The Prettiest Girl I Ever Killed (11 page)

I shook my head in amazement. “You never accept the obvious, do you?”

“Can’t afford to. Gil, for example … the guy is such an airy figure here in the community, nobody notices his comings and goings. Gil’s vague about where he goes when he’s away … which proves not a goddam thing, because he’s vague when he’s right here.” He stood up. “I’ll walk you back to your car. How strong are you?”

“Strong enough to walk,” I said, getting up.

“That’s not what I meant. Those phone calls could mean he’s trying to isolate me, turn the community against me. He might work on you next.”

I set my jaw firmly. “I’ll let you know when I turn against you. When do we meet again?”

“I don’t know. Your afternoons are out, the night …”

I felt a bitter frustration. “What do I do, just exist in limbo until you call?”

“The problem is—look, can you give me a key to the store?”

“Well … I guess. What for?”

“I want to search for bugs. Microphones. That’s the only way he could have known you were working on Ethel, by listening in. Once I clear that up we can talk there.”

I opened my purse and got out my key ring. Then I stopped. “When are you going to search?”

He shrugged. “Midnight. It’s a good hour.”

“I’ll come and stand watch.”

“I won’t need it. I’ll work in the dark.”

My face went hot. “Look, I know I was the one who didn’t want risk. But I’d rather be doing something than sitting at home.”

After a moment he nodded. “Okay. Wear dark clothing. Go in the back door. Don’t turn on any lights. I’ll knock once and you let me in. You keep the key, it’s safer.”

We reached my car and I started to seize the door handle. Suddenly he grabbed my arm and jerked me back. “Wait! Now you get another lesson. You see anything strange about your car?”

My neck hairs rose as I looked it over. Shiny chrome, polished glass, gleaming enamel, all covered by a thin patina of road dust. Someone had written across the door: VELDA BAYRD IS A HORE.

I felt rage pinch my nostrils. “Son-of-a-bitching kids—!”

“Not kids,” he said. “Look at the lettering.”

I looked, and my rage turned to a chill. The writing slanted backward just like that of the note. “I see. He knew where we were.”

Curt nodded. “He’s starting on you, Velda. Better not come to the store tonight.”

I set my teeth. “I’ll be there,” I said. I was scared, but I was mad, mad enough to go after the killer with my bare hands and fingernails….

Curt wouldn’t let me in the car until he’d gone through his routine of checking for booby traps. Then he searched for car tracks but the gravel road revealed none. As I drove off—he was going to stay and search the woods—I could feel hidden eyes watching me. I knew why Ethel wanted to run; it was a terrible feeling.

The night began badly. I’d made the date assuming that Lou would be asleep by midnight, but midnight came and Lou hadn’t even come home. I didn’t want to leave Sharon alone, so I waited. Lou came in around twelve-thirty and said he just wanted to go to bed. I mixed him a drink and he fell asleep before he finished it. I pulled on navy-blue slacks and stuffed my nightdress inside them. It made me bunchy around the hips but I wasn’t going to a fashion show. Over that I put a black cardigan. I’d backed into the garage beforehand—I was getting skilled at stealth—so I had only to release the brake and coast down the drive to the gate before starting the engine.

I pulled into the alley behind the store with my lights off. The dashboard clock said one-thirty. It was an eerie hour: the town was dark and silent and a chilly wind whistled around the corners of the buildings. I stopped outside the back door. If anyone saw me I planned to say that I’d come back to lock up the office safe. Curt stepped from a doorway, almost invisible in black. He whispered:

“Go in and close the door. No lights.”

I went in and closed the door behind me. The only light came from a streetlamp on the corner. I listened to the sound of my breathing and the hum of the meat cooler. The store was warm and full of familiar smells, but in the dark it seemed alien. I jumped as a knock sounded at the back door. I opened it; Curt was silhouetted in the door a moment, then he stepped to one side and disappeared. I closed the door and turned, trying to penetrate the blackness.

“How can you see?” I whispered.

“Another lesson in skulking, Velda,” he said. “Use your peripheral vision. The corner of the eye. Look over there at the cash register. You see me clearly?”

“I see a lumpy shadow, yes.”

“Okay, now look toward my voice. I disappear, don’t I?”

He did. The next thing I knew he was standing so close I could feel the warmth of his body. My muscles went taut and quivery, expecting his touch. But he didn’t move. We stood in darkness amid the odor of celery and cold meats. Curt seemed to be listening. Finally I asked:

“Shall I stand at the front and watch the street?”

“No, you watch the back. Gaby’s parked where she can see the front.”

“Oh.” I felt strangely disappointed. “She knows I’m here.”

“Yes,” said Curt, moving away. “I’ll start with the cash register. The electric system would be a good place to hide a microphone.”

I stood by the back door for what seemed like a half hour, listening to the occasional tinkle of metal. I could tell when Curt left the cash register and started tinkering with the meat cooler. The silence prickled at my nerves; when Curt came near enough so I could communicate in a whisper, I asked why he’d quit having Gaby watch Gil Sisk.

“Too risky,” said Curt. “Anyway, if he’s the guilty party, I want to give him a chance to incriminate himself. He has no really ironclad alibi for the time of any of these accidents, and that’s what makes me—”

He was interrupted by two short honks of an automobile horn. “That’s Gaby’s signal,” said Curt.

We hurried out the front door and into the street. A half block away stood Curt’s car and Gaby beside it, looking down at the ground. The car looked squat and low to the ground, and then I saw that the rear tires were flat.

“He did it while I was watching the store,” said Gaby. “The wind was rattling the leaves in the park, and I didn’t hear a thing. But he must have been crawling around the car while I sat there—”

“Your car,” Curt told me. “We’ll go out to Gil’s house.”

As I was driving, Curt said he’d seen no point in searching the area; the man had already shown that he was skilled at hiding his tracks. If he found Gil at home, though, he could clear him….

Gil’s car was gone. Tacked to the front door, almost as though Curt was expected, was a note written in Gil’s huge flowing script: CURT: I HAD TO GO TO K.C. BACK IN A FEW DAYS. GIL.

“That does it,” said Curt. “I’ve got to find out where he is.” He turned to me. “You know any of his hangouts, his hotel?”

“He never mentioned any.”

“Okay. Now if you’ll take us back to town …”

In town Curt said he and Gaby would wait in the car until the station opened and he could get his tires filled. I drove home and crawled into bed as it was getting pink in the east. Lou looked as though he hadn’t moved since I left him.

Next morning Gaby came in and asked me to have a Coke with her. I was training a new girl to take Ethel’s place, a farm girl named Doris whose husband worked in the grain elevator. I showed her how to use the cash register and joined Gaby in the drug store. We sat at one of the marble-topped ice cream tables which had been there since I was a little girl. Gaby said in a low voice:

“Curt called Kansas City. He’s hired a private detective to trace Gil.”

Gaby looked tired but no longer frightened, as though she’d gone a step beyond fear. I had an elusive letdown feeling and finally identified it. Since Gaby was telling me this, it meant Curt couldn’t see me. Her next words verified it:

“Curt says it isn’t safe for you to meet for awhile. He also thinks its better if you don’t stay home alone. If your husband isn’t there, visit neighbors. Don’t let your daughter out alone at night.”

“Why is he so worried about me?”

“Not only you. Me too.” She jerked her head toward the window. I saw old Tully Robinson and his wife Carrie standing beside Curt’s car. They were both Brushcreekers, and I’d known them all my life. Tully had been a brawler in his youth and had once served a term for stealing hogs. Now he was nearly sixty and steadied down. Carrie was a stocky woman with iron-gray hair and biceps as big as Gaby’s thighs. She’d been the Nation’s midwife for years, but the younger women now used the doctor in Franklin. She was strong as a man; I remembered seeing her drive mules and strip cane for their sorghum mill. We kids used to eat the sweet sorghum while the foam was still on it. At county fairs Carrie ran the cotton candy concession and Tully the penny-pitch.

“My housekeeper and Curt’s hired man,” said Gaby. “They’re staying with us for a time. Curt says he trusts them implicitly.”

“So do I,” I said. “But where’s Curt?”

Gaby shrugged. “He’ll be out of touch until Gil is located. Curt says he’s number one suspect.” Gaby smiled a bitter smile which did nothing for her beauty. “I liked Gil, but I find myself hoping he’s the one. Just to end this damned nightmare.”

I looked at Gaby and wondered if I were stronger than she was. I wasn’t eager for it to end—perhaps because when it ended, Curt would leave….

For a week I had to stay in the store all day while I trained Doris to take over in the afternoons. I didn’t see Curt at all, but Gaby came in a couple of times looking pale and Camille-like—particularly alongside ruddy, jovial Carrie Robinson. She’d shake her head when I asked if there was anything new. There was something new, but not in the quest for Gil Sisk. One night a rock smashed the window of Stubb’s tavern; attached to it was a printed note saying: THIS IS FOR SANDY BENNETT. Nobody could figure it out except that somebody blamed Stubb because she’d drunk beer there the night she burned. Stubb closed up for a week and went to Excelsior Springs, which contributed to the town’s somber aspect. Two mornings later, Bill Struble found a dead dog with its throat cut hanging from the railroad-crossing signal. It was a brindle watchdog—of mongrel breed but mostly boxer—belonging to Fern Blake, the widow of Jerry Blake, who’d been killed when the butane tank blew up in the hardware store. Fern demanded protection, and Sheriff Wade named a special deputy to patrol the area at night. He was Wayne Calvin, a mechanic at Slavitt’s auto salvage, Seventh Day Adventist, and about the only unmarried man in Sherman who didn’t drink. Tension still mounted; Tillie Sims, 75, who lived alone, saw an eerie face in her window one midnight. Her sister Winifred, 72, who hadn’t spoken to Tillie in twenty years, saw a face in her window the following night. The two women moved in together the following day, so it couldn’t be said that events were all bad.

The county paper came out that Friday with a three-column headline: PRANKSTER PROWLS SHERMAN.

The story was treated with the Sunday-school type of indignation typical of small-town newspapers. It included a warning from Sheriff Wade that the prankster was guilty of malicious mischief and subject to prosecution.

Just below that story, another tiny headline caught my eye:

CURT FRIEDLAND ARRESTED
RELEASED FOR LACK OF EVIDENCE

Curtis Friedland, former resident of Sherman, was arrested by Sheriff Glen Wade on suspicion of possessing illegal firearms. He was released for lack of evidence.

I pondered the item a minute before I realized it referred to the phony arrest at Curt’s place while I watched. Lord! that was how long … over two weeks ago. Two county papers had come out since then.

“Guilt by association,” said Curt’s voice.

I looked up and saw him standing there. He wore his old denims, but they were deeply wrinkled and stained with red mud, as though he’d been tramping the Brush Creek hills all night. Just seeing him lifted my spirits, but I was depressed by the gray weariness of his face.

“You mean the paper?” I asked.

Curt nodded. “No county sheriff is going to be elected year after year without knowing how to use his local newspaper. He released the story of my arrest knowing the editor usually tries to group all Sherman news together. Most people will just assume that both items were part of the same story. I’m already getting dirty looks.”

I folded the paper and shoved it aside. “I’ve been starving for news, Curt. Haven’t you found out
anything?”

He shook his bead. “The detective’s looking. I’m looking. Nothing new.”

At the same time he was making writing motions with his hand. I slid a pencil and pad over to him and watched him write:
Tomorrow, five p.m. Your mailbox.

He went out and climbed in his car. I hoped he’d go home and get some sleep.

That night at seven I got a call from Harley Grove, secretary of the town council. He asked me to tell Lou they were having a special meeting of the council. Lou was supposed to come. I asked what it was about; I’d gone to school with Harley and was shocked when he said bluntly: “Council business, Veda. Just tell Lou to be sure and come.”

Lou came in at eight and I relayed the message. Then I watched TV without seeing it until Lou came home at ten. He was chuckling as he pulled off his tie. While I mixed him a drink, he said: “They think Curt Friedland’s bringing this trouble. They want him pressured out of town.”

I felt like I’d been suddenly thrust among foreigners. That’s why Harley hadn’t told me what the meeting was about. Where had I slipped up? How had word gotten out that Curt and I were …
what did they think we were doing anyway?

“How could they pressure him?” I asked.

“Someone would talk to him, buy him out. They … had me in mind.” He laughed and tipped back his glass. The ice clicked against his teeth. He lowered his glass and belched. “It’s the old story of bell-the-cat. Everyone wants the other guy to do it. I told them they’d better forget the idea before it lashes back. Friedland’s no hairy-necked Brushcreeker.”

I felt grateful to Lou, and guilty because I was working behind his back. But I explained to myself that Lou and I were going through the period of estrangement we usually have when he starts a new project. He was traveling, buying new equipment, supervising the work. I only saw him late in the evenings, and even then he’d usually be working out in the shop, where he’d installed a desk and an adding machine for a makeshift study.

I was watching the mailbox at four-forty p.m. the next day. My heart jumped when I saw Curt’s old car stop—but the car drove off immediately. I trudged out and found a brown manila envelope crammed into the box. It contained a book,
The Prophet,
by Kahlil Gibran, and an aerial photo of the Brush Creek wilderness. The book had certain words circled, and the photo was speckled with numbers written in grease pencil. I took it to the house and tried to fathom the connection between the book and the photo. I couldn’t. I decided the key was missing. Damn Curt and his penchant for intrigue….

The phone rang at three a.m. I got up, my thoughts suspended. A three a.m. call meant trouble. “Hello,” I said.

“Velda,” said a husky, muffled voice. “Listen carefully and you’ll know who I am. You got a sandbur in your butt, remember? You didn’t notice until you started to pull on your panties, then you had to have him pull it out. You looked funny standing in the gully holding your dress up with your panties down—they were red, I remember the color—while he—”

I slammed down the receiver. My heart was beating so fast I thought it would choke me. Perspiration trickled down my body and between my breasts. My hands were sweaty; I wiped them on my nightgown and felt an urge to scrub my entire body with soap. The words had stained me with filth….

It had been the watcher. No other living person could have known about that embarrassing incident with the sandbur. I walked into the bedroom and looked down at Lou’s sleeping figure. I wanted to wake him up, but I’d have to tell him the whole story of Mart and I, about Curt’s project—and what could Lou do?

I drank a glass of straight Scotch and felt better. I regretted having slammed down the phone; if I’d listened longer, he might have let slip some clue to his identity. Even now … I lifted the receiver and heard only the crackle and hum of the wires. I called Central and asked: “Did you just put through a call to me?”

“Uh … yes.” The operator yawned audibly into the phone. She slept on a couch beside the switchboard. “It came from Connersville I think. Yes. Connersville.”

“Thank you. Get me Curt Friedland’s residence.”

While she was ringing I remembered Curt’s warning of secrecy. But it was too late because Gaby was answering, her voice breathless and urgent.

“Is Curt there?”

Gaby sighed. “No. I thought this would be him.”

I felt a brief pity for Gaby; in a sense, she was nearer the danger than I was. “I just got a nasty call from … our friend. From Connersville.”

“I’ll tell Curt when he comes in.”

That was all. Next morning in the store I tried by subtle questioning to learn if any Shermanites had been in Connersville the night before. As nearly as I could learn, none had. Gaby came in and we went for another Coke. She said Curt had left for Connersville as soon as he got home. He planned to look for someone from Sherman, especially Gil Sisk. Then she asked: “Did you figure out the code?”

“Not completely. I know the territory in the photo—”

“He thought you would. The page numbers in the book correspond to the numbers on the photo. When he wants to meet you, he’ll give you a quote from the book—over the phone or in a note. The page on which the quote appears will be the number of your meeting place. Find the circled word in the phrase, count from the left-hand margin, and you’ll have the time of the meeting.”

My head was spinning. “Ingenious.”

She gave a wry laugh. “He plays it like a chess game. You should see my instructions on what to do in this or that emergency while he’s gone. He covers everything but an invasion from Mars.” She paused. “The quote for today is: ‘Speak to us of love.’”

I frowned. “Don’t you know where the place is?”

She shook her head. “No. Nor the time. You see how it works? A person could overhear and still know nothing. Like me.” She gave a crooked smile. “He says there’s no need to spread the burden of secrecy.”

I drove home after work and looked it up. Page eleven. The word “speak” was circled, fourth from the margin. Four o’clock at site eleven. I dressed excitedly in green slacks and sweater; it would be our first meeting in nearly a week.

The site was a cove so choked with cattails that no boat could enter. I sat down on the bank and smoked a cigaret; I was completely hidden from the lake. Cattails arched overhead, a hill sloped up to a deserted farmhouse, and sheep grazed on the hillside. After ten minutes Curt came strolling down the hill; his eyes were puffy and I decided he’d been taking a nap in the farmhouse while he waited for me. He didn’t look any more tired than before; maybe he’d reached a level of fatigue where it no longer showed. He sat down beside me and asked me about the call. I told him in general terms, without revealing exactly what Mart and I had been doing there. I tried to describe the voice, but could only say that it was a man’s voice, muffled and indistinct. Curt said he’d seen nobody in Connersville, but that a couple of switchboard operators had promised to keep track of calls to Sherman. They might or they might not; at any rate he planned to spend the night there just in case.

Then he fell silent. I still wasn’t used to his total lack of small talk. I got nervous. I looked at the hill, the grazing sheep, the blank windows of the farmhouse like staring eye sockets, and I felt a strange emptiness. I had been eager to meet him … now what? I wanted something more, but I knew no way to break through to him….

Still, it was our daily afternoon meetings which kept me from leaving town. Because the calls continued during the following week. There was no voice; just a ringing late at night, then a hoarse breathing which gave me chills. I’d listen and visualize Curt out patrolling the neighborhood lines. (His listening post at Connersville produced nothing; only the first call had come from there.) Lou would sometimes be in bed asleep and sometimes out in his study working. If he’d asked me about the calls I’d have told him, but he didn’t ask. (He wasn’t aware of me really. The road job had bogged down; they’d run into rock outcropping and were blasting it out. With each blast Lou’s profit margin dwindled.)

Each morning Curt would call with a quotation or else Gaby would bring it into the store. I’d find the spot on the map and Curt and I would meet. Our seventh meeting wasn’t much different from any of the others. It took place in a little hickory grove where I’d climbed trees as a girl.

“Another call last night?” asked Curt.

I nodded. “Like the others. He breathed at me. What’s new from the detective?”

“On the night of Bernice’s death he went to Kansas City, but there’s no record of his having stayed in a hotel.”

“Maybe he stayed with a woman.”

“As a bachelor, why would he hide it?”

I nodded. “True. Gil would be more likely to brag about it.”

On the tenth day I said: “Maybe Gil’s a victim. He could be lying dead someplace.”

Curt nodded. “Sure. The body could be hidden but not the car. The detective has the make and number. Five-thousand dollar convertibles don’t sit abandoned for ten days without being noticed.” He looked at me sharply. “You have another suspect?”

“I suspect everybody,” I said. “I watch the people come in the store and they all act guilty. Sylvester Bloch mumbles to himself all the time. Fred Goff has a twitch in his face. When he looks at me it’s like grasshoppers jumping under his skin.”

“We’ve got more than our share of kooks,” said Curt. He was whittling a point on a hickory stick. “Maybe it’s inbreeding. In my class at school there were fourteen kids, all descended from three couples.” He squinted up at the blue sky between the new leaves. “While I went to school with them they were individuals. People. Since I’ve been away they’ve become types, like a Washington Irving story of the New England backwoods. Eli Black was Eli Black, boring and stupid at times, but someone to have a certain kind of fun with. Now he fits perfectly the category of a rural loudmouthed braggart and coward. Marie Herzog was once a moderately attractive, friendly girl, a good dancer, and a girl who’d go all the way in a parked car just to be a good sport. Now she’s a frowsy, blowsy, gabbling busybody. Janet was a sharp kid, careful about whom she dated, always on top of the lesson, neat and clean and ready to call attention to the fact that you weren’t, but in a good-natured, for-your-own-good manner. She never put out until you’d agreed to go steady. And even then not until you’d hauled her fifty miles to a movie. Now she’s a greedy wolfish woman, collecting tinsel in that overbuilt house of hers, pushing her husband until the poor bastard’s got a crick in his neck from looking over his shoulder to see if she’s behind him. She’s a Las Vegas type, the kind you see at horse races and in charge of fashion magazines. Rolly Cartwright was a pudgy little guy whose hands were always sweaty, who was always putting the seam of his pants out of the crack of his ass, who giggled in the locker room and seemed to spend a lot of time in the john. Now I can see plain as hell he’s a fag. Gloria’s a dyke; she stands over there in the post office and she doesn’t watch the men go by, she watches the girls. I don’t know where or how she gets her kicks now. In high school she was always the girlfriend of the good-looking chick, the one you always had to bring a date for and the guy you brought always said never again. Just when you were going strong with your date in the movies … she’d nudge your date and whisper in her ear. In a restaurant she’d never go to the john unless your date accompanied her, and then in the john she’d try her damndest to screw up your scene, telling your date you’d gotten fresh or something. Well, she’s queer. Look at the guy she married, he’s just about as effeminate as you can get without being an overt fag. Somebody should do her a big favor, go over and say, Look baby, your scene is women. Stop fighting it and start making it and you’ll be a lot happier.”