“Gee, you don’t know what she had stacked against her. That rotten Vance had been planning it a long time. He got some kind of morality report on her from the London police from way before they were married, I guess to show that she knew she shouldn’t get married. And then he had the tape recorder things of her and Nancy at their house, and her and me at their house, and the pictures he hired that man to get, following them around. It must have cost an awful lot, the whole thing, but as Pat said, it was a hell of a lot cheaper than California divorce. She couldn’t get a lawyer to agree to fight it. I mean, after all, there wasn’t any question about the way she was.”
“Did you get to see those pictures, Martha?”
“Oh sure. The funny thing, they made it look like nobody else was around at all. I don’t know how that man got those pictures so close, Pat with me and with Nancy and with Lysa Dean, just one with Lysa Dean, one where you couldn’t tell it was Lysa Dean unless you knew.”
“So by the time you saw those pictures, you and Pat were together?”
“Yes. The rotten thing he did, we went up to the city to see some friends of hers, and we came back to Carmel, he was gone and the locks were changed, and our personal stuff was piled in a carport, and there was a man there to keep anybody from breaking in or anything. The way it was, she was still trying to get over being in love with Nancy and maybe she never did. I guess maybe she never did get over it. But I did try to make her happy, I really did.”
“Why would somebody want to kill her, Martha?”
She sobbed again, and blew her nose. “I don’t know! I just don’t know. That’s what they kept asking me. Gee, we lived real quiet here, over a year now, and for a long time we’ve been working the same shift at the Four Treys, me as a drink waitress and her on a change booth. Just a few friends. She hadn’t got interested in any other girl or anything, and nobody was after me like that. There was just one thing.”
“What do you mean?”
She frowned and shook her head. “I don’t know. It started weeks ago. Before that, whenever she’d think of Vance she’d go into a terrible rage, and sometimes she’d cry. Weeks ago she got a letter from somebody. She didn’t let me see it and I can’t find it so I guess she destroyed it. She was kind of… far away for a few days after she got it and she wouldn’t tell me anything. Then one day when I was out, she made long-distance phone calls. She really ran up a terrible bill. Forty dollars and something. And later she made a few more calls. Then she got very pleased about something. She’d be grinning and humming around and I’d ask her why she felt so good and she’d say never mind. Sometimes she would grab me and dance me around and she’d tell me everything was going to be just fine, and we were going to be rich. It didn’t matter so much to me. I mean we were doing all right here. We didn’t have to be rich. I don’t know if it had anything to do with her being murdered last night.”
“Where were you when it happened?”
“I heard it! My God, I was in bed half asleep. I was sort of worrying about her. I’ve got a virus and I was off work. She was supposed to be finished at eleven and home by quarter past, but it was a little after midnight when I heard the car motor. I could tell it was ours, it’s such a noisy little car. I’d left one light on for her. I wondered what she’d bring me. She’d bring me a little present if I was sick. Some kind of joke sort of. The car stopped out there and I heard the car door, and then just outside that screen door, she yelled `What are you…‘ Just those words. There was a kind of a terrible crunching sound. And a falling sound. And steps running. I turned on the lights and put my robe on and ran out and she was just outside the door on the ground, and her head…”
I waited several minutes while she slowly and painfully pulled herself back together. “She was so alive,” Martha moaned.
“But several weeks ago she stopped being mad at Vance?”
“Yes. But I don’t know what it means.”
“After she was locked out of the house, she did have a chance to talk to her husband?”
“Oh, several times. She begged and pleaded.”
“But it didn’t do any good.”
“He wouldn’t even let her have her car. He said she was lucky to keep the clothes she’d bought. Finally he gave her five hundred dollars so she could afford to go away. I had about seventy-five dollars. We came here on a bus and got jobs. He was nasty to her.”
“Martha, does the name Ives mean anything to you? D. C. Ives?”
She looked blank. “No.”
“Santa Rosita?”
She tilted her empty little head. “That’s strange!”
“What do you mean?”
“Just a couple of days ago she was singing that old song. Santa Lucia. But she was saying Rosita instead of Lucia, and I said she had it wrong and she laughed and said she knew she did. Why did you ask about that? I don’t understand.”
“Maybe it doesn’t mean anything.”
“But if it has anything to do with who killed her…”
“Did she have any kind of appointment coming up?”
“Appointment? Oh, I’d forgotten. Just the other day she said she might have to take a little trip. Alone. Just for a day or two. It made me jealous. She teased me and let me get real jealous, and then she said it was a kind of a business trip, and she’d tell me all about it later.”
“Where was she going to go?”
“Phoenix. Gee, we don’t know a soul in Phoenix.”
“How soon was she going?”
“I don’t know. It sounded as if she meant real soon.”
I couldn’t shake loose anything else of interest. She was worn out. But she was still alert enough to ask again who I was and what I wanted. I had to answer a question with a question.
“What are you going to do now, Martha?”
“I haven’t thought about it.”
“It’s your chance to get out of… this kind of situation.”
Her little mouth firmed up. “I don’t know what you think you mean by that. Listen, Pat got me out of a lousy situation. I don’t want anything like that again ever. What do you know about anything?”
“Don’t get sore.”
“Why shouldn’t I? Jesus Christ! Anything you people don’t understand, it has to be lousy. Pat always said that. The world doesn’t have to be your way. We never asked anybody to approve or disapprove. It’s our own business. Who did we hurt?”
“You?”
“Me! That’s some joke. That really is. Honest to God, when I remember the way it used to have to be, when I thought that was the only thing there was, boy, it makes my stomach turn right over. I’ve got friends who want to take care of me.”
“I bet you have.”
She stared at me, narrowed her eyes, threw her head back and yelled, “Bobby! Bobby!”
I left without any particular haste, but without delay either. Even so, they were between me and my car. Bobby had a friend, equally sizable. In the angle of the light the friend looked like the young Joe DiMaggio, but with a black dutch bob, and wearing desert rat khakis. Joe carried a putter. The gold head and chrome shaft glittered.
They separated and moved in from either side.
“Don’t make any stupid mistakes,” I said, coming to a halt.
Joe had managed to train herself down to a good imitation of a baritone. “You bassars got to get a lesson not to come around here bothering the brides.”
“What have you got here?” I asked. “A colony?”
“Smart ass,” Bobby said as they moved in. They generally do very well against the undoctrinated male. There is a chivalrous reluctance to hit a woman. Martha had come to the trailer doorway to watch the sport. I had learned a painful lesson long ago when reluctance had slowed reaction time, and I had spent the next several days walking around like an eighty-eight-year-old man. It is the type of mistake you are not likely to make twice in one lifetime. And these two were more dangerous than male thugs because their aberrations fired their hatred of the authentic male. They might not know when to stop hitting.