“No,” I said. “My name’s Graves. I’m on a fishing trip.”
“My,” she said admiringly, looking at the white shirt and the tie, “you go fishing all dressed up, don’t you? My brother, when he goes fishing, he’s the messiest thing,
actually, you should see him.”
“I just got here,” I said. “A few minutes ago.”
Her story was plausible enough. She might be looking
for somebody named Gillespie. God knows, she sounded as if she could get lost. She could get lost in a telephone booth, or a double bed. But still...
An icicle walked slowly up my spine and sat down between my shoulder blades.
It was the radio. It was what the radio was saying.
“...Butler...”
“Are you fishing all alone?” Dreamboat asked.
All I had to do was stand there in the sunlight beside the car and try to hear what the radio was saying, and remember it, and listen to this pink-and-silver idiot, and answer in the right places, and at the same time try to figure out whether she was an idiot or not and what she was really up to, and keep her from noticing I was paying any attention to the radio.
“Mrs. Madelon Butler, thirty-three, lovely brunette widow of the missing bank official sought since last June eighth...”
Widow. So they’d found his body.
“Mrs. Butler is believed to have fled in a blue 1953 Cadillac.”
“I don’t see any car,” she said, looking around. “How did you get here?”
“...sought in connection with the murder. Police in neighboring states have been alerted, and a description
of Mrs. Butler and the license number of the car...”
“Pickup truck,” I said. “Its in the shed.”
“...since the discovery of the body late yesterday, but no trace of the missing money has been found. Police are positive, however, that the apprehension of Mrs. Butler will clear up...”
The man had known the body’d been found, and that they were going to arrest her. He didn’t want her arrested. He still didn’t. Maybe this lost blonde wasn’t lost.
“Malenkov,” the radio said.
But she was going to get lost, and damned fast.
“—drink of water,” she was saying. She was smiling at me. She wanted to come into the house. She wanted to look around.
I smiled at her. “Sure, baby. But water? Look, I got bourbon.”
I was leaning in the window a little. I slid her skirt up.
“Thought I saw an ant on your stocking,” I said. I patted a handful of bare, pink-candy thigh. “Come on in, Blondie.”
The “You—” was as cold and deadly as a rifle shot. Then she got back into character. “Well! I must say!”
But the only thing she could do, under the circumstances, was go. She went.
I took a deep breath and watched the car go across the meadow and into the timber, and then I could hear it climbing the hill in second gear. It didn’t stop. I heard it die away in the distance.
He might be out there in the timber somewhere with his gun, or he might be still in town. Maybe he’d just sent her scouting. If that had been his car following us last night, he had finally figured out where we’d turned off, and he knew we had to be back in this country somewhere.
Well, there was a lot of it. They had plenty of places to look.
Unless, I thought coldly...Maybe she had seen through that old varsity fumble and knew I was just trying to get rid of her. Maybe she knew she had already found what she was looking for.
There was one way to find out. That was to stand out here in the open like a goof until he got back with the gun and shot a hole in my head. I went inside.
Madelon Butler had come out of the bedroom and was standing by the table where the bottle was. She turned and watched me.
“Could you hear the radio?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Why?”
“You’d better sit down. There at the end of the table,
where you can’t be seen from outside. And take a drink. You’re going to need it.”
She sat down. “What is it now?”
“They’ve found your husband’s body. And the police are looking for you.”
She poured the drink and smiled at me. “You do have a flair for melodrama, don’t you?”
“You think I’m lying?”
“Certainly. And who was this timely courier, bringing the news? An accomplice?”
I sat down where I could see out the door and across the meadow. “Look. See if you can get this through your supercilious head. You’re in a jam. One hell of a jam. Nobody brought any news. It was on the radio, in that car. The police are looking for you, for murder. And not only that, but the girl in the car was looking for you too.”
I told her about it.
She listened boredly until I had finished; then all she did was reach for her purse and take out a mirror and some make-up stuff. She splashed crimson onto her mouth. In spite of myself, I watched her. She was arrogant and conceited as hell, but when you looked away from her for a moment and then looked back you went through it all over again. You didn’t believe anybody
could be that beautiful.
“I’m ready to go back to town,” she said, “if you are.”
“Don’t you want to hear me waste my breath any more?”
“Frankly, no. I should think we’d about run through your repertoire.”
“You don’t believe any of it at all?” She put the finishing touches on the lips, pressed them together, looked in the mirror once more, and then across at me. She smiled. “Don’t be ridiculous. By your own admission, you’re a housebreaker, liar, and impostor. And attempted extortionist. Quite an array of talent, I’ll admit; but to ask me to believe you is a little insulting, wouldn’t you say?”
I leaned across the table and caught her wrist. “And don’t forget abduction, while you’re adding it up. So why don’t you have me arrested, if you don’t believe any of
it?”
“And add to the burden of the taxpayers?”
“No,” I said. “I’ll tell you why. You can’t.”
“Don’t paw me,” she said.
I reached over and took the other wrist. I slid my hands
up inside the wide sleeves of the robe and held her arms above the elbows. “I want that money. And I’m going to get it. Why don’t you use your head? Alone, you haven’t got a chance, and the money’s no good to you if you’re dead. Maybe I can save you.”
“Save me from what?” she asked coldly.
I shook my head and took my hands off her arms to
light a cigarette. “Has your car got a radio in it?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I’ll tell you the easy way to find out if I’m telling the truth. Trying to go back to town is the hard way, and there’s only one to a customer. In about an hour there should be some more news. We’ll listen to it.”
“Maybe there’s some on now,” she said. She picked up her purse and started toward the door. She had a good start before I realized what she was up to.
I jumped after her. By the time I reached the door she had run down off the porch and was standing in the open, fumbling in the purse for her keys and looking around for the car.
“Wait!” I yelled. She paid no attention.
She swung her face around and saw the shed at the side of the house. The car had to be in there. She whirled, ran one step toward it, and then it happened.
The purse sailed out of her hands as if a hurricane had grabbed it. She stopped abruptly and stared as it flopped crazily and landed six feet away from her on the edge of the porch, and we both heard the deadly whuppp! as something slammed into the front wall of the house.
She was frozen there. I was down off the porch and running toward her before I heard the sound of the gun. Without even thinking about it, I knew it was a rifle and that he was shooting from somewhere beyond the meadow, over two hundred yards away She started to run now. I grabbed her. It was four long strides back to the front step. I dug in, feeling my whole back draw up into one icy knot. I was a hundred yards wide, and all target.