by C. E. Murphy
"Here's your car," Mr Vaughn said as they came down the steps. "I'm glad you were able to take time out of your busy schedule to visit this weekend."
"For the Vaughns, anytime. But the car can wait. Who are your friends, Hank?" The big man passed by Mr and Mrs Vaughn to approach Rosie and Jean, an uncomfortably wide grin spread across his face.
"Rosie Ransom and Jean Diaz," Hank said. "Rosie, Jean, I'd like you to meet Senator Coby Haas."
A blush soared up Rosie's cheeks as the senator shook her hand with damp fingers. "Gosh, I knew I recognized you but I couldn't think why. How embarrassing. It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr Senator, um, Mr, oh, fiddlesticks. Senator Haas."
Haas chuckled, deep and rumbling. "I'd be pleased if you'd call me Coby, Miss Ransom. It can never hurt a politician to be on a first-name basis with pretty women."
Rosie withdrew her hand from his and tried not to wipe it on her dress. "That's very generous of you, Senator, but I couldn't presume."
"It's not a presumption if I ask," Haas insisted, but shook Jean's hand, too, rather than press Rosie any further. Jean's gaze skittered to Rosie's, her eyes widening as the senator clasped her hand with his sweaty one. Rosie struggled to keep a moue of disgusted agreement from her features, mostly because the Vaughns were watching. "A pleasure," Haas repeated. "I hope I can count on you girls voting for me in the next election. Now, I really must run, but if you ever need anything, why, Harry there has my direct number and I'll be darned if he shouldn't hand it over to two such fine young constituents as yourselves. Harry, Valentine, until next time." He climbed into the waiting Cadillac and it drove away, leaving Rosie looking after him in astonishment.
"Well, now we have to go through this whole rigmarole all over again," Harrison Vaughn said as he approached with his wife. "Coby's always jumping the gun, doing his best to get introductions before anyone else has the chance. I suppose I would too, if I was thinking about running for President. Those personal connections can make the difference, I'm told. I'm Harrison Vaughn, and this is my wife, Valentine Lewis Vaughn."
He offered a hand that Rosie took nervously, still wanting to wipe her fingers after Haas's handshake. Harrison Vaughn's hands were warm but not slick, and a smile of relief swept Rosie's face. "Rosie Ransom. This is my friend Jean-Marie Diaz."
Mrs Vaughn offered a trill of dismay. "Oh, dear, you poor creature. Not the Rosie Ransom the papers have been talking about, surely? What a trial for you, Miss Ransom! How are you holding up?" Rather than shake Rosie's hand, she offered a delicate embrace, then slipped her arm around Rosie's shoulders. "You must come in and have something to drink rather than stand around in this dreadful heat. What a good friend you are, Miss Diaz, helping Miss Ransom in her time of need."
Rosie said, "Actually," and Jean caught her eye, shaking her head swiftly. Mrs Vaughn turned an expectant look on Rosie, who fumbled for something to say and landed awkwardly on "Actually, we were hoping we could steal Hank away for lunch at Big Bob's. There's a Sunday special, see, Big Bob's Burger Challenge, where if you can eat the whole burger you get it for free. It's as big as Hank's head and I bet Jean he couldn't finish it and that I'd buy everybody lunch if he did." She clamped her lips shut and tried not to meet Hank or Jean's eyes, knowing they'd be gawking at the elaborate lie.
"Well, we could never keep a young man from his diner duties," Mrs Vaughn said with a smile. "Perhaps you might come back to visit us this afternoon or later in the week. We so rarely get to meet Hank's friends."
"We'd be delighted," Rosie promised before she caught Hank's wince, but that just served him right for fibbing about who his parents were. Or avoiding the truth, anyways, even if he hadn't outright lied.
Mrs Vaughn smiled and slipped her arm through her husband's. "Oh, I know! Why don't you take the Jaguar? Then you'll have to come back for your car."
"We'll have to come back to drop Hank off anyway," Jean pointed out with a faint smile, and Mrs Vaughn trilled another laugh.
"Oh, yes, of course. Well, run along, then, children. It's lovely to have met you. Do try to not eat the entire burger, Hank. It would be ungentlemanly to make Miss Ransom pay for lunch when you could do it yourself."
Hank, smiling crookedly, said, "Yes, Mother," and escaped into the Oldsmobile before she could offer any more advice. Rosie and Jean, both smiling, followed suit, and a moment later, they were off, following the dust from the Senator's Cadillac.
TWELVE
"Head south," Hank said to break the overwhelming silence in the car. "We'll find a stretch where we can dump it in the water. Hopefully by the time it surfaces it'll have lost enough pieces that no one will be able to put its face back together."
"That's horrible."
"What did you expect me to do, Miss Ransom? If I let Johnson see that thing, it'll raise all kinds of questions nobody can answer."
"You can."
"Questions nobody really wants answered, then," Hank said irritably. "Do you want to be dropped off somewhere first? So you're not party to this?"
"Would it do any good? I wanted to call the police in the first place."
Hank leaned forward, draping his arms over the back of the front seat so he could gawk at Rosie. "And tell them what? You're having a run of bad luck and keep being obliged to kill people?"
"That's what I said," Jean murmured.
Hank gave her an approving look. "Thank God somebody here is sensible. How did she know you were the Redeemer, Miss Ra—"
"You might as well call me Rosie. Mr Vaughn."
Hank sat back suddenly enough that Rosie looked at him, surprised to see his jaw set as he frowned out the window. "I wasn't trying to deceive you, Mi—Rosie. And I'm not ashamed of being Harrison Vaughn's son. But when your father's an industrialist, people have certain expectations of you. Sure, it's too bad the Vaughn boy got shot up, but at least he can follow in his father's footsteps, right? Make a profit even if war cost him the life he wanted to have."
Rosie caught her breath on asking what life that was, and Hank continued unabated. "But then it turns out the son would rather take a clerk's job at the police station than take part in the family business, and people just don't understand that. He can afford it, sure, but someday, he'll go back home to where the money is. He's just playing around in the gutters for a while. When a soldier who really needs a job comes home, well, the Vaughn kid better know enough to get out of Dodge. No point in getting his hands dirty, never mind that there's a hell of a lot of dirt involved in making war machines. But that's different, when you're just the overseer. Can't help it if there's money to be made in killing people, right? Might as well make the money yourself. Somebody's gotta, after all."
Hank transferred his attention to Rosie, startling her with the intensity of his blue gaze. "But I came home tired of blood, Rosie. I'd rather my money wasn't stained with it either, if I can avoid it. So I noticed, yes, when Johnson didn't call me Vaughn the other night. I noticed I had a chance to not be Harrison Vaughn's son, for a while. My mistake was probably in imagining I could deceive myself into thinking the family name might not matter, not that I could trick you into thinking I was somebody else." He looked back out the window, apparently no longer interested in the conversation.
Rosie turned around and frowned out the side window, speechless for a long while. When she finally found something to say, she thought it might be too late, but there wouldn't ever be a better time, either. "I guess most of us are swimming in blood money, Hank. I guess that's the only reason I have—had—a job at all. I guess you can walk away from it if you want, but maybe instead you might think about seeing if you can wash all that money clean. Maybe it doesn't matter so much how you got it. Maybe what's important is what you do with it." She pressed her lips together and wrapped her arms around her ribs. "And I guess maybe I would've treated you differently if I'd known you were Harrison Vaughn's son, and I'm sorry about that, because it's not fair. Not any more than being talked down to because you're a woman is fair."
<
br /> "Oh good," Jean muttered. "Now you can kiss and make up while I dump a demon into the river. Did you have somewhere in mind, Hank?"
"There's an abandoned quarry with water at the bottom, not much farther down the road. We should be able to weigh it down and drop it there." All the stiff offense left Hank's voice, leaving him sounding like he was discussing what to have for lunch after all, not hiding bodies. Rosie sank deeper into the Oldsmobile's bench seat, trying not to hide her face in her hands. Jean and Hank seemed suited for this kind of thing, but up until a few hours ago she'd never broken a law in her life. Well, a few days, if she counted shooting Goode, but that didn't hardly count. He hadn't been human, anyways.
"What do we do if somebody sees us out there?"
"Pretend we're making out," Hank said so blandly that Rosie twisted around to gape at him. He pulled a faint smile into place. "No?"
"Well, for one thing, there's three of us, mister!"
"I spent time in France," Hank said, still blandly. "Ever heard of a ménage à trois?"
Jean shot him a sharp look in the rear-view mirror, and Rosie, who hadn't, figured out enough to blush. Hank's smile turned into a grin, and Rosie kept her mouth shut the rest of the drive out to the quarry.
It should have been hard, Rosie thought later. Dumping a body should be hard. But the old rock quarry looked like it hadn't been visited in a decade, and Jean backed the Oldsmobile up to its lip like she'd been doing it her whole life. She wouldn't get out of the car, though, shaking her head violently when Rosie climbed out. "I can't look over that edge. I'll throw up. It's bad enough having the car this close. It makes me want to vomit already."
"Scared of heights?" Rosie asked in astonishment, and Jean gave her such a dark look, Rosie decided not to tease her. She hadn't imagined she would be the one helping to weigh down the demon's pockets, though, and muttered, "At least she's in coveralls, or we'd be tying rocks into her skirt." Hank looked at her and she said, "Women's clothes hardly ever have pockets. Why do you think we like wearing dungarees so much?"
"I thought it was because you knew how great you look in them."
A smile crept over Rosie's mouth. "That part doesn't hurt." Then, horrified, she realized that sounded like flirting—on both their parts!—and not just flirting, but doing so over a dead body. There had to be whole sections of Hell set aside just for that kind of thing. She bit her bottom lip, finished filling pockets, and with a thin wail, helped Hank pitch the demon's body over the edge of the cliff.
They didn't throw it quite hard enough, and it bounced off a narrow ledge before rolling down the quarry's side until it splashed into the lake. Rosie watched through her fingers, but Hank stood there, frowning down at it with a cool professionalism, until he finally nodded. "Hardly any bubbles, and no hint that it's coming up any time soon. Good. Let's get out of here. Does that bet on the burger still stand?"
Rosie, sick to her stomach, looked at him through her fingers. "Are you serious? You could eat?"
"One thing the Army teaches you is to always eat when somebody else is buying." They got back into the car, and Jean put it into gear with more force than necessary, getting them away from the cliff's edge as fast as she could. They were a good five miles out of the quarry again before she started to get her color back, and by the time they'd driven back into town, she said she could do with some lunch. Even Rosie, reluctantly, admitted to hunger, and not too much later conceded she would buy everybody's lunch, while Hank Vaughn leaned back in a red booth at Big Bob's and groaned over eating too much.
Bob came out of the kitchen to whip them up ice cream sundaes that he brought to the table himself, with a shake of his balding head at Hank. "Mostly it's the young pups who put those burgers away, and usually only after a game. I don't know if I oughta be horrified or impressed."
"If I eat that sundae, I'll be horrified," Hank said. "Is this the reward for eating too much? More food?"
"Nah. It's a break for a couple kids having a rough weekend. Sorry about Ruby, Jean. She was a good girl." Bob pressed his big hands against Rosie and Jean's shoulders for a moment, then ambled back to the kitchen, where his deep voice echoed comfortably off the walls as he called out orders.
Jean bit the inside of her cheek and didn't look up from her ice cream for a long time. Not that she ate any, any more than Rosie could right then. She just looked hard at it, eyes bright, until she finally dug the spoon deep into the ice cream bowl and came up with a giant bite that she shoveled into her mouth. A dribble of chocolate squirted from the corner of her mouth and her eyes popped, cheeks chipmunk-round. Rosie clapped a hand over her own mouth and giggled. Jean tried a smile around the huge bite of ice cream and more squirted free, until she grabbed a napkin to keep it all in as she laughed. She managed to swallow it, wiped her mouth, and whispered, "Ruby used to do that all the time to make me laugh," before pushing the sundae away and putting her head down on the table.
Rosie reached over to touch her hair, and Hank got up from the table. "I'll get the tab."
"No, I said I would."
"Hey." Hank gave her a faint smile. "Let me. At least I've still got a job. For a while, anyway."
"You have a strange way of comforting people, library man." From the way Hank's smile strengthened, Rosie figured he recognized she'd forgiven him, and he went off to pay the bill without any more argument from her. The diner had filled up while they were eating, lots of well-dressed women with children in their Sunday best, coming out for a treat after church. It made the joint comfortable, if not homey. It couldn't really be homey with the chrome highlights and red leather seats and gleaming white tables, and the black-and-white checked tile pattern on the floor would overwhelm any home kitchen with its size, but it felt like a good place. Friendly and safe, where, if everybody didn't know each other by name, they at least knew they were among like-minded folks.
Jean snaked a hand out to find a napkin without lifting her head, and sniffled and wiped her eyes at the table's edge, then sat up to take Rosie's attention away from the other diners. "I'm okay now," she said hoarsely, then shrugged. "You know. ‘Okay.'"
"Atta girl." Rosie squeezed her hand, then dropped her voice. "I forget if I said thank you for saving my life, so … thank you."
"You did," Jean said with another sniffle. "You can say it again a few more times, though."
"Thank you thank you thank you—" Rosie kept going until Jean giggled again and Hank came back to the table to peer at Rosie curiously. Her last thanks petered out into a breathless wheeze and she got up to say, "Thank you, too. For lunch."
"You're welcome. Look, if you want to run me home, I'll get out of your hair—"
"Out of our hair?" Rosie asked. "Are you crazy, mister? I think we need to be in each other's hair. Have you gone to see Pearl today? We need to bring her groceries. More than peanut butter and jelly, anyways."
Jean asked, "Who's Pearl?" as Hank shook his head, and they all headed for the door. Hank and Rosie exchanged glances as Hank held the door for them, the girls ducking under his arm, and neither of them answered until they were in the car.
"Pearl is the other girl who was there on Friday night," Rosie said carefully. "She was sick with Goode's blood and I … well, I guess I Redeemed her. Hank didn't think it could even be done, but she's not sick anymore. Or dead."
Jean put the key in the ignition but didn't turn it. She just sat there, in fact, then said in a low, dangerous voice, "What do you mean, the other girl? What was she doing there? Was she helping him? Rosie, is Ruby dead because of her?"
"No." Rosie swallowed. "Ruby is dead because Goode was a monster. Pearl was just another girl in trouble because of him, Jean. A different kind of trouble, but it would've killed her just as dead."
Jean gave her a flat look. "You're splitting hairs, aren't you?"
Rosie thinned her lips, then glanced away and nodded. "Yeah. But it's still not Pearl's fault, Jean. You said yourself Ruby was all dazzled by Goode. Pearl couldn't have done that.
It was all him. She did try to … lure … me to him. And I guess it worked, but it wasn't the same. Ruby and the other girls, they were already besotted with him. Pearl brought me to him because I was asking questions. She didn't get Ruby killed, Jean. Just Goode did that."
Jean twisted to look hard at Hank, who nodded. "She's right, Miss Diaz. Pearl was another victim. She just got lucky that Rosie was there and able to save her from Goode. She got lucky Rosie insisted on trying. I would've just …" He shook his head. "Let's just say if I'd had a piece of rebar handy, it would've ended differently."
"I don't think I want to meet this girl," Jean said in measured tones. "How about I bring you two back to Hank's place, and then you can get his car and go do whatever it is you need to do."
"My parents' place," Hank said, but Rosie nodded and Jean drove the Oldsmobile back through the increasingly attractive streets until they'd reached the Vaughn estate again.
Mrs Vaughn appeared in the huge house's double front doors as if she'd been waiting for them since they left, and came lightly down the steps to open her arms like she'd embrace all of them even before they got out of the car. "Do come in," she offered. "I'm sure you lovely young women have a great deal of social activity to keep you busy, but I would so appreciate just a little of your time. Oh, you must come in too, please, Jean. You mustn't just run off. Five minutes, and I'll make you a cup of tea."
"You mean Bertha will make us tea," Hank said as he got out of the car and held Jean's door for her. Mrs Vaughn shrugged agreeably, and Jean cast Rosie a frustrated glance before reluctantly emerging from the car. Rosie got out before Hank could get to her door, and Mrs Vaughn clucked at him for ungentlemanly behavior.
