Killing Cousins (8 page)

He called the taxi and went down to the street to wait for it. He knew that he was behaving recklessly, and he felt a proportionate uneasiness, but it was absolutely clear that Fidelity wouldn’t in some circumstances and would in others, and he was determined, at whatever risk, to establish the circumstances in which she would. Anyhow, he thought, the risk surely wasn’t great. Old Quincy had said as much, and it was pretty certain that Quincy wouldn’t be involved in something like the appropriation of wheels, which was out of Quincy’s line, if he hadn’t assured himself ahead of time that there was practically no chance of anybody’s getting caught. It surely would do no harm to delay the delivery of the Buick a few days or a week, especially since it would be, in the meanwhile, down in the sticks by the lake he had mentioned, where it would hardly be seen, or attract any attention if it was.

There really was a lake and a lodge. The lodge didn’t belong to Cousin Fred, of course, but he couldn’t see that it would hurt anyone if he simply borrowed the use of it. It actually belonged to the man who operated the market for appropriated wheels with which Cousin Fred did business. Cousin Fred frequently did various errands for this man, who was a man of some importance, and one of these errands had taken Fred to the lodge on the lake. Being a perceptive fellow, he had recognized at once the possibilities of such a place, and he had seized the opportunity of having a duplicate made of the key with which he had been entrusted.

It certainly paid to think ahead, he thought.

Sitting back in the seat of the taxi that took him downtown, he closed his eyes and visualized Fidelity’s neat little behind, which was rather like a symmetrical Parker House roll.

TEN

 

After he had bathed and changed, putting his soiled garments into the bag from which he took the clean ones, Quincy left in the Buick. Stealth being necessary, he and Willie pushed the Buick out of the garage onto the incline of the drive, and Quincy leaped in nimbly and rolled backward to Ouichita Road without lights or engine. On the Road, he swung upgrade backward and then downgrade forward, still without lights or engine, and disappeared silently behind the high shrubs and bushes that grew along the way. Standing and listening in the drive outside the garage, Willie thought that she heard, finally, the Buick’s engine come to life at least a block or two away. Then she went into the garage, closing the big door after herself, and up through the house to her own room. She saw by the little clock on her dressing table that time had moved far into the morning, and she wondered if Quincy would make it to KC on schedule. But she was not particularly concerned about it, for such matters could safely be left in Quincy’s hands. Fortunately for her, the exertions of the night had exhausted her, and sleep, she thought, would come quickly. She went into the bathroom and showered, abusing Quincy a little for the mess he had left, and then, in her bed, lay and listened to the crying of an owl in her brain and went finally to sleep to the crying, although not so quickly as she had thought and hoped.

It was three o’clock the next afternoon when she opened her eyes and was instantly wide awake. It was clear to her at once that she was going to start thinking about things and getting depressed if she didn’t do something to avoid it, and the first thing to do, as a beginning, was to leave the house and go somewhere else. Considering places to go, she got up and walked over to a window and looked out onto the side lawn between the house and the hedge, and it was a hot day out there, filled with white sunlight. What she thought she would do then, seeing the hot white day, was to go swimming in the pool at the Club. The muscles of her thighs and back and arms were quite stiff from the disposal of Howard, and the swimming would be therapeutic for the muscles, as well as something to do for the sake of doing something. She thought that she would just wear her swimming suit under a beach coat, and so she put on the suit, which was rather a struggle because of its tight fit, and was on the way downstairs with the beach coat and a bright striped towel over her arm when the doorbell began to ring and kept right on ringing imperiously. She was exorbitantly startled by the harsh sound because it was a repetition of the incident that had happened last night when she was in practically the same position on the stairs, if not, fortunately, in the same circumstances. She had thought then that it was Mother Hogan ringing, and she thought the same thing now, but then it hadn’t been, and now it was. It was Mother Hogan. She came forcefully into the hall behind a magnificant bosom and stood looking sternly at Willie in her brief swimming suit. It was more of a glare than a look, to be precise. Mother Hogan, it was plain, was in no mood to tolerate equivocations.

“Willie,” she said, “where are you going naked?”

“I’m not naked. I’m wearing my swimming suit, as you can see, and it should be perfectly obvious, consequently, that I’m going swimming.”

“Shame on you, Willie! You’re as nearly naked as it’s possible to be publicly without being arrested, and in my opinion it shows extremely poor taste to go about in that condition when poor Howard has disappeared without a word to anyone.”

“He didn’t disappear without a word. He said a great many words that he damn well may be sorry for, and I’m determined that he must at least apologize for saying them when he returns, if he ever does.”

“Whatever he said, he must have been justified. Moreover, Willie, I believe that you know exactly where he went and where he is now. You’re refusing to tell me out of spite, and I demand that you tell me the truth at once.”

“Go ahead and demand as much as you please. I’ve told you and told you that I don’t know, and I don’t. It’s true, however, that I probably wouldn’t tell you if I did.”

“You see? You’re a spiteful creature, Willie, and probably worse. Have you been carrying on some disgusting affair with someone?”

“I don’t believe I care to discuss my affairs with you, disgusting or otherwise, and you had better be careful what you say unless you want to be sued for slander or something. It’s well known that you’re one of the worst scandalmongers in town, and care nothing whatever for the truth.”

Mother Hogan began to swell in the area of the bosom, which was already swollen enough, and to turn a kind of pale lavender in the face. Willie watched her uneasily in the fear that there might suddenly be another Hogan to dispose of, which would have made one more than she could possibly stand, and two too many. Mother Hogan wouldn’t breathe, that was the alarming thing. She simply stood there and kept swelling and swelling and turning that odd lavender in the face and refusing absolutely to breathe. Finally, however, just when it seemed that she must surely burst, she merely deflated instead in a kind of hissing anticlimax, like a punctured inner tube.

“Willie,” she said, “you’re a wicked girl to talk that way to a mother who is worried to distraction about her only son. However, I refuse to engage in further acrimonies. What I want to know is, do you propose to be reasonable and help me find Howard or not?”

“No, I don’t. Let Howard take care of himself. He has run away with three bags and the Buick and what else I don’t know, and he can come back when he gets ready, if he ever does, and I’m not sure at all that I give a damn if he doesn’t.”

“Very well. Now I understand clearly how you feel, and I must say it’s not surprising in one with your background. I’ll tell you something, though. There’s something very odd in all this, including your attitude, and if I haven’t heard from Howard by tomorrow morning at the latest, I shall certainly consult the police.”

“I wish you would. I’d like to consult them myself, as a matter of fact. I’m almost certain there must be some kind of law against desertion. It’s probable that I have all kinds of rights and advantages I’m not fully aware of.”

Mother Hogan retreated, an affronted and quivering mass of indignation, and Willie waited until she had completely cleared the area before going on to the garage and backing out the station wagon. She was somewhat disturbed by the threatened consultation with the police, and she would have to be quite careful about what she said, if it actually became necessary to say anything. It might be rather difficult to explain things satisfactorily to someone inclined by his position to be suspicious, but then, on second thought, it probably wouldn’t be so difficult after all, for she should have in tomorrow’s mail, or Tuesday’s at the latest, the letter from Dallas that Quincy had gone to send. As a matter of fact, Quincy was certainly in Dallas at this moment, if he wasn’t actually on his way back, and it was a comfort to think of Quincy and how clever and helpful he was. It was the practice of some people to consider Quincy a kind of failure, if not a joke, but it was certain that some of them who thought they were most superior, someone like Evan Spooner or others she could mention, would have been no help at all in a critical situation like this, and in fact they couldn’t even have been trusted to try.

There were quite a few members sitting at round tables on the terrace of the Club, and there were a great many others out on the golf course playing golf, but there didn’t appear to be so many out there as actually were, because they were so widely dispersed. In the pool were mostly kids, jumping off the high and low boards and floating about on little inflated rafts and things, but there were a few women stretched out in the sun around the sides on bright enormous towels, and one of the women stretched out was Gwen Festerwauld. She was stretched out on her belly with her face buried in the crook of an arm, and Willie, who did not at the moment care to talk with Gwen, went past her and dived into the blue water that was not really blue at all but only looked so because that was the color the tank was painted. The water was warm and deliciously sensuous on Willie’s skin. She swam slowly across the pool and back a few times, avoiding the kids, and then lay floating on her back with her eyes closed, and the warm, sensuous water was like a poultice, drawing the soreness from her arms and back and thighs. After a while she rolled over and swam to the side and crawled out and spread her towel beside Gwen’s and lay down. Gwen lifted her head, screwing up her eyes in the bright light.

“Hello, Willie,” Gwen said. “Is it you?”

“Yes,” Willie said, “it’s me.”

“Would you mind telling me where you’ve been all day?”

“I’ve been at home, that’s where. Why?”

“Because I was over at your house three times this morning, no less, and every time I rang and rang the bell but couldn’t get an answer. Are you quite sure you were at home?”

“It isn’t likely, Gwen, that I’d forget where I was no longer ago than this morning. I was in bed and asleep all the time and didn’t get up until this afternoon, only a little while ago. I couldn’t get to sleep last night, because of being upset about Howard and all, and so I finally took some pills, and I guess I took more than I should have or something, since I slept so long and couldn’t be wakened. Did you want to see me about something special?”

“I wanted to see if Howard had come back, that’s all.”

“Well, he hasn’t. Mother Hogan has been after me and after me to find out where he went, but I don’t know and I don’t care. He can come back or not. It’s all the same to me.”

“Do you suppose anything could have happened to him?”

“Oh, nonsense, Gwen. If anything had happened to him, an accident or anything like that, I would have heard about it long ago. Men carry all sorts of identification about with them in their wallets and places.”

“That’s true. It isn’t likely anything has happened to him, I guess. You’re probably right in refusing to get excited and behave foolishly. I told Marv about it, and he only laughed. He said Howard is sure to come back pretty soon.” Gwen rolled over onto her back and shuddered. “God, what a head! It’s simply bursting.”

“Aren’t you rid of your hangover yet? I must say it’s the longest one I’ve ever heard of.”

“Oh, I’m rid of the one I had yesterday. This is a new one. As I predicted, Marv came home about five and was feeling chipper as you please and acting so positively innocent that you’d never have suspected him of being a perfect bastard only a little while before. He insisted on going out to a back-yard barbecue that a friend of his had invited us to, and so we went, and there were two large kegs of beer that everyone felt compelled to empty, which we did, and I hope to die if I ever go on such a party again. It’s really amazing, Willie, how everyone simply sheds all his inhibitions at a back-yard barbecue with beer. It was all your chastity was worth to walk near a bush, and I can tell Marv, if he cares to know, that this particular friend of his who had the party has some very liberal notions regarding the prerogatives of friends.”

Willie buried her face in the crook of an elbow and quit listening. She was rather bored with Gwen’s hangovers and imperiled chastity, the latter of which was a fiction anyhow. Lying in the therapeutic sun, she began to wonder what she would do with the rest of the day and the coming night, which might be a bad time if she did nothing to prevent it, and what she planned to do was to go on lying in the sun for quite a long time and then swim some more in the warm water, which would feel cool after the sun, and finally to have something to eat and drink on the terrace, a sandwich and a salad and several Martinis. After that it would be dark, and she would drive home and take the pills that she had not needed or taken last night—or early this morning, rather—and almost the next thing she would know, with luck, it would be tomorrow, another day to be lived that could be lived when it came.

ELEVEN

 

The pills, as it turned out, were effective. Nine hours after taking them, she was wakened by the first-floor activity of Mrs. Tweedy, who had returned to duty after a two-day leave. Mrs. Tweedy, an ample woman of Irish extraction, did not so much approach her work as attack it, and it always astonished Willie a little to see order and cleanliness restored under her hands, for it seemed from the accompanying clatter and thumping that she was, on the contrary, tearing the place apart. This excessive noise was generally annoying, especially early in the morning, but this particular morning it had an exactly opposite effect, and it was, in fact, as comforting to Willie as music or a warm bath. It seemed to signify the resumption of normalcy in a reasonable world where one could expect to survive comfortably, with a little luck and ingenuity, in spite of unexpected and unfortunate episodes that might disrupt events temporarily.

She climbed out of bed immediately and bathed and dressed and went downstairs briskly. Mrs. Tweedy was in the sunny dining room, and she received Willie with a moist eye and a determined cheeriness that informed Willie at once that the Tweedy ears had intercepted already the report of Howard’s defection. Well, there was no doubt where Mrs. Tweedy’s sympathy lay. She had been herself deserted by
two
husbands, one who had thoughtlessly died and another who had thoughtfully caught a freight going west, and even if she had known the true disposition of Howard, it is doubtful that she would have felt that he had received any worse than he deserved.

“Good morning, dearie,” Mrs. Tweedy said warmly.

“Good morning, Mrs. Tweedy. I believe I’ll have a simply enormous breakfast, if you don’t mind. Scrambled eggs and bacon and toast and jelly and coffee and a large glass of orange juice to begin with.”

Mrs. Tweedy was clearly nonplused by this ravenous lightheartedness. She had been prepared to find Willie in distress, if not collapse, and she didn’t now know what to say or what attitude to assume with this unexpected person who came downstairs demanding scrambled eggs and appeared to have been relieved of a burden rather than to have suffered a loss. For a moment, truth to tell, Mrs. Tweedy resented Willie’s unwarranted behavior, which deprived her of the chance to play the faithful servant in a tight little domestic drama, but then she began to understand, of course, that Willie was only hiding her shame and hurt beneath a precarious pretension, the gutty little thing, and it was enough to break your heart to see it. So much courage to find, Mrs. Tweedy thought, in one so slight—hardly bigger than a pound of soap. Quickly adjusted and still moist of eye, Mrs. Tweedy retreated to the kitchen and returned with orange juice. Willie accepted it and began to sip it, sitting alone at table in the morning sunlight.
What,
she thought, while Mrs. Tweedy cracked an egg in the kitchen,
shall I do today?

One thing I must do,
she thought,
is see Quincy as soon as possible and assure myself that everything went well with him on the trip to Dallas. This can be arranged easily enough, for all I have to do is go into the bank and cash a check at his cage, which will be a natural way to see him that will excite no suspicion, and fortunately I can still cash a check as an excuse for going, for Howard at least left the money in our joint checking account, the deceptive bastard, although he wiped out the savings account and cashed the bonds. The bank will open at nine o’clock, and it is now past eight, so I will drive down there in the station wagon after I have finished my breakfast. I do hope everything has been completed satisfactorily with regard to the Buick and the letter, and I really have no doubt that everything has, for Quincy is exceedingly competent when he tries to be, and I have great confidence in him.

Mrs. Tweedy, after a while, returned with the rest of breakfast—golden eggs and crisp toast and coffee. Watching Willie devour these good things with apparently keen appetite, she admired more than ever the quality of Willie’s pretension. You would never know to watch her, poor little thing, that she had suffered a great blow to her pride, if nothing else, and was holding herself together only with the greatest effort. Mrs. Tweedy did wish, however, that there was a way to refer to Howard’s defection in a natural manner that might elicit some discussion of the matter and afford her an opportunity to express her opinion, which was a decided one.

“Do you wish to speak with me about something, Mrs. Tweedy?” Willie said.

“I was just wondering if you might have some special instructions this morning,” Mrs. Tweedy said.

“No, I can’t think of anything special.”

“About the cleaning, I mean.”

“There’s not a great deal of cleaning to be done. Just the routine things.” “What I mean is, should I clean Mr. Hogan’s room?”

Willie was silent for a few moments, staring into the bright sunlight. Mrs. Tweedy thought that she looked very young and sad, like an unhappy child, and it was apparent that the mentioning of Mr. Hogan’s name, which wasn’t, in Mrs. Tweedy’s opinion, even the beginning of what he ought to be called, had upset her so greatly that she now must wait to regain control of her emotions before answering. This was Mrs. Tweedy’s interpretation of the silence, but it was not quite a true one. The truth was, Willie was trying carefully to remember if anything incriminating or suspicious might be left in Howard’s room that Mrs. Tweedy shouldn’t see, but she couldn’t think of anything of that kind that had ever been there at all, except the gun and Howard himself, both of which had been removed. After the few moments of silence, she nodded her head and said to Mrs. Tweedy that she should, of course, clean Howard’s room as usual.

“You’re a brave, sweet girl, dearie,” Mrs. Tweedy said.

After this oblique reference, Mrs. Tweedy went back to her work, wishing for Howard a fate almost as unfortunate as the one he had in fact suffered, and Willie finished her eggs and bacon and toast and poured a second cup of coffee from the pot on the table. She sipped the coffee and saw, looking out the window onto the side lawn, that Marv Festerwauld’s dachshund, named Lester, had slipped through the hedge again and had treed the red squirrel that lived in a maple outside the kitchen door. It was plain from the ridiculous way in which he kept jumping into the air and opening and closing his mouth that Lester was barking at the squirrel, which was, no doubt, although he could not be seen by Willie, sitting on a branch above and chattering back at Lester. All of this absurd activity took place in perfect silence, because of the windows being closed for air conditioning, and this was what made it amusing and worth watching.

It made Willie think of the old question about whether a falling tree would actually make any sound if there were no one around to hear it. She had herself never cared for intellectual problems and discussions of that kind, not being the intellectual type, but it was something that would probably interest someone like Quincy, who was always thinking about difficult things that didn’t seem to matter much one way or another, and it was time, she thought, now that Quincy had come into her mind in connection with Lester and the squirrel and the hypothetical falling tree, to go down to the bank and see if Quincy was all right and if everything had gone well with him.

She went out into the hall and called upstairs to Mrs. Tweedy that she was leaving, and then she went on to the garage and backed out the station wagon and drove downtown. The large revolving clock attached to the bank building reported that it was nine fifty-three when she passed through the door below it, and the thermometer on the back side of the clock indicated eighty-six degrees. The instant she stepped into the cooled interior air, she had the most terrible and debilitating feeling that Quincy was not there in his cage where he was supposed to be, and that something disastrous had happened after all to spoil his plans and ruin everything. The feeling was so strong and her conviction of disaster so certain that she felt quite faint and could not force herself to look in the direction of Quincy’s cage. Instead, she sat down on a wooden bench along the wall and stared at the floor until she was feeling normal again, except for the dreadful conviction of disaster, and finally, all at once in order to get it over with instantly, she looked up in the direction of the cage, and there was Quincy safe and sound in spite of her sudden foolish fear to the contrary.

She was seized by a wild compulsion to giggle aloud in sheer relief, but she buried the incipient giggle under a deep breath and stood up. It was just as well, as it turned out, that she had delayed on the bench, for Quincy was just finishing with a patron while the other tellers had been idle, which would have made it appear odd, to say the least, if she had waited for Quincy when there was no necessity. It just showed you, she thought, how even a bad experience could turn out for the best and be of service in the end.

She walked over to Quincy’s cage and began to write a check to herself for fifty dollars, which she did not need, and Quincy smiled and nodded in a casual kind of way that was absolutely admirable, the cool and clever little devil. You couldn’t possibly have told from observing him that they were any more than amiable cousins by marriage, or that either of them had been up to anything the least secretive or out of the ordinary.

“Good morning, Cousin,” Quincy said.

“Good morning,” she said. “I’d like fifty dollars, if you please.”

She pushed the check through the little aperture, and Quincy asked her if she wanted it any particular way, meaning in particular denominations, and she said No, and he counted out a twenty and two tens and a five and five ones.

“Did you have a good weekend?” he said.

“It was pretty quiet,” she said. “Nothing much happened.”

“Same here.”

“It’s going to be a hot day. I noticed by the thermometer when I came in that it’s already close to ninety. I’ll probably go swimming at the Club later. About five.”

“Maybe I’ll see you out there.”

Which meant that he would, and that was about all they could say—only casual remarks because of the chance of being overheard. But Quincy kept looking at her and smiling in that cool way of his, and just as she was turning to leave he slowly winked his offside eye in relation to the teller in the next cage, and she knew that everything had indeed gone well, as she had hoped and Quincy had promised.

Slipping the fifty dollars into her purse, smiling and nodding casually as one cousin-by-marriage to another, she turned and walked out of the bank, and her feeling of relief had grown into a kind of quiet elation and sense of well-being. It was too early for lunch, especially after such a hearty breakfast, and so she decided to spend some time shopping. She did this leisurely for about two hours, moving from shop to shop and leaving her purchases to be delivered or picked up later, for there was none among them that she really needed and very few, if any, that she would even want after she received them. Shortly after noon she went to the Hotel Quivera and had lunch in the coffee shop. She wished she could have a Martini before and after, but the bar was not open yet. Lacking a Martini to linger over, she lingered instead over a glass of iced coffee, and she managed, altogether, to kill another hour pleasantly, after which, on a kind of impulse, she went to a movie. Sitting in the movie, she remembered that she had failed to call Mrs. Tweedy and give notice that she wouldn’t be home for lunch, and this was a dereliction for which Mrs. Tweedy had practically no tolerance, and she would have to be pacified later.

The movie was exceedingly dull. The male lead was played by a young man whose hair was too long, and it was, in fact, longer than the hair of the young woman who played the female lead, which was too short. In spite of being bored, Willie continued to sit in the cool, dark theater until her eyes happened to wander to the clock under a small light to the right of the screen, and she saw that it was half-past two. The time reminded her that the mail had surely been delivered on Ouichita Road, and that she might have a letter from Dallas.

Although there was no hurry to go and get the letter and read it, she nevertheless felt compelled to do so. She left the movie and drove home in the station wagon, and there, still in the box, was the letter. It had come by air mail. She carried it into the house and read it in the living room, and in spite of expecting it and knowing all about it, she felt a strange and unpleasant little shock while reading it, as if it had actually been written by Howard himself, even though he was dead and buried among the brambles beside the creek on the farm of Quincy’s maternal uncle.

As she stood there with the letter in her hand, feeling at first the shock and then a vague uneasiness, the bell at the front door began to ring, and she went out into the hall and opened the door, not waiting for Mrs. Tweedy, who was upstairs. A man was standing there with his hat in his hand. Willie didn’t know him and couldn’t remember having seen him before, but she had an immediate conviction that he was a policeman, and that was, in fact, what he was.