“Well, then,” said the voice, with heavy joviality that was somehow menacing, “can I expect you at my house this afternoon? I checked your schedule, your last exam is finished—”
To his house? Why? How? This afternoon? “But I... Professor, I... this weekend, I...”
“Tied up? All right then, Miss Marsden, I’ll expect you for tea on Monday afternoon. But... let’s make it early, say... two P. M.?”
“But I... I don’t...”
“That’s fine, Miss Marsden. I expect you know the way.”
She leaned against the wall, thankful for the cold steel of the partition against her forehead, idiotically clutching the dead receiver to her ear as if it would tell her more. Her heart was pounding. What in God’s name could he want? She made herself straighten up. More pertinently, what was the matter with her? What had she to feel guilty about? Granted, it had been an odd conversation, but... not a conversation where phone booths, or Friday nights, or even suicide had come up. The trouble, of course, was that she knew of Paula Halstead’s infidelity and Professor Halstead didn’t. And now that Paula was dead, wouldn’t he be happier with his memories of his wife intact?
Up in her room, Debbie sat down on her bed to await Rick’s arrival. She would tell him of the phone call; he would know what she should do. He... but no. This was her problem, she wouldn’t say anything until after she had seen the professor. She would feel really silly if she got there on Monday and it was something about the newspaper or fall classes or something like that. She wasn’t going to let it ruin her weekend with Rick. Not this weekend, when everything belonged just to the two of them. Nothing must intrude, and most especially nothing which might remind Ricky of Paula Halstead.
She realized the red Triumph was stopped at the end of the walk, horn tootling. She picked up her train case and went out. Downstairs, she tossed it into the back of the car, hopped in beside Rick, and shyly stretched over to kiss him. The butterflies were back in her stomach. As they pulled out, neither noticed the green Rambler, parked a short block down Dormitory Row, which started up behind them.
At the wheel, grim-faced, was Julio Escobar.
The cabin was perched at the bottom V of a deep wooded ravine, enclosed by jagged coastal bluffs and backed by a thick stand of Douglas fir and tideland spruce. There were two small bedrooms, a living room dominated by a cast-iron wood stove, and a tiny kitchen with a butane cook stove. On the roof was a rain-filled water tank to gravity-feed the kitchen sink, toilet, and shower. The front of the cabin, the living room, looked out over the beach, and the front door opened on a flight of fifteen rough wooden steps terminating on the sand dunes which rimmed the beach. This was a V of white sand, not over a hundred yards wide at the water’s edge, which faced a mirror-image V of water. It foamed in from the open sea between enclosing black blades of granite which dropped down from the bluffs flanking the ravine.
Debbie clapped her hands in excitement. “Oh, Ricky, we’ve got our own private beach!”
Rick came up behind her and put his arms around her waist. She turned in the circle of his arms and kissed him briefly, then broke loose with a nervous little laugh.
“Whoa!” she exclaimed. For an instant she had felt a giddy touch of near-terror: in a few hours, when darkness came, she was committed to surrender everything to him. “Can... we go swimming, Ricky?”
“Sure, nude if you want to!” he mock-leered. But she heard his voice quaver a little, and then it was all right. He was nervous too! “They can’t even see this cove from the highway; in all the years my old man’s had this place, nobody’s ever come down here.”
“I’ll wear my suit, thanks. What if your folks came down?”
“I told you, Deb, they won’t. Hell, they think the other guys are down here with me. They know we wouldn’t want ’em hanging around.”
His slap across her backside made her yelp. “Let’s get our suits.”
Debbie stripped in the left-hand bedroom. She had shut the door behind her, and the window was filled with the dark green branches of a fir tree close behind the house, so she studied her nude body in the full-length mirror on the inside of the door. Long and slender legs, without any excess flesh inside the thighs, where so many girls jiggled when they walked. Waist tight and firm, breasts thrusting and well-formed, without a woman’s mature fullness yet to draw them down.
A tiny scratching from the window made her spin about with a muffled yip, trying ineffectually to cover her groin and both breasts with only two hands; then she giggled and sank down on the bed. A chipmunk peered in at her intently, one paw up with a single tiny claw hooked through the screen. He jerked his head twice, a comic’s double-take, and was gone with a flirt of the tail, so instantaneously that Debbie could not be totally sure he ever had been there at all.
What a cutie he was! She’d put out nut meats for him later.
She got into her bikini quickly, the funny hollow feeling back from having seen herself nude; in a few hours Ricky would have explored every secret place of that body...
“Hey, quit gawking in the mirror and c’mon,” he called.
“I wasn’t gawking,” she said as she emerged. “This chipmunk...”
Her voice trailed off. She wore just the skimpy halter and abbreviated trunks of the most daring bikini she’d been able to find in Los Feliz, and Rick’s avid stare, hot and frank and wanting, made her blush furiously. He’d never even seen her in shorts before, and now he could see almost all of her.
“I... I’ll race you to the water!” she exclaimed, avoiding his gaze, frightened again by his nearly nude, very male body.
They splashed in almost together, with yells from Rick and squeals of despair from Debbie at the fifty-degree temperature; then it was a water fight and finally a thorough ducking despite Debbie’s pleadings and shrieks. Rick finally desisted; they kissed hurriedly, then ran back up the sand to the dry, sun-warmed beach below the dunes, where they flopped out on their towels out of the wind.
Julio, no longer able to see them from his place of concealment in the conifers by the foot of the gravel drive, gritted his teeth and turned away. He climbed up the narrow track, went over the locked gate, and trudged back to the Rambler parked in the view-area two hundred yards beyond.
Lying bastard, pretending he wasn’t making it with Debbie! For all Julio knew, he was balling her right there on the beach right now. He’d go make sure, if he could be sure they wouldn’t see him. It was all right that he’d been following Debbie, off and on, since the Fourth of July, looking for proof that she might betray their identity to someone as the attackers of Paula Halstead; but he had no excuse for having followed her and Rick today.
He got in the Rambler, U-turned back toward San Conrado, the nearest town, some ten miles north. Yeah, it was a sort of sick scene, following them today. Especially when he knew he would come back after dark, try to actually see them making out. It was like a goddamn fever or something, which had gotten worse the more he followed her. He had seen no signs of treachery, but he had learned every turn of her head, every expression of her face, all the movements and graces and occasional coltish awkwardness of her body. He had fed upon her, had even considered picking her up and just taking what she was giving to Rick.
Anything, in fact, to put out the fire which raged in his guts.
At sundown they went in and shut the windows and got a fire started in the wood stove. Debbie made steaks and baked potatoes and salad and warmed the French bread; they sat cross-legged on the living-room rug to eat, facing one another.