Then, like a letter from home, I saw the pink on the sky, the reflected city lights of Sandson.
“That way,” I said. “Come on. Take it easy.”
After a long time I was able to correct our course by the lights of a familiar hotel. It seemed that we would never, never make it — and then my knee thumped sand. She stood up, swayed and fell forward. I tried to get her up. She was out cold. I got her over my shoulder and weaved up to the house. I dumped her, dripping wet, on the couch. I turned on the hooded desk light, got big towels.
Her lips were blue. Her eyes opened and her teeth were chattering so badly she couldn’t speak. It was a warm night. I poured a shot and held her head up while she drank it. She gagged but she kept it down. I got blankets, covered her. She cried for a long time, softly, as a tired child will cry. I sat beside her and rubbed her forehead with my fingertips until she went to sleep.
After she was asleep, I sat for a long, long time in the dark and I knew, without her telling me, just how it had happened. She had grieved for Ted. But not enough. She had been strongly attracted to me, as I was to her. With a person of her intense capacity for loyalty, it seemed an unthinkable deceit. It made a strong conflict within her. What she had done had seemed to her at the time to be the only solution.
I knew that when she awakened, her reaction would tell me whether or not I had guessed right about her feelings.
I sat there until the eastern sky was gray shot through with a pink threat of tomorrow’s sun. She stirred in her sleep, opened her eyes and looked at me with no alarm or surprise. She held her arms up and I kissed her. It was as natural and expected and unsurprising and sweet as anything I’ll ever know.
“I had a nightmare,” she whispered.
“A long, long bad dream, darling. It’s all over now. For good.”
“Don’t ever say anything to me that you don’t mean, Joe. Ever.”
“Promise.”
“And Joe...”
“Yes, darling.”
“Please. Go away from me for a little while. Way over there. I feel like a hussy. I don’t want to be one.” She grinned. “Not quite yet.”
“We ought to get you back.”
“Isn’t today Saturday?”
“Don’t ask me like that. I always look at my watch when anybody asks me too quickly what day it is. Yes, it’s Saturday.”
“No classes, Joe. I can cook. How do you like your eggs?”
“After a swim at dawn, of course.”
“Then go on out and swim, dear. You’re dressed for it. I’ll call you when it’s ready. How’s the larder?”
“Full of ambrosia.”
“Come here, Joe. Now go swimming. Quickly, Joe. Quickly.”
I swam. She cooked. She called me. I ate. We kissed. We made silly talk. Words are no good. Ever.
That Ted had himself a girl, he did. I was glad he was dead. To be glad for a thing like that gave me a superstitious feeling of eternal damnation. Bad luck. It gave me a shiver. She saw it. We held hands. No more shivers. No more bad luck, I hoped.
During that week, after I rubbed Keyes off our list, we plotted. I could speak more freely because now I could talk about Ted without it rocking her as badly at it had in the beginning.
I said, “We tried one way. I have a hunch that guy you mistrust is just another zany. Now we go at it from the other direction. We forget motive and try opportunity. We back-track on the beach party, the return trip from Tampa, the gun-cleaning episode, Ted’s apparent suicide. Now from the motive viewpoint you brought out that the case is stronger for an outsider.
“From the opportunity point of view, the case is stronger against one of the brethren. Two of the incidents happened inside the house. At the beach party most of the members were present. The car accident is the hard one to figure out. I suggest that we drop it for the time being. Maybe it was a legitimate accident. Maybe it just served to give the murderer his idea. Were you on the beach party? Yes, I know you were, because I know Ted was there. And it was all couples.”
“You want me to tell you about it.”
We were in deck chairs side by side on the little terrace, our heads in shade, our legs outstretched in the sun. She took a cigarette. I held the lighter for her.
She leaned back. “The beach party was just before Christmas vacation started. It was a fraternity affair, but there were a few outsiders, guests. Rex Winniger, the boy who drowned, was with a casual date, a snakey little blonde that I disliked on sight. Rex had broken off with Bets, a girl in my house. It seemed too bad. He was very popular and a good athlete, but not much of a swimmer. He came from Kansas, I think.”
“Where was the party?”
“On a long sand spit called Bonita Island. We used a big launch belonging to Harry Fellow’s father. Harry graduated last year. We moored it on the mainland side of the island and we had to wade ashore. We got there in mid-afternoon. Everybody swam and toasted in the sun. The drinking started a little later. Nearly everybody drank too much. The party got a little wild.
“The party broke up a little after midnight because some of the boys had passed out and their dates were yammering to be taken home. Somebody thought of counting noses. Rex and the little blonde were missing. Some of the group thought it would be a big gag to leave them marooned there. Then they went looking with flashlights. They found the little blonde asleep on the sand. They got her awake and she said she hadn’t seen Rex in she couldn’t remember when. You could feel people getting a little worried and a little soberer then.
“The boys made a line across Bonita holding hands — it’s only about seventy feet wide. They went right from one end to the other. Quite a few of the other boys could have swum to the mainland as a joke. But Rex really couldn’t swim that well. Then we all hoped that maybe he’d tried it and made it all right. But on the way back people were laughing in that funny nervous way that worried people do. Ted whispered to me that he didn’t like the look of it at all. We girls were taken home.
“In the morning Ted met me and he looked haggard. He said that Rex hadn’t showed up. They reported it early that same morning. Hundreds of people looked for the body. The papers made a big story of it and the blonde got her picture on the front page, looking tearful. Well, you know the rest. The beach party was on a Thursday night. They found his body on the beach on the mainland on Saturday afternoon, about three miles below Bonita Island.”
“Did you notice if he got drunk at the party?”
“Everybody was drinking. Some of them got pretty sloppy. But I don’t remember that Rex was sloppy. We talked about that later. We compared notes. After dark everybody was in the water at one time or another, because the surf was coming in beautifully.”
“Was there any incident, any trouble that caught your eye?”
She thought for a few moments. “No... I guess not. Nothing really unusual. When people drink they say things they normally wouldn’t say. There were quarrels and poor jokes and some spiteful talk. Harv Lorr was president of the house. He saw that things weren’t going too well. He tried to keep all the boys in line. Arthur Marris helped him, even though Arthur was only a junior then. Ted could have helped but he didn’t want to leave me alone for as long as it would take.”
“All in all, a bust party, eh?”
“Not a nice party, Joe. Full of undercurrents.”
Chapter Four
Sweating Bullets
At that moment a car drove in. I heard it stop. Till gave me a quick look. I got up out of the chair. Bill Armand, the faintly vulpine junior, and Brad Carroll came around the side of the house, carrying suits and towels. One of Armand’s dark eyebrows went high in surprise as he saw Tilly.