“Two days before I was to leave, my husband came back. He crashed off the Yucatan coast, but got into a life raft and was picked up by a Sanport fishing boat. They docked at night and he got home unseen.
“But now they’ve found out where we live, and they have the place surrounded. Barclay rented the house right across the street, and they watch me all the time, waiting for me to lead them to him—”
“And they don’t know he’s inside?”
“I don’t think so. You see, they searched it the first time while he was actually gone. They made it look like burglary.”
“But didn’t you say they’d searched it again today? Yesterday, I mean?”
She nodded. “He’s in a sealed-off portion of the attic, and the only way into it is through the ceiling of a second-floor closet. He stays up there nearly all the time. All the time when I’m out of the house. I think they’re pretty sure he’s gone, but they know if they keep watching me I’ll lead them to him sooner or later. I hadn’t realized until what happened up at the lake that they might try beating me up. That scares me, because frankly I don’t know how much of it I could take.”
That angered me and made me realize how much more there was to this girl than her looks. No whining, no heroics – she simply said she didn’t know how much of it she could take and went right on with what she had to do. The next time that pug looked at me, I’d look back.
She went on. “And as to what’s in the plane, it’s money. About eighty thousand dollars. All he has left. He can’t take much more, Bill. That plane crash did something to him – and being brought back to Sanport after he thought he had gotten away. And losing the money on top of it, so he couldn’t even run any more.”
“But you just wrote a check for fifteen thousand—”
“I know. Naturally, he left me some so I could follow him. I sold my jewelry, and borrowed on the car.”
I began to catch on then. She was merely handing me the last chance they’d ever have. This girl was a plunger, and when she said she trusted you she trusted you all over.
“Well, wait,” I said. “I can probably find a cheaper boat—”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to go to sea in a cheap boat. And we’ll recover the money from the plane, anyway.”
“Do you realize the jam you’ll be in if I turn out to be a phony?”
“That was the general idea, Bill, when I said I wanted time to make up my mind about you. Remember?”
“I remember,” I said. “Do you mind if I get a little personal? I’ve been feeling sorry for Macaulay because he was up against a rough proposition alone. I’d like to amend that; I don’t know of anybody who’s less alone.”
She didn’t answer for a moment, and I wondered if I’d gotten it off as lightly as I intended. After all, this was an awkward situation for her, and she’d already shown me the road signs once.
It was almost too fast for me then. She slid toward me on the seat, murmuring, “Bill . . . Bill!” her face lifted to mine and her arms slipping up around my neck, and then I was overboard in a sea of Shannon Macaulay. Yet even as I swam into that sea, my mind was trying to tell me it was an act and that the reason she was saying my name over and over was to keep me from having my head blown off. And that’s what it was.
A voice said, “All right, Jack. Break it up and turn around.”
I turned. A light burst in my face, and another voice I recognized as Barclay’s said, “You people are oversexed, aren’t you?”
Two thoughts caught up with me at once. The first was that they hadn’t heard us and didn’t suspect anything. Her reaction time had been so fast they’d caught us kissing, just as you’d have expected of two people in a parked car along the beach. That was good.
But it was the second one that pulled the ground from under me. They had that light right in my face, and they’d be blind if they didn’t see the marks that pug had left on it.
I had never been more right. “Hmmmmm,” Barclay said softly. “So that’s where he went.”
“Who?” I asked, just stalling for time. I had to think of something. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t be stupid. The guy you hit, up at the lake.”
If I denied it they wouldn’t believe me anyway, and when he didn’t show up they’d go out there and ask the watchmen. They’d know then I’d done something to him. There was a better way: talk like a loud-mouthed fool, and admit it. It didn’t have much chance, but at least it had more than the other.
“If that’s who you mean,” I said. “He did. I guess you haven’t seen his face. Keep him out of my hair or he’s going to be bent worse than that the next time you get him back.”
“Where is he now?”
“How would I know?” I said. “Was he supposed to tell me his plans?”
“Skip it, wise guy,” he said. “And get out of town. We’re too busy to be chasing around after your love instincts. Get out of the car.”
I didn’t want to, but I got out. I heard her shaky indrawn breath as I closed the door. “No. No. No – ”
It was a good, cold-blooded, professional job. Nobody said anything. Nobody became excited. I never did even know for sure how many there were besides Barclay. I swung at the first dark shape I saw, because I had to do something; the blackjack sliced down across the muscles of my upper arm and it became a dangling, inert sausage stuffed with pain.
They gave me a good working over. The last thing I heard was Shannon’s screams.
When I came to, she was there on her knees beside me, helping. My arm was numb and I felt sick, but she rested there until the pain subsided.
Driving back to town, neither of us said anything about the way she’d put on the kissing act to keep my head from being blown up.
Finally, I asked, “What did Macaulay do to them?”
She hesitated.
“It’s all right,” I said. “If it’s none of my business—”
“No,” she said slowly, staring ahead at the headlights probing the edge of the surf. “It isn’t that. It’s just that I don’t know the whole story myself.”
“Didn’t he tell you?”
“Most of it. But not all. He says I’ll be safer if I never know. It happened about three months ago. He had to go to the coast on business, for about a week, he said. But three days later he called me late one night, from San Antonio, Texas. I could tell he was under a bad strain. He said for me to pack some bags, and leave right away for Denver. He didn’t explain; he just said he was in trouble and for me to get out of New York fast.
“He met me in Denver. It was something that happened at a party he went to, in some suburb of Los Angeles. He didn’t want to talk about it, but he finally admitted a man had been killed, and he had seen it.”
“But,” I said, “All he has to do is go to the police. They’ll protect him. He’s a material witness.”
“It’s not that simple,” she said. “One of the people involved is a police captain.”
“Oh,” I said.
It sounded too easy and too pat, but on the other hand there wasn’t any doubt she was telling the truth. But what about Macaulay himself?
“How long have you been married?” I asked.
“Eight years.”
“And he’s been with that marine insurance firm all the time?”
“Yes,” she said. “He’s been with them ever since he came out of law school, back in the thirties, except for three years in the service during the war.”
I shook my head. There was nothing in that. We came into the almost deserted town. I stopped beside her car and got out with her. She put out her hand. “Thanks,” she said. “It’ll be bad, waiting for that card.”