Bill Pronzini - The Lighthouse

She said, “Well, where’ve you been?” but not as if she cared much.

“Where do you think?”

“Over at the Sea Breeze running up your bar tab, like usual.”

“Don’t start in. I had three beers, all on Mitch.”

“Where’d he get money to throw away on you?”

“I said don’t start in. Boys asleep?”

“They’re in bed.”

“Mandy?”

“She’s not hem.”

“Where the hell is she, this late?”

“Out. She wouldn’t say where she was going.”

“I told her not to go running around after dark, after what happened to that hitchhiker last week. Damn it, I told her.”

“She wouldn’t listen to me, either.”

“You know where she is, don’t you? Off with that long-haired punk from Bandon again, that’s where. Spreading her legs for him in the backseat of his jalopy.”

Della glared at him. “I don’t like that kind of talk. You know I don’t.”

“Think she hasn’t been going down for him? Think she’s still a sweet little virgin?”

“You’ve got an ugly mouth, Hod Barnett.”

“No uglier than hers. Can’t tell me she hasn’t been acting funny lately, like she’s hiding something. You know what I think?”

“I don’t care what you think.”

“I think she got herself knocked up,” Hod said, “that’s what I think.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you.”

“Why the hell should I like it?”

“Then she’d have to get married and move out and you’d have one less mouth to feed.”

“Ahhh…”

Hod went over to the refrigerator. He felt like eating something, but there wasn’t anything to eat. Not even a slice of bread or some milk left. No use saying anything about that to Della, either; no damn use saying anything anymore.

He slammed the refrigerator door, and when he turned around she had her nose buried in the romance book again. What did she get out of reading that crap? Did she think some Prince Charming was going to come along and take her off somewhere, a bag like her? She hadn’t been bad looking twenty years ago, when he’d met her down in Oklahoma after his Army discharge at Fort Sill. But now look at her. Letting herself go the way she had… he could barely stand to put his hands on her, even in the dark. Sometimes he wondered why he’d married her in the first place.

In the living room, he kicked Jason’s busted-up Mr. T doll off his chair-damn kid, always leaving his toys lying around-and sat down. The Coos Bay paper was on the floor next to the chair where Della had thrown it. All wrinkled and torn, as usual-she kept right on doing that to the paper even though she knew it drove him crazy. He picked it up and got it straightened out and glanced through it.

Another story about the young college girl they’d found on the cape last week. (Why wouldn’t Mandy listen to what she was told? What was the matter with that kid?) Still nothing new about who’d strangled her; they didn’t even have a suspect. Mitch thought it might be Ryerson, but Hod didn’t believe that for a minute. If Ryerson had done it, the state troopers would’ve arrested him by now, wouldn’t they? Sure they would have.

They weren’t stupid. Mitch was hipped on the subject of Ryerson. Just plain hipped on driving him out of the lighthouse, out of Oregon and back to California where he belonged. He’d probably do it, too, sooner or later, one way or another. If those rats didn’t work, he’d come up with something etse-something even worse, maybe, something Hod didn’t even want to think about.

No sir, he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it one damn bit.

The sound of the telephone cut through the silence, making her jump.

Almost as soon as she’d come inside, minutes ago, the wind had stilled and the lighthouse had become eerily quiet. The phone bell was like a dissonant cry in the silence. She stared at the instrument, listened to it ring again, then moved over to it. Jan’s parting words echoed in her mind: Don’t answer the phone. But it was an admonition she couldn’t heed. She was not about to cut herself off from the outside world-not now, not after what had happened here tonight. She caught up the receiver and said hello.

She half expected the call to be another anonymous one. But the voice that said, “Mrs. Ryerson?” was young, female, and familiar. It was also high-pitched, frightened-sounding.

“Yes? Who’s this?”

“Mandy Barnett. Listen, I need to talk to you, I need your help. Can you come get me? Right away?”

“Mandy, what on earth—”

“Please, Mrs. Ryerson, please!”

“I… I don’t have the car.”

“What?”

“My husband took it a little while ago. He’s on his way into the village—”

“Oh my God!”

The cry scraped at Alix’s already-raw nerve ends. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

“I can’t talk now, there’s no time. I’ll come out there on my bike. I don’t know what else to do.”

“Mandy, where are you—?”

But the girl broke the connection-abruptly and noisily, as if she had banged the receiver against something before getting it into the cradle.

Alix gripped the receiver for a moment before lowering it. The call could have been some sort of trick, something Mandy had been put up to by her father or Mitch Novotny to lure her away from the lighthouse so they could commit further atrocities. No, that didn’t make any sense, not so soon after the rats in the pantry. And the terror in the girl’s voice… she was sure that had been real. But why call me if she’s in trouble? Alix thought. A relative stranger who’d been hostile to her in the past? That didn’t make sense either…

She looked at her watch. Almost eleven. Jan had been gone less than fifteen minutes. Not enough time to get all the way into Hilliard. Not enough time for whatever trouble Mandy was in to involve him. Then what—?

The telephone rang again, the sudden clamor making her jump just as it had the first time. She snatched up the receiver. “Yes? Hello?”

“Mrs. Ryerson?” This time the voice was male, deep and muffled.

“Yes?”

“You looked inside your pantry yet?”

She went rigid, hearing not only the words but the undercurrent of malice.

“Better look if you haven’t,” the voice said. “We left you a little present—”

Quickly she replaced the receiver, taking care not to slam it down. Wasn’t that what the phone company always advised you? Don’t respond in any way. Just hang up quietly. But that was advice for dealing with obscene callers; this was something else entirely.

In the space of time it took to dial a number, the phone bell shrilled again. Alix backed away toward the stove. The ringing went on and on-eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen. The sound filled the room, seemed to penetrate deeply into her skull. She put her hands to her ears to shut it out… and the ringing stopped. The silence that followed it seemed to vibrate with after-echoes.

She waited, thinking that if he called again she would unclip the cord from the base unit; she couldn’t stand any more of that piercing summons. But he didn’t call again. And after three or four minutes of silence, she went to sit on the couch-stifny at first, poised, listening, and then with a gradual easing of tension.

A brandy was what she needed now. But the only bottle they had was an unopened fifth in the pantry, and she couldn’t go in there, even if Jan had made sure all the rats were gone. Couldn’t go through the cloakroom with the one rat’s blood spattered on the wall. Not now, and maybe not ever again.

Time passed. The wind picked up again, beating at the windows, playing its games in the chimney so that smoke backed up thinly into the room and stung her eyes. She remained alert, listening for movement, for sounds under the wind. When she next looked at her watch, it was five minutes before midnight. Jan had been gone nearly an hour. And it had been almost that long since Mandy’s call.