Corpus Delectable
Page 14
“Wade, what’ll I do?”
“Go back down there and send Oldham on alone. Tell
him I’m a cousin. Tell him you’ve got to meet Rock. Tell him the truth, anything, but get rid of him so I can take you to a place where you’ll be safe until I have a chance to do something.”
“No, I think I’d better go back, Wade, and face it. I can straighten it out. I didn’t kill Rock.”
“They think you did. Sheriff Hyder has a case against you. You’ve been tried and convicted over every backyard fence in Big Hominy. What do you want to do, provide them with a Roman holiday? Now get down there and get rid of Oldham.”
I heard her take one slow step; another. I glanced at her, and she was moving toward the road like a mechanical doll with no feeling in it.
She reached the cutbank. Oldham helped her down, taking both her hands in his, and throwing a mean-mad glance in my direction. He pulled her close to him and they talked for a minute.
There was little doubt in my mind as to Clarence Oldham’s serious and honorable intentions toward Vicky. He had money and class. He was in the mountains for a vacation. He was not the kind of man you’d associate with the usual hill girl. But Vicky was different. He sensed it; he saw the qualities in her that I did, and he treated her like a gentleman. Big Hominy didn’t like that, having its own opinion of how she should be treated.
Oldham’s argument with her failed. He got in his car and drove off.
I crawled out of the brambles as she came up the slope; she moved as if she were tired, and her face was lined with frustration.
I spat out the pebbles. “What did Oldham have to say?” “He tried to talk me out of it.” “What did you tell him?”
“That Rock was dead. The truth, Wade, except I didn’t identify you.”
She looked at her high-heeled shoes, and then up the mountainside. She sat down, took the shoes off, and peeled her nylons from her legs. “Maybe I should have listened to him, Wade. He said it was crazy for me even to think I’d get blamed for Rock’s death. Clarence said he would hire a good lawyer. I’d get nowhere running away, he said. I hurt him, Wade, and he’s been nice to me.”
“He doesn’t know Big Hominy, though.”
“No, he doesn’t. Well, what do we do now?”
“I’ll take you across the mountain to the old Stillman place. The cabin is still sound enough for you to be comfortable there this time of year.”
We climbed up through the timber, following a dim trail that most eyes would have missed. But we were both hill bred, and the trail was as plain to us as a city sidewalk. The cool breath of the mountains was in our faces and the solitude wrapped us. It could have been nice, having her walk beside me this way.
“You haven’t told me about Rock,” she said, and her voice was so tight it jarred me with an awareness of the feelings she must be fighting to control.
“Deaf Joyner found Rock this morning when he took a bottle of whisky to the cabin where Rock’s been staying. Deaf reported the killing and Sheriff Hyder took Doc Braddock up with him. The doctor said Rock was killed about eleven o’clock last night by a blow on the head. Deaf said he’d seen a woman come out of the cabin about that time. She’d run through the glade below the cabin and moonlight had struck her full in the face. Deaf said the woman was you.”
She faltered a step, then kept on walking.
“Deaf said he just figured you’d paid a visit to your ex-husband, and he thought nothing about it until this morning. Kirk Hyder spotted the fireplace poker lying across the cabin from the fireplace, and wondered if it could have been the murder weapon. He wrapped it up, along with a compact and a couple of other things that he took from your room, and sent a deputy highsailing it to Asheville.
“The deputy was all steamed up when he got back with news that the Identification Bureau in Asheville had matched up fingerprints from your things with a set from the poker.”
I glanced at her, but her bloodless face remained a silent mask.
“The minute I heard,” I said, “I went to the employees’ quarters at the hotel. You’d left early in the morning with Oldham and no one knew where you had gone. I bribed a maid to let me in the room. I saw nothing more than Kirk had, but I put two things together. There was a purchase slip from Brudick’s, dated yesterday, for a new bathing suit. I couldn’t find the suit.
“I decided you and Oldham had gone to Cheoah Park for the day, planning to swim, maybe go boating. It was the only thing I could think of.
“I was afraid to go to Cheoah because you might take the Burnston road back and I’d miss you. So I holed up east of the point where the Burnston and Big Hominy roads join. If you’d been to Cheeoah, you had to come back along that stretch.”
She stopped walking. There was an old log lying beside the path, and she sat down on it, resting her elbows on her knees, letting her hands fall limp.
“It’s no good, Wade.”
“Don’t talk crazy!”
“You tried—thanks. It would have been better if you’d let me walk into it.”
I sat down beside her, took her chin in my hand, and made her look at me.
“I haven’t started to try yet, Vicky. There’s just one thing I must know. Did you kill Rock? You said back there that you didn’t. But I want to hear it again, with you looking in my eyes. Did you kill him, Vicky?”
“Before God, Wade, I swear to you that I didn’t.”
I nodded. I didn’t care what the evidence said. I knew her too well. I knew she couldn’t tell that kind of lie while she was looking at me like that.
“Was Deaf lying about you being in the cabin?”
“No,” she said. “I was there.”
“You shouldn’t have gone.”
She read the blame in my eyes and dropped her head as if ready to accept punishment. “I know it, Wade. Just another two months now and I could have got my divorce under the two-year separation law. I hadn’t seen Rock since he’d been back. I didn’t know for sure that he was back, just heard gossip that he was hanging around the fish camps and bootlegging joints. Then he sent word to me that he was in trouble and had to see me. I was afraid not to go to Joyner’s. You know how Rock was.”
A brute. That was Rock.
“He was dead when I got there,” Vicky said. “Alone with him, I got scared. I thought I heard somebody moving around outside the cabin—that’s when I picked up the poker. I didn’t know if it was really somebody or just nerves. As soon as the night was still again, I threw down the poker and ran like crazy. I didn’t think of fingerprints or anything except getting away. When I got to my room I calmed down. I knew what people were bound to say when Rock was found. But saying isn’t proving, and this morning I decided the best thing was to go on about my business as if I’d never been out there. In the light of day, it was easy to convince myself that all I’d heard last night was leaves rustling outside the cabin.”
She stared down into the darkening valley. “I’m tired of fighting, Wade. I’ve kidded myself too long. I’m just Hap McCall’s daughter, hill trash. Even animals in cages have more sense—they don’t try to beat their brains out against the bars. It would be a relief to just give up.”
“I won’t let you,” I said. “And I won’t let them hurt you any more either.”
She studied my face. “No,” she said. “You’re sincere right now, Wade, and I believe you. But later …”
“Come on,” I said. “It’s time we were getting to the old Stillman place.”
With a shrug, she started up the trail ahead of me, carrying her shoes and stockings. Without looking over her shoulder, she asked, “What are your plans?”
“To leave you hidden and safe, while I turn up something in Big Hominy. If I can’t …”
“Yes, Wade?”
“I’ll get together all the money I can and take you out of the country.”
She kept walking without saying anything and finally I said angrily, “Maybe you wish it was Oldham taking you.”
“He treated me nice, Wade. He has a business of his own in Charlotte. He can afford to spend three or four hundred dollars vacationing at the hotel. He might even have asked me to marry him, but he won’t now. So I wasn’t wishing anything about Clarence.”
The flat sound of her voice reminded me of the dry rustling of leaves blowing across a mountainside on a winter day.
Read more of Man Killer
F+W Crime is committed to developing the past, present, and future of crime fiction in all of its forms. With widely-praised content at its core, F+W Crime offers readers a true community experience that crosses all spectrums of media, and boldly shares in the evolution of how a story can be told.
Visit us today for information on new authors, exclusive offers, and more!
fwcrime.com
This edition published by
Prologue Books
an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
57 Littlefield Street
Avon, MA 02322
www.prologuebooks.com
Copyright © 1964 by Talmage Powell, Registration Renewed 1993
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
eISBN 10: 1-4405-3715-1
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-3715-8
We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster ebook.
* * *
Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.