Dart grinned. 'Hate poetry, love poetic justice. Once you start questioning Hugo Driver, everything he owns is up for grabs.
'I think something went on at Shorelands that nobody but the two of them knew about. After they came back, they were partners. Chancel even had Driver stay overnight at the Poplars a couple of times. Ordinarily, he wouldn't have bothered to spit on a weasel like Hugo Driver, even one who made a lot of money for him.'
'So Driver had something on him.'
'Or he had something on Driver, and he wanted to make sure that Driver didn't forget it.'
'Could only be one thing,' Dart said. 'Tell me what it is. Get it right, I'll do you a big favor.'
'Hugo Driver killed Katherine Mannheim. Maybe he didn't mean to, but he killed her anyhow, and Lincoln Chancel knew it. Chancel helped him hide the body in the woods, and Driver was in his power ever after.'
Dart nodded. 'Desperate man, desperate act. Why? What happened?'
'One day Bill Tidy spotted Driver doing something fishy with her bag. Maybe he stole a notebook and found enough to realize that all he needed to pull himself out of his hole was a little more of the story. Driver was a thief; he did what came naturally to him, he stole her ideas. Maybe he broke into Gingerbread looking for more material, and Katherine surprised him. She said some thing cutting to him - she was good at that, you wouldn't have liked her at all. Maybe he hit her. Whatever he did, she died. Driver wasn't ruthless enough to be a killer, like Lincoln Chancel.'
Another thought came to her. 'It almost has to have been something like that. She would never have invited Driver into Gingerbread, but he was inside it because in the book he used a photograph she kept on her desk.'
Dart smiled up at the roof of the car and hummed a few bars of 'Too Marvelous for Words.' His smile broadened. Turn this buggy around and pick up 9. I've just had a particularly lovely idea.'
'Didn't you say something about a favor?'
'I believe I did. This is going to mean a lot to you.'
She glanced at his gleeful face.
'The time ever comes I have no choice but to kill you, I'll do it quickly. Goes against the grain, making a sacrifice here, but I guarantee you won't suffer.'
'You're quite a guy, aren't you, Dick?'
'Go to the wall for my friends,' he said.
When they got to Pittsfield, Dart manacled a hand to her elbow and guided her through shops for shaving supplies, a toothbrush, a glossy silk tie, boxer shorts, and over-the-calf socks. Outside of town, he asked her to drive into a gas station and pulled her into the men's room. Nora looked away as he filled the tiled cubicle with a fine sea-spray. 'If cars could run on piss, I'd be a national resource' Dart removed his cap and leaned over the sink to inspect the bandage wound around the sides of his head. 'Cut this off me.' Nora found the scissors and worked the tip of one blade under the topmost layer of cloth. Soon she was unwinding a long white strip from around his head.
'Who did this for you?'
He gave her a glance of weary irony.
When the last of the bandage came away, Dart tilted his head and probed his hair with his fingers while scrutinizing himself in the mirror. 'What's a couple of lumps to an adventurous soul, eh? Hurt pretty good at the time, though.'
'Distinct memory of pain. Flashes of light behind my eyes. Second biggest headache of my life.'
'What was the biggest?'
Dart lowered his hand and his suddenly expressionless eyes met hers in the mirror. In the hot little box of the bathroom, Nora went cold. 'Popsie Jennings. Old whore landed a solid one with her andiron. Still hurts worse than either of yours.' He looked away and fingered a spot on the back of his head. 'I have to shave, brush my teeth, make myself pretty for Shorelands. What's my name again?'
It took her a moment to understand what he meant. 'Norm. Norm Desmond.'
He smiled at her and took the razor and shaving cream from a paper bag. 'Tonight Mrs Desmond is going to bestow upon Mr Desmond a particularly deep marital pleasure. At least twice. You have to work off your debt.' He squirted shaving cream onto his fingers and began working it into his stubble.
'I want to tell you about the fun we're going to have at Shorelands. Going to be a great pleasure for both of us.' He rinsed his fingers and began drawing the razor down the right side of his face. 'You want to talk to the old ladies, right? Win them over, pump them for information?'
'That's right.'
'Let's do it the stand-up way. Scam the shit out of some old dame, she'll spill everything she knows. You did it to Natalie Weil, so do it to one of them.'
Nora watched him shave. Unlike any other man she had known. Dart cleared an area of foam and whiskers, then ran the razor back over the same patch of skin in the opposite direction, in effect shaving himself twice. 'You want me to kidnap one of the maids.'
'Tie her up, beat the crap out of her, whatever. Get her out of the house and into the car. She says whatever she says, and then I kill her. Be interesting. Lot of entertainment in an old lady.' He threw out his arms, splattering foam on the tiles. 'I award myself the Dick Dart Prize for Superior Achievement in Twisted Thinking. I'll be your support group, give you all the help you need to do your thing.' He finished shaving his face, ran water over the head of the razor, and began on his neck. 'Afterwards, we have to trust each other. It'll be you and me, babe, the Dream Team. After the first one, cops don't care how many murders you commit. In death-penalty states they don't bring you back to execute you all over again. Shows how fucked up they are, the low value they put on life.' He ran the razor over a few patches of foam, reversed direction and shaved the same places again, then rinsed his face with cold water and reached for a handful of paper towels.
'How do you see us ending up? If you don't mind my asking.'
Dart blotted his face, threw the wadded towels on the floor, and looked meditative for a moment before taking the new toothbrush from the bag. He snapped the case in half and tossed it aside. 'Toothpaste.'
Nora rooted in her bag and brought out her toothpaste. 'Well?'
'Roadblock. A million cops and us. Hey, if we get to Canada, we might have a whole year. Essential point is, we do not under any circumstances allow ourselves to be arrested. We broke out of one jail, we're not going to wind up in another one. Live free or die.' He bent forward and attended to his teeth.
At the bronze Shorelands Trust sign, they drove between overgrown stone pillars into a tangle of green. 'The drums, the beastly drums,' Dart intoned, 'will they nevah cease, Carruthers?'
Crowded on both sides by trees, the path angled right and disappeared. Nora reached the curve and saw the path divide at a wooden signpost standing on a grass border. One branch veered left, the other right, into a muddy field. As they approached the sign, the words grew legible. MAIN HOUSE.
GINGERBREAD. HONEY HOUSE. PEPPER POT. RAPUNZEL. CLOVER. MONTY'S GLEN & THE SONG PILLARS. MIST FIELD.
All of these lay somewhere up the left-hand path. VISITOR PARKING pointed to the field.
Nora drove out of the woods and turned right. A man in khaki work clothes pushed himself out of a lawn chair next to a trailer on a cement apron and came forward, admiring the car.
'What a beauty,' he said. 'Godalmighty.' He had furrowed cheeks and small, shining eyes. Dart snickered.
'We like it,' Nora said, giving Dart a sharp look.
The man stepped back and licked his lips. 'Don't make them like this baby anymore.'
'By gum, they shore don't. Pops,' Dart said.
The man glanced at Dart and decided to pretend he wasn't there. 'Ma'am, if you're here on a day visit, there's a ten-dollar entrance fee. If you're an overnight guest, pull right into the lot there and check in at Main House after I find your name on the list.'
'We're staying overnight. Mr and Mrs Desmond.'
'Back in a jiffy.' After another lingering look at the car, he went into the trailer.
'Did a little prison time, but not for anything interesting,' Dart said.
'You don't know that.'
