That single ray of hope faded as minute after minute dragged slowly by. She began pacing the floor again, wondering when the body, or bodies, would be found. Other parked couples would probably not investigate the shots, would not want to become involved. She remembered that there had been a shooting in that area a year or so ago. The shooting had been attributed to hoodlums. The bodies had not been found for two days...
Finally, she made a pact with herself. If Fred had not returned by one o’clock, she would call the police, tell them the whole story, rid herself of the suspense that was threatening her very sanity.
She turned to go back to the table again, then stopped in her tracks. A car had pulled into the driveway. She wheeled around, waiting. Steps came falteringly across the porch. The door came open, and Fred stood there, his collar open, his face pale, and and the front of his white shirt smeared with blood.
“It’s all right,” he said, coming in and closing the door behind him. “Don’t be alarmed. I’m not hurt. Just — just an accident.”
He hurried to the bar, poured himself a stiff drink, gulped down half of it, and returned to stand beside the davenport.
“We were on our way home and, suddenly, out of nowhere, this — this hoodlum came dashing out to the street corner and began shooting...” He caught sight of the blood on his shirt and began staring at it as if seeing it for the first time. “My God!” he gasped and hurried toward the bathroom adjacent to the kitchen.
Yes, he was lying, putting on some kind of act for her benefit. She felt certain of that.
He was back in a minute or two, bare to the waist. There were no bullet holes in his chest or torso. The blood on his shirt had been from the girl...
He picked up his drink from the table and finished it off. “This — this hoodlum,” he continued, “came rushing up and began firing, point-blank. T. J. got a slug in his arm and another one high up in the shoulder.”
T. J.?
“Guess I got blood on me when I was helping him out of the front seat and into the back where he could lie down while I rushed him to Doc Markham’s place.”
So that’s why Fred was lying! Not to save himself, but to cover up for T. J.! Just like a man!
And then, suddenly, Betty felt a ton of grief and worry slide from her shoulders. Fred had not been parked in that car! It had been T. J.! And T. J. had probably been parked in that car the Saturday night before and other Saturday nights...
But who had done the shooting?
Gloria? Gloria was certainly familiar with that parking area and might easily be involved. Men in general were important to Gloria’s life, but it was hard to conceive of any man in particular driving her to violence.
Sara? A jealous wife finding that her husband had betrayed her? But Sara had been positive all along that Fred had been the philanderer! Even on the previous Saturday night when Gloria’s headlights had swept over the parked sedan, Sara had been so positive Fred had been in the car that she had showered Betty with sweet rolls and cloying pity for several days — until she had brought the jelly roll into the garage that morning and had suddenly became angry...
“Fred,” Betty said abruptly, “does T. J. own a green shirt?”
“A green shirt?” He wrinkled his brow. “Now how on earth would I know what kind of shirts T. J. owns?”
“Try to remember,” Betty urged. “Was T. J. wearing a green shirt last Saturday night?”
Fred’s brow wrinkled some more. “Come to think of it,” he said, finally. “He was wearing some kind of a green thing. A knit pull-over...”
“With three or four buttons at the throat?”
Fred nodded.
Now suddenly, the pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. The jelly roll, the garage, the litter Betty had gleaned from the back seat of the sedan and placed on the newspaper — gum wrapper, cigaret butts, green button — and Sara’s quick anger. The button! Sara had recognized it and had hurried home to check the green shirt — and her world had begun to fall apart.
But Sara had not as yet been absolutely certain. T. J. always rode to the club with Fred, and the button could have got into the back seat in a perfectly innocent manner. And so, tonight, Sara had called off the bridge session and had driven to the club parking lot to watch and to wait. T. J. had probably bowled a game or two before coming out of the club and getting into the red sedan to go after his paramour. Sara had followed, and when the sedan had pulled into the wooded area, her ego had received its final devastating shock. For weeks, she had been showering down poisonous darts and false pity from the parapets of her pride-built castle, and now the whole structure had come crashing down, its foundations kicked asunder by her own husband who at this very moment was probably sitting in the back seat of the sedan — making love...
Obsessed by uncontrolable rage, she had taken the gun from the glove compartment where T. J. generally carried it, had gone to the sedan, thrown open the door, and fired blindly into the interior, caring little whether she killed one or both of the occupants.
After that, T. J. and the girl — whoever she was — had managed to drive the sedan back to the club where they had summoned Fred and Doc Markham and had concocted a story...
“I guess I’ll just never understand women,” Fred said, his brow still wrinkled. “T. J. gets almost murdered tonight, and you want to know the color of the shirt he wore last week!”
“It’s probably best for all concerned,” Betty said, ambiguously, “that you don’t understand.”
Fred was thoughtful for a moment. “Poor Sara,” he said, finally. “Maybe you should bake some Brownies tomorrow and take them to her. She’s been mighty good to us, you know, bringing us sweet rolls and things.”
Betty nodded. “Poor Sara,” she said. “I feel so very, very sorry for her,” she added — and was not at all surprised to find that she really meant it.
Cave in the Rain
by Gil Brewer
Fear touched lightly, at first. She tried hard to dismiss it, but it would not go away. What Warren had just told her was frightening. He had been jovial about it, too.
She stood waist deep in the lake waters, and looked at the sky. She wanted to sound as if what he’d said did not affect her.
Her voice was strained. “It might rain.”
“Looks like it, Charlotte,” Warren said. “I like the rain, though. Spring rain.”
“Yes, but the way those clouds are piling up, it won’t be just a sprinkle. Maybe we should go back to town.”
“Let’s swim, honey.”
She looked at him and forced a smile. It was the first time he’d called her anything but Charlotte. Just the same, any guy who would bring a girl out here, knowing what he knew, did not exactly inspire confidence.
Warren grinned at her, broad-shouldered, slim, handsome, with an extraordinary amount of jaw, and dark blue eyes that could be very still, and a moment later light with excitement. He was brown-skinned, as though he took a lot of sun, and his teeth showed startlingly white.
Light thunder shuddered in the late afternoon. She glanced across the short stretch of woods to the cliffs beyond the lake. Above the ragged silhouette of the cliffs, dirty near-black clouds streaked.
“You think we should go back to the car?” she asked.
“No.”
Sometimes he was abrupt.
“But we haven’t eaten, Warren.”
“We will. All that food you brought. Enough for an army.”
He dove under the water. She watched for him to surface. He didn’t. He could stay down the longest time.