“I have a use for it. I know what I’m doing.”
She backed away, supporting herself on the doorknob.
I said to Clare: “We better do as she says. She won’t hurt you.”
“Nor you unless you make me. Don’t reach for your gun, and don’t try anything funny. You know what happened to Dewar.”
“Not as well as you do.”
“Don’t waste any tears on that one. Save them for yourself. Now get in here.” The gun wagged peremptorily.
I edged past her with Clare at my back. Ethel shut the door and moved to the bed, her eyes never leaving mine. She sat on its edge, and supported the elbow of her gun arm on her knee, hunched far over like an aged wreck of a woman.
It was strange to see the fine naked legs dangling below her hospital gown, the red polish flaking off her toenails. Her voice was low and resonant.
“I don’t like to do this. But how am I going to make you see it my way if I don’t? I want Clare to see it, too. It was self-defense, understand. I didn’t intend to kill him. I never expected to see him again. Fidelis was after him, and it was only a matter of time until he caught up with Owen. Owen knew that. He told me himself he wouldn’t live out the year. He was so sure of it he was paralyzed. He got so he wouldn’t even go out of the house.
“Somebody had to make a move, and I decided it might as well be me. Why should I sit and wait for Fidelis to come and take the money back and blow Owen’s head off for him? It was really my money, anyway, mine and Clare’s.”
“Leave me out of this,” Clare said.
“But you don’t understand, honey,” the damaged mouth insisted. “It really was my money. We were legally married, what was his was mine. I talked him into taking it in the first place. He’d never have had the guts to do it alone. He thought Fidelis was God himself. I didn’t. But I didn’t want to be there when Jack Fidelis found him. So I left him. I took the money out of his pillow when he was asleep and hid it where he’d never look for it. Then I drove down here. I guess you know the rest. He found a letter from Gretchen in the house, and traced me through it. He thought I was carrying the money. When it turned out that I wasn’t, he took me out to the beach and beat me up. I wouldn’t tell him where it was. He threatened to shoot me then. I fought him for the gun, and it went off. It was a clear case of self-defense.”
“Maybe it was. You’ll never get a jury to believe it, though. Innocent people don’t dump their shooting victims in the drink.”
“But I didn’t. The tide was coming in. I didn’t even touch him after he died. He just lay there, and the water took him.”
“While you stood and watched?”
“I couldn’t get away. I was so weak I couldn’t move for a long time. Then when I finally could, it was too late. He was gone, and he had the keys to the car.”
“He drove you out to La Jolla, did he?”
“Yes.”
“And held a gun on you at the same time. That’s quite a trick.”
“He did, though,” she said. “That is the way it happened.”
“I hear you telling me, Mrs. Dewar.”
She winced behind her mask at the sound of her name. “I’m not Mrs. Dewar,” she said. “I’ve taken back my maiden name. I’m Ethel Larrabee.”
“We won’t argue about the name. You’ll be trading it in for a number, anyway.”
“I don’t think I will. The shooting was self-defense, and once he was dead the money belonged to me. There’s no way of proving he stole it, now that Fidelis is gone. I guess I owe you a little thanks for that.”
“Put down your gun, then.”
“I’m not that grateful,” she said.
Clare moved across the room towards her. “Let me look at the gun, Ethel. It’s father’s revolver, isn’t it?”
“Be quiet, you little fool.”
“I won’t be quiet. These things have to be said. You’re way off by yourself, Ethel, I’m not with you. I want no part of this, or the money. You don’t understand how strange and dreadful–” Her voice broke. She stood a few feet from her sister, held back by the gun’s menace, yet strongly drawn towards it. “That’s father’s revolver, isn’t it? The one he shot himself with?”
“What if it is?”
“I’ll tell you, Ethel Larrabee,” I said. “Dewar didn’t pull a gun on you. You were the one that had the gun. You forced him to drive you out to the beach and shot him in cold blood. But he didn’t die right away. He lived long enough to leave his marks on you. Isn’t that how it happened?”
The bandaged face was silent. I looked into the terrible eyes for assent. They were lost and wild, like an animal’s. “Is that true, Ethel? Did you murder him?” Clare looked down at her sister with pity and terror.
“I did it for you,” the masked face said. “I always tried to do what was best for you. Don’t you believe me? Don’t you know I love you? Ever since father killed himself I’ve tried–”
Clare turned and walked to the wall and stood with her forehead against it. Ethel put the muzzle of the gun in her mouth. Her broken teeth clenched on it the way a smoker bites on a pipestem. The bone and flesh of her head muffled its roar.
I laid her body out on the bed and pulled a sheet up over it.
Guilt-Edged Blonde
A MAN was waiting for me at the gate at the edge of the runway. He didn’t look like the man I expected to meet. He wore a stained tan windbreaker, baggy slacks, a hat as squashed and dubious as his face. He must have been forty years old, to judge by the gray in his hair and the lines around his eyes. His eyes were dark and evasive, moving here and there as if to avoid getting hurt. He had been hurt often and badly, I guessed.
“You Archer?”
I said I was. I offered him my hand. He didn’t know what to do with it. He regarded it suspiciously, as if I was planning to try a Judo hold on him. He kept his hands in the pockets of his windbreaker.
“I’m Harry Nemo.” His voice was a grudging whine. It cost him an effort to give his name away. “My brother told me to come and pick you up. You ready to go?”
“As soon as I get my luggage.”
I collected my overnight bag at the counter in the empty waiting room. The bag was very heavy for its size. It contained, besides a toothbrush and spare linen, two guns and the ammunition for them. A .38 special for sudden work, and a .32 automatic as a spare.
Harry Nemo took me outside to his car. It was a new seven-passenger custom job, as long and black as death. The windshield and side windows were very thick, and they had the yellowish tinge of bullet-proof glass.
“Are you expecting to be shot at?”
“Not me.” His smile was dismal. “This is Nick’s car.”
“Why didn’t Nick come himself?”
He looked around the deserted field. The plane I had arrived on was a flashing speck in the sky above the red sun. The only human being in sight was the operator in the control tower. But Nemo leaned towards me in the seat, and spoke in a whisper:
“Nick’s a scared pigeon. He’s scared to leave the house. Ever since this morning.”
“What happened this morning?”
“Didn’t he tell you? You talked to him on the phone.”
“He didn’t say very much. He told me he wanted to hire a bodyguard for six days, until his boat sails. He didn’t tell me why.”
“They’re gunning for him, that’s why. He went to the beach this morning. He has a private beach along the back of his ranch, and he went down there by himself for his morning dip. Somebody took a shot at him from the top of the bluff. Five or six shots. He was in the water, see, with no gun handy. He told me the slugs were splashing around him like hailstones. He ducked and swam under water out to sea. Lucky for him he’s a good swimmer, or he wouldn’t of got away. It’s no wonder he’s scared. It means they caught up with him, see.”