Хал Эллсон - Mink Is for a Minx

She welcomed them, saw to the disposal of their wraps, then fled to the kitchen. Rod was making six new drinks.

“I’m sorry, Tiger-cat,” he said. “I mentioned the party days ago and that bunch was committed elsewhere, for some dinner or other. I didn’t think they were coming. You may scratch me, but don’t be mad.”

“I’m not.” Marian stretched on tiptoe and nipped his ear. He set down the bottle and jigger to put his arms around her.

“You’re my favorite small blonde. If this weren’t our seventh wedding anniversary, I’d marry you.”

She opened the door of the liquor cabinet, then checked mentally the cold buffet waiting to be served after midnight.

“Rod, I allowed for two or three extra people, but not six. And there’s a run on bourbon. Famine and thirst will stalk this house tonight.”

He lined up the six glasses on a tray. “All right. Go in and circulate. There’s an all-night delicatessen on Oakland and Caldwell, and a superbar beside it. I’ll go and fetch.”

She took up the tray, then set it down again.

“No, you go in and make like a host. You know the new people and I don’t. I haven’t even got their names straight. Entertain them and I’ll slip out and get the stuff.” She crossed the hallway to the coat closet and he followed.

“You’re a pretty thing tonight. Don’t be gone long.”

“I won’t.”

Rod held the honey-color beaver coat, her anniversary present, and she slipped into it. The color matched her hair. Her long party earrings picked up flecks of green in her grey eyes.

“I don’t like you driving alone on a foggy night. Have you had your car checked lately?”

“It’s running fine.” Marian grinned up at him. “Anyway, you know nothing bad can happen to me on the road. If I stall or anything, a truck driver always appears — pouf! — out of the air or somewhere, and gets me going again.”

“I don’t believe in your friendly truck drivers. None of them ever helped me.”

“Naturally not. Truck drivers like girls. ’Bye. I’ll be quick, darling.”

She turned in the doorway. “You might look in on Midge and Teddy. They were sleeping like fat little angels half an hour ago, but the party noises might waken them.”

Marian backed her winter-splashed car out of the garage. A random harmony of voices, music, and laughter followed her into the road. The house looked festive, even elegant, with its big windows glowing and the guests’ cars lining half of the block.

Marian had not really wanted to move to the suburbs, but people kept saying country life was better for children. Now she wasn’t sorry. Entertaining a lot of people at once was fun, and they couldn’t have done it in the city apartment.

It seemed darker than usual as she drove toward the reddish cloud of bottom-lighted fog that marked the city. She turned on the radio. A jazz quartet was playing cool crystalline improvisations. Nice — but the music broke off.

“We interrupt to bring you a news bulletin. An attack tonight on Mrs. Doris Clift, twenty-nine, of seven-twelve North Inshore Drive, has led police to believe the psychotic killer who in three weeks has taken the lives of four Chicago women, may now be at large here in Meridian.

“Like the Chicago victims, Mrs. Clift was struck over the head and strangled. Her car had left the road and veered across a curb, a few country blocks from her home. But her assailant was interrupted by the approach of Frederick T. Sayers, forty-six, of five-eighty Smith Place, who was walking with his two Boxer dogs on leashes. Sayers told police he saw the stalled car as he emerged from beyond a clump of shrubbery, and heard moans. The dogs jerked away from him as a man jumped from the car and ran into the shadows, apparently cutting directly across a lawn. The dogs gave chase but came back to Sayers after the sound of a motor indicated the man had driven away.

“Sayers got only indistinct glimpses of the man, and he did not see the vehicle. Mrs. Clift, in serious condition at Saint Mary’s Hospital, could not be questioned. Her husband, Anthony Clift, an attorney, told police she was to have joined him and a group of friends at a downtown restaurant. She was in evening dress. One of her jade earrings had been ripped off, tearing an earlobe.

“Like the four Chicago women, Mrs. Clift is an attractive blonde.”

Marian shivered. She raised a hand to slip off her own earrings, but returned it firmly to the wheel. She would not get all jittery because a psycho was partial to youngish blonde women dressed for parties. The announcer’s voice droned on.

“A crumpled piece of paper found in Mrs. Clift’s car seems to indicate beyond reasonable doubt that her attacker was the Chicago killer. It had been torn in half. Pencilled heavily in black were the words ‘Repent, ye daughters of—’ and parts of scrawls that might represent words in an unknown or secret script. Psychiatrists who examined similar notes left with the Chicago victims said the use of a private language points strongly to a psychotic derangement of severe type.”

Marian snapped off the radio.

The highway had seemed strangely empty. Now, nearing the two stores, she realized she had half forgotten how dark and lifeless a city street can look two hours before a winter midnight.

She parked and ran into the superbar on her thin, glittering heels. Men lined on barstools turned to stare as she took two bottles of bourbon from a shelf, gave the bartender a ten and a five and waited while he put the bottles in a bag and rang up her change.

In the delicatessen next door she bought hastily, choosing cold meats, a cheese, a long loaf of rye bread. She hurried out, the two bags awkward in her arms, her purse dangling from her wrist. She jammed the bag with the bottles inside the larger one, freeing a hand to open the car door.

“Damn,” she muttered as a fingernail tip sheared off against a rim of the steering wheel.

She shoved the unwieldy bag along the seat and slipped in beside it. She should have put the stuff on the floor in back where it would be more stable, she supposed. But depositing it on the seat was quicker, and Marian was tense with impatience to get home, to touch her children’s sleeping heads and to be in her living room with her guests.

The dark had grown thicker, capsuling the glow of street lights inside their own haloes. Marian took her car keys from their place — deplored by Rod and illegal in their state — above the visor. The car started with the sputter, suggestive of post-nasal drip, which it always developed in damp and chilly weather.

Fog shortened the flare of her headlights. She left the curb and a truck, parked two car-lengths behind, started up at the same moment. It followed close at her rear, its headlights turned on bright, glaring back from her mirror into her eyes.

At first Marian felt only a mild annoyance. She kicked her own lights to bright and back to dim, to remind the other driver that he was violating the traffic regulations. The truck lights did not respond.

She shrugged. Marian’s frequent claim that truck drivers were homely knights dedicated to the succor of frail — though adept — women motorists had not been entirely a joke. Often in minor emergencies they had stopped to help. Now, just when her nerves were jangled anyway, she had to encounter a slob of a driver who seemed intent on blinding her.

But then, you couldn’t expect everyone to conform to an occupational pattern. Look at butchers. Once she had known a nice, sensitive butcher who painted in oils, assiduously avoiding the use of the color red.

But damn it, why didn’t a policeman flag down this creep and make him dim his lights? She had not seen a policeman, a highway patrolman, or a prowl car since she left home.