reached a wide place where he could turn around. Then he and the Chrysler were gone and I was standing there alone in the heat, listening to the rainwater drip in the trees and waiting for my pulse rate to slow to normal.
Get out of town, stranger, or I’ll fill you full of lead…
When I got back to the Sportsman’s Rest there was a dark blue Datsun parked in front of Kerry’s and my room, and when I went inside she said, “I rented a car while you were off in Ragged-Ass Gulch. I’m tired of being stuck here all by myself. At least now I can go someplace if I feel like it.”
Her tone dared me to argue with her; I didn’t argue with her. I went to the telephone instead and tried to call Helen O’Daniel. No answer. I called the sheriffs department and asked for Jim Telford. He was gone for the day, and no, they weren’t allowed or even inclined to give out his home number. I looked up his name in the telephone directory. He wasn’t listed.
Kerry said, “Martin Treacle called. He wants you to call him back right away.”
“Did he sound calmer than he was this morning?”
“No. I think he wants his hand held.”
“Let’s go have dinner,” I said.
So we went and had dinner-a companionable one, for a change. And we came back and I tried the O’Daniel number again and still nobody answered. I read a 1936 issue of Detective Fiction Weekly; Kerry read her mystery novel. I wanted to make love in spite of my sore face; she didn’t. She went to sleep and I lay there, wide awake, thinking about the investigation and contemplating my lot in life.
At the moment, neither one seemed very promising.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The way Monday started off, I knew it was going to be a humdinger.
I didn’t sleep very well that night-bad dreams, some involving explosions and fire and hands with guns in them shooting me, then dragging my body down into dark water; others crazily erotic and involving not Kerry but Jeanne Emerson. When I woke up in the morning I felt groggy and my face hurt and the sheets were damply bunched under me. I also happened to be alone in bed: a little fumbling around told me that.
I managed to get my eyes open, to sit up. Kerry was hunched at the dining table across the room, wearing nothing but her bra and panties, playing solitaire. Uh-oh, I thought with a fuzzy sort of bewilderment. Now what did I do? The only times I had seen her play solitaire was when she was angry and upset, and as far as I knew she hadn’t gone out anywhere. Which left me-something to do with me.
“Morning,” I said, more or less cheerfully. And waited.
Silence. She didn’t even look my way, much less quit slapping cards down on the table.
“Hey. Remember me?”
Silence.
“Kerry? What’s the matter?”
She paused with part of the deck in one hand and a red queen in the other. Her head came around, slowly, and the look she gave me would have wilted a rose at twenty paces. “What’s the matter?” she said. “I’ll tell you what’s the matter. You talk in your goddamn sleep.”
“What?”
“In your sleep. Talk. You.”
“What?”
“‘Oh, Jeanne,’ you said. ‘Oh, baby.’ And the whole time you were pawing me and snuggling up. ‘Oh, Jeanne baby.’ You son of a bitch.”
I was awake now, good and awake. I swung out of bed and got up too fast and almost tripped over a chair that was on that side. As it was, I reeled a little and banged into the wall and cracked my elbow. I wheeled around to face her-the Naked Ape, standing there with his tail and his secret hanging out.
“Listen,” I said, “listen, I had some kind of crazy dream, that’s all. You can’t hold somebody responsible for what he dreams. The subconscious-”
“Don’t give me that crap,” she said. “I don’t give a damn about your subconscious. It’s your conscious I’m interested in. Not to mention your conscience. How many times did you sleep with her?”
“What?”
“Jeanne Emerson, the Chinese fireball. How many times?”
“I never slept with her, not once-”
“Hah. ”
“Kerry-”
“Sure. ‘Oh, Jeanne baby.’ Sure.”
“I’m telling you, I did not go to bed with her.”
She slapped the red queen down hard enough to make the other cards jump. Otherwise, silence.
“Come on, now,” I said, “this is silly. You can’t be this upset over some stupid dream I had-”
“It wasn’t your dream, it was what you said. And what you did.”
“What did I do?”
“Something you never did before.”
“ What, for God’s sake?”
She told me what. I gawped at her a little.
“I don’t believe it,” I said. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“Not to me, no. That’s the point. You sure as hell must have done it to her.”
“Look, how many times do I have to say it, I never did anything with or to Jeanne Emerson!”
“You’re lying. You’ve got guilt written all over your face.”
“Goddamn it, I’m not lying!”
“Quit yelling.”
“I’m not yelling either!” I was good and mad now, partly because I was feeling guilty-and that was stupid because I really didn’t have anything to feel guilty about. “I’m tired of all this, the way you’ve been acting lately. Accusations, mood changes, me having to walk on eggshells around you all the time… I won’t put up with it anymore. ”
“You’re trying to change the subject-”
“The hell I am. You want me to start confessing; how about if you do some confessing? How about telling me why you’ve been so bitchy the past couple of weeks. ”
She looked away from me. Her face was white, her hands were clenched into tight little fists.
“Well?” I said.
She came up out of the chair so fast she whacked into the table and sent the cards flying. The look of strain on her face was a little frightening. “Did-you-sleep-with-Jeanne-Emerson?”
The way she said that was a little frightening, too, and it took the edge off my own anger. I started to reach out to her, but she backed away from me; her hands were still clenched.
“Kerry, calm down-”
“Don’t tell me to calm down. Tell me the truth. Did you screw her?”
“No. I swear to you I didn’t. ”
“Liar. ”
“I said I swear it to you. She wanted me to. She even… ah hell, she came on to me one night, the last time I saw her. The night she came to my flat to take her photographs.”
“Came on to you? What do you mean by that?”
“Made a pass at me, what do you think I mean?”
“She came right out and asked you to go to bed with her?”
“No. I was showing her something-”
“I’ll bet you were.”
“-in one of my pulp magazines, and she put her arms around me and kissed me and then… ”
“And then what? ”
