Chapter 12
"YOU!"
Alan's voice was hoarse. He stood over Nora, legs apart, braced against the lingering effects of the sleeping pill.
"What's the matter with you?" she cried. "Have you gone insane?"
"Sure. I'm insane. I've been crazy all along." He raged with sudden laughter. Nora had brushed her hair, sprayed and lacquered it back into perfection upon her head. She had done this, or he'd never have wakened in time to intercept her call to the police. "It's you, all right," he said. "It has to be you. Nothing else makes sense."
"Alan, you're ill. You're drugged with sleeping pills. What's wrong with you?"
"I want out of here, that's all. I'm getting out of here. And you're not calling the cops." He grabbed the phone and ripped it from the wall. "You called them once on me, didn't you?"
"I don't know what you're talking about!"
"Of course you don't. That first time I came up here. You were shocked to see me out of jail, weren't you? You thought you'd put me away for good, didn't you for murder?"
"Alan, you've gone insane!"
"No. I've gone sane. Maybe those hoods beat the sense into me. Maybe I got so low, so beat, I had to see the truth even about you. All of a sudden, I even remember that you paid twenty thousand for a share in Duke & Thomson-"
"You're not making sense."
"I'm making sense. No wonder you didn't want the Twenty Grand Murder Case aired. Even if I had changed it so the only suspect was old Brinkerhoff's stepson and not his stepdaughter. His stepdaughter! It wouldn't take long to check and find that your stepfather's name was Brinkerhoff, would it? And you thought I had found that out, didn't you? That's what got you bugged. Your conscience was so guilty, you were sure I'd figured the truth. You thought I was going to try to blackmail you ... So you fixed me, didn't you? You came out, you fixed me a steak dinner, gave me a look at your incredible beauty, gave me liquor that you knew poisoned me. Your loving and the liquor, it knocked me out while you put on my old shoes, my pants and coat, went over and killed old Sheram while I slept. What a frame-up! Who'd ever connect the aloof Nora with a murder in the suburbs? Just as nobody suspected you of the Brinkerhoff murder. Your mother had been dead for years. Nobody out here even knew Brinkerhoff was your stepfather, or connected with you in any way ... You got rid of him and you got the money that started you onward and upward in business, didn't you? And you thought I was smart enough to have figured that out-or maybe I'd stumbled over the truth about your being his stepdaughter while I was doing research. Sorry to disappoint you, doll. I wasn't that smart."
"I don't think you're smart at all," she said coldly. She glared up at him.
They were like two primitives, taut, naked, gazes fixed on each other in violent hatred.
"So when I came up here looking for help, you sent me away. After I left, you notified the police "
"Why would I do that?"
"For the same reason you called them now. To be sure I was caught. To be sure your frame held me. I was too scared to think when the cops turned those lights on me, or I'd have known they didn't just happen to find me on that street somebody had told them I was there. There they were, with searchlights and guns at four a.m. because you had told them I was around here. You set me up from the first, Nora, only I couldn't figure why until I realized that twenty-grand crime script really was about a woman. An ambitious, greedy woman who lusted for power and security enough to kill for it ... Only you didn't kill just once, after all, did you?"
He stared down at her. "It wouldn't have been smart to kill me. They might connect me and you even as boss and employer. But who would ever connect you with a dirty old man like Sheram? A man you'd never even met? But they'd connect me vengeful me, killing him for poisoning my dog. You really figured it. One more murder to secure your place on top of the world. Up here, high above L.A. You owned the world, if you just killed that old man and got me blamed for it and out of the way before I could blackmail you."
He turned, walking away from her, forgetting for the moment that they were naked. Nudity suddenly didn't matter. Everything was basic here, life, death, murder.
"Only Sheram's death wasn't enough. Tess Simpson saw you that night. But Tess was a Lesbian, and she came to see you-didn't she?"
Nora shrugged. "She came up here. The horrible old Lesbian. She'd say nothing about seeing me that night if I became her lover." She shuddered. "When I threw her out, she went to the police ... I had to kill her."
"With a knife from my place! Oh, you really wanted me, didn't you, Nora? You wanted me dead!"
She leaped up from the couch. Her breasts quivered, trembling with the emotions that racked her. "You were in my way!" she screamed. "I tried to help you. You were a drunk, eaten up with grief, and I tried to help you ... But you wouldn't drop that story about Brinkerhoff ... I tried to get you to drop it, but you wouldn't do it."
He shook his head. "And you were so eaten up with guilt that you couldn't believe I knew nothing about your being Brinkerhoff's stepdaughter!"
She strode past him, going out to the balcony, overlooking the city that gleamed like a chest of spilled jewels in the final moments before dawn.
She stood looking out over the town, the world that had belonged to her until he came along to threaten her.
"You wouldn't drop it!" she raged. "Oh, I knew. You'd keep picking at it, until one day you found out that I was Brinkerhoff's stepdaughter and then and then it would have cost me everything..." She gazed out upon the dark town. "I had worked too hard, too long. I couldn't lose it. I couldn't stand to lose it."
He gazed at her, standing nude on that balcony like some vengeful goddess on Olympus plotting the extermination of unimportant earth creatures so far below her they were like tiny lights winking in the darkness.
Alan's voice was dead. "Where are my clothes, Nora? I'm getting out of here."
She laughed at him, her voice quavering. "Then you'll go naked."
"Where are my clothes?" He strode out to the balcony beside her. It was as if they were removed from all that world below them. But he knew better.
She laughed again. "They're gone, Alan! Your clothes. I put them down the disposal ... I was taking no chances. You were going to stay here this time until the police came for you."
He gazed about helplessly. Then he forced himself to laugh. "Was that very smart, Nora? If you let them find me here in your apartment, you can't help getting involved ... aren't you afraid they might learn the truth?"
"How? Who'd believe you? I told them you had forced your way in here once, and I'll tell them you did it again."
He shook his head, staring at her. "Murder means nothing to you, does it?"
"Not when it means I might lose all this." She swung her arm, her breasts pulling taut, making her lovelier than ever, more a pagan goddess than ever. "I worked too hard, too long. They won't take it away from me. I won't let them take it away from me!"
"You've lost it anyway, Nora. It's too late now."
"What are you talking about?"
"About you. About murder. Maybe that first murder was smart. I don't know. Brinkerhoff. Trying to bed you down. Trying to drag you down. Trying to keep you in a world you wanted to escape. Trying to make you an old man's mistress when you wanted to own a world of your own. You lured him away from anybody who knew there was any connection between you. You killed him, you took the money you needed to start you on your way."
"It was my money. My mother's money. I had every right to it."
"Sure. It bought you all this. And a terrible sense of guilt you couldn't escape for a minute. Every little sign looked suspicious. I was working on unsolved murders, trying to please you, but you saw it as my attempting to blackmail you. To threaten you. You stopped being smart then, Nora killing Sheram just looked smart, and killing Tess was even more stupid. I'll tell the police she came here to see you, and they'll find witnesses to prove she was here. You're mixed up in it, and it's all going to fall apart."
"No! Because they're going to blame you! You forced your way in here. I had to kill you. Nobody will ever question me about Sheram or Simpson and your murder will be justified self-defense!"
Alan shivered, staring at the wild lights glittering in Nora's widened eyes. "And how are you going to accomplish that?"
"like this!" she screamed.
She raised her arms like battering rams and ran toward him.
Alan caught his breath, seeing that she meant to shove him over the low railing of her balcony and send him to his death in the street, God knew how many floors below.
"Nora! Don't!" he said.
But it was more like a nightmare than all the nightmarish things that had happened to this moment. There was no flicker of sanity remaining in her distended eyes. Her mouth was stretched taut across her teeth. Her whole body shook with the hatred she felt, the need to kill the one final murder that would secure everything for her.
Her splayed hands struck at him. He leaped back, his legs striking the balcony railing. For a second he tottered there, catching his balance.
He saw Nora go sailing past him as if on some violent hurricane, drawn outward. She didn't even scream. One moment she was poised there, like a bird in flight, and then she plunged downward.
Alan leaped away from the railing, trembling.
There was not a sound. From here on her penthouse balcony, it was as if she had never existed.
But he knew she was dead down there. He heard sounds of ambulances, cars, distant cries.
He covered his face with his hands, sick with agony. All he could see in his mind was the way it was, Nora sprawled broken in death down there, naked.
She had tried to conceal herself from the world, and it had not worked out, and she lay in death, exposed for all the curious to see.