“I swing both ways, but don’t tell Gretchen. Well, you can’t, can you?”
“What I have to say next may embarrass you. Last night” — he was still talking to Gentry — “Gretchen decided to make things confusing for us by using Maureen Neal’s motel room and checking out in the morning in the usual way. Remember — she wanted us to think the dead girl in the water was Gretchen herself, not Maureen, and she wanted the identification to stand up for at least a day. Peter was with her. I happened to coincide with them at the motel.”
“I spotted your car,” Peter said. “I wanted to get the hell out, but to Gretch it was some kind of goddamn challenge.”
“And a funny thing happened.”
“You thought it was funny, did you?”
“Brother and sister had sex,” Shayne said. “I was on the other side of the connecting door.”
“I had to,” Peter said, almost whispering.
“She told you you had to. As Maureen Neal, she could tell me things that would head me the wrong way and keep me busy. She didn’t know I’d never seen a good picture of her. If Tucker had shown me the slides in the right order, I’d know that Gretchen Tucker had a brother. The sex was to make sure I didn’t make the connection. That’s what she told you, anyway.”
Peter muttered, “I can’t deny it happened. She didn’t give me time to think.”
“Thinking back now, was it necessary? When I walked in you knocked me out with a bottle. You kept me tied up till you were sure I didn’t know who she was. You could have played it that way from the start. Or used sound effects. You didn’t actually have to do it.”
“She said you might be photographing us—”
“She tricked you, I believe that. But she liked it. She went off with a bang. I’ve had enough women fake it to know that was real.” He added, “You too, I think.”
Peter looked at the floor. “It disgusted me.”
“But you couldn’t refuse, could you? Because you were already planning your switch. With all this money floating around, none of it was floating your way. She’d worked out a procedure for breaking the story through Rourke. You had the rest of the night to put junk film in the cans, but it had to be real motion-picture film, in case she checked at the last minute. You bought it before the stores closed yesterday.”
“So.”
Now Shayne began to bear down. “I think I know why you had to kill her, but I want to hear it from you. She wanted to have sex again, to calm you down before the scene at the shopping center. You’d done it once, and the world hadn’t come to an end. Sex without hangups, the way it is in Warehouse films. She’s always bossed you, hasn’t she, Peter?”
Peter nodded dumbly.
“And if you’d let her win this morning, she’d have you for life. Under new names, Mr. and Mrs. Fisher, that nice couple from the east. You said it disgusted you. It disgusted you later. It didn’t disgust you then.”
“Yes.”
“No, you liked it as much as she did,” Shayne said calmly. “You knew it was wrong and dangerous. You knew your sister was a sick woman, and you were putting yourself in her hands. After the second time, you couldn’t ever refuse her again. And she was a schemer and planner. Maybe that was the real reason she worked out this movie — not to ruin her husband but to get you under her full control.”
“I couldn’t let her—”
“There was only one way you could break free, turn her own plan around and use it against her. She’d tricked you. Now you had to trick her. That was fair. She was stronger than you.”
“So much stronger, Mike. We used to play around when we were kids. I never wanted to, she was the one.”
“That’s not so bad up to the age of ten. But nobody wants to stay ten years old all his life. And that’s how it would have been, playing house in Omaha. Chicago. Seattle. There was only one way to grow up.”
“That’s it!” Peter said excitedly. “I didn’t know you’d understand. Sooner or later everybody has to grow up. She was wild! We did it this morning in the Everglades, Mike. We did it that second time. And it was immensely exciting! The best time I’ve ever had with a woman. And it was terrible. I didn’t plan to shoot her. I’m not the schemer. She was laughing, you see. Today was the first day of the rest of our lives. She gave me the gun and told me to fire in the air. She had a rock to throw in the water, to make a splash. Realistic.”
He finished dully, “I fired, but not in the air. She made the splash with her own body. The acting was over.”
“That was carefully done, Mike,” Gentry said. “Do you think it’ll stand up?”
Shayne rubbed his mouth without replying.
They were walking through the Warehouse lobby. Lib stepped out to intercept them.
“Is it over? Is it true there were two murders?”
New letters were being put up on the marquee: “Domestic Relations, the picture the whole town is talki—” A higher admission price had been posted.
Baruch and his cameraman came out behind them. Baruch made an apron of his striped robe so he could load the cans of film: Sally, Delinquent Venus, Friends and Neighbors.
“Mike, the coach’s part in the football film. Do you want to talk about it?”
Shayne slammed the trunk and went to the front of the car. Lib was still hanging at his elbow.
“You look tired, Mike. I live a couple of blocks away. I’m told I give a great massage.”
Shayne started the motor. She held on to keep him from leaving.
“And we could—”
Shayne seldom fed the motor too much gas at the start, spinning his wheels and leaving rubber behind him to mark where he had been. But he did it this time. He came down hard on the accelerator and shot off toward the city. He’d spent too many hours of his life among these people.