She poured another drink. The bottle was nearly empty. She held up the glass and looked at it. “Well, you’re the high-priced expert.”
She was chromium-plated and solid ice both ways from the middle. From her attitude you’d think she was merely a spectator at all this. It was something she was watching from the first row balcony and finding a little tiresome.
The air was clammy with heat. My shirt stuck to me. I looked at her and the bottle with irritation. “Look. You can lay off that sauce.”
She glanced briefly up at me. “And you can mind your own business.”
I sat down across from her. I caught the front of her pajamas and pulled her up straight in the chair. “Let s get this straight. Right now. If we get out of here, for about the next two months I’m going to have the job of trying to hide you from the police. It’s going to be rough, believe me. And if you get caught I’m in the bucket too. So I don’t intend to make the job any harder by having to watch out for a blabber-mouthed lush wandering around in a fog. You’ll stay sober.”
There was only faint interest in her face, as if she were just waiting for me to crawl back under a rock. “If you’re certain you’ve finished,” she said, “you might take your hands off my clothing.”
“Yes, Empress,” I said. I shoved her back in the chair. “But keep it in mind.”
“Do you intend doing anything about getting us out of here?”
“I’m working on it, Your Highness. But we can’t go anywhere until after dark, anyway. So keep your pants on.”
“Barbarian.” “Who is that guy out there?” “How would I know? He hasn’t sent in his card.” “Cut it out. Who is he?” “I fail to see where it concerns you. You’re being paid
to neutralize him, not identify him.”
“Boyfriend?”
“As you wish,” she said boredly
“Who killed Butler? Both of you?”
She made no answer. She merely stared at the empty
space where I would have been sitting if I hadn’t already crawled back under the rock.
Even if we got out of here, I thought...
Living with her for two months was going to be fun. Which one of us would start to come unglued first?
Chapter Eight
I stood with my back against the rear window and stared out the front. As nearly as I could, I lined up the broken panes front and rear, and sighted. He’d be right in there somewhere. There was no reason for him to move, if he could see everything from where he was. He could watch the house there, and he could cover the road.
There was nothing to mark his spot, however. One area in the timber was just like any other. I looked farther up the hill. On the skyline and a little to the right I saw a tall tree that had apparently been struck by lightning. That would serve as a reference point.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Getting ready to call a cab,” I said.
I took off the white shirt. It could be seen too easily in the timber. I found an old blue one in the storeroom and put it on, and shoved the gun back in my belt.
She was still watching me. I went over to the table, picked up the bottle of whisky, and poured what was left on the floor.
“You’re going to have to be at least partly sober for this,” I said. “Now. The only reason he hasn’t walked in here and shot you is that he knows I’m here and that I’ve got a gun. It’s his gun. You still following me?”
She nodded, saying nothing.
“Well, I’m going out there. I’m going to try to get behind him. I hope I can get out the back without being seen. But the gimmick is that he might not shoot if he did see me. It’s you he wants. So he may pretend he doesn’t see me, and let me go. And when I’m out there on the wide part of the swing he may come in for you.
“The front door is locked. After I go out, bolt the back one. Sit in the storeroom, because it hasn’t got any windows. And if you hear him on the porch or if he starts
to kick in one of these other windows, scream. And keep screaming. Close the door to the storeroom and pile everything in there against it. And if you smell smoke, scream twice as loud.”
“Smoke?”
“That’s right. It’s one way.”
She got it, but it didn’t scare her much. “All right,” she
said. “And thank you for your solicitude. It’s touching.”
“Isn’t it,” I said.
I opened the back door and stepped out. Nothing happened.
I dropped off the porch and ran bent over toward the bushes at the edge of the water, the muscles bunched up and icy in the middle of my back. Guessing where he was and what he’d do was fine on paper, but out here in the open I could feel the cross hairs of a telescope sight crawling all over me like long-legged spiders. It was the dead silence all around and not ever knowing that made it bad.
I hit the bushes and dropped into them. A mosquito buzzed around my face and got in my nose. I stifled the impulse to sneeze, and searched the timber along the lake shore in both directions, turning my head very slowly. Nothing moved. I looked behind me, out across the lake, just for the sheer relief of seeing one place he couldn’t be. It was glassy under the sun. Out in the middle a mud hen swam, jerking its head, and left a V-shaped ripple on the surface. The trees were dark green along the other shore. It looked like the picture on a sporting-goods calendar.
I started crawling to the right, between the screen of bushes and the water’s edge. I had to slide under the little dock where the two skiffs were tied up. I was behind the shed now. A down log blocked my way. I crawled over it. A limb broke, snapping loudly in the hush. I fell to the ground and waited. Nothing happened. Three minutes went by. Four. I started again.
Mud sucked at my hands and knees. Sweat ran down my face. I kept watching for snakes. I looked back. The house and shed were lost in the trees, but I could see the dock. I had come over a hundred yards. A little more would do it. Wherever he was, he’d still be near enough to the edge of the timber to see the whole meadow.
I had to be behind him now. I stood up, wiped some of the mud off my hands, and began slipping through the timber, circling and heading away from the lake. Here in the low ground, underbrush was heavy, but ahead I could see it thinning out as I approached the foot of the hill. I stopped in a minute and held my breath to listen. If he had seen me leave, he’d be closing in now. I’d have to get there fast if she screamed. It was silent except for a squirrel chattering up on the hillside.
The grade began to pitch upward into the pines and stunted post oak. The soil was sandy here and matted in places with pine needles. My feet made no sound at all. I could see the meadow now and then through the trees, two or three hundred yards off to my left and a little below. I went straight up toward the crest of the ridge. In a few minutes I came out on level ground, turned sharp left, and began searching for the tall pine with the dead top. After another hundred yards I found it and faced down toward the lake for a glimpse of the house to orient myself. Through a small opening in the trees I could see part of the roof. I turned ninety degrees and went straight ahead for a hundred and fifty steps, going very slowly now and taking advantage of all the cover I could.
I stopped and squatted down at the foot of a pine. I should be directly above him. Somewhere in the trees below he was lying with his rifle beside him, watching the house. Moving nothing but my eyes, I began covering it foot by foot, every tree trunk, log, bush, every patch of mottled sunlight and shadow. As my eyes probed, I rubbed my hands in the sand and then together, to get the rest of the mud off. I checked the gun in my belt, to be sure it would come free when I needed it.
I could see nothing. No movement, no bit of color that could be clothing. He was farther down. I picked out a clump of bushes ten yards ahead and crept toward it, moving noiselessly on the sand. Crawling up beside it, I lay flat on my stomach and studied the hillside below me for five minutes. There was no sign of him.
I moved again. I could see the edge of the meadow in places below me now and knew this was as far as I could go. If I missed him and got in front of him I was dead. I stopped, lay still, and searched the hillside on both sides and ahead. My eyes made the slow, complete swing from right to left, stopped, and went back again.
I saw him.
