“This has been a shock. Will you leave me now please?”
I tried to take her hand, but she moved it quickly out of my reach.
I could see how white she was and how tense. I realized she had to be given time to get over what I had told her. Already I was bitterly regretting having told her.
I got out of the car.
“I wouldn’t have done it, Gilda, only I love you so much.”
“Yes, I understand.”
The car began to move away from me. She was staring through the windshield. She didn’t look at me.
I watched the red rear lights of the car go down the steep hill. I had a sudden horrible feeling she was moving away out of my life: moving out of it for good and all.
Chapter VII
I
Two days crawled by, and they were bad days for me.
I kept thinking of Gilda, seeing again the wooden stunned expression on her face as she had driven away and wondering why she hadn’t wanted me with her.
I tried to assure myself it was a natural reaction. I had confessed that I had murdered her husband. The shock must have been a horrible one. What really bothered me now was that this stupid confession might have killed her love for me. That was something I couldn’t bear to think of, for her love was more precious to me than my own life.
On the second night I could stand my thoughts no longer. I got into the truck and drove down to Los Angeles. I called her number from a pay booth.
I was startled when a man answered.
“Is Mrs Delaney there?” I asked, wondering, with a feeling of dread, if this man was a police officer.
“Mrs Delaney left a couple of days ago,” the man said. “I’m sorry but she didn’t give us a forwarding address.”
I thanked him and hung up.
I didn’t need a blueprint to tell me what had happened. My stupid confession had killed her love for me as I had feared it might. She had gone away because she didn’t want to see me again — ever.
I scarcely slept that night, and for the first time, I regretted killing Delaney. I was paying for what I had done, and from the look of my future, I would go on paying for it.
The following morning, as I was shaving, the telephone bell rang.
It was Harmas calling.
“Can you meet me at Blue Jay cabin at eleven?” he asked. “We’re having a meeting, and I want you in on the technical end.”
I said I would be there.
“Swell, and thanks,” and he hung up.
The next three hours were bad ones. My nerves got so shaky I had a drink around half-past nine, and that led to three more drinks before I drove over to Blue Jay cabin.
Harmas’s Packard was parked near the verandah steps, and as I walked up them, I could hear him whistling in the lounge.
He looked around as I paused in the doorway.
“Come on in. The others will be along any time now.”
I walked stiff-legged into the lounge.
“What’s it all about?” I asked.
“You’re going to see how we insurance dicks earn our money,” Harmas said. He had dropped his indolent pose. He looked alert, and his wide, satisfied smile scared me. “I want you to give me a hand.” He took two ten-dollar bills from his wallet and handed them to me. “You’d better freeze onto these in advance in case I forget. My boss — this guy Maddox I was telling you about — is coming, and when he’s around I’m likely to forget my own name.”
“Maddox?” That really jolted me. “What’s he coming for?”
“Here he is now,” Harmas said.
I heard a car coming and I stepped to the french doors and looked out.
The sight of the police car with its siren and red light on the roof gave me a shock.
From the car came Lieutenant John Boos of the LA Homicide Squad: a big, powerfully-built man, around forty-two or three, with a red, fleshy face and small steel-grey eyes.
He was followed by a short, thickset man who I guessed was Maddox. He wasn’t more than five-foot six. He had the shoulders and chest of a prize fighter and the legs of a midget. His face was rubbery and red. His eyes were restless and as bleak as a Russian winter. He wore his well-cut clothes carelessly, and he had a habit of running thick, stubby fingers through his thinning grey hair to add to his untidy appearance.
He came up the verandah steps, frowning, his small restless eyes missed nothing.
Harmas introduced me.
Maddox shook my hand. His grip was hard and warm, and he nodded to me.
“Glad to have your help, Mr Regan,” he said. “I understand you’re working for the company now.”
I muttered something as Boos loomed up.
“Hello, Regan,” he said. “So you’ve got tangled up in this thing too, huh?”
“That’s right,” I said, and my voice sounded small and husky.
“Let’s get at it,” Maddox said and walked into the lounge. He stood in front of the TV set. “This it?”
“That’s the baby,” Harmas said cheerfully. He turned the set around. “Those four screws held the back in place.”
Maddox stared for a long moment, then walked over to the empty fireplace.
“Sit down, Lieutenant. You, Mr Regan, sit over there. We won’t need you for a while so just take it easy.”
I sat away from the other three and I lit a cigarette. My heart was thumping and my hands were unsteady and I was pretty badly scared.
Boos picked the most comfortable chair and lowered his bulk into it. He took out a pipe and began to fill it.
Harmas sank into another lounging chair and stretched out his long legs.
“Well now, Lieutenant,” Maddox said, “I’ve asked you up here because I’m not satisfied with this claim. Briefly, one of our salesmen called on Delaney and sold him insurance coverage for this TV set. There’s a clause in the policy that gives coverage of five thousand dollars in the event of death through a fault in the set. It’s one of those dumb clauses our sales people put in to catch a sale. We have sold twenty-three thousand, four hundred and ten of these policies, and this is the first claim covering death by a fault we have had. That is: it is a twenty-three thousand to one chance, and when that happens I get suspicious. The claim arrived five days after the policy was signed. Delaney was buried before the policy was even delivered.”
Boos lit his pipe and frowned at Maddox.
“It could be one of those things, M: Maddox. I’ve read the coroner’s report. I’ve talked to Sheriff Jefferson. Nothing I’ve seen in the report and nothing Jefferson has said has convinced me there’s anything wrong with the setup. It looks straightforward enough to me.”
“It looks straightforward to you, Lieutenant, because you don’t handle fifteen hundred claims a week as I do,” Maddox said. “If you had sat at my desk for the number of years that I have, you would get to know a bad claim by instinct. I know this claim is a bad one. I feel it here!” And he paused to thump his chest. “But I don’t expect you to act on my hunches. Let’s take a look at the setup. Delaney was paralysed from the waist down. I’ve got a report from the doctor who attended him when the accident happened. The doctor says he was not able to bend at the waist. That means he was sitting upright all the time in his chair, and he could not bend forward. Now I’ll give you a little demonstration that’ll interest you.”
He turned to me.
“Mr Regan, I want your help. Will you sit in Delaney’s chair?”
I knew what was coming. Keeping my face expressionless, I walked over to the chair and sat in it.
Harmas picked up a length of cord that was lying on the table. He went around behind me and looped the cord around my chest and behind the chair and tied it tightly, preventing me from moving forward.