She crossed the room, threw a bolt. “This is your room, young man.”
Keith followed her in. “Fine.”
“I’m glad you like it.” She moved about quickly, like a sparrow. “I own up, when I first saw you two, I thought to myself, uh-uh, a pair of those college hellions. They do try to register here, you know. But I took one look at you, young man—”
“Why, thank you,” Keith said. And get the hell out, he thought.
He looked through the window. Old Newt was still in his doorway, watching.
The woman paused as she started from the room. “Oh. We always collect in advance.”
“I paid your husband.”
“Oh, excuse me. By the way, you’ll find extra blankets in the bottom drawer of that bureau. Nights still get chilly this time of year.”
“Thanks very much.” Get out!
Finally, she left.
He shut the door behind her, leaned against it. Nancy was standing in the middle of the room, looking at him.
“Keith.” She took a couple of steps toward him, noticed his change of expression, came to an indecisive halt. “You’re very tired, aren’t you?”
“No,” he said, “I’m not a damned bit tired. I can last for days. Weeks. I know how not to get tired.”
She was turning slowly toward her own room, stricken. He felt a savage frustration. Something was happening between them. It had begun back there on the lake when Vallancourt’s car had almost cornered the compact. It was getting worse. It was all that suspicious sonofabitch Newt’s fault.
“Nancy...”
She shivered. Then she came across the room deliberately, put her arms about him, stood thigh to thigh against him.
“The only way you can hurt me, Keith, is to close the door against me.”
“I don’t understand why you bother with me.”
“Why try?”
“I need to. I want to. If you were a plain Jane or a cripple, I might understand. But you could have your pick.”
“Why do you keep running yourself down, Keith?”
He passed the back of his hand across his forehead. “You mix me up. Worse than hell, Nancy.”
“Everything is mixed up right now. But we’ve reason for hope.”
“Give me one.”
She stood looking up into his face. “You really don’t know how to hope, do you, Keith? You just know how to survive.”
“I’ve made it for twenty-two years,” he mumbled.
“Then you can keep on doing it.”
“Nuts,” he said.
“All right, I’ll give you another. You think whoever killed Dorcas Ferguson is lying on a bed of roses while you’re loose? While the case remains wide open?”
“His nerve won’t break. I’m on the run. Why should he walk in and confess?”
“I didn’t mean that, and you know it. But he’s trying to cover up a murder. He’ll make a slip. As long as the investigation goes on, we’ve plenty of reason for hope.”
Outside, a rough-running old car started with a backfire.
Keith slid away from Nancy.
“Kill that light!”
She jumped for the wall. He eased up to the side of the window.
He saw an old sedan leaving the parking area. It stopped at the street’s edge, and in the light of the street lamp he saw that the woman Heather was driving. She got the bucking jalopy into the street and disappeared.
Keith glanced back to the office of the motel. Newt was still standing in the doorway.
“That old guy suspects something!”
“Keith...”
“Damn it, don’t use that patronizing tone to me, Nancy! I tell you, he thinks we’re up to something. He’s a canny louse, living off a woman who does all the work.”
“Keith, you’ve got to control these suspicions.”
“I know what I’m talking about. I could feel it in the old man. That Newt and my father... They carry the same stink in their eyes.”
Across the parking area, Newt had come to life. He was at the telephone, dialing quickly.
Keith pushed Nancy aside. As he burst out of the cabin, she ran after him, caught his arm. “Keith!” she said in a sharp whisper. “You mustn’t!”
He shook her loose without taking his eyes off the lighted window of the office. Newt was acting furtive. Any fool could see it. There could be only one reason why. The old man had given his wife time to get out of harm’s way...
Newt spun about, guilt written all over his cunning face.
“What the devil...”
Keith jerked the phone from his hand.
Newt stood staring as Keith lifted the phone to his ear.
“You sure you want it that way, Newt?” a voice said. “The whole ten bucks on Sandy-boy in the fourth tomorrow at Gulfstream? Well, it’s your dough, but if your wife finds you’ve been laying more bets...”
In a panic, Keith let the phone drop on its cradle, killing the voice.
Newt was pressed against the wall, studying Keith nastily.
“Boy, who’d you think I was calling? The cops, maybe?”
“Forget it,” Keith muttered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything.”
“You acted like you meant plenty, busting in here this way. You know, you look damned familiar to me. You ever do time at Prison Farm Four? Nah, that ain’t where I seen you...” Newt stopped, his mouth slack. He went mud-colored. He tried to recover, to move nonchalantly across the office toward the sanctuary offered by his apartment.
But, Keith was there, grabbing a handful of sleazy shirt-front.
“Okay, let’s hear it. Where have you seen me before?”
“Boy, I ain’t. I swear.”
Keith pulled the man up on tiptoe. “You’re a liar. You’ve seen my face on every TV newscast today, in the newspaper. Isn’t that it?”
Newt swallowed, his Adam’s apple jerking. “Boy, why didn’t you just stay in that cabin? I had my mind so set on calling the bookie soon as my old woman was out of here, I wouldn’t of remembered you from Adam...”
11
Ivy Ferguson Conway was waiting when the three men returned.
“In the living room, Mr. Vallancourt,” Charles said quietly. “Mrs. Ledbetter has been keeping her company, and I’ve left word at Mr. Conway’s home, in case you dropped him there.”
They went into the living room. Mrs. Ledbetter was standing beyond a high-backed brocaded chair. Vallancourt dismissed her with a nod. She slipped out of the room.
Ivy was sprawled in the big chair, very drunk. All her girlishness was gone. She looked like a surly, vain old crow.
“Home the hunters,” she said in thick mockery. “Did the great big mans make heroes of themselves? I don’t believe they did. The nasty delinquent is still at large.”
“Ivy.” Conway’s voice was full of phlegm. “You’ve no business coming here in this condition.”
“Dear boy, I had to welcome the shining knights. John, get me a drink.”
“You’ve had enough, Ivy!” her husband said.
“This is John’s house, and John can do as he likes in John’s house, can’t you, John? Poor John... thought you knew her so well, didn’t you? And Nancy turns out to be just another female with the usual streak of bitch.”
Conway towered over his wife. He seemed about to strike her. Vallancourt caught his arm.
Ivy was staring at her husband’s broad hand. Then he shook himself and moved backward, and she giggled. “We never never never strike little wifie before friends, do we, darling? Only in the privacy of home sweet home.”
“Please, Ivy. We’d better go.”
For an instant, his tone reached through the fog. Her eyes deepened briefly with suffering. “Home is where the heart is, Howie boy. So I have no home. Because you don’t have a heart.”