Then, at last, hurtling himself forward. Head lowered, shoulders hunched, legs churning like pistons. Rapidly gaining momentum until he hit the door with the impact of a charging bull. Rather, he didn’t hit the door, since the door was no longer there. I had flung it open. Instead, he rocketed through the opening and hit the wall on the opposite side. And he hit it so hard that several of its tiles were loosened.
There was an explosive spllaat! He bounded backward, and his head struck the floor with the sound of a bursting melon.
For a moment, I thought he must be dead. Then, a kind of twitching shudder ran through his body, and I knew he was only dead to the world. Very unconscious, but very much alive.
I got busy.
I yanked off my robe, and tied him up with its cord.
I grabbed up some towels, and tied him up with them.
I tied him up with the hose of the hot-water bottles.
I tied him up with the electric light cords from the reading lamps. And some pillow cases and bedsheets. And a large roll of adhesive bandage.
That was about all I could find to tie him up with, so I let it go at that. But I still wasn’t sure that it was enough. With a guy like that, you could never be sure.
I backed out of the bathroom, keeping my eye on him. I backed across the bedroom, still watching him, and out into the hallway. And then I stopped stock-still, my breath sucking in with shock.
Connie stood flattened against the wall, immediately outside my door. And lurking in the shadows at the top of the stairs, was the hulking figure of my father-in-law, Luther Bannerman.
31
I looked from him to her, staring stupidly, momentarily paralyzed with shock. I thought, “How…why…what…?” Immediately following it with the thought, “How silly can you get?”
She and Bannerman had journeyed from their homeplace together. Having a supposedly invalided daughter was a gimmick for chiseling money from me. So he had parked her before coming out to my house this afternoon, picking her up afterward. Since Kay wouldn’t have volunteered any information, they assumed that she was no more than the nurse she appeared to be, one who went home at night. She had left. While they waited to make sure she would not return, they saw Manny’s husband enter the house in a way that no legitimate guest would. So they followed him inside, and when he failed to do the job he had come to…
My confusion lasted only a moment. It could have taken no longer than that to sort things out, and put them in proper order. But Connie and Luther Bannerman were already edging toward me. Arms outspread to head off my escape.
I backed away. Back was the only way I could go.
“Get him, Papa!” Connie hissed. “Now!”
I saw a shadow upon the shadows—Bannerman poising to slug me. I threw up an arm, drew my own fist back.
“You hypocrite son-of-a-bitch! You come any closer, I’ll—!”
Connie slugged me in the stomach. She stiff-armed me under the chin.
I staggered backwards, and fell over the rail of the balustrade.
I went over it and down, my vision moving in a dizzying arc from beamed ceiling to panelled walls to parquet floor. I did a swift back-and-forth re-view of the floor, and decided that I was in no hurry at all to get down to it.
I had never seen such a hard-looking floor.
I was only sixty-plus feet above it—only!—but it seemed like sixty miles.
I had hooked my feet through the balusters when I went over the rail.
Connie was alternately pounding on them and trying to pry them loose, meanwhile hollering to her father for help.
“Do something, darn it! Slug him!”
Bannerman moved down the stairs a step or two. He leaned over the rail, striking at me. I jabbed a finger in his eye.
He cursed, and let out a howl.
Connie cursed, howled for him to do something, goddammit!
“Never mind your damn eye! Hit him, can’t you?”
“Don’t you cuss me, daughter!” He leaned over the rail again. “It ain’t nice to cuss your papa!”
Connie yelled, “Oh, shit!” exasperatedly, and gave my foot an agonizing blow.
Her father took another swing at me, and my head seemed to explode. I heard him shout with triumph. Connie’s maliciously delighted laugh.
“That almost got him, Papa. Just a little bit more, now.”
“Don’t you worry, daughter. Just you leave him to Papa.”
He aimed another blow at me. She hit my sore foot again.
And I kicked her, and I grabbed him.
He was off-balance, leaning far out over the rail. I grabbed him by the ears, simultaneously kicking at Connie.
He came over the rail with a terrified howl, clutching my wrists for dear life. My foot went between Connie’s legs, and she was propelled upward as Bannerman’s weight yanked me downward.
She shrieked, one terror-filled shriek after another. Shrieking, she flattened herself against my leg and hung onto it.
She shrieked and screamed, and then yelled and howled. And one jerked one way, and the other pulled the other way. And I thought, My God, they’re going to deafen me and pull me apart at the same time.
They were really a couple of lousy would-be murderers. But they were amateurs, of course, and even a pro can goof up. As witness, Manny’s husband.
I caught a glimpse of him as I was swung back and forth. Looking more like a mummy than a man, due to the variety and number of items with which I had bound him. He came hopping through my bedroom door, very dazed and wobbly-looking. He hopped out onto the landing, lost his balance and crashed heavily into the balustrade.
It creaked and scraped ominously. The distant floor of the reception hall seemed to jump up at me a few inches, and the terrified vocalizings of the Bannermans increased.
Somehow, the mummy got to his feet again, though why I don’t know. I doubt that he knew what he was doing. He got to the head of the stairs, stood looking down at them dazedly. He executed another little hop—and, of course, he fell. Went down the steps in a series of bouncing somersaults. Hitting the leg which Bannerman had just managed to hook over the rail.
The jolt almost knocked Bannerman loose from me. Naturally, I was yanked downward also, simultaneously exerting a tremendous yank upon the balustrade.
It was too much. Too damned much. It tore loose from its ancient moorings, and dropped downward. Connie skidded down my body head-first, unable to stop her plunge until she was extended almost the length of her body. Clutching her father’s legs, as she clung to me by her heels.
She screamed and cursed him, hysterically. He cursed and kicked at her.
A strange calm had settled over me—the calm of the doomed. I was at once a part of things and yet outside them, and my overall view was objective.
I didn’t know how the few screws and spikes which still attached the balustrade to the landing managed to stay in place. Why it didn’t plunge downward, bearing us with it, into the reception hall. Moreover, I didn’t seem to care. Rather, I cared without caring. What concerned me, in a vaguely humorous way, was the preposterous picture we must make. Connie, Bannerman and I balled together in a kind of crazy bomb, which was about to be dropped at any moment.
I waited for the weight to go off of me, the signal that we were making the final plunge. I waited, and I kept my eyes closed tight. Knowing that if I opened them, if I looked down at that floor so far below me, it would be about the last time I looked at anything.
There was so much racket from the Bannermans and the grating and screeching of the balustrade that I could hear nothing else. But suddenly the weight did go off me in two gentle yanks. There was another wait then, and I expected to hit the floor at any moment. Then, I myself was yanked, and a couple of strong arms went around me. And I was hustled effortlessly upward.
I was set down on my feet. I received a gentle bearing-down shake, then a sharp slap. I opened my eyes. Found myself on the second-floor landing, with its ruined balustrade.
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Connie and Bannerman were stretched out on the floor face down, with their hands behind their heads. Manny’s husband lay at the foot of the stairs in a heap.
Kay peered at me anxiously. “I’m terribly, terribly sorry, darling. Are you all right?”
“Fine,” I said. Because I was alive, wasn’t I, and being alive was fine, wasn’t it?
To show my gratitude, I would gladly have gone down on my knees and kissed her can.
“I would have been back sooner, Britt, but a truck driver tried to pick me up. I think I broke his darned jaw.”
“Fine,” I said.
“Britt, honey…we don’t have to say anything to Sergeant Claggett about my leaving you alone, do we? Let’s not, okay?”
“Fine,” I said.
“I’ll think of a good story to cover. Just leave it to me.”
“Fine,” I said.
“You do love me, don’t you, Britt? You don’t think I’m awful?”
“Fine,” I said.
And then I put my arms around her, and sank slowly down to my knees.
No, not to kiss her can, although I really wouldn’t have minded.
It was just that I’d waited as long as I could—and I couldn’t wait any longer—for something soft to faint on.
32
Kay’s story was that she had gone out of the house to investigate some suspicious noises, and had found a guy apparently trying to break in. During her pursuit of him (he had got away) Manny’s husband, and subsequently, the Bannermans, had entered the house. But, fortunately, she was in time to overpower them and save me from death.
The story didn’t go down very well with Jeff Claggett, but he couldn’t call her a liar without calling me one, so he let it go. And Kay not only kept her job with the department, but she received a commendation and promotion. The increase in pay, she estimated, would pay for the all-white gown and accoutrements. Which, she advised me unblushingly, she intended to wear at our wedding.
To move on:
Connie and Luther Bannerman pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder, and attempted murder. They received ten years on each count, said sentences to run consecutively.
Manny’s husband remained mute, and was convicted of attempted murder. But other charges were dug up against him before he could begin serving the sentence—he was a very bad guy, seemingly. The last I heard, he had accumulated two life sentences, plus fifty years, and he was still standing mute. Apparently, he saw nothing to gain by talking.
Manny was taken from her hospital to the criminal ward of the county hospital. Pat Aloe could have got her out, I am sure, since the charge against her of harboring a criminal—failing to report her husband to the police—was a purely technical one. But Pat had grimly washed his hands of Manny. He wanted nothing more to do with her. He had no further need for her, for that matter, having begun the swift closing out of PXA’s affairs.
Manny cooperated fully with the authorities, and their attitude toward her was generally sympathetic. She had attacked her husband without intent to kill him. His abuse had driven her temporarily insane, and when she recovered her senses, she was holding a steam pressing-iron in her hand and he was sprawled on the ground at her feet. The storm was gathering by now, and she was forced to flee back inside her resort cabin. When the police came in the morning to investigate the storm’s havoc, she was near death with shock and she was never questioned about her husband’s supposed death.
Actually, he wasn’t even seriously hurt, but there was a dead man nearby—one of several who had died in the storm—who resembled him in size and coloring. Manny’s husband made the features of the dead man unrecognizable with a few brutal blows, switched clothes with him and planted his identification on him.
He disappeared into the night then, and no one ever questioned the fact that he was dead. Possibly because so many people were glad to have him that way. Rumors had been circulating for some time that he had irritated people who were not of a mind to put up with it, and only his apparent death saved him from the actuality.
There followed an extended period of hiding out, of keeping out of the way of former associates. Finally, however, believing that feeling about him had cooled down, and having sized up Manny’s situation, he had paid her a covert visit.
She was terrified. Anyone who knew him well would be. Also, she was vulnerable to his threats, thanks to the nominal attempt on his life and the malicious mischief she had made for me. She couldn’t go to the police. She couldn’t go to Pat, who was already furious with her. So she acceded to her husband’s demands. She would go away with him, if he would leave me alone.
She collapsed after his visit, and was forced to go to the hospital. His reaction was to try to kill me. She hoped to buy him off, and he accepted the money she gave him. But, of course, he could not stay bought. Again, he gave her an ultimatum: She would go back to him, or I would go, period. So she had agreed to go back to him, but the ugly prospect had brought on another nervous collapse with its resultant hospitalization.
Actually, he had no intention of leaving me alone, regardless of what she did. He was a handsome hood, and as vain and mean as he was handsome. And it was simply not tolerable to him to allow his wife’s lover to live.
So he had tried to kill me for the third time. At the same time the Bannermans were attempting to kill me for the second time. And so much for them.
The charge against Manny was dismissed, with the urgent recommendation that she seek psychiatric help. She gladly promised to do so.
Mrs. Olmstead was caught up with in Las Vegas. She was drunk, thoroughly unremorseful and some twenty thousand dollars ahead of the game. She returned most of my money, I think. I’m not sure, since I don’t know exactly how much she got away with. Anyway, I declined to prosecute, and she was still in Vegas the last I heard.
Still drunk, still unremorseful and still a big winner.
33
I went to the hospital a few days after the Bannermans and Manny’s husband tried to kill me. My house needed repairs to make it livable and it was kind of lonesome there by myself, so I went to the hospital. And I remained there while the courts dealt with my would-be killers, and certain other happy events came to pass.
The doctors hinted that I was malingering, and suggested that I do it elsewhere. Jeff Claggett gave me a stern scolding.
“You don’t want to marry Nolton. You shouldn’t marry her. Why not lay it on the line with her, instead of pulling the sick act?”
“Well…I do like her, Jeff,” I said. “And she saved my life, you know.”
“Oh, hell! She was goofing off when she should have been on the job, and we both know it.”
“Well…But I promised to marry her. I didn’t think I’d ever be free of Connie at the time, but—”
“That wasn’t a promise, dammit! Anyway, you’ve got a right to change your mind. You shouldn’t go ahead with something that’s all wrong to keep a promise that should never have been made.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” I said. “I’ll have a talk with Kay as soon as I get some other things out of the way.”
“What things?”
“Well…”
“You’ve got a go-ahead on your erosion book, and a hefty advance from the publisher. You’re getting a good settlement on your condemnation suit; my lawyer friend says it will be coming through any day now. So what the hell are you waiting for?”
“Nothing,” I said firmly. “And I won’t wait any longer.”
“Good! You’ll settle with Nolton right away, then?”
“You bet I will,” I said. “Maybe not right away, but…”
He cursed, and stamped out of the room.
The phone rang, and of course it was Kay.
“Just one question, Britt Rainstar,” she said. “How much longer do you plan on staying in that hospital?”
“What’s the difference?” I said. “My divorce hasn’t come through yet.”
“Hasn’t it?” she
said. “Hasn’t it?”
“I, uh, well”—I laughed nervously. “I haven’t received the papers yet, but I believe I did hear that, uh—my goodness, Kay,” I said. “You surely don’t think that I don’t want to marry you.”
“That’s exactly what I think, Britt.”
“Well, shame on you,” I said. “The very idea!”
“Then, when are you leaving the hospital?”
“Very soon,” I said. “Practically any day now.”
She slammed the phone down.
I lay back on the pillows, and closed my eyes.
I was thoroughly ashamed of myself. My shame increased, as the days drifted by and I stayed on in the hospital. The naive, evasive-child manner I maintained was evidence of my general feeling of hopeless unworthiness. The I-ain’t-nothin’-but-a-hound-dawg routine set to different music.
Whatever I did, I was bound to make someone unhappy, and I have always shrunk from doing that. I am always terribly unhappy when I make others unhappy.
I wondered what in the name of God I could tell Manny. After all, I had told her that the only reason I didn’t marry her was because I couldn’t. I was married to Connie, and there was no way I could dissolve our marriage. Now, however, I was free of Connie, and Manny was free of her husband. So how could I possibly tell her that I was marrying Kay Nolton?
I was wrestling with the riddle the afternoon she came to see me, the first time I had seen her since that seemingly long-ago day when she had come to the house.
I stalled on giving her the news about Kay, staving it off by complimenting her on how nice she looked. She thanked me and said she certainly hoped she looked nice.
“You see, I’m getting married, Britt,” she said. “I thought you should be the first to know.”
I gulped and said, “Oh,” thinking that took me off the hook all right—or sank it into me. “Well, I hope you’ll be very happy, Manny.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m sure I will be.”
“Is it, uh, anyone I know?”