Fletcher Flora: The First Golden Age of Mystery & Crime MEGAPACK™: 26 Stories by Fletcher Flora

“He’s strong as a bull,” I said. “He’ll live forever.”

A shiver rippled her flesh, and the tip of her pink tongue slipped out and around her oiled lips.

“It’s a nice day, Tony. A hot, dreamy day with a blue sky and white clouds drifting. If I were old and ugly, I’d like to die on a day like this.”

She remained quiet a minute longer, lying against me with her hair splashing down my back, and then she slipped away, rising in the hot sand.

“I want a drink,” she said. “A long, long drink with lots of ice and a sprig of mint. You coming, Tony?”

I stood up too, and we stood looking at each other across the sand of the artificial beach that had cost Grandfather a small fortune.

“I’ll be up in a little,” I said. “I think I’ll swim out to the raft and back.”

Her breasts rose high against the restraint of the white band and descended slowly on a long whisper of air. She wet her lips again.

“I’ll have your drink waiting,” she said.

I watched her walk away up the beach, her legs moving from the hips with fluid case, even in the soft sand, and after she was gone, I went down to the water and waded out into it to my waist. The water was cool on my hot skin and seemed to make everything clear and simple in my mind. Swimming with a powerful crawl, I was nearing the raft in almost no time. A few feet from it, treading water, I stopped and looked at Grandfather’s motionless back. I wasn’t worried about his hearing me. He’d been partially deaf for years and usually wore a little button attached to a battery. After a few seconds, I sank in the water and swam under the raft.

The first time I reached for his ankle, my fingers barely brushed it, and it jerked away. Reaching again, I got my fingers locked around the ankle and lunged down with all the force I could manage in the buoyant water. He came in with a splash, and even under the water I could see his veined eyes bulging with terror as my hands closed around the sagging flesh of his throat.

He was strong. Stronger, even, than I’d thought. His hands clawed at mine, tearing at my grip, and I scissored my legs, kicking up to a higher level so that I could press my weight down upon him from above. My fingers kept digging into his throat, but he put up a hellish threshing, and when I broke water for air, it was all I could do to hold him below the surface. It was a long time before he was quiet and I could let him slip away into the green depths.

There was a fire under my ribs. My arms and legs were throbbing, heavy with the poisonous sediment of fatigue. I wanted to crawl onto the raft and collapse, but I didn’t. I lay floating on my back for a minute, breathing deeply and evenly until the fire went out in my lungs, and then I rolled in the water and crawled slowly to shore.

On the white sand where he had dropped it, Grandfather’s towel was a bright splash of color. Leaving it lying there, I crossed the beach and went up through a sparse stand of timber to the eight room house we called the lodge.

Cindy was waiting for me on the sun porch. She had removed the dark glasses but was still wearing the two scraps of white lastex. In one hand was a tall glass with ice cubes floating in amber liquid and a green sprig of mint plastered to the glass above the amber. Her eyes were lighted hotly by their golden flecks. Between us, along a vibrant intangible thread of dark understanding, passed the unspoken question and the unspoken answer.

“Tell me more about Acapulco,” I said.

She set the glass with great deliberateness on a glass-topped table and moved over to me. Still with that careful deliberateness, she passed her arms under mine and locked her hands behind my back. There was surprising strength in her. I could feel the hard, hot pressure of her body clear through to my spine. Her lips moved softly against my naked shoulder.

“Was it bad, Tony? Was it very bad?”

“No. Not bad.”

“Will anyone guess?”

“I had to choke him pretty hard. There may be bruises. But it won’t matter, even if they do get suspicious. It’s proof that hurts. All we have to remember is that we were here together all afternoon.”

“What do we do now?”

“We have a drink. We wait until dusk. Then we call the sheriff and tell him we’re worried about Grandfather. We tell him the old man went swimming and hasn’t returned.”

“Why the sheriff?”

“I don’t know. It seems like the sheriff should be the one to call.”

“The will, Tony. Are you sure about the will?”

“Yes, I’m sure. It’s all ours, honey. Every stick, stone, stock and penny, share and share alike.”

It was only then that she began to tremble. I could feel her silken flesh shivering against mine all the way up and down. Her lips made a little wet spot on my shoulder. Under my fingers, the fastening of her white brassiere was a recalcitrant obstacle, thwarting the relief of my primitive drive. Finally it parted, the white scrap hanging for a moment between us and then slipping away. My hands traced the beautiful concave lines of her sides and moved with restrained, savage urgency.

Her voice was a thin, fierce whisper.

“Tony,” she said. “Tony, Tony, Tony...”

Out on the lake, they were blasting for Grandfather. All day, at intervals, we’d heard the distant, muffled detonations, and every time the hollow sound rolled up through the sparse timber to reverberate through the rooms of the lodge, I could see the bloated body of the old man wavering in terrible suspension in the dark water.

On the sun porch, Cindy stood with her back to me, staring out across the cleared area of the yard to the standing timber. She was wearing a slim black sheath of a dress without shoulders. Beautiful in anything or nothing, in black she was most beautiful of all. She was smoking a cigarette, and when she lifted it to her lips, the smoke rose in a thin, transparent cloud to mingle with the golden haze the light made in her hair.

“It’s been a long time,” she said. “Almost an hour.”

“What’s been almost an hour?”

“Since the last explosion. They’ve been coming at half-hour intervals.”

“Maybe they’ve raised him.”

“Maybe.”

She moved a little, lifting the cigarette to her lips again, and the sunlight slipped up her arm and over her shoulder. I went up behind her and trailed my hands down the black sheath to where it flared tautly over firm hips and then back up to her shoulders. I pulled her back against me hard, breathing her hair.

“Nervous, Cindy?”

“No. You?”

“A little. It’s the waiting, I guess.”

She turned to face me, her arms coming up fiercely around my neck.

“Sorry, Tony? Will you ever be sorry?”

I looked down into the hot, gold-flecked eyes, and I said, “No, I’ll never be sorry,” and her cigarette dropped with a small sound to the asphalt tile behind me. Out on the front veranda, there was a loud knocking at the door.

I went in through the living room and on out through the hall to the front door, and there on the veranda stood Aaron Owens, the sheriff of the county. He was a short, fat little man with round checks and a bowed mouth, and it crossed my mind that maybe he’d been elected sheriff because the voters thought he was cute. Looking in at me through the screen, he mopped his face with a bright bandana and blew out a wet sigh.

“Hello, Mr. Wren. It’s a hot walk up from the lake.”

I opened the screen door and told him to come in. “My cousin’s on the sun porch. She’ll mix you a drink.”

We went back to the sun porch, and Cindy put bourbon and soda and ice in a glass and handed it to him. He took the drink eagerly.

“We’ve been listening to the blasting,” Cindy said. “We haven’t heard any now for an hour.”