Chapter 1
Margie Carney waved goodbye from the open convertible and turned the key to start. The old Ford coughed for a moment, straining for ignition, then turned over with a roar. Breathing a sigh of relief at the sound of the rusty old muffler, Margie engaged the weakened clutch and eased the creaking car away from the curb.
My only luxury, she thought sardonically as she shifted into second gear with a crushing grind. The fifteen-year-old convertible was, in fact, her sole possession. With the exception of a meager wardrobe she had nothing else to claim as her own. Seven years of marriage had provided her with nothing else except a furnished walk-up apartment and a weekly bridge game with some of her old high school cronies. At twenty-five Margie thought her life was already a failure with nothing to care for except the rattling old Ford.
The cool summer air swept her long red hair back from her soft suntanned face as she drove through the night. It was past eleven o'clock and very few cars illuminated the black asphalt with their headlights. Margie felt completely alone and free to think aloud on the nights that she drove home from her bridge games. When the sun-yellowed top was down she would look half at the road and half at the stars as she drove, talking over her problems with the glimmering suns that dotted the sky's blackness.
Why did I ever do it, she asked, directing her thoughts at the constellation, Orion. She had long ago stopped trying to find solutions and had turned to the causes of her seemingly useless life. Margie could easily recall the days seven years ago when she had been a beautiful, free high school senior.
Those days were the best, she remembered. Her last name had been Donovan then, and she had risen in prominence to be not only the most popular and attractive gjrl of her class, but also second in scholastic standing. Those were days of challenging mental activity, of dances and parties, and most of all, football games.
Football, she thought, almost hating the game and blaming it for her now-drab existence. Margie had been the head cheerleader during her senior year. It was more a position of social status than anything else, but it also afforded her the opportunity to be around the players who were, of course, boys. And naturally she enjoyed them much more than silly babbling girls. They were men of action and ability, she had always thought when looking at them smash each other to the ground during the hard-hitting games. And afterward there were always parties and dances where the muscled young men would practically stand in line so that they might surround her supple young torso with their strong arms on the dance floor.
That was Ben. Margie had watched him throw the ball like a professional quarterback to lead the team to the state championship, but she had never been able to draw his attention until the last dance of the football season of their senior year. She remembered him arrogantly strutting up to her and taking her onto the dance floor, never saying a word until his long sinewy arm wrapped itself around her back and guided her in circles to the music. His firm masculine grip had sent tingles through her entire body and from that moment on it was like magic.
From that night until the end of May they had dated no one else, allowing themselves only enough free time to study. Hundreds of hours together, at first on regular dates, and later in bed had forced them to fall into what they thought was undying love, and the night before graduation at the Senior Prom, Ben asked her to marry him. Without the slightest hesitation she had said yes and in June they were married.
For two years they carried on like newlyweds, loving at night and studying during the day. Ben's excellent quarterbacking had bought him a scholarship to the State University and though she didn't have the money to go to school, Margie would study with Ben, learning everything about business that his courses had to offer. Pride and ego held Ben in the firm belief that his wife should not work and so her life was filled with nothing but spare time.
It was so nice, Margie thought as she shifted into second again and edged the old Ford around a corner and onto a dimly lit street. It had been ideallic until the summer before Ben's junior year in college. Margie felt an old fear choke her thoughts as she remembered the afternoon the foreman of the construction firm called to tell her about the accident. At the time the details had been sparse, but later she learned that Ben had been pushing a wheelbarrow of bricks up a heavy wooden plank when suddenly the plank broke and he fell. It had only been an eight foot drop and he had landed safely on his back, but before Ben could move, the four hundred pounds of rough red bricks had crashed down on his legs. One thighbone had fractured cleanly, but his right kneecap had been smashed and splintered, ending his football career and his scholarship in less than a second.
Margie was mesmerized in thought as she drove, hardly seeing the darkened street as it quickly passed under the worn tires of the old Ford. That was the beginning of the end, she remembered with the first moistness of a tear nestling in the corners of her moss-green eyes. She had seen the change in Ben whenever she visited the hospital and by the time he was home he had become a different person altogether. His vitality had disappeared and even after he had learned to walk with a plastic kneecap and silver pins in his shattered bones there seemed to be little left of the optimistic young man she had married.
"I tried," she whispered to the stars in the constellation Orion. "I really tried, but it hasn't helped."
Margie fought the bitterness she always felt when she remembered the first year after the accident. Her tear-blurred vision forgot the dark street as she remembered the ugly things Ben had said to her during that year. She had tried to understand and comfort him, but he wouldn't acknowledge her concern. Instead he had completely turned away from his wife until, when they moved back to their home town, he had rented a one bedroom apartment with twin beds.
That had been the final blow to the young girl's willpower and she had decided to file for divorce. Her moving out had shocked Ben, however, and after a few weeks separation and hours of discussion they had reconciled their marriage without ever consulting lawyers, ft was soon afterwards that Ben went to work for the detective agency.
The old Ford rattled over a dip in the road and Margie shuddered at the thought of Ben's associates. She barely knew them, yet the thought of her husband working with men who spy on other people made her cringe. The job had paid for her convertible and let them rent a nicer apartment, though they still slept in twin beds. She knew the money was adequate enough for them to live on, but now she hardly ever saw her husband. He worked sixteen to twenty hours a day, not leaving any time for her, and his excuse was that he was doing it for her.
For me, she thought sarcastically. About the only thing he does for me is his husbandly duty in bed once a week ... Saturday nights at ten o'clock ... and then he's like a professional stud bored with his work. Tears of frustration started to spill over her long eyelashes and down the tender flesh of her smooth rounded cheeks. She was a full-blooded woman, ready to give her husband the extreme sexual pleasures that every man dreams about, but her desires had been checked by his indifference and constant absence. She needed the fire of his manliness between her long slender thighs and the warmth of his body next to her as she slept, but she was denied both most of the time.
"Oh!" she gasped as the old Ford suddenly hit another dip in the road and veered nearly out of control. A loud thump, like the sound of a pillow smashing into an opponant during a slumber party pillow fight, pounded into her ears.
The noise brought her back to the reality of the old Ford and she realized that she had been driving nearly fifty miles an hour through a residential area. She quickly looked through the rear-view mirror to see the backside of the stop sign that she had just run. God, she thought as she put her foot on the brake pedal and eased the speeding convertible down to thirty miles an hour, a cop could have seen me and given me a ticket ... Ben would be furious.
"I've got to be more careful," she said aloud, then suddenly realized that she could have been killed if another car had been passing through the intersection at the same time.
Maybe I'd be better off dead, she thought, but knew that she was lying to herself. The sudden realization of what could have been a close call with death turned her nerves to glass. Unsteadily she opened her purse and fumbled for a cigarette that would bring her temporary relaxation.
One quick puff as she lit it, then a long extended drag on the mentholed tobacco and she eased herself more comfortably into the seat, luxuriating in the smoke that filled her lungs and the cool air that blew her long hair behind her head like a sensuous beckoning flag. In another minute she would be home and would have to forget about being a woman. Margie knew that she would have to sleep alone as usual, but for the moment she could dream.
Margie Carney rolled her suntanned body over in the softness of her solitary bed. She moaned and lifted her sleep-hazed head from the pillow to look at the electric alarm clock that sat on the table between the twin beds she had grown to hate.
Nine o'clock.
Morning always seemed to come late, she thought as she yawned, her long arms stretching above her head. Another day full of nothing but a little housework and maybe another novel. She looked at her husband's empty bed, knowing that he would already be gone. Ben had been asleep when she got home last night and was gone before seven thirty. It had been two days since she had heard his voice. He was always gone before she got up in the morning, and he usually never returned until after she was asleep at night. And last night, a night that she couldn't help thinking about him and how much she needed him, he was snoring when she entered the bedroom. What kind of life is this?
The tousled bed reminded her of the dream she was having just before she woke up. It had been about herself and an unnamed stranger who had taken her away from the drab existence of an unsatisfied housewife. Margie had no idea whom she had dreamed of, but the itching heat that smoldered under the soft red pubic hair at the apex of her thighs reminded her of what he had done to her in the multi-colored fantasy.
She threw the sheet off her perspiring body and got out of bed. Her muscles ached for the first morning movement and she stretched her arms above her head, trying to touch the ceiling. Her skin tightened over her jutting breasts as she stood on her tip-toes and flexed the taut muscles of her thighs, making herself shudder with the sensuous rippling in her loins.
It feels so good to be a woman, she thought as she recalled the dream and at the same time bent to touch her toes. She bobbed slightly while her hands grasped her ankles and she stretched the loose muscles that sleep had relaxed. The honied odor of a woman's sex drifted from between her thighs to her sensitive nostrils and the dream-stranger flashed again through her mind. He'd been so masculine and so passionate, she thought as she looked at her slightly jiggling breasts. She could remember him kissing the tight pink nipples and then running his wet tongue down the lean skin of her soft sensuous belly until he found his way to her hungry clitoris.
"Whew!" she said aloud and stood up. That was something that Ben had never done, and probably never will. Margie didn't know where she got the desire to be kissed there, but her dreams were becoming more and more obsessed with the salacious kiss of an imagined tongue implanted between the wet pink lips of her vagina.
Suddenly she realized that her index finger was softly carressing her swelling clitoris and she drew it away, half afraid of what she might do. She had masturbated before, when Ben had first bought the twin beds and made her sleep by herself, but she was so ashamed that after a few times she quit, vowing that she would never do it again. Now. she thought it was silly to play with herself, but wondered if she had masturbated in her sleep when she dreamed of the lusty stranger whose massive penis surged in and out of her smooth wet vagina nearly every night.
Margie frowned at her obscene thoughts and dismissed them from her mind as she grabbed her robe and headed for the kitchen.
As she entered the tiny cubicle she could see that the coffee pot was on as it was every morning when she got up. Ben was thoughtful about her morning coffee, but that was about all, she mused unhappily to herself and poured a cup of the hot black drink. She winced at the heat as she put it to her lips and gingerly sipped a few drops. Still not awake she turned to sit at the breakfast counter when she saw the bold black headlines of the morning paper staring at her.
HIT AND RUN DRIVER KILLS TEENAGER
God, she thought, the poor child.
Margie picked up the paper and began to read the story. It began with the girl's name and address and then explained that she had been out late studying with a friend. About eleven-fifteen she had left her friend's house, deciding to walk home because of the beautiful weather.
It was a beautiful night, Margie thought as she read, when suddenly the story shot out at her attention like a rifle bullet...." at the corner of Ninth and Harrison when an old white convertible sped through the intersection, not even slowing for the stop sign, and struck the girl down, killing her almost immediately. One witness said...."
Ninth and Harrison! White convertible! Oh, she gasped. Impossible! But there was more doubt than assurance in the young housewife's mind. Though she refused to admit it, she knew that she had nearly lost control of her car at Ninth and Harrison ... the dip in the road ... the muffled thump when she hit it. No, it couldn't have been her, she couldn't have killed tha; child. She just couldn't.
The newspaper story continued: " ... that the driver was probably drunk. Though almost a block away the witness described the driver as a woman with long flowing hair, but was not close enough to get a better description.
"Police are continuing their manhunt for the driver and hope for a break within the next twenty-four hours. An officer at the scene said that the old car was probably falling apart anyway, and had dropped the last three feet of its tailpipe on the pavement when it bounced over a large dip in the road."
The tailpipe, she thought. I'll check the tailpipe. Clutching the newspaper in her fist, Margie ran from the kitchen through the back door and toward the apartment's garage. But at the corner she stopped, trembling with fear. If the tailpipe was missing, then she was guilty; a killer. No, it had to be someone else!
Her knuckles were white from the pressure of her clenched fists, but she knew that she must conquer her fear. Slowly she took a few small steps toward the open garage, then with resolution she turned the corner and stared at the dented rear bumper of her white Ford convertible.
It was gone!
Below the tarnished chrome bumper there had always been a rusty tailpipe extension, but as she stood in the bright morning sun peering into the garage Margie could see that it was gone.
Guilty!
No, impossible, she thought again, not wanting to believe that it was gone, and dropped to her knees to look for the rotted old pipe. It had to be there, she knew, because she had wired it up with a couple of clothes hangers only a week ago. Of course, it could have fallen off at any time, not just at Ninth and Harrison ... but it was no use.
Slowly she rose from her knees and backed away from the car. The muffled pillow-like thump kept banging at the back of her mind and she imagined a thirteen-year-old girl bouncing off the fender and onto the pavement. She could almost hear a painful scream as the girl hit the hard asphalt.
"No! Stop!" she screamed and covered her ears with her hands, trying to deafen the hideous scream.
The noise seemed to stop, but Margie in her mind's eye, could still see the girl lying lifeless on the pavement. She lowered her hands from her ears and walked cautiously around the car, wondering if it might jump out and strike her down. There were no dents that she could see and she supposed that the girl must have been hit by a glancing blow. She was probably killed when her head hit the pavement, Margie thought coldly.
She completed her circle of the car and saw the newspaper lying on the garage floor, its headlines blaring out their accusation. She knew that she couldn't leave it there. Someone might pick it up and tie the stroy in with her old convertible, and worst of all, with her. Frantically she picked up the paper and ran back to the safety of her kitchen.
"Oh, what am I going to do?" she thought aloud as she leaned against the closed door trying to catch her breath.
She could see headlines telling of her conviction and subsequent imprisonment, but none of them seemed real. It was ridiculous, she thought. They wouldn't send her to prison if she told them that it was an accident; that she didn't even know that she had hit anyone. She'd simply confess and they would have to let her go. The law could be cruel ... they'd have to let her go.
The telephone suddenly rang and Margie jumped with a gasp. It rang a second and a third time before she decided to answer it. Ben might be calling and she could tell him what had happened. He'd help her when she went to the police. After all, he was her husband.
Her heart stuck in her throat, Margie crossed the small kitchen and answered the ringing telephone.
"Hello, is this Margie Carney?" a strange voice asked.
"Yes, it is," she answered. "Who's this?"
"You might not remember me," the high pitched male voice said. "I knew you when you were Margie Donovan at Central High School. My name is Jamie Barth."
Jamie Barth, Jamie Barth, her memory echoed. She had a vague recollection of that name ... someone who played football with Ben.
"I'm not sure," she said. "Your name sounds familiar, but I can't place you."
"I didn't really expect you to, remember me," Jamie told her. "I was the water boy on the football team when Ben was a senior. Remember, he was the best quarterback in the state that year."
Of course, she thought, Jamie Barth. She remembered the skinny waterboy with the long greasy black hair who carried the water bucket and scoop like they were made of gold. But no one had ever bothered to associate with him because he'd never been very freindly, nor really very socially attractive. Margie wondered why he would call her.
"Yes, Jamie, I remember," she said trying to sound cheerful. "How've you been?"
"Not bad at all, thanks," he said, his ego pleased that she would remember the waterboy from a high school football team.
For another minute they talked about Ben and old classmates, trying to recall what had happened to a few of them until finally Margie's curiosity forced her to ask: "Did you have anything special in mind, Jamie? I mean, is there something I can do for you?"
"No, not really,'" he answered. "I've seen you driving around town in that white Ford of yours and just thought I'd give you a call."
The Ford! Why did he say that? She wanted to dismiss him and everything else from her mind. The teenager's body flashed into her vision again and she could hear the muffled thump hitting the car. Tailpipe ... thump ... dead girl: she wanted to go to sleep and erase everything. It was a nightmare, a horrible dream. None of it could be true!
"Well, I'm glad you called, Jamie," she finally answered. "But I've got some shopping to do. Maybe you, Ben and I could get together for a drink sometime."
"Yes, maybe we could," she heard him say, the tone of his voice suddenly becoming very strange. "After all, I've seen you driving that convertible around so many times and never tried to call you before."
"Sure, Jamie," she said hurriedly, wanting to hang up the receiver. "Maybe we can do it this weekend."
There was a deathly pause and Margie thought she heard him chuckle, but he suddenly broke in as if she had never said anything.
"Yeah, in fact I saw you driving last night. I'd just left Smitty's. You know, that little bar at Ninth and Harrison."
Oh God, she thought as she gasped at the words. He saw me! He saw me! Even though Margie had decided to turn herself in, the knowledge that someone else knew she was the hit and run driver unleashed panic in her guilty mind.
Jamie chuckled at her gasp and said: "Yeah, I thought you'd know the place. You lost something there, didn't you?"
"I-I don't know what you're talking about." she answered feigning innocence. "I wasn't even out last night."
"Oh, sure you were," he said, sounding like a reprimanding schoolmaster. "Remember, you hit something in front of Smitty's and lost a piece off your car, like a tailpipe, maybe?"
It was unreal! He sounded like he enjoyed tormenting her. It was an accident, but he made it sound like she did it on purpose. How could such a little skinny kid be so cruel?
But Jamie Barth was no longer a skinny little kid. He knew that he was still underweight and pale, but he'd become a man long ago, a man with his own ideas about the world and about beautiful women like Margie Carney.
"Don't give me that crap," he suddenly barked at her. "You know damn well I saw the whole thing and now I've called to offer you a big favor."
He waited for her to say something, but she remained silent except for her heavy deep breathing into the white telephone receiver.
"If you go to any garage in town you're gonna be caught and have your sweet little ass thrown in jail.
People in this town don't like hit and run drivers. Hell, if they don't send you to the state pen, they'll run you and Ben out of town. How'd you like to spend about five years of your life in a dirty prison cell?"
"Jamie, you-you've made a mistake," she told him. "I think we'd better hang Up now."
"Nobody'll hang up until I say so," he growled. "I'm gonna save you a lot of trouble, so just listen.
"I'm a mechanic, see, down at the Acme garage. Now, if you bring your car down here during the day to be fixed, you get pinched. So if you want to stay out of stir, all you have to do is leave the keys in your car tonight. I know where you live and all I have to do is come by around midnight and pick it up. I can put on another pipe at the garage when no one'll be there, and have it back in your place before two o'clock. I'm just doin' it as a favor, 'cause I always thought you were a good lookin' chick. No one else'll know, not even Ben."
"I-I guess you do know," she whispered. "But it doesn't matter. I'm going to call Ben and have him take me to the police. I don't know why you'd want to help me get out of this mess, but it just wouldn't be any good. I've got to turn myself in."
What a stupid broad, Jamie thought. She thinks I'm doin' this because I'm a good guy. Christ, they get dumber every year.
"O.K., baby, if that's your bag, then do it. Just remember what I said about the five years in prison. If you change your mind you call me at Acme."
Margie heard the click at the other end of the line and slowly put her receiver back on the hook. She was relieved, but couldn't help thinking about Jamie Barth. His language was so rough and he sounded so funny when he talked about seeing her in front of the bar. But he did offer to help her, and he didn't want anything in return. Maybe just being a mechanic made him sound so rough. After all, she thought, he might have really cared about me going to prison....
"Who's on the phone," Ben asked from behind her, breaking her thoughts. He had come in through the front door and she hadn't heard him.
"Oh," she gasped. "You startled me ... What are you doing home? I didn't expect you until late tonight," she said. She wanted to tell him now, confess everything, but decided to wait and see what his mood was. If he was in a bad temper she thought she should wait until later.
"Right there," he said pointing to the newspaper on the counter. "That's why I'm home."
Margie looked from the paper to her husband's usually stoic face. She could see that he was extremely tense and had more energy than she had seen in him for more than four years.
"Don't you ever read the paper," he asked, his voice louder than normal. "The headline, the little girl who was killed last night! Her parents called the agency this morning. They don't think the police'll find the bitch who did it, so they want us to take the case."
The case? But there isn't any case, she thought. I did it and I'm going to turn myself in.
"I've been assigned to handle it," he continued. "And I'll be goddamned if I'll quit before I find the killer who drove that car."
"B-But why did you come home?" she asked, suddenly afraid of what he might do if he knew that she was guilty of the horrid crime. "You could have just called to tell me."
"I came for my gun," he said in a heavy monotone.
"I left it behind and I might need it. When I catch that bitch I'm not going to let her go, even if I have to shoot her."
Shoot her! Margie trembled when she thought that he might have to shoot his own wife. She had never seen him so intense, so singularly dedicated to one idea. It was almost like he was obsessed. She had to tell him the truth! But how?
"Ben," she whispered, but he didn't hear her.
"And you know what else," he said as he pulled his pistol from its hiding place in a drawer. "Al told me that if I can solve this case in less than a week, he'll make me a full partner. That means we're on our way to everything that we ever wanted."
But to Margie it didn't matter. Promotions or possessions had no more value. She knew that she had killed an innocent teenage girl with her car and that she would have to confess her crime. But Ben ... Ben didn't even care, she thought as she watched him checking his revolver. He only wants to catch a criminal, avenge a dead girl and get his promotion. Can't he tell? Doesn't he know that something's wrong?
"That's it," he said snapping the gun shut and studing it into the holster on his belt. "I've gotta run now."
It was now or never!
"B-Ben," she asked, her voice trembling with fear. "Yeah, honey."
"G-Good luck," she heard herself say. Margie Carney, she thought, spineless coward.
She watched his lips smile and thank her and saw the door close behind his back. His limping right leg bouncing down the back stairs sounded like the muffled thump that had haunted her mind for the last hour. Except for the limp he seemed like the young Ben Carney that she had married, but it made no difference. Too many hours of lonely bitterness and silence had held her from telling him the most important thing that had ever happened to her, to them, since his accident. What shall I do? she asked herself again and again but her thoughts were a jumbled mass of confusion.
She imagined the unconscious body of the girl again and saw the tailpipe flying off the back of her car. It was a horrible sight for her tormented mind. She could see the blackness, the speed and the dreadful dark blood spilling onto the pavement, all framed by the cold steel bars of a prison cell.
"Ooooh," she moaned and slammed her open hand against the telephone book that hung from a small gold screw in the wall.
For a moment she stared at it, then cautiously pulled it from the wall and began thumbing through the yellow pages.
She slowly dialed the numbers that she read from the boldface type of a quarter-page ad. The last digit took what seemed like an eternity to finish its course.
The high shrill ring that normally would have startled her, barely seemed audible as she waited for someone to pick up the telephone at the other end-of the line.
Finally a voice boomed into her ear: "Acme Garage:"
Margie Carney knew that she could change her mind, but there was no other way.
"May I speak to Jamie Barth," she asked while her whole body trembled with the knowledge that she was now committing an unforgivable crime and there was no turning back.