Twisting the Rope
Page 25
“So. I did it.
“There’s a phone at the end of the pier. I called Sandy. Poor Sandy, again. She drove out and picked us up. Didn’t see you at all, Pádraig, and that was just as well that we had Jude in the car with the windows closed by then, or we’d have had a drunken, accordion-playing sailor on our hands too.
I couldn’t think, and Sandy got hysterical as soon as she touched Jude. A mess. We piled him into the car and drove out to her house.” Elen ground her jaw.
“It has been a thoroughly unfortunate few days for all concerned!”
Pádraig made a funny, old-maidish sound with his tongue. “You poor creature,” he said to Elen. His face looked almost grown up.
Long stared at the steeple of his own fingers with narrowed eyes. “And the detective caught none of this? None?”
Martha let her back slump into a half circle and her hands were balled in her lap.
“Hah!” Everyone glanced up at Elen’s brittle cry. “Anderson caught all of it!”
Long’s eyes flashed. Pádraig frowned. Martha straightened, looking very stupid.
“He caught all but the bit about being called ‘chickie.’ He found out about George’s not being a sailor all right. He glommed onto my bag. Easiest of all, he had already grabbed Sandy, who had had more than she could stand. People heard the shot, you know.
“Poor Sandy.” Elen’s lips tightened compassionately, and then she glanced again at Pádraig. “Sandy wants to come and throw herself before you in gratitude and penitence. If it wouldn’t bother you too much. She’s awfully sorry, she shot you with rock salt.”
Pádraig squirmed sheepishly. “Aw, there’s nothing to that!”
Martha burst out: “I don’t understand! How is it that Anderson knows and yet he let you out?”
Elen’s tight smile grew tighter. “Because it wasn’t murder after all. But it also wasn’t suicide.”
Long growled. “This becomes a Chinese puzzle.”
“It was manslaughter. I killed him in the course of a struggle, trying to keep him from committing murder.”
“But he was unconscious already when you killed him,” said Long stubbornly.
“Not at all. What I did was to hang the body of a dead man over the Santa Cruz pier.”
Martha stood up suddenly, rocking the bed. Her mouth was a large O and her eyes were smaller ones. “With the piano wrench. When you hit him with the piano wrench. That’s how his neck came to be broken.”
“Got it in one.” Elen tried to smile, but it ended in a shudder. She gazed up at Martha with a spark of her old animation.
Long was still struggling with the information. “But… but you meant to kill him, when you lowered him on the rope. You thought he was alive.”
“Yes,” The animation faded. “But meaning to is not, the same thing as murder. Anderson said they will balance that against the fact that I hit him to prevent his committing murder against a child.
“I may very well be charged with manslaughter. Or something else. But…” She stood up.
“Not murder. So—la!” She started back toward the door. “I must tell Teddy how lucky he is, because I think Anderson knew that his friend Wolfie came up here with drugs for him.”
“But Teddy says he doesn’t use drugs,” protested Martha. “And I believe him.”
Elen nodded. “But George used drugs. I think—and I think Anderson thinks—that George was somehow forcing Teddy to supply him. But Anderson is not a narc, thank God. And Teddy is a very lucky boy.”
She turned again at the door. “Kiss, kiss,” she whispered, and went out.
Pádraig turned ponderously. “Ná… Elen… Don’t bolt off like that. And he knocked his chair rattling into the wall heater as he blundered by.
“Yes, you do,” said Martha to Long.
They were alone now, in the dark and unhomey room, and he fixed his yellow eyes on her in puzzlement. “I do what?”
“Don’t you remember what you were saying? Just before Pádraig came in. You were listing your points for me, my dear. Some of them are quite valuable.
“Your wealth can be useful, I grant you. It can also get, in the way…. If I were a younger woman, I think it would mean more to me.
“Your faithfulness is quite an asset, of course, and by that I don’t mean the fact that you don’t go nosing under all the ladies’ skirts, like a dog. I mean your intellectual integrity. And consistency.” She ticked off these matters on her fingers.
“As for your vaunted biddability… well, I think that always had its limits, for you can be as unbending as a wall, Mayland. Almost as stubborn as I am. And I further think that I’m going to see less and less of your yielding nature, after today.” Her eyes were sky blue under the fading light as she measured him. “You don’t seem to need your ‘spiritual teacher’ anymore.”
He sat in front of her in his accustomed chair. “I’m sorry. I mean, I’m sorry I was such a bother to you for so long. I can see now how difficult it must have made things, having me dump everything in your lap. I wonder you didn’t just swat me away.”
Now her glance was startled. “I’m not such a fool as that. Besides, you’d be a hard fly to swat! Ah, wait till you have rapturous acolytes treading your heels. As you will, my darling. I predict you will.” She gave an incisive nod and crossed her legs neatly at the ankle.
“But I think the reason I will marry you is partly because of the waiters (how I hate to cook) and partly because of your amazing virility…. “Mayland Long rose with a gasp, coughed, and knocked the table lamp over once again, reaching for Martha. This time it broke.
In the subsequent darkness Martha struggled to finish her sentence. “But… umph. Mostly I think I will marry you because of the wonderful way you wear your clothes.”
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following:
Lines from “There Was a Lady,” by Triona NiDhomhmaill from the album Relativity. Copyright © 1985 by Triona NiDhomhnaill. All rights reserved. Courtesy of Green Linnet Records.
Titles from “Irish Dance Tunes for All Harps. 50 Jigs, Reels, Hornpipes, Airs” by Sylvia Woods. Copyright © 1984 by Sylvia Woods, Woods Music, and Books Publishing (Los Angeles, CA).
Excerpt from The Maha Prajna Paramita Hridaya Sutra. Translation as used by The Zen Center, San Francisco.
Copyright © 1986 by R.A. MacAvoy
Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media
ISBN: 978-1-4976-0258-8
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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R. A. MACAVOY
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