“Gramie, it all goes back to that girl?”
“Little Sonya, you mean?”
“No! The teacher, the one that got killed.”
“Oh. I didn’t know her.”
“A nitwit, but insane about him, about Burl. I think he got sick of her. I think she was messing him up with his — weakness. You know what it is?”
“Women, I would say.”
“Yes. Gramie, I haven’t plagued you with it, I haven’t said anything — partly from not wanting to weep on your shoulder, partly from hating to talk about it, it’s so ugly. But you’ve no idea what it’s been like, having him in the house, especially since he got out of the Army. Well, one of the angles has been, I can’t keep a servant. Three times it happened, once with a colored girl, twice with white women, and Gramie, the last white woman I got was older than I am. I got her from the agency, and on account of her age thought my problem was solved. He took her while she was fixing dinner — and seemed extra excited by her because she was old.
“Gramie, I’ve tried to inform myself about men of his kind, I’ve read Casanova’s memoirs, and books about Burr, Sickles, and Charles the Second. I don’t understand them at all, but this I’ve found out about them: They’re sick, or unbalanced, or something. Strange, offbeat things excite them, as Dale Morgan excited him — till she became a pest. She was a born spinster, pale, colorless, and prissy, but that’s what set him off.”
“Where does the money come in?”
“I’m coming to that. She was killed when her car hit a culvert wall — her mother was driving, and Burl was here in this room with me, watching a football game. The police didn’t even question him. The insurance adjuster did.”
“Questioned Burl, you mean?”
“Right here in this room. And at his request — Burl’s request — I sat in and answered some questions, too. And a strange thing came out: They’d taken out reciprocal policies, I think that’s what they’re called, reciprocal accident policies, his in her favor, hers in his — five thousand for loss of a limb, twenty-five thousand for loss of life, and double indemnity for death in a motor accident. Burl kept telling the adjuster: ‘It was all her idea — I thought it was screwy myself. But she was paying for it, and who was I to object?’ Gramie, that money had to be paid, the whole fifty thousand, and I’m all but certain it has been.”
“Then Lang was right?”
“He should know what Burl’s balance is.”
“Then let Burl pay, why not?”
She tightened, then went on: “One night, not long after that, a boy showed up here, whose name I don’t recall, but Burl called him Al. He’d been in the Army with Burl, in Japan, in the headquarters motor pool, keeping trucks, cars, and motorcycles in running order. And he got slopped on beer and talked — mainly about girls, in tea houses, shops, and bars, which I thought an odd subject in front of me, but I indulge all former soldiers. But then suddenly he remembered Bong, and I thought Burl was trying to shush him, by changing the subject, by being reminded of other things. But Al kept right on. I judge Bong’s name was Bin Ben Bon, but Al called him Bing Bang Bong, and reveled in his exploits. Bong was a South Vietnamese, who had done undercover work, and special sabotage in Hanoi. And he would boast of how he had killed Hanoi generals, four of them, he said, four ‘genetor,’ it seemed he called them, by loosening a certain screw, a set-screw in the steering assembly, of these North Vietnamese generals’ cars. ‘One slet-sclew,’ he boasted to Al and Burl. ‘Come here rook I show you, one ‘slet-screw’ in generor car, a generor clash, generor die in ditch.’ Al thought him killingly funny, but I didn’t. I had a horrible suspicion I’d heard the truth at last about poor little Dale Morgan’s death.”
“...Be a pretty hard truth to prove.”
“Gramie, does Lang have to prove it?”
“Go on, say what you’re leading to.”
“What I’m leading to is: I think Lang wants that money, a big hunk of what Burl was paid — if he was paid, as I imagine he was — but I don’t think that’s all he wants. I think he wants to ruin Burl, as a matter of sheer vindictiveness — break the thing wide open before consenting to be bought off — but not before reopening that other case. Because if the police find out that he was paid that money, they’ll have to reopen that case.”
“But they must know it already.”
“Right, and then this will force their hand.”
Now, for the first time, I went into details, on the rape I mean, telling stuff I’d left out before, especially that other couple, but she wouldn’t let me finish. “Please! I can’t listen to it,” she said, “I can’t bear any more! Oh, what a filthy, rotten thing!”
“Incidentally, why the sundown bit?”
“...On that, I think I did right.”
“Yeah, but what was the idea of it?”
“To give Burl time to skip.”
“Oh. Oh, I see. Well — did he?”
“Not till I kicked in with money. Can you imagine that? That tremendous sum he was paid, and still he sandbagged me for five hundred dollars. It’s why I couldn’t call you sooner. I had to go to the bank for cash.”
I got out my blank check, the same one I had waved at Lang, and got ready to kick in with my share. But actually I wrote five hundred, the whole bite. When she saw that figure, though, she lifted my hand, the one with the pen in it, and kissed it. “Gramie,” she said, “I love it when you give me money — it makes my heart go bump, that’s the woman of it. But this I can’t take off you. No — it’s on me for being so dumb. For having him here at all. For—”
Suddenly she stiffened, broke off, and then asked me: “Gramie, you talked to this girl — where? Where is she now?”
“At my house. I thought I said.”
“Then, until we know where we’re at, keep her there! Don’t let her go home! Because this is what terrifies me: Dale Morgan is dead — that we know. But it would simplify Burl’s problem, put him in the clear, if this girl were to die, too — accidentally, of course, as Dale Morgan died. It mustn’t happen.”
“Listen, I can’t lock her up.”
“You’ll have to do something, Gramie.”
She stared at me, then went on: “Perhaps Burl has skipped, perhaps not. Perhaps he’s out there somewhere, just biding his time. And if he knows where she is—!”
It was hard for me to believe, to get through my head at all, that she was talking in earnest. I mumbled I’d try to think of something, and then she asked me: “Would you like me to ring Jane Sibert? And call off your luncheon engagement?”
“I can’t. I drew some cash too, her allowance for the next four weeks, that I thought I’d hand her before she leaves, as kind of a going-away surprise—”
“Then, you must go. She’s important to us.”
“What time is it?”
“Twelve-ten. You’d better be running along.”
I kissed her, told her: “I’ll be in touch, I’ll keep you posted. After Jane goes I have to see Sonya, and report to her how I came out. Perhaps she’ll have some idea on how to keep undercover.”
“Is she nice? Or what?”
“She’s damned easy to look at.”
Chapter 5
So why was Jane Sibert important, and why did I have to go? Well, she was a widow who lived on a little farm, a place of sixty-seven acres, in back of College Park, and I’ve already told how she took me in, when I was fifteen years old, becoming a sort of foster mother to me, so I wouldn’t have to live with my stepfather. It was a wonderful place for a boy, and I loved it for ten or twelve years, but it was not such a wonderful place for a middle-aged woman, trying to live there alone — after I pulled out, I mean. And yet she was sot, as she called it, and instead of selling her farm, persisted in living on it, as she had in the days of her marriage, when the University of Maryland, whose campus abutted her fields, was the Maryland Agriculture College, and things were simple and friendly and small. So of course the catch was her assessment. Once it was upped to bring it in line with adjoining properties, which were so valuable it took your breath, she’d be eaten alive by taxes. To head that off, to retain her “rural agriculture” status, the place had to be agricultural, meaning she had to farm it.