Vol Ii Part 14 (1/2)
I kicked the knife away. ”It's all over,” I told Grace. ”Take it easy.”
But she had no intention of fainting. ”Shall I call the police?”
”If you please.”
It took almost an hour to set them straight on the story. When they finally released us, I took Grace's arm and led her out to the elevator.
”Have I earned a fee?”
”You certainly have,” she said emphatically.
”Okay. I'm taking you home to collect.”
I felt pretty good. I didn't even get mad when I found a cop downstairs writing out a parking ticket for my Buick.
I merely asked him to hurry.
SOMEBODY'S GOING TO DIE by TALMAGE POWELL
I'm afraid to go home tonight.
I'll go, of course. To a modern, lovely house on Coquina Beach overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. The beach is not the habitat of paupers.
A singularly beautiful and devoted woman waits for me there. Doreen. My wife.
We are ringleaders in a smart c.o.c.ktail set. We get special service whenever we go into a beach restaurant. Everything has worked perfectly. No one on the beach suspects how we came into our money.
To an outsider I might well be a person to envy. Yet I would give five years of my life if I could escape going home tonight.
Doreen was unaware of the jam I was in when we went on that hunting trip together six months back. We had been married only a few weeks at the time, after getting acquainted during a business trip I took to Atlanta.
She was still pretty much of a stranger to me, and she was such an intense person I didn't know how she would take the news.
We'd had a wonderful time on the trip. Few women would have taken the dark, tangled swamp, the south Georgia heat as Doreen had. Snakes, alligators, they didn't faze her. Neither had the panther.
We were in Okeefanokee hunting deer. I'd struck the panther's spoor in late afternoon. I'd wanted Doreen to turn back, but she'd looked at me strangely.
”Enos,” she said, ”I never suspected you'd be afraid of anything. You're big, ugly, direct, blunt, hardheaded, cruel-or is that only a front?” She finished with a short laugh, but there was a seriousness beneath her words.
”I'm not afraid for myself,” I said.
”Then never be afraid for me,” she said excitedly. ”Come on, Enos, I want to see you get this cat.”
I jumped the cat twenty minutes later. As it came out of a clump of palmetto and saw gra.s.s I put a 30-30 slug in her. My aim was a trifle high. The panther screamed, pinwheeled in the air, and came at me, a crazed ma.s.s of fury and hatred.
Doreen stood her ground and waited for me to shoot the cat. When the beast lay still and p.r.o.ne, it was I who had to wipe sweat from my face.
Doreen walked to the cat slowly. Blood on the animal's hide was already beginning to draw flies and gnats.
”See, Enos,” Doreen said, ”some of it is still pumping out of her, the hot, red life. Wasn't she beautiful in death?”
I s.h.i.+vered. ”Yeah,” I said. ”Yeah. Let's get back to camp.”
We returned to camp and Doreen cooked our supper. Rabbit on a wooden spit and sourdough biscuits.
When we had eaten, we retired to our tent behind mosquito netting. Around us the swamp was coming to life. Its music was a symphony with tones ranging from the shrill of crickets to the ba.s.so of the frogs. The swamp rustled and sighed and screamed occasionally.
Doreen slipped into my arms. ”You were wonderful with the cat today, Enos.”
Thinking of it, her breath quickened and I could feel her heart beating against me.
”I've shot 'em before,” I said.
She pulled my chin around with her thumb and forefinger. ”I don't interest you a bit at the moment, Enos,” she stated. ”What's bothering you?”
”A business detail. Nothing for you to worry about.”
”I'm your wife,” she said. ”Tell me.”
”All right,” I said looking directly into her eyes. They were large and dark. In the dim light of the lantern her pupils were dilated and as black as the glossy midnight color of her hair.
”I'm in trouble,” I added after a moment. ”Serious trouble. I might even be yanked into prison.”
”Why?”
”I've taken some money that doesn't belong to me.”
”From whom?”
”Sam Fickens.”
”Your business partner,” she said.
”That's right. You know we've been spending at a heavy clip, Doreen. The house was costly. A good buy, you don't find many old colonials on an estate any more. But costly.”
”You're sorry, Enos?”
”I'm not sorry for a thing,” I said. ”Except that money ran short. Sam and I had this deal with the Birmingham company coming up. My share would cover the shortage. But the deal blew up. And Sam discovered the shortage the day before you and I left on this trip. He told me to go ahead and take the trip-and use it to figure out whether I want to make him sole owner of the company or spend a few years in prison.”
”Why, the dirty snake,” Doreen said, not without a degree of admiration in her voice. ”It's nothing short of blackmail.”
”True.”
”You're not going to let him get away with it, are you?”
”What can I do?”