Deadly Welcome

by John D. MacDonald

  And thought, almost with calmness, about Donnie Capp. Those men had their uses. There had been a couple like that, ones he had been glad to take on patrol whenever he could. The catlike, fearless ones, the killing breed, amoral, antisocial, and entirely dangerous.

  She had found a tray somewhere and she set it on a table she had placed close to the bed. The servings were abundant and smelled good, and he discovered that he was indeed hungry.

  “You knew what you were doing out there, Miss Betty.”

  “That is one primitive kitchen. I guess I like to cook because I just live to eat. I eat like a wolf and never gain a pound. Knock wood. I am just not the dainty feminine type, I guess.”

  “You must have left work early.”

  “I’m my own boss down there, Alex. I’m pretty well caught up. Some delinquent accounts to needle. The slack season is starting. It will pick up a little in July, and then September will be a graveyard. When we’re rushed, I’m one busy kid. I even pitch in on the other end when it’s needed. I can clean and adjust a marine carb, adjust spark plugs, do compass compensation. And I can paint hell out of a hull.”

  “A paragon.”

  “Irreplaceable. Anyway, I like it. Sails and stinkpots both. The smell of marine varnish. Everything about the water. Buddy is the same way. We’re hooked, I guess. We’re on the stuff.”

  “To get back to Donnie Capp.”

  “Do we want to?”

  “That little horror with the black club tried to turn me into a rabbit. The so-called nice people in Ramona don’t mind having him around because he never whips their heads. Maybe they even think he’s doing a good job. A man like that can be dangerous, Betty. He can get to thinking there’s nothing he can’t get away with.”

  “I guess I’m… guilty too, Alex. I’d heard how he likes to use that club, but I thought he used it on… people who needed it. I didn’t know he’d do anything like this. Did you try to… throw him out or anything?”

  “No. I know the type. He wanted the ‘Mister Deputy, sir,’ treatment and I gave it to him. To make sure I’d stay humble, he took his little club and went to work like a man felling a tree.”

  “That’s terrible!”

  “The worst thing is I can talk rough, but I know damn well I’d better not be fool enough to go after him.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you one thing, Alex Doyle. He’s not coming after you again. Even though Daddy’s dead, there’s still some push behind the name of Larkin. And I am going to let Donnie know and let Sheriff Lawlor know that if there’s anything else like this, Buddy and I are going to make the biggest stink they ever ran into. And I know that doesn’t change the fact that he has already hurt you.”

  “I’ve been hurt before. I’ll get over it. But it would be nice to know it isn’t likely to happen again very soon.”

  She took the tray away and washed the dishes and came back and sat by the bed. It was one of those rare evenings when for a short time all the world is suffused with an orange-yellow glow and all objects are strangely vivid and distinct. The glow from the window by the bed fell softly on her face, lighting it so clearly that he could see, in the light gray iris of her eye, little flecks of golden brown close to the pupil. And the strong brown column of her throat with the tender hollow at the base of it, and a heaviness of the level mouth, and a tawny brown of her eyebrows, a shade darker than the sun-struck mane of hair. Here was the special and stirring beauty of the female creature in perfect health, all glow and warmth.

  She looked away suddenly and stood up with an awkwardness she had not displayed before. He knew he had stared at her too intently, and had upset her perfectly unconscious poise.

  “I guess I’d better go.”

  “Thanks for everything you’ve done.”

  “It doesn’t make much of a welcome home.”

  “I didn’t expect too much.”

  “Alex… Just why did you come back?”

  “I told you.”

  She looked down at him, frowning in the fading light. “Something bothers me a little. You don’t seem to… fit.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Neither do I, exactly. Maybe I shouldn’t try to say anything.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “You say you’ve been just wandering, working on construction jobs. The way you talk, it isn’t always the same. Sometimes it’s real piney woods talk. And then you change and talk as if you had a lot more… background and education. I’m not a snob. It just seems strange to me. And there is about you something I can’t quite put my finger on. I guess it’s sort of an unconscious… air of importance. Not importance, maybe. Significance. As if people had been paying attention when you had something to say. And those real sharp bright sports shirts and slacks don’t seem to me to be… right. They’re what you’d buy, I guess, if you are what you say you are. But in some way they’re wrong for you.”

  “I’m bugged by the gay threads, doll.”

  “I just want to know if you’re putting on some kind of an act that I don’t understand.”

  “That’s a pretty strange idea, Betty.”

  “Your nails are well kept, Alex. And your hands aren’t callused.”

  “Nowadays we sit up there in those big cabs and push the little buttons.”

  “If it is an act, Alex, has it got anything at all to do with… Jenna?”

  “Honey, I came back to my home town. With a buck or two saved. Thought I might stay if I found something just right. But the man worked me over good with his little club, and now I’m not so high on sticking around. When the lumps are gone, I might just up and move along in case he gets some more ideas. That’s all there is.”

  She stared at him for a few more moments and then smiled and said, “All right. Good night, Alex.”

  He lay and listened to the jeep drive away into the dusk. He had a new and special appreciation for her. She was a big healthy blonde and he had been careless. Her intuitions and perceptions were almost frighteningly keen. There was nothing opaque about Miss Betty. And now he could not, when he was with her, revert to a flawless performance of the role he had selected for himself. She was sharp enough to realize that would confirm her guess. And so he would have to maintain the same level of carelessness. It would be easier and safer to avoid her. But he found that prospect surprisingly distasteful.

  chapter SIX

  BY THE TIME DOYLE was up and shaved and dressed on Thursday, he knew that it wasn’t going to be one of the best days he had ever spent. His arms were leaden. Each slow movement had to be tested cautiously to see how much it was going to hurt. Even in areas where he could not remember being hit, his muscles felt as though they had been dipped in cement and rolled in broken glass.

  It was a day of high, white, scattered clouds that frequently masked the sun, and a fresh northwest wind with a hint of chill in it. After he had breakfast and cleaned up, he hobbled slowly out onto the beach, dragging an ancient gray navy blanket.

  After he had baked for nearly an hour, Betty Larkin said, “Good morning! I guess you feel better.” She beamed down at him and dropped lithely into a Buddha pose on the corner of his blanket. She wore a pale gray one-piece swim suit with small blue flowers embroidered on it. She carried a white rubber cap and a big towel.

  “I feel just fine. I feel just a little bit better than if I was poking myself in the eye with a stick.”

  “I saw you out here, so I went in and changed. Hope you don’t mind?”

  “Not a bit. If I don’t have to swim too.”

  “But you do! I heard Gil tell you to.”

  “I know. But I haven’t got any character.”

  “Come on now! Come on!”

  He groaned as he stood up. He followed her to the water. She tucked that bright heavy hair into the rubber cap and dived in and swam out. He paddled very slowly and tentatively, floating often, until, much sooner than he would have thought possible, some of the pain and stiffness began to leave his muscles. And he bega
n to extend himself. He swam beside her, and they swam out to the unexposed sand bar a couple of hundred yards out. He swam with the untutored ease and confidence of any Floridian born and raised near the water. His stroke, he knew, looked clumsy, but it got him through the water quickly and without thrash or great effort. She was a superb swimmer. He knew she had had coaching. She was as sleek and swift and graceful as an otter.

  They stood on the bar, facing each other. The water came to her shoulders.

  “I talked to Donnie last night. First he tried to laugh it off. Then he got mad. He told me it wasn’t any of my business. But I just got twice as mad as he did, and he finally got it through his thick head that I would make trouble for him, all that I possibly could, if he touches you again. And then he pretended that a great light had suddenly dawned on him and he…” she paused and looked toward the shore, her face coloring slightly under the deep tan “… said he didn’t know we were in love. And even if I wasn’t showing much taste, he wouldn’t beat up any boy friend of mine. It was just his way of saving face. He knows better than that.” She laughed in a bitter and humorless way. “I guess the whole town knows better than that. In his own way, he was being as nasty as he could.”

  “I don’t know what you mean about the whole town.”

  “It’s a long dull story. Anyway, he got the message.”

  “And thank you. It’s a pleasure hiding behind your skirts. I would like to meet him some time outside the state of Florida.”

  “And I had a scrap with Buddy. No sister of his, by God, was going to be buddying around with no sneak thief. I told him you didn’t do it, and why you’d said you had. So he said it looked like I’d swallow anything you felt like telling me. I… got him straightened out after a while. Now he’d like to see you. But he won’t come out here. I would like to have you stop at the yard. Sort of casual-like. I mean, if you’re going to settle here, Alex, it’s people like Buddy who will make the difference.”

  “I’ll stop by some time, Betty.”

  “Good.”

  They swam back in. She toweled herself, pulled off the cap, fluffed her hair, sat on the blanket and took one of his cigarettes. He stretched out near her. She sat looking out toward the water, hugging her knees. She had missed one portion of her back when she had dried herself. The sun-silver droplets of water stood out against the deep warm brown of her shoulder. “About what I said last night, Alex.”

  “Yes?”

  “About if you were playing a part or something. I guess you thought I was crazy. I guess that ever since… Jenna died, the whole town has been a little bit crazy. There were so many people prying. It’s terrible the way they flock around. Oh, Donnie Capp had a ball. He really did. Some of them were crackpots and some were free-lance magazine writers and some were amateur detectives. Donnie ran them out just as fast as they came in. The business people weren’t too happy about them being run off, but Donnie had the go-ahead from Sheriff Lawlor. There was some trouble about one man, about what they did to him over in Davis in the court house, but Donnie and two of the other deputies swore the man tried to run and fell down a flight of stairs, so nothing came of it. Donnie has said a hundred times that sooner or later, all by himself, he’s going to get his hands on the man that killed Jenna. He takes it as a kind of personal insult that it should happen right in his own area. You know, after they locked up just about everybody who’d been in the Mack that night, Donnie, they say, got six or seven confessions before the sheriff pulled him off because there were too many newspaper people in town. Maybe he will find out someday. I hope he does, and on the other hand, I sort of hope he doesn’t. Because then it will be the same thing all over again, and maybe worse with a trial and all. And it was very hard on Mother. You know, they’d come stand in the side yard and stare at the house with their mouths hanging open, like so many morons.

  “Anyway, Alex, we’ve gotten so conditioned to people trying to pry that I got the crazy idea maybe somebody had sent you back here to… write it up or something. I guess you could find out… personal things that an outsider couldn’t. For one of those terrible slander magazines. I guess it was a silly idea.”

  “You have my word of honor that I’m not here to write up the story of Jenna.”

  She turned and smiled at him. “I guess it’s just an idea that somebody should have thought of. How about me helping you find something to do, Alex? What have you been thinking about doing?”

  “Sounds like I’m becoming some sort of a project.”

  “Maybe. Anyway, to keep the record straight, you don’t have to worry that maybe I’m moving in on you in any kind of… emotional way. I’d just like… to be your friend, Alex. I like to be with you because you don’t… get sloppy ideas and try to put your hands on me. That is sort of… what Donnie was referring to.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “This is a small town and it’s all public knowledge, and somebody will tell you all about it sooner or later, and they may get it all twisted, so I’ll tell you first. So you won’t make any… mistakes. Now you roll over the other way. It’s easier to talk to your back on this topic.”

  “If it’s something that makes you that uncomfortable, I don’t have to hear it.”

  “I think I’d like you to hear it from me so you’ll hear it truthfully. I was eleven when you left. And I guess it was all starting at about that time. Or maybe earlier. Jenna was Daddy’s favorite. He had no time for me or Buddy. As if he had only just enough love for one of his kids. When we were little, he used to call Sunday Jenna’s day. And whenever it was nice weather, they’d go off together on a Sunday picnic, sometimes in the car but almost always in that old skiff of his. I guess Buddy used to think the same way I did that when we got to be older, we’d go too. But it never turned out that way. Even though Jenna was six years older, I tried to be exactly like her. So he’d love me too. And get things for me the way he did for her. Little surprises, special things when he went on trips. And swing me up in his arms and laugh and call me his girl. But no matter how hard I tried to be just like her, it never worked, Alex. And so I began to feel that there was something wrong with me. Something terrible that I didn’t know about and nobody would tell me. I used to try to guess what it was.

  “And finally, as I kept on growing and growing, I decided that it was because I was so big and ugly. Jenna was so dainty and pretty and little. That was a quality I couldn’t duplicate. When I was about eight, Daddy began to have trouble with Jenna. Some kind of trouble I didn’t understand. She lost interest in going on picnics with him or anything like that. And he started beating her for the first time, and then buying her presents to make up. Usually he would beat her because she came home so late. And when he’d tell her she couldn’t go out, she’d sneak out. I was secretly glad because I knew he was going to stop loving her and begin loving me. And I wouldn’t be bad the way Jenna was being bad. I couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t go on picnics. You remember when Jenna ran away. Daddy was like a crazy man. He spent a lot of money hiring people to find her and bring her home, but nobody could find her. And then he just seemed to pull way back inside of himself, where nobody could reach him.

  “About a year later, after I was twelve, I was invited to a party on Saturday afternoon. Daddy was home that day. I had a blue dress, a new one for the party. He was sitting in the living room, reading some kind of business papers. I remembered how Jenna used to go to him and turn around like a model when she was dressed up for a party. And he would call her his girl friend and tell her how pretty she was. I guess I had some idea of cheering him up. And I did want him to be nice to me. So I went in and held my arms out and started turning around and around. It made me a little dizzy. After a little while he yelled for my mother. ‘Lila!’ he roared. ‘Lila, come get revolving scarecrow out of here!’”

  “What a filthy thing to do!”

  “I ran upstairs and locked myself in my room. I wouldn’t come out. I didn’t go to the party. I cut
up the blue dress until there wasn’t one piece bigger than a postage stamp. And I refused to wear another dress until I went away to Gainesville after Daddy died. I was a big scarecrow, and jeans and shorts and khakis were good enough for scarecrows. That’s part of it, part of the reason, I guess.

  “Anyway, by the time I was fourteen, I had a pretty good knowledge of what Jenna’s local career had been like. I won’t mince words, Alex. It was as if she had some strange kind of disease. Most of the boys she knew and a lot of men, married and single, in the county had lifted her little skirts, practically by invitation. I don’t know when or how it started. Or why. I know she had matured early, and I know I certainly didn’t. At fifteen I still looked like a skinny boy. Maybe I wanted to be a boy. I don’t know. But in the six months before Daddy died, I suddenly turned into the same approximate shape I still am. Sort of bovine, I guess you could call it.

  “And I certainly didn’t want to follow in Jenna’s footsteps. She’d been gone a long time but they still talked about her. Dirty talk. It offended me. My ideas of romance were highly platonic. I wanted no part of kissing games. I was going to prove that there could be a Miss Larkin who could stay off her back, excuse the expression.

  “In my freshman year I came back for Christmas vacation. All my friends were back. There was a big holiday dance at the high school auditorium. I had a date. There was a lot of drinking going on, out in the automobiles. And a rough element was hanging around, quite a few of them from Davis. By the time I realized my date was coming apart at the seams, he was too drunk to drive me home. I didn’t want to spoil anybody else’s fun by asking for an early ride home. So I started to walk it. It’s only about a mile.