He turned and padded quickly along the side of the house, sprang upon the end of the veranda, and entered the house through the front door.
After the heat and insects, the foyer was a pleasantly cool invitation. He didn’t pause, darting into the long, sunken living-room. One by one he looked behind pictures on the wall, tested bookcases. At last he stood with fists clenched, teeth grinding. Was it just a made-up thing, this wall safe of hers?
He looked once more about the living-room, his gaze stopping at the archway opening into the dining room. He hurried in, looking at the long table and arranged chairs, the tall bay with its soft draperies at the farther end of the room, the buffet closer at hand. Over the buffet hung an oil painting of a bowl of fruit. He crossed to it, touched the picture. It was hinged at the top, and when he swung it open a soft laugh caught in his throat. An almost frenzied joy built in his eyes as he studied the dial of the compact and very secure-looking wall safe. He lowered the picture silently.
Slipping into the hallway, he hurried to the kitchen. He gave it a quick survey: cabinets, counter-tops, stove, refrigerator, walk-in cooler, large worktable, the huge old copper sink with its sideboards cluttered with flower cuttings and a couple of gardening tools where she’d arranged the basket.
He looked out the rear window and drew in a thin breath. She was returning, only a few yards from the house, no longer carrying the basket.
He pressed himself against the wall beside the screen door and counted the approaching footsteps. He clenched and raised his fist, and when she stepped inside he slammed his knuckles against her cheek.
A small note of pain jarred from her. She reeled, twisted, tripped over her feet, and fell in an awkward heap near the sink. She was numbed for a moment. Then she pulled herself up, holding to the edge of the sink and looking over her shoulder at him. Her eyes were slightly glazed, more from shock and sudden terror than from the force of his blow.
“What do you want?” she managed in a hoarse whisper.
“Just open the safe, lady, that’s all.” He’d moved out from the wall and stood now near the center of the room, hands cocked op hips, staring at her defiantly.
She was perfectly still for a moment. Clearly, she was thinking, this could well be the last day of her life. She would live until she had opened the safe; but looking at his brutishness and the temporary loss of sanity in his eyes, she was certain that he wouldn’t leave a living witness to his crime.
He mistook her silence. “Don’t get crazy ideas,” he warned. “You’ll open the safe, one way or another. Easy or hard.”
“I believe you,” she said.
“And don’t try to stall or con me. Won’t do you any good to claim there’s only some papers or something like that in the safe. I know what safes are for.”
“No, I wouldn’t try to lie to you about the safe.”
“That’s on the track, lady. Now let’s get moving.”
He stepped back and slightly to one side to make way for her to go ahead of him. She moved her hands, both of them, more quickly than he could blink. She grabbed flower cuttings, shears, heavy knife all in a motion from the sideboard and flung the lot of it at his face.
The wet stems, leaves, and petals showered against his cheeks; the knife sailed past his ear; the heavy shears crashed against the bridge of his nose.
With a yelp of pain, he grabbed his face and stumbled backward a step. He heard the snap of the screen door. “Damn you! I’ll really fix you now!”
He stumbled to the door, feeling the warm coursing of blood from his nose. He squinted his eyes back into focus and saw her running hard across the back yard toward the ivy-grown mausoleum and live oaks a hundred yards away.
Snorting out a spray of blood, he ran out to catch her, taking long strides, his mouth a confident and determined gash...
She was wearing workaday clothing, blouse, slacks, sandals, and she was much faster than he’d expected — a tough, hardy plantation woman.
He narrowed the gap between them steadily. Nearing the mausoleum, she cast a look over her shoulder, her mouth a wide hole laboring for breath.
He forced a little more speed. A few seconds now and he would trap her against the old family tomb. He could see the bright splash of color of the flower basket where she’d set it against the rusty sheet-iron door.
With a quick shift she darted around the mausoleum. OK, he thought, but it wouldn’t do her any good. Beyond the crypt he’d glimpsed only open fields of palmetto, sage, stunted brush that offered her no ready place to hide.
He burst around the rear of the mausoleum and stumbled to a halt. The fields yawned emptily. She’d disappeared, just like that.
He stood briefly, catching breath through his mouth and blood-encrusted nose. Then a cold smile crimped his lips and he turned slowly. Simple, he decided. Since she didn’t head across the field, she had to duck around the tomb, hoping to beat it back to the house.
He ran to the front of the mausoleum, looking toward the house and seeing no sign of her in that direction either. Again he halted, more indecisively.
He scanned in all directions carefully, even among the lower branches of the spreading oaks. A tremor of anger and frustration ticked the corner of his mouth. He tilted his head, straining his ears for the cracking of a twig, the rustle of a sage clump, sounds that would tell him that she was now in back of the mausoleum. Round and round, he mused, while she keeps the vault between us... but it wouldn’t work, of course. He’d charge, overtake her, or reverse directions suddenly and have her come charging around a corner straight into his grip.
Then a slow frown began to creep between his eyes. He had the feeling that he was seeing something he shouldn’t. A wrong detail. Something out of place.
The basket of flowers! His breath caught. The basket was tilted over on its side now — and the door of the mausoleum was slightly ajar.
“Well, I’ll be diddle-damned!” he breathed to himself. His gaze inched over the weather-blackened sheet-iron door. Her only hiding place... She’d slipped around, ducked inside, hoping that he’d search the fields and give her a chance to get back to the house, a telephone, a gun.
He let out a laugh. Bending, he picked up a small pebble, threw it, and listened to it ring against the sheet-iron door.
“You hear that, lady, that little old rock?” he called out. “It means you’re not so smart after all. You’ve blown the deal. It means I’m coming in and drag you out. This time I won’t fool around. I’ll whip so much hell out of you, you’ll be begging to open that safe.”
He grasped the ragged edge of the door and swung it back hard, and lunged at the indistinct form of her there inside the dense gloom of the mausoleum.
His fist was raised to start giving her the message without any more question marks. As his hand came smashing down, he glimpsed a countermovement that she made. His eyes were still focusing from the brilliant sunlight outside, but he saw that she was holding something. A weapon.
As his weight crashed against her, the weapon in her hand was driven home, straight through the wall of his stomach, biting deep into his entrails.
His scream shattered against the stone walls. He fell back, grabbing at the sudden fire in his guts. He collapsed outside the mausoleum and lay thrashing in the sunlight.
Her half-incoherent phone call brought me to the Deveau place in record time. When I arrived, she was sitting on the front steps, her body bent far over, her arms wrapped around her shins, her cheek pressing against her knees.
She heard the police car skid to a stop on the driveway gravel and struggled to her feet as I got out of the car and ran over to her.
A sob racked her body. She reached toward me for support. “Constable Jenks...”