“We can take off right now, honey,” he said. “It’s too hot for this kind of work.”
“I’m Mrs. Foley. I want to talk to you about what happened the night Shirley Mannix was killed. Do you want to come around and get into the car?”
He stood silently for a moment. “I’m pretty messed up to get in the car, missis. Better we could set on that shady bank over there.” The insolence was gone. He seemed extremely polite.
They walked over to the bank. He sat a good five feet away from her, half turned to face her. “What was it you wanted to know?”
“Mr. Arlington and Mr. Stack said she was spending time with you and your brother during the evening.”
“It’s usually like that when we’re in there the same time. One thing, she never cost a man much money. Not by drinking root beer.”
“And she became... friendly with my husband?”
“She took a quick shine to him. Shirl was like that. She played up to him, and from what I hear, they left together, all right. We left about the same time T. J. did.”
“Mr. Arlington was under the impression that when she sat with you and your brother, the three of you were discussing my husband in some way.”
“I guess you could say we were, missis.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, I guess you could say it was like a bet. Arlington came in with that fella, him in a business suit and white shirt and tie, and that gold wedding ring on him, and talking so neat and serious to old T. J., and I guess we kidded Shirl about taking dead aim at him, and we told her he wasn’t about to take up with the likes of her, and she vowed as how she’d get her hooks into him with hardly no trouble at all.”
“I understand she stopped him and spoke to him.”
“That’s what she did.”
“What did she say to him?”
“Ma’am, I haven’t any idea in the world. Some crazy thing. That’s what she’d do.”
“But you and your brother didn’t stay around to see her win the bet.”
“I wouldn’t exactly say that, missis. We seen her go sit with him at the bar, and from the way he took it, that bet was lost right there. We went on home.”
“And there’s nothing else you can tell me?”
“No, ma’am, not a thing. It was too bad, what happened. These are bad roads on a dark night. Shirl said she had a wish to go on down to the city, and I guess that’s where she talked him into taking her. But they only made it part way.”
“It would be pretty stupid for my husband to bring her down to where he lives and works and where a lot of people know him.”
“A man gets a woman on his mind, he doesn’t think too clear sometimes, ma’am.”
“Well, Mr. Marlow, thank you for being so cooperative.”
“I guess I wasn’t much help to you.”
She stood by the car and watched him walk back to the work area. He looked back at her once, squinting against the bright sunlight. She drove by the crew until she found a place to turn around, and then went on back to the village, waving at Mr. Winkler as she went by.
She was back in the city in time to see Johnny before returning to the house. He seemed listless and depressed. His head dressing was much smaller, and they had had him in a wheel chair on the sun deck for an hour, but he did not seem cheered by it. He had not remembered anything more. He doubted that he ever would.
“Cheer up, darling,” she told him.
“It hurts when I laugh.”
“So try a kind of ghastly chuckle.”
He stared thoughtfully at her. “You couldn’t possibly be hiding any kind of good news, could you?”
“Nothing we can use. I am the mystery woman of the north woods — poor, blind, stupid, loyal wife. But I have a feeling that the official version is suddenly going to collapse. I can’t explain it. It’s just a feeling. A kind of subconscious confidence.” She frowned. “It’s almost as though I already knew something important and I don’t know exactly what it is.”
His smile was weak but it was a smile. “Tiger blood,” he said.
“What?”
“It makes me think of that time with National Appliance.”
Her cheeks felt hot. “Well, they were wrong and I was right.”
“A two-billion-dollar corporation versus one indignant little housewife.”
“They kept brushing me off.”
“Honey, they didn’t even know they were in a fight until all of a sudden they started bleeding. And then they had to fly two factory engineers in, bringing replacement parts and a letter of apology from the company president.”
“Just the vice-president. And they were very nice men. They understood that when you promise somebody something, you should do it.”
He shook his head. “Tiger blood. If I didn’t know you, honey, you’d scare me. But this time it isn’t a case of getting a new dryer fixed. This time it’s broken-down John Foley, and maybe there aren’t any spare parts. How about a job? No bonding company will touch me after this. Where do I start? Door-to-door selling? Gas jockey?”
She quelled the sudden feeling of tears. “What you do, sir, is do one thing at a time, and getting well has first priority.”
He stared at her. “Sure. Everything is going to work out fine.”
“Hasn’t it always?”
“That isn’t logic. That’s superstition.”
“So be it. I have a superstitious belief in us. And don’t forget the tiger blood.”
All night in the lonely bedroom her sleep was restless. She kept drifting in and out of tumbled dreams, awakening to a feeling of fading terror, of deep dejection.
There were so many little inconsistencies in the story of the accident, but they did not seem to point in any logical direction. Added up, they merely resulted in a feeling of wrongness.
She arose and got a drink of water and then went to the window and leaned her forehead against the cool glass and looked wistfully out at the moonlight. How do you make all the little wrong things turn out right? she thought. What do you add or subtract to make them feel consistent?... If a haystack is thirty feet high and it takes forty-one cows a month and a day to eat it down to the ground, what is the name of the farmer’s daughter?
She moved slowly back toward the bed. Suddenly she stopped and opened her eyes wide; she took a deep breath and held it. And then, walking as carefully as though she carried something fragile upon her head, she went to the bed and sat rigidly on the edge of it. She took her concept and tried to make it seem false, tried to create a new disbelief. But it would not totter. It stood squarely, based on a reality that made it more truth than supposition.
She grinned into darkness, joy commingled with a savage satisfaction. She tried to sleep, and knew she could not. She dressed and went to wake Irene to tell her she was going to drive up into the hill country again.
The interview with Sergeant Daniels and Trooper Vernon Gyce was not difficult to arrange, but convincing them that they should take action was another matter. They viewed her proposal with what she considered evasiveness.
“But what harm would it possibly do?”
Daniels cleared his throat. “The thing is, we’ve got to have something to go on.”
“You stare at me as if I’d lost my mind. Shouldn’t people be able to ask you for a little help?”
Sergeant Daniels said, “But the way we’re set up, there’s a Criminal Investigation Division to handle things like that, Mrs. Foley.”
“I don’t care who does it, just as long as somebody does. How many times do I have to tell you the things that are wrong about this whole episode, gentlemen? I’ve looked into it. I know that my husband was not drunk. He would not pick up that woman. He would not drive like that. He would use the seat belt. He would not head in this direction. And a man who is notoriously sullen and uncooperative was very sweet and polite to me. Isn’t that enough?”