Once a Widow

Lee Roberts

Once a Widow

The man’s muscles moved smoothly beneath his bronzed skin as he walked across the deck toward the woman who sat in a canvas chair in the stern of the cabin cruiser. The sun was hot and yellow, the sky a clear washed blue, and a warm breeze blew the woman’s short tawny hair back from her tanned face. Her brief white two-piece bathing suit accentuated the golden glow of her slender body.

She was forty-three years old, but an easy life and much money had helped her preserve a convincing illusion of youth. There was only a slight puffiness beneath her chin, and her body was still slim-waisted and shapely. She wore no makeup except lipstick and one had to look close to see the tiny lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth. Faint freckles were scattered over her nose and rather high cheekbones. Above the waistband of her white bathing shorts, on the right side, was the beginning of a thin white appendectomy scar. One hand, resting on the arm of the chair, held a slender-stemmed cocktail glass. The nails of her hands and feet were lacquered a brilliant red.

She smiled lazily as the man approached and her gray eyes beneath bronze lashes seemed almost sleepy. The man stopped before her, swaying easily on bare feet as the boat rolled gently in the off-shore swell. From the stern the twin exhausts made a soft throaty purr above the blue-green water and mingled with the strains of dance music from a radio inside the cabin.

The man was young, not yet thirty, tall and powerfully built, with thick broad shoulders, heavy arms, a flat stomach and strong hairy legs. His only garment was a tight pair of green swimming trunks. He had a handsome, somewhat arrogant face, with a full, almost sensual mouth and a jutting chin. His hair was thick and black, worn too long; it curled over his small flat ears. Heavy black brows almost joined over the bridge of a short straight nose. The clear blue eyes were a little too far apart. Virile was the word for the man, virile and handsome, and he was aware of it; it showed in the smiling, easy, spread-legged way he stood before the woman. He held a silver cocktail shaker and ice tinkled with a musical sound as he swayed gently with the movement of the boat.

He bent over the woman, still smiling. “Darling, I forgot the olives. Do you mind terribly?” His voice was deep and almost too rich, with a carefully cultivated cadence.

“Of course I mind,” she said, pretending to pout. “How can one drink a martini without an olive?”

He shrugged elaborately, turned and pretended to pour the shaker’s contents over the side.

“You dog!” she cried in mock horror, and lifted her glass. “Pour.”

Grinning, he turned back and filled her glass. The clear amber fluid glinted in the sun. He lifted the shaker. “To us.”

“Yes,” she said with sudden soberness. “To us, to six months of complete, heavenly happiness. You’ve made me very happy. You know that, don’t you, Richard?”

He bowed slightly, “Thank you, Madam. I try to please.”

Her eyes searched his face. “How about you? Have you been happy? Do you still like the little car I gave you for your birthday?”

“Need you ask?” His white teeth gleamed against his tanned face, but something flickered darkly in his clear blue eyes.

Suddenly she laughed. “Then you don’t wish to trade me in on a new model?”

He smiled down at her. “Darling, do you mean the car—or you?”

“Me. I—I’m not young, not like the girls you knew before we were married.”

“I’ll never trade you in.” His gaze went over her appraisingly. “Body still good, all parts in first class working condition, paint job fine—”

“Only lipstick,” she broke in.

“Paint job fine,” he repeated, pretending not to have heard her. “I’d never trade, because I couldn’t get my money back.” He grinned again. “I’d junk the heap first.”

She raised fine bronze eyebrows and said archly, “So at last you confess that you married me for my money?”

“Of course, darling,” he said. “Why else would I marry you.” He sighed. “I can’t think of another single reason.”

Her body stirred in the chair and she gazed up at him through lowered lashes. “Think hard, my dear,” she said huskily.

He touched her shoulder, “Please don’t ask me to think. I can’t—when I’m near you.” He smiled, but his voice sounded faintly weary, like an actor repeating too familiar lines.

She laughed, almost triumphantly, as if she’d forced him to say what she’d wanted, and raised her glass. “To us, Richard, and all the lovely years ahead.”

They drank and the boat purred lazily through the gently rolling water. It was a beautiful boat, all varnished mahogany and polished brass with a tiny galley and a cabin which slept two. The automatic steering device was set and the gleaming prow was headed due north across the vast empty expanse of Lake Erie. The late afternoon sun slanted beneath the stern canopy and cast a mellow glow over the woman’s body. Standing before her, the man’s tall figure was etched in blood red and he seemed a black giant against the horizon. He gazed down at the woman, tilted the shaker, and said softly and urgently, “More, darling? You’d better have some more.”

She drained her glass, the movement making a merciless line of her throat, showing the cords and the faint wrinkles. Her short, thick, tawny hair fell back and over her tanned shoulders. The man noticed the throat and also the gray tinge of the hair near the scalp, and a swift grimace of distaste crossed his face. But he was smiling instantly as she gazed at him and said softly, “Of course, dear. Isn’t this our second honeymoon?”

He nodded and did not speak.

She held up her glass. “Yes, pour again. I can’t fly on one wing. Or two wings. Or three.”

He filled her glass, smiling somewhat grimly. “You’d have to fly to get ashore from here. Why didn’t you ever learn to swim?”

The water was rolling in long swells now, dark green in the fading sun, and to the south the lake seemed almost limitless, with only the smudge of the mainland twelve miles away. Ahead of the boat, and slightly to port, maybe a hundred yards away, was a rising projection of rocks and stunted pines which the man knew to be a barren acre of land called Snake Island on the Great Lakes charts. Its only purpose, as far as the charts were concerned, was to mark the beginning of the Canadian reefs.

“I’m afraid of the water,” the woman said.

He gazed out over the empty, rolling expanse of lake. “I know you are,” he said, “but why?”

She shivered a little and drank from her glass. “Richard, when I was twelve years old I almost drowned. I never forgot it, and have feared the water ever since. I wish I did not, for your sake. You love it, don’t you?”

He turned to face her and shrugged. “Sure, I like to swim—always have. So you never tried to learn?” He was watching her narrowly.

“Why should I?” She gave him an oblique smile. “If I fell in, you’d rescue me.”

“Of course. But what if I wasn’t around?”

“I’d drown,” she said simply. She leaned forward and touched his hand. “Richard, would you like me to learn to swim? So that we could completely share our pleasures?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“All right,” she said. “I just won’t go near the water unless you are with me.”

He avoided her gaze and drank again. Across the thick undulating water the little island was receding slowly astern. The boat purred smoothly along, its propellers barely churning the water. The man placed the cocktail shaker carefully on the deck and turned to the woman. She nodded at the island. “Let’s anchor over there and eat our dinner. I’ll get it ready while you stir up some more martinis. Want to?”

“Sure,” he said, gazing down at her.

She gave him a sly smile. “I have a surprise for you.”

“What is it?” His voice held a sudden sharp edge.

“You’ll see. I’ll show you later, after we anchor.”

He took a deep breath. Then he said softly, “And I have a surprise for you—darling.”

“Oh, good… Richard, are you really glad you married me?”

He nodded silently.

“You don’t mind being my fifth husband? My last husband?”

“No,” he said, “and I am the last.” He didn’t smile.

A small frown appeared between her carefully plucked brows. “What’s wrong?” she asked quietly.

He leaned down, the muscles of his tanned body rippling in the yellow sunlight, and pulled her to her feet roughly against him. Her drink spilled over his bare chest. She laughed a little breathlessly and tried to pull away from him. “Be careful, dear. Wait…”

He lifted her in his arms and her glass fell to the deck and shattered with a tiny tinkling sound. She stopped struggling and lay quietly in his arms, gazing at him with eyes suddenly soft and half veiled. “Going to carry me over the threshold?” she murmured.

He didn’t answer and gazed out over the water. Snake Island loomed darkly, far away now, and there were no other boats in sight. The lake was desolate, empty, and the only sounds were the waves slapping against the hull and the muffled purr of the motor. Abruptly he swung around and moved swiftly to the side of the boat. She saw the look in his eyes then and cried in sudden panic, “Richard! Put me down!”

He reached the low rail and flung her violently over the side. She screamed once, a piercing sound of terror, before she struck the water and went under. Almost instantly she appeared again, struggling violently, her short hair floating and bobbing on the surface. She tried to scream again, but it was only a liquid strangling sound, and once more she sank beneath the greenish white-flecked water.

The man whirled and ran into the cabin, savagely opened the throttle, grasped the wheel. The boat swung in a wide arc, her motor roaring. The graceful varnished prow lifted and water churned white in her wake as she sped southward toward the mainland, away from the nameless spot where the tawny-haired woman had sunk beneath the surface.

The man reached out and shut off the radio. Then he lifted a bottle of gin from a compartment beside the radio, drank deeply, wiped his mouth on a forearm and slid onto the padded seat behind the wheel. The sun dipped low in the west, its slanting rays gleaming red on the water. A chill breeze sprang up and swept through the open windshield. The man shivered, closed the windshield, took a shirt from a knob on the dash and placed it over his shoulders. It was a short-sleeved shirt covered with mauve prints and hula dancers against a green background, part of a beach ensemble matching his trunks. It hung loosely, exposing his brown naked chest.

Presently it was dusk. The man turned on the running lights and kept the boat’s nose on a tiny beacon of light marking the harbor far across the dark water. From time to time he drank from the bottle. Once he lit a cigarette, smoked it to the end and then dropped it indifferently to the deck where it burned itself out. Not once did he look back.

It was black dark by the time he approached the mainland. He stood in the stern and gazed at the faint lights on the shore perhaps five hundred yards away. He could see the tiny streaming headlights of the cars on the shore highway as they sped upward to the bluffs of Erie Cliffs and then disappeared when the road dipped inland toward the towns, cities and resorts to the east. The boat was barely moving, its motor throttled to a mutter. The man turned, stooped and entered the cabin. Not wishing to turn on the interior lights and perhaps attract undue attention to the boat, he took a flashlight from a compartment and went over the craft carefully, tossing overboard anything that might point to the recent presence of more than one person aboard. These items included the picnic hamper filled with food—more food than one person would eat—the pieces of the glass broken by his wife, the cocktail shaker, cigarette stubs in ashtrays and on the deck (but not the ones stained with lipstick). He did not worry about fingerprints, because as the woman’s husband he would naturally have been aboard on previous occasions. And he left such feminine articles as a lipstick, silver compact and comb, a few scattered hairpins and some lipstick-stained pieces of facial tissue. He had come aboard in the afternoon wearing only the green swimming trunks and the shirt, and the disposing of his clothing was therefore no problem.

When he was satisfied that any remaining articles would indicate the woman’s recent presence only, he went on deck once more and stood in a soft evening breeze and watched the shoreline. When the boat was abreast of a familiar dark mass of rock and pine trees he balanced himself easily on his bare feet and made a smooth dive over the side. He came to the surface ten feet from the boat and, shaking the water from his eyes, he began to swim shoreward with long, easy strokes. Behind him the boat purred slowly away in the general direction of Cleveland.

Presently the man’s feet struck sand. He stood up and waded through shallow water to a small beach beneath a high bluff and sheltered on both sides by thick evergreens. There was faint moonlight now and he saw the dully gleaming windows of the low, flat-roofed house above and the stone steps leading up to it from the beach. To his left was a long pier with a boathouse at the end. He went up the steps to the house, crossed a stone terrace beneath a striped awning and stopped before a glass-and-steel door. From a zippered pocket in the waistband of his trunks he took a key, unlocked the door, entered the dark house and moved with easy familiarity down a short carpeted hall, turned left into a long living room and stood before a window which comprised the entire north wall, where he gazed out at the dark softly rolling lake and the blue-black sky, brightening now with a hazy moon and the early winking of stars. He wondered where the boat was now and how far it would travel before the gas ran out, or before it cracked up on the beach. He regretted the boat. It was one of the things he’d loved, but it had been expendable, and he could buy another, a more expensive one, if he wished. He could do anything now, have anything he wanted, without being forced to ask his wife for it.

He felt no regrets for his wife, although as he stood there in the darkness by the wide window he thought that when he’d first met her in Las Vegas she had not been so bad, not with the expert makeup, the smart evening gown, the subtle perfume, at least fifty bucks an ounce. And her figure was really quite good, if you overlooked the faint wrinkles, the blue veins, and the breasts which sagged when she was naked, and the appendectomy scar resulting from comparatively crude surgery years ago, when she had been very young.

His name was Richard Barry and he had smelled the money when she approached his table. She had returned his smile and placed a hundred dollar bet on the red six and talked carelessly to him as she lost and continued to play, watching him with a quirk on her lips as he spun the wheel, and raked in the house winnings. A waiter from the bar had kept bringing her Scotch and water and at four in the morning she was still there by his side. The crowd had thinned and Richard closed his table and checked out with the cashier. When he returned to the table she was still there waiting, pretending to be absorbed in lighting a cigarette. He touched her arm and smiled. “You’ve had bad luck. The least I can do is buy you a drink.”

“Thank you. I hoped you would ask me.”

It had been easy. Her name was Karen something and she had just divorced her fourth husband in Reno. She was ripe. After a drink at the Last Frontier they’d gone to her hotel suite. She had dropped nineteen hundred at his table and it never hurt to be nice to the customers. Because of him, she stayed on in Vegas. Three weeks later they were married. At first he had loved the feeling of freedom, of security. Things had been rough for him, a bad run of luck, and Karen had come along at just the right time, at a time when he was not only broke but hot from his last job in L.A., a job he’d performed for Alex Kamin, to whom he was indebted, not only for money. He’d used a .357 magnum on the man Alex had designated, a fine gun for the purpose, with lovely muzzle velocity. You could hit a man almost anywhere with the magnum and he was dead.

Alex had paid off, after deducting what Richard owed him, but the money went fast (why was it that after every job he spent so much dough on booze and women?) and he wound up stony broke in Vegas and took the job at the casino. On a night two weeks later the woman had wandered in alone, flaunting her diamonds, a pastel mink stole over her bare shoulders, and came straight to his table…

It hadn’t been so bad, Richard thought, as he stood before the vast window overlooking the lake, at least not for the first couple of months. Karen’s home in Cleveland was luxurious. There were servants, three cars, a swimming pool and a private beach. She entertained a lot because, as she told him, she wanted to show him off to her friends, and he had not minded. He possessed manners and charm and an easy knack for wearing clothes, and some of Karen’s female friends were young and restless, bored with unexciting husbands. Richard was handsome, new and exciting. He had amused himself with several of the bored wives who came to the house, and in the city there were other opportunities. Karen gave him plenty of spending money and opened charge accounts for him at Higbee’s, the May Company, Sterling Lindner Davis, all the big stores, which he used freely for clothing, sporting equipment, jewelry, anything he wanted. Often he told himself during those first months of marriage to Karen that he had it made; he was set for life, if he was careful. If they had stayed in the city maybe everything would have been fine.

But in May she told him that they were going to her summer place at Erie Cliffs, just the two of them, not even a maid. “You’ll love it,” she said, patting his cheek. “It’s so quiet there, and the wind blows at night—I love the wind and the sound of the waves. We can go out in the boat and lie on the beach in the sun, do anything we want to without bothering about people. I’m suddenly weary of people, darling. I just want to be with you.”

“How long will we be there?” he asked cautiously.

“Until September.”

He was aghast. “Just us?”

“Most of the time. Oh, perhaps we can have a few small parties. I’m tired of parties. All of my friends have met you now, and are simply burning with envy.” She kissed him passionately. “Won’t it be lovely?”

“Yes,” he said dutifully.

But it was deadly. By the end of the first two weeks he thought he’d go mad with boredom. He couldn’t get away from her. The mornings weren’t so bad, because he usually slept until almost noon, and she did not disturb him. At Erie Cliffs he found that she was an early riser and he sometimes pretended to be sleeping until she had dressed and left the bedroom. She did the shopping in the mornings, usually at the stores in Harbor City, sixteen miles away. This was fine with Richard. But she was always home in time for lunch and then it was nothing but talk, talk, talk until bedtime, and after. He felt trapped. He was sick of her. He admitted it. And there was no one else near the godforsaken place. Even the woman who came to clean the house twice a week was fat and spoke in a guttural Polish accent.

The few times he had been free there had been no place for him to go, nothing to do, except for an afternoon in July when Karen had a dental appointment in Harbor City. Richard told her flatly that he did not feel like going with her. She had pouted, but when she saw that she could not persuade him, she gave him a curt smile and went alone. As soon as her white Cadillac had disappeared down the highway he took the yellow Corvette she’d given him for his birthday and drove to one of the public beaches east of Erie Cliffs. He picked up a girl there, a thin girl with metallic blond hair and red, red lips. It was easy, as usual, and the Corvette had helped, not that he needed the trim little sports car to complete his conquest. They wound up in a motel along the Marblehead road. The girl wasn’t much, but at least she was a change from Karen and well worth the few beers and hamburgers it cost him. She said she loved him and begged him to meet her the next day. He promised that he would, but forgot her as soon as he’d returned her to the beach; it seemed that her parents were very strict and funny about strange men bringing her to her home in Port Clinton.

Karen was waiting for him, sulky because he’d gone away without her. He told her carelessly that he’d just gone for a drive around the island. Then he kissed her, stirred a pitcher of martinis and by the time they were ready to drive into Harbor City for dinner she was in a forgiving mood. Her cool fingers touched his cheek and she whispered in his ear that if he was a good boy she would welcome him to her bed when they returned to the house at Erie Cliffs. It almost ruined his dinner. And it was then that his plan for murder began to take form, even before he met and fell in love with Rose Ann Deegan.

During the time at Erie Cliffs Richard Barry had noticed on several occasions that if Karen drank too many cocktails before lunch she would take a nap until late afternoon. And so, when it pleased his purpose, he saw that she consumed too much of whatever they were drinking that day—martinis, manhattans, old fashioneds, gin and tonics—and he pretended to drink with her. Then, after lunch, she would usually say apologetically, “Richard, I feel drowsy. I think I’ll take a little nap. Do you mind terribly?”

“Of course not.” Sometimes he even kissed her, quite warmly. And she would totter to the bedroom. Then he would wash the dishes and dry them, clean up the kitchen. A dirty kitchen annoyed him, he didn’t know why, exactly. Maybe it was because his mother’s third floor flat in Sacramento had always been so littered and untidy, the beds unmade, the ashtrays overflowing and sticky unwashed dishes on the kitchen table. Then, after he was certain that Karen was asleep, he would take the Corvette and roam the countryside, thinking, thinking.

It was on one of these afternoons that he stopped at a soft drink and ice cream drive-in for a Coke and saw Rose Ann Deegan for the first time. The girl who came out to his car was young, maybe twenty. Her small face held a fresh scrubbed look and her mouth curled  little at the corners. She wore her black hair in a pony tail tied with a red ribbon, and a pale blue uniform hugged her slim waist, gently curving hips and tautly covered the swell of her breasts. She hooked a tray over the Corvette’s door, poised a pencil over a pad and said brightly, “Yes, sir?”

“Double Coke, lots of ice.”

She nodded, smiled, and returned to the open counter of the drive-in. Richard watched her with quickening pulse. She was just about the cutest babe he’d seen around here, he thought. When she returned with his drink he gave her his most friendly and engaging smile, turned on his full charm, which was considerable when he chose to exert it, and said, “Thank you.”

She returned his smile, almost shyly. “You’re welcome. When you’re finished, just toot your horn.”

“I’ll do that,” he said, as she moved away. She was certainly built, he thought appreciatively. Small, maybe, but he liked them that way. And she looked like class. “Hmmm,” he said softly to himself.

Other cars drove in and as the girl served them, Richard sipped his Coke and watched her movements. When he had finished the drink he placed the glass on the tray, lit a cigarette and settled back to wait until the girl was free. Presently there was a lull and she moved to the counter. Richard gently sounded the horn and she came over instantly, as if she’d been expecting it. He placed a dollar bill on the tray and as she reached into a pocket of her uniform for change he smiled and said, “Keep it.”

She pocketed the bill, said, “Thank you,” unhooked the tray and turned away.

“Wait,” he said gently. “Please.”

She paused and swung slowly, regarding him gravely. Her eyes were a soft brown and very clear.

“How far is it to Sandusky?”

“About twelve miles. You take the Bay Bridge.”

“On this route?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks,” he said, still smiling. “What time are you off duty?”

She smiled, too, but said, “I don’t think that concerns you.”

“Don’t misunderstand, please,” Richard said quickly. “I’m on a vacation, all by myself. Frankly, I’m lonely. I hoped that maybe you could show me some of the sights around here.”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Why not? Give me one good reason.”

She lifted small rounded shoulders. “I—I don’t know you.”

“You will,” he said easily. “I’m not a bad guy, really.” He gazed at her earnestly and sincerely. “How about it?”

“No, thank you. I—”

A 1946 Ford sedan with a crew-cutted youth at the wheel drove in and stopped beside the Corvette. A plump blond girl wearing a white blouse and red shorts got out and the Ford zoomed away with a loud exhaust roar. The blonde said to the brunette, “You can take off now, Rose Ann, as soon as I change.” She walked swiftly toward the building.

Richard Barry glanced at his wrist watch. Three o’clock. He grinned at the girl, who still stood uncertainly. “You’re off duty now,” he said. “Let me take you home.”