I suppressed the surge of resentment I always feel when a woman tries to pin me down. “I don’t know,” I said without anger. “I’ll call you.”
“Oh,” she said again. After a moment she asked tentatively, “Do you think it might be before the weekend?”
“I’ll call you,” I repeated patiently.
My patient tone took an effort. I had come close to yelling the words and hanging up on her again, but I managed to control the impulse. As long as I got my point across, I really had no desire to hurt her.
In a subdued tone she said, “All right, Tom,” and hung up.
As I had half expected, Helen phoned me at the office again just before five.
“George has another sub-committee meeting tonight,” she said with a touch of cynicism. “The Special Gifts division this time.”
“How many divisions does the United Fund have?” I inquired.
“He’s ostensibly met with ten so far. I suppose he’ll have to start over soon. Will you be home this evening?”
“I’ll make a point of it,” I said.
“Eight thirty again?”
“All right.”
“Tonight I’ll come to the back door.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll leave it unlocked. Just walk in.”
“See you then,” she said softly, and made a little kissing sound.
Mention of the back door made me remember the key Esther still had. I thought about phoning her desk to ask about it, then decided it would keep until I saw her on the way out of the plant, or until morning if I missed her then.
A last-minute phone call from one of my salesmen held me until ten after five so I missed her that afternoon.
I might have known there would be a catch to any prospect as pleasing as the one I had visualized while lying awake the previous night. Helen didn’t mention it for a long time after arriving at my apartment, but then she gently let me know what the catch was.
The early part of the evening followed the same pattern as the previous one. She arrived jumping out of her skin, and it took three double bourbons to relax her. Once relaxed, she casually walked into the bedroom and took off her clothes. For some time after that we didn’t have any conversation at all.
Eventually, as she lay quiet with her head on my shoulder, I asked, “Were you serious last night about your heart spinning?”
Her lips lightly brushed my chin. “I don’t joke about love, Tom. Maybe it’s just rebound, but I think I’m in love with you.”
“Is it the marriage kind of love?”
She nestled her bare body closer to mine. “Is that a proposal or just a request for information?”
“Some of both, probably.”
Her lips touched my chin again. “It’s the marriage kind of love if you reciprocate. I’m not interested in another philandering husband.”
I said, “I’m the monogamous type.”
“That’s not quite enough, Tom. Do you love me?”
In thirty years of living and loving I had carefully avoided permanent entanglements by making it a rule never to tell a woman I loved her. But now I took the plunge.
Pulling her head against my chest, I said into her hair, “I love you.”
“Completely?”
“Completely.”
She was silent for a time. Presently she said in a withdrawn voice, almost as though speaking to herself, “Marriage to me would mean a big change in your life. Money, social position. George’s present job, if you wanted it.”
“Hey,” I said. “You don’t have to parade your wares. It’s you I love, not the side benefits.”
“Is it?” she asked.
Cupping her chin, I tilted her head back so that I could see into her face. “What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Only there’s the factor to consider that I already have a husband. George has to be disposed of.”
I kissed the end of her nose. “I didn’t intend making you a bigamist. That’s a simple problem. After you divorce George, we’ll get married.”
“I don’t intend to divorce George.”
“What?” I asked.
“I want you to kill him.”
I took my arm from around her shoulder and sat up straight. “Kill him! What in the hell for?”
In a voice suddenly so cold with venom it nearly hissed, she said, “Because I hate him. I want to do to him what he planned to do to me. I want to watch him die, and make sure he knows I planned it.”
I looked down at her with my jaw hanging open. A little stupidly I said, “But divorce is so simple, baby. We can get all the evidence—”
“You don’t know me very well,” she interrupted. “I don’t do things halfway. I gave George all the love there was in me. And now he has all the hate I’m capable of feeling. If you want me for your wife, you’re going to have to kill him. Because you’re not going to get me any other way.”
She wasn’t any more in love with me than I was with her. She was simply offering herself and the material things that went with her in exchange for revenge.
I guess it’s true that hell hath no fury such as that of a woman scorned.
I got up, slipped on a robe and padded barefoot into the front room, where I started to mix myself a drink. Helen strolled from the bedroom naked and stood watching me without expression.
As I poured water on top of the whisky and ice, she said, “Make me one too, please.”
I carried the one I had just mixed over to her and built myself another.
“Cheers,” I said sarcastically.
She took a sip of her drink, her gaze fixed on me over the edge of the glass.
“So it isn’t love after all,” I said. “It’s just hate for George.”
She took another sip, then set the glass on an end table. “I told you I love you,” she said in a level voice. “You’ll never find any indication that I don’t even if we live to be a hundred.” She added in a tone of faint mockery, “In return I expect you never to let me feel you married me just to get George’s sinecure instead of for my lily-white body.”
There wasn’t any point in further discussion. It was clear from her manner that it was a take-it-or-leave-it proposition.
“I’ve never committed a crime,” I said. “This is a thing I’m going to have to think over long and carefully.”
“Then I’ll go home and give you time to think. Tomorrow is Thursday, you know, and Friday I leave for the cottage. It doesn’t give you much time to plan out details.”
Turning, she re-entered the bedroom. I tossed off the rest of my drink, set down the empty glass and followed her as far as the bedroom door. She was putting on her clothing.
“You certainly waited until the last minute,” I said bitterly. “If I decide to go along, I’ll have two days to plan a perfect murder. You knew you wanted him dead before you came here last night. Why didn’t you spring it then?”
“You can’t ask a relative stranger to kill for you,” she said calmly. “We had to get a little better acquainted.”
She was right, of course. From her point of view she had played the thing exactly right. It didn’t make me feel any better to realize she had been carefully maneuvering me into just the position she wanted.
I didn’t dress to walk her to her car. I escorted her only as far as the kitchen door. She didn’t seem to expect any more. At the door she offered her lips for a good-night kiss and I gave her a bare peck. Her lips were as soft as ever, but they were cool.
For the second night in a row I didn’t get any sleep. I didn’t even go to bed until nearly time to get up. I spent the whole night pacing and smoking cigarettes while I balanced in my mind the attractions of being a rich murderer against the attractions of remaining poor but relatively sinless.
After weighing all the pros and cons, I came to a decision at six thirty A.M. Then I fell into bed for an hour, rose again, showered and shaved, drank three cups of black coffee and went to the office.
15
AS I WENT BY ESTHER’S DESK, SHE STOPPED ME. SHE Examined my face with an expression of worry.
“Are you ill, Tom?”
For no reason except that I was on edge from my restless night, the question irritated me. “I’m fine, thanks,” I said shortly.
“You look so tired.”
“I’ve been having a little trouble sleeping.”
“Maybe you need someone to pet you to sleep,” she said hopefully.
I ignored the suggestion. “You still have my back-door key, Esther?”
“At home,” she said.
“See if you can remember to bring it tomorrow, will you? I don’t have a duplicate.”
“All right, Tom.”
She looked as though she were on the verge of saying something else, then changed her mind. Suspecting it was going to be another inquiry as to when she was going to see me, I didn’t press to find out and moved on to my office.
I didn’t realize how ferocious my mood was until I found myself snapping at poor, meek Norma Henstedder. About eleven I called her from the stenographers’ pool in order to dictate some correspondence. When she came into my office, she studied me with the same worried expression Esther had worn.
“Do you feel all right, Mr. Cavanaugh?” she asked.
“Why?” I inquired acidly. “Have you taken over the duties of plant nurse?”
She paled as though I had slapped her. Immediately I felt ashamed of myself, for the woman had done a lot for me without asking a thing in return. I felt the least I could do was treat her pleasantly.
“Sorry, Norma,” I growled. “I’m in a vile mood. You’ll have to put up with me today.”
Her color instantly returned. “You work too hard, Mr. Cavanaugh,” she said sympathetically.
Seating herself, she carefully tugged her skirt to below her knobby knees as she always did and opened her shorthand notebook. She gazed at me expectantly, her eyes enormously magnified by their thick-lensed glasses.
“I’m all ready,” she said, just as though nothing had happened.
Somehow I got through the day, though I was nearly falling down by closing time. Helen phoned just before five.
“Come to any decision?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Want to drop by tonight about the same time?”
“Is it yes or no?”
“I’ll tell you when I see you.”
“I’m not sure I can get away tonight,” she said. “He hasn’t phoned that he’s going out. Perhaps he plans to stay home.”
“Use the same excuse he does,” I growled. “Dream up some kind of committee meeting.”
“Why can’t you tell me now? If it’s no, I can save myself the trip, and you can save your bourbon.”
I decided it was time to let her know I had no intention of being a yes-dear kind of husband for the rest of my life.
“Be there at eight thirty,” I said, and hung up.
I deliberately waited in my office until ten after five because I didn’t want to encounter Esther on the way out. I was in even less a mood than I had been that morning to be questioned about when we would get together again. When I finally left the plant, I was in such a state of near exhaustion, I needed a pickup fast in order to avoid going to sleep driving. I stopped by Tony Vincinti’s.
The cocktail crowd was beginning to fill up the place, but everyone at the bar seemed to have a drink in front of him at the moment, so Tony had time to give me a little personal attention I didn’t need.
“Compare,” he greeted me effusively. “How you making out with that cute little blond?”
“Fine,” I said. “Make me a double Gibson.”
As he mixed it, he examined me with concern. “You look beat, amico. You have a fight with your girl?”
I merely shook my head.
“You ought to grab that little doll,” he told me confidentially as he placed the drink before me. “She’s crazy about you, you know.”
I hiked my eyebrows.
“I could tell by the way she looked at you that day, Tom. Right away I said to myself, ‘That’s the girl for Tom Cavanaugh.’ “
“You’re pretty good at snap judgments, are you?” I asked dryly.
He flashed his white Sicilian smile. “Did I ever tell you how I met my Angelina?”
“Many times,” I said wearily. “You saw her from the back at Mass, kneeling. You fell in love before you ever saw her face.”
“Well, that snap judgment worked out pretty good, didn’t it?” After a pause, he added reminiscently, “What a cute little can she had at nineteen. Just like your girl’s.”
If I had been considering marriage to Esther, this remark might well have killed the idea. I had met Tony’s Angelina.
“Of course there’s a little more to her can now, after twenty years of spaghetti,” he conceded.
About three times as much, I thought, but kept the comment to myself. Tony moved on to serve other customers.
His words started a train of thought. I wondered how I’d feel about Esther if she had Helen’s money.
There was no question that Helen had it all over Esther in physical beauty. She was certainly the most beautiful woman I was ever intimate with. They seemed equally passionate, though Helen’s passion was a more controlled thing. Esther had an intriguing habit of losing all control and surrendering with complete helplessness; Helen left the impression that she knew what she was doing every second and could switch her passion on and off at will. I gave Esther points on boudoir technique.
And of the two women, Esther certainly had the warmer personality. Helen’s plans for her husband had already showed me the ruthlessness beneath her gracious exterior. As I thought about it, I realized there was always a certain remoteness about her. I couldn’t imagine the regal, golden-haired Helen crawling on my lap simply because she wanted to snuggle close to me, as Esther liked to do.
By the time I finished my first Gibson, I began to understand why George Mathews had strayed. With something of a jolt I realized that without her money, I’d never in the world choose Helen over Esther.
I had one more double Gibson, which kept me awake long enough to eat some dinner. When I got home, I took a warm shower followed by an ice-cold one that jarred me completely awake. By the time Helen arrived at eight thirty, I was as refreshed and relaxed as if I had gotten in eight hours’ sleep.
As usual she arrived right on the dot. But tonight there wasn’t a trace of nervousness in her. She wasn’t dressed for romance either. In place of the low-cut gown, she wore the simple street dress she had worn the first night I visited her home.
When she came in, she didn’t offer me a kiss. She stood just inside the door, examining me coolly.
“Well?” she asked.
“You win,” I said. “I’ll kill him for you.”
Instantly she was in my arms. Her lips came up to mine with all the fire she had shown the first night.
“I love you, darling,” she whispered. “You’ll never regret it. I’ll love you as no man was ever loved before.”
Having reached my decision, the problem was how to perform the act without getting caught. Helen’s insistence on being present at the kill, plus her insistence that Mathews know why he was going to die, complicated matters.
After mixing us both drinks, I said, “We’re not going to make any of the mistakes your husband would have made if he’d actually gotten around to killing you. He’s an utter jerk.”
“How do you mean?” Helen asked.
“Buying a gun under an assumed name, for instance. If the gun had ever been located, they’d have traced it back to him within hours.”
“How?”
“Because that’s all the time it would take to trace it to the pawnshop. And from there on it would be routine. The husband is always automatically a suspect when a woman’s murdered. With you as the corpse, they’d march George down to the pawnshop and the proprietor would instantly identify him as the buyer.”
“But suppose my—” She paused to grimace. “—my body had never been discovered?”
“Possibly it wouldn’t have been,” I admitted. “With six sash weights tied to it. There are a couple of hundred-foot-deep holes in Weed Lake. But if it had been, the weights and cord could have been traced back to him, too. We won’t take that sort of chance.”
“What will we do?”
“There’s only one sure-fire murder method,” I said. “A planned accident. The cops can never prove murder in an accident case even if they suspect it.”
“You mean something such as running him over in a car?”
“I mean something such as his falling out of a boat and drowning. While you and he are out fishing.”
She frowned. “How could I get him out in a boat? Anyway, it’s too dangerous. Suppose he pulled his gun and shot me before you came out of hiding?”
“You don’t actually have to go fishing with him,” I said. “We just have to make it appear that’s what happened. Does the cottage have a bathtub or a shower?”
“A combination,” she said. “You plan to drown him in the bathtub and then throw his body in the lake?”
“It’ll be a little more elaborate a plan than that,” I told her. “I want to stew over the details for a while. Why don’t you go home and phone me at the office in the morning?”
“Tomorrow’s Friday,” she reminded me. “You’d better have things worked out by then, because I’m leaving for the cottage right after lunch.”
“They’re practically worked out now,” I assured her. “Don’t worry about it.”
She seemed content with that. She left a few minutes later. Except for a tender kiss of good-by and the outburst when I’d said I’d kill Mathews, we had had no physical contact. We hadn’t even sat together, Helen sitting on the sofa and I in a chair.
Esther would either have been in my lap the whole time or next to me on the sofa with her thigh pressing mine and our hands clasped.
After two sleepless nights all I felt like doing was collapsing in bed. But I still had some thinking to do and it had to be done tonight. For hours after Helen left I sat in the front room chain-smoking while I wrestled with the problem of how to commit a murder without getting caught.
Body For Sale Page 9
