Goodbye. Don.
Done reading the letter, the violent hatred which filled it having aroused an answering hatred within her, Glory was nevertheless torn. She truly loathed Wilma now. She would gladly have wiped the redhead from the face of the earth. And yet her body hungered for the next night to come and sweep her into the ecstasy she found in Wilma’s arms.
No! She wouldn’t go, she told herself. This she-devil had ruined her life. She deserved to die before she ruined any more lives. . .
If Glory had reason to kill Wilma, the reverse had also come to be true. All Wilma’s machinations, all the devious tricks she’d used to save her father’s farm, all the maneuvers which had seemed so promising of ultimate success—all seemed now to have been for naught. At the very moment when it had seemed that she must win, she found herself eye to eye with defeat.
Preston B. Dawes had thwarted her. She couldn’t know how much wrestling he’d done with his conscience, but she did know the upshot of it. Dawes had called on her father, Ben Maiden, and told him the truth about her lesbian relationship with Glory and how she’d tried to use it to blackmail him.
Ben told Wilma of Dawes’s visit and of the revelations he’d made. He told her he believed Dawes. He told her he’d decided to sell. He told her these things with cold, deadly calm, and then he said nothing more. He went up to his room and locked the door behind him.
Wilma was stunned. She was at a loss. There was no point in carrying through her threat to Dawes about exposing her affair with Glory to the press. It was too late for that now. All it would accomplish would be to hurt her own father more.
She thought of going to see Don. He might have some information which could help her stop the sale before it went through. He worked very closely with Dawes. But Don had been avoiding her lately. Somehow, he must have caught wise to some of the truth about her. She couldn’t be sure just how much he knew, but she decided it was doubtless enough to have put him on his guard against her. It seemed sure his usefulness to her was over.
How could Dawes be stopped? And stopped quickly, before her father signed the bill of sale? She went over all the people she was in a position to manipulate and discarded each of them as being of no use in this ultimate situation. Her mind was left with only Vito D’Angelo-—and that meant murder.
She might be able to pressure him into killing Dawes. She had enough on Vito so that it might be to his advantage to do it. Or to see that it was done. By Angus. Morton, probably, if he didn’t do it himself. There was no time to bring in an outside hood. But even if she could arrange for a killer, it would be difficult to arrange for the murder of Dawes. The only places he ever went in Glenville were his home and the factory. He was rarely alone. To have him murdered would be to point the finger of suspicion immediately at her father or herself. Nobody else in Glenville had any conceivable motive for killing Dawes. Still --
It was then that Wilma thought of Glory. A beautiful girl given to wandering around the countryside all by herself. A girl who had liaisons at shady motels. There were any number of reasons why such a girl might meet with violence. She was rich and often carried sums of money with her which were large by Glenville standards. Even robbery could be a motive.
But what would be gained by killing Glory? Everything, Wilma decided. With her out of the way she could convince her father that Dawes had lied in an effort to get him to sell. Dawes himself would be too grief-stricken to pay any attention to business. Indeed, he’d probably take his daughter’s body back East for burial. That would leave Don in charge of the negotiations with her father. And Wilma had good reason to be sure of her ability to handle Don.
Yes, Glory’s murder would most certainly serve her purpose. And it would be so easy to arrange. Wilma got in her car and drove to the Morton Motor Lodge. She had a long talk with D’Angelo and a short one with Morton. Nothing definite was decided, but the possibilities of cooperation looked very good indeed. And if there was no cooperation, why, then, Wilma thought to herself, she might just kill Glory on her own. She hated the girl for being rich and beautiful. She might even enjoy killing her. Yes, that was certainly a strong possibility.
Wilma mulled it over as she drifted off to sleep that night. She closed her eyes at just about the time the meeting was breaking up at the Barker house. She dreamed vivid dreams of violence and death.
Such were the dreams—waking or sleeping -- of many in the town of Glenville that night. Murder stalked the town, making its plans and marking its prey. It was poised to strike.
Less than twenty-four hours later, the blade of murder tasted a young girl’s blood!
CHAPTER TWELVE
Nature’s light bulbs dotted the sky, thin beam-streaks joining to spray gray through the window and highlight the glistening pearls of sweat on straining, naked female flesh. Bodies thrashing on the bed, merging like the merging of hate and love consuming them. Mouths yearning to consume, nostrils filled with the perfume of desire, eyes dilating at the sight of quivering breast-tips and hungrily arching legs, ears sucking in the liquid sounds of lovemaking and quivering to the tongue-touch whisper of wordless sighs and desire-filled moans, and the hot, wet, clutching feel of femaleness enveloping femaleness and being enveloped in return. . . .
Such was the scene played by Glory and Wilma in their cabin at the Morton Motor Lodge that fateful night. Such was the scene less than an hour before the thrust of an ice pick sucked the lifeblood from the body of one of them. Such was the scene before their living lust was stamped out by the lust to kill.
Their passion reached its pitch and exploded, leaving them prey to the brooding hatred each was developing for the other. But the hatred was temporarily snuffed out with their interim cigarettes, channeled once again into the expression of their mutual passion. Then exhaustion, and silent rest.
Rest broken finally by Glory, as she rose from their bed of depravity and went into the bathroom. She showered and scrubbed her body. She rubbed the skin with a vengeance, as though trying to cleanse herself of the perverse and tingling hunger which had so recently overwhelmed her. Then she dried herself, wrapped the towel around her head like a turban, went back into the bedroom and seated herself in an armchair.
She watched as Wilma stretched, catlike, and got to her feet. Her eyes stayed on the redhead as she crossed the room and entered the bathroom, closing the door behind her. The latch didn’t catch and the door swung open again. Noticing it, Glory got up automatically, walked over to the doorway and closed it once again. Returning to the armchair, she heard the water-rush of the shower as it was turned on by Wilma.
A moment later, Glory heard the scream. It was a high-pitched wail of terror turning to pain and it seemed to go on for an impossibly long moment. A second scream started to follow it, but was abruptly cut off. Then there was the dull sound of wet flesh striking porcelain.
Glory sat frozen, her mind uncomprehending. At last she managed to shake off the daze of fear and got to her feet. She crossed to the bathroom door and opened it. For a few seconds the light blinded her. She blinked, her eyes adjusted to it, and the horror of brutal murder swam into her vision.
Wilma’s body was sprawled over the edge of the tub, bent backwards with the impact of sudden violence. Her red hair spread fanwise over the wet tile floor. An ice pick, handle still quivering, was buried deeply in the flesh beneath her left breast. Her eyes were wide open, green, staring jewels sparkling with terror and polished frozen by the instant of her death.
The dead cat-eyes held Glory obsessed. She didn’t scream. She didn’t cry out. She didn’t move. She simply stood there staring back into their depths while numbness ate further and further into her brain and blanketed her very ability to think. After a while she turned from the scene and walked, as if in a trance, to the farthest corner of the other room. She crumpled to the floor there and closed her eyes as if overcome by a great weariness. Her head sank forward, chin resting between her naked breasts, the towel covering her hair shining white and motionless in the still room.