“Good for you,” I said and slammed the receiver in her ear. I don’t know what I got so damned sore about, but I did. Wasn’t everything working out the way I’d planned? But it bothered me, somehow. I got mean drunk that night, the kind of drunk I don’t like to get. The next day I was all right, though.
It was about a month or so later and I wasn’t sure whether Vera was beginning to look a little chubby already or if it was just my imagination, when she called me one night, told me she had to see me. I tried to shake her off but she insisted. She came up to my place.
She looked terrible, her hair not fixed right, kind of ratty looking and her eyes too dark underneath and with a kind of haunted look. She sat there, twisting her hands in her lap and told me how she and Harry Owen had gotten real cozy together and he’d told her he loved her, wanted to put her up in a swanky apartment and like that. But he never even came close to asking her to marry him. Well, today, one of the other girls in the office made a funny remark to Vera and she knew she couldn’t wait much longer. So tonight she gave Harry the business. She told him.
“Van, he went crazy,” she said. “He told me I’d have to get it taken care of, I’d have to. He’d pay for everything. I told him that was out. I told him I wouldn’t go for an operation, no matter what, and he couldn’t make me, and that my — condition was his responsibility and he had to marry me. Well, he really went wild, then. He cursed me and, all of a sudden, he grabbed me, and started choking me. Look.”
She undid a little silken scarf around her throat and showed me the imprint of his fingers. I didn’t know what to say, couldn’t figure it. Harry Owen was one of these Man Of Distinction types, gray temples, clipped mustache, a little paunchy, but always well groomed. Always quiet and polite, too. Every inch a gentleman. I couldn’t even picture him doing something like that. Something was wrong, somewhere. I’d never even heard him raise his voice in the office. I didn’t get it.
“What am I going to do, Van?” Vera said. “I... I’m afraid of him, now. No kidding. Van, he wasn’t fooling. His eyes were murderous. He would have killed me right then and there, but I managed to break away.”
I said: “You go home and get some rest. Try to forget about it. Maybe he’ll calm down and be sorry and change his mind after he thinks it all over. What else can you do? Forget this crap about being afraid of him. He was just trying to frighten you. Guys don’t kill girls for things like this, today. What have you been reading, American Tragedy or something?”
I talked to her some more, calmed her down, and got her out of my place. But the thing kept bothering me, all that night. I didn’t sleep much. I knew that these quiet, gentlemanly guys like Owen were the worst kind when they did finally flip about something. I wasn’t really so sure Vera had nothing to worry about. But it wasn’t my business any more. This was between the two of them.
The next day, I noticed that the boss was grouchy and irritable, the first time I’d ever seen him that way. He looked pale and drawn and about ten years older, too, as though he hadn’t slept very well. But late in the afternoon, I met Vera by the water cooler. Nobody else was around. She broke out in a big smile.
“It’s all right, Van,” she whispered. “He apologized today. And he said he’d be glad to marry me. He said it was just that the shock of finding out about my — you know — condition, was too much for him. But he was sweet as pie, today. Tonight he’s going to drive me up to show me his country place in Westchester. And next week we’ll announce the wedding. Isn’t that swell, Van?”
I said I guessed it was and then somebody came along and we couldn’t talk any more. At five o’clock, going down in the elevator with Joe Harvey, the office manager, it came to me that something was wrong. A guy doesn’t change just like that. Not from one complete extreme to the other. And this taking her up to see his country place sounded a sour note to me. Down in the lobby, I told Joe Harvey I had a big date tonight, and would he loan me his car? He said sure.
I drove right to the block where Vera had a room and parked there and waited and watched. About seven-thirty, Harry Owen’s big Lincoln swerved to the curb in front of the building and he went in and got Vera and the two of them drove off. I followed them.
They drove up deep into Westchester before the Lincoln turned off into a lonely dirt side road. I cut the lights on Joe’s car, eased in behind them, way behind, because Owen would have suspected something if he’d seen another car behind him on this lonely country lane. Then I saw him stop, about a quarter of a mile ahead. I slewed into the side of the road, cut the engine, quick. I got out and started to walk, keeping in the shadows, toward the red glow of the Lincoln’s taillight, up ahead.
I was about ten yards from their car when I saw Harry Owen get out of the driver’s side, walk around the car to the other door, open it and start to drag something out. I edged a little closer. What he was dragging out, I saw, was Vera. He was dragging her out by the legs and her skirt got hiked way up and the starlight gleamed on the whiteness of her thighs. Then Owen went around to the trunk compartment of the car and got out a spade. He held the spade under his arm while he dragged Vera’s corpse into the woods. I followed him and saw the clearing where he was going to bury her, and then I got out of there, fast. I drove home.
All that night I was so excited I could hardly sleep, hardly wait for tomorrow. I knew it would be better that way. Be more of a shock to him. When nothing had happened by morning, he’d pretty well figure he was safe. I waited most of the next day, too, until the middle of the afternoon. Then I took some mail into Harry Owen in his private office.
“Hi, Harry,” I said. “How’s Vera?”
He took it nice. He just looked up quietly and said: “Vera? Oh, you mean that little brunette you used to go with?”
The one I used to go with. I had to admire this guy, the way he’d got control of himself, even though he did look terrible. I said: “Yeah, that one.”
“She doesn’t work here any more,” he said, fussing with papers on his desk, not looking up. “I got a call this morning, said she was resigning, had another job.”
“Yeah?” I said.
“Yes, Van. She was a nice girl. Too bad you two had a falling out. I’m busy, Van. Anything special on your mind?”
“Yes,” I told him. “Vera. I’m wondering how she made that call this morning. Any phone booths up in those lonely Westchester woods? You know, where she’s tucked in for the long sleep?”
He jerked almost out of his skin. His head went back so hard his neck snapped. I’ve never seen such a scared, sick look in anybody’s eyes. His face looked like crumpled parchment. He didn’t say anything, Just looked at me.
“She didn’t quit any job, did she, Harry?” I said. “She’s just took a one way ride along a dirt road, off the Hutchinson River Parkway, with a guy who had her in some trouble.”
“Van,” he said. His voice sounded like a frightened child’s. He tried to say something else but all he could do was keep saying my name over and over.
“Don’t worry about it,” I told him. “I won’t be greedy. But I think it’s about time I got promoted, got a big raise, don’t you, Harry?”
He said: “Go away, Van, for a few minutes. Leave me alone. Let me think.”
“There’s nothing to think about. I’ve been here long enough to get promoted, get more pay. Nobody will think anything. Not like what they would think if they knew about that grave up there in Westchester. I could take the cops there easy. I know just where it is.”