“But they’ll get you, Roy,” she said. “You can’t get away with this. You killed him. That’s murder, Roy!”
He went over to her and flicked his finger stinging hard against her cheek. “Don’t keep saying you, baby,” he said. “Get that we in there. We killed him. You’re in this right up to your cute ears. But don’t worry about it. We’ve already gotten away with it. If anybody had heard the shot, they’d have been here banging on the door already. Nobody knows what’s happened here except you and me.”
“But when they find him here, Roy, they’ll—”
“Not here,” he cut in. He stooped and dug into the fat man’s pockets. He brought out a room key with the big plastic tag attached to it. “Later, about four a.m. when everything’s quiet, you and I’ll lug him down to his room. It’s only two floors below. We’ll use the service stairs. If nobody seess us, fine. If they do, we’re just helping a drunk back to his room. You understand?”
That’s the way it worked out. Nobody saw them. The next morning when the chambermaid found the corpse, they were long gone. They were way down south of Mason-Dixon, in the land of corn pones, ham-hocks and turnip greens.
Laurie had fought it with everything she had. She thought about what would happen if the law did get on their trail. The shock and the shame of it would kill her folks.
Roy had laughed off that objection. “Safest place in the world! Who’s going to look for city-boy Roy Willis on a tobacco farm deep in the Carolina red clay country?”
When she didn’t answer, his voice sharpened, hacked at her: “All right,” he said. “I’m your husband. They’re my in-laws. I’ll go there alone, then. What’s the matter — you ashamed for me to meet your folks, to see the kind of place you came from?”
But it wasn’t that she was ashamed of the place or the folks. That wasn’t why she hadn’t been back once in the seven years she’d been away. It was because of Roy. She knew Roy would turn on the charm and they’d fall for it, and then somehow, some way, Roy would figure an angle to use that worship for his own purposes. Roy wasn’t happy about somebody liking him unless it paid off.
Then there would be the admiration for their expensive clothes, the ostrich-skin luggage and the expensive convertible. Questions would be asked about what Roy did, how he made so much money. He’d lie glibby through it all, but Laurie was afraid she’d be trapped.
She’d never been very good at lying to her folks. When they’d get her to one side and tell her what a wonderful guy Roy was and how lucky she was to have married such a fine man, Laurie was afraid she might not be able to stand it. She might break and blurt out the truth.
Those were the reasons she’d never gone back and why she didn’t want to go back now. But when Roy said he’d go alone, she knew she was licked. He’d do it. Once again she’d lost to Roy. She had always lost, right from the beginning. Nobody bucked Roy Willis and got away with it.
Laurie began to feel suffocated, closed in by the walls of the bedroom. There was no air in the room. Roy had a phobia about sleeping in a room with an open window. Outside, through the glass, Laurie could see a night breeze rustling the leaves of the crepe myrtle and pecan trees. She suddenly had to get out there, feel the cool of the night on her feverish skin, freshen her lungs with the clean sweet air.
She turned and padded across the room to the door, eased it open, stepped out into the hall. She paused by the open door of her sister’s room. The kid was sleeping quietly now.
It was funny how she thought of Gin as a kid. She wasn’t really, anymore. She was seventeen but she was grownup. The long, gangly legs had filled out and taken on beautiful lines. Gin had really bloomed in seven years. When Laurie and Roy had arrived early this morning and Laurie had been unpacking, Gin had insisted on trying on one of Laurie’s gowns. In that gown, with the freshness of youth shining from her, Gin was so beautiful it hurt to look at her.
Roy had let out a long, low whistle. “Hey,” he’d said. “Look at this kid! She’s a killer! Maybe I married the wrong sister, eh?”
Gin had gotten flustered and fled from the room. Roy had looked at Laurie and laughed.
Laurie had known what he meant. Sometimes, lately, she’d catch him studying her with narrowed eyes. He’d say: “What’s happening to you, Toots? You’re losing something.” He’d shake his head, impatient, a little puzzled. “You’d better do something about it, baby. Once that extra zip is gone, you won’t be worth a damn to me. These fat rich old suckers don’t want floozies. Hell, floozies are a penny a peck.”
He wasn’t telling Laurie anything she didn’t know. The seven years might have passed right over Roy but they’d hit her hard, left their indelible mark. Little touches around the eyes and the mouth, more in the expression than in the features themselves. Some would say that she’d taken on an air of worldliness, but Laurie knew that nothing had been added. It was like Roy had said — something had been lost.
It frightened her. In the smart clubs and hotel cafes that she and Roy worked, Laurie had seen other woman not much older than herself who were dulled completely, who in desperation were trying to recapture that lost something with too much paint and too much jewelry and too loud laughter. But it was all false flash and you could see through it.
What Roy meant was that when she got like that he’d take off.
The thought had panicked her at first. Evil grew on you; you became used to it, depended on it. She knew no other life. What would she do without Roy? How would she live? Then she’d gotten used to the idea and it was only the uncertainty of when it would happen that bothered her. The world didn’t end for women suddenly without husbands. She’d go on. She’d take care of herself somehow, maybe divorce Roy and try to start over, maybe marry again.
Now, though, the business of the fat man had changed all that. She was saddled with Roy for life, and he with her. She was the witness to his crime, the one who shared his guilt, and he’d have to stick with her.
Maybe it was a good thing, too. From the way Roy had looked at Gin today, Laurie knew that he wished he could swap her for the younger version. Turn her in for the 1950 model. And if it weren’t for the murder, Laurie knew that Roy would have no qualms about getting Gin to run off with him. A young hayseed like Gin, all full of wild, romantic notions, would be a setup for Roy’s fast, smooth talk — just as Laurie had been when she met him. But he would never try it the way things were.
Laurie moved away from the doorway of her sister’s room to the front door of the house. She unhooked the screen catch and stepped out onto the porch. She stood there, breathing deeply of the night’s sweetness. The soft hum of chicadas and tree toads was everywhere, muted, soothing.
After a few moments, Laurie moved off of the porch toward the driveway where the convertible was parked. Roy always carried a spare pack of cigarettes in the dashboard compartment. She would sit in the open front seat of the car and have a smoke and then go back inside to try to get some sleep. Maybe at the same time she could figure some way to get them away from the farm.
Roy had sworn to her that they’d only stay here a few days. But tonight before going to bed Roy had said: “You’ve got nice folks, honey. And this is a nice old stash, quiet, isolated. Maybe we ought to stretch out this vacation, hole up here for a month, give that fat-boy business a real chance to cool off before we try to operate again.”
Panic had leaped inside of her like a live thing. She remembered the tough time she’d had answering some of her mother’s questions. She remembered how Roy had taken young Gin out for a ride in the convertible “just to show her how smooth it rides,” and how flushed and excited the kid had been when they got back. Since then Gin had talked about nothing but what a wonderful man Roy was and how she envied Laurie and how sick she was of the farm and farmer’s sons and this whole neck of the woods.