Bill Pronzini - The Lighthouse

“Something wrong?” Mrs. Hilliard. asked. She had bagged the last of the groceries and was watching Alix with a faint smile tugging at the edges of her mouth.

Alix didn’t answer immediately; she was afraid the anger building in her might make her voice shake or crack. She drew a deep breath before she said, “Yes, something’s wrong.”

“Well?”

“These prices… they’re too high.”

Lillian Hilliard shrugged. “This is a small store, a small town. Prices are bound to be high. We can’t give you the kind of deals your big-city California stores do.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it.” Alix held out the receipt. “I’m not stupid, Mrs. Hilliard-I know what your prices are and I remember the order you rang things up in. ”

“You don’t like what I charge, you can shop someplace else.”

“I don’t like being cheated—”

“Lord knows I don’t want your kind in here anyway.”

“I said I don’t like being cheated. Do you pad all your customers’ bills, or only those of outsiders like my husband and me?”

“Now hold on a minute—”

“No, you hold on a minute! I didn’t say anything before when you were unfriendly to us. Or later, when you made accusations against my husband without bothering to listen to his side of the story. But when it comes to outright dishonesty—”

“What I do ain’t nothing compared to murder.”

“Murder?” Alix stared at her. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t you know?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Lots of murderers down in California,” Lillian Hilliard said. “All kinds of crazies running around loose. Pick up the paper and read about it every day. One could be living right next door to you and you’d never know it until he gets caught. One could even be living in your house, maybe.”

The full implication of the woman’s words registered. Alix’s first reaction was shock. Then her anger flared, turned to rage coupled with a fierce defensiveness. Her fingers bit into her palms as she struggled to calm herself.

“Are you trying to say my husband had something to do with that girl’s murder the other night?”

“If I am, I’m not the only one.”

“Damn you, I—”

“Don’t you curse me in my own store.”

Alix could no longer control her rising fury. She said, “You’re a disgusting woman, Lillian Hilliard. Your mind is small and your morals even smaller. I wouldn’t have anything you’ve touched in my house!” And she grabbed the nearest bag of groceries, shoved it violently across the counter.

The storekeeper almost fell backward off her stool as she clutched at the bag. It slipped through her hands, crashed to the floor. Alix shoved the other two bags after it and then turned toward the door. Lillian Hilliard shouted after her, angry words that she didn’t listen to and that she cut off by slamming the door.

She was at the car, fumbling in her purse for her keys, when she became aware of a man coming toward her. It was the wiry little workman who had been installing shelves in the store several days before-Adam something. This morning he was wearing a red headband to hold back his longish blond hair, and there was a smile on his sharp-featured face that did not reach his eyes.

“Morning, Mrs. Ryerson.”

I don’t know you, she thought. I don’t want to know you. She gave him a vague smile and continued to rummage in her purse for her keys.

The man was not put off by her silence. He maneuvered between her and the door of the station wagon, directly in her path. His grin was broader now, showing yellowed teeth, a chipped incisor.

Alix faced him in annoyance. “Is there something I can do for you?” she asked.

“Why, I’m just being neighborly, Mrs. Ryerson. My name’s Adam Reese.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Reese, but I really have to be going.” She tried to edge around him, but he bounced over to block her again.

“This is a real neighborly town,” he said, still smiling. “Just thought I’d stop and ask how everything’s going out there on the cape.”

“Everything is fine.”

“Sure about that?”

“Just what is it you want, Mr. Reese?”

Reese kept smiling, but it was a smile that meant nothing-a mere reflexive stretching of mouth and facial skin. “Now, Mrs. Ryerson, like I said, I was just being neighborly—”

“Is that what you call it?”

“Sure thing. It’s just that out there at the light, you’re pretty isolated. Things can happen to people who live in lonely places like that.”

She could feel her rage rekindling. “Things such as somebody shooting at our car in the middle of the night?”

Reese’s eyebrows rose, meeting the wispy fringe of hair that escaped from his red headband. “Well, now, why would anybody want to do a thing like that?”

“You tell me.”

“Can’t say. Seems a waste of good ammunition to me.”

Alix tried to step around him again. And again he moved into her path. “’Course, that’s nothing,” he said, “now there’s been a murder practically in your front yard. Found that dead girl’s body no more’n a couple of miles from the light, wasn’t it?”

She said nothing, just glared at him.

“Not that that means you folks know anything about it. Or had anything to do with it. Sure is funny, though. I mean, you folks move in out there at the light, my friend Mitch’s poor old dog gets run down, and next thing there’s this poor young girl found strangled in a ditch—”

“Get out of my way, damn you!” She pushed around him and yanked at the door handle.

“Hey,” Reese’s amused voice said behind her, “don’t go away mad.”

She got into the car, ground the starter, finally got the engine going and the transmission into reverse. Once on the road she slammed the gearshift into drive and accelerated with such force that the tires threw up a spray of gravel. When she looked into the rearview mirror, Adam Reese was still standing there, hands on hips, the grin splitting his face like a wound.

It wasn’t until she turned off onto the cape road that she slowed down, and when she pressed on the brake pedal, her leg began to shake. She pulled onto the verge, switched off the ignition, and leaned forward against the steering wheel, spent by her rage.

God, how I hate those people! she thought. Small-minded, insular, suspicious of anyone who’s not like them. As if anyone would want to be like them.

She sat there for what seemed a long time, forehead against her folded arms. After a while, when the last of her anger was gone, a new feeling rose, one of unease.

Why was she letting them get to her this way? She’d lost control in the general store, and she would have struck that handyman if he hadn’t let her past him. And over what? Nasty innuendo that she should have laughed off as small-town rumor-mongering.

Still… when a person allowed gossip to upset her like this, it was usually because she felt there might be some truth in it. Underneath was she afraid that Jan might be a murderer?

Instantly she rejected the notion. It was ridiculous. Jan was her husband, the man she had lived with every day of the past eleven years. She might suspect him of minor faults but never of a crime, much less one as monstrous as cold-blooded murder.

She raised her head and looked out at the flat gray joining of the bay and sea that lay beyond the barren reach of the headland. In spite of herself, her thoughts went back to that night in Boston, the one and only time Jan had spoken of the murder of the girt in Madison. Had he been unduly traumatized by finding the body of someone he’d known only a few hours? Horrible as the experience had been, had his reaction and subsequent de-pmssioo indicated a deeper involvement in the crime? No, she refused to believe that. The real trauma came later, from the way he and his friends had treated Ed Finlayson and the inevitable disintegration of the group.