A Knife in the Back

by Bill Crider

  “I don’t think so. When you’re young, maybe you need excitement, but after a certain age, you don’t need excitement. You need nice.”

  Sally thought about Jorge, who seemed pretty exciting, and wondered if maybe she hadn’t reached “a certain age” yet. She tried not to think about it too hard. She didn’t want her mother picking up on it.

  “Mother knows best,” Sally said.

  “There’s no need to use irony on me,” her mother said.

  First Jack, now her mother, Sally thought. Maybe she was becoming insensitive to irony.

  “I was an English major, too, remember,” her mother reminded her, as if she needed reminding.

  Her mother had taught English in high school for thirty-five years, retiring only a year before Sally’s father, who had been a chemistry teacher himself, died of a heart attack.

  “I remember.”

  “Good. I do know best, and I think you should stay as far away from this excitement as you can. Will you promise?”

  “I promise,” Sally said, in a tone that she hoped was sincere and convincing.

  “Fine. Call me tomorrow.”

  “I will,” Sally said. “I love you.”

  “And I love you. Good-bye.”

  Sally hung up the phone. Lola, having satisfied her craving for food momentarily, was sitting at her feet, staring up at her.

  “What are you looking at?” Sally said.

  “Meow,” Lola said.

  “I promised I’d stay away from the excitement,” Sally said.

  “What are you worried about? That something might happen to me and you’d starve to death?”

  “Meow,” Lola said.

  “Well, don’t worry about it. I’ll be sure you have plenty of food. Besides, I meant what I said. I’m staying away from the excitment. I meant what I said.”

  “Meow,” Lola said.

  “I know what you mean,” Sally said. “It’s easy enough for me to promise to stay away from the excitement. But what if the excitement won’t stay away from me? That’s what I’m worried about.”

  “Meow,” Lola said, looking smug.

  “I don’t have to worry about a thing, do I,” Sally said. “Not with you to protect me.”

  Lola didn’t dignify that remark with a comment. She strolled under the kitchen table, flopped down on her side, and started licking one of her front paws. After she had licked it a couple of times, she swiped it along the side of her nose. Then she started licking it again.

  Sally watched her for a second, thinking about how single-minded cats could be, and about what she might eat for supper. She looked out the kitchen window and noticed that the sun was going down. That wasn’t good, and she tried to think about something else. She didn’t want to worry about the excitement that might come looking for her but that she had promised to avoid.

  The telephone rang.

  Sally picked it up, thinking that her mother was calling back with some bit of advice that she’d forgotten to pass along the first time.

  “Hello,” she said.

  There was no response.

  “Hello?”

  Nothing, not even heavy breathing.

  “I have Caller ID,” Sally lied, thinking that she should have subscribed to the service long ago.

  Except that it wouldn’t have mattered. The telephone company had made it easy to block Caller ID, probably at the request of thousands of companies engaged in telephone solicitation who knew that no one would pick up the phone if they knew that Frank’s Timeshares was calling.

  But Sally was relatively certain that this wasn’t Frank’s Timeshares on the line. She didn’t bother saying hello again because she was sure she wouldn’t get any response. She just hung up.

  She looked down at the telephone for a few seconds, thinking that it might ring again. After a little while, she decided that it wouldn’t, for which she was grateful.

  There was one little thing she hadn’t mentioned to her mother. She hadn’t mentioned it to Weems or Jack, either. She’d tried not even to think about it, but she was thinking about it now.

  She was still thinking about it, and about the pistol in the bedroom, when the telephone rang again.

  22

  Sally let it ring. She wasn’t going to be harassed by a telephone, whatever else might happen. She waited to see if the caller would say anything when the answering machine picked up.

  After four rings, she heard her own voice, or a reasonable facsimile, saying that she couldn’t come to the phone right now but if the caller would please leave a message, she’d return the call as soon as she could.

  “Sally?” Jack Neville said. “I didn’t mean to bother you at home. I just thought—”

  Sally picked up the receiver and said, “Hello, Jack. I was in the other room and couldn’t get here before the machine picked up.”

  “Oh.” Jack sounded relieved, as if he might have been afraid she wouldn’t take his call. “I really hate to bother you at home. I know how I feel when students call me about business on the weekend.”

  “So this is about business?”

  “Yes,” Jack said. “Well, no. No, it’s not really about business.”

  “Is it about the murders?”

  “No,” Jack said. “It’s not about that, either.”

  Sally had things pretty well figured out at that point. She had a Ph.D., after all.

  “I think we need to talk, Jack,” she said, deciding to take the reins of the conversation. “Why don’t you come over? On second thought, maybe I should come over there.”

  “You should?”

  “I think it would be a good idea. How much time do you need?”

  “Time?”

  “To get ready for a visitor.”

  “Oh,” Jack said. “Well, I wasn’t really expecting anyone, and—”

  “Don’t worry. I’m not the world’s greatest housekeeper, either. I’ll be there in an hour.”

  “Do you know where I live?” Jack asked.

  “I have your address, and this is a small town. I can find you.”

  “Okay,” Jack said.

  Actually it was an hour and five minutes before Sally arrived at Jack’s house. She had taken time to have something to eat and to take a shower. Not that she was getting herself fixed up to see Jack. She just wanted to be comfortable. She wore a pair of faded jeans and an old cotton shirt.

  Jack met her at the door. He was wearing jeans, too, and trying to look casual, but Sally could smell freshly applied aftershave, and his shirt looked suspiciously new. Either that, or it had been freshly ironed. Sally wondered how many men knew how to iron these days.

  Sally carried her purse in her left hand. In her right was the rosewood case.

  “What’s that?” Jack asked, gesturing to the case.

  “My gun.”

  Jack looked shocked and backed up a step.

  “I promise that my intentions are honorable,” he said.

  Sally laughed. “I never doubted it. So are mine.”

  “Then why the heavy artillery?”

  “It’s not heavy artillery. It’s a thirty-eight. Can I come in, or are you going to make me stand out here all night?”

  “I’m sorry. Come on in. I was just a little surprised to see that you were carrying a gun. Are you afraid I’ll try to stick a knife in you?”

  “I think the only person in the department who’d like to do that is Ellen Baldree,” Sally said, following Jack into his den.

  It was an interesting room, mainly because it looked exactly like the kind of room people might think a bachelor English teacher would have. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled one entire wall, and they were filled with books, some of which were lying on their sides in front of other books that were on the shelves behind them. Some of the books were hardbacks, some were paperbacks, and it was easy to see that they weren’t there for decoration. There was also a large entertainment center with a TV set, a VCR, a DVD player, and a stereo system with racks full o
f CDs on both sides.

  “I’m not much of a decorator,” Jack said.

  “It’s a comfortable room,” Sally said. “I’m sure it’s filled with the things you like.”

  “Books, music, and old movies,” Jack agreed. “Those are the things that I enjoy.”

  “You don’t have a cat around? Or a dog?”

  “No pets,” Jack said. “Or animal companions, if you want to be politically correct.”

  “I’m not too worried about that. I just wondered if you liked animals.”

  Sally thought of Lola, who wouldn’t care whether Jack liked her or not. She most assuredly wouldn’t like Jack. She didn’t like anyone, except possibly Sally, and she didn’t like Sally all the time.

  “Animals are fine,” Jack said. “And maybe it’s not true to say that I don’t have a pet. I sort of have one.”

  “How can you ‘sort of’ have a pet?”

  “I’m feeding a cat,” Jack said. “It won’t come in the house. It won’t even let me get close to it. But it doesn’t mind eating the food I put out.”

  “How do you know it doesn’t belong to someone in the neighborhood?”

  “It’s a he, not an it. I’ve asked around. Nobody will claim him. You wouldn’t blame them if you could see him, and he looks a lot better than he did when he showed up here. I think he’d been in a bad fight, or else he’d been run over by a car.”

  “You didn’t take him to a vet?”

  “I wasn’t kidding when I said he wouldn’t let me get close to him. Anyway, I put out some food and water for him, and he’s been hanging around ever since. Now and then he goes off for a while, but he always comes back.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “He’s big and gray and a little ragged around the edges. Not as ragged as he was, though. If he ever gets tame, I’ll take him in for a checkup.”

  “Good idea,” Sally said.

  There was a short, awkward pause.

  “You can put the pistol anywhere,” Jack said.

  Sally put her purse and pistol case down on a battered old coffee table that looked as if Jack had found it at a garage sale. She had to move several magazines and a stack of student papers aside to make room. Sally didn’t mind the clutter; in fact, she was glad to see it. She would have been depressed if Jack had been a better housekeeper than she was. She had been mildly pleased when she saw that his lawn wasn’t as neat as Mae’s.

  There was a green pen lying by the papers. Sally picked it up and looked at it.

  “I went to a workshop once,” Jack said by way of explanation. “The speaker told us that students had been intimidated by red marks on their papers ever since they started going to school. She suggested that we try a different color. Frankly, I can’t see that it helps.”

  Sally put the pen on top of the papers. Probably not many people would realize it, but English teachers had to do a lot of their grading at home. If they did a good job of keeping up with all the essays their students wrote, there was no way to do all the work during regular office hours. Even if you were practically accused of murder, you had to keep up.

  “I was hoping to get those graded in time for Naylor to return them on Monday,” Jack said. “Students expect instant feedback these days.”

  “I know what you mean,” Sally said.

  She picked up a couple of magazines. Texas Monthly. National Geographic. She laid them back on the table.

  “I subscribe to too many magazines,” Jack said. “I’m trying to cut down. Please. Have a seat.”

  Sally sat on the couch, which, like the coffee table, had seen better days.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” Jack asked. “I don’t have any wine, but I do have Jack Daniels. I could mix you something. Or I have Pepsi One. And water. Just tap water, none of the fancy stuff.”

  Sally could tell that Jack was feeling a bit awkward. He wasn’t used to having people in his house.

  “I’ll take the Pepsi,” Sally said.

  Jack filled two glasses with ice and soda and set them on paper napkins on the coffee table. Then he sat at the end of the couch opposite Sally.

  “You said you had something to talk about,” Sally prompted him, picking up her glass.

  “Uh, yes, but maybe you’d like to tell me about the pistol first.”

  Sally took a sip of her drink, then set the glass on the napkin.

  “I got another phone call just before yours,” she said.

  “I called about a half hour earlier, but the line was busy,” Jack said.

  “That was my mother. This call came later, just before yours. I thought your call might be from the same person, calling me back.”

  “Who was it?”

  “I don’t know who it was.”

  “Man or woman?”

  “I don’t know that, either. Whoever it was didn’t say anything.”

  “A breather?” Jack asked.

  “No. Nothing like that.”

  “What was it then?”

  “I think it was someone calling to see whether I was at home.”

  “And that’s why the pistol?”

  “That’s why. Now tell me what you wanted to talk about.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jack said. “I don’t get it. Maybe I missed the punchline.”

  “You didn’t have any way of knowing,” Sally said, “so now I’m going to tell you.”

  Jack relaxed back against the couch and said, “Let’s hear it.”

  “It’s something that happened this afternoon,” Sally told him. “I didn’t tell Weems about it, either.”

  “He’s not going to like that,” Jack said.

  “I don’t plan on having him find out about it. There’s no way he will unless you tell him.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that. He and I don’t confide in each other. So what happened?”

  “You remember when the man in the iron mask was climbing out of the pit and I hit him in the head?”

  “That wasn’t an iron mask,” Jack said.

  “Literary allusion,” Sally said. “Something every English teacher should know. Like irony.”

  “Irony?” Jack said.

  “Never mind. Do you remember what I’m talking about?”

  “I remember, all right. How could I forget? He fell back on top of me, and I hit my head on the floor.”

  Jack reached behind his head and felt the knot. It was still there, and still tender.

  “I’m sorry,” Sally said. “I should have asked about your ribs.”

  “They’re fine,” Jack said.

  Sally looked doubtful.

  “Okay, so they’re not fine. But they’ll be all right. I took some aspirin.”

  “I didn’t know you were such a macho guy.”

  “I don’t like painkillers. I have an addictive personality.”

  Sally waited to see if Jack would explain.

  “Games,” he said. “I like to play computer games. Hours on end if I don’t watch myself. It might translate to painkillers. But I think we’re getting off the track here. You were going to tell me something.”

  “Yes. When you fell back down in that grease pit, the guy in the mask fell on top of you. The welding mask bounced up just a little.”

  “And you saw his face? You should have told Weems about that. There’s no telling what he’ll do when he finds out.”

  “He’s not going to find out because it never happened,” Sally said. “I mean it happened, but not the way you think. I didn’t really see a thing.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it was dark and he was down at the bottom of the hole. And because the mask didn’t really rise up enough to show me that much. He pulled it right back down.”

  “Let me see if I have this straight,” Jack said. “You didn’t see him, so now he’s threatening you by making phone calls and not saying anything.”

  “It sounds silly when you put it that way,” Sally said. “But it’s not silly, and I’m going to te
ll you why.”

  “Good,” Jack said, “because I don’t see why anyone would be bothering you if you didn’t see anything. It just doesn’t make any sense to me. Now I know how some of my freshmen students must feel when I’m trying to explain where the comma belongs in a compound sentence.”

  “It’s really very simple,” Sally said.

  And then the telephone rang.

  23

  Jack jumped about a foot.

  Sally didn’t seem surprised.

  “Are you going to answer it?” she asked.

  “Sure,” Jack said, getting up and heading toward the kitchen.

  “Do you have Caller ID?”

  The phone rang again.

  “Yes,” Jack called when the ringing stopped. “It says ‘unavailable.’”

  “Why am I not surprised?” Sally said.

  Jack picked up the phone.

  “Hello?” he said.

  There was no answer. Jack looked through the doorway into the den at Sally, who shrugged.

  “Hello?” Jack said.

  Still no answer. Jack hung up.

  “See what I mean?” Sally said when Jack returned.

  “Why call me? I didn’t see him. After I banged my head on the concrete, I didn’t see anything except for some funny white lights.”

  “There’s probably a name for those.”

  “I don’t know it, though, and I don’t even care. What I want to know about is those phone calls.”

  “I can’t tell you anything. I just had a premonition something like that phone call might happen if that guy wearing the mask thought I saw his face. That’s what I was going to tell you. It doesn’t really matter whether I saw him or not if he thinks I did.”

  “You should have told Weems. You could have asked for protection.”

  Sally laughed. “I have a picture of that happening.”

  Jack smiled ruefully. “You’re right. Weems would think you were crazy. He probably doesn’t believe in premonitions.”

  “I kind of thought I was crazy, too,” Sally admitted. “My mother’s the one who claims to have psychic powers. Everyone thinks she’s a nut.”

  “Even you?”

  “Even me, but only about the psychic powers. In other ways, she’s as sane as can be. At least she doesn’t go around carrying a pistol.”