Джеймс Чейз - The Way the Cookie Crumbles

‘What’s the matter with the sea?’ Algir asked, staring in front of him. He couldn’t bring himself to look at the girl. ‘Don’t you like the sea?’

The previous week he had driven along highway 4A, searching for an isolated place where he could kill this girl and get rid of her body. This road they were on now led to the place he had found. He had come down this road every day for five days, always at this time and he had never seen anyone either on the road or the beach. It was a strictly Saturday and Sunday bathing and picnic spot: on weekdays, no one seemed to have the time nor the inclination to bathe there.

‘I want to see Mummy as quickly as possible,’ the girl said nervously. ‘We’re wasting time, Mr. Tebbel, coming this way. We must stop and turn back.’

‘What makes you think you won’t see her this way?’ Algir said. ‘I didn’t say she was in Paradise City, did I?’

‘Isn’t she? Then where is she?’

‘She’s in Culver Hospital,’ Algir lied. ‘This is a short cut to Culver.’

‘But it isn’t! I know this road. It leads only to the dunes and to the sea.’

‘You must leave this to me, Norena,’ Algir said, a sudden harsh note in his voice. ‘I know what I’m doing.’

She looked at him. He didn’t seem to be the same man who had met her in Dr. Graham’s study. That man had been charming, kind and sympathetic. But this man... Norena experienced a chill of terror. How could a man change so utterly and so quickly? It was like a face that changed in a nightmare.

A heron, startled by the approaching car, flew out of a tree and flapped heavily away. Ahead of them, Norena saw the sea.

‘There’s the sea,’ she said in despair. ‘This road leads nowhere except to the sea.’

The citrus shrubs had given way to tall pampas grass that swayed like sinister beckoning fingers in the warm gentle breeze.

‘Please stop,’ she pleaded. ‘Please.’

A hundred yards ahead of them the road came to an end in a big circular turnaround.

As Algir slowed the car, she again looked at him. His face was drawn and glistened with sweat. His eyes were staring. His lips were set in a hard vicious line. The sight of him horrified her. She had an instinctive feeling that he was going to attack her. She had often read the rape and murder cases that from time to time appeared in the newspapers. She had read them without much interest, sure that that sort of thing could never happen to her. In her opinion most of the murdered girls had only themselves to blame for their end. By the way they dressed and generally behaved themselves, they really did ask for trouble. But why should this man attack her? What had she done?

Unless, of course, he was one of those awful maniacs you read about. But he couldn’t be. He was Mummy’s lawyer. But did Mummy have a lawyer? She had never mentioned him. Again Norena looked at Algir who had stopped the car and was removing the ignition key.

He didn’t look at her. She hated that. If he had looked at her she might have seen what he was planning to do by the expression in his eyes. His movements were slow and deliberate. She noticed his hand was shaking as he withdrew the ignition key.

The beach with its lines of dunes, its yellowing clumps of dried grass and its broad wet ribbon of sand, marking the receding sea, stretched for lonely, empty miles. The breeze had stiffened, blowing the loose dry sand in little swirls that week after week, month after month, year after year formed the high sloping dunes that broke up the flatness of the beach.

She found herself slipping back the door catch. The car door swung open and she was out.

Algir’s reaching fingers were too late. She felt his grip, but she tore loose and she began to run across the soft sand faster than she had ever run before.

And she could run. She hadn’t played hockey and basketball for nothing. She hadn’t won the hundred yards at the College sports against stiff opposition for nothing either. Nor had she ever had to race for her life, and as she flashed across the beach that thought that she was racing for her life urged her forward at a speed that made her winning hundred yard sprint look slow.

Taken by surprise, Algir glared after her. He was shaken by the way this girl could run.

If she escaped and talked!

He scrambled out of the car and tore after her. The distance between them must be at least a hundred yards, he thought, and it was increasing. Who would have thought the little bitch could run like this? Her long legs seemed to fly over the sand. Already he was panting. His only exercise was an occasional game of golf. Running like this quickly made him breathless. He kept on, aware that she was drawing further and further away from him. Finally, she disappeared from his sight behind a high dune.

He ran on until he reached the dune. His breathing laboured, his heart hammering, he scrambled up the dune and stopped, his eyes smarting with sweat. He could see her, but now a distant figure silhouetted against the azure blue of the sky. She was still running with long, effortless strides, but she had changed her direction. She was no longer running blindly along the beach that stretched for several miles before it petered out into a vast, swampy cypress forest. She was heading inland now, her back to the sea. Ahead of her was a screen of oak and willow hummocks with the occasional maple tree forcing its way through the dense undergrowth.

Algir had explored these hummocks a few days previously. Through their tangled undergrowth there was a cleared track that ran in a crescent shaped curve and finally came out onto the dirt road they had driven up from highway 4A.

Did she know the track led to the highway? He saw at once his chance of catching her. It was his only chance. He slid back down the sand dune and raced across the sand towards the Buick. Reaching the car, he slid under the steering wheel, put the key into the ignition lock with a shaking hand, started the engine and set the car shooting back down the dirt road.

It took him only a few minutes to reach the T-joint of the dirt road and the track from the hummocks. He drove the Buick under the shade of a willow tree, then taking off his jacket and leaving it in the car, he half ran, half walked down the track until he reached the fringe of the hummocks. He paused to look back in the direction of the Buick, but the high growing pampas grass hid it from view. Nodding, satisfied, he walked into the undergrowth for a few yards. Then selecting a thick shrub, he sat down behind it. From there, he could see some twenty yards up the track.

There was nothing he could do now, but to wait.

While waiting, he thought of Ticky Edris and this girl, Ira Marsh, that Ticky seemed so pleased with. The whole success of the plan revolved around the girl. If he made a mistake then Johnnie Williams, Muriel Marsh and her daughter would have been murdered for nothing. Maybe he had been crazy to have agreed to go in with Ticky on such a plan, but Ticky had convinced him.

‘I’ve seen her, you haven’t,’ Ticky had said. ‘She’s made for the job. You don’t have to worry about her, Phil. That doll will do anything for money.’

He thought Ticky had been nuts to have promised a teenager fifty thousand dollars. Why give so much of the profit away? Surely, she would have come in on the job for as little as ten thousand?

Ticky smiled his evil smile.

‘What does it matter? Who said she would get any of the money? Relax, Philly-boy, what’s one more body, now we have three?’

Algir wiped the sweat from his forehead. He didn’t trust Ticky. He would have to watch out that Ticky hadn’t ideas about him. Ticky might be thinking, What’s one more body, now I have four?

Algir suspected that Ticky was unbalanced. He had a revenge complex. Ever since he had begun working at La Coquille restaurant, so he had told Algir, he had dreamed of getting even with the rich.