The woman tipped up her chin to Ferguson, carefully, so as not to destroy the beauty of her pose. “What is he talking about, Ian?”
“Mr. Gunnarson claims you shot him last night.” He was watching her like a photographer, ready to click the shutter of his judgment. “There’s no doubt he was shot.”
“
“That’s one of the questions I came here to ask you.”
“Are there others? You keep on pitching low curves at me like that one, I’ll ask my husband to chuck you out on your ear.”
Ferguson shook his head at her.
I said: “Why did you shoot me? You know perfectly well you did.”
“I don’t know anything of the sort. And don’t stand over me, I hate people standing over me.” A thin edge of hysteria had entered her voice.
Ferguson picked up a chair and placed it for me, a safe distance from her long chair. “Please sit down. There’s no need to stand, after all.”
I noticed as I sat down that Dr. Trench had slipped in behind me and was standing quietly just inside the door. The woman appealed to her husband, holding up both hands to him with the fingers stiff and spread. “Tell him he’s making a mistake, Fergie. You know I couldn’t have done it, I was out like a light. It must have been somebody else shot him. Or else he’s nuttier than a fruitcake himself.”
“Was somebody else there, Mrs. Ferguson?”
“I don’t know, honest. I don’t know who was there. They had me drugged, and I lost two whole days. You don’t have to take my word, ask Dr. Trench.” She craned her pretty neck to look past me.
The doctor stood there polishing his glasses. “This is no time to try to settle anything. Why don’t you let it lie for now, Gunnarson? Mrs. Ferguson’s had a rough two days.”
The third day was turning out to be no less rough. I heard a car coming down the lane and thought it was Wills, arriving on cue. I went with Ferguson to the door. It was Salaman.
“I want to talk to the lady in person,” he said.
“Say whatever you have to say to me. My-wife is far from well.”
“She’ll be farther from it unless she pays her bills.”
Ferguson said in an old, weary voice: “I’ll pay you. I’ll give you a check on the Bank of Montreal.”
“Don’t you do it, Fergie.” The woman had come up behind us in the hallway. She brushed past me and leaned on Ferguson’s arm. “This character knows we’re in trouble, he’s trying to shake you down. I don’t owe him or anybody else any sixty-five thou. I don’t owe him sixty-five cents.”
“She’s lying her little head off,” Salaman said. “She thinks she can gamble my money away and lie herself out of it.”
“I never gambled in my life. I never even put a dollar in a slot machine.”
“You’ve never even been in Miami, I bet.”
“That’s right, I haven’t.”
“Liar. You slept with me in Miami two months running last summer. What’s more, you liked it. Maybe you want to forget it, now that you’re married to Pops here, but I’m here to tell you that you can’t.”
“Which two months last summer?” I said.
“July and most of August. I wasn’t planning to bring this up, but the lady forced me to.”
“I was in Canada all through August,” she said.
“That’s true,” Ferguson said. “I can vouch for it.”
“It takes more than that. I don’t like using muscle, but why are the ones with the most the hardest to collect from?” Salaman’s voice was rising. His hand went under his gabardine jacket, as if he felt a pain there, and came out holding an automatic. “Make with the checkbook, Pops. And take my advice, don’t try to stop the check.”
“I don’t know what goes on here,” the woman said, “but we’re not paying money we don’t owe.”
Salaman leaned toward her. “You’re Holly May, ain’t you?”
“That’s my name, little man. It gives you no right-”
“You’re the movie actress, ain’t you?”
“I used to be in the movies.”
“You remember me, don’t you? Hairy-legs Salaman with the loving disposition?”
“I never saw you before in my life and I wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot pole.”
“I hear you saying it. You used to tell it different.”
Ferguson looked at her in bitter doubt. She answered his look. “This boy has got me tabbed for somebody else. It happened another time last year, before I went to Canada. Some stores in Palm Springs sent me bills, and I hadn’t been in Palm Springs all winter.”
“Aw, cut it out.” Salaman reached for her face in a sudden movement and snatched off her harlequin glasses.
“Don’t you dare, you!”
“Hey!” Salaman said. “Come out in the light. I want to look at you.”
He took hold of her wrist, not roughly, but with an easy assumption of superior force, and pulled her out into the sun.
“Let go of my wife,” Ferguson cried. “I’ll break your bloody neck.”
Ferguson started to move on him. I tried to hold him. A bullet in the bowels was all he needed to complete his disaster. I couldn’t hold him with one arm. He tore himself out of my grasp.
The woman swung her body between her husband and the gun. She jerked her wrist free and grabbed her dark glasses out of Salaman’s hand. Salaman’s eyes remained intent on her face. Then he looked around at us. The gun muzzle followed his glance.
“What are you trying to pull on me? She ain’t Holly May. Where’s the real McCoy?”
“How would I know? There’s thousands of people look like me. They used to send me their pictures in the mail.” The woman let out a laugh of savage enjoyment. “Too bad, lover-boy, some gal conned you good. You better get out of here before somebody steals your wallet. And put that firearm away before you hurt somebody.”
“That isn’t a bad idea,” Trench said at my elbow. He walked toward Salaman with a double-barreled shotgun in his hands. “Put the cap pistol away and get out of here. I happen to be a skeet shooter, and this shotgun is loaded. Now get.”
Salaman got.
I noted his license number, and telephoned it in to the police station. If he had a criminal record, as he almost certainly had, concealed-weapons charges would keep him out of mischief for some time. This pleasant duty accomplished, I asked for Lieutenant Wills.
Wills was on his way in from the mountains. The desk sergeant said if it was urgent he could direct him by radio to Ferguson’s house. I told him it was urgent, and went back to the big front room. Meeting Trench in the hall, I asked him to absent himself for a while.
The moony spinnakers were strung out down the sea, ballooning home. Ferguson sat on a stool beside the woman’s chair, holding her hand. Or perhaps she was holding his hand. She was a powerful woman, whoever she was.
“Take off your glasses again, Mrs. Ferguson. Would you mind?”
She made a mouth at me. “I hate to. I look awful with this black eye.”
But she removed the harlequin glasses and let me look at her. The bruise was an old one, already turning green and yellow at the edges. She couldn’t have received it within the past fifteen hours. Besides, it was on the wrong side. Gaines was right-handed. The woman in the mountain house had been struck on the left side of the head by his revolver.
There were other, more subtle differences between that woman and the one in front of me. She had had a frozen face, as hard as a silver mask, and eyes like blowtorches which had burned holes in it. The face I was looking at was mobile and lively, in spite of the damage to it. The eyes and mouth were smiling.
“You’ll remember me.”
“For more reasons than one. Has somebody been masquerading as you?”
“It certainly looks like it.”
