She swirled about and yanked the closet door open and walked in and snapped the closet light on. She began to rummage among the garment bags and hangers.
“I know darned well I left my white linen here...”
Sandra Jean tilted her head thoughtfully. Tully felt a pang, a stab of recognition. The head-tilt was one of the mannerisms he so loved in Ruth.
He stood there watching the girl. The dim light in the closet played tricks on him. Of course, the hair was different. But if it were darkened to auburn... yes, with auburn hair...
Something cracked in Tully’s head.
Split it wide open.
For an instant he felt dizzy.
He steadied himself in the bedroom doorway.
“Sandra.” He had trouble with his voice.
“Yes?”
“The natural color of your hair. It’s auburn, isn’t it?”
Busy going through the garments in the closet, Sandra Jean made a vague affirmative sound.
He began a slow crossing of the room. It was as if he were wading in an undertow. “Two summers ago. In June. Your hair was its natural auburn then, wasn’t it?”
“How should I know? Why on earth—?”
She whirled. He was just outside the closet, breathing in heavy gusts, making slow grinding sounds with his teeth. She paled and shrank against Ruth’s clothes.
“What’s the matter with you?” his wife’s sister asked. Her voice was high-pitched suddenly.
Later, Tully was to marvel at his control. All he was conscious of now was the throbbing in his temples and the tickle of sweat as it crept down his nose.
He said thickly, “How long have you known Cranny Cox, Sandra?”
12
Sandra Jean shrank deeper into her sister’s clothes closet. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“When did you first meet Cox?”
“I’ll let the white dress go for now,” she whispered. “I can get it after Andy and I get back.”
She made as if to leave the closet. Tully loomed over her. She stopped. Her face was yellow-white now.
“Davey, please. I want to go to Andy.”
“Tell me.”
“Dave! Let me out of here! Or I’ll—”
“What?” David Tully said. “Call Andy? Go ahead. You can tell both of us all about you and Cox. Or yell copper and save me the trouble.”
He could see the girl’s natural shrewdness take over little by little. She was weighing the probabilities even before the panic was fought down. She smiled up at him.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Dave. You scared me, that’s all. You must be out of your mind. Let me pass, will you?”
“Sure,” Tully said, stepping aside. She slipped quickly by him. “But I don’t think you’ll want to go just yet, Sandra. Even if it’s only to indulge me a few minutes longer. Don’t you want to hear my brainstorm?” She’ll have to stay and listen, he thought, if only to find out how much I’ve guessed.
He was right. Sandra Jean shrugged and said, “Why not?” and sat down at Ruth’s vanity, crossing her legs and looking at herself in the mirror. She began to poke at her hair. “But make it snappy, lover, or Andy’ll think you’ve got evil designs on his bride.”
“The resemblance,” Tully said. “It’s been right here all the time, under my nose, and I didn’t see how it answered the question.”
“What question?” the girl asked, still plumping up her hair.
“The question of how a woman of Ruth’s taste and character could foul herself up with a mucking gigolo like Cox. The answer obviously was that she couldn’t. So it had to be you, Sandra. You and Ruth are such look-alikes it hits me every time I see you.”
“I suppose there is a resemblance,” Sandra Jean said carelessly, “and I can see how you’d figure me for more of a tramp than my beloved sister, but aren’t you forgetting something, Davey?” Her eyes in the mirror were watchful.
“No,” Tully said, “I’m forgetting nothing, Sandra. You mean the fact that when you were indulging in your nasty little peccadilloes you did it using Ruth’s name. I wonder why. To protect yourself? Hiding behind your sister’s name would do it, all right. Maybe it had a deeper meaning—”
“Such as, Doctor?” the girl laughed. “As long as we’re hallucinating...” Her eyes kept giving her away.
“Such as that you’ve always hated Ruth for being what you couldn’t be, and by masquerading under her name in a filthy affair you transferred the filth to her in some perverted kind of way.” He shrugged. “The psychiatrists can dig into that. What interests me is that it’s the only explanation that makes sense.”
Sandra Jean began to search among Ruth’s lipsticks for the shade she wanted. “For what?”
“For Wilton Lake, for instance,” Tully said. Her hand paused for the slightest instant over a lipstick. Then it resumed its motion and she was applying it to her pouting lips. “That was you up at the Lodge two years ago, Sandra, wasn’t it? With Cox? You using Ruth’s name and wallowing in a three-day orgy the people up there still remember! That resemblance worked overtime for you, Sandra. I showed one of the maids a photo of Ruth and she said, yes, that was the woman with Cox that summer. It was an honest mistake — seeing a wallet-sized snapshot after the passage of two years, the woman made a logical identification. But I think if we darken your hair and take you up to the Lodge for the old gal to inspect in the flesh...”
This time fear flickered in those depths. She set the lipstick down, white-faced again. Tully pressed on remorselessly.
“I don’t know why even you took up with a creep like Cox — for the kicks, I guess, rolling around in the gutter to see what it tasted like — but you must have come to your senses, probably gave him some money, and thought you were rid of him. Only it didn’t work out that way, Sandra, did it?”
The full lips were drying. Her tongue stole out to wet them.
“Cox wasn’t rid of you. For some time he let you alone. But then he got sick, and he was broke, and he rummaged around in his dirty little bag of tricks and came up with that weekend. He got in touch with you. And you wrote him a letter — that unsigned typewritten note the police found in his effects: ‘Cranny— You keep away from me, and I mean it. What happened between us is ancient history... I’ve found myself a leading citizen here who’s very much interested in me and I think he’s going to ask me to marry him...’ That wasn’t Ruth referring to me. That was you referring to Andrew Gordon.”
He saw her thighs tighten and her rump begin to lift. But then she sank down again.
“You must have scared him off for the time being. Or he was too sick to follow it up. But under Maudie Blake’s fat and tender hands he got back on his feet. And he made straight for this town like bad news. And phoned here, asking for Ruth. Andy himself told me that; he took the call when you and he were here and Ruth happened to be out. Even Cox thought your name was Ruth.”
Her eyes were darting about now like trapped fish. Tully knew what she was thinking. Not about Ruth. Not about him, or even herself. She was thinking of Mercedes Cabbott’s money, and how it was slipping though her fingers.
“That’s when you got your big idea, Sandra. You’ve always had the key to this house. You lifted my gun and went to the Hobby Motel. It was you the Blake woman heard Cox call Ruth. It was you who shot Cox to death.”