Tully said into the phone, “Don’t upset yourself, Norma. Ollie’s undoubtedly on his way home right now, or he’d have called you.”
“Why didn’t he call me anyway?” Norma wept. “He has no consideration, Dave. I’m so alone all the time — in this awful house—”
“It’s one of my best,” Tully said fatuously.
“Oh, you know I don’t mean that!” To his surprise she stopped crying, sounding angry. “It’s just that Ollie keeps avoiding me, and don’t tell me he doesn’t, Dave Tully!”
“I’ll tell you exactly that, Norma. He’s the most successful lawyer in town, and he’s carrying a tremendous work-load. He spends every minute he possibly can with you.”
Norma was silent. For a moment Tully thought she had simply walked away from the phone, as she sometimes did. But then, suddenly, she said, “What did you want Ollie for, Dave?”
It brought Tully back to his own troubles. “Oh, a matter of business, Norma. Would you tell him to give me a ring when he gets home?” He hung up before Norma could ask for Ruth.
Tully sat down at the phone to wait. If ever a man needed legal advice, he thought, it’s me right now. Ollie was a damn good lawyer. A little cautious, maybe, but give him time to think a thing through and he was a tough baby to beat.
Tully was still sitting there when he heard somebody moving around in the living room. He jumped up, heart racing. Ruth! Could it possibly be Ruth?
He ran into the living room.
But it was only Sandra Jean.
Sandra Jean was Ruth’s sister, and she used her older sister’s home as if her name were also Tully, instead of Ainsworth. She was busy at the cowhide-and-bleached mahogany bar when Tully walked in — so absorbed in fixing her Scotch on the rocks that when he said “Hi!” in her ear, she almost dropped the tall glass.
When Sandra Jean saw who it was, she said, “Don’t do things like that, you creep,” giving him one of her characteristic pouty-lipped, moist looks, and turned back to the bar. “You really bugged me, pops. Now I do need one with muscles,” and she added a full inch of Scotch to the glass.
“I thought it was Ruth,” Tully said. “Do you know where she is?”
“Probably having dinner out,” Sandra Jean said, sipping. She gave him a long-lashed, thoughtful look over the rim of her glass. “I guess she didn’t expect you home so early. I was kind of working the raised-eyebrow department myself when I saw the car and the lights on — I was just going to look for you when you gave me that verbal goose. But I needed this drink first.”
“You’re drinking too damned much,” Tully said.
“Yes, popsy,” Sandra Jean said. “You want to spank the naughty little sister?” She stuck her bottom out at him, laughing.
“Act your age, will you?” Tully sat down wearily.
He wondered only briefly what Sandra Jean was doing there if she had believed he and Ruth weren’t home. Ruth’s kid sister operated on a sort of emotional radar — “Obey that impulse!” was her motto. She had a key to their house, and if she were in the neighborhood and suddenly felt like a drink, the fact that no one was supposed to be home wouldn’t stop her. On the other hand...
She was still looking at him over the glass. Tully stirred uncomfortably.
He always had that feeling when he was alone with Sandra Jean. She made him conscious of himself. As if she possessed a secret knowledge, a quivering and unspoken something between them which shamed him, and amused her. The only thing that made it tolerable was his rueful conviction that Sandra Jean affected most men that way.
She turned from the bar and went over to the TV set and clicked it on, sipping all the time. Tully watched her a little warily. She was an attractive kid, all right. “Kid...” Some kid! In many ways she was like Ruth — the same clean-line legs, the same nipped-in waist, flow of hips, full shoulders; the same dramatic facial structure, wide-apart eyes, perfect little nose.
Ruth’s hair was a sun-drenched auburn and Sandra Jean’s was whatever color her frequent whims dictated — right now it was a kind of bangy Cleopatra black — but their real differences were vital, a matter of movement and gesture in carrying out the unconscious commands of their worlds-apart temperaments. If they walked across a room together, observed from either fore or aft Ruth walked like a lady and Sandra Jean like a belly dancer — with the same equipment. There was a smack of sensuality in every move the girl made, almost a naked carnality.
She’s going to give some man a hard time, Tully thought dimly. Andy Gordon, if she could wrestle the young nitwit out of mama’s clutch. And maybe a procession of others who, like the panting Gordon boy, would mistake Sandra Jean’s striptease personality for heaven-sent passion. Tully had long suspected that beneath his young sister-in-law’s steamy exterior lay a soul of ice.
The blast of the TV jarred him back to the present. He started to get up, but sank back when Sandra Jean turned the sound down low. She dropped into a chair opposite him, sprawling on the end of her spine, her long legs thrust out as far as they would go. She closed one eye and sighted through the amber liquid in her glass.
“Thought I’d wait around for Ruth and muscle in, if you two are going out tonight,” she said. “Lover-boy is dancing attendance on mama and left me at loose ends this evening. You don’t mind, do you?”
Tully said nothing. Ruth... He shut his eyes and massaged them with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand.
Sandra Jean said suddenly, “Say, what’s the matter with you? Trip go sour?”
Tully opened his eyes. “Look, Sandra, don’t you have any idea where Ruth is?”
“No. Should I have? You’re looking kind of green, Davey. How about a slug of Scotch?”
Tully shook his head and shut his eyes again, wishing she would go away. His temples were pounding. Ruth... He tried desperately not to think.
And then a scent insinuated itself into his nostrils, a musky flower-scent that instantly evoked the funeral parlor and the waxworks figure on the mortician’s work-table. Tully’s eyes flew open. Sandra Jean was stooping over him, careless of the cleft exposed by her low-cut frock, her young breath hot on his face.
“Poor Davey,” she moaned, and she stooped lower and put her lips on his surprised mouth, and then she was kissing him hard and thrusting with her tongue.
Something devastating happened to Tully, a reflex of revulsion that made his big hands shoot out and grab the girl’s arms and shake her so violently that her head flopped back and forth as if her neck were broken. Sandra Jean yelped softly and dropped her drink; he felt some of the Scotch splash on his trousers. It was the expression on her face, however, that brought Tully to his senses. For a moment she had looked like a terrified child. He shoved her from him and jumped up.
“Don’t ever try that on me again, Sandra,” he muttered. “Ever, do you understand? Play your erotic games with Andy. I play for keeps.” Suddenly he felt ashamed. He turned around and said, “I hope I didn’t hurt you.”
“But you did.” Sandra Jean’s moist pout was in evidence again. “You’re a brute, do you know that?” She actually wriggled. “Oooh, what a brute. I didn’t realize you’re so strong, Davey. Shake me again?”
“Oh, shut up,” he growled, and walked over to the window. In its reflecting surface he saw the girl staring at his back. Then she shrugged, picked up the remains of the glass, and went off to the kitchen with insolent hips.
The hell with her, Tully thought, staring into the darkness.
Where was Ruth? Why didn’t she come home? Or at least call?
Tully set his throbbing forehead against the cool glass...