One lady whose face was blackened was Mrs. Shirley Simpell of this city. It was she who later identified the alleged bomber to the police as Mr. Archer Hornsby, a junior executive with a local drug concern. Mrs. Simpell also alleged that Mr. Hornsby’s wife Llona was a party to the crime. Police arrested Mr. and Mrs. Hornsby and subsequently they were released after posting bail.
It has been established that both of the accused are active in the local anti-war movement. Mrs. Simpell, in a later statement issued to the press, said that Mrs. Hornsby had tried to pull down a large American flag, a banner which had been draped from several of the mezzanine balconies to within about six feet of the floor below. (Investigation shows that this banner had indeed been ripped and torn to the point of desecration.) Mrs. Simpell further characterized the Hornsbys as “dangerous anarchists who will stop at nothing to overthrow everything this country means to decent people.” The Hornsbys refused to comment on the charges against them, or on Mrs. Simpell’s statement.
When Llona had finished reading the carryover on the front-page article, she flung the newspaper down with disgust. “The nerve of them!” she said hotly. “They make it sound like I ripped up that American flag on purpose!”
“Well, everything was pretty confused,” Archer replied. “I guess maybe it looked like that to some people.”
“Like your friend Shirley Simpell?” L1ona’s voice was overgranulated sugar, lumpy with sascasm.
Archer didn’t reply. He didn’t want to hassle with Llona. He felt guilty enough. She hadn’t asked for any explanations-—-yet. If she did, he didn’t know what he could say. He'd been caught—-literally--with his pants down. There would be no talking his way out of that.
More than that, Archer was really worried about the predicament they were in with the law. They’d been arrested pretty much on Shirley Simpell’s say-so, but he knew that as the oops continued their investigation they’d undoubtedly come up with evidence that would look pretty damaging in a court of law. They might even end up in jail! Archer wracked his brain for some way to alleviate that possibility.
Their legal predicament didn't bother Llona as much as it did Archer. The reason it didn’t was something of which he was still innocent. Llona was aware of the fact that the wheels of justice grind exceeding slow. She figured that by the time they actually came up for trial, she’d be dead.
It wasn't that she was unconcerned about Archer. She was concerned about him, but her feelings were mixed. On the one hand she didn’t want to mete out a lifelong punishment to him anymore. On the other, she thought a few months in jail-—certainly no more than a year -- might teach him a well-deserved lesson. Also, the fact of her death, of his being a recent widower, would undoubtedly get him the kind of sympathy which would result in a mitigation of his sentence.
No, her most pressing problem wasn’t the possibility of going to jail. It was the same problem she’d had right along. It was the problem of lining up a proper wife for Archer to replace her after her demise.
“One thing I really don’t understand-—” Archer’s mind had veered away from finding some means of avoiding a jailhouse future to a puzzled consideration of the recent past. “—- What were you doing at that DAR convention anyway?”
“I went there to save you from a fate worse than death--if I could—a feat I was by no means sure I could accomplish before the fact.”
“But how did you know I’d be there?”
“I have ways of knowing things.” Llona was evasive. She had no intention of telling him about Olivia and her role in arranging his punishment as a favor to Llona.
“How did you know that condom was really a time-bomb set to go off?”
“Don't ask so many questions!” A little nastiness became discernible in L1ona’s tone. “Or I’m liable to start asking some myself. Like what were you doing naked on that balcony with a used contraceptive? And just exactly what gives Shirley Simpell the right to be so vindictive?”
“It’s political with her.”
“You know damn well it’s more than that. But let’s just drop it, Archer. Let’s drop it before I start saying some truths that are better left unsaid at this stage of the game.”
“Okay. I guess you’re right!”
“You know damn well I'm right!”
“All the same, Llona, I want you to know I appreciate what you did. You know, when I saw you jump for that flag and pull youself up on it to the balcony, the way you were ripping and clawing with that frantic look on your face, I thought you were coming after me. I never thought you were really trying to save me. And when you grabbed for my equipment the way you did, I was sure you were trying to castrate me. Boy, was I ever surprised when you just yanked off that condom and flung it away and it exploded the way it did.”
“In the brandy bowl!” Llona giggled. “That sure was one hell of an explosion, wasn't it.”
“The way those DAR broads stampeded, it was like the shot heard ’round the world, like they just heard the British were coming.” Archer laughed with her.
But neither one of them laughed for long. Nor did their momentary togetherness last. They drifted back into the apartness which had become their lifestyle these last few months.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Pickle Finger of Fate had started its upward jab, the trek of the goose, shortly after the incident at the DAR dinner. At that time, Llona was filling out the COMP-U-MATE questionnaire. Archer was marshalling his energies to overcome the legal predicament he was in because of the explosion at the dinner. At a five-and-ten cent store in a small, rural Mississippi town, Rufus Blisternape, who had no children, was testing out yo-yos before selecting one to buy. Who is Rufus Blisternape? The Fickle Finger of Fate!
After due reflection, Archer had come to the conclusion that the key person in his trouble with the law was Shirley Simpell. It was she who had signed the complaint against him and Llona. It was her evidence which was most damning to them in the eyes of the police. It was Shirley more than anybody else who was rewriting the explosion -—which in some ways really had been an accident —to look like a plot fostered by the “Commie-controlled, subversive peace movement.”
Thinking about it, Archer decided that there might be psychological reasons, ulterior in nature, if not in intent, behind Shirley’s vehemence. The fiasco of the last time they’d tried to make love, he hypothesized, must have hit her, at some level, as a personal rejection. And it was this she was out to revenge, rather than the punishment for subversion she seemed to bi seeking on the surface.