Instead, he had been in bed beside her, wearing the striped red pajamas she had given him for Christmas last year. This was the first time she had ever seen him wear them-the first time they’d been out of the box, as far as she knew. He was awake. He rolled over on his side to face her, already smiling. At first the smile frightened her. She thought it might mean he was getting ready to kill her.
Then he touched her breast and winked. “Want to, Myrt? Or is it too early in the day for you?”
So they had made love, for the first time in over five months they had made love, and he had been absolutely magnificent, and now here they were, lunching at Maurice on an early Sunday afternoon like a pair of young lovers. She didn’t know what had happened to work this wondrous change in her husband, and didn’t care. She only wanted to enjoy it, and to hope it would last.
“Everything okay, Myrt?” Keeton asked, looking up from his plate and scrubbing vigorously at his face with his napkin.
She reached shyly across the table and touched his hand.
“Everything’s fine. Everything is just… just wonderful.”
She had to take her hand away so she could dab hastily at her eyes with her napkin.
2
Keeton went on chowing into his hoof borgnine, or whatever it was the Froggies called it, with great appetite. The reason for his happiness was simple. Every horse he had picked yesterday afternoon with the help of Winning Ticket had come in for him last night. Even Malabar, the thirty-to-one shot in the tenth race. He had come back to Castle Rock not so much driving as floating on air, with better than eighteen thousand dollars stuffed into his overcoat pockets. His bookie was probably still wondering where the money went. Keeton knew; it was safely tucked away in the back of his study closet. It was in an envelope. The envelope was in the Winning Ticket box, along with the precious game itself.
He had slept well for the first time in months, and when he woke up, he had a glimmering of an idea about the audit. A glimmering wasn’t much, of course, but it was better than the confused darkness that had been roaring through his head since that awful letter came.
All he had needed to get his brain out of neutral, it seemed, was one winning night at the track.
He could not make total restitution before the axe fell, that much was clear. Lewiston Raceway was the only track which ran nightly during the fall season, for one thing, and it was pretty small potatoes. He could tour the local county fairs and make a few thousand at the races there, but that wouldn’t be enough, either.
Nor could he risk many nights like last night, even at the Raceway.
His bookie would grow wary, then refuse to accept his bets at all.
But he believed he could make partial restitution and minimize the size of the fiddles at the same time. He could also spin a tale.
A sure-fire development prospect that hadn’t come off. A terrible mistake… but one for which he had taken complete responsibility and for which he was now making good. He could point out that a really unscrupulous man, if placed in such a position as this, might well have used the grace period to scoop even more money out of the town treasury-as much as he possibly could-and then to run for a place (some sunny place with lots of palm trees and lots of white beaches and lots of young girls in string bikinis) from which extradition was difficult or downright impossible.
He could wax Christlike and invite those among them without sin to cast the first stone. That should give them pause. If there was a man-jack among them who had not had his fingers in the state pie from time to time, Keeton would eat that man’s shorts.
Without salt.
They would have to give him time. Now that he was able to set his hysteria aside and think the situation over rationally, he was almost sure they would. After all, they were politicians, too. They would know that the press would have plenty of tar and feathers left over for them, the supposed guardians of the public trust, once they had finished with Dan Keeton. They would know the questions which would surface in the wake of a public investigation or even (God forbid) a trial for embezzlement. Questions like how longin fiscal years, if you please, gentlemen-had Mr. Keeton’s little operation been going on?
Questions like how come the State Bureau of Taxation hadn’t awakened and smelled the coffee some time ago? Questions ambitious men would find distressing.
He believed he could squeak through. No guarantees, but it looked possible.
All thanks to Mr. Leland Gaunt.
God, he loved Leland Gaunt.
“Danforth?” Myrt asked shyly.
He looked up. “Hmmm?”
“This is the nicest day I’ve had in years. I just wanted you to know that. How grateful I am to have such a nice day. With you.”
“Oh!” he said. The oddest thing had just happened to him. For a moment he hadn’t been able to remember the name of the woman sitting across from him. “Well, Myrt, it’s been nice for me, too.”
“Will you be going to the race-track tonight?”
“No,” he said, “I think tonight I’ll stay home.”
“That’s nice,” she said. She found it so nice, in fact, that she had to dab at her eyes with her napkin again.
He smiled at her-it wasn’t his old sweet smile, the one which had wooed and won her to begin with-but it was close. “Say, Myrt!
Want dessert?”
She giggled and flapped her napkin at him. “Oh, you!”
3
The Keeton home was a split-level ranch in Castle View. It was a long walk uphill for Nettle Cobb, and by the time she got there her legs were tired and she was very cold. She met only three or four other pedestrians, and none of them looked at her; they were bundled deep into the collars of their coats, for the wind had begun to blow strongly and it had a keen edge. An ad supplement from someone’s Sunday Telegram danced across the street, then took off into the hard blue sky like some strange bird as she turned into the Keetons’ driveway. Mr. Gaunt had told her that Buster and Myrtle wouldn’t be home, and Mr. Gaunt knew best. The garage door was up, and that showboat of a Cadillac Buster drove was gone.
Nettle went up the walk, stopped at the front door, and took the pad and the Scotch tape from her left-hand coat pocket. She very much wanted to be home with the Sunday Super Movie on TV and Raider at her feet. And that’s where she would be as soon as she finished this chore. She might not even bother with her knitting. She might just sit there with her carnival glass lampshade in her lap. She tore off the first pink slip and taped it over the sign by the doorbell, the embossed one which said T H E K E E T O N s and NO SALESMEN, PLEASE.
She put the tape and the pad back in her left pocket, then took the key from her right and slipped it into the lock. Before turning it, she briefly examined the pink slip she had just taped up.
Cold and tired as she was, she just had to smile a little. It really was a pretty good joke, especially considering the way Buster drove.
It was a wonder he hadn’t killed anyone. She wouldn’t like to be the man whose name was signed at the bottom of the warning-slip, though. Buster could be awfully grouchy. Even as a child he hadn’t been one to take a joke.
She turned the key. The lock opened easily. Nettle went inside.
4
“More coffee?” Keeton asked.