Curiosity about a vaguely remembered bump in an otherwise level lawn had driven him into the night in the hope that he could somehow help Zeigler, but nothing had turned up that would help him at all.
His reflection in the glass stared back at him. Beyond, in the growing dark, he also seemed to see Zeigler. In a way, the man was a shadow of himself. They lived differently but followed the same code, which was why they got along so well from the day they met. The code said others could lie, cheat, and steal. They would not, even in retaliation.
Analyzing businesses, separating causes from effects and looking for solutions had given him a sixth sense. The pieces fit or they didn’t — and these pieces didn’t fit. He couldn’t believe accidentally killing Grover would push a man like Zeigler over the edge, any more than the departure of a wife he didn’t care about.
There had to be a flaw in the story somewhere.
When the thought came, he couldn’t erase it. Like the one solution to any problem, it stood pure and shining and unassailable. He turned to Amanda. Her eyes were closed.
He bent and whispered into her ear. “Randy lied about what happened.”
The eyes remained closed. “Lied? That’s one helluva story to dream up.”
“He didn’t dream it up. He reversed the roles. Listen to me carefully. Zeigler was working late, not Randy, which is more likely. Zeigler didn’t have much cash on him. He never did. Zeigler couldn’t operate the cash access machine. Anything with keys on it always baffled him. That’s why he kept money in the house safe. And because of the late hour, it was like him to take Grover along, intending to give him the money, drive him in to the station, and put him on a bus. So Zeigler drives up to that house on the hill and he walks in on something that takes the heart out of him and sends him into a depression so deep the mind mechanics may take years to find him, much less bring him out of it. One guess as to what it was.”
She sat silent for a few moments, then the eyes opened, the shoes were on, and she was headed for the door, tossing the words back over her shoulder. “Damn you, Denbow. I wish you’d stop thinking so that I can get some sleep.”
The phone rang two hours later.
“I’ve had enough of your fertile brain, Denbow. I’m at home.”
“That’s too bad. Dinner is waiting, the wine chilling, the table set, and the candles ready.”
“Bloodshot eyes ain’t romantic, even by candlelight.”
“Don’t you pay attention to commercials? I have a little bottle of the stuff that clears that up in seconds. What did Randy have to say this time?”
“Exactly what you thought he’d say. His father caught him and his sexy stepmother in the most embarrassing of all situations and it shocked Zeigler’s mind loose from its moorings.”
“I knew it had to be something that gross, but don’t tell me the sight made poor Grover faint and hit his head.”
“Since Zeigler was out of it, Randy jumped all over Grover, wanting to know what they were doing there. Grover told him. Whether his father came out of it or not, Randy knew the story stopped with him. Grover, though, was edging toward the door to tell the world. Randy was about to become national Sleaze-of-the-Month, but there’d be no television interview or book contract. He’d be finished. With his wife and family, at the plant, and especially in the community. The way people felt about his father—”
“—they’d start a movement to bring back tarring and feathering.”
“Furious, blaming Grover for the whole thing, he ran after him, picked up a rock and hit him. It was obvious by then that Zeigler would be no problem for some time, so he and Mrs. Strike-It-Rich worked out the details. Feel smug about bringing him to justice?”
“I don’t give a damn about him. All I was concerned about was Zeigler. Now that the psychiatrists know the real cause of his depression, they should find it a great deal easier to bring him around.”
“What made you realize Randy was lying?”
“Zeigler and I subscribed to the same code. If I’d never lower myself to skulk around in the dark to catch a cheating wife, neither would he.”
“Some code. Look where it got him. But that little bit of information might come in handy some day, so maybe I should change my mind about dinner. Does the code prevent you from taking advantage of a woman who falls asleep over the entree?”
Silverware gleaming, the table set before him. Precise. Perfect. And empty.
“You’re the only exception. Taking advantage of you under any and all circumstances is mandatory.”
“Best clause in the code, Den-bow. Light the candles. I’m on my way.”
An Attractive Family
by Robert Arthur
The Farringtons were a rather attractive family, if you don’t mind overlooking a few bad habits — such as committing murder. And it is probably not fair to speak of murder as being a habit with them. After all, they had only committed it twice.
However, they were well on the way to making it a habit. Even now they were planning to make the figure two into a three. But they were not looking sinister, nor whispering to each other. They were discussing the subject frankly and openly as they sat in the parlor of East View, the summer home they had rented on the Massachusetts coast at a spot where the rather steep, rocky cliffs fell away to the brawling waves of the Atlantic.
They were even drinking tea as they talked. At least Marion Farrington was — tea with lemon. Bert Farrington, her uncle, was also drinking tea, but his was laced with Jamaican rum. Dick, her younger brother, was drinking scotch and soda, which looks like tea but isn’t.
“It’s really a pity the child must have her birthday in two weeks,” Marion Farrington said. “It forces us to act.”
Dick, who was thirty-two, well-built, tanned, and handsome, obviously accustomed to living well and spending money freely, glanced out the window. Jinny Wells was visible across the open field, just at the edge of the woods. She seemed, from a distance, almost the child that Marion had called her, although Jinny was almost twenty-one — a twenty-one that, based upon past performance charts of the Farrington family, she was not likely to reach. At the moment Jinny seemed to be searching the ground for small objects which she popped into a basket on her arm.
“She’s quite a pretty thing,” Dick commented. “And I do think she admires me.” He straightened his tie. “If we could only put it off for a little longer—”
“Aha!” Bert Farrington, who was plump and red-featured, twenty years older than his nephew, wagged a finger at him. “Mustn’t get sentimental, Dick. The future of the Family is at stake.” He said it that way, with a capital F, as if he were speaking of the British Empire or the State of Texas.
“Bert’s right.” Marion sat erect, a full-bodied forty-two, attractive if you overlooked the set of her chin and the determination that glinted in her pale blue eyes. “On Jinny’s twenty-first birthday we have to make an accounting of the estate, under the terms of Alice’s will. We might manage to postpone it for a few weeks, but eventually her lawyer would force the issue. You know what the result would be.”
Dick drained his glass in a nervous sort of way while he thought of all the money Alice had left him that was now gone, including half of what she had left Jinny. “Money certainly doesn’t go far these days,” he said.
“The inflation,” Bert said, in a philosophical manner. After all, if anyone went to jail it would be Dick, as trustee of Jinny’s estate, rather than Bert. Just the same, Bert, having sponged off his niece and nephew for fifteen years now, and hoping to continue to do so indefinitely, was willing to go to any reasonable lengths to help keep Dick out of jail. After all, Dick would soon have to find another rich wife to marry, and that was seldom accomplished in jail.