“No. He was just here that one time. I’ve still got it.”
“Go get it.”
She stood up, thinking of going to the kitchen, to the canister of flour, and she remembered how insistent Danny had been about not opening it, and his promise about what he would do if she did. So she turned instead toward the closet, pushed the clothes aside, took the envelope of money from the brown purse and, in a sudden rage at her own stupidity in not taking any of the money out, she flung the envelope at Lee. The money spilled in the air and fluttered down around him, on the bed and on the floor, and she wanted to laugh at his dazed expression.
He picked the money up slowly, counted it and put it back in the envelope. “A thousand dollars,” he said. “What for?”
She sat on the bench again. “He said he was in trouble and it was getaway money if things didn’t work out right. But if they did, we could keep it. And if he got killed, we could keep it.”
“He didn’t say what kind of trouble?”
“You know how he is.”
“And that was all?”
“He gave it to me to hide and told me not to tell you about it and then he left.”
“Did he park his car in front?”
“No. I don’t know where he left it. He came to the back door. I was in the kitchen ironing. He went out the back door when he left.”
“Have you told anybody about this? Did you tell your friend Ruthie?”
“No. I haven’t told anybody.”
Lee sat, frowning, and he rapped the envelope against the knuckles of his other hand. It was the same gesture Danny had used.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I’m trying to guess how Keefler would react if I told him what...”
“But it’s your own brother!”
“I’m aware of that, Seel. I’m very aware of that, believe me. But I have to be sure Keefler won’t get on the trail of this... incident. I guess we have to take a chance.”
“Shall I put it back?”
“I’ll take care of it, thank you. Seel, why couldn’t you have told me about this when it happened.”
“I promised Danny. I gave my word.”
“You’re married to me. I don’t like Danny roping you in on something like this.”
“Where are you going to put it? Suppose he comes after it when you aren’t home?”
“You tell him to wait and you phone me at the school and I’ll come back as soon as I can.”
“Suppose he’s in a hurry?”
“That is going to be too damn bad. I want to know what the hell is going on.” He walked toward the bedroom door, turned and said, “I’ve got a meeting at seven.”
“I don’t know how you expect to use up all the time there is asking me all kinds of questions and then think I can push a magic button and have a meal pop out of the wall or something in two seconds. I was real stupid. I was thinking it was Saturday night and maybe it wouldn’t be too much to expect to get taken out, maybe, and even...”
“Skip it, skip it,” he said. “I’ll get a sandwich on the way.”
When he came back into the bedroom she was working on the other foot. He showered quickly and changed. By the time he was ready to leave she had nearly finished shaving her legs.
“I’ll be back about eight-thirty,” he said.
“Oh, goody,” she said, not looking up.
“Maybe we could go out to the drive-in.”
“Double goody.”
“Think it over,” he said. He put his hand on her shoulder and she turned a sullen face up for his kiss, turning her lips aside so that his mouth brushed her cheek. He started to say something else, then turned and left the room. She heard the thin slap of the screen door, the whine of the feeble starter, the fading sound of the noisy motor. The room was turning gray-blue with dusk. She went out and phoned Ruthie, but there was no answer. She went sulkily into the kitchen, made herself a peanut butter sandwich and ate it standing at the sink. The kids next door were having a screaming contest. After she drank a glass of milk she began to look for the money. It took her half an hour to decide it was in his desk drawer, the middle drawer, and it was locked. She worked at the lock with a bent paperclip for a long time, and gave up in disgust.
She turned on the television, checked the six available channels, turned it off. She looked in her purse and found she had two dollars and a quarter. The evening was beginning to get cool. She put on her powder blue suit and walked down to the bus stop. She left the house unlocked, left no note. Let him sweat. Let him go to the drive-in by himself. She saw the bus coming, and she felt as though she wanted to cry. The night was full of people having fun. And there wasn’t any fun left over for Lucille.
Chapter Four
Danny Bronson
Danny woke up at eleven on Sunday morning, the fourteenth of October. He had had another prison dream, full of stone and bars and naked lights and night noises. He brought it out of sleep with him, and it took him long seconds to reorient himself in time and place, to identify the slant of beamed ceiling above him. He raised up on one elbow and looked at the clock and lighted the first cigarette of the day.
It was an enormous and comfortable bed with a trick headboard with radio, bookshelves, light switches. He exhaled, lay back, and felt the dull pulsation of a mild hangover. Too much liquor, too many cigarettes, and maybe a little bit more than enough of the big brunette, Mrs. Drusilla Catton, who had installed him in this remote and luxurious private lodge and expected frequent and earthy attentions in return.
Drusilla had explained to Danny why the camp was so luxurious and so isolated. Drusilla was the thirty-year-old second wife of Burt Catton, aged sixty. Burt had built the camp long ago when the first Mrs. Catton had been alive. Burt had originally picked up the sixteen hundred acres of forest land with the idea of subdividing it. But, because Ethel, the first Mrs. Catton, was almost impossible to endure without some systematic diversion, he had built the camp in great secrecy, a place for private and special entertainment unsuspected by the dread Ethel. It was sixty-three miles from Hancock — sixty on Route 90, then three on a narrow county road. The final half mile was a private gravel road. He had brought in electricity, had an earth dam built to convert a stream into a two-acre lake, and had gone as far afield as Toledo to import an architect who seemed to have an instinctive understanding of just what Burt Catton wanted. Local labor from the near-by town of Kemp had constructed the camp. It was on a knoll overlooking the two-acre pond, with a good view of a range of far hills beyond the pond. The roof had the steep pitch and big overhang of structures where the snow load is heavy. The house was a rectangle, with but two huge rooms, the living room and the bedroom. A narrow hallway connected the two rooms, with a tiny kitchen off one side of it and an equally small bath off the other side.
Many windows in both the living room and the bedroom faced the pond. With its paneled walls, subdued dramatic lighting, deep furniture, startling color contrasts, efficient bar-corner, luxurious music system, low tables, chunky ash trays, the house served Burt Catton’s purposes perfectly. There were obvious clues to what those purposes had been: the vastness of the bed, the curious profusion of mirrors in the bedroom, the lack of provision for guests, the absence of any personal belongings. Dru had told him how she had been brought here by Burt, after Ethel had died but before Burt had married her, how he was known locally as Mr. Johnson, how one big closet in the bedroom was filled with dressing gowns and night gowns of a spectacular sheerness.
It had served as a refuge for Burt Catton during the final years of Ethel’s vituperative life — a place she did not know about, a place where she could not reach him. He had sometimes come here alone, but more often he was accompanied by a woman.