You Live Once Part 14

"He takes care of the boats and does odd jobs. Mary wouldn't. "

"But she did," Bettiger said.

"She went out with him quite a few times. She'd drive up there and meet him before you opened the place at the lake. He was crazy about her. She told me about it. She stopped going out with him because she said he had started to bore her. He was beginning to act jealous and possessive, and that was the one thing Mary never could stand."

Kruslov said, as though speaking to himself, "The body wasn't far off the main road between here and Smith Lake.

Jealous." He turned and nodded at Hilver. Hilver left his post by the far wall and headed toward the door.

At the door Hilver stopped and said, "The state boys?"

"No. This is ours. Take Watson along and pick him up yourself and bring him in. Any more, Miss Bettiger?"

"No more that I know of. I think I know them all. We.. always told each other everything. Gosh, it's going to seem kind of..." She dived into her purse for a handkerchief.

The more I thought about it, the better Yeagger fitted the role of murderer. He'd seen me with her up there at the lake. And I remembered a rather awkward little incident.

It had happened the first time I went there with her. We were looking for somebody, I forget who. We'd walked up to the horse barn. Mary was wearing slacks. When she went in ahead of me I told her that she'd missed one of her belt loops in the back. She had stopped at once and said, "So fix it!"

She undid her belt and I pulled it back through the loops and threaded it through the one she had missed. Then I had reached my arms around her and I had just started fumbling with the belt buckle when Yeagger walked into the barn. He'd stopped quickly. Mary had said h.e.l.lo to him, moved out of my arms and buckled her own belt. Even at the time I realized that it must have looked d.a.m.n funny to Yeagger, because he had no way of knowing how we had gotten into that situation-my arms around her, a pile of straw handy, and her belt undone. I realized now that it must have driven him crazy, finding us like that.

Apparently she had stopped seeing him, and he was jealous.

It wasn't too hard to imagine him driving down into the city on Sat.u.r.day night and hunting for her. He could very easily have spotted her car at the club. He looked like a man with a lot of patience. He could have followed us. It could have been Nels Yeagger who put the car lights on us. He was born and raised in the woods; it would have been no trouble for him to park up the street and come back silently through the gra.s.s. Maybe just in time to hear me give her the key. The rest would not have been hard to arrange, and he had provocation.

It made me feel better about my part of it. I hadn't done anything. The body had been found. If Yeagger had done it, and I was growing more convinced every moment that he had, they would break him down and my part would be forgiven in the triumph of catching him.

After a few more questions which uncovered nothing, the meeting broke up. Myrna Pryor had already left the room, right after Kruslov gave the account of the phone call. I walked out into the grey afternoon with Nancy and Dodd.

"She was so very much alive," Dodd murmured.

"And now she is so very much dead," Nancy said too sharply. I looked at her. I did not like the look in her eyes.

She was not a nice woman at that moment.

They drove off. As I stopped on the way toward my car to light a cigarette, Paul France caught up with me. He wore a pale grey felt hat with the brim turned up all the way around. It was pushed back a little. He looked like a mild rabbit.

"You like Yeagger for it," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"Her kid brother hired me, Sewell. I sat and watched people. Don't ever play poker with me. You came into that room and you held a straight open in the middle with all your money on the table. Then the call came. For you it was like a one card draw that filled that belly straight. You lost the lines in your face and your shoulders dropped a good two inches with relief."

"You have quite an imagination."

"I have none. I never believe anything I don't see.

That's maybe why I do good at this business."

"Maybe I was afraid Kruslov was aiming at me, Mr. France."

"Was that all?"

"I don't see how it could be anything else, do you?"

He smiled at me. I did not like his smile. There are certain sharp-toothed tropical fish that wear that same smile all the time. He went back toward the house. He wore a rumpled blue suit that looked too big for him. I watched the way he moved. Bullfighters move that way, and very good dancers, and top ring professionals. I was glad he had broken off the conversation, he made me uncomfortable. I was particularly glad I hadn't killed her. France had a certain gothic menace about him. And his eyes were as wise and ancient and knowing as those of a great lizard.

It was ten of six when I turned into the plant road. Just as I made the turn the black sky opened and the rain sluiced down, lifting a six-inch fringe of silver off the asphalt, so heavy that the wipers were useless. As I crept cautiously along I saw Toni Mac Rae distorted by the windshield water, galloping along the side of the road toward the bus stop, holding her purse over her head. The rain had caught her midway between the plant and the bus stop shelter.

She ran girl-fashion, knees in, heels kicking out, hips switching. It is awkward, and sometimes ludicrous, often charming. There seems an unpleasant distortion about any girl who runs as a boy runs.

I swung the car door open and yelled at her. She ran for the car, grabbed the door handle, swung herself in and plumped down on the seat, slamming the car door in the same motion. She was panting and she smelled of damp cloth and damp girl.

"Glub," she said.

"Bad timing."

"Another fifty feet and I could have stopped running. It wouldn't have made any difference then. I thought I could make it to the shelter before it hit. Bad guess. Gosh, I'm soaking."

The jumper was a darker blue and a closer fit. The white blouse showed pink where rain had pasted it to her arms.

Her hair was fairly dry right on top, but the ends were drenched. At the plant I swung around and headed back out toward the road.

"This time I get to take you home," I said.

"This time," she agreed. It was a standing argument between us, her not letting me drive her to or from work.

She lives in a rooming house at 985 Jefferson. My apartment is at 989, just two doors away. I hadn't known she was in the neighborhood until I had seen her one Sunday afternoon at the corner store. Then she told me the story. Her father lives with his second wife on the other side of town. He stayed single for several years after Toni's mother died, and then married again. The house is small and there was a new crop of children. Toni moved out, with no ill will on either side. It was a question of s.p.a.ce, primarily.

"Is there anything new about Mary Olan?" she asked.

"They found her body. She was strangled. They found the body north of here, in the woods."

"How awful!" Toni said.

"How perfectly dreadful! Who did it?"

"They don't know. They think a handyman named Yeagger did it." I told her why they thought he might have done it.

She sneezed three times, making of each small paroxysm a delectable thing indeed. I turned on the car heater. She pulled off her sodden shoes and curled nyloned toes in the direct heat.

"Poor Mary Olan," she said.

"I don't know, Toni. I really don't know. She had health and money and position. But she didn't seem to be having a very good time. She wasn't enjoying herself. She had a set of demons riding her, making with the spurs and flailing the whips."

The rain slackened a bit but as I turned into our street it came down again harder than before, making floods in the gutters and a metallic hammering on the car roof over our heads, turning the car into a small isolated world. I parked in her driveway, and when she reached for the door handle I said, "Relax a minute. It'll ease up. No need to get a worse soaking. I've got no place to go."

We sat there in the rain. Slow traffic crept by, headlights shining. I said, "I'll start this old phonograph record again. Why can't I drive you to work and back.