“I’m for both of you, son, and don’t forget that!” he said in a rough tone. “But I want you to stop acting like the emotionally wounded little boy. You’re jealous and mad as hell, deep down, and in a way I can’t blame you. But just because Pryor’s made a play for her doesn’t mean she’d ever be a party to hurting you.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“You’re damn right I’m right. Now forget it. I’ve got things to do. I’ll see you in the morning. How’s the head?”
“Better.”
“Then take some more of those pills the doctor gave you and rest. That’s the thing you need most.”
There wasn’t much time. Every meal I ate, every nap I slept brought the sands that nearer to a finish. We could not keep secret the disappearance of the body from the funeral home indefinitely. The time would come for a burial, for an official statement. Lew knew all that as well as I did. He knew how far he had his neck out.
But there was, for me, too much time. Time in which to think, to picture Keith Pryor gradually making head way with Vicky—perhaps holding her in his arms. To watch them in the tortured eye of my mind standing close together. How many times had she lifted the warm softness of her lips to his? How many words thick with passion had he murmured to her?
I tried to keep the pictures out of my mind.
Lew came to my room the next morning with a downcast expression. She had seen Pryor last night. I knew that even before he spoke. They’d met on a downtown corner, gone to a dine and dance place in a cheaper section of town. They hadn’t come in until very late. The shadow that Lew had put on their trail had reported that they hadn’t danced much. They’d talked with people in the juke joint, drifted on to another in the raw section of town. They hadn’t been at all romantic, the shadow had reported.
Good, I thought with grim satisfaction. Maybe it’s going sour between them, with death a black blight on their feelings. Maybe the husband, dead, stands between them now far more than the living husband had.
Or perhaps he was simply playing it smart, biding his time, not rushing her.
I sat there thinking about it a long time after Lew had gone. The pictures of him and her together came back more vivid than ever. I wondered how much more of this waiting I could endure.
The second day passed, and I knew my nerve was going. I was cracking up and I seemed unable to halt the process. Lew wasn’t moving fast enough. He had found nothing conclusive. The second night his shadow had lost Vicky and Pryor across town in a section of cheap hotels.
Lew was a worried man that night. He wouldn’t take his eyes off my face. He insisted on staying in the room until I had gulped the pills Hardy had given me.
But I palmed them instead and drank the water as if I were swallowing the pills. I lay back across the bed, closed my eyes, and after a time Lew went out. I waited until I heard his footsteps fade downstairs; then I sat up, threw the pills under the bed, and began dressing. I didn’t put on my shoes. I wanted no echoing footsteps as I slipped down the rear stairs out of the house.
I stayed in shadows and used back streets. I was still weak, and it took me thirty minutes or better to get from Lew’s house to my own. My place was dark, and I didn’t go in. I stood in the shadows of a row of royal palms across from the house watching, waiting. Expecting the two of them together.
But she came alone. She swung the green sedan in the driveway, entered the house, and I saw lights flash on. She appeared in the living room window for an instant, going toward the phone alcove. I moved quickly across the street, into my own yard. I could see her through the window. She was across the expanse of living room, talking quickly with someone on the phone. Then a shadow, the shadow of a man, long, distorted, showed briefly against the living room wall. Before I could catch a breath the light in there snapped off, and then Vicky screamed.
I hit the front door. It was locked. I fumbled for a key. A voice shouted from inside, “Stand back, or I’ll shoot her.” Sweat popped out on my face. I heard a door slam, and I ventured the key into the lock then. Another door slammed, and I tore toward the rear of the house. I heard the surging roar of the engine of the green sedan. I was hearing his words over and over, “Stand back, or I’ll shoot her.”
I knew him. I’d recognized the voice.
I hurled myself across the yard toward the driveway just as the big car careened out of the drive into the street with a scream of tortured rubber.
I stood there a moment, gasping. Then I forced strength into my shaking legs and charged back into the house.
My hands were shaking so badly I could hardly dial Lew Whitfield’s number. His phone screamed twice before anyone answered, and then it was Marge, not Lew. “I’ve got to talk to Lew,” I bellowed.
“He’s not here, Doug. He just got a phone call from Vicky. He’s on his way over there now.”
“He’ll be too late. Marge! Shoffner’s got her! He barreled away from here with her in my green sedan. Got that? Old man Wendel Shoffner, my yardman, has Vicky as hostage, at his mercy, in my green car. Call headquarters. Tell them to make it an all-car signal. That’s an order from the D.A.’s office!”
She got it, she said, and I didn’t waste any more time. I slammed down the phone and pushed my reeling body back
