Маргарет Миллар - Do Evil In Return

When she crossed the border into Oregon she had to cut her speed because the noon sun, pressing down through the huge trees, made such brilliant patterns on the road that it was difficult to see any distance ahead or to distinguish the real from the shadow. Now and then she heard a mountain stream chortling furiously, violently, as if nothing could ever stop its mad, hilarious descent to the Pacific.

She reached the outskirts of Ashley a little after two o’clock. A sign informed her that she was about to enter Ashley, the Friendliest Little Town in the West, Population 9,394, Come Early and Stay Late.

She stopped at the first AAA motel that she came to. It was built in a small clearing of trees, two hundred yards off the highway, and it was so new that it still smelled of fresh wood.

A fat man in shirt sleeves was sitting on a kitchen chair tilted against a door marked “office,” fanning himself with a comic book. A dozen other comics were scattered around his chair, half of them without covers, the others brand-new, True Love Comics, Teen-Age Romance, I Was Jilted, Western Love and Romances. The fat man’s face was as innocent and devoid of thought as a marshmallow. He was probably laughed at in school as the fat boy, Charlotte thought. Now he’s getting back, he’s the hero of all the comic books, the lover who jilts, the cowboy who rides roughshod over women’s hearts. Poor man, poor boy.

“Any vacancy?” she said.

“Yes, ma’am. Number Four over there. Bath and shower, Beautyrest mattress. Six dollars a night.”

“That will do.”

She parked her car in front of Number Four, and came back to register at the office her name and address and the make and license number of her car. A card on the desk identified the fat man as Mr. Boy H. Coombs, Mgr., La Siesta Motel.

“You a doctor, eh?” Mr. Coombs said. “I see by your car.”

“Yes.”

“I never saw a lady doctor so close up before. In the movies I have, though. Ingrid Bergman was a doctor in a movie once, fell in love with Gregory Peck, only Peck happened to be...”

“Yes, I know. ‘Spellbound.’ ”

“Yes, yes, that was it. ‘Spellbound.’ I don’t know what she saw in Gregory Peck. He’s skinny as a broom, besides being a nut — in the picture, I mean.”

“Have you a phone book?”

The question took him by surprise. He had to stop a moment to make the transition from romance to phone books. “Well, sure we have.”

“I just want to look up an address.”

“Oh. Sure.” He searched around the desk and under the counter for the phone book and couldn’t find it. He stood up, panting from the exertion, and wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his pink shirt. “Somebody must have swiped it off of me. That’s low, stealing a phone book.” (But there was a dreamy look in his eye; the fat boy was Dick Tracy, out for revenge, on the trail of the thief who took the telephone book. On his slender wrist, a two-way radio. In his head, a photographic memory.)

“Perhaps you can help me locate someone,” Charlotte said crisply, and Mr. Coombs’s eyes snapped back into focus.

“I should be able to, lived here in town all my life.”

“Do you know Mrs. Myrtle Reyerling?”

“Myrtle? I sure do. Why, Sergeant Reyerling’s one of our war heroes, got his name on a plaque in the First National Bank, corner of Third Street. Myrtle lives in an apartment above Woolworth’s. You can’t miss it. Drive straight into town and there it is.”

“Thanks.”

The Woolworth store had a bright new façade but the apartments above it were dark and airless and smelled of last month’s grease and last week’s cabbage.

Charlotte paused before a door marked in pencil on a torn slip of paper, M. Reyerling. The transom was open and there were sounds inside the room, not sounds of quarreling, but of two women vociferously agreeing with each other about a third who wasn’t present

“I told her. I told her time and again.”

“I know you did, you bet you did.”

“But no, no, she was headstrong. Always believing the best of people. The best. Huh. I know now there’s no best in anyone. Only better. And them damn little better than the worst.”

“You’re absotively right, Myrtle, but don’t let it get you down.”

It was Myrtle Reyerling who opened the door, a tall, thin woman in her late twenties, with a six-inch pompadour that listed slightly to one side like a schooner in a high wind. Her mouth was pinched-looking, her jaw hard, but there was something pathetic about her eyes; they were questioning, bewildered.

“Mrs. Reyerling?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Charlotte Keating, a friend of Violet’s.”

The woman turned away, swallowing, swallowing again, before she spoke. “I guess you know about her then?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Come in if you want to. This here’s my girlfriend, Sally Morris.”

A dark-haired young woman with a wiry body and big muscular legs acknowledged the introduction with a nod.

“It’s all over town,” Mrs. Reyerling said. “Whisper, whisper, whisper, about how Violet was in the family way and not by Eddie. I don’t believe it. Violet was a good girl. My kid sister. Was a good girl and don’t anybody say different.”

“Now take it easy, Myrt.”

“She was a good girl.”

The young woman called Sally made a little gesture of impatience. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, good girls can do a lot of the same things as bad girls. I just told you, I saw her with my own eyes. She was in that bed, sleeping. And there were signs — know what I mean?”

“No!”

“Now Myrt, you know me, I’m no gossip, but I’m no dumbbell either. I’ve been working around there long enough to know the signs.”

Charlotte interrupted, “Signs of what?”

“Well, you know.” There was an embarrassed silence before the girl broke out again: “In the first place what was she doing there, sleeping at eight o’clock in the morning in a man’s room? The man was already checked out — he left the key in the lock outside like it says on the door to do when you check out. Well, I saw the key and I figured I’d get the room made up early. I went in, and there was Violet sleeping peaceful as a baby. I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t any of my business. I just walked out again and rapped on the door real hard to wake her up. Then I beat it. I didn’t even tell Myrtle about it until today. She always made so much fuss when Violet did anything wrong, even when she took a drink or smoked a cigarette.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Mrs. Reyerling whispered. “I didn’t. I had to look after her, she was my kid sister. I wanted her to grow up to be a lady.”

“Sure. Sure, I know, Myrt. I’m not blaming you. It’s life, is all. We all got to take it on the chin.”

“How many times do I have to take it? How many chins you think I’ve got?”

“Now, Myrt.” The girl turned to Charlotte. “I work at a motel, see? Rose Court, it’s called; on the other side of town. That’s where I saw her, in this guy’s room.”

“Do you remember the man?” Charlotte asked.

“I didn’t see him. But when I was making up the room afterwards I found a tie he’d left behind in the john. I never saw a tie like it before. It was blue with gray coins on it and little wee dice with red eyes. I thought I’d hook it to give to my old man, maybe it’d bring him luck in a crap game. But I got cold feet, and turned it in to my boss, Rawls. Rawls is as honest as the next guy, which isn’t saying much, because he started to wear the tie himself, instead of mailing it to the man who’d left it behind.” She hesitated a moment. “I’m not saying anything against Rawls, exactly. If he found a wallet he’d probably turn it in to the police minus a few bucks for his trouble. But this tie — he couldn’t resist it. He thinks he’s a pretty classy dresser. Around town they call him Adolphe Menjou.”