Finally, there was applause which rapidly died down as Melinda began "Dancing in the Dark," one of her better numbers. Vic opened his eyes and saw Joel Nash staring at him in an absent, yet intense and rather frightened way. Vic closed his eyes again. His head was back as if he were listening, enraptured, to the music. Actually, he was thinking of what might be going on now in Joel Nash's liquor-fuddled mind. Vic saw his own rather pudgy figure on the sofa, his hands peacefully clasped on his abdomen, his round face smiling a relaxed smile that by now would have become enigmatic to Joel Nash. Nash would be thinking, maybe he 'did'. Maybe that's why he's so nonchalant about Melinda and me. Maybe that's why he's so strange. He's a 'murderer'.
Melinda played for about half an hour, until she had to repeat "Dancing in the Dark" again. When she got up from the piano, people were still pressing her to play some more, Mary Meller and Joel loudest of all.
"We've got to be going home. It's late," Melinda said. She often left immediately after a session at the piano. On a note of triumph. "Vic?" She snapped a finger in his direction.
Vic got up obediently from the sofa. He saw Horace beckoning to him. Horace had heard, Vic supposed. Vic went over. "What's this you told your friend, Mr. Nash?" Horace asked, his dark eyes shining with amusement.
"My friend?"
Horace's narrow shoulders shook with his constrained laughter. "I don't blame you a bit. I just hope he doesn't spread it around!" "It was a joke. Didn't he take it as a joke?" Vic asked, pretending to be serious. He and Horace knew each other well. Horace had often told him to "put his foot down about Melinda," and Horace was the only person Vic knew who had ever dared say that to him.
"Seems to me he took it pretty seriously," Horace said. "Well, let him. Let him spread it around."
Horace laughed and slapped Vic's shoulder. "Just don't get yourself in jail, old man!"
Melinda tottered slightly as they walked out to the car, and Vic took her elbow gently to steady her. She was almost as tall as he, and she always wore flat sandals or ballet slippers, but less for his sake, Vic thought, than because they were more comfortable and because her height in flat shoes better matched the height of the average man. Even though she was a bit unsteady, Vic could feel the Amazonian strength in her tall, firm body, the animal vitality that pulled him along with her. She was heading for the car with the undeterrable thrust of a horse getting back to stable.
"What'd you say to Joel tonight?" Melinda asked when they were in the car.
"Nothing."
"You must have said something."
"When?"
"Well, I 'saw' you talking to him," she persisted sleepily. "What were you talking about?"
"Bedbugs, I think. Or was it Mary I was talking about bedbugs to?"
"Oh!" Melinda said impatiently, and snuggled her head against his shoulder as impersonally as if he had been a sofa pillow. "Must've said something, because he acted different after he talked to you."
"What did he say?"
"It's not what he said, it's the way he 'a-a-acted'," she drawled. Then she was asleep.
She lifted her head when he shut off the motor in the garage and, as if walking in her sleep got out, said, "G'night, dear," and went into the house through the door at the side of the garage that opened into the living room.
The garage was big enough for five cars, though they had only two. Vic had had it built so that he could use part of it as a workroom, keep his tools and his boxes of plants, his snail aquaria, or whatever else he happened to be interested in or experimenting with that took space, all in apple-pie order, and still have enough room to walk around in. He slept in a room on the opposite side of the garage from the house, a room whose only door opened into the garage. Before he went to his door he bent over the herb boxes. The foxgloves were up—six or eight pale-green sprigs already forming their characteristic triad leaf clusters. Two bedbugs were crawling around on their piece of mattress, looking for flesh and blood, but he was not in the mood to offer his hand tonight, and the two dragged their flat bodies off slowly in search of cover from his flashlight beam.
Chapter 2
Joel Nash came for a cocktail three days after the Mellers' party, but he didn't stay to have dinner with them, though Vic asked him and Melinda pressed him. He said he had an engagement, but anyone could have seen that he hadn't. He announced smilingly that he wasn't staying another two weeks after all, but was leaving the following Friday. He smiled more than ever that evening and was on a defensive tack of being facetious about everything. It was an indication
