don’t want his goddamn bed, I haven’t wanted it for years. I like the pressure off me!”
“Oh… wait,” I said, “wait a minute… no wonder. No wonder. Your husband has never known a thing about this, has he? Damn! Albert came to you with the story about Ray’s cheating, didn’t he? Albert came to you with the demands.”
“This is nonsense.”
“It sure is. No wonder your husband was so indignant when I made those implications about him killing Albert! And you, you didn’t really give a damn about that little girl he was screwing, did you?”
“I told you, I didn’t want to be a part of his damn sex life! Raymond and I, we have an understanding, a way of living together. Our life together is the business. The business is our relationship. We don’t have any children, couldn’t have any, our family is the business, and our relationship is the business, and why don’t you go fuck yourself!”
“You don’t want your husband to find out about Albert, do you? You don’t want him to know that you had your own brother killed.”
“Quarry…”
“And no wonder. A woman who’ll murder her brother might do most anything…”
“How much, Quarry? I have another four thousand in the house. Just wait here. I’ll get it. I’ll get it for you.”
“Why did you want him dead? What threat did Albert pose you? You didn’t give a damn about your husband’s cheating.”
She said, quietly, in defeat, “He said… he said he’d tell everyone about Raymond… he’d go to the press and he’d tell them about Raymond and the girl.”
And I laughed.
Because it all made sense; the motive was there at last.
Scandal.
An empire built on chicken soup and fudge recipes and family cannot endure a scandal. The rest of the world may accept adultery, the jet set and movie stars may be able to screw when and whom they please, but not in the Midwest, not when you’re Linda Sue and Ray Springborn, the Kitchen Korner couple.
And who knew how many ether Springborn skeletons- in-the-closet Albert would have been able to reveal, intended to reveal? Raymond Springborn’s mob connec- tions, perhaps? And what else did Linda Sue have to hide from her public? There had to be something. Perhaps any number of somethings. Whatever they were, the scandals would be fueled by their source: the broken-down, pitifully neglected member of the Kitchen Korner clan, Albert Leroy.
“So that’s why Albert Leroy had to die,” I said.
“He died a long time ago,” she said “He was a vegetable.”
“Yeah, I know, a potato, you told me before. What did he ask for?”
“He wanted to be vice-president of Springborn-Leroy Enterprises He wanted decision-making power. He wanted a fat salary, like you guessed.”
“He wanted too much.”
“Yes, he wanted too much! He was a lousy janitor, how could he expect to move into an executive position? He couldn’t’ve handled it, he would have been a public embarrassment to us, if he didn’t run us out of business first. He was enough of an embarrassment to us as he was.”
“What about that fabled treasure of his?”
“He did have around nine or ten thousand in the bank, left from his inheritance.”
“What of that?”
“It’s mine now. Or was. I’ve given you people the equivalent, now that you’ve been paid twice.”
“Shit, that was nice of your brother, wasn’t it? Paying you back what it cost to murder him.”
“What’s the purpose of this? What do you want, Quarry?”
“Nothing. This four thousand will do fine.”
“You’ll leave, then?”
“I want to know one thing more.”
“What?”
“Who is ‘Vince’?”
“I have no idea.”
“Now don’t bullshit me, Linda Sue. Maybe housewives all over middle America would believe you, but this is your brother’s killer you’re talking to.”
“I tell you, I have no idea! I heard Raymond mention the name just now, when you two were talking up in the tower room. I never heard the name mentioned before.”
“You realize, don’t you, that this ‘Vince’ is probably the guy who stole the four thousand and killed my partner?”
“What do you care? You have four thousand and you’re still alive.”
She was right.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be out of Port City before midnight.”
“Make it sooner if you can.”
“Don’t worry. I got no intention of settling down here.”
“Quarry…”
“What?”
“Why, uh… why…?”
“Why aren’t I twisting your arm for any more than just this four thousand? Because your brother tried the same thing, didn’t he? And you murdered him for it. Hell, I’m not even your brother. I’d hate to think what you’d have done to me.”
Her eyes and mouth were tight in the plastic surgeon’s mask. “You pompous ass… where do you get off with that condescending tone? You keep saying that I murdered my brother. Let me remind you, you smug smart-ass bastard… you murdered Albert Leroy.”
“No,” I said. “I killed him. You murdered him.”
And I left her to think about it. I hoped she’d think about it a long time. But I doubted it.
26
I woke with a start. I looked at my watch. Eight-thirty. I’d slept fifteen minutes. After two hours of staring at the ceiling, thinking more thoughts than is healthy, I’d dropped off to sleep, which wasn’t healthy either. When Port City was just another unpleasant memory, then I could sleep. Not now. Not yet.
Peg was beside me, asleep for an hour and a half, an arm draped loose across my midsection, her head snuggled under my shoulder, one breast crushed casually against my side. We’d had supper in the kitchenette and dessert in the bedroom and spent the rest of our time drinking the one third of a bottle of Scotch which constituted the remainder of her liquor supply and mindlessly chit-chatting, finding out as much about each other as we cared to know.
She gave me an uneasy feeling. All day, being around her had provided a pleasant but nagging sensation, like a dream not quite remembered. It was as though she were a thought in the corner of my mind trying to make itself known, a barely defined reminder of something my mind had long before blocked out. I didn’t want to admit what it was, who she indirectly reminded me of. I didn’t want those feelings to crawl up out of my subconscious and onto a rock of awareness where they could wriggle and tease and bathe in my understanding of them. I didn’t want to face the realization that I hadn’t felt like this since I was young, a young man who believed in certain absurd abstract notions, a young man who married before he should have, feeling emotions he defined as profound and should have seen for the animal instincts they were.
But Peg, this sexpot centerfold blonde right out of a wet dream, this gracefully aging beauty who liked one- night stands with greasy-haired potheads ten years her junior, this hard, delicate little broad who screwed me right after she saw me, she was getting dangerously close. She was getting dangerously close to being a person in my
