Now You See It... Part 62

She smiled and kissed him again. Definitely not a sisterly kiss.

Or a sisterly dutch at his groin-

"Tonight," she said.

Oh, what a tangled web, I thought as Brian turned away from her, Ca.s.sandra laughing softly -

He knelt beside Max and started to lift him up, Max's weight was dead, his limbs completely flaccid.

What have they done to him? I wondered.

"I can use that champagne now," Ca.s.sandra said.

She crossed to the bar as Brian, grunting from the effort, managed to lift Max to a standing position and began to half-drag, half-lead him toward the freezer.

He's still alive, I thought.

Now You See It.. 201

But completely helpless.

At the bar, Ca.s.sandra twirled the champagne bottle in the bucket, lifted it out and tore off its metallic neck wrapping.

Then she stopped and looked at the bottle.

Made a sound of grim amus.e.m.e.nt.

"What?" gasped Brian, using every bit of his strength to get Max to the freezer.

"If we could drug his private-stock brandy, chancing that he'd drink it of his own accord-as Harry did with me Scotch-how do we know Max didn't do the same thing with this bottle of champagne-so conveniently placed in the ice bucket? He could have used a hypo-needle, just as we did."

She dropped the bottle into the wastebasket.

"Good try. Max," she said.

The -woman has no trust in anyone, I thought.

Opening me doors beneath the bar, she lifted out a new case of champagne and tore it open, removing one of its bot- tles. Tearing off its metallic seal, she started to thumb out the cork.

"Better to drink safe champagne on the rocks, eh Padre?"

she said mockingly to me.

if I could only move, came the thought. I would be able to kill.

Hearing the pop of the cork and the brief gush of escap- ing liquid from the bottle, Brian looked around.

"Celebration time," he said glumly.

"Of course, love," she answered. "We have a lot to cele- brate."

"Of course," said Brian-

"Oh, cheer up, for Christ's sake," Ca.s.sandra told him, pouring champagne into a gla.s.s of ice cubes.

Lifting the gla.s.s, she jiggled it for several moments, then drained it; sighed.

202 Richard Matheson

"Not as good as chilled/' she said, "but ifll do."

Brian had Max to the freezer now and was putting him inside.

I watched, in pain.

"You really think he poisoned that champagne?" he asked, breathing hard.

"He could have," she answered, pouring herself a second drink. "He always planned ahead."

"What a twisted mind you have," he muttered.

"Twisted, but surviving," she told him, taking a sip of her second drink.

She raised her gla.s.s toastingly toward the freezer.

"You're right. Max," she said. "It is my favorite brand.

Not the exact bottle of it that you'd planned on. However- as brother Brian put it-all's well mat ends well."

Oh G.o.d, I'd be able to fall! I thought, enraged.

Now Max sagged in the same spot where he'd thought his dead wife had been hanging minutes earlier.

I felt myself grow tense as his lips stirred laboredly.

"The brandy?" he asked in a faint voice.

"Oh, you didn't hear me, darling?" Ca.s.sandra said lightly. "Yes, of course. The brandy."

"The same stuff she's been putting in your food for thir- teen months," Brian added-

"Shut up," Ca.s.sandra told him.

"A lot more of it, though," Brian said.

"Shut up," she ordered.

I dosed my eyes. If I could only vanish from this awful place, I thought. Be an Effect--be gone in a flash. I hated what was going on and what had gone on. All of it was sickening, dis- maying- How could it have gone so far?

Finished with Max, Brian bowed toward my son.