Kitten with a whip (21 page)

"Just a minute," David said. He couldn't lie still, not knowing. "How did you find out so much about what happened?"

Ehlers grinned broadly. "You know what I ought to do? Tell you it was just good routine poHce work. But the truth of it is that she told us. She was still aUve when the Mexican cops got there. She gave them the whole story before she died."

Ehlers said his good-bys again and left. David didn't notice. His mind was full of Jody, vicious, pitiful, erratic, self-centered Jody, effervescent one minute, black-mooded the next, and not a truthful bone in her body. She had run things as she saw fit to the very end, trying to transform the world to her liking, and weaving Ues with her last breath.

Or was there more to the answer than that? Perhaps, after all, Jody had been fond of him in her own perverse fashion and, knowing she was dying, had done what she could to save him. It gave him an odd sad feeling to think of that. Yet ... it was equally plausible that Jody had lied to the cops as her final flippant gesture at the authority she refused to recognize. He would never be sure. There was no more imderstanding Jody in death than in hfe. He could recall now her last words before the crash. Oh God, I didn't see it coming . . .

WeU, this much he could be sure of. Intentionally or not, Jody had saved him. He was in the clear, everything explained away, nothing for him to confess to. Even the cuts and bruises he had gotten in the fight with Buck, the broken tooth from when Buck had flattened him in his own living room, all could be blamed on the crash,

*Tm a lucky guy," he said wonderingly. He had never before thought of himself that way.

Virginia patted his hand. "We re lucky, too, Katie and me. I don t know how we'd ever get along without you."

"Yeah," David agreed, mostly to himself. *^atie, especially. She needs both of us, all the parents she can get to help her grow up right. She's got to imderstand, be taught."

Virginia smiled quizzically, pretending to be affronted. "WeU, don't you go thinking a wife doesn't need a husband. And what would you do without me around, being wifely? Which reminds me, what on earth did you spifl on our brand new carpeting in Katie's room?"

He had nearly forgotten about scrubbing up the blood stains. "A drink,"

"Oh, dear," Virginia said softly. "Now you ve made me feel awful again. When I think of you alone in the house, sitting around Katie's room with a drink in your hand, wishing we were home . . = Oh, David, Im so sonyl"

"No, he muttered. "No, don t. Please don t feel like anything was your fault." It stood huge in his mind, the He he had just told her. It was the first he could ever remember between them. And with piercing sudden insight, he knew it wouldn't be his last. He could see it coming. From now on he would Hve with the nagging worry of Virginia finding something else around the house that would necessitate more lies, one piled on another, his secret wall between them. One of the girls* bobby pins, or Hpstick on a glass, or the bottles that had made Jody blonde, or the party noises the Clarks had heard, or Peggy's remembrance of his buying the blue dress. Or his precious smashed decanter, Virginia's own gift. Jody had never been able to see it coming, but he could.

All this, haunting his home forever. With Hes, he would be haunting his own home.

Virginia was watching him, concerned. *1 think you need to rest now, David. Your color's not good at all. Ill go out for some dioner and give you a chance to sleep. I won't be long." She rose, movea her chair away and blew him a smiling reassiuing Idss.

"No," he said. 'Wait." He could see it coming and it would never be any good that way. If their Hves were to remain entwined together, they must chng to mutual trust as well as to each other. If he didnt have the courage to tell her now, there would come a time when there would be no need to teU her, the time when she would know without teUing that he had no courage at aU.

Unless that was what she thought of him already . . .

She asked, "You want me to do something for you before I go? Hold a cigarette so you can smoke?"

"Nol" He quieted down. "No, don't do anything for me." A strange thing to hear himself say but, staring at

her soft female face, he imagined for an instant that he saw past it. And behind the pHant covering of flesh was bone, strong bone, a narrower inner face that he had never noticed before, not in all these years. There was something predatory there, something of Jod/s face.

He tried to forget that glimpse of the succubus, remember what he was going to teU her. You know, darling, we've been having a heat wave down here and maybe I got to feeling edgy, cooped up . . . No, that wasn't right —he couldn't blame it on the heat.

He tried again, while she stood there trying to figure him out. You know I love you, don't you, Virginia. I mean, these things I've got to tell you, I hope for God sakes I can make you understand. I hope you'll forgive me, too, but Tm not asking for that right off, only that you'll understand.

No. He didn't like that, either. It rang too familiar, like a kind of sufferance he'd been Uving on all his Ufe. He'd be damned if he'd beg, wholly damned.

But why did he fear her so? Worse. How long had it been going on? That wasn't love or anything like it

"Come here, Virginia," he said.

She moved toward him, straight and womanly and gentle-eyed, not at all an image of fear. "Darhng, try to get some more rest. Whatever it is, will keep."

"Not this. I got a hunch it's been going on for years."

Troubled, Virginia was looking down on him. Probably that had been going on for years, too, without either of them knowing. No wonder it had been so easy for Jody to dominate him; he had been in practice for the role. It wasn't a domination that Virginia had wanted or noticed, surely give her that much credit. Nor was it a dependency on his part that he had meant to create. But now he could look back and see the gentle stress that would disjoint them both eventually, if he permitted it. Somewhere along the line in their career of marriage, he had let himself subtly withdraw a pace or two, and Virginia had been forced to take over, to fill in the gap with her own strength. Had she ever realized that he was drawing on her like that? Had she yet missed the honed point of his sex, the male aggression that he had begun to waste in the far comers of his mind with

dark-closeted yearnings for adventure? He didn't like to think so. It was a dislocation too psychic, too mystical even, to reveal itself until there had come a showdown. Tody had been the showdown, Jody who had seen through him and used him for aU she was worth. And he mignt as well thank her for it.

"Get the chair,'* he told Virginia. "You make me im-comfortable in that position." She brought back the chair and sat down by him. Now, in his turn, ne had frightened her, although he hadn't meant to. He held out his good hand and sne hesitated, then laid her left hand in it.

He said, "This is going to be hard stuflF to say, hard to put across, and I Imow it needs a heck of a lot more thought. From both of us."

"If only I hadn't gone away . . ."

"No, it's probably a gooa thing you did. Because there's got to be some adjustments made. Between us, I mean, you and me. Something's been going wrong and I've been letting it, not noticing. Maybe you've noticed, I don't know. I prefer to think you naven't."

She didn't understand at all, not yet. But the predatory look had gone away. Whether it had ever existed outside his imagination, he didn't know.

Well, he wasn't begging for any easy way out. Virginia could make up her own mind. She could think it out for herself, after she'd heard, and take it or leave it. He fingered her wedding ring as he began to tell about it, speaking slowly, seeking for the strict truth. "You see, last Saturday morning . . ."

THE END

of an Original Gold Medal t}ovel by Wade Miller

THE WAR WAS OVER THE LID WAS OFF

An intimate, realistic and revealing

story of Army life in an occupied

country, when fighting men suddenly

out of danger plunge into a frantic

whirl of soft living, hard loving, high

finance and low cunning. Inevitably

they sometimes go too far . ..

ARTICLE 92 MURDER-RAPE

by Webb Beech

author of NO FRENCH LEAVE

Any person subiecf to military law

who commits murder or rape shall

suffer death or imprisonment for

life, as a court martial may direct . ..

And there just didn't seem to be any question that Sergeant Jones had raped an officer's wife ... It was just too fantastic to suspect for an instant that the lady might have consented . • .

ON SALE NOW—ONLY 40(

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FAWCETT WORLD LIBRARY

K1431

If your dealer is sold out, send cover price plus lOO each for postage and handling to Gold Medal Books. Fawcett Publications, Inc., Greenwich, Conn. If order is for five or more books, no postage or handling charge is necessary. Order by number and title. No Canadian orders.

ANOTHER IN THE BESTSELLING TRAVIS McGEE SUSPENSE SERIES BY

John D. MacDonald

"John D. MacDonald keeps one reading with fierce inteiest."

^ —N. Y. Herald Tribune Book Review

THE QUICK RED FOX

From all that Travis McGee could gather it must have been one hell of a party. Ten playful people swinging wild and free, getting drunk, getting bored, swapping partners in the warmth of sun on naked bodies, miles from civilization.

Miles from civilization—and 300 feet from a very good camera with a telephoto lens. The whole sordid show was down on film, and the star attraction was a woman named Lysa Dean whose professional life depended on her private reputation.

It was a blackmail set-up as old as the hills and Lysa was old enough to have known better. McGee didn't want to touch the deal with a ten-foot pole—except there was another woman involved, a lovely, longing, tender woman whose life was slowly draining away into disaster. • • •

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If your dealer is sold out, send cover price plus 10^ each for postage and handling to Gold Medal Books, Fawcett Publications, Inc., Greenwich, Conn. If order is for five or more books, no postage or handling charge is necessary. Order by number and title. No Canadian orders.