Chapter 8
It was ten minutes past two by the clock on the elegant simulated tortoiseshell dashboard and five minutes past by the clock on the courthouse tower as Lois Maynard flipped the wheel lightly around and turned out of the square into Fetter Street.
"I tell you again, Gus," she said patiently. "There's nothing whatever wrong with me. No matter what Swede Carlson thinks or you or anybody else thinks. I just got a case of jitters, sitting out there alone."
Now that she was back in town, among houses and people who were alive, not dead, she was ready to believe that was the way it was. It had all been a sort of wild phantasmagoria that didn't make any possible sense. She ought never to let anything like a conscience bother her. All a conscience was, was an atavistic throwback to childhood, your own and your family's, when you were taught a lot of nonsense and punished if you didn't follow it. Janey wasn't going to take any sleeping pills. That was nonsense of another sort. More of her old broken-wing tactics.
"I got the most awful jitters out there, Gus, and I'm terribly ashamed of myself. Will you excuse it, please? Just this once, please?"
That was the line to take. She realized it instantly, aware of the change taking place in him as he relaxed a little in the seat beside her. There was no use being stiff-necked and combative, the way she'd started out being. It only made him more and worse of both. She ought to know him well enough by now to know that, if nothing else.
"I'm really horribly sorry, Gus. Please don't be cross at me. I guess I'm not nearly as competent as I try to pretend. I guess murder's something you have to get used to, isn't it?"
"It sure is," Gus said. He knew it from a lot of experience. He was sick out behind a row of garbage cans the first one he'd covered. Even if she didn't see Wernitz on the cellar floor, she'd sat out in the dark and seen them take him away, and seen the ambulance. Imagining things was a lot worse sometimes than seeing them. "It's my fault," he said. "I shouldn't have let you go."
"Oh, then you're not mad at me, Gus? Thanks! You're sweet. May I kiss you? Do you mind if I do, Gus-just once?"
She leaned over toward him, the car swerving with the quick movement of her body.
"Drive, Lois. Drive the car and keep off the milk truck."
They weren't quite on it, but they would be if Lois got her libido all unleashed, which usually happened when she got contrite and feminine. "And don't make passes at your boss." He grinned at her in the dark. She laughed and slowed the car down for the red light.
"Who's going to make them if I don't?" she inquired easily. "Marriage has made you horribly stuffy, hasn't it? Or are you just afraid to let yourself go?"
The light changed. Instead of turning left toward her own house, she turned toward the center of town.
"Hey," Gus said. "Where-"
"Who's driving this car, Mr. Blake?" She kept to the right and down Locust Street. "I took you out, and I bring you back. The Maynard shuttle service has its standards."
"Don't be a dope, Lois. I don't want you to drive out alone. I don't care about you, but your father'll be sore. It's after two."
The smile moved in her yellow-green eyes. Something was finally working the way she'd planned it-planned and forgotten it in her sudden attack of moral jitters out in the Wernitz yard. She'd planned it on her way in to pick him up and take him out to Wernitz's, as part of her cold war against Janey. Janey would be awake and watching, she was sure of that. She'd probably be upstairs in the dark, looking out the window, and she'd see her drive Gus up to the door. Gus would have to object to her going back by herself-as a supper guest at her father's house that night, he'd have to object. And Janey would see them drive up, and drive off again. And it was working. The house was just a block away now. She let him protest until suddenly she was aware that something wasn't working.
Oh, my God! she thought. Her hand on the wheel tightened. The car lurched a little and came back as she caught herself and it. Something had gone wrong. Her mouth was as dry again as it had been out in the Wernitz yard. A policeman-More alert for the sight of the narrow red brick house behind the privet hedge at the moment than Gus, who turned telling her to drive on around the block and he'd take her home and get a taxi back, she'd seen the uniformed policeman come up and turn in there. Gus had not. She'd seen the lights in the house first, too, in the dining room downstairs, in the living room on the second floor, and bedroom on the third. Oh, no, she couldn't have! But why were the lights on at a quarter past two, and why was the policeman going into the house? Lois moistened her parched lips. She must have done it.
It was an instant of impulsive dismay not as close to horror as she had thought it was going to be, or as it had been out in the dark yard. Here in town, with Gus beside her, a fait accompli almost in her hands, she was herself again. She was the girl slipping back into the shadow of her father's room, watching Janey, pleased that Janey was taking the sleeping pills from her mother's table drawer. She could feel the hard, tight smile on her face again there in the car. It was what she wanted. She'd been a stupid fool out at Wernitz's.
"What goes on?" Gus said suddenly. He'd turned to look at the house. It was surprise that alerted him, nothing more. He wasn't worried, only surprised to see the house all lighted up at a quarter past two in the morning. "Better stop."
Lois Maynard had already decided that. Her foot was on the brake and she was slipping easily along the curb.
"Maybe Janey's-" She started to say maybe Janey was sick, but that was a mistake. She realized abruptly that with the scene she'd made out in the country, and even in spite of her denials there was anything behind it, it could look very strange. "Maybe Janey's got company-strays from our party." She said it lightly as she stopped the car. The fact that there were no cars except Gus's old coupe in front of the house occurred to her at once. "Or maybe just Orvie," she said. "Let's both go in, shall we? Maybe there's a cup of coffee. Or I could even do with a drink, after what I've been through-or what you've been through with me.
"Okay." Gus opened the door and held it while she slid across the seat and out at the brick walk. He was looking up at the house, a little worried, she thought, in spite of what she'd said. Worried about the kid, probably, she decided as he closed the door. She went up the walk with him, her pulse beating quickly, her throat dry, not with any agonized remorse, but dry the way it was at the races or when she saw Gus suddenly come into a room. She held her breath sharply as he put his key in the lock, turned it, and pushed open the door. And let it go as sharply as she stepped inside and looked around. The policeman? Where had he got to? There was no one in the hall, and no one moving upstairs. She was listening intently to hear them up there. Then she turned and looked into the lighted dining room. Gus had shut the door and come on in. He was there in the double door beside her. Both of them were looking at Janey, in her yellow wool dressing gown, her head on her folded arms, her eyes closed, her long lashes sweeping her pale cheeks, asleep, quietly asleep. Lois's heart leaped for an instant.
"Why, she's asleep." Gus said it in the surprised way people say unexpected obvious truths.
Lois stood motionless there. Her eyes, moving around the room, fell suddenly on a small bright-orange capsule, on the floor against the table leg. She moved a step to hide it from Gus. Her hands were trembling. Then she had taken them. She looked quickly back at Janey, aware that Gus had moved. He was going over to the table.
"Why don't you just let her sleep, Gus, till she wakes up?" Lois Maynard said. "She doesn't look as if she'd had much sleep lately, does she?" She went close to the table herself, bent down quickly, and picked up the orange capsule, slipped it into her coat pocket.
"No, I'll get her upstairs."
As he spoke, Janey stirred and opened her eyes. "Gus!"
She got up quickly. "Oh, Gus!" She put her hands out to him, and saw Lois Maynard. She dropped her hands to her sides and took a step forward.
"Janey, what's happened? What the-" Gus stopped and began again. "Janey, what's the matter?"
"Just waiting for you, dear," Lois said. She stifled a slight yawn. "It is frightfully late, of course. But now we're here what about a drink?" She looked at Janey. "Or do you want to go to bed? Don't mind me if you do. I'll swallow it down and scoot along. I wish newspaper offices closed down on Saturday." She turned to Gus. "What about a drink, boss? And don't look at Janey like that. A girl's got a right to wait up for her husband. And it's her dining room, isn't it? I mean if she likes to sleep sitting up?"
"Shut up, Lois." He cut her off brusquely. She knew she was making him sore, but that was all right. If he was sore at her he wouldn't be too patient with Janey. That was the point right now. No man, especially not Gus Blake, liked the idea of a woman waiting up for him, especially when another woman was a witness to it.
"What's the idea, Janey?" he asked impatiently.
Lois's eyes smiled. She was so right. And Janey was such a little sheep. All she did was open her vapid blue eyes a little wider, move back another step, take hold of the back of the chair, and moisten her pale lips.
If I ever wait up for him, Lois thought, I won't have on cotton pajamas and a woolen bathrobe, and I'll comb my hair and put on some lipstick. And I won't let him push me around like this.
"Nothing's the matter, Gus," Janey was saying, "I-I guess I went to sleep, is all." She turned her small white face to him and tried to smile. "I'm sorry you caught me. Why don't you get Lois a drink? There's some Scotch in the pantry. And then take her home."
"That's big of you, madam," Lois said pleasantly. "But I can get home with no trouble whatsoever. I would like a drink."
"I'll get you one if you two dames will shut up."
Gus pushed a chair into the table, pushed open the pantry door, and let it swing shut.
"You know the green-eyed business is frightfully young, Janey," Lois Maynard said evenly. "Did you drop this? I found it here on the floor." She took the orange capsule out of her pocket and held it out to Janey. She smiled again. The girl really had thought of taking them tonight. She could tell by the way her body stiffened and her saucer eyes opened even wider. "Take it, dear. It's yours. You don't have to worry. It takes guts to really go to sleep."
She felt Janey's cold fingertips touch her hand as she silently took the capsule and put it in the pocket of her dressing gown. She started almost convulsively as Gus pushed the pantry door open again.
"Didn't your mother stay, Janey?" he asked. Lois's eyes smiled again. He was the picture of the intelligent male trying to find out what was going on in the minds of a couple of women, one acting true to form, the other off on a tangent that made no sense of any kind.
"Oh, if she did then you can take me home, can't you?" Lois said quickly. "I do really hate to go alone." She took the highball he handed her, raised it to her lips, and smiled across the rim of it at Janey.
"Is your mother here?" Gus asked impatiently. "I told you-"
Janey found her voice. "Yes, she's here. She's upstairs." Her fingers tightened on the back of the chair. "I've made up the couch in the study for you. And if you-if you don't mind, I'll go on up and go to bed. Good night. Good night, Lois."