The Blob had visited Cox that night at the motel after Ruth left. (To go where? But this question Tully killed dead in its tracks.) Maudie Blake overheard, recognized the voice, maybe even saw its owner as he slipped into the room, or out of it afterward. Maudie moved over to Flynn’s Inn. She made contact with the killer, told him where she was, demanded a talk... It could have taken place either at Flynn’s or elsewhere. Wherever it was, Maudie must have laid it on the line: I know you shot Cranny Cox. I’ve set up this Ruth with the cops as your pigeon, and I can even make it look worse for her with what I know. But it’s gonna cost...
Greedy Maudie Blake. It cost, all right, but not the Blob. It cost Maudie her life. One murder or two — the penalty was the same.
It happened after I left her, Tully thought, after she sent me up to the Lodge. The Blob must have been watching, waiting. I leave, he goes in. Through a side entrance or something, unseen. Then up to her room.
She’s pretty loaded by this time. He may have come prepared to strangle her, or to hit her over the head, or smother her with a pillow. But her drunken condition gives him a better idea, a way to kill her that looks like accidental death...
The formless Somebody standing or sitting in Maudie’s room. Maybe pretending to drink with her as he discusses her demands. Urging her to drink even more. Until she falls on the bed and passes out.
Then how easy to kill her.
The alcohol-saturated blood already poisoning her liver, kidneys, brain... All he has to do is to keep forcing the liquor down her throat as she lies conveniently across the bed with her head over the side and her mouth open. He would have to be careful that she didn’t choke to death. A little at a time... delicate as an operation, but easy, so easy. And finally the alcoholic content of her blood reaches and passes the fatal level.
Dead of an overdose of alcohol. What had Julian Smith said? “We get two-three deaths like that a year.”
Obliterate traces of his visit. Trip the tumbler, let the door swing shut, locked.
Easy.
Safe.
(And where was Ruth all this time?)
It gnawed. It gnawed.
Shortly after Tully’s return home, a sleek white sports car with the top down dragged to a stop before the house.
The screech of rubber brought him to the front window. Sandra Jean and Andrew Gordon were getting out of the car. They were talking and laughing. Mercedes Cabbott’s son made a sweeping gesture: I am master of the world, it said. He stumbled slightly as they started up the walk. Tully wondered how much Andy had had to drink.
Tully opened the front door.
“Hi, pops,” Sandra Jean said.
Andy made two fists, did a little shuffle, and threw a one-two at an imaginary opponent. He grinned crookedly at Tully. “Sure it’s safe for me to come in, Champ? You pack a mean wallop.”
“Andrew, don’t be silly.” Sandra Jean took him by the arm.
“Come in,” Tully said.
They breezed past him into his house, Andy Gordon still shadow-boxing. He’s not as drunk as he’s acting, Tully thought; he rarely is.
“Oh, Andy, stop that,” Sandra Jean said. “We haven’t time for games. You can play all you want afterward.”
“Afterward?” Tully said. He closed the front door.
“Haven’t you heard?” Mercedes’s son threw his head back and howled like Tarzan. “The mating call! Mind if I have two or six of your drinks?” He wobbled toward Tully’s bar and got busy.
Tully glanced at Ruth’s sister.
She nodded. “We’re getting married, Davey.”
“Oh?”
“Eloping!” the darkly handsome boy chortled. “How’s that for an idea, Champ?” He threw himself into an armchair with his drink and stretched his muscular legs, grinning. Tully noticed that he merely sipped from the glass.
“Great,” Tully said. “Whose idea was it?”
“Mine, o’ course. Got down on my knees to my li’l ol’ gal. Didn’t I, sugar?” Andy rested his head on the back of the chair and began to sing O Promise Me. He broke off to take another sip. Tully glanced contemptuously at Sandra Jean. She laughed in his face and went over to Andy and stooped to rub cheeks with him.
“You certainly did, darling. Nicest proposal I’ve ever had. And so legal, too. Look, I’ll be ready in a jiff—”
“Wait a minute,” Tully said. “I take it Mercedes knows nothing about this?”
“You take it and you can have it,” Andy chuckled. “I s’pose you think I’m afraid of her. No such thing, my friend. Just cutting the old umbilical. I’m old enough to know what I’m doing. Right, my-love-my-dove-my-undefiled?”
“And such muscles, too,” Sandra Jean crooned.
“And what’s more,” the boy said, waving the glass, “if that louse of a stepfather of mine opens his yap — pow! I’ll smear him all over the palace floor.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” his bride-to-be smiled, laying her finger over his lips. “This is going to be a civilized elopement. No brawls, no quarrels — just sweetness and light. Mercedes doesn’t mean a thing she said. All we have to do is do it, Andy. She won’t cut you off. She’ll come around.”
“Not losing a son, but gaining a daughter,” Andrew Gordon muttered. “I dunno though, Sandra. The old girl can get awfully tough...”
“Everything’s going to be just fine, Andy,” Sandra Jean murmured, nuzzling his ear. “You just trust Sandra Jean.”
“Yeah,” the boy said. He pulled her face down and kissed her fiercely.
She struggled, laughing. “Andy! In front of Dave—?”
“Hell with Dave.”
“No, now you finish your drink while I get those things together,” the girl said firmly. “I’ll be right back.” She extricated herself, kissed him lightly on the forehead, and hurried out of the living room.
Tully followed her.
She went into his and Ruth’s bedroom. Tully went in after her. She wheeled on him.
“Whatever you’re intending to say, Dave — I warn you, don’t.”
“Seeing that this is my bedroom,” Tully said, “do you mind if I throw up all over it?”
Her eyes, so beautiful, so like Ruth’s, flashed hell’s-fire. For a moment he thought she was going to spring at him claws first. But then, with remarkable discipline, she forced herself to smile.
“Davey, I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have come except that I have some things of mine here I want to take with me on our honeymoon. I won’t be long, and then we’ll be out of your hair.”
Hair. She had washed a lighter tint into her hair since he had last seen her. He wondered what its original color had been, why she kept changing it.
“Sometimes I think you’re not human, Sandra.”
“Mercy! And what do we mean by that?” the girl said mockingly. She looked human enough as she turned to walk across the bedroom, her hips rising and falling rhythmically. “Aren’t I female-human?”
“On the outside, definitely. But what are you inside?”
“Lover, it goes clear through.” She paused at the closet door — Ruth’s closet — and turned around. “I know what’s bugging you about me, Davey, and it hasn’t a bloody thing to do with Andy Gordon or Mercedes Cabbott. You think I’m acting like a bitch because I’m proposing to run off and get married while my sister’s in all this trouble. But what do you expect me to do? Sit on Mercedes’s terrace and wring my hands? I told you, I can’t help Ruth. All I can do is help myself. This is my big chance at sonny-boy. I may never get another.”
“You mean it’s your big chance at the fortune sonny-boy’s slated to come in to.”
“Sonny-boy and his dough. Look, Dave, I know how you feel about me, but I’m nowhere near as bad as you think I am. Of course Mercedes’s money has a lot to do with it. I wouldn’t marry Andy if he wasn’t coming in to it. But I’m really fond of the kid; I intend to be a good wife; maybe even make a man of him. The big laugh in this thing is that I’ll probably turn out the best goddam daughter-in-law Mercedes Cabbott could possibly want for her precious Andrew. End of speech.”