Myrtle felt an answering grin of exactly the same type rise on her own face. Yet she tried to dissemble. “Mercy’s sake! I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Yes you do.” June had looked around quickly, but the two women had this corner of that strange afternoon to themselves.
“Mr. Gaunt.”
Myrtle nodded and felt her cheeks heat in a fierce, unaccustomed blush.
“What did you get?” June asked.
“A doll. What did you get?”
“A vase. The most beautiful cloisonne vase you ever saw.”
“What did you do?”
Smiling slyly, June countered: “What did you do?”
“Never mind.” Myrtle looked back toward the Daughters of Isabella Hall and then sniffed. “It doesn’t matter anyway. They’re only Catholics.”
“That’s right,” June (who was a lapsed Catholic herself) replied.
Then she had gone to her car. Myrtle had not asked for a ride and June Gavineaux did not offer one. Myrtle had walked rapidly out of the parking lot. She had not looked up when June shot by her in her white Saturn. All Myrtle had wanted was to go home, take a nap while she cuddled her lovely doll, and forget what she had done.
That, she was now discovering, was not going to be as easy as she had hoped.
7
WHHHHHHOOOOOOO Buster planted his palm on the horn and held it down. The blare rang and blasted in his ears. Where in hell’s name was that bitch?
At last the door between the garage and the kitchen opened.
Myrtle poked her head through. Her eyes were large and frightened.
“Well, finally,” Buster said, letting go of the horn. “I thought you’d died on the john.”
“Danforth? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Things are better than they’ve been for two years. I just need a little help, that’s all.”
Myrtle didn’t move.
“Woman, get your fat ass over here!”
She didn’t want to go-he scared her-but the habit was old and deep and hard to break. She came around to where he stood in the wedge of space behind the car’s open door. She walked slowly, her slippers scuffing the concrete floor in a way that made Buster grind his teeth together.
She saw the handcuffs, and her eyes widened. “Danforth, what happened?”
“Nothing I can’t handle. Pass me that hacksaw, Myrt. The one on the wall. No-on second thought, never mind the hacksaw right now.
Give me the big screwdriver instead. And that hammer.”
She started to draw away from him, her hands going up to her chest and joining there in an anxious knot. Quick as a snake, moving before she could back out of his reach, Buster shot his free hand through the open window and seized her by the hair.
“Ow!” she screamed, grabbing futilely at his fist. “Danforth, ow!
owww!”
Buster dragged her toward him, his face clenched in a horrible grimace. Two large veins pulsed in his forehead. He felt her hand beating against his fist no more than he would have felt a bird’s wing.
“Get what I tell you!” he cried, and pulled her head forward.
He thumped it against the top of the open door once, twice, three times. “Were you born foolish or did you just grow that way? Get it, get i’t, get it!”
“Danforth, you’re hurting me!”
“Right!” he screamed back, and thumped her head once more against the top of the Cadillac’s open door, much harder this time.
The skin of her forehead split and thin blood began to flow down the left side of her face. “Are you going to mind me, woman?”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!”
“Good.” He relaxed his grip on her hair. “Now give me the big screwdriver and the hammer. And don’t try any funny business, either.”
She waved her right arm toward the wall. “I can’t reach.”
I He leaned forward, extending his own reach a litt e and allowing her to take a step toward the wall where the tools hung. He kept his fingers wrapped firmly in her hair as she groped. Dime-sized drops of blood splattered on and between her slippers.
Her hand closed on one of the tools, and Danforth shook her head briskly, the way a terrier might shake a dead rat. “Not that, Dumbo,” he said. “That’s a drill. Did I ask for a drill? Huh?”
“But Danforth-oww!-I can’t see!”
“I suppose you’d like me to let you go. Then you could run into the house and call Them, couldn’t you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Oh no. You’re such an innocent little lamb. It was just an accident that you got me out of the way on Sunday so that fucking Deputy could put those lying stickers up all over the house is that what you expect me to believe?”
She looked back at him through the tangles of her hair. Blood had formed fine beads in her eyelashes. “But… but Danforth… you asked me out on Sunday. You said-” He jerked hard on her hair. Myrtle screamed.
“Just get what I asked for. We can discuss this later.”
She felt along the wall again, head down, hair (except for Buster’s fistful) hanging in her face. Her groping fingers touched the big screwdriver.
“That’s one,” he said. “Let’s try for two, what do you say?”
She fumbled some more, and at last her fluttering fingers happened on the perforated rubber sleeve which covered the handle of the Craftsman hammer.
“Good. Now give them to me.”
She pulled the hammer off its pegs, and Buster reeled her in.
He let go of her hair, ready to snatch a fresh handful if she showed any sign of bolting. Myrtle didn’t. She was cowed. She only wanted to be allowed back upstairs, where she would cuddle her beautiful doll to her and go to sleep. She felt like sleeping forever.
He took the tools from her unresisting hands. He placed the tip of the screwdriver against the doorhandle, then whacked the top of the screwdriver several times with the hammer. On the fourth blow, the doorhandle snapped off. Buster slipped the loop of the cuff out of it, then dropped both the handle and the screwdriver to the concrete floor.
He went first to the button which closed the garage door. Then, as it rattled noisily down on its tracks, he advanced on Myrtle with the hammer in his hand.
“Did you sleep with him, Myrtle?” he asked softly.
“What?” She looked at him with dull, apathetic eyes.
Buster began to whack the hammerhead into the palm of his hand.
It made a soft, fleshy sound-thuck! thuck! thuck!
“Did you sleep with him after the two of you put up those goddam pink slips all over the house?”
She looked at him dully, not understanding, and Buster himself had forgotten that she had been with him at Maurice when Ridgewick broke in and did his thing.
“Buster, what are you talking ah-” He stopped, his eyes widening.
“What did you call me?”
The apathy left her eyes. She began to retreat from him, hunching her shoulders protectively. Behind them, the garage door came to rest.
Now the only sounds in the garage were their scuffling feet and the soft clink of the handcuff chain as it swung back and forth.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry, Danforth.” Then she turned and ran for the kitchen door.
He caught her three steps from it, once again using her hair to draw her to him. “What did you call me?” he screamed, and raised the hammer.
Her eyes turned up to follow its ascent. “Danforth, no, please!”
“What did you call me? What did you call me?”
He screamed it over and over again, and each time he asked the question he punctuated it with that soft, fleshy sound: Thuck.
Thuck. Thuck.
8
Ace drove into the Camber dooryard at five o’clock. He stuffed the treasure map into his back pocket, then opened the trunk. He got the pick and shovel which Mr. Gaunt had thoughtfully provided and then walked over to the leaning, overgrown porch which ran along one side of the house. He took the map out of his back pocket and sat on the steps to examine it. The short-term effects of the coke had worn off, but his heart was still thudding briskly along in his chest.