Kay jumped up and left the table.
29
I was sorry now that I had told her the story, but it hadn’t been a rib. My great-grandfather actually had told it to me, a bit of bitter fun-poking at Indians, their decline and fall. But there was wisdom in it for any race.
We all overlook the obvious.
Danger is so commonplace that we have become insensitive to it.
We wring the hand of Evil and are shocked at the loss of fingers.
I left the dining room, pausing in the hallway to glance into the kitchen. Kay was aware of me, I am sure, but she did not look up. So I went on down the hall to the vast reception area, crossed its gleaming parquet expanse, and started up the stairs.
It hadn’t occurred to me before, but what Kay had said was true. The upward climb was seemingly interminable and as shadowed as it was long. There were those strange sounds, also, like stealthy footsteps in pursuit, sounds where there should have been none. And, due to a trick of acoustics, no sounds where sounds should have been.
I reached the landing, breathing hard, almost leaping up the last several steps. I whirled around, tensed, heart pounding. But there was no one behind me. Nothing but shadows. Cautiously, I looked down over the brief balustrade that joined the top of the staircase to the wall of the landing.
The parquet floor below me was so distant that I would not have known that it was there had I not known that it was, so distant and so cloaked in darkness. I backed away hastily, feeling more than a little dizzy.
I went on to my room, cursing my runaway imagination. Calling down curses upon Kay for her unwitting planting of fear in my mind. Cops should know better than that, I thought. It didn’t bother cops to talk about darkness and shadows and funny noises, and people sneaking up behind other people. Cops were brave — which was not an adjective that could be applied to Britton Rainstar.
I was, at least figuratively, a very yellow red man.
I had a streak of snowy gray right down the middle of my raven locks. And I had a streak of another color right down the middle of my tawny back.
I got out of my clothes and took a shower.
I put on pajamas and a robe and carpet slippers.
My pulse was acting up, and there was a kind of jumpiness to my toes. They kept jerking and squirming of their own volition; my toes always do that when I am very nervous. I almost called out to Kay when she came up the stairs, because she was a nurse, wasn’t she? and I certainly needed something to soothe my nerves.
But she was miffed at me, or she would have come to me without being summoned. And if I managed to un-miff her, I was sure, what I would get to soothe me was Kay herself. One of the best little soothers in the world, but one that I simply could not partake of.
I had screwed the lid on that jar (you should excuse the expression). She was forever forbidden fruit, even though I should become one, God forbid.
I tried to concentrate on nonscary things. To think of something nice. And the nicest thing I could think of was something I had just determined not to think of. And while I was doing my damndest not to think of her, simultaneously doing my damndest to think of something else, she came into my room.
Fully dressed, even to her blue cape. Carrying her small nurse’s kit in one hand, her suitcase in the other.
“All right, Britt,” she said. “I’m moving in here with you or I’m moving out. Leaving! Right this minute.”
“Oh, come off of it,” I laughed. “You’d get a permanent black eye with the department. As big as your butt, baby! You’d never get a decent job anywhere.”
“But you won’t know about it, will you, Britt?” She gave me a spiteful grin. “After I leave, and you’re all alone here in this big ol’ house...”
She set her bags down and did a pantomime of what would happen to me, clawing her hands and walking like a zombie. And it was ridiculous as hell, of course, but it was pretty darned scary too.
“... then the big Black Thing will come out of the darkness,” she intoned, in ghostly tones, “and poor little Britt won’t see it until it’s too late. He’ll hear it, but he’ll think it’s just one of those noises he’s always hearing. So he won’t look around, and—”
“Now, knock it off, dammit!” I said. “You stop that, right now!”
“... and the big Black Tiling will come closer and closer.” (She came closer and closer.) “And closer and closer, and closer — GOTCHA!”
“Yeow!” I yelled, my hair standing on end. “Get away from me, you crazy broad!”
“ ’Fraidy cat, ’fraidy cat!” she chanted. “B. R. has a yellow streak running down his spine!”
I said I’d rather have a yellow streak running down it than pimples. She said angrily that she didn’t have pimples running down hers. And I said she would have when my hex went to work.
“A pretty sight you’ll be when you start blushing. Your back will look like peaches flambé in eruption. Ah, Kay, baby,” I said, “enough of this clowning around. Just give me something to make me sleep, and then go back to your room and—”
“I won’t go back to my room! But I’ll give you a hypo if you really want it.”
“If I want it?” I said. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean, I won’t be here. You’ll be aww-ll all-alone, with the big Black Things. I thought you might be afraid to go to sleep aww-ll all-alone m this big ol’ house, but—”
“All right,” I said grimly. “We wound up our little affair, and it’s going to stay wound up. You know it’s best for both of us. Why, goddammit—” I waved my arms wildly. “What kind of a cop are you anyway? A cop is supposed to be something pretty special!”
She said she was something pretty special, wasn’t she? — managing a demure blush. I said she could stay or get out, just as she damned pleased.
“It’s strictly up to you, Miss Misbegotten! My car keys are there in the top dresser drawer!”
“Thank you, but I’ll walk, Mr. Mangy Mane. I’m a strong girl, and I’m not afraid of the dark.”
She picked up her bags and left.
I heard the prolonged creaking of the stairs, as she descended them. A couple of moments later, I heard the loud slamming of the front door.
I settled back on the pillows, smugly grinning to myself. Dismissing the notion of going downstairs and setting the bolts on the door. It would be a lot of bother for nothing. I would just have to go down and unbolt it, when Kay came back. As, of course, she would in a very few minutes. Probably she had never left the porch.
I closed my eyes, forcing myself to relax. Ignoring the sibilant scratchings, the all-but-inaudible creakings and poppings peculiar to very old houses.
I thought of the stupid Indian and his blindness to the obvious. I thought of Connie’s senseless refusal to give me a divorce. I thought of Luther Bannerman, his quick admission that Connie had no insurance policy when he thought Claggett was going to check on it.
Why didn’t Connie want a divorce? Why the fear of Claggett’s checking with the insurance company? What—
Oh, my God!
I sat up abruptly, slapping a hand to my forehead, wondering how I could have missed something that an idiot child should have seen.
I was insured. That was what Claggett would have discovered. Bannerman had lied in saying that the insurance company had rejected me.
Why had he lied? Why else but to keep me from becoming wary, to allay any nasty suspicions I might entertain about his and Connie’s plans for me.
Of course, the existence of the policy would have to be revealed in order to collect the death benefit. The double-indemnity payoff of two hundred thousand dollars. But there was absolutely nothing to indicate that fraud and deception had been practiced to obtain the policy. Quite the contrary, in fact.