"What're you so happy about tonight?"
"Because Tony isn't here!" Trixie squealed.
"Shut up, Trixie! What did you do to him?" Melinda asked, advancing on Vic.
"Do to him? I haven't seen him."
"Where were you all afternoon?"
"I was at the office," Vic said.
Melinda went into the kitchen for another drink.
Trixie drowsed in her chair. Vic moved his chair closer to hers, to catch her if she toppled.
Melinda came back with a kind of frozen, drunken horror on her face as if she had just seen something terrible in the kitchen, and Vic was about to ask her what had happened, when she said, "Did you kill him? Did you kill him, too?"
"Melinda, don't be absurd."
"Tony wouldn't be afraid to call me. Tony wouldn't forget. Tony's not afraid of anything, not even you!"
"I didn't think he was afraid of me," Vic said."That's obvious."
"That's why I know he didn't forget!" Melinda said, beginning to sound breathless. "That's why I know something's happened to him! And I'm going to tell 'everybody'—right now!" She set her glass down hard on the table, and at that instant there was a deep, sleepy roll of thunder, and Vic immediately thought that the rain tonight—and he had noticed that it looked like rain since about four o'clock—would wash away the tread marks of his tires, if any, on the dirt road, and a very good rain would help to wash away the bloodstains on the white rocks.
Melinda was in her room, getting her coat, he supposed. He was not in the least afraid of what she might say to anyone, but he was afraid that something might happen to her if she drove her car in this state. Vic was getting up to go to her room when he saw Trixie lean sideways, and with a swoop of his left arm he caught her and softened the bob of her heavy head. He settled her head on his shoulder and walked to Melinda's room.
"I don't think you should drive in this condition, Melinda," he said.
"I've driven in worse. Do you know if the Mellers are in?"
He gave an involuntary laugh. The Mellers were farther out of the way than the Cowans or the MacPhersons, who were in the direction of Wesley and Ralph and the Wilsons, and so she had asked him the question to save herself a trip. He looked at her as she bent over her dressing table, gathering lipstick and keys, swaying in her cream-colored topcoat, and he suddenly felt that he didn't care what happened to her tonight, because she was going out to denounce him again and it would serve her right to smash herself into a tree or to get stuck in a ditch on a fast turn. Then he thought of the hairpin turn on the hillside halfway between their house and the Mellers'. There was a cliff there, and the road would be slippery tonight. He thought of Cameron's body at the end of its fall, bouncing noiselessly off the final slope and rolling to a dead stillness. "Where do you want to go?" he asked. "I'll drive you."
"Thanks!" She whirled around and her eyes struggled to find him. She frowned and blinked. "Thanks a lot!" she shouted, the words incongruously sharp and clear.
Vic was sliding his hand nervously up and down Trixie's soft, overalled thigh. Suddenly he turned and carried Trixie to her room, laid her down gently on her bed, and came back to Melinda's room just in time to collide with her as she was rushing out of the door. The impact staggered them both back, and then Vic lost his head, or perhaps his temper, and the next thing he realized was that he was on top of Melinda on the bed, trying to hold her arms, pinning one arm down but failing to catch the other.
"You're in no condition to drive!" he shouted.
Melinda's knee was against his chest, and suddenly it pushed him with an amazing force and he was catapulted backward, nearly somersaulted backward, and he heard an explosive crack in his ears. Then there was some kind of lull, during which he was aware that he was smiling foolishly, and he saw the weave of her gray rug very distinctly for a moment beside his shoe, and realized that he was trying to get himself from one knee onto his feet. He staggered a little and noticed on the gray rug nearly a dozen red dots, heard the upward whine of Melinda's car starting outside, which was peculiarly nauseating, and then he felt his warm blood sliding down the back of his collar.
He stood up and headed mechanically for the bathroom. The whiteness of his face frightened him so that he stopped looking at it. He felt the wet back of his head, feeling for the wound. It was like a wide, smiling mouth in his hair, and he knew it would need stitches. He debated pouring a whisky before he telephoned for a doctor, versus possibly fainting before he could get the whisky and make the call, stupidly spent about a minute debating, and then went directly to Melinda's telephone.
He dialed the operator, and asked her to dial Dr. Franklin, then on second thought Dr. Sewell, another Little Wesley doctor, because he didn't want Dr. Franklin to see another domestic crisis involving the Van Allens. Vic had never spoken before to Dr. Sewell, so he introduced himself first.
"Hello, Dr. Sewell. This is Victor Van Allen on Pendleton Road ... Yes. I'm very fine. How are you?" The pale peach-colored wall in front of Vic was disintegrating, but he kept his voice very steady. "I wondered if you could possibly come out to the house tonight and bring some equipment to do a few stitches?"
Chapter 23
Vic had sometimes wondered what would happen if he, or Horace Meller,
