“She probably got a look at your face. Listen, get through, will you? You just busted a dream Charles Boyer was in with me.”
“Just tell Buck: Okay.” He hung up. I got undressed right where I was standing, on the zipper plan; just dropped everything off together and stepped out of them. But he was asleep again, he didn’t ask who it was.
I got her door key and the other one back into his pocket. I hung that blasted checker-board coat as far back inside the closet as it would go, and made a mental note to sell it to the first old-clothes man that came around. The collar with her death kiss on it I rolled up at the bottom of the laundry bag.
The rest was up to the dicks.
They didn’t show up for three days. Three days that were like three years. It was in the papers the first day, just a little squib. Not a word about the lipstick in her hand or the smear on the magazine. That gave me a bad jolt. Had they muffed it? There was always the possibility that Louie had gone back inside, after he’d thought he’d seen me leave there that day, and rearranged my carefully planted setup. But if he had, I’d have been dead two days already.
What looked good about it was that, although the papers spoke of their sending upstate to have a Frank Rogers held and questioned, there was no follow-up. It stopped at that. The next editions didn’t say a word about his being brought back under arrest. His alibi must have held up. It should have, it was the straight goods.
The bureau drawer gave a crash at this point that was enough to split it in two, so I quickly dropped the paper. This was Thursday night, the second night after, around eight, Buck’s usual time for getting caked up to go down to the club. He was standing there across the room in suspenders, holster, and stiff shirt, but with a bare neck. “Well?” he growled. “What do I use for a collar? They’ve run out on me.”
My heart started hitting it up. “Ur-um-uff,” I said.
A shoe horn went past my left ear and a lit cigar butt sailed by my right. He didn’t wait to see if he’d hit me or not; he headed straight over for that laundry bag behind the bath door. “Now I’ll hafta use the same one twice!”
I managed to stay on my feet, but I was dying all over by inches as I saw his arm go down into it, scuffing things out. “Wait, hon,” I moaned. “Getcha nice fresh one at the haberdasher downstairs. Won’t take a minute, they’re still open.” I got the door open.
It worked. He quit burrowing, with his fingertips just an inch away from it by that time. “Well, get some life into your bustle, I gotta get down there.”
It was right in our same building, but you had to go out the street door and around to get into it. I was too frightened even to remember his size. I bought one of every half-size they carried, from fourteen up to seven-teen, to make sure of hitting the right one, and charged them. It was only when I ducked back into the house door again and saw people stopping dead and staring, that I realized I had on bell-bottomed pajamas and a brassier. It was better than a shroud, at that.
He let me off easy, just pushed me back over the arm of a chair. It stayed up, so I did too. He hadn’t fished up what lay curled at the bottom of the laundry bag and that was all that mattered.
That was Thursday.
Friday lasted 96 hours, but it finally ended. I kept worrying Rogers had spilled it that an anonymous woman had tipped him to get out of town. If that leaked, and it got back to Buck!
Friday night I got a sudden phone call from Buck, from the club, at two in the morning. He never did that any more; he would have been only too glad if I’d tried to cheat on him those days, so he could’ve tied the can to me.
I knew what it was, before he even said anything. They were on the trail at last. They must have just been over there to talk to him, for the first time. He was phoning to warn me ahead.
“Anyone been around?” he asked mysteriously.
“No.”
“In case anyone does, remember what I told you Tuesday night?”
“That was the night you came home early from the club, at three.”
I didn’t get any thanks for it. “Now listen, Last Year, if anything gets gummed, if there’s any slip-up, I’m going to know just who’s to blame for it. You better wish you’d never been born.”
He was right; I was probably his only alibi, from the moment he had left the club that night. That may sound as if it was bad for him, but I was the one it was bad for. He could always get out of it in the end, he’d got out of worse ones, and in this case there was the printed gun (so he thought!) and no witnesses. But if there was the least hitch, if he was questioned once too often or half an hour too long, he’d know the answer. That was curtains for me; there was no one else I could pass the buck to.
He’d hardly rung off than there was a knock on the door. I knew who it was. I knew I was going to have to handle the interview just as though Buck was present, or listening in the next room. That didn’t have me stopped. If they had any brains at all, maybe they could get it from what I didn’t say, instead of what I did.
But when I’d opened the door, it was only one guy. “Headquarters,” he said, and he tipped his hat and showed his badge. Only strangers tipped their hats to me any more, not the guys I associated with. “Are you Buck Colby’s wife?”
“Common law.” Buck didn’t even refer to me as that.
“Come in and talk to you?”
“Why, sure,” I said hospitably. “Help yourself.”
He looked around him casually. Suddenly he’d said, “About what time does Colby get back here at nights as a rule?” It was out and waiting to be answered before I’d even heard it coming. I was supposed to think he wanted to see Buck right now and wondered how long he’d have to wait for him.
“Never much before three. He’s kept busy at the cl—”
He cut it short with his hand. “How about after?”
“Seldom after, either.”
“Take Tuesday, for instance.” They were coming faster now.
“Tuesday was one of his early nights. He was here at three to the dot.”
“References?”
“You picked an easy one for me to remember.” I thumbed the busted mirror. “I was still sitting up there when he came in. If it had been any later than three I would have been in bed. And as a matter of fact, I remember asking him, ‘What brings you home so early?’ He said the take had been rather thin.”
“Where does that mirror come in it?”
“He was taking off his shoe, and he pulled too hard, and it flew out of his hand and landed over here.” I coughed deprecatingly.
He’d shut up all of a sudden. He kept looking at me as if he found me kind of interesting, all at once. The next time he spoke, it wasn’t a police question any more, it was more personal. “Been — married to him long?”
I slid my mouth around toward my left ear. “I’ve been with Mr. Colby two years now.” It sounded strangely sweet, coming out of such a bitter-shaped thing.
He was getting more and more interested in me personally, seemed to forget all about what had brought him up here. Seemed to. “Worked in one of his clubs, I guess, in the beginning?”
“No. Mr. Colby did urge me to when he first met me. But I was intending getting married at the time, so I didn’t feel free to accept. However, the party I — uh, had figured on marrying had an accident, and that left me much freer to accept, so I did.”
He looked at me. “Had an accident,” he said without any question mark.
“Yes. A rather large beer truck ran wild down a hill near where I was living and crushed him against a cement wall as he was on his way up to see me. I suppose even the first time would have killed him, but every time the frightened driver tried to reverse and extricate his vehicle, it would only back up a little and then go smashing in again. It happened three or four times. Like a sort of battering ram.