Pop went on walking. “That word, now—murderer. Someone can kill in the heat of the moment, an instant’s irrationality . . . it’s as if you had a fever, that you blacked out. . . . Only afterward there are things to be mended.”
“With more murders.” Amy made a little hole with her finger, a tiny tunnel at which the pup sniffed in fascination. Then his paws began to work, his toenails sent the dirt flying, and the hole suddenly became a trench, then a small cavern. The pup stopped, his tongue rolling, his eyes begging permission to continue the game.
“Should he be digging here?” Amy wondered.
Pop’s gaze was on the book. “It doesn’t matter,” he said off-handedly. “Look, Amy. Suppose I could find out for you whether the child was safe or not. Wouldn’t that do? If there was a promise that no harm would come to her——”
Amy shook her head. “If I can’t find Elizabeth, the book goes to the police.”
He shifted the pipestem again. “Not even if . . . if I could guarantee——”
“How could you?” she said irritably. “No. I’d have to see her myself.”
“But this kidnaper . . . I mean, people like that—— Awfully jumpy, of course. Set like a hair trigger. You wouldn’t want to press them, force them, perhaps cause them to lose their heads.”
“Why should the kidnaper blow his top?” Amy argued. “He’s done the other jobs smoothly and carefully. This is my ticket to Elizabeth. When I see her, when I can bring her home again, I’ll pass it over.” She was tapping the book, and Pop’s eyes were glued to the tapping finger.
He made a lunge at her. She was unprepared. With one hand he knocked her aside, so that she fell into the path; with the other he seized Tzegeti’s diary. Amy didn’t try to pick herself up at once. She watched Pop. He was breathing deeply, jerkily, and his skin was red with a sudden flush.
“I had to do it, Amy. For the child’s sake. For yours. I’m going to handle the affair for you. The little Tzegeti girl will be all right, and you won’t get hurt either.”
Amy reached for her purse. Pop wasn’t watching her now. His fingers were straying over the book’s covers, dipping between the leaves.
“Give it back, Pop.”
The sight of the gun must have been a terrific surprise. For a moment she thought that Pop actually didn’t believe what he was seeing, that he mistrusted his senses. “Hey!” he said, a short breathless grunt of a word. “You—you’ve got a——”
She stood up slowly and leveled the barrel at him. “I’m not fooling.”
For a moment they faced each other, a battle of wills, of wits. He was wondering, now the surprise was wearing off, if she’d really use the gun, really aim it at him and cold-bloodedly pull the trigger; and she was keeping her face a mask.
“I’m a little off the beam today, Pop. Almost insane, you might say. I don’t think a jury would convict me of anything if I shot you now—not if my lawyer was careful to bring out how I’d taken the Tzegeti child into my house, and because her aloneness was somehow so much like my own I’d grown very protective toward her, and how much of a strain I’d been under since she disappeared. Oh, I don’t mean killing you. Maybe I couldn’t quite get away with that. But a bullet can do other things than kill. It can shatter a bone, disfigure a hand, leave a limp. I could do those things to you, Pop, if I don’t get the diary back.”
He must have seen that the flaming savagery in her eyes was real, that its burning heat was meant for him. He flinched a trifle.
Then he put out a hand—not the one with the book in it, but the one with the pipe. “But, Amy, this is me—Pop!”
“It was you, Pop, a long time ago. Somewhere along the way there were changes made—not nice changes. From an honest cop you turned into a greedy politician, then into a shakedown artist, then murderer, thief, kidnaper——”
“No, Amy. Oh, my God, you’ve made a horrible mistake!”
“I haven’t made any mistake, and don’t go religious on me. There are some tools over there.” She nodded toward a clutter of things in one of the side paths: a shovel, a hoe, a roll of wire, clippers, a hose nozzle. “Hand over the book and pick up the shovel. And start digging.”
“Digging?” His mouth gaped. “Where?”
“Here.” With the toe of her shoe she turned over some of the loose earth.
He looked into her eyes again and then went off stumblingly to the heap of tools and came back with the shovel. He paused then. He had put the pipe into his pocket. He looked old and hurt and bewildered, the book in one hand, the shovel handle in the other. There wasn’t any of the usual humor, or fatherliness, left in his manner—just puzzlement that Amy should treat him like this. She reached a hand toward him. “Give the book, Pop.”
He laid it near his feet, at the side of the path, in a move that was quick and catlike. “Amy, you can’t think I buried the little girl there.”
“You’ve done something there. Get busy.” She fingered the trigger impatiently.
“I’ll prove to you how wrong you are.” He began to dig, to toss the earth into a heap at one side, and all at once Amy had the hunch that she was guilty of an error. Not the kind Pop meant, however. There wasn’t anything under the loose dirt. Either Pop had told the truth about transplanting the zinnias or the meaning of the freshly turned earth was one she hadn’t glimpsed.
Amy half turned, looked around the yard. The garden extended up the slight slope of the hill. At the rear was a tool shed and a garage, both hidden under climbing morning-glory and bougainvillea.
Pop raised himself from the hole he had dug. “Look, Amy. My shovel doesn’t strike anything but soil.” He gave the soft earth in the bottom of the hole a stab with the shovel, and she heard the clean scrape of the trace of gravel as he withdrew the blade.
“All right. We’ll look somewhere else. Your garage. And the shed.”
He nodded, laid down the shovel, reached for the book.
“Let it be.”
He withdrew his hand, giving her a studying sidewise glance. “I never thought I’d see you like this, Amy—hard, tough, savage.”
“I believe you commented on it before,” she said. “Let’s see the shed first, then the garage.”
He led the way up the sunny slope, through flower beds where bees were busy, where a couple of butterflies drifted like pale blue snowflakes. “I don’t keep much in the shed any more. Old papers—I save them for the scouts. And a few gardening things.”
She wouldn’t believe; she went on in and checked the interior. Then she glanced back at the heap of things in the path. A faint uneasiness stirred in her. Something was askew and she couldn’t place it. She turned, caught Pop’s eye; hatred glittered in it and something more: amusement, perhaps. “Well, let’s try the garage.”
Pop’s nice new coupé sat inside, gleaming, dustless. He’d allowed himself to spend a bit of money here, a touch of ostentation. This was a rich man’s car. Amy looked through the windows at the dove-gray upholstery. It was bare, immaculate.
“You see, the little girl isn’t here,” Pop pointed out, aggrieved. “You made some bad accusations, and you ought to take them back.”
“Not until I’m sure,” Amy said. “We’ll look at the house now.”
She picked up Tzegeti’s book as they passed.
The interior of the house was cool, dim, and shadowy, and their footsteps echoed a little in the empty quiet. Pop went ahead, and Amy kept the gun on him, but the gesture was beginning to be an empty one, and Pop no longer had much of the air of a prisoner; he was more like a guide, an injured innocent only too glad to prove her wrong. His manner grew brisker and more cheerful by the minute.
And all the time she knew that something was amiss. Something had happened out there in the yard but the meaning had evaded her, though it remained, a shadow in her mind, to nag. She began to watch Pop now, not openly, as before, but slyly, and she began to let a hint of uncertainty creep into her manner.
So Pop expanded, grew almost jovi
al, joking, and threw open closet doors with exaggerated hospitality.
All at once Amy checked him. “Wait a minute. We passed up the kitchen. I’ll have to see it.”
He winced elaborately. “Even you can’t think of me as a cannibal, Amy.”
She let a look of doubt flicker in her face. “No, but I’ll have a look.”
He was careful to conceal the touch of surliness that threatened to break up his casual air. “Oh, very well, then.” He jerked open the kitchen door and walked quickly into the room. It was a large kitchen, quiet and shadowed now, since it faced east and the sun was low. Amy pushed the wall switch and the lights came on. There was not the usual sterile brightness, the shine of tile and gleam of chrome. It had been remodeled, and a decorator with an affinity for Early American had done well by it. There was a fireplace of old brick, a warming oven, an open grill, and long work-boards of shining oak. Pop liked to cook, she remembered. In the middle of the room was a big round table, comfortable chairs drawn up; a low light hung from the ceiling. Amy thought to herself that Pop entertained in here, played cards with his cronies at the big table, served beer and barbecued sandwiches. Yes, this was the room of his inner delight, the place where he enjoyed himself and squeezed the joy out of the luck and the power life had brought him.
She turned around. In the rear wall, set into an alcove, were the necessary appliances that even a decorator couldn’t get away from: the refrigerator, the big range, the tile sink. They looked apologetic and out of place in the elaborately homey room. Amy’s eye swept past them, then went back. “What happened to your stove?”
Pop licked his lips. “The clock was out of order.”
She walked over, still casual and puzzled. At the top of the big white range, where the electric controls had been, bare wires protruded.
“This was the kind of thing that turns the oven off and on automatically,” she said.
“Yeah,” he agreed, “only it hadn’t been working right.”
She touched the oven handle idly, glanced at Pop to see if there was any reaction. His face was blank; he wasn’t thinking about the stove, he didn’t care if she looked in the oven.
Amy straightened, wondering to herself: Where do I go from here?
“Don’t you think apologies are in order?” Pop suggested lightly.
“No. The more I think the situation over, the more sure I am that you’ve got more at stake in this than anyone. It never occurred to me to wonder what made things tick in Lomena, and how the gears came to mesh so smoothly in spite of the gambling being installed, a growth like a cancer on the town. I should have thought, if I’d had any sense, that there was someone in authority to keep the town bright, to bring out that aura of civic health, and perhaps most of all to keep the business people from complaining too much about the loss of revenue over the gambling tables. A go-between. That’s you, Pop.”
“You are insane, Amy.” His voice had risen and there was tightness in it. “This accumulation of strain has been too much for you. Here, take a chair and rest for a moment. Let me bring you a glass of water.”
She smiled a little. “You don’t have to pretend with me, Pop. I’m wise to you now. I can see why you resigned as chief of police and became a sort of father to the town. You became very valuable to the gambling interests. When complaints started, you got up and made a speech. You pointed out the beauties of Lomena, its terrific cleanliness, its community pride, its low taxes, its splendid schools. You had a pipe line right into headquarters, too, and you could warn when trouble loomed up. Tell me—have they given you the name of the witness who saw you on that train?”
He was at the sink, a glass in his hand, his fingers on the faucet. For just a moment an unusual stillness settled on him, the way an animal grows still to listen for danger.
As if in answer to that listening, there was a sound.
Steps came up on the porch and someone knocked at the front door.
CHAPTER TWENTY
POP LOOKED without affection at the figure of Neece which filled the doorway. The big, square, good-natured face turned from Pop to Amy, politely puzzled, wondering. “What goes on here?” The pup had come in with him, now made a rush for Amy, tripped over himself, ended in a sprawling dive, and scrambled to his feet whimpering.
Amy had the purse, Tzegeti’s book, and the gun to handle. She crowded the purse and the book under her arm, put a free hand down to comfort the dog. “You’ve come to the right place, Mr. Neece. But there isn’t any deal. Pop isn’t trading today.”
She saw Pop, turning from the sink, look at his watch, a quick secretive motion, a flick of the wrist that he had thought concealed. In that moment she thought of the electric clock missing from the range. A frightening framework seemed in the process of building itself, under the surface of her mind, a thing made up of bits and pieces of which she didn’t have enough. She had to hurry; her pulse trembled with the need to be quick, to know surely—and the very need for speed set up a block, a wall.
“Perhaps,” she suggested to Neece, desperation making her voice shake, “you might help Pop to a decision.”
Neece kept his pleasantly puzzled expression. “I guess I’d better have the situation explained in words of one syllable, Mrs. Luttrell.”
She laid the book and the gun on the edge of the big table. “I’m sure that Pop knows where Elizabeth is. I’ve offered Tzegeti’s diary for her freedom. I’ll go further. I’ll give him a head start so that he can get away before the police know.”
“You’re saying that Mr. Bronson is the kidnaper?” Neece looked at Pop, a long look; and Amy saw that there was no friendship here, only a business association, perhaps, but that they were deciding something about her. Neece went on, “I can’t quite believe you’re making such an accusation.”
“I am. I am.”
His tone grew more reproving. “And I think you ought to put away the gun. That doesn’t look too good. It cheapens our errand here.”
He was suave and smooth; he made her feel like a gashouse tough. At the same moment she saw how his poise, his sureness, communicated itself to Pop. Pop put down the glass of water he’d been holding.
Neece continued. “I came here to ask Mr. Bronson’s help in my efforts to contact someone who might have knowledge of the child. He’s a reliable citizen, a former officer, with friendships everywhere.”
Amy said, “He’s a crook.”
Neece seemed pained by it. He began to walk toward her, and Pop fell into step from the other wall. They were converging on her. She wanted to pick up the gun, and she remembered the things she’d said before, her willingness to shoot anybody and to take the consequences—only here she was, penned in, and Neece’s words made all that she had done seem silly and melodramatic.
“Go back!” Amy cried, choking on the words.
“You are upset!” Pop Bronson purred, his eyes glowing. “I think you ought to see a doctor, Amy. Perhaps take a sedative and sleep awhile.”
“He’s got her somewhere!” Amy stuttered to Neece. “Here! In the house—only I can’t find her. And he’s got something working, some plan—some machine.” She couldn’t say why the last words had popped into her mind; she tried to point to the place on the big range where the electric timing clock had been fastened, but Neece’s pleasant eyes and the slight shake of his head mesmerized her. “If I could only think——”
“You’re ill. Very ill,” he suggested comfortingly.
“Please help me!” Amy backed a little, and the table pressed the back of her thighs and held her there in the path of their advance.
“You’re as sick as all get out,” Pop added, relishing the hypnotized despair that kept her rooted, relishing the homespun humor of his remark. “Yes, real sick.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said a new voice, a tough, brash masculine voice. Their three heads jerked around in unison toward the door to the rear yard, and there was Fogarty, lounging against the lintel, twirling a bit of rope.
There
was a space of about ten seconds when the room held utter silence, when none of them seemed even to breathe.
Finally Neece managed, somewhat inanely, to get out, “Here, what are you doing?”
“Watching,” Fogarty said coolly. “I’m waiting to see what you and Bronson are going to do to Mrs. Luttrell. I thought it might make interesting reading.”
Neece stepped away from Amy, stepped out of the path he’d made across the floor to pin her against Pop’s big table. “You’re implying a rather nasty idea there.”
“Well, the look on your face wasn’t so respectable, either. What’re you going to do, by the way, about her statement that Bronson has the kid here?”
“Why—why, ignore it, of course. What else could——”
“I wouldn’t do it if I were you. Your boss wouldn’t like it—providing Cunninghan is your boss and not Bronson here.” He made a negligent gesture which included Pop and Neece, bound them casually in whatever business was afoot. “The thing about Cunninghan—he likes to have bridges behind him. He likes to have a legal excuse, even a lame one, for what he does. And there damned well isn’t any excuse this side of hell for kidnaping.” Fogarty inspected a hangnail on his thumb.
Neece took on the gingerliness of a man walking a mined field as he got himself entirely away from Pop, away off on the other side of the room where there could be no physical association between them. “If Mr. Bronson is involved in anything criminal, naturally I’m not connected with it.”
“Oh?” Fogarty seemed elaborately surprised. “You were pretty chummy a minute ago, but I’ll let it pass. I want Mrs. Luttrell here to hear a few facts. I took this rope around”—he walked over to the big table and dropped the rope there—“and didn’t have any trouble striking pay dirt. Bronson might have thought he was getting just an ordinary piece of leftover hemp. But of course he forgot that he’s rather an important citizen and that a clerk in a hardware store might go out of his way a bit, wanting to please him. This was a sample, or part of it. The clerk remembers Mr. Bronson without any difficulty at all.”
Nets to Catch the Wind Page 19
