“Hi, Stan, this is Joel. Listen, about our date tonight—I don’t know where Lucy is.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, she wasn’t here when I got home yesterday. I’ve called a couple of people, but no luck.”
“Hm-m,” said Stan Merrill, knowing full well. “You mean you really don’t know where to call her?”
“Well—I could try a couple of other places, I suppose. But I didn’t want to hold you people up about tonight. I better call you again after I find her. She might—you know—not feel like going tonight.”
“Yeah,” Stan said in a disappointed tone. “Well, let me know, Joel, and good luck.”
Then Joel looked up Robert Vanderholt’s number in the Philadelphia directory and called him.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you,” Joel said, “but do you happen to know where my wife is?”
Robbie gave a laugh. “No, I don’t.”
“You don’t? Didn’t you see her yesterday afternoon? Say around five?”
“Yes, I did see her yesterday,” Robbie said. “Maybe she went out afterwards for a long walk.”
“If so, she hasn’t come back. You evidently had a little argument with her. The room was sort of a mess.”
“Oh? Sorry.”
Joel set his feet firmly on the floor. “I’m not kidding, Robbie, where is she? I don’t want any more games.”
“I’m not playing games, either. I left her in the house. Why don’t you keep a better watch on her?” Robbie put the telephone down.
Joel was furious for an instant, then he smiled.
It was now time for the police. Joel looked up the number in the front of his Pennerlake and vicinity directory, called, and told them his trouble. Yes, he had asked everyone he knew to ask. “Twenty-six years old, five feet two, dark blond hair, blue eyes, a hundred and ten pounds,” Joel said in answer to their questions.
The police said they would send out a missing persons alarm, and would also come to his house.
Two policemen arrived thirty minutes later. Joel was smoking a cigarette and walking the floor. In the course of their inquiry, they looked in the bedroom, which Joel had left just as it was. No, he had not been having a drink with her, he said, her guest had been Robert Vanderholt, whom of course Joel had already telephoned. Lucy wasn’t with him.
“Still—it seems he was the last person who saw her,” Joel added. “The last I know of, that is. He said she was here when he left.”
“The bedspread was like this, too?” asked one of the policemen.
“Yes. Sort of twisted. I . . . just left the room the way it was. Didn’t even sleep in here last night.”
This remark led them into the relationship between Lucy and Robbie, which Joel disclosed with appropriate reluctance. “I suppose they’re having an affair—yes.”
Then the police went off to visit Robert Vanderholt. In about an hour, they brought Robbie back with them. Robbie was in a go-to-hell, what-do-I-know-about-it mood, but nervousness made him grimace and rub his nose, and Joel thought it made a bad impression on the police.
“What did you do after you left her yesterday at five o’clock?” asked one of the policemen.
“I went home—played some records—stayed in,” Robbie said.
“Did you have a quarrel with Mrs. Lucas yesterday?”
They were all standing in the bedroom, and now Robbie looked around him uneasily at the twisted bedspread, the glasses in which some pale scotch and water remained.
“We had a little quarrel, yes,” Robbie said.
“What about?”
Robbie shrugged, then rubbed his nose again. “It’s embarrassing to say, but we quarreled because Lucy wanted to see me more often.” He threw a cocky glance at Joel.
“Did you strike her?” asked the policeman.
“I did, I’m sorry to say. I slapped her face. She hit me back, then I pushed her and she fell on the bed.”
“Anything after that?”
“No, I walked out after that.”
“Did she make any threats? Say where she might go?”
“No. If you want my opinion, she called for a taxi, took it to Philly or New York and spent last night in a hotel—under another name. She wants to get everybody worried over her. Or maybe she’s hiding a black eye, I don’t know.” Robbie shifted and started toward the door, as if he considered the interview over.
The two policemen seemed to think it was over, too. One said to Joel, “We’ll keep you posted, Mr. Lucas.”
Betty Newman was looking out her window as the police went off. She came over with Chuckie, her son, trailing behind.
“Something the matter, Joel?” she asked.
“Joel looked worried. “I don’t know. I can’t find Lucy. I haven’t seen her since yesterday morning at breakfast.”
“What?”
Joel explained the situation and why he had called the police. “When did you see her last, Betty?”
“I don’t think I saw her all yesterday.—No, I didn’t. I go off at eight-thirty, you know, and I’m not back till four-thirty.” Betty was a cashier at a roadside diner near Pennerlake. Her husband had run off with another woman years ago, Joel had heard. Betty was rather blowsy and getting on to forty. She and Lucy had never been chummy.
“One of our friends—uh—visited Lucy yesterday afternoon,” Joel said.
“I do remember seeing a blue convertible in your driveway, yes,” Betty said with an air of innocence, though Joel was sure she knew, just as the whole neighborhood knew, about Lucy.
“And do you know if Lucy went off with him? Around five?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t.”
That was just the answer Joel wanted.
“You think she was maybe kidnapped and murdered?” asked Chuckie Newman, who had been listening intently.
“Chuckie!” said his mother in horror.
Joel felt his face go fittingly white. “Let’s hope not.”
Then Joel went into his house and called the Merrills. He said they had better not count on him and Lucy making it that evening, and to find another couple who could use the tickets. The Merrills didn’t sound too upset, but asked him to call them as soon as he found out anything.
Sunday morning at eight, Joel was awakened by a telephone call from the Pennerlake police.
“Last night,” said the police officer, “a girl named Elinor Farrington called up after she heard the missing persons report on the radio. She said she and a couple of fellows had a conversation with a man planting a tree on Scrubby Mountain, kidding him, y’know, about maybe he was burying his wife. He said he was. Well, we couldn’t investigate last night in the dark, but we did early this morning. Mr. Lucas, there was a body under that new tree, and the description certainly fits your wife’s, so we’d like you to come over to the station and have a look, if you don’t mind.”
Joel said he would be right over. He put on a fresh shirt and his best suit, thinking he might see the Farrington girl at the station.
They had Lucy on a table in a back room. Joel identified her.
“You recognize this blanket, Mr. Lucas?” asked the policeman, holding up the army blanket.
Joel nodded. “It’s from our house.”
“The Farrington girl described the man she saw planting the tree. About five-ten, around thirty, wearing corduroy pants and a cap. She can’t remember what color hair he had. I’d like you to talk to her.” He led Joel toward another room.
The Farrington girl, very sober-faced now and in a skirt, was sitting on a straight chair in a kind of waiting room. She repeated her description of the man she saw planting the tree, while Joel, looking very straightforward and neat in his dark blue suit and white shirt, listened attentively.
“She doesn’t remember seeing any car nearby,” the officer said to Joel. Then, to the girl, “Is this the man you saw?”
Elinor Farrington looked at Joel, looked him up and down. “I don’t think so, because the man was a different type. Very different. He was sort of squirmy. He rubbed his nose and wouldn’t look me in the eye.”
The police officer looked at Joel. “Any ideas who the killer might be, Mr. Lucas?”
“I’m bound to have an idea,” Joel said carefully, “and I think it was the last person she was with. Robbie Vanderholt. Look at the way she was dressed—or rather not dressed.” He cleared his throat. “I think Vanderholt killed her and took her body out in the army blanket, kept it in his car over Friday night, and buried her yesterday morning. What else can I think?”
“We’ll go back to Vanderholt,” said the police officer.
Joel went home again.
Before noon, the telephone rang, and the police had made great progress. They had found several caps and four pairs of corduroys, one old and mud-stained, in Vanderholt’s closet. They had brought Vanderholt to the Pennerlake station and the Farrington girl had identified him.
“Vanderholt says he didn’t do it,” said the officer, “but he may break down in a few hours.”
Joel called up the Merrills and solemnly reported the news: Robbie Vanderholt had killed Lucy. The Merrills had seen Robbie a couple of times, had noticed Lucy’s interest in him, Joel knew, and so undoubtedly guessed that he was her latest.
“You poor darling!” Gert Merrill said. “Would you like to come and stay with us for a few days? You shouldn’t be in that house all alone.”
Joel protested bravely that he was bearing up all right. And so he did to the Zabriskies and the Richardsons and a few other people who called up after the news appeared in Monday morning’s newspapers. Three months later, the trial was over, and Robbie Vanderholt was sentenced to twenty-five years in a Trenton prison. He protested his innocence to the last, and accused Joel of having killed her in anger, but Robbie’s words didn’t stand up against fact: Robbie had a lot of corduroys and caps, Robbie twisted his face and rubbed his nose (he had on the stand also), and the Farrington girl had positively identified him.
Lucy’s income from a trust fund left her by her family reverted to Joel: a hundred and fifty dollars per month, a sum that Lucy had managed to spend entirely on herself. Joel had certainly not killed her for that, but it was a nice addition to his salary. He bought a few things that he had wanted for a long time, a stereo, a new set of golf clubs, and a new dinner suit. He especially needed the last, as his friends were constantly inviting him to dinners to meet this or that pretty and eligible girl. Joel enjoyed his role as widower, after six months still too stunned by his wife’s murder to contemplate marrying again, though his friends had reached the point of saying he deserved a better life than Lucy had been leading him.
One evening around nine, when Joel had just got settled with a beer in front of a promising television play, his doorbell rang. It was Betty Newman from next door.
“Oh, hello,” Joel said, surprised. “Come in.”
“Thanks.” Betty came in. She was in high heels, and Joel got a whiff of perfume as she walked past him.
“I was just starting to watch some TV,” Joel said. “Want to—”
“I’m not much in the mood,” Betty interrupted.
After a couple of minutes, it was obvious what she was in the mood for, and Joel was flabbergasted. Betty had had him over to dinner a couple of times since Lucy’s death, but there hadn’t been a hint of anything romantic or sexy in her attitude. Joel parried her as politely as he could.
“Oh, come on, Betty. I’m very flattered, but—I guess I’m the old-fashioned type. I still believe marital bliss is the only real thing, and I’d rather—”
“As a matter of fact, I’m talking about marriage,” Betty said. She was leaning back on his sofa now, with a glass of beer. Her pudgy face looked even less attractive than usual with the extra lipstick and the splotches of rouge on her cheeks.
“Well—I certainly can’t think of marriage yet.”
“Can’t you? I think you’d better. I know a little secret about you, Joel. And I think I’ve waited a decent length of time, don’t you?”
Then Joel knew, and ice went down his veins. He sat up stiffly in his armchair. “What’re you talking about?” he asked with an effort at a smile, and at the same time he was thinking: Betty might suspect, but she can’t prove anything. Maybe she saw him drive out of the garage that Saturday morning, but she hadn’t seen the body on the floor in the back of the car.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Betty said. “But I saw Robbie Vanderholt go off by himself at five-fifteen that afternoon. He wasn’t carrying any corpse with him. Then you came home.” She waited.
“You’re making that up, Betty.”
“I am not. And furthermore, I’ll spill it to the police—if you’re not more cooperative. I’ve been very cooperative with the police so far—from your point of view.”
Joel chewed the inside of his cheek, suddenly seeing a vista, a long one, of his life ahead with Betty. Saggy breasts and blowsy cheeks and that awful freckle-faced goon of a son that went with the deal. A situation that would inspire a second murder, if any situation would. But he could never dare risk a second murder. Or could he?
Betty recrossed her plump legs. She looked absolutely confident. “I’ll make you as happy as I can, Joel. How about it? Don’t you think we could have a pretty good life together?” She smiled as winningly as she was able.
His heart heaved, like a sick stomach. “Yeah, sure, Betty. Sure we could.”
“So, it’s a deal?”
It’s a deal,” Joel said.
THINGS HAD GONE BADLY
This was the story in the newspapers, in the local paper and in the New York Times, and it merited about five lines in both:
Robert Lottman, 25, a sculptor, confessed having killed his wife, Lee, 23, by blows about the head with a rolling pin in the kitchen of their home near Bloomington, Indiana. Their two-year-old daughter, Melinda, in the kitchen at the time, was unhurt in her crib when police arrived, after having been summoned by Lottman.
Robert Lottman went quietly into the hands of the police, then into a jail cell, his manner described by one journalist as “cool” and by another as “cold and indifferent.”
The two-year-old Melinda was at once sent to her grandmother, Evelyn Watts, of Evanston, Illinois. Mrs. Watts expressed disbelief of her son-in-law’s act. She had liked Robert Lottman, until now. She had been sure that he loved her daughter. She couldn’t understand why the murder had happened. She had never seen Robert lose his temper. Robert didn’t drink or take drugs. What had happened?
The psychiatrists—two—were asking the same questions in the Bloomington jail. They were not keenly interested, but a psychiatric questionnaire was a necessary formality.
“I don’t know,” Robert Lottman replied. “I loved her, yes. I loved her.” He detested saying that to the officially engaged psychiatrists, but it seemed little to reveal, since why should he have married Lee if he hadn’t loved her?
“You had quarrels?” said one psychiatrist. It was more a statement than a question. “Fights before?” That was a question.
“No, never,” said Robert. He looked his interrogator in the eyes.
“Then why did you do this?” Long pause. “Sudden fit of temper?”
Robert remained silent, uncomfortable. He was thinking that he didn’t have to answer, anyway. Since he had admitted striking the fatal blows, what did it matter if they had had a quarrel, if he had had a fit of temper, or not? “I was not angry,” Robert said finally, hoping this would satisfy the two and that they would go away. He had been sitting on the hard chair for twenty minutes.
Now th
e dark-haired psychiatrist said to Robert, “You know, if you and your wife had been having a quarrel—about anything—it could be a manslaughter charge. Lighter than premeditated murder.”
“Come on, Stanley, no one’s bringing up premeditated in this—as yet. It’s a household affair.”
Robert wanted to switch them both off. He wagged his head, tired and bored. The psychiatrists might think that movement “evasive,” he thought. Robert did not feel in the least evasive. He felt contemptuous of the two men before him, questioning him. Robert had pride. He was not going to tell them why he killed Lee. These two might never understand. They didn’t look the types to take the time. Maybe he would write out why he had killed Lee. But write it for whom? Not the court, certainly. Maybe for himself only. Robert was a sculptor, not a writer, but he could make himself clear in words if he wanted to.
“We’re trying to do the best for you before the—the—uh—trial,” said one of the men.
“Sentence. Before the sentence,” said the other.
The best for him? What did it matter? Robert said nothing.
“You don’t care what kind of sentence they give you?” asked the dark-haired one.
“That’s correct. I don’t care.”
“There wasn’t another man in the picture?” asked the plump, baldish one, in a tone of hoping that there had been.
“No. I’ve said that.” How he had hoped for another man! “Isn’t this enough? I don’t know how I can tell you any more.”
A minute later he was free, at least of those two. A prison guard came in and accompanied him back to his cell. Robert paid no attention to the guard. He had no intention of trying to escape out one of the doors, two of which gave onto a parking lot. The jail did not look grim or well guarded, it was just a jail.
Robert’s mind was on another man. There had not been another man. Funny, in a way, since Lee had been so fantastically popular when Robert had met her.
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