Charles Williams - Girl Out Back

“Do you think you’d better? It’s a long way up there.”

To the kitchen?” I said. “I thought we’d scramble some eggs.”

She murmured a naughty word from behind the Mona Lisa smile and gently swung her feet. A slipper fell off. It was among the more unnoticed events of the year.

I was going through the living-room when I felt her begin to go rigid in my arms. “You don’t have to show off your strength,” she said. “I know you’re younger.”

Jesus, not now, I thought. “Shucks, ma”am,” I said. “It ain’t hardly nothin’ at all. Little ol’ triflin’ armful like you.”

“Don’t overdo it,” she said. “You’ll scare me. I’ll take your word there were no girls out there.”

I gave it the old fourth-quarter try. “Stop fighting me, you alabaster houri. I’ve got my arms full.” I kissed her, but it was all nothing now. She’d retreated into the cave to paw over her wrongs, whatever they were. Well, she’d certainly picked a strategic time for it. I went on up the stairs, feeling savage about it, and dropped her on the bed. She could go to hell.

“Well?” she asked sweetly.

“Well, what?”

“This is the old professional? Where’s the technique?”

“I lost my way,” I said. “We should have gone out and climbed on the back fence.”

“You would feel more at home there, wouldn’t you?”

”Is there anything else?” I asked.

“What?”

“It’s Thursday,” I said. “The help’s night out.”

She clenched her hands down by her thighs and looked up at the ceiling. “Go away,” she said in a thin, quiet voice. “For the love of sweet Jesus Christ, go away. Go away, go away.”

I went away. I drove over to the store, let myself in, and savagely attacked the accumulated paper work. There was usually some release and satisfaction in that, because I liked the place. I’d built it up to what it was. The first time I’d ever seen it, one afternoon a little over two years ago when I’d dropped in for some item of tackle I needed on a fishing trip, I had recognized its potentialities and it had interested me. She’d come in about that time to say something to the inept and lethargic old gaffer who was running it for her, and she had interested me even more. Well-to-do widows with sex appeal are rare enough to be collector’s items in this vale of tears, and here was a real jewel. I gave her a good sales talk about what I could do with the place, quit the public relations outfit I was working for in Sanport at the moment, and moved in. Both phases of the project were wide open for an operator with any talent at all; inside of sixty days the business was in the black and I was in her bed. Four months later we were married. Not that she was particularly a patsy; but we did hit it off well in the hay, and she was in the market for a romantic and suggestively tragic figure who never talked much about his past. It’s stock, but easy.

It was ten p.m. when I ground out the last of the letters and finished checking the receipts and making up the bank deposit. I slammed the door of the safe and stood for a moment looking around the dim interior of the showroom. Mrs. Jessica Roberts McCarran Godwin, I give it to you. Cherish it, and guard it well in that old classic repository of the fervent resignation and the disenchanted farewell. From now on I’m just going through the motions here while I look after Godwin’s future. And no motions at all at home. Put it away, dear Mrs. Godwin; you had your little revenge and I’ll admit it was a nice piece of strategy, but it works only once in this league.

The drug store was still open. The copy of that digest magazine Cliffords had in his trunk was the current issue, and I found it on the stand. I drank a coke while I read the article about Haig. It could be, I reflected thoughtfully; it was a million-to-one shot, but it was probably the only thing they’d never thought of. I got in the station wagon and drove out to the cemetery just north of town. The night was dark and there were no houses within a half-mile; I had it all to myself. I took a flashlight from the car and went through the gate.

Grayson? No-o. Greggson. . . . That was it. It took about ten minutes to find the double headstone. I splashed the light against it and felt a surge of excitement as I read the date.

I could quit worrying about that part of it. I knew now how Cliffords had got that money.

I left the house before she got up, and had some breakfast in town. Otis was parking his car at the side of the store when I arrived.

“How was the fishing, boss,” he asked.

“Poor,” I said. I opened the front door and we went in. “Those jokers probably got their bass somewhere else. Never believe a fisherman.”

“Who does?” he said. He leaned against the showcase and lit a cigarette. “Say, where’d you stay up there?”

Dan Cahoon’s fishing camp was the obvious answer, since it was the only good one, but that warning bell went off in my mind just in time. “Oh,” I said. “Some little place on the west side. Why?”

“Man came in yesterday and made us an offer on those two reconditioned fifteen-horse jobs. Said he’d take both of ‘em if we’d cut the price fifty dollars. I tried to get hold of you at Cahoon’s, but they said you wasn’t there.”

That was too close for comfort. “I started there, but decided to try a new one. In this business, the more camp operators you know, the better.”

Careful. Don’t explain too much. Never, never do that. “Did he say he’d be back?” I went on.

Otis nodded. “Today or tomorrow. And, by the way, that F.B.I, man—what’s his name? Ramsey. . .?”

“I think it was Ramsey,” I said casually. I reached inside the showcase and straightened a display card of brass spinners. For Christ’s sake, what about him? “Something like that. Why?”

“Oh, he was in again, looking for you.”

“He was?” I asked. That was all I could manage.

“Yeah. You know, boss, that must be something really hot they’re working on.”

Don’t mind me, Otis; don’t let me hurry you. I love these rambling dissertations. What do you think of T. S. Eliot? “You say he wanted to see me?”

“Yeah. He just wondered if you ever remembered who gave you that new bill.”

“No,” I said, breathing again. “It throws me.”

He leaned his elbows on the case and frowned at the cigarette in his hand. “You know, I was just thinking. I mean, about that twenty. You remember those two motors we fixed for Nunn . . .?”

I was beginning to feel limp. Torquemada lost a good man when Otis blundered into the wrong century. “What about them?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Probably nothing. But he must have picked ’em about Saturday, because I noticed Monday they was gone. The bill would have been over twenty dollars, and he’s got a pretty sad reputation for being mixed up in anything crooked that’s going on. It’s just a shot in the dark. . . .”

And Ramsey was here pumping him. I lit a cigarette for myself.

“. . . I didn’t think of it till after the F.B.I, man had left, but you might mention it when he comes back. I think they’re still around here, a couple of ‘em. They’re making every place in town.”

Is this the last trip, Otis? You’re sure you don’t want to feed me through the rollers again? I frowned thoughtfully at my own cigarette, since that seemed to be what they were doing now, and said, “No. Wait. I think she came after those motors. His wife, I mean. Early Monday morning, before you got here. Seems to me she gave me a check.”

Was that too risky? It would be if it got as far as Ramsey, but not if I stopped Otis here and now. “Yeah,” I went on. “I’m pretty sure of it. Signed her own name to it. Her first name, I mean. Janice? Jeanette? No. Jewel. That was it.”