Twilight Girl (17 page)

"Get away from me—you drunken slob." Lon shoved at the unwelcome body, threw the strength of her arms against Sassy's ribs, freeing herself of the disgusting burden. Lon leaped back to avoid further contact. And Sassy doubled, swayed for one unsupported instant and fell forward. Too late for Lon to catch her, to record in her mind that the blonde was unconscious. Too late for anything but the crack of Sassy's forehead against the flagstone coping—a sound that Lon absorbed through her own body like an internal rifle shot. And then Sassy lay still.

Lon waited, paralyzed, staring wide-eyed at the arched mound beside her feet. The shock passed through her then, and she squatted next to Sassy's head. Breathless and fearful, She turned Sassy's limp face, saw only inconsequential-appearing scrape on the forehead.
Oh, God!
The prayer whispered in Lon's mind.
Oh, God—why doesn't she move?
And Lon watched with sick horror the widening spot of red, the rich crimson pool expanding on the flagstone under Sassy's head, moving in an incredibly sluggish trickle from the corner of Sassy's mouth.

Then came the frantic shaking, the calling of Sassy's name. The desperate impulse of lifting an eyelid as she had seen movie detectives do. The long time before knowing, before acknowledging with that final, dreadful certainty that comes not from physical tests—the uplifted lid, the imperceptible pulse—But from some mystic, inner sense, knowing that Sassy was dead. Lon screamed it inside herself.
Dead. She's dead.

Lon felt a child's panic. Saw herself as a little girl. Helpless amid holiday adultery. Humming sound that never had been really a sound whirred now in her head. And the fear-frozen child within told her.
Make it look like an accident. It truly was an accident, but they won't believe you. Even when it's true, they never believe you. Make it look as though—

And Lon kneeled beside the crumpled form, away from the water's edge, burying her palms in the still-warm flesh. Burying her palms, crying for breath and pushing with all the strength she could summon to roll the horror from her sight.

The splash was gentle. Unprotesting, the slate water accepted its burden. And closed over it like a reverent nun's hands folding.

Lon trembled to her feet. To see close-cropped yellow hair undulate in slow movement, the way submerged sea plants wave in response to a current. To see other things. How dark the turquoise fabric looked when wet. How faintly pink that cloud of water there.

She started for the car and stopped, retracing her steps, grateful for a keen mind that knew clearly and efficiently what must be done. Kneeled once more, to scoop water from the pool with cupped hands. Dashed the water against the red puddle on the rough coping, repeated the cleansing ritual many times, arms moving with frenetic, mechanized speed.

The rock was only lightly tinged with color when finally she hurried toward the Plymouth. Cleaner than it had ever been, Lon assured herself. Soaked with enough water so that it would not dry red and caked.

* * *

Mavis was walking to the car, tugging a valise and juggling two cardboard cartons. Lon watched through half-closed eyes, head pillowed against the rim of the steering wheel, feigning sleep. And saw Mavis take a short route across the lawn, unknowingly avoiding the pool's edge and what would be better unseen. Mavis set down the bag and opened the door.

"Guess we can cut out, baby," Mavis said. She tossed all her worldly possessions carelessly to the back seat. "Sassy's painless. So junked up, she wasn't even around when I walked out." The brown girl sank into the front seat, shook her head dolefully and slammed the door.

They were at the foot of the hill, turning into the highway, before Lon felt sure enough of her voice to ask, "What's 'junked up,' Mavis?"

Mavis started to reply, hesitated, and then said, "Sick. Miserable sick." A long while later, she spoke again. Pensively, more to herself than to Lon. "Feel I owe her something, you know? One phone call, maybe. Monday, when her mama's home. Get somebody else to do for her what I figured she'd do for herself last night. Cross her. That's the only way. But I care that much—care that much about anybody, come to think about it." Mavis looked out at the scrubby hills, fresh in the morning light. She seemed to be pondering a secret problem of her own. "Man, Sassy keeps going the way she's going... Sassy's a set-up. Kill herself, that's all."

And no one sick should be struck—killed. A person should
be able to tell when someone's weak and sick.
Lon's hands tightened on the wheel. She concentrated on the white line dividing the winding ribbon of concrete before her, blinking bard to keep her eyes from closing of their own accord. Yet felt no need now for sleep.

CHAPTER 14

Somewhere in a tree-shaded canyon, Lon listened to the motor idle It was the wrong time to congratulate herself on the carbureter adjustment that had produced this pleasing, steady purr. Strange, the way insignificant thoughts had of coming to her mind when other, much weightier matters should be possessing her faculties.
Did a body sink to the bottom or float? And who would find it? When?
And the silly thought returned:
it would have cost her plenty at Mageley's garage, but she had done the job herself—and just listen to that motor!

And then Lon remembered that she had said goodbye to Mavis, had looked up to watch the slim figure start up a steep concrete stairway embedded in a rocky wall that had been cut away to make the road. At the top of the stairway stood a picturesque house, or what could be seen of a house, built from fieldstone. Mavis wasn't going there and Lon wondered why she had not offered to carry the pathetic luggage with which Mavis struggled. Lon looked long and hard at the figure in loosely hung black, watching until the sting of tears forced her to rub her eyes and drown out the image. "I'll be over to see you soon," she promised hoarsely, although Mavis had already heard her say that once and could not hear her now.
Mavis—how was I to know she was sick?

Lon put the Plymouth in gear. Soon was driving on through the canyon then, past the sign that warned drivers that this was a closed area and no smoking was permitted, headed in the logical direction. And she could not permit herself to think what it would be like to walk into her home where the questions would be hurled at her and the accusations heaped upon her shoulders. She refused to project herself that far into the future Thinking, she might turn the car around, drive to some other place—some other place. But where? Where can anyone go, at the end, but home?

Sunday was the right day for homecoming, the exactly right day. For how could Lon's mother prolong the inquisition, how many times could the thin, whining voice repeat questions and answer them vindictively in the next breath, when Sunday culminated a week of planning, organizing, telephoning? On this day, Mrs. Harris bathed in approval. On this day the Supervisor of the Sunday School reaped her reward.

Eddie was tugged unwillingly between televised Dodgers and the church; her father made stern noises and reminded Lon that she was being unfair to her mother. So much for them. And after the initial scene, during which Lon had responded with terse, tight-lipped answers—
Yes, I did, Mother... I guess you're right, Mother... I guess I'm sorry, Mother
—the worst was suddenly over and Lon closed her bedroom door as she had closed it against unpleasantness so many times before.

The sense of having found sanctuary after a long pursuit enveloped Lon then. Her head felt airborne, sickeningly light from sleeplessness and a hunger she had no desire now to satisfy. Yet here she was safe. She would think things out after she slept.

But when she fell across the bed, an inner pressure would not let her sleep.

She tried to review the events of the preceding night and of the morning, hoping to isolate the precise reason for the knotted growth in her belly. Examine the moment, the deed, the malignancy that must be specifically identified before the surgical knife can cut it from the pain-wracked flesh.
Killed somebody. Murdered somebody.

Yet the briefness of her time with Sassy was whirled away in kaleidescopic views of lengthier, more vivid scenes. A tricky left turn on the way to Violet's—the heavy Saturday evening traffic—the unappetizing look of delicatessen macaroni salad in the Polivka kitchen—Violet's mother—the sinking luxury of that hall carpet under her loafers at Greggs'. Views, sensations, impressions unworthy of memory, indelibly stenciled upon her mind, recalled more sharply now than that flashing instant between Sassy speaking, moving and breathing—and Sassy face down in pink water.

Something as shatteringly final as death should have been alloted more time. More significance than the recollection of a bruised forehead. Lon felt a vague resentment, thinking of this.
It had taken so little time to end Sassy Gregg's life. Something as terribly important as that, and it had taken no more than a few seconds.
It wasn't right, somehow. And Lon thought then, with a childlike pity for herself,
someone should have told me she was sick.
Resenting Sassy next, but only mildly, for cheating her out of the fair and satisfying revenge, for letting herself die under such unheroic, un-memorable circumstances. Pow. Thud. Sounds from a comic book—and that was all! The thoughts spun around in her brain and suddenly Lon wished she could cry.
No one told me she was too sick to fight. What will they say when they find her? Drowned. Fell, hit her head, fell into the pool. Why lie here and worry about it?

Lon lay rigid, her arms feeling like overfilled tubes, blood forcing into them, pumping, nearing the point of bursting. Her head throbbed. The sound was the minor twang of a tuning fork now, playing back and forth from her forehead to her crown. Ceaseless, tremulous sound. Why couldn't she cry?

* * *

Miraculously, she had fallen asleep. She awoke as she always did, before the rest of the household. It was morning, all right, she convinced herself, glancing at the electric alarm clock. She had slept, then, most of one day and through a full night. Monday morning.

When the realizations had registered, she noted the time. Ten after seven. In twenty minutes, another alarm clock in her parents' room would bring the house to life.

The morning paper would be on the front lawn by now. Lon slid out of bed, wondering when she had straightened herself out to lie on the pillow with the covers over her; she had slept in the shirt and slacks worn to Violet's party—such a long time ago. She padded through the house, opened the door in cautious, silent slow-motion and returned to her room with the newspaper tucked inside her sleep-wrinkled shirt.

She saw Mavis's picture before she read the captions. And refused to let herself be shocked by the familiar face staring out at her from the shaking newspaper. Her eyes drifted to the center of a column, skimming through a reported exoneration of someone named Durham Saunders, until late Sunday considered the prime suspect. Seems the man had sobbed as he recounted discovery of his fiancée's body, had disclaimed all knowledge of her drug habit. Her parents had rushed home from Las Vegas—wealthy contractor Warren Gregg had collapsed upon viewing the body of the couple's only child.

Nothing at all about red stain or a fight. Nothing about Lon Harris. And she noted this with a garbled mixture of relief and disappointment. They had it all wrong! How could she let it upset her, when they had it all wrong?

Her vision traced an upward pattern to the bold-faced type: PLAYBOY RELEASED IN MYSTERY SLAYING. She read the caption under Mavis's picture then:
Maid Sought In Drug Murder.
Oh, they really had it fouled up!

Strange, she thought, that she could read it all without going to pieces. The newspaper was held steadily now and she could study it with an almost anesthetized calm. Her mind was clear and alert, so that she could analyze:

First, the flagstone coping hadn't been mentioned, but it was the clue they needed. She should have done a more thorough job of washing off the blood.

Second, they had not found Mavis. Not yet But they would. There would be only one thing to. do then, and it would be more noble to do it before they dragged Mavis into it.

Third, it was just as well that her mother hadn't seen this newspaper. She would insist that she had seen the missing "maid" on her doorstep between three and four on Sunday morning. More arguments. More scoldings, questionings.

And while she was working out all this logically, Lon thought, too, that it would be less irritating to have someone in a police uniform explain the whole situation to her mother later. Because, that way, he would be the one forced to answer the whining questions. She felt sorry for the faceless police officer, but a malicious amusement went with her sympathy. Let somebody else listen for a change!

Lon folded the newspaper carefully, covering the photo.
They won't do anything to you, Mavis. Did you think I'd let them? When it's all over, we'll get together—you'll be proud of me!

She opened the bottom drawer of the desk, started to tuck the newspaper under her Island plans. Then, on second thought, Lon lifted the sheaves of paper to the desk top, leaving nothing in the drawer but the folded newspaper. Leafing through the stacks of notebook paper, it occurred to her that police stations were not like business offices or stores, where you had to wait until nine o'clock before making a phone call. Her father would miss his sports page during breakfast, might even tie up the phone, calling to find out why his paper hadn't been delivered. No, this was the time to call. Now, while she could do it without the self-conscious feeling of being overheard by the family. There was a dramatic sense, an excitement, in thinking of what she would say. And Lon's only regret was that Mavis would not be there to hear her.

* * *

There was so much to be done after the call was completed. So much to accomplish before the alarm clock in the other bedroom sounded—before they came to pick her up.

Lon patted cold water on her face, rinsed out her mouth, dried herself with a towel. She found cold fried chicken in the refrigerator, washed it down with milk, rinsed her mouth again, then hurried back to the bedroom.