We All Killed Grandma

by Fredric Brown

  I walked across the room to go to the bathroom and noticed that I wasn’t walking quite straight. Not actually staggering but not quite on balance either. This must have been just about how drunk I was, I realized, a week ago tonight when I’d walked into Grandma’s house. Probably a urinalysis would show about the same percentage of alcohol as it had that night when they’d given me one at the police station. But there wasn’t any urinalysis apparatus in my bathroom.

  And I didn’t care how drunk I was, anyway, or how much drunker I got.

  CHAPTER 8

  I WOKE up with a well-deserved hangover, but it wasn’t any particular color. It wasn’t even actively painful; I just felt dull and stupid and as though my head was stuffed with cotton. I showered and dressed and then went out for coffee, lots of hot black coffee. It took away some of the cotton but not all of it.

  It was eleven by the time I got back to my room and it was getting hot already. Within an hour or two my room was going to be a hotbox again, and today was the day I really had to study the stuff I’d brought home from the office; today and tomorrow both, if I was going to be ready to go back to work Thursday. And it couldn’t wait till evening, because I was seeing Vangy this evening.

  I decided that a beach was the answer. Not a sandy, crowded public beach—and particularly not the beach where I’d seen Robin yesterday. Just a quiet place where there’d be a breeze off the water, and trees for cool shade.

  I took my brief case down to the car and started driving. Before I got out of town I stopped and bought a few sandwiches to take along, and I bought a couple of thermos bottles and had one filled with ice water and the other with hot coffee. I drove on out the river road and found the spot I was looking for. The afternoon went not too badly. I studied a while and dozed a while and then studied some more.

  When the shadows of the trees began to stretch out over the lake I drove back home, showered again and dressed for the evening. The hangover was gone.

  The address Vangy Wayne had given me was an apartment house about like the one where Robin and I had lived—where Robin still lived—but on the other side of town.

  I buzzed a bell button downstairs and caught the latch of the door. One flight up, so I walked. The door of the apartment was ajar so I went in and Vangy’s voice came from the next room, “Rod?”

  “Rod,” I said.

  “Not quite ready. Be with you in a few minutes.”

  A few minutes would probably mean half an hour so I made myself comfortable on the sofa and picked up a magazine. But instead of looking at it, I looked around the room. It was a nice comfortable room, a little on the frilly side for my taste and the pictures were just pictures and there wasn’t any bookcase, just a magazine rack.

  Had I ever been here before? Probably; Vangy had said I’d walked out on her. Whatever she meant by that. Of course that could have been from a tavern or from a party somewhere, but if it had been any place I’d taken her I doubted that I could have been so rude as to leave her there, for whatever reason.

  So I must have been here. How often? And, by any chance, had I been here a week ago yesterday, the evening of the murder?

  And what had my relations with Vangy been? Getting the answers to those questions came first, ahead of being briefed about the office and the people I’d again be working with.

  Vangy’s voice, “Help yourself to a drink, Rod, while you’re waiting. Just a few more minutes.”

  “Thanks, I’ll wait, Vangy,” I said. I’d already seen the decanter of whisky, the pitcher of water with ice cubes in it, the glasses, that she’d put out on the coffee table and had decided against it. I’d be drinking during the evening, no doubt, but the longer I waited before starting the better.

  I tried to read the magazine a while and then Vangy’s voice again, “Ready in one second now, Roddy. Want to make us each a drink?”

  Roddy, yet. I wondered if I’d ever liked to be called Roddy. I doubted it.

  “Sure,” I said. I made the drinks and a minute later she came out of the other room. I stood up.

  She looked like a million dollars in one small package. “Like it?” She pirouetted for me and I gathered that she was showing off the dress; it was a nice dress but I don’t know enough about women’s clothes to describe it.

  “Beautiful.”

  “Bought it today, took a long lunch hour. Just for you, Roddy.”

  “It’s beautiful,” I said again. She needn’t have bought it for me; she probably didn’t realize that any dress she had, except the one she’d been wearing at work yesterday, would be a brand-new dress to me. Women could save a lot of money on clothes if their friends acquired amnesia oftener.

  She came over to me and I wondered if I was supposed to kiss her. I wanted to reach for her, but I didn’t. I handed her a drink instead and we sat down on the sofa. She moved over, after I sat, to be closer. In fact, touching. She was on my left and I put my left arm around her because it would have been uncomfortable otherwise.

  She wriggled closer. Apparently we weren’t starting quite from scratch.

  We each took a sip of our drinks and she put hers down on the coffee table. I kept hold of mine so I wouldn’t have to decide, just yet, whether I had any other good use for my right hand.

  I asked, “Vangy, how well did we know one another?”

  “Why—pretty well.”

  “Well enough that I can ask you just how well?”

  Several seconds ticked by and she hadn’t answered so I said, “Listen, woman, you know that I don’t remember a thing that happened to me before midnight eight nights ago. But you know it academically; you don’t really realize it. Or you’d see the spot I’m in and why I’ve got to know things like that. You know I don’t remember anything that’s happened between us—serious or trivial. But you can’t get it through your head, can you, that there’s also a blackout of any emotional reactions I may have had toward you? How do I know how to act toward you, if I don’t know what the score was?”

  “I—I see, Rod. I hadn’t thought of it that way. But why not let it go at that? I mean, if you don’t feel any way toward me emotionally, why can’t we just start from scratch? Forget what happened—if anything did?”

  That wasn’t the way I wanted it, but maybe it was better to let it go at that for the evening so I said, “All right. Maybe that’s best.” I took my arm from around her and moved slightly away from her on the sofa. As I took a sip of my drink I could feel her looking at me.

  “You’re not mad, are you, Roddy? I mean, because I want it that way?”

  I grinned at her. “Of course not. It just occurred to me that I was getting fresh on awfully short acquaintance if we’re starting from scratch. Why, Miss Wayne, I’ve known you less than half an hour; ten minutes in Mr. Carver’s office, not much longer that that just now.”

  She pouted. She looked cute pouting; I guess because she did it so obviously and humorously. Besides, her lower lip, projecting as it was, momentarily tempted me to try nibbling at it. But that would have spoiled the act. And might have started something I wasn’t sure yet that I was ready to start.

  “All right, Mr. Britten,” she said. “Or may I call you Rod? You may call me Vangy.”

  “Fine, Vangy,” I told her. “And you may, with my full permission, call me Rod henceforth. But—I’m sorry, but I don’t like Roddy. Did you use to call me that? Really?”

  “Well—once in a while, but mostly just to annoy you because I knew you didn’t like it then.”

  “I’m afraid I’m the same guy, Vangy, memory or no. I’ll probably like or dislike the same things.” I looked at her squarely. “Is that good, or isn’t it?”

  “Aren’t you forgetting what we just decided, to ask that?”

  “All right, Vangy,” I said. “Getting hungry? Anywhere special you’d like to eat tonight?”

  “Anywhere you say. And yes—I am getting hungry. I skimped lunch to shop for this dress.”

  She picked up her drink and finished it
and I finished mine.

  In the car I weakened and slipped my arm around her again. It was nice to have my arm around her. It was nice to be with a pretty girl who wasn’t afraid of me and who didn’t keep me at arm’s length, with whom I didn’t have to watch every word for fear I’d say the wrong thing. Why couldn’t I have sense enough to forget about Robin? For whatever reasons, she’d divorced me; she was through with me.

  But with my arm about Vangy, my hand against the soft warm flesh of her bare arm, I kept thinking of Robin in a yellow Bikini suit sunning herself on a red blanket.

  “What are you thinking about, Rod?”

  It wouldn’t have been smart to tell her. I said, “Thinking regretfully about the fact that we’re going to have to waste a couple of hours while you tell me mundane facts about the office setup and the people I work with. How’s about starting now? The only ones I’ve met are the receptionist—May Corbett, I think she said her name was—Carver, Jonsey, yourself. Skip yourself, since we’re starting from scratch. But start with them and go on from there.”

  She started with Carver and that took up the rest of the ride downtown. Gary Cabot Carver was quite a boy, which I’d already guessed. A genial and likeable lush who drank constantly but never, as far as was known, to the falling-down point, he nevertheless was a damned good advertising man and knew the game inside out. Drunk or sober—and he was sober only for the first hour or so of any given day—he knew whether copy and layout were or weren’t effective, and could put his finger accurately on what was wrong with anything that wasn’t effective. He was an excellent salesman, a good customer’s man, except with a few clients who didn’t drink and didn’t like drinking—and Carver was smart enough to use someone else to do the selling to and to maintain contact with those clients.

  “Does he get along with the help okay?”

  “Sure. He’s generous and easy to work for. Never bawls anybody out without plenty of cause. Approachable and easy to talk to.”

  “How about approaches from his side? Does he make them?”

  “You mean toward the girls? Well—not objectionably. He tried a few times to date me, but he’s married and I don’t go with married men. I managed to get that idea across without either of us hurting the other’s feelings so we stayed friends.”

  So Vangy didn’t date married men. That didn’t completely fit; I’d been married up until last Tuesday and we must have been together at least once or I couldn’t have, as she’d put it, walked out on her. But then again, I’d been in the process of being divorced; under those circumstances she would quite probably have figured me as only technically married. I’d probably have figured it that way myself. In fact, I must have.

  I parked the car in front of a little French restaurant, a quiet place without music to talk against, that I’d discovered—or more likely rediscovered—a few days ago. I decided we might as well get my briefing on my fellow employees over with, so I kept the conversation on the office while we had cocktails and then ate. When the names began to multiply I took a few notes; twenty-odd people are a lot to memorize all at once. And according to Vangy’s version, which agreed with Carver’s, I’d been friendly with all of them although I hadn’t had any outstandingly close friends among them.

  All that took us through dessert, coffee and brandy. And I decided that was enough of that; I’d at least have a good start at knowing the others at the office and who each was and what he did.

  I asked Vangy what she’d like to do for the rest of the evening; it was only nine o’clock.

  “Let’s go back to my place, Rod. I’d as soon talk there as any place else. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Sounds wonderful,” I told her.

  I waited till I was driving again and then I asked, “Vangy, was I with you last Monday evening?”

  “Rod, we weren’t going to talk about that.”

  I slowed down the car. I said, “Vangy, as far as personal relations between us are concerned, I’m willing to start over and forget whatever happened—since I’ve already forgotten it anyway—if you want things that way. But that Monday evening’s different. That was the night of the murder, and I’m trying to find out where I was and when. If I was with you, at least tell me from what time to what time.”

  “You were with me, for a while. You picked me up at seven, like tonight. We went out to eat and went back to my place. You left there about ten o’clock. And that’s all I’m going to tell you.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “How sure are you about the time? The time I left, I mean?”

  “Well—it was within a few minutes. I can’t make it any closer than that. Why does the time matter?”

  “Just because I’m trying to figure out what happened. Particularly why I went to Grandma’s. You couldn’t tell me that by any chance, could you?”

  “No, Rod, I couldn’t. I don’t know where you were going or what you were going to do when you left my place at ten. Now will you please drop it?”

  Her tone of voice told me I’d better do just that.

  I parked the Linc and we went up to her apartment. I made drinks.

  I clinked mine against hers and said, “To us, Vangy. Starting over.”

  For the rest of the evening I’d forget murder, I’d forget amnesia, I’d forget Robin. Why shouldn’t I forget Robin? We were divorced, and she didn’t want to see me again. Vangy was what the doctor would have ordered for me, if there’d been a doctor there to order.

  Vangy was cute, cuddly, kissable, sleepable-with—maybe.

  Kissable, anyway, because I was kissing her. And being kissed; she wasn’t passive about it. And it was very nice, very pleasant. So was the touch of the soft flesh of thigh, the soft firmness of the small but perfect tip-tilted breast my hand cupped.

  Sleepable-with, yes. God, how sleepable-with.

  Her lips kissing my ear and then whispering in it, “A moment, Rod. This dress—we’ll ruin it.”

  She slipped out of my arms and through the door of the other room. I made myself another drink and drank it. And I thought; God damn it, I thought.

  She was back, wearing a silk robe that would have nothing under it—except Vangy. She was back in my lap.

  And I put my arms around her, but on the outside of the robe. My voice didn’t sound like my own. But it said, “Vangy, I want you. I want you terribly. But I’ve got to be honest with you because I don’t know how much, if anything, this means to you. Damn it, I’m still in love—I mean, I’m in love again—with Robin. Strictly one way, but that doesn’t change it. So it wouldn’t be fair to you, Vangy, if this is anything more to you than—just for fun, a romp in the hay—and you won’t tell me what our relations were—”

  She was off my lap by then, standing very straight. “I think you’d better go, Rod.” Her voice was brittle.

  “I’m sorry, Vangy. Awfully sorry—”

  “Please go.”

  There didn’t seem to be anything else to say. I’d said it, and it had been the honest thing to say, but it hadn’t been the right thing. Can you, I wondered, be honest with women and still get along with them? Was that what had happened between Robin and me? Had I been too honest with her about something?

  No, I didn’t think so. It was more than that.

  The door of Vangy’s apartment closed behind me. Gently, but more firmly than if it had been slammed.

  That’s that, it said.

  CHAPTER 9

  I SAT in the car and felt lousy; I didn’t start the car because I didn’t know whether I wanted to go home or somewhere else, and if so where.

  It was five minutes after ten. About the time I’d left here eight days ago tonight. The night of the murder.

  And probably, I realized, under pretty similar circumstances. I hadn’t exactly walked out on Vangy; she’d ordered me out. But women sometimes look at things differently. What did I mean, sometimes? They look at things differently. Like as not, by her interpretation, I’d walked out on her tonight. Just because I’d told her I didn’t
love her.

  But damn it, I’d had to tell her that, the more so because I hadn’t known—still didn’t fully know—what there had been between us. If she thought she was in love with me, thought I was in love with her and expected me to marry her, my taking advantage of the situation just because she was sleepable-with and I had hot pants would have been a rotten thing to do.

  But maybe what I’d just done was a worse thing. I didn’t know—but whether or not, it was too late to change things now. I wanted to go back up there and apologize and lie like a gentleman, but it was too late now. And the worst of it was that I had an increasingly strong hunch that I’d just made an ass of myself, that it would have been a romp in the hay, or at least not too much more than that, for Vangy. But I’d had to be silly and tell her that I didn’t love her—wasn’t it enough that I didn’t state the converse of that proposition?—and, worse yet, that I wanted another woman instead. If she had any pride at all she was sure to tell me to get the hell out of her apartment—just as she had.

  Rod Britten, Don Juan.

  Probably I was the only honest man on earth. And the biggest damn fool.

  Here I was sitting alone in my car instead of—but I didn’t want to think about where I’d be and what I’d be doing if I wasn’t sitting here.

  Either I’d better get drunk or go home and take a cold shower. And I wasn’t going to get drunk; I’d been doing too much of that for the past eight days and it didn’t help, except for the moment.

  That’s what I’d probably done when I left Vangy’s a week ago last night. At just about this time or a few minutes earlier. Let’s see, why couldn’t I get my mind off Vangy by trying to find out what I’d done in the time between then and the time Walter Smith had seen me downtown?

  Almost an hour and a half to account for, from the time I’d left Vangy until Walter had seen me. And from one point to another was about a fifteen-minute walk; five minutes or less if I’d caught a taxi. An hour and a quarter, at least, to account for. Like as not spent in some tavern between here and there, tying one on. At the time I left Vangy’s at ten I’d hardly have been as drunk as I was at the time I reached Grandma Tuttle’s at midnight. Tonight, for instance, we’d had one drink at her place before going out to eat, a cocktail at the restaurant before eating and a brandy afterwards; I’d had two drinks back at Vangy’s. Five drinks, and with a big dinner in between the first two and the next three I felt them hardly at all. And that would probably have been about the pattern of our drinking on the previous date. Unless, of course, I’d been high by the time I got there at seven to pick Vangy up. In that case, five or six more drinks with Vangy could have given me enough of a jag to carry me through till midnight.