He went toward her, yielding to the clumsiness of his urgency, opening his shirt.
His clothing awkwardly shed, he carried her to the bed. He gloried in the strain of lifting her, holding her high, flinging her to the counterpane so that she bounced and laughed.
The expertness he had pretended sloughed from him like so many loose buttons. With joy and fury, he fumbled at her breasts, kissed her ravenously.
She too had a neediness-whether to love or merely to be adored he was afraid to wonder. Her hands pulled his loins to hers. She snatched, clung, accepted his every wild young gesture ...
Such were the passions that shaped Tom Bern's life. But sooner or later he would have to learn that it took a good man to make a bad woman happyl
1
HE AWOKE to a sound. At first it was unidentifiable. Then it became familiar-a kind of rhythmic whispering and thumping-and he grinned, opened his eyes. Laura was doing her exercises.
At least she called them so. He saw her in the day's first light. She was stark naked-as, under the bedcovers, was he. The memory of last night's love lingered as a reviving memory in his body. Not only in his brain-in his whole body. He saw her now with his eyes and brain and his flesh was responding.
She was slender as a sword but built like a woman. Long of arms, legs and torso, with gently sloping shoulders, firm-budded breasts crowning a swell of chest. An abruptly lean waist flared to lyric hips which her present motions blurred. She was gyrating her loins and bumping, taking slow knee-bent, dancing steps forward and back-a belly-dance routine.
Exercises, hell. She was making ritual love to the early sun that bathed her body in gold. She was offering sex to the new day. Tom knew no jealousy. Instead he felt a kind of glory. When a man's love rival was the sun-he had a prize.
He spoke softly. "Laura."
She spun to a frozen pose, facing him. Even in startlement her body never lost its poise. She could have been photographed for eternity at this instant, standing firmly on one leg, the other bent forward slightly at the knee, heel raised, a nymph ready for flight. Knees close together so that she could dart, if she chose, in any direction. A female thing of nature, ready to flee any danger or no danger at all. Simply flee willfully. But she was not about to run away, he knew, and he gave himself up to enjoyment.
Her posture expressed the spring-steel suppleness of her waist, the smooth, bouncing flare of one hip. Her hair was tousled, one strand drifting across her forehead. Her sea-blue eyes glinted. In the golden light of the sun behind her, reflected from the palely papered walls of the bedroom to bathe her front in caressing color, she could at that moment have been immortalized in a portrait that men would worship forever.
She smiled. "I didn't mean to wake you, Tom."
"You didn't. But thank God I'm awake. Come here, girl."
After two years of marriage she was still girl to him, to be won and possessed and loved each dawning day, each spendthrift night. He had never had enough of her.
The bent knee moved, the heel sprang. She chose the direction of her flight-straight to him.
He rose to meet her, exploding bedcovers aside, seized her and sank down to he with her in the sun. He kissed her warm lips, tasted her tongue, felt her teeth. She had good teeth, sharp and even. They nipped playfully at his lips, at his tongue. Her arms embraced him.
"Tom," she whispered. "I don't have breakfast ready."
On most mornings she awoke before him, made breakfast after her so-called matutinal exercises, came back to wake him with love. She was-and he knew she wanted to be-the perfect, commuter's wife.
"To hell with breakfast," he said.
He had woken this morning to the sounds of her movements but not because of them. His car was in the shop, being overhauled, and he had planned to leave a little early to catch the bus to the city. Some silent alarm he had set in his brain last night had awakened him-to this. Occasionally, before, he had happened to witness Laura's early erotic greeting to the sun and he knew he was a clod usually to sleep through the performance. It was art. He was sure no-other man on earth had been privileged to see it. But he was a happy clod. He liked both sex and breakfast.
Right now he wanted sex. He would dress while Laura made breakfast. Or, as he had said, to hell with breakfast.
He applied himself to her quickly. While often they deliberately prolonged their passion, Laura and he seemed always almost instantly ready for one another. As if they really made love all day, all night, whether together or apart. This morning, of course, he had been aroused by her dance. And she, perhaps, by the sun.
She sensed his urgency to possess her. "The bus?" she whispered and he nodded.
She opened to him then as a flower opens to blazing sunlight and he invaded her as hotly. She received him with a cry and was instantly molten. Briefly, with insane jealousy, Tom wondered if the sun really had touched her where he now probed-then joyously dismissed the thought. She had this ability to suit her sexual rhythm to his, making even the briefest of unions perfect.
This was not too brief. He did not want to let her go or let himself go and toyed dimly through the blaze of his passion with the notion that he could also say to hell with the bus-blow himself to a cab. Or, in fact, say to hell with his business and the whole rest of the earth. But in the heat of their joining he grew aware more importantly that her passion was forcing his, urging hisand the volcanic flow came, exploding the day to a brilliance unmatched by the sun.
He lingered briefly within her to drain them both. He whispered, kissing her, "You were making love to the sun, before. I beat the old stinker, didn't I?"
An odd shadow crossed her face before she smiled. "The sun is fickle-he's not always there. Sometimes it rains and he hides behind clouds. I love you better."
"The point is-do I love you better?"
She laughed. "Much, much better-" and kissed him.
He left her with reluctance and she arose. "I'll make breakfast while you shower, shave and dress." She bent briefly to rub her cheek to his. "Though I love those whiskers. What's a man without whiskers? Nothing but a dummy in a business suit for empty-headed office girls to leer at. Do women make passes at you in the city, Tom?"
"I keep a club in my desk to chase them away. They respect it."
"I bet they do, darling. We'd better hurry."
Her nakedness disappeared into a cloudy pale-blue negligee and the cloud slipped out of the room. Pure, beautiful magic. He swung briskly out of bed, strode through a fast shower, shaved and dressed quickly.
While the odors of breakfast bacon and coffee drifted into the room, Tom Bern thought himself, this morning, the luckiest man alive.
He wondered why, in two years of marriage and all this fine sex, he and Laura had no children-but the thought did not trouble him. Children came-or they did not. He loved Laura.
* * *
Tom Bern came home still that evening by bus. A telephone call to his garage had elicited the information that his car would not be ready for several days. He left the bus feeling worn, hot and tired, crossed the wide drive, with its handsome green turf divider, came to the vacant lot near his home-and saw Laura playing football.
Laura was with some neighborhood kids, gangly sub-teeners, including several shrill little girls. Stopping to look on, Tom Bern saw his wife take the ball from a humped-over center and dance backward, slim legs scissoring. He saw her cock an arm and toss a pass to a sawed-off youngster.
It was a woman's throw, somewhat awkward, but Tom noticed she managed to put quite a spin on the ball. And those steps, from knees close together to permit her darting in any direction, reminded him ridiculously of her all-female posture this morning.
The pass was caught and the receiver ran furiously. Laura shouted encouragement until he was whacked by one of the defenders.
An argument began as to whether he had been touched by both hands. It was resolved. The two teams grouped again. There was a real huddle, Laura down on one knee in the middle, plotting the next play with her cohorts.
Tom Bern walked on, grinning. Probably no other wife in the valley could line up with those kids in a touch football game among the high foxtails of the vacant lot. Or look as lovely in tight, tan shorts, an orange-and-black striped T-shirt and tennis sneakers. And under a blue baseball cap, russet-brown hair sticking out in all directions.
He noted with more pride than jealousy that the game had collected a number of male spectators. Laura had exceptionally attractive legs, tanned from the summer just past.
He turned into a walk leading to his house, a modified rancher with redwood sidings and a low tile roof. The house was fitted to a long, rather shallow lot, with two wings at either end of a dichondra lawn where droplets from a recent watering sparkled in the clear bright fight of this slowly fading September day.
Mrs. Carter, the housekeeper who lived out, was in the entry hall, hat and coat on. She took his briefcase and placed it on a drum table.
"Mrs. Bern said to remind you about the club tonight. You won't be eating at home. And your sister is waiting in the den."
Tom already knew Claire was here. He had seen her old Studebaker parked down the block. He sighed inwardly. He had forgotten the club affair tonight. There were papers in his briefcase he had planned to work on. Claire was an added problem.
"Thank you, Mrs. Carter. You'd better hurry if you're to catch the six-o'clock bus."
He turned to his left, strode past the sunken living room. The den was off the long hall that ran across the front of the place.
Claire was standing at a window, looking toward the vacant lot where Laura was playing football. She wore a brown suit, with a scarf at her throat. She was five years older than Tom, possessed what women termed a good figure. Tom thought her very thin.
He braced himself. "Claire, why don't you put your car in the driveway when you come here? I've often asked you to."
"Never mind about my car," Claire Bern said. "Tom, I nearly came downtown to your office this afternoon-but decided to wait. I had to think of what I was going to do-try to compose myself-"
The tone of her voice warned him that this was no ordinary visit.
"What's happened?" he asked. "Is Randall in trouble again?"
He had had to get his brother Randall out of trouble before, always at considerable cost to himself.
"It's that wife of yours," Claire said. "Tom, I warned you about marrying a woman you knew nothing about-"
"And I've warned you," Tom Bern said angrily, "that I'll listen to no more of your talk against Laura."
"You'll listen this time," Claire said fiercely. She jerked open her purse, brought out a paper which she thrust at him. "This came in the afternoon mail. It confirms what I've suspected all along."
The paper was folded to fit an envelope. Tom unfolded it. He saw two lines of typing, all in capital letters, in the center of the page. They seemed to blur. He read them again.
JUST WAIT UNTIL EVERYBODY FINDS OUT THAT LAURA HAS TWO LIVING HUSBANDS
Tom heard himself speak: "You said this was mailed to you. Did you keep the envelope."
"Yes. Here."
The envelope was cheap-probably bought in a dime store, Tom Bern thought. The postmark showed that the letter had been mailed yesterday. The point of origin was blurred. Perhaps the sender might somehow be traced-the police-his mind shied violently from the thought.
He examined the typing on both envelope and letter. It appeared to have been inexpertly done with an apparently old machine. The letters were worn and uneven.
Claire said, "Tom, if you've known all along and still married her-"
"Don't be absurd," he said shortly. "And sit down."
"I won't-"
"Sit down."
Then he, too, was sitting on the leather divan that faced the TV console. Claire had jerkily, reluctantly, moved to the matching armchair. She perched herself on the edge of the cushion, smoothing her skirt distractedly over her knees. Her lipstick was a dark smear against the pallor of her features.
Tom Bern continued to examine the letter-or to pretend to. He did not seem to be able to concentrate on it. He found himself instead clinging to his own identity. He was T. V. Bern, Properties Consultant, which meant he was in the business-for himself-of advising people with money how they could make more with it. He was doing fairly well-or had been. One breath of scandal could ruin him.
His attention returned to Claire.
He spoke again. "A poison-pen letter, Claire-vicious, scurrilous, untrue."
"Is it untrue?"
"Of course."
His sister's lips grew even thinner. "Maybe you believe that. I don't. That woman has had you bewitched. She never told you what she really was, where she really came from, the truth about herself. Now it is catching up with her."
"Claire," Tom said, "don't ever again call my wife 'that woman.'"
Claire stood up. She was trembling. "The letter was mailed to me. The writer must have intended that I do something about it. Or there will be another one-mailed to somebody else."
"You're not going to do anything about my affairs," Tom told her. Then, in sudden sharp anxiety: "You haven't mentioned this to anybody, or shown it-to Randall, perhaps?"
"Of course not."
"Then you're not to tell anyone-"
"My God, do you think I want such a thing known?" Claire cried. "The point is-what are you going to do?"
This was a question he could not answer. Tom Bern had no idea of what he was going to do.
Claire continued, her voice rising, "Perhaps you can look forward to living here with the people we've known all our lives-and the new ones as well-with that sort of thing talked about behind our backs. Perhaps you can stand the humiliation, the shame-I can't. And there is the danger to your business-"
Yes. Those who entrusted their money to Tom Bern would not react well to scandal. He was "old family"--his mother's people had once owned most of the valley, had laid down the rules for its development into a status suburb of the sprawling city.
"You must do something at once," Claire said fiercely.
"I will," he told her. "And I want your promise that you won't do anything yourself, Claire."
She did not give the promise. Instead she moved again to the window.
"At least she has stopped playing with those children-half-naked, without brassiere-" Claire turned. "You're going to force the truth out of her, Tom, and then admit you made a bad mistake-divorce her-"
"That's enough," Tom Bern said, rising. He had heard voices at the back of the house. "Wait here for me, Claire. Don't leave until I can talk to you again."
He went back along the hall, across the living room, with its array of Chinese modern furniture-Laura's choice. The voices came from the kitchen. He pushed through a swinging door into an area of tile, gleaming chrome and bright colors-yellow, ivory, rose.
Laura was standing at the refrigerator, sipping a glass of ice water. Luis Preil was with her, grinning, a hand on Laura's arm.
She pulled herself away from him, turned to Tom. "Hi, darling. Our side beat their side. I saw you stop to watch for a minute."
Luis Preil laughed. "What a throwing arm. You should send her up to play quarterback for the old school, Tom."
Some color appeared against Laura's low cheekbones and accentuated the few freckles across the bridge of her nose. She had blue eyes, a gentle mouth, a delicately curved chin-but she was neither meek nor gentle.
"Luis, don't be silly," Laura said. She came to Tom, touched his cheek. "I must run and shower-I'm disgustingly sweaty. Come kiss me later, Tom."
Claire's accusation had been false-there was a bra under the T-shirt. Tom told himself he had known she would not be guilty of such gaucherie-or had he? He was angrily aware that the letter had caused him to wonder about Laura. He knew nothing of her past.
She left him. Luis Preil had investigated the refrigerator and found some cheese. He began to nibble it. "Thought I'd inflict myself on you and Laura-go to the club with you," he announced. "If, that is, there are no objections."
Luis was Tom's closest friend. Tom and Luis Preil had gone to prep school and college together. The only experience they had not shared had been Tom's Marine years. A punctured eardrum had exempted Luis from military service.
More to the point than long friendship, however, was the fact that Luis was now Tom's most important client. The Preil account had made it possible for Tom to leave the firm he had worked for and go into business for himself.
Luis had not always had money. During their growing-up years Tom had been the more fortunate one. Luis's widowed mother had sacrificed desperately to provide for him. The death of his paternal grandfather, coincidentally with the death of a bachelor uncle, had put a moderate fortune into Luis's hands, one with a capital worth of about two million dollars.
Tom said, "Luis, mind taking a rain check on that?"
Preil's dark brows lifted. He was slim, dark-haired, rather small-an inch or so shorter than Laura and well below Tom Bern's six-one-not unhandsome, although his lips were a little thick and his nose broad.
Luis Preil was unmarried. He lived in an ugly old house at the north end of the valley, inherited from his grandfather.
"A family fight? I saw Claire's car out front." Luis laughed. "Well, I'll run along, then. Don't want to get caught in more cross-fire between Berns."
No love was lost between Luis and Claire, partly because of snobbery on Claire's part during the years before Luis had inherited his money, partly because Luis had always taken Tom's side against her.
"You will be dining with me, though," he announced, turning toward the rear door with a fussy adjustment of his expensive sports jacket.
"No, we won't. You'll dine with us," Tom said. "You've been grabbing too many checks lately, Luis."
It surprised him that he could speak so calmly, matter-of-factly, with the other thing, the words of that damnable letter burning in his brain. From Luis's manner Tom knew he had not betrayed the worry ravening him-and Luis had sharp perception, an almost feminine intuitiveness at guessing the thoughts of others.
"You and your chintziness with my money," Luis said. "If you don't ease up and let me spend some of it, I'm likely to take the whole bloody bundle away from you." He laughed again. "Sure, you can buy the dinner tonight-but on one condition. Put it on your expense account. Not only because I'm your client. You'll also meet Evan
Richards." He hesitated, hand on knob. "Suppose I should get myself a date."
"How about Roseanne Short?" Tom said.
Luis started. "What the devil made you speak of her?"
"I heard somebody mention having seen you at her place," Tom said. "I thought you might be getting interested in Roseanne."
"Well, you heard wrong," Luis said. "Oh, there was a day when I sliced a drive into her yard, was poking about, trying to find the ball. She came out and we had some words about golf-and other things. Listen, after the way that woman gave you the brush, she's the last one alive I'd have anything to do with."
Tom said mildly, "The way I heard the story, you weren't playing golf. No matter. See you in a couple of hours."
He went back through the house. He heard Laura taking her shower.
Claire was at the front door, slapping brown gloves against her purse.
"I'm going, Tom," she announced. "And I won't promise you anything about the letter. Either you take some action-"
"Goodbye, Claire," Tom said.
"-or I shall," Claire finished.
2
HE MADE a pitcher of martinis at the small bar in the den, carried it to the north wing.
The wing contained three bedrooms. Tom crossed his and Laura's to the bathroom. He saw his wife dimly through the swirling steam in the shower stall, slid open the glass door.
"How about a drink, lady?"
"Golly-thanks." She leaned out toward him with the kiss promised in the kitchen. A moist kiss, droplets beading her face, her body. "That's better than any drink, though I'll still have one, if you don't mind. Hand me a towel, please, Tom."
She stepped out of the stall, took her glass, raised it to his and sipped. She began to towel herself briskly. He consumed his own drink, looking on, then picked up a talcum shaker and sprinkled her. He remembered his morning's love and what had preceded it. Where had she learned her dance to the dawn? Had she ever performed it intimately for another man-another husband? Was there truth to that letter?
Laura asked, "What kind of day did you have?"
"The usual. Mrs. Hedges monopolized most of it."
"Is she still insistent about her trip around the world?"
"Very much so."
"I'll bet she's planning a hunt for a new husband."
"I hope she finds a better bargain than the skinflint she had to endure for so long."
"Well, we can't all be as lucky as I was."
"Or I."
Two years together. By now the yoke could begin to gall. But Tom had not yet become aware of any friction or desire to wander. Not that he and Laura had never clashed. They had-briskly-on occasion. Laura had a temper. So did he. And there were the times of her dark moods-when she went through some door and closed it on him.
What did those moods signify? Did they mean that she was thinking of another man-another husband? Was another man somewhere still privy to her matutinal dance to the sun? Tom became aware of a lurking, undirected rage, primitive, brutish.
"I forgot about this club thing tonight-brought the papers concerning Mrs. Hedges and meant to go over them," Tom said.
Again it surprised him that he could speak so steadily.
"Tom, if you want to skip the club it's all right with me. I can open a few cans for supper-"
"No. That oil man-Richards-will be there. Luis has arranged a meeting."
"Luis makes a very good salesman for you." Laura sprayed herself with something from an atomizer, a fragrant scent.
"He has brought me more clients than I've been able to sign up myself," Tom conceded wryly. "What did he want a while ago."
"Didn't Luis tell you?"
"No. I was just coming in through the kitchen when he yelled and came pelting along with that nonsense about my pass-throwing."
Tom explained what had brought Luis to their rear door. "He's in one of his lonely moods, I guess, wants our company."
"I sometimes wish he didn't want it so much of the time."
Laura lifted both hands to fuss with her hair. Tom caught his breath at the sight of her in that posture. His senses absorbed the slim, youthful body, the taut, thrusting perfection of tawny-nippled, pointed breasts. Her glowing beauty evoked wrenching desire in him. He was aware of an enchantment as strong as the first time he had seen her nude.
He found his thoughts fleeing in a kind of panic--clutching at another nude vision, one he had escaped. Roseanne Short. Odd that he should remember Roseanne-and then again, perhaps not odd at all. Laura's beauty suddenly held danger-it could hurt him. Roseanne's could not. He was hypersensitive to every nuance of thought and feeling after the impact of the letter.
But Roseanne, naked, did not compare with Laura. He should have known. He had seen both women often enough-and Roseanne had already lost out.
He looked again at his wife. Laura was wrapping a robe about herself and going into the dressing alcove.
"You'd better hurry with your shower," she said, running a brush through her hair. "I'll lay out your things as soon as I'm into my own first layer. Black tie, I suppose. Soft shirt? Weather's still warm."
"Soft shirt, by all means."
Tom poured himself another drink. He leaned against the door frame, sipping, watching her still, as though by sheer scrutiny he could gain some clue that would brand the letter a foul he.
"You might ask how I spent my day," Laura said.
"Okay. How did you spend your day?"
"I spent the morning doing the house with Mrs. Carter's help-or maybe under her supervision. At noon I attended a ladies' luncheon and was put on a committee for a cancer fund fashion show. You're down for two tickets at twelve-fifty each."
"Okay."
"I got home about three, changed and raked leaves. That old pecan tree next door is a pest. Let's sneak over there some dark night and chop the damned thing down."
"Good idea."
"Some of the kids showed up to help me. Then they all headed for the vacant lot to play football," Laura said. "Was it wrong for me to go along?"
She sent a mock-fearful, little-girl sort of look at him. Her eyes were impish. But he was thinking of her odd attraction for kids. Laura possessed a rare gift for winning their confidence. He found himself wondering again why she had not conceived for him.
"I know Claire must have had something to say about my playing football," she continued. "I could tell from her attitude when I called out hello to her."
"Luis was right. You're a hell of a good passer. Where did you learn to throw a football?"
"When I was a kid. My grandmother said I should have been a boy-the way I was always mixing in boys' games."
Her grandmother was the only kin she had ever mentioned.
"That was in the Midwest-I don't remember the town," Tom said.
"You don't have to," Laura said, letting the robe slide from her. "It wasn't much of a town. I wonder what I should wear."
"Go as you are-it's the way I like you best."
Tom ducked into the bathroom.
As though nothing had happened-could he keep it up?
* * *
Tom had caddied at the old country club in his early teens, had won his first championship at nineteen. The tarnished cup was among the trophies in his den. But the old club had been sold when land values shifted.
The new club was located several miles north, on the edge of the developed, suburban sprawl. It boasted a handsome Mediterranean-style clubhouse, tennis courts and a swimming pool-also a fairly difficult golf course which Tom played occasionally in the middle eighties.
Laura did not care for the clutter was she afraid of the place?
Laura enjoyed swimming-but she used a neighbor's private pool near home. She played an enthusiastic game of tennis-but found public courts only a couple of blocks from the house more convenient than the club. She was indifferent about golf and bridge.
Laura's aversion to the club was another reason for Claire's discontent with her. The club was important to Claire. Tom paid her bills there-hers and Randall's.
He and Laura reached the club before eight. Tom wheeled Laura's Chevrolet into the crowded parking lot and turned it over to an attendant. The man's Up curled derisively and Tom frowned. Laura had owned the old car before their marriage and displayed an irrational fondness for the shabby vehicle. She had resisted Tom's efforts to replace it. Was it in some emotional way a link to her suddenly mysterious past?
Laura said, "Look, there's Luis's new Cadillac."
A gleaming convertible. Tom nodded. Luis had already shown it off for him. Luis went through two or three expensive cars a year-he was a good driver but reckless.
Tom commented, "The accessories must have set him back as much as the car itself. It has everything but a TV set."
Or a boudoir, which would be more to Luis's taste.
They moved across a terrace. Laura gripped his arm lightly. "You're looking mighty sharp tonight, my love," she murmured.
"Thanks. You're quite a dish yourself."
Laura wore something in black, strapless, affording a nice display of shoulders and back and bosom. Tom was surprised again at how well he concealed his nagging awareness of the letter now nestling in the inner breast pocket of his coat.
He said hellos to people he knew only vaguely. The old guard of the club had thinned out in recent years. New members had come in. Pushing parvenus, Claire angrily termed them. But some old members were left, including
Luis Preil, Roseanne Short, the Berns. Luis did not seem to care one way or the other about the newcomers. Roseanne-but Tom had no idea what she might think. He had heard a rumor she had been posted recently for nonpayment of dues.
He glanced into the dining room, saw it already partly filled. Beyond it, on a terrace overlooking the golf course, an orchestra was playing. The affair tonight was a dinner-dance.
Laura said, "I do hope you won't be served that unjointed fried chicken that gave you heartburn the last time we were here." Then: "Excuse, please, for a moment."
She left him for the powder room. Tom waited near a fountain. A corridor extended at his right. Two women appeared from it, not together.
The one in the lead was Edith Dowling. The other was Roseanne.
Tom was startled. Both women seemed to have materialized abruptly from his past. Was his reaction again caused by the letter? He had long since ceased to think of both in personal terms-although Roseanne had been on his mind earlier in the evening.
He had not devoted conscious thought of any kind to Edith Dowling in a long time-had glimpsed her last, and then from a distance, a year or more ago. He had heard vague talk, quite a while back, that she had married again for the fourth or fifth time.
The valley had known its share of furtive affairs, undercover adulteries, hurried Nevada divorces. Edith Dowling had been involved in several of those. Also, Tom Bern had made love to her long before Laura.
Following his graduation from college, while he had waited to learn whether he must spend some time in uniform, he and Edith had engaged in a headlong affair. Neither timorous nor inexperienced in her responses to him, Edith still had not seemed like a girl on the loose. A girl of her time, rather, conforming to the terms of fierce competition for men who ruled her feminine world. So Tom had thought during that gay, pleasure-filled summer.
He had even considered marrying her and had written of his plans to Luis Preil, who had then been celebrating his inheritance in Europe.
What he had not put in the letter-what he had hidden even from himself-was Edith's meaning for him. He had pretended a cynicism which was cover for his youthfulness and trust.
He had loved her, lusted for her, let the love affair take its tone from what he supposed was her idiom. He had never admitted-except once-that he feared the mystery of her.
She had been a wise witch woman and her charms had been a spell. For all his strength, he had been at her mercy and he had known it-and she had damned near broken him.
Why was he recalling now the woman she once had been-the boy he no longer was?
Because he expected once more that he would be betrayed?
The last afternoon with Edith had been the best.
* * *
"How very tedious," she had said when he had told her he was going overseas. "I never saw myself, you know, as the faithful little woman that a fighting man comes home to. Want me to wait for you, Tom? Want me to promise I'll be true?"
At the moment, she was drawing long, sheer, dark hose off her splendid legs. Her face was turned, giving him a shadowed view of her profile as she bent over her task. She had loosened her hair, which that summer had been in one of the longer styles, so that it misted her bare shoulders. She seemed to be fashioned of the same stuff as clouds.
He cried out of sudden loneliness, "What's wrong with you? The more naked you get, the more you're hidden from me. Of course I want you to wait." He swallowed, afraid to show helplessness. "You're not everybody's dish, you know. I think you're gorgeous, but some might think you fat. I laugh at your jokes-I bet they go over most guys' heads. You tickle at the damnedest times. I make allowances, but who else would? You'd better wait for me, Edith."
She sighed. The stockings dropped to her bedroom carpet. All nude now, she rose and faced him. The room was large and cool, its louvers tempering the fierce lowering sun. "Let me put it this way," she said. "I like being needed, but I hate to do the needing. I'd rather think of myself as heartless, selfish. Otherwise, I might wake up and cry at night, alone. How much do you need me, Tom?"
She stirred a little, even while standing still, fingers on her dressing table bench. She stirred as life inevitably stirs at its quietest, with small pulses and contractions and the endless rush-hour business of a billion body cells doing their destined jobs. Her high, heavy breasts were not as beautiful as Greek marble but they were part of her mystery. Her skin was shadow-dark on the chalice of her belly, not only above the suntan line of her bikini bottoms, but below as well.
What races, what loves, had gone into her making, he could not guess-nor, he thought, could she have told him. At times she seemed immortal. This afternoon-the last hour, he would think later, of his true youth-was one of the times.
"I need you," he confessed. He came toward her, yielding to the clumsiness of his urgency, opening his shirt with hands that felt like paws.
Himself naked, his clothing awkwardly shed wherever it fell, he carried her to her bed. She had weight and bulk. He gloried in the strain of lifting her, of holding her high, flinging her to the counterpane so that she bounced and laughed. He allowed his body to express devotion, humility, awkwardness-all that he had suppressed for fear of boring Edith.
The expertness he had pretended-and which, because he practiced it, had been expertness enough-sloughed from him like so many loose buttons. With joy and fury, he fumbled at her breasts, kissed her ravenously, their tongues meshing. He locked his knees about her, rocked her in a kind of prone, triumphant, ritual dance. When he paused to gulp air, his breathing was guttural, coarse.
She too had a neediness-whether to love or merely to be adored, he was afraid to wonder. Her hands turned into clutching fists that pulled his loins to hers. She snatched, clung, accepted his every wild young gesture. At one point she pulled free, rolled beside him. Pivoting, writhing, her head toward the foot of the bed, she plunged her shadowed face at his swollen, wanting manhood, her lips apart.
He felt the frenzied kiss in a brief mad weakness, as though he had surrendered all will and identity to worshiping her flesh. He stiffened-and with tortured effort plucked her away from him. He felt ineffably branded, possessed-from now on, no matter what, he was hers. Her champion and knight, a fool for her-but not yet merely a tool, not quite.
She was the cornerstone, he the steeple. Fighting for mastery of them both, he thrust her where a woman belonged, hammered into the core of her.
Wind fluttered at the louvers. A journey that had no chart had ended at a point that had no name. They separated slowly.
When his breathing was normal again, he said, "You'll wait. That's what you just told me."
She protested, one arm across her eyes, "Told you? I never said any such thing."
"Your body did the telling. Was your body telling a he?"
When she made no denial, he felt like a king.
They dressed as the sun lowered. Later, they went out somewhere for dinner and Tom was full of plans. She still made no denial.
When he first went overseas, he had counted the weeks until his return. Little by little, he had stopped counting.
Edith's letters had been short, few, noncommittal. Then they stopped-why, Tom had never learned.
The old affair might as well have happened a century ago, between two other people. In the intervening years Edith had become a divorcee twice over and the subject of sniggering talk. She was thinner, in other ways changed.
* * *
Tom stared at Edith. She saw him, ducked around the far side of the fountain, crossed the foyer and went outside. He knew a sudden urge to follow her-why? To escape Laura and the present?
He fought down the urge, stood rooted. But her image stayed with him. Her dress had been tight over hips and breasts, with a marked display of cleavage. Her face had been vividly pretty. Her color had been high and it had seemed to him that her face had frozen into a maskhard and challenging-at her sight of him.
Tom grew aware of movement close to him. He jerked his eyes away from the direction of Edith Dowling's disappearance.
He said, "Hello, Rose."
Roseanne Short was wearing black-starkness became her. She was a natural blonde with hair so pale as to be almost silvery. She was tall, generously proportioned-and tonight, Tom thought, she was a little haggard.
Tom asked, "When did Edith Dowling come back?"
"A couple of weeks ago, I believe," Roseanne answered. She studied him with a strange sort of intensity. "Tom, I'd like to see you some time-as soon as possible-in private. Could you come to my place tomorrow?"
He asked in some concern, "Anything wrong with the estate?"
She had inherited considerable amounts of money from her father, along with a small house near the club fairway, close to the ninth green.
"No," Roseanne said. "Tomorrow?"
"All right. I'll try to make it around four."
She moved toward a man who came to join her, a car dealer named Euel McGrath, a newcomer to the valley.
Tom heard a voice: "Hi, Tom! Over here."
Randall, Tom's brother, was standing at the entrance to the bar, glass in hand, already a little tight.
"Hello, Ran," Tom said.
He did not see very much of his brother, separated from him by an age gap of twelve years.
"I'm glad you came," Randall said, beaming. "We're going to have a dandy crowd."
Randall was on the committee handling tonight's affair. He devoted a good deal of time to club committee work. In his mid-forties and even with most of his hair gone, he still had unlined, youthful features and managed to maintain a good appearance-by rigid economies on Claire's part, Tom supposed.
Randall gestured with his glass. "Luis Preil is here. Come and-"
Luis appeared, elbowing Randall aside, teeth gleaming against his dark features as he smiled at Tom Bern.
"Later, Ran," he said. "Right now Tom and I have to hustle downstairs."
Randall's face fell. "But I haven't had a chance to talk to Tom in weeks."
Tom said, "Luis, I'm waiting for Laura. She's in the powder room."
"Ran can watch for her and explain where we've gone," Luis said, putting a hand on his arm. "Evan Richards is downstairs."
Tom allowed himself to be drawn along the corridor, down a winding stairway toward the lower bar just off the locker room, reserved for men only. Luis had been angling hard to land Evan Richards as a Bern customer.
There was not much of a crowd in the downstairs bar. It would be jammed later with refugees from the dance. Luis paused in the doorway, looking around with a frown.
"Don't see him. Know he arrived, though. Drives a new Rolls-a Silver Cloud. He's a nut about cars, like me. I gave the attendant five bucks to pass the word when he rolled in. Listen, don't forget to compliment him about the shack he just moved his new wife into, over in San Marino. It cost a hundred and fifty grand-"
Luis's voice trailed off. At the near end of the bar a stocky, florid-faced man, a stranger to Tom, was speaking, seeming to hold the attention of everyone here.
" ... don't know the guy myself, but I understand he's a member, a hotshot in the muscle line and one of those snobbish old-timers," the man was saying. "And the way I heard it, this wife of his, a real looker, didn't tell him everything before he married her. And now some things in her past are going to blow up a storm-"
Luis Preil made a furious, whining sound and lunged at the man. He clamped a fist on the speaker's shoulder and jerked him around.
He shouted, "You damned liar-" and his fist slammed into the florid face.
The man cried out in mingled surprise and pain, staggering sideways, lurching against the bar. Luis tried earnestly to bit him again but Tom was there by then.
Somebody came at Tom, aiming a fist. He swayed back, let it go by, seized his assailant's arm, spun him around and gave him a hard shove which sent the man away on a headlong run the length of the room.
Tom grabbed Luis and pulled him out of the bar.
He demanded, "What in hell made you do that?"
"Wish I had smashed his teeth," Luis muttered. He rubbed his face. It was twisted, bitter. He tried to speak, couldn't, swallowed hard and tried again. "Tom, damn it-wish you hadn't heard. Don't know who started that filthy story. I've been trying hard to find out. And when I do-"
His fist clenched again convulsively. He hammered it hard against his palm.
"Go on," Tom Bern said. His throat felt tight. "What's the rest of it?"
"You're the one he was talking about," Luis said. "You and Laura-"
3
THE CLOCK in the den chimed twice. The house was quiet. Tom Bern paced back and forth, his bare feet silent against the floor. He wore only pajama pants. Laura had gone to bed an hour ago.
Spread out on the small desk were the papers he had brought home. Mrs. Hedges, a widow of fifty, her late husband's estate satisfactorily probated and a decorous period of mourning concluded, wanted twenty-five thousand dollars to make a leisurely trip around the world. The sum would have posed no particular problem-except that the deceased Mr. Hedges had warned sternly in his will against her dipping into capital.
However, Tom had spotted in her portfolio some low-interest federal notes-they could be sold. Mrs. Hedges could be handed her twenty-five thousand. The residue, invested in various tax-free municipals, would, if she left it alone for a while, in time pay for her trip.
He moved to the desk, picked up a pencil and began to draft his recommendation. But the pencil lagged. He sighed and put it down.
The evening came back to him-the events following that messy business in the club's downstairs bar. Evidently the person who had written the letter was following it up by spreading vicious gossip.
The fellow Luis had slugged had been taken into the locker room by friends. Luis, in a glowering temper, had started after him.
Tom had held Luis back. "Let it be. If there's something to be done-it's my business, not yours."
He did not know of anything he actually could do. Racy tidbits of scandal were always circulating through the club. They seemed to spring from nowhere, were false as often as not. They died fairly quickly or were overridden by some newer rumor.
Tom could only hope this one would die if left alone. But could he himself leave it alone? The subtle chemistry of suspicion was already at work in him. Beyond loving her, what did he really know about Laura? Nothing more than he had known when he had first met her. Nothing more than he knew each morning when he saw her, each night when he embraced her-or when he caught her in unguarded moments as he had that afternoon at play with the subteeners. The evening at the club had told him nothing new about Laura.
It had told him something mildly startling about himself. He tried, in retrospect, to analyze his feeling when he had unexpectedly seen Edith Dowling. For the first time since his marriage to Laura, his memories of Edith had had an impact on him. And her physical appearance had had an undeniable emotional impact as well-her years and marriages had been good to her. He had known a definite physical stirring. Perhaps not enough to make him feel unfaithful to Laura. But his former intimate knowledge of Edith had given him a mental view right through her dress and what he had seen had given him a concentrated glimpse of something he might have lost when he and Edith had broken up.
Edith had matured, ripened-had many loves given her that compact sexual aura that had hit Tom like a blow? Or would she have it even if he had married her, kept her all to himself, with no sharing by others?
The thought brought his mind back to Laura. To share Laura with another was an intolerable concept-probably Edith's effect on him and his previous thoughts of Roseanne were some form of insidious escape from the sudden uncertainty of Laura into a safe and settled past. A past he knew-his own. But was the past settled? He had seen Edith, no matter how briefly, as a once more desirable woman.
Laura had been waiting when he had gone upstairs with Luis. Randall had been standing by, wanting again to talk to Tom. But a girl had come along-Luis's dateand the table had seated only four.
The wiles and coquetry of that girl-Pauline something-or-other-had bothered Tom. Luis had played up to her, pretending to be interested and impressed. Once he had caught Tom's eye and winked to indicate his amusement. Tom had felt momentary irritation-Luis had been letting the girl make a fool of herself to gloss over what had happened downstairs, to conceal from Laura that anything was wrong.
The ruse apparently had succeeded. Laura had given no indication that she had heard of the unpleasant business. Dancing with her later-on the terrace above the golf course-Tom had felt that everybody had to be eyeing the two of them, although he had managed to intercept no covert, speculative glances. Laura, who loved to dance, had seemed intent only on the enjoyment of being in his arms. His own arms had felt, contradictorily, fiercely possessive and doubtful.
Driving home, around one, her only comment had concerned Luis's date. "I felt sorry for her-trying so hard-"
"Well, she stands probably no chance at all. I don't think he'll ever marry, but the girl must have understood that the odds were high against her and that there likely won't be another date after tonight. And while he doesn't lead a very monkish existence in that big house, she isn't the type he'd take there."
"How do you know?" Laura had asked. "Tom, I've a feeling you've never really known Luis Preil."
The remark had startled him. It had sounded almost like something Claire might have said. One of Claire's frequently reiterated remarks was that he took people too much at face value.
Anybody can hoodwink you-anybody....
Claire usually meant Laura.
"Maybe I don't know all there is to know about Luis," he had conceded. "I do know, however, that he has a taste for a different kind of woman from that one tonight. The first time I noticed it was at Stanford. The sister of a guy on the football team came down from San Francisco for some prom. She was a divorcee and-let's say-rather selectively free with her favors. Luis and I were about twenty-one. He went overboard for her."
"But after she went for you first?" Laura asked.
Tom was startled. "How in the devil did you know that?"
"Just guessing. Go on."
"Well, I was always in training for some sport and wouldn't break training for her. I told Luis to go ahead and date the girl. He-likes his women slightly broken in. I suppose he may be hooked one of these days-but if marriage happens to him it's likely to be to someone about your age or even somewhat older."
Laura did not respond. She did not seem interested in pursuing the subject of Luis Preil's possible matrimonial future.
She said sleepily, "Darling, will you put the car away, please, while I go in through the front? All I want to do is cream my face and then fall right into bed."
* * *
The bits and pieces of the evening kept coming back. Laura and Tom had danced on the terrace, in the coolness of the night. The terrace faced eastward, so that the neon incandescence of the valley, the vast conflagration against the night sky that was the big city, were behind them. The view was of high, dark mountains.
Laura danced very well, even with what had often seemed to Tom a professional polish. Once, coming home early, he had discovered her tap dancing in the hall, radio turned up. She had been doing an intricate series of steps, slippers he had never seen before on her feet. Her heels and toes had rattled like castanets against the hardwood.
Where on earth did you learn to do that?
Something I just picked up...
But it obviously had not been something one just picked up-rather a skill acquired during years he did not know about. And the slippers had vanished-he had not seen them again.
During the intermissions, last night, there had occurred the discharge of the social obligations that such an affair entailed. Tom had managed to handle his.
Claire had been there with a brittle hello and a meaningful glance specifically excluding Laura. Tom had felt like kicking her. He had had several glimpses of Roseanne, dancing with McGrath, apparently her date for the evening. Tom had wondered at her choice. McGrath had a grimy reputation. But how much choice did Roseanne actually have, these days? She was past thirty and, with competition from so many younger women, had to make do with second best.
Apparently no other man had come along to fill the place in her life once held by Tom Bern.
Tom had not encountered Edith Dowling again.
But Evan Richards had shown up, to be introduced by Luis. Richards, a big, chunky, craggy-faced man, had been accompanied by a sleek, lacquered young woman, his fifth wife. They had been in the upstairs lounge, drinking with some friends they had brought along, and had been about to leave.
"We'll get together later," Richards had told Tom.
"Your office or mine-I'll give you a ring in a day or two."
Richards headed an oil and gasoline distributing company, with several hundred independent service station outlets, that had netted three million last year after taxes. He owned a controlling interest-about thirty per centof the stock.
"Always handled my own money but it's getting too much for me," he had confided, with a laugh. "Pouring in too fast. I could use some help. And-" squeezing Tom's arm-"we've got a lot to talk about. I was in the stands the day you made your big run-cost me a thousand bucks because I bet on the other team. But worth it, the thrill of seeing you pack that ball for seventy yards."
Tom had smiled patiently. He had grown weary of talking about the run, which actually had totaled only forty-eight yards-he noted wryly again that the past, as well as the future, apparently had to remain unsettled. The run kept growing.
He remembered something else that had happened tonight.
Bruce Aldridge had been at the dance. Bruce was Tom's first cousin, a man about Randall's age. He had given Tom his usual cold stare, cold greeting. Bruce, who had a fair real estate business, fancied himself the head of the Aldridge clan and would never relinquish the conviction that the Berns were responsible for the loss of millions from the Aldridge lands which Tom's father had frittered away.
Had there been an extra meaningfulness in the man's attitude tonight?
Was Bruce Aldridge capable of having written that letter?
Tom took the letter from the desk drawer where he had locked it upon returning home. He read it again.
Just wait until everybody finds out....
Wait. How long? The rumor that something was wrong in Laura's past had already started at the club. When would the talk begin that she was a bigamist-a lawbreaker?
His fist closed tightly in impotent anger.
"Tom?" Laura said.
She stood at the door from the entry hall, russet hair tousled. She wore a shortie that matched her husband's pajamas. Its bottom hung wrinkled against her golden thighs.
She came in with a pit-a-pat. of hurrying footsteps, settled herself on his lap, cheek against his.
"I had a bad dream," she whispered, "and awoke alone in the dark."
Her cheek was damp. She must have wept in her sleep. He was familiar with her bad dreams-but not with their cause. Abruptly his curiosity felt deadly. He managed to quell it.
He shuffled the letter in with the Hedges papers. He felt the pulsing of her body heat, through the thin nightie, felt Laura shiver faintly. She pushed herself back a little to study him-her features grave, almost blank. A shallowness in her eyes diluted their usual vivid blue.
He knew the look well.
"Darling-please?" Laura whispered.
Desire for him was always strong in her after her nightmares. His response came like a rising, fiercely insistent tide. His hands delved under the nightie, caressed her, fondled the ripe cones of her breasts, the womanly fullness of hips and torso. Laura's parted lips met his, glued together in murmurous communion. She writhed in his embrace, thrusting herself against the hardening pressure of his hands.
A cry wrenched from her.
"Now, Tom-"
He stood up, Laura cradled in his arms, her face now pressed against his shoulder. He carried her out of the room and along the hall to the bed they shared. He left the desk lamp on, its hooded light focused on papers he had to work at-including the one that had come from nowhere with its malignant threat.
* * *
Tom walked into the three-room suite which comprised the offices of T. V. Bern, Properties Consultant. His quarters were obviously not expensive. They were meant to have a reassuring effect on people who were turning their money over to him to handle.
He employed two middle-aged women, a secretary and an accountant who had some knowledge of tax matters. Miss Mogridge, the secretary, brought in the morning mail and notations of several calls.
"Mrs. Hedges wishes to see you today," she said.
Tom glanced through his mail, pushed it aside. "Bring me the phone book, please."
Waiting for her to return, he thought of what he had done this morning.
He had been up early, gotten his own breakfast. Laura had still been asleep when he had caught the bus to the city. He had felt like a coward for fleeing Laura but he had not trusted himself to face her. Would he have been able to keep his worry and suspicions submerged? Laura might have read his thoughts.
He had not gone directly to his office. He had stopped at a typewriter shop. He had shown the letter, folded so that only the first word was visible, to a lone man on duty there.
"Can you tell me the make and model of typewriter on which this was written?"
The man had glanced at him sharply, then opened a drawer and brought out a large magnifying glass. He had studied the single word for several minutes, shrugged.
"Pica type, pretty old and worn, bad spacing, a new ribbon but inexpertly put in. Bet the machine hadn't been used in a long time, maybe years, when this was written. I'd need more to go on to give you a positive answer--but probably you're looking for an old Underwood. A real oldie-it'd go back thirty years or more. If, that is, you're doing any looking."
"Thank you," Tom said. He handed the man a five-dollar bill. "This is for your trouble. Thanks again."
That much he had accomplished. Had he gained anything? He felt a faint stirring of memory, something that had happened a long time ago-a memory vaguely associated with Edith Dowling. But all the name now conjured up in him was remembered passion-and brief desire he had known when he had seen her at the club. Was he again seeking some subtle security in the past?
Miss Mogridge brought him the phone book. He thought defensively that the past had some uses, began to track down an old Marine buddy, Dusty Kruger, now connected with the city's sheriff's office.
His search took some time. At last, ringing the number of a sheriff's substation on the southeast side of the city, he asked for the officer in charge.
"Dusty? Is this Dusty Kruger?"
"Why, boy, hell of a long time no see," Dusty Kruger boomed. "Everything jake with you? Still working for that same company?"
"No. I'm in business for myself-but along same lines." He drew a long breath, telling himself the odds were astronomically high against Kruger's ever having heard of Laura's maiden name. "There's something you can do for me, if you will. I'm trying to check up on a certain person's background. There may be-" he took a deep breath-"some misunderstanding involved. I don't want to go into details. If I gave you a name-could you quietly check the city and county records? And keep it confidential?"
"Criminal?"
"All records."
A bitter taste rose in his mouth at what he was doing. He almost hoped the request would be denied.
"Not entirely kosher," Kruger said. "Still, it could go as a routine check. I handle them by the dozen every day. However, I'll have to know why you're asking, Tom."
"This is a highly personal matter," Tom said. "You have my word I'll hold anything you tell me entirely confidential."
"Well, all right," Dusty Kruger said. "If that's the case, I'll check-just check. You'll get what I'm legally permitted to tell you. If you want more, you'll have to tell more."
"How soon?"
"Maybe today, maybe tomorrow. Now, what's the name?"
"Laura Cotter," Tom said.
He hung up, rubbed his face with a shaking hand, then rose and left his office. He passed Miss Mogridge's desk. "I'm going to be out for a while. Hold off Mrs. Hedges and anyone who might drop in. If a Mr. Kruger calls, tell him I'll get in touch as quickly as possible."
The die was cast now. It might not take Dusty long to learn that Tom Bern was checking up on his own wife--but if a clue to Laura's past lay in this area, Dusty would find it. In the Marines, Tom remembered, Dusty had exhibited a faculty for knowing more about the members of any command group than the men themselves, from private to top brass.
Tom doubted that anyone had ever come to Dusty before with the question: Whose wife is mine?
4
THE FIRM Tom had once worked for occupied the entire fifth floor of one of the most imposing buildings in the city's financial section. The past two years had seen some changes. The elevator girl was a stranger, and so was the receptionist in the outer lobby who inquired in modulated tones whom he wished to see.
"Mr. Shell or Mr. Scott-or Mrs. Lake," Tom said.
Beyond the receptionist were double doors with their array of names-the senior partners in large letters above the line. Myrl Gordon was now semiretired. Both Seth Shell and Phil Scott were still active. The name of Thomas V. Bern had once been among the half-dozen below the line, moving up year by year. It would probably be at the top if he had stayed on.
Seth Shell came out, smiling, to conduct him inside for a tour of the place, an introduction to the three juniors added since his time. They studied him wonderingly, a man who had quit the security and opportunity here.
"Keep your account sheets covered up," Shell said loudly. "He's our competition now."
He chuckled as he spoke. The partners had wished Tom well when he left, not grudging the fact that he had taken Luis Preil's account with him. Luis had been a headache for them.
Making the rounds, the various offices-greeting the new people-took nearly an hour. But it was something Tom could not slight. Procedure and protocol mattered here. Tom turned down lunch invitations from both Shell and Phil Scott, explaining why he was here.
"An account I worked on about six years ago-the Merridew shipping people, you may remember-is a washout. But one of the nephews is around and I thought I would check on him. I'd like a look at the file for his address."
He was lying quite expertly. He wondered how facile he would grow with untruth in the course of his search.
"Help yourself," Phil Scott said. "And how about some golf one of these days, Tom-my club? I've some pigeons I'd like you to pluck for me."
Phil's club-a membership there and a senior partnership in this firm had once seemed the most important goals in Tom's life.
He managed to break away at last. The file room was the domain of Mrs. Agatha Lake, a motherly, gray-haired woman who greeted him with an embrace and a brief show of emotional tears.
She said, "The Merridew folder, Mr. Bern? That would be in storage. I'll need a little time-"
All of which he well knew. The lie had been fabricated only to get her out of here, leave him alone for a while.
He said, "There's no great hurry."
She trotted toward the dead-file room. Tom moved at once to the personnel file cabinet and began to search through it, wondering what he would say or do if someone came in and discovered him.
The third drawer he investigated yielded a manila file folder with her name neatly typed on the tab: cotter, miss laura. But when he opened the folder a sharp sense of disappointment stabbed through him.
He had anticipated a company employment record with all the required data-date and place of birth, schooling, previous experience. What he found was a plain sheet of white bond, with the notation: "Temporarily employed, typist and general office work, @ $65 per week." The date was a little over two years ago.
All this he already knew, of course. Apparently, because she had been temporary, no form had been filled out. And no address was shown for Laura at the time. He had never known where she had lived while working here.
Tom noticed another notation on a separate slip-the name of an employment agency.
It was another starting point, if he could find it-if the employment agency still existed.
He restored the folder, closed the drawer, brought out and lit a cigarette. The shakiness was in his hands again. He sat down to await the return of Mrs. Lake, to parrot his thanks for the useless errand on which he had sent her.
A stepladder stood nearby, pushed against shelves that filled one wall. Those shelves held office supplies-this area served also as a stock room.
He looked at the stepladder, remembering in vivid detail the moment when he had first seen Laura.
* * *
It was a hot August day. Tom Bern came in from the street at mid-afternoon. He peeled off his jacket, plucked fretfully at his shirt and punched his call signal to summon a stenographer, thinking partially of an account analysis he must dictate but even more of a date with Roseanne Short that evening.
Things were not going at all well between him and Roseanne. He had not been able to see her for more than a week. Something was driving them apart. Tom meant to make a determined effort to find out what it was.
His call was not answered. He went to investigate, found the steno room deserted save for one harried woman who told him no help would be immediately available.
The others are taking dictation. We're all loaded up--so many away on vacation.
He headed morosely back. He probably would have to wait until late to get out the report-Myrl Gordon was pressuring him for it-and would miss Roseanne. She had failed to wait for him several times.
Tom Bern became aware of a stir of movement in the stock room as he passed the open doorway. He stopped, looked in, discovered a young woman perched at the top of the stepladder, trying to reach something on a top shelf. The stepladder was swaying dangerously.
Tom ran across the room and grabbed the stepladder. He steadied it, looked up at her. He had an awareness of open-toed pumps, red nails and slim bare legs-of a swirl of skirt as she hurriedly shifted position and reached down to press it against her thighs, of russet-brown hair, worn rather long, of blue eyes and parted lips and a pale oval face, low cheekbones, a cleft chin. Something seemed to stir within him.
"Th-thank you, Mr. Bern," she said unevenly, still pressing both hands against her skirt. "Mrs. Lake pointed you out to me this morning. I'm on as a temporary vacation relief. My name is Laura Cotter. I was trying to reach some envelopes."
"Well, you'd better come down and let me do it for you," Tom said. "Here, let me have your hand."
She descended a couple of steps hesitantly, still holding to her skirt, then reached out.
The touch of her hand gave him a sense of pleasant shock.
He was to contend later that he had fallen in love with Laura at first sight-must have, considering all his actions from that point on. Laura was to smile at this statement.
I suspect all you were aware of was my legs-and so was I, up on that damned ladder, thinking I was sure to fall off with my dress up around my neck ... and thinking, oh, hell, no pants-
The streak of puckish humor was constant in her and contrasted with her moods of dark withdrawal.
That day in the stock room Laura, off the ladder, shook out her skirt, lifted a hand self-consciously to brush back a wayward lock of hair from her damp brow and looked toward the top shelf again.
Tom said, "Let that go for now. Can you take dictation?"
"I'm afraid not. But I can type a little."
"Good. I can use you."
He took her arm. She started slightly.
He had a typewriter moved into his office and dictated the report slowly, pacing back and forth, studying Laura's head bent earnestly over the machine.
She was not a very good typist. He suspected her of having bluffed outrageously in claiming any liability. The rest of the office was empty and silent and twilight was deepening outside before the report, three pages long, was finished, initialed and ready for Myrl Gordon's desk. Tom cleaned up in a hurry, one eye on Laura.
"We're going to dinner now." And quickly, before she could say anything: "It's on the company, usual procedure when anybody works overtime."
You didn't fool me in the least with that line. But I was so tired and hungry that I decided to buy it. Also, I had just about the price of a hamburger on me and that would have been my supper....
She went off to freshen herself. When she came back, Tom thought the way she walked was wholly enchanting-a gliding pace, one foot placed precisely in front of the other, her back very straight, her chin lifted. The Marines had replaced his own spine with a ramrod. He disapproved of anyone who did not stand tall.
The events of that evening blurred slightly in his memory afterward.
What in the dickens did we do? Wasn't there something about a sailor?
Yes. You became obsessed with the subject of popcorn, said there was always a popcorn wagon in the park and went off to hunt for it. A sailor was trying to pick me up when you came back. I was afraid you were going to slug him...
It's a wonder I didn't. Sailors call Marines seagoing bellhops. I've no love for them...
I was disappointed because you didn't bring back any popcorn. After all your talk about it I was hungry for some....
He remembered midnight and Laura pointing at the hands of a giant neon clock on a building nearby.
Tom wanted to drive her home. She refused to let him. She tried several-times to say good night, shake him off. In her was some sudden sense of worry, strain, even desperation-to be wondered at. He was accustomed to women playing with the possibility of an affair. Perhaps the decision was no-but it was usually stated with a smile. Laura's obvious strain, brought about by his company, was something new in Tom's experience.
The big bus terminal waiting room was bathed in a white fluorescent glow. A few people were scattered about on hard wooden benches. Laura's bus left at half-past the hour. Her destination, Tom gathered, was somewhere on the east side of the city. He could not understand why she still refused to let him drive her home.
The bus was called.
Laura said, her voice thin and tired, "Good night-" and started to move away from him.
He reached out, put his hands on her. Laura's face tilted up, pale in the weird white light, her cheekbones accentuated. Then his mouth was against hers as he i kissed her. Laura's lips were tight, dry, pulsing with almost fever heat.
She wrenched herself away and ran toward the bus.
Not until he was heading toward his apartment did he remember his date with Roseanne Short.
* * *
The employment agency occupied two rooms of an odorous, ramshackle building above a theater which showed Mexican movies. A long-faced old man who wore a dusty toupee and protruding dentures sized Tom up and brightened hopefully.
"You looking for somebody to hire?"
Tom shook his head, sat down. "I'd like a look at the record you have on a young woman for whom you once got a job."
"Only a cop can get a look. And the way you ask I know you ain't one."
Tom brought out his wallet. He removed a ten-dollar bill and placed it on the table.
The old man laughed. "Just like a private-eye movie on TV."
Tom added another ten. He closed the wallet and put it away-a bluff. He had to see the form Laura had filled out, no matter what the cost.
The protruding dentures clicked. The old man asked, "How long ago was she in?"
"Between two and three years ago."
"What's her name?"
Tom told him, the bitter taste on his tongue again. The old man heaved himself up and moved creakily to the file cases, began to paw through them. He returned, making a whistling sound between his teeth.
"Maybe we're both in luck-if this is the Laura Cotter you're looking for."
It was the record of her life, barely more than she herself had told him, inscribed on one sheet of a printed form. laura mae cotter. education: two and a half years of high school, night school, san francisco and reno, nevada.
She had a faint sense of inferiority because of her lack of a high-school diploma, had taken various courses after leaving her Midwest home. Perhaps a hit-or-miss sort of selectivity was involved. Her knowledge of arithmetic was so rudimentary she could not keep her household checking account balanced-but she had acquired a surprising amount of information concerning home decoration, color balance, furniture. And she knew more about what went on under the hood of an automobile than did Tom Bern. Where had she learned these things?
The old man was consulting a dog-eared ledger. "Got her only one job, paid me a fee of twenty-three seventy-five," he remarked. "Only call I ever got from that snooty outfit, too."
Prior experience. Laura had listed two earlier jobs--one with a dancing academy, another with a candy company. She claimed typing skill and general clerical ability.
"I remember her," the old man mused. "A real looker. Stacked nice, too, the way a woman ought to be, not like those Hollywood babes that make you think they're toting watermelons around."
He cackled again, picking up the two ten-dollar bills, tucking them into a vest pocket. "Made a man wishful, just looking at her, even a man as old as me."
Married? No, Laura had written.
There was little here he did not already know. Still a vague shadowy area, bristling with question marks, was the period between the time she had left her grandmother's house and her appearance in his life.
But one item might prove helpful. Laura had been required to list her home address and telephone number, as of two years ago. He studied the address, memorized it.
"Guess there's only one reason for you to be interested," the old man murmured. "Her kind of woman, it's got to be. She's in trouble over some man."
Tom Bern stood up and walked out of the hot, closed-in room, leaving the old man to sigh and suck at his teeth.
* * *
It was a street on the east side of the city, an urban slum, a string of small, shabby bungalows close together, each fronted by its patch of brown, weedy lawn, cars crowding the curbs and jamming the driveways.
Tom had picked up a rental car. He had anticipated finding a hotel or a rooming house, probably some dead-end place where any records available might tell him nothing.
What circumstance had brought Laura to live in one of these bungalows?
The number he was seeking was on a stucco cracker-box, even meaner and more abused by time and its occupants than the neighboring dwellings.
A man sat on a low, uncovered stoop, watching Tom's approach with a growing frown. He had hulking size and a fair show of muscles, tended somewhat to fat. He wore only khaki pants. A fuck of ginger-colored wool on his chest matched in color burr-cut hair topping a square, flat-skulled head.
A hand showing two finger joints missing gripped a beer can. He sucked from it. A slatternly pickup truck slanted off the driveway onto red adobe dirt and a patch of devil grass. A crudely lettered sign read: p. lambros, hauling.
"Yeah?" the man said. "What do you want, mac?"
Tom stopped. "Have you lived here long?"
The other finished his beer and tossed the can aside, into a bed of dead geranium stalks.
"Too damned long, far as I'm concerned," he grunted, standing, simian-like toes flexing against hot concrete. "What's it to you?"
"Been here two years?"
Tom felt a tightness in him-the stint in the Marines had given him a yardstick for measuring this sort of man. And Laura, living here-could this man have been the reason she had never wanted him to know where she was staying? Laura-this man?
"Yeah, mac. More. I'll ask it again. What business is that of yours?"
He took the plunge. "Did a Laura Cotter live here once?"
The man's frown vanished. It was replaced by wicked glee, a crinkling of dirt-grimed seams in his face. "So that's it. Knew she'd been in trouble before and would be again-it figured. Well, I hope it's plenty of grief she's got this time."
The heat was strong. Tom Bern's body was greasy with sweat. The devil wind from the desert blustered fitfully.
"Anything you want to hear, I'll tell," the man said. A vengeful note whined in his voice. "Nothing's too rough for what she's got coming-the teasing, two-timing, sneaky bitch."
5
TOM BERN took a step forward.
The man said, "Hey, wait a minute. You're a cop, aren't you?"
"No," Tom said. "I'm not a cop."
"Well, drag tail, then. I don't have to answer everybody's questions."
Tom's hand shot out. The man reeled back and sideways.
"Damn you-talk."
"Pete-" A woman's voice came from the house. "Pete, don't start anything-"
A screen door squeaked rustily. The woman came out into the heat and glare.
She wore a short, sleeveless wrapper. Her slip showed below it. Her legs were bare and so were her feet. She was about Laura's age. Her figure was not bad. A fading prettiness indicated that she had begun to let herself go.
The man swore at her but backed off.
"He's my husband," the woman explained. "I'm Jennie Lambros. Pete's always talking himself into fights-and he just can't fight worth a damn. I'm tired of patching him up." Her brass-tinted hair, set in tight waves, was held by a net. Sullen fines showed about her mouth. "You got a cigarette, maybe?"
Tom offered his case, then his lighter. She seated herself on the stoop. The slip crawled up. She seemed indifferent about showing her legs, rubbed a hand over her eyes.
"Wish this heat wave would break. I work nights. It must be a hundred and ten inside. Is Laura okay?"
"Yes," Tom said.
The woman squinted at him, cigarette dangling between her lips. "Well, I'm glad to hear it. Tell her that some time-if you get a chance."
Tom asked, "Did she live here?"
"Sure. For about three months, couple of years ago. We met at a candy place where we were working as packers. Fruit candy-awful-tasting stuff. The joint went broke and so did we. I had Laura move in with me. This is my house. She brought her car along. It used to sit where Pete has his truck-needed a tire and she couldn't afford one, not until the last-"
He tried to envision the two women together. What about the man? He was told with her next words, "Pete was working away from here then. It was nice, just me and Laura."
She crossed her arms, elbows resting on thighs. "Both of us hunting jobs, making enough from baby-sitting for coffee and smokes. Things were slow. Work was scarce. I guess it always is if you don't know much. I quit school in the sixth grade. Laura rented a typewriter and used to pound on it, practicing. She wanted a steady office job, a place , to live all her own. She'd go downtown nearly every morning and make the rounds of the employment agencies." The woman sighed. "Then Pete lost his job and came home." She gestured toward the house. "One bedroom. Laura had to move onto the sofa in the front room. Have I got to draw a picture of how it was-weather like this, that hot hole, no clothes or you'd melt, no privacy-and him always after her?"
Lambros spoke obscenely from beyond the truck.
"Shut up," his wife told him. "If I thought you ever made the grade-but you didn't. That's why you keep calling her those names."
The man swore again and strode away. A door opened and slammed. The woman went on.
"I stood it for a while, him pawing her, always trying to catch Laura when she was alone. Then I told her she had to get out. He'd have worn her down. A woman gets tired. I know."
Tom supposed he should ask questions. He could not seem to think of any. At last one came to him.
"Did she get any mail?"
"One letter-right at the last. She had mailed one out just before that-with twenty dollars. I saw her put it in the envelope. To San Francisco. A fellow with a funny name. Well, not funny, actually. I noticed because it was like the one Pete hung on me, Lamb or Lumb. No, Lom. That was it, L-o-m. It stuck in my head. The letter she got came from him."
Tom thought of Laura in this house-the place where she had never let him bring her, probably because of Pete Lambros. Another thought came to puzzle him. She should have been glad to escape this place-yet he had had to work hard to persuade her to marry him.
Perhaps a man in San Francisco could furnish some more answers. The name beat in his head, coupled with his own: Lom-Tom, Tom-Lom. Why had Laura sent Lom twenty dollars?
Tom's wallet came out again. It contained another ten.
The woman took it. "Thanks. I don't get bad tips where I car-hop nights but the bills eat them up fast. And that truck doesn't even keep Pete in beer money. I've got one more thing to say."
He waited.
"Don't hang around to tangle with Pete. I knew when she left that Laura was going to some man. You, I guess. Well, she's too good for you. And-" her gaze fixed meaningfully on his left-hand wedding band-"you're a bastard for checking back on her, no matter what she's done."
Tom Bern thought she might be right. But he had to keep checking.
And he had to take off his wedding ring.
* * *
Dusty Kruger had not yet called. But Mrs. Hedges had. And his mail held a new tax assessment.
There were other matters demanding his attention. Life had to go on, he thought wryly.
He moved in a world of blue-chip securities, of bonds of many sorts and yields, of amply secured trust deeds, with some real estate management mixed in.
The real trick in his business was the acquisition of clients. At this he had not done nearly as well as he had hoped. But he had put in less than two years on his own. Building a clientele took time. And he had managed to increase his income, which was the main objective.
Miss Mogridge brought in some checks for him to sign, one for Claire in the amount of three hundred dollars, his monthly contribution. She had a trickle of money from various sources, including a small annuity his father had once, with uncharacteristic foresight, taken out-that and what Tom gave her enabled Claire and Randall to get along.
A two-hundred-dollar check to Laura's account, her housekeeping and personal money. He paused over this one, thinking of how often that account was out of balance. She wrote a good many checks to cash was the chief cause of trouble. And now Tom found himself wondering about them.
A man named Lom-in San Francisco...
His intercom buzzed. "Mr. Bern, your sister is calling."
Claire was in a fretful mood. "I've waited all day for some word from you, Tom, staying near the phone-"
"Claire, I told you to forget the matter, that I would handle it."
"You won't ever talk to me," she protested. "There was gossip about Laura at the club last night and Luis Preil punched a man in the face. I'm getting more afraid. On top of that, Randall is up to something."
"Confound it, why didn't you tell me last night?"
"I didn't want to talk about it then. He has been getting up early and going out every day for the past week, not going to the club except in the evenings. I checked. And he won't tell me what he is doing."
"Make him tell you." Tom's head was beginning to ache. If Randall was heading for trouble again, he would have to stand by him, bail him out as before. It was an obligation he could not shirk. "Make him tell what he is doing, then call me. And forget about Laura."
He hung up, rubbed his eyes. That letter about Laura had killed his working day-now would it destroy his family relationships?
He said, passing Miss Mogridge's desk, "I'll be gone the rest of the afternoon. We'll get a detailed recommendation for Mrs. Hedges tomorrow."
* * *
He was caught in a traffic jam on the freeway. It was past four, almost five, before he was within sight distance of Roseanne's old house-close enough to the country club to make plausible Luis's claim that he had sliced a golf ball onto her property. Tom's date with Roseanne had been for around four.
The bumper-to-bumper idleness had given him time to think. He had deliberately forced his mind away from Laura. The letter's sordid allegations, the near-squalor he had discovered in his efforts to back trail her so far were nothing he wished to dwell on. But a curious montage of his sexual life, past and present, had begun to dominate his subconscious from the moment the impact of the letter had sunk in.
The montage floated to the surface of his awareness during the enforced sluggishness of his drive to his appointment with Roseanne. The prospect of seeing Roseanne today did not immediately excite him-but his brief glimpse of Edith Dowling last night at the club had. And earlier, while watching Laura dress for the club affair, he had remembered Roseanne naked. And thinking of her so now reawakened, surprisingly, some small excitement in him and caused him to wonder whether the same impulse that had catapulted him on Laura's back-trail in fear of sordid discovery might not also be turning him inward upon himself-where equally sordid findings might await him.
He was still several blocks from Roseanne's and the traffic had let up slightly when he saw Edith Dowling. At first he thought her some trick of his imagination. Then a reasonable explanation came to him. She had probably been at the club and so was in the neighborhood.
She was standing beside a lamp standard. Tom braked to a stop beside her. The persistent hot wind blew her black hair, fluttered her short skirt. Her legs were bare.
"Hello, Edith."
He caught an all but imperceptible movement that suggested she wanted to turn away from him-perhaps go away as she had last night. Evidently it would have been impractical for her to leave the spot, for she seemed to reconsider.
Her lips curled slightly. "Why-it's the wonder boy," Edith Dowling said. "How are you, wonder boy?" He managed with an effort to keep from becoming angry, knowing no reason for the cutting edge of her scorn.
"I didn't invent the name but it fits you," she went on. "Why not? You're the one to whom nothing unpleasant ever happens. You were always bound to get rich, have a beautiful wife-a nice home. I've kept track of you. You'll be way up there one of these days-where nobody can cause you any trouble."
Her voice held derision-and something else. Did a question burn in her eyes-or an answer?
"If you're making me trouble now, Edith-cut it out. I don't know what you're talking about but I want to know. Get in here and tell me."
"I'm sorry as hell, Tom, but I can't do that," Edith Dowling said. "I'm waiting for a man." She laughed. "Waiting on the street. I suppose you think that fits me."
"Where are you living?" Tom asked.
"At the old apartment house. I've gone all around the circle. I'm where I lived with Mama when I first came to the valley. Remember?"
He remembered. The building was only a block from here. Why, then-and with whom-was she keeping an appointment on the street?
A car crept up behind him, stopped. Edith turned toward it. Tom glanced back. He did not recognize the car or its driver.
"Edith, I want to see you again," he said.
"I don't want to see you," she said, with that same curl to her hp.
She hurried back along the street. In his rear-view mirror Tom saw her get in the other car, saw it make a U-turn and move away.
He would see her again as soon as possible. There was much he meant to learn from Edith Dowling. Perhaps about Laura. Certainly about himself.
6
THE HOUSE needed painting badly. Weeds sprouted in the driveway. Tom wondered why Roseanne could not have allotted some of her money, lavishly spent elsewhere, to the place. He punched the front-door buzzer. No one responded.
He moved around to the side, noticing a foursome that was approaching the nearby ninth green of the club course. The garage doors were open. Tom saw a Thunderbird, grown shabby during the two years Roseanne had owned it.
He walked over to the garage. Besides the car, it contained only a stack of old newspapers. He turned at the sound of Roseanne's voice.
"Tom, what are you doing there?"
She was standing on the rear porch, peering at him through a trellis where sweet peas had once bloomed.
He said, "I thought you might be out here when no one answered the door."
"The bell quit working months ago. Come on in."
He moved to join her. She fumbled at the door with a vague pawing gesture, swayed a little, then steadied herself with a furtive glance at him. She made an obvious attempt to compose herself.
Roseanne had a glass in her hand. She was a little drunk. And she had been crying. Her eyes still brimmed with tears. Wet streaks ran from her eyes down to her mouth.
He opened the door for her, followed her across a dark laundry room into the kitchen.
"The whole place is a mess," Roseanne said. "I'm no good at keeping house and it has been a long time since my last cleaning woman."
Dishes were stacked in the sink. Tom saw remains of a breakfast for two at a dinette table, not yet dried egg yolk, bits of toast, a cigar butt in a coffee cup.
Roseanne led him into the living room. She wore tight capri pants and a man's nylon shirt, the tails hanging down. Her feet were bare.
She crossed the room to a sideboard and examined a number of bottles. "Let's see-vodka, gin, here's some whiskey-"
"I'll help myself, if you don't mind."
He wanted a drink. He was not quite sure of how he felt. He had once belonged here. Had the seeds of this decay been evident then? Or was what he saw decay? Could it simply be neglect?
He and Roseanne filled glasses at the sideboard. Tom sat down on a divan fronting a low coffee table. Dust curls were everywhere. A half-slip was tossed over a chair back and the dress Roseanne had worn last night was puddled on the floor near her open bedroom door. He had a glimpse of the bed. It was unmade.
Roseanne pulled a hassock around and sat down, rolling the glass between her hands. She touched a finger to her cheek.
"I've been feeling blue, Tom-afraid among other things that you weren't coming."
He was remembering all the times he had been in this room-in every room in the house for that matter, including Roseanne's bedroom.
Roseanne emptied her glass. "Tom, will you lend me five hundred dollars, right away?"
The abrupt request startled him. He stared at her and she seemed oddly younger, more expectantly alive than she had scant moments earlier on the porch. Making the direct request for the money seemed to have solved some problem-probably of courage-for her.
"So the estate is in some kind of trouble," he said. "I don't know why you told me last night it wasn't."
"The estate is broke," she said. "And I don't care. I know I've been foolish, spent too much-" She paused, watching him.
He asked, "Is it really that bad? I'd be glad to check for you. After all, this house and other things you own add up to something."
She smiled. "The damned house is mortgaged to the hilt. I've been warned that I'm due to be kicked out in about another week because I can't make the payments. And my other things? All pawned. The finance people will be coming for the car, too."
Tom found himself smiling also, without quite knowing why. He had been sipping his whiskey and it had eased his tension headache-but Roseanne herself evoked the smile from him. She seemed quite different from the way she had last night at the club-and suddenly he knew why.
Alone with him, she was facing the end of her private rope-whatever turns she had taken in it during the interim between now and when he had last known her intimately. A surge of affectionate admiration rose in him. She had chosen this way to go down with the ship of her once-substantial inheritance-smiling at a friend. The request for a loan was of no consequence-it merely emphasized her point, that she was broke. Five hundred would not carry her for long.
Tom lifted his glass in a salute and drank again. Roseanne nodded, stood up and walked to a window. She looked out at the golf course. Late sunshine against the thin shirt silhouetted her full breasts. Tom felt the impact of disturbing memories.
"Tom," she said, "I want the money so I can go away. For good. I couldn't say this to anyone but you. I may never be able to repay you, although I'll try. Honestly."
"All right," he said. "I'll get you the money, Roseanne."
"When?"
"Tomorrow or the next day. I'll let you know."
Her eyes squeezed tightly shut for a moment. She opened them, averted her gaze from his, started toward the sideboard.
"I need another drink, Tom. But not for the reason I drank before you came. This is to celebrate."
"To celebrate what? Your new-found poverty?"
She was at the sideboard, pouring, her back to him.
"Liberation." She did not turn around. "Freedom from the past." Now she faced him, drink in hand. "Do you ever want to turn back the clock, Tom?"
He took his time about answering. She looked lovely to him suddenly, standing tall, head erect, shoulders back, breasts and loins boldly forward-and he revised his earlier feeling that she was again the girl he had once courted. Points of similarity existed-but this new Roseanne, created for him and perhaps only for this moment, might have been an older, wiser sister of the other.
At last he said, "Perhaps just a little-only enough to remember."
She laughed. "Yes-to remember. How much do you want to remember, Tom?" She reached behind her to set her glass back on the sideboard. The movement thrust one breast into bold relief against the tailored white blouse. Her hips swayed slightly when she faced him again. Now her smile was serious. "I heard talk last night at the club-about Laura."
He made his voice careful. "Did you?"
"Yes-and I hated hearing it. Just as I've hated your being married to her for the past two years."
Tom realized he had finished his drink. The whiskey had hit him but not hard enough. He could use another.
Standing close to Roseanne while building a fresh drink he asked, "Why should my marriage have troubled you? You and I had broken up long before that."
"Because I thought she was giving you something I had foolishly spent long before I spent my money-would you call it goodness? Excellence? Perhaps she even came to you a virgin."
Tom had finished making his drink. He turned to her. "Virginity is difficult to define, Roseanne."
Roseanne made a face. "That means she didn't. I'm sorry you told me that-I really would rather not have known." Her face had grown flushed, oddly intent. "Tom, I've watched Laura since you brought her into your life-and you're not the only thing I've envied her. You know, of course, that I've had several men since you-although I doubt you've bothered trying to imagine details." Her laugh was short, brittle. "I'm afraid I haven't paid much attention to the sordid details, either-you see, neither they nor the men seemed to matter. My picture of Laura was that all the men in her life, whether you or someone before you, mattered a great deal."
Tom sipped his drink. "And that's why you hated to hear the gossip?"
She nodded. "Tom-I've never wanted you hurt. I don't want you hurt now."
Her hand was on his arm. He glanced at it. She had good fingers, long and strong. He looked at her face. Her even, lately slack features were pulled together and softened by that intent, soberly smiling expression, giving them a womanly loveliness. Her pale eyes held a depth he remembered from long ago.
He set down his drink, put his hands on her waist.
"Roseanne-are you trying to tell me something? Do you know more than I do about Laura? You mentioned 'someone' before me in her life. Do you know there was just one?"
"Is that important, Tom? Because I can't answer you."
He laughed shortly. "Maybe it isn't important."
His hands tightened deliberately on her waist. She was fuller there than he remembered her. But she had never been a small girl. The unfathomable look in her eyes excited and angered him-the men in her life, those in Laura's, in Edith Dowling's-was he simply one of many in a parade of males strolling through the lives of the women he knew?
Controlled savagery was in his movements as he drew her against him and in the kiss he pressed to her lips. At first she was stiff and wooden in his arms-slowly she melted. Her lips parted and he knew for sure that she was no longer the girl he remembered.
Her mouth mated with his in practiced passion--unsimulated, he was sure. Her arms slid about his neck. Her body moved, molding to his from breasts to thighs. He sensed a depth to her embrace. Some unsuspected strength emanated from her-a quality she had not possessed or he had been unable to evaluate when she and he had been younger. He knew a wavering resistance to it.
The resistance was Laura, his briefly powerful thought of her-his abruptly fathomless uncertainty about her. The uncertainty vanished-at least one man had preceded him in Laura's life and probably more-and with it disappeared his resistance.
His own strength took over.
He was not later quite sure of the details-perhaps his mind wanted to shut them out, shut out his motivations for retracing his own back trail after puzzling all day over
Laura's. He knew that he and Roseanne moved directly from the sideboard into her bedroom and that he undressed her as surely and firmly as though he had always possessed her. The body he bared was full and ripe-he noted with a faint anger he barely understood a certain flabbiness in her, not yet so pronounced as to ruin her looks ... but he remembered later thinking that it was probably a good thing for Roseanne to enter upon a leaner period of life. Wealth spoiled some people as surely as poverty did others.
He shut his mind again to thought. The brief parallel between Roseanne's former wealth and the squalor he had found in Laura's past suggested things to him he wanted to postpone analyzing. He himself became naked, or nearly so, with disordered haste and coupled hungrily with Roseanne, telling himself that it was a thing he had done before and others had since-so why not again? Telling himself, too, that she had wanted it-that this was why she had asked him to come to share her moment of renunciation of the life she had known in the valley, her instant of farewell. This was why-not any five hundred dollars.
The brief rationalization left him with a hollow lack of conviction-as did one final, fleeting thought that he owed Roseanne an allegiance older than anything he owed Laura. The last was so obvious a lie that he recognized it almost before it was born and discarded it. This left only an acceptance of what Roseanne was doing to him--what her part in his life had once meant to him and what it meant now.
He had from the start been aware of her dimensions, more generous than Laura's-her breasts, her body were larger inside and out. She cradled him more softly, more passively he thought at first-then changed his mind. The fire in her simply waited-she responded to him by mouth, movement, sound and caress, almost as.if she wanted to tell him something. The message reached him dimly-she loved him, had always loved him.
She told him so repeatedly throughout their lovemaking-cried it, gasped it when at last he flamed in her and spent himself, her body fusing with his.
He kissed her one final time and, looking deep into her eyes, finally knew what she meant.
He left her silently, fumbled into his clothes. He understood himself only dimly-but in some subtle way he was prepared for what she told him at the door.
"How many doesn't matter, Tom," she said. "What's important is who matters to a woman. You matter to Laura. So would-and so has-any man she's ever had dealings with. That much I wanted to tell you. And this-you're in better company with her than you ever-could be with me."
Her earlier assurance and animation had left her. She looked again as she had last night, as she had so often recently. Discouraged, a little harried and uncertain and trying to cover up.
He turned his eyes quickly away from her and did not look back as he said, "I'll see that you get the money, Roseanne. Good luck."
He walked out quickly.
7
HE RAN the rental car up beside Laura's Chevrolet and entered the house. Laura came to kiss him and be kissed.
Cool and crisp in a bright print dress, she studied him in some concern.
"Darling, you look beat."
He forced a smile. "A rough day."
Laura said, "Beef stroganoff, hot rolls and iced tea on the patio-in about ten minutes." He had an odd sense of having been gone from her for a long while-he could barely remember this morning. "Tom, Luis is in the den. I've gathered he intends to stay for dinner."
For the first time since he had known her he was grateful to leave her. He found Luis lounging in the den's leather armchair, sucking at a gold-tipped cigarillo and tapping his cheek in an effort to blow smoke rings.
Luis said, "Hi. Did Richards call you today?"
"No." Tom turned to the bar.
"Well, he'll be after you. You've got him in the bag, boy-you can bank his next year's commissions right now. He can't wait to go over the run with you, step by step."
"Damn the run," Tom said.
Luis came to his feet, laughing. "What are you saying? That was your biggest moment."
Luis was kidding. But the game came back to him, as it often had when his mind needed to escape the present. The time he had spent with Roseanne had been flight also-Tom began to sweat a little, thinking that he had abruptly reached a point where he wanted to flee escape itself. But that later November day gave him refuge again-the hour had neared dusk and for some reason the lights had not been turned on. The air had been cold. On fourth down, with about twenty seconds left in the game, the opposing quarterback had elected to kick. Tom, playing safety, had caught the ball with two tack-lers right on him.
He had seen the movies of the game and did not quite believe the run himself. But the two men covering him had misjudged him just enough to let him get away. He had reversed his field twice, each time crossing the entire playing area. He had escaped being cornered both times by diving into knots of desperately converging players, bursting somehow through them. He had slipped once, almost falling. His hand had touched the ground but his bent knee had not, nor had he quite lost forward momentum. He had gone all the way, carrying a man with him for the last five yards. So many people had poured onto the field then that no final point could be kicked.
A moment of total glory-how many people could boast of one? An instant of adulation and acceptance by thousands. To have to listen to people discuss the feat bored Tom-but the miracle of it could still warm him in times of guilt and stress.
"All right," Tom said. "I'll talk to Richards about the run for as long as he wants to listen."
"That's my boy," Luis grinned, held out a glass to be filled. "I was with him this afternoon. You should see the suite he's got in the city-for entertaining." He kissed his fingertips expressively. "And deductible, too, he says. Can't you fix up a deal like that for me, including a long-legged blonde to do the pouring-like the one he has?"
"Sure. Just go into the oil business."
"Maybe I will. I might have need of some extra money. That guy I slugged last night is talking about suing me for fifty thousand." Luis was grinning puckishly. "Hell with him. I've got some other news for you. I'm going to get married."
Tom almost dropped his glass. "Come again."
"Knew that would shake you up." Luis chuckled. "It's God's truth, Polly Brasher and I-"
"Who?" Tom said blankly.
"My date last night. You seemed miles away all evening-but I've been hoping she made at least some impression on you."
"Oh, yes. I remember." The girl who had chattered like a parrakeet. "But when did all this happen?"
"Last night," Luis said, returning to the armchair. "I'll set it up for you, blow by blow. The dance petered out soon after you and Laura left. I invited Polly to my place. She accepted-curious about the orgies I'm supposed to conduct there, probably, and wondering whether she'd soon be hurdling the furniture to get away from me. About three, her mother came hammering at the front door, screaming for her chick." Luis began to laugh. "What a show that was! The old trout barged in, backed by Polly's brother-in-law. She was bellowing her head off, but quieted down awful fast at the discovery her little girl not only had all her clothes on but was ready to commit mayhem on Mama. I suppose Polly must have figured her chance to snare me had been ruined by the crash-in. I struck both of them dumb by announcing our impending nuptials."
Tom stared at his friend, not quite sure whether to believe what he had heard.
Luis said, "I'll give with the punch line. How did the old battle-ax learn Polly was at my place? Why, I tipped her off in a hoarse whisper over the phone calculated to bring her running."
"All right. Give with another punch line, Luis. Why on earth did you pull such a stunt?"
Luis was suddenly quite sober. "I did it for you, boy-you and Laura. I've set a backfire-give everybody something else to talk about, something a lot more tangible to chew on than a mere nasty rumor. The club Casanova has been brought to time at last! And it's catching on."
Tom said, "You've done some crazy things but this tops them all. Aside from the fact I don't at all appreciate your efforts on my behalf-you've given this girl, Polly, a hook she can sink pretty deep into you."
"Well, give me some credit for trying," Luis said, voice momentarily brittle. "Also, maybe you weren't listening good a minute ago. I'll repeat what I said then. I'm going to get married. To Polly Brasher."
He strode restlessly to the front window, both hands shoved into the pockets of his expensive flannel slacks, and stood looking out at the twilight.
"Why not?" he continued, speaking over his shoulder. "You and Laura have got something pretty nice. You're happy. God knows I'm not, rattling around in that damned big house. One dame after another and never a look in the eyes of any of them like I've seen in Laura's for you. Maybe I'll have your kind of luck. It's time I was finding out."
Luis looked around with a crooked smile. "Anyway--I'm going through with it."
"You have my best wishes, of course," Tom said.
Luis came back across the room to him. "And you'll be my best man?" An odd sort of smile seemed to tug at his lips. "I was just remembering the time I agreed to stand up for you, when-well-your marriage to Roseanne never came off, of course. But this time we'll have no slip-ups."
Laura appeared in the doorway. "Soup's on, you two."
Luis went to join her. He slid an arm momentarily about Laura's waist. "Honey, I've got some news for you-just told Tom. The old bachelor friend of the family is issuing invitations to his wedding, and you two will get the first."
Luis and Laura headed toward the patio. Tom realized he had not seen today's mail.
He found several envelopes on the hall table, began to rifle through them. The breath caught in his throat.
He was holding another of the cheap envelopes. The irregular worn typing had grown bitterly familiar from his study of the one which had preceded it. This letter was addressed to him.
8
THE NEXT day was Friday. Tom Bern drove to the airport. The morning was another scorcher. The mountains surrounding the airfield were brown and black, whipped by the withering wind. He booked his flight, sought a phone booth.
He told Miss Mogridge, "I probably won't be in today. I'll try to check with you some time this afternoon."
The Hedges matter was urgent, Miss Mogridge reminded him. But a greater urgency drove him.
"Hold her off until Monday."
He next dialed his bank and arranged for a personal loan for two thousand-might as well make it a round figure.
"Can you set it up in a hurry? Fifteen hundred to my office account and five hundred in cash?"
His plane was being called as he completed the arrangements. He ran for it, plunged gratefully into the air-conditioned interior.
The heat was still strong even at ten thousand feet. It manifested itself in turbulence over the jagged mountains. The restless atmosphere matched Tom's mood.
Both poison-pen letters were in his pocket. He had brooded over the second one until late last night. hasn't claire told you yet about laura's other husband? maybe you know already. everybody will before long.
Laura had been up at seven, bustling about, fixing his breakfast. She wore a negligee, pink and sheer, with ribbons at her throat.
He had asked, "Something new?"
"It's my honeymoon robe. Don't you remember? You bought it for me."
He remembered the honeymoon well enough. Honeymoons, he had been told, were not nearly all they were cracked up to be. But his had been a golden time, filled with moments of enchantment.
"Honey, I'm sorry I forgot about the robe," Tom said.
"I suppose you wouldn't remember, at that-I seem to recall not getting to wear it, or much of anything, very often."
He had managed the required laugh.
Laura had turned the talk to Luis Preil's marriage. Luis had invited Laura to be matron of honor.
"I think the girl ought to ask me, don't you?" Then, musingly: "I wonder if it's really going to happen."
"The marriage? Could be. Perhaps Luis at last has talked himself into taking the dive."
"I wonder." Laura had glanced away for a moment. "Maybe he is up to something else."
She could be sharply intuitive. Had she formed a guess that Luis had become engaged to Pauline Brasher for another purpose than marriage? But she seemed to abandon whatever thought she had had. She had stretched and yawned, the almost transparent pink robe against her body.
"You remind me of a stripper I saw one night at a junior chamber of commerce dinner," he had said, cringing inwardly at the unbidden thought that she might once have entertained at some such ribald gathering. He had this dawn again secretly witnessed her matutinal dance to the sun and was surer than ever that she had danced professionally.
This morning no sex had followed the rite-he had told her he had to catch a plane. The truth was that he had felt no desire for her-the episode with Roseanne had seemed to put a great distance between Laura and himself.
The flight held nothing of particular interest for him. He had made it many times on business-one reason Laura had suspected nothing. Tom closed his eyes, pushed his seat back and brooded. He thought of the purpose of this trip-he was hunting a man-and tension began to rise in him.
After a lengthy interval he shook himself and looked at his watch. An hour or so had passed. The flight had about twenty minutes left. A glance down showed him a curving shoreline, the Pacific a dull green where it rolled to a misty horizon.
Sight of it brought back with exceptional vividness a moment he would never forget. Somewhere below him was a small cove with its brief sandy beach where he and Laura had stopped during the first day of their honeymoon, the second of their marriage. They had discovered the place by accident, following a dirt lane angling toward the water from a cliff-top highway. He had been driving for hours. The lonely little cove and beach had seemed a gem of beauty. Lazy combers had creamed on the sand. A few strutting gulls had offered the only company.
Tom had suggested a swim, I don't have a bathing suit, Tom...
Who needs one?
All right-but you keep a sharp lookout, mister ... The water had been too cold for swimming. They had frolicked briefly in the surf, then retreated to the warm sand.
I always wanted to marry a girl with pointed breasts...
A look had passed between them, the sort of look that he was to learn later constituted one of marriage's most solid returns, the look that could speak volumes, rendering words wholly superfluous. With acquiescence from Laura, her hand reaching out to him, then her arms, not caring now who might come down the dusty lane and discover them as she yielded herself to him in murmurous pleasure.
They had not yet been wed a full day-but had already achieved this moment, bright and shining. The future had promised more of them.
The future was now.
The plane jolted to a landing. Tom rented a car and began a study of the area telephone books.
It came as something of an anticlimax that he found the name Lom quite easily. It was more common than he would have supposed-he chose one that seemed to tie in with what he thought he had learned about Laura.
A dusty little office, up two flights from a dingy street, featured a faded, peeling sign on the door: theatrical enterprises. There was no receptionist. A thin, sharp-featured, bald young man sat behind a cluttered desk, shoulder hunched to hold a phone against his ear. He cocked a thick black brow at. Tom Bern, pointed to a chair and went on with his conversation.
The walls were covered with hundreds of photographs, most of them yellowed, vulgar and cracking with age. Tom studied as many as he could, almost afraid to see one of Laura, nude or nearly so.
The telephone conversation came to an end.
"You're Lom?"
The thin man plucked a cigar from a round humidor on his desk and chewed on it, looking Tom over. "Right.
Who're you-process server, bill collector, outraged husband-or what?"
Tom said, "I want to know about Laura Cotter."
Lom removed the cigar from between his teeth and studied it. "Just like that? You throw me a name and I'm supposed to recite. Lots of people go through here."
"You'd remember her," Tom Bern said. "She sent you some money two years ago-possibly more since then."
Lom chewed on his cigar again, subjecting him to a sharp scrutiny.
"I want to know about the money," Tom said. "And everything else. The information you give me may keep Laura out of trouble. Do you want to tell me-or do I do my digging elsewhere?"
The man doodled briefly on a pad, brow furrowed. Then he pointed.
"Look on that wall-about halfway up, by the door."
Tom stood up to examine the photograph. It was dust-grimed, fly-specked. Laura was in it, a slimmer Laura, wearing brief trunks and bra, dancing slippers, a top hat-all studded with sequins. She had been caught in a dance step. Before Tom made out her face he recognized the willowy grace in the curve of her body.
She was not alone. The young man in the photograph with her wore a tailcoat of exaggerated cut, white tie, top hat-he was slight of build and fox-faced, Tom thought.
"They called the act Herbie Day and Laura," Lom said from behind him. "Day was a stage name but the only one he used. We booked them around for three years or so in clubs here in the city-Reno spots, Tahoe, places up and down the coast. Not a bad act-and not particularly good. Never rated top billing or big money. Just another hoofing twosome, taps, a little ballroom, a touch of adagio. Day had some patter, mostly blue, gags that he stole."
Tom Bern turned to face him.
Lom went on, "We always wondered what Laura might have done as a single. Something extra in that girl-she projected, might have gone high if she had cut loose from Day. But he taught her what she knew and she was loyal to him." Lom mused over his cigar: "Kids like her pour through here all the time-nice and fresh when they start out. But the niceness doesn't usually last very long in the places they've got to work and with things they've got to do."
Tom said, "About her background-where did she come from?"
Lom's eyes narrowed. "If you want personal stuff--why don't you look up Laura's sister and ask her."
"Her sister? Where is she?"
Lom shrugged, rubbing a fleshy nose. "Search me. I saw her only once. Caught the act in Reno-I was on my way through to New York. There was this kid around, younger than Laura, looked like her. Laura said the kid was her sister-that maybe she and Herbie would work her into their act. I advised her against it--something about the kid told me she was liable to be trouble, especially with Herbie Day and his pass for every babe. But Laura wouldn't listen. It was plain nobody was going to talk down the sister to her."
"And?"
"That's all. I never saw the kid again. Haven't been back to Reno, either. Maybe she's still there."
"Her name?"
"Ellie-Allie-something like that. I never saw Laura again, either. Now do you want to hear about that money?"
Tom nodded tightly.
"Okay. Laura started sending it three years ago. She sent maybe a hundred dollars altogether-but none after the twenty bucks she sent two years ago. The dough was for Herbie Day. The guy had his back broken in an auto accident. He's dead now." Lom spread his hands. "He was paralyzed from the waist down. The state had to take care of him, a charity patient. Laura tried to help with money for little things. She sent the money through me-until Herbie died."
His phone rang. He scooped it up, spoke briefly, then covered the mouthpiece with his hand.
"Some of my business is kind of private. And I've told all I know. Mind?"
Tom walked to the door. He paused there to look at the photograph again, wheeled and returned to the desk.
"You've said 'we' several times. Who's your partner? Maybe I should talk to him."
"Damn," Lom said, his voice a soft explosion. "Listen, it's all over and finished. Let it go and get out of here."
"No. I want all the information I can get." He took a long shot in the dark. "There are grounds for bringing the police into this."
Lom chewed his Up, then hung up without bothering to warn his caller.
"All right. I'm Morris Lom. My Uncle Nate founded and ran the business until he died two years ago in November. I took over about a month ago-after Nate's no-good son-in-law almost put the agency into bankruptcy." He bit into a fresh cigar. "Like I said, I went to New York four years ago to buck the big time. Uncle Nate got sick-cancer. I flew out when they wired the end was near. He told me about Laura and the money. Uncle Nate sent' it on to Day-he hadn't seen Laura since before the accident. Then there was the last twenty bucks. Laura asked how Herbie was-it was the only letter that showed a return address."
The return address would have been the Lambros place-the time period during which Tom had been begging her to marry him.
"Uncle Nate figured she had done enough. He wrote her that Herbie was dead and to forget him."
"What was there to forget?" Tom demanded.
"You mean-was there something between Laura and Herbie? Well, Day wanted her bad enough-every guy who saw her did. Including me. I carried a torch for Laura, too." Morris Lom's lips twisted wryly. "But she was strictly business. She and Herbie always had separate rooms-I think she just sent the money out of pity. And-Laura was driving the car when that accident occurred."
"Tell me about the accident."
"They were coming here from Reno. A tire blew out in the mountains. Laura couldn't hold the car on the road-it sideswiped a tree. Nobody ever blamed her--except Day. Uncle Nate went to see him. Day claimed Laura wrecked the car deliberately, trying to kill him. Herbie got so wild and incoherent Uncle Nate had to leave. He never went back. And you've got it all."
"All except one thing. Your uncle told Laura that Herbie Day was dead-but he wasn't. And isn't now, I gather. Where is he?"
Lom started to protest, then sighed and gave in.
He muttered then, "Wish now Uncle Nate could have talked more. Still, I'm sure, he told it all-you wouldn't want to tell me why you mentioned cops?"
"Just to get you to talk." Tom paused at the door to pull the photograph of Herbie Day and Laura from the wall. He wanted this token of a younger Laura.
Lom did not object. "I'm glad you were bluffing," he said. "I hope she's happy. I've laid it on the line, straight. Remember that when Herbie Day starts running her down."
"I'll remember," Tom said and left.
9
THE CONVALESCENT home was in the coastal hills. It was a vast and rambling old white house of many turrets and gables and had been some nabob's mansion at the turn of the century, probably. Tom made inquiries at a desk just inside the front door.
A starchy and efficient young woman consulted a card index.
She said, "Oh, yes. Mr. Day would be in the west wing-but he is probably outside this afternoon." She summoned an orderly to guide him.
The orderly was a chatty type. "Day, huh? Can't remember his ever having had a visitor before and I've been around a couple of years. Hope you can cheer him up. Nobody here can."
"What's his condition?" Tom asked.
"Well, not too good. Circulatory trouble, usual in such cases, growing worse in his. And he won't do a thing to help himself. There's a guy with a hate on against the whole world. Most of those we get make a try. Not Day."
At the end of a long veranda Tom saw a figure hunched in a wheel chair, wispy hair stirred by a slight breeze.
"Herbie, somebody to see you," the orderly announced and left them.
No chairs were available. Tom sat against the veranda rail. The wheel-chair occupant's face was that of the hoofer in the photograph but older. The mottled skin was stretched tight. The mouth was pinched. The features were colorless. Herbie Day had lost most of his hair. A gray pajama jacket covered his sunken chest. The hands dangling from its sleeves dangled also from shockingly thin wrists. A blanket was spread over his useless legs. Only his eyes, burning, bitter, seemed alive.
He said forcefully, lips scarcely moving, "If you're another damned do-gooder-get the hell away from here and leave me alone."
Tom said, "You were once a dancer, I understand."
Day studied him. "Yeah. I nearly made it big. Astaire, Kelly, Bolger-they'd have had to move over to make room for Herbie Day. Now-" he clawed at the blanket-"all the good these'll ever do me they might as well be cut off."
"I think I may have seen you," Tom said. "In Reno?"
"Maybe," Day muttered. "Reno was my town-top billing, top dough. They won't forget me there."
"But you weren't working alone, as I remember."
Day shifted position, a tortured, labored effort. "What's with you, Jack? What's your angle? What brought you sucking up to me?"
"I remember a girl in spangles," Tom persisted. "With brownish-red hair."
A slight change came to Day's attitude. "She had looks," he muttered. "Not that I really needed her-just a cute piece for a couple of rhythm turns, as naked as the law allowed. A corn-fed from nowhere when we met. I taught her. She couldn't do more than a time-step at the start. She learned fast enough-"
Day's voice trailed away. He looked off toward the bay as though lost in reverie.
Tom produced his cigarette case. Day reached out quickly. "This dump is worse than stir-one pack a day and you've got to kiss up those lousy orderlies to get your mitts on that. I did better at first-had some dough now and then to buy my own, all I wanted-" He caught himself. "I'll ask it again-what angle you working? So I teamed with a dame once. It's all over and finished, years ago. What's with the digging?" Tom had no answer for him.
Day went on: "Maybe you're just another head-shrinker throwing a pitch. I should yak it up, tell everything I'm supposed to have bottled in me. Then I'll feel peachy keen again, ready to start learning how to fix watches or to do some other stinking sitting-down chore so they can shove me out of here. That's all the creeps want-to get rid of me." His fingers clawed the blanket again. "Well, I'm staying. There's nothing to tell. That dame wrecked a car and put me here. And it wasn't any accident."
"I heard that a tire blew out and she couldn't hold the car on the highway," Tom said.
"You heard a lie. She wanted to get rid of me. She proved it by running out afterwards." Day panted. "Hell-if we'd only stayed at that motel where we'd spent the night before-like I wanted to. Damn it, one time only, that night at the motel-but worth waiting for. Then she made me come on down the mountains with her next morning and it happened. And she ran out."
The revelation of intimacy made Tom Bern work to hold his emotions in check.
"That crooked little bitch sister of hers was all she could think about," Day muttered. "Ellie was somewhere in Frisco then-shacked up, likely. There was a babe who knew how to land on her feet. And we had to leave the motel to warn her-as though I gave a damn what happened to that tramp."
"Warn her?" Tom said. "About what?"
The man hunched his shoulders, head lowered. "So that's what you're fishing for, huh? Well, the hell with you. I'm not talking. Go away. Stay away. Leave me alone."
"I might be able to help you."
"Yeah? Could you give me back my legs?" The bark of a laugh was bitterly derisive.
"It doesn't sound as though Laura ran out on you," Tom said. "She sent you money."
Day started violently, head jerking up. "Who told you that?"
"A man named Lom."
"Nate Lom?" Spittle flecked Day's lips, his chin. "You're a damned liar. Nate Lom is dead. I read about it in a Frisco paper two years ago. And a dame you said you saw dance with me once in Reno-but all at once you know her name. There's only one way you could have found out about that money. From Laura herself."
Tom said. "No. Let me explain-"
The man reached out, grabbing Tom's hand. His fingers had the feel of dried twigs. "I want her back. She's mine. That's the way it was and it hasn't changed. She's got to come back, make up for the years she's been away. She owes it to me."
Tom jerked himself free. Herbie Day toppled from the wheel chair to the floor. He writhed desperately, clutching now at the uprights of the veranda railing in an effort to lift himself. "What I said before don't count. It doesn't matter, what happened to me-nothing does-if she'll only come back. I'll do like they want me to-learn a job and get out of here-but Laura has got to be with me. You tell her that."
The orderly came at a run, thrust Tom brusquely aside. "My God, what'd you do to set him off like that?"
Herbie Day screamed as he fought the orderly. The incoherent sounds seemed touched by madness. They tore at Tom Bern's nerves.
"If there is anything I can do-"
"Just beat it," the orderly said. "Got to move him inside. He's liable to wind up in convulsions. Beat it. And do us a favor. Don't come back."
* * *
Tom drove back to the airport, turned in the car and booked passage home on a three-o'clock flight. The talk with Herbie Day had left him feeling like a Peeping Tom. Still, he found himself remembering yesterday with Roseanne with less guilt-and the distance between Laura and himself increasing.
Before leaving the hospital he had made out a check for fifty dollars to be turned over to Day. Laura had acknowledged a debt to the man-he could do no less than assume it. He wondered if he had always understood material obligations better than those of the spirit--was this why Edith had called him wonder boy to whom nothing unpleasant happened?
He stipulated that Day was not to know who had given him the money. This was agreed to-he was handed a receipt. What was he buying his way out of?
Stepping out of the plane, trudging through familiar heat, he sought a phone booth again. Miss Mogridge reported two calls from Mrs. Hedges, who had also visited the office in a fretful mood.
"She threatened to take her account to somebody else, Mr. Bern. Then she promised to be back on Monday."
Also, he was informed, Mr. Kruger had called him.
Tom Bern sorted out a handful of change and fed the telephone again. He began to sweat as he waited for Dusty Kruger to be located at the sheriff's substation far across town.
"I've got just two words on the police check for you, boy," Dusty Kruger said. "Here they are: Report Negative. But I'd better warn you-it's easier to start this kind of check than to stop it. And this one isn't finished."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Why, negative as far as information on file with our police and sheriff's offices goes. The name Laura Cotter maybe rang a bell for somebody downtown and it could be pushed farther. If there's a kickback the heat will be on for me to explain why I asked for the check to be made. I'll have to give with an answer-the right one."
"I'll give you something then," Tom Bern said.
He had not really thought police files would yield anything on Laura and did not think so now.
"There're some civic records I haven't yet checked. Still want me to go ahead on those?"
"No-and thanks."
He was suddenly ashamed of himself for prowling behind Laura's back. Perhaps his best bet would have been to confront her with the very first letter.
Had he been afraid? What would have happened if she had admitted the truth of the accusation-and laughed at him because his business-the successful materialistic side of him-might not have withstood the scandal?
* * *
Laura was at the carport, shepherding some excitedly chattering kids into her Chevrolet, skinny boys in swim trunks, two plump little girls wearing bathing suits. Laura's own swimming outfit was black jersey. She had a beach coat over one arm. Fine down against her thighs shimmered golden in the hot sunlight.
She cried, "Darling-you're home early."
He withstood her quick kiss, the feel of her lips moving subtly against his. She was exquisitely adept at all the lighter touches of love. Professionally so? A professional wife?
He muttered something about the heat and getting a start on the weekend.
Laura said, "The kids and I are going over to the Brogdons' pool. Wouldn't you like to come along."
"I don't think so, thanks."
Pain was throbbing in his forehead-he would be unable to stand the squealing of those youngsters. Actually he did not want to go. Period.
Laura said in some concern, "I won't go either, then."
He studied her-the brilliant and alert blue of her eyes, the worried furrow in her brow. Was she expressing intuitive understanding of his inward torment-or was the way she looked another of the arts she had learned? How much of anything he knew about her was truly the Laura he had thought her to be?
Tom Bern shook the ugly speculation aside. "No, go ahead."
"Well-" Laura said. "I'll be back by six." She got into the car, started its motor. "By the way-Roseanne Short called three times today. She wouldn't say what it was about, just that she had to talk to you."
A questioning note in her voice. Tom managed to keep his features wooden.
"I'll give her a ring."
He went into the house, peeled off his sweaty clothing and showered. He gulped down aspirin and consulted his memory for Roseanne's number. He dialed it on the bedroom extension. There was no answer.
He went to the den to lock up the two letters, the photograph and the receipt from the convalescent home in his desk.
Two gold-tipped cigarillo stubs in a tray caught his attention. Had Luis Preil been here during his absence? He quelled the quick unaccustomed suspicion that leaped to his mind. Laura and Luis? Nonsense.
His headache was growing worse. He prowled moodily about, mixed a drink but put it aside after one sip. All the events of yesterday and today were crowding him--and he had none of the answers he had sought.
After a time he became aware of dusk creeping into the house. He consulted his watch and picked up the den telephone. The hour was past six.
The Brogdons were an elderly couple who lived some blocks away. They owned a big house and a pool Laura liked to use. Their housekeeper answered Tom's ring, informed him the Brogdons were away at Palm Springs. The pool had been drained during their absence for the mending of a leak.
"Mrs. Bern came by but went away, sir, when I told her."
Laura's continuing absence was puzzling, wholly unlike Laura. With those kids she might have sought another pool-but why had she failed to notify him?
Tom heard the sound of her voice at a little past seven. He found her in the kitchen, at the refrigerator, a beach coat draped about her shoulders.
"Cold cuts, green salad, something in aspic. Will you be staying for supper, Luis?"
"Not me." Luis wore a white linen coat, dark trousers, black tie. "I've a date at the club with my fiancee." He flicked his hand in greeting to Tom. "Hi, boy. Listen, Laura's old Chewy is about to give up the ghost. I ran across her tinkering with it, had to push her home."
"I think the battery is dead. It's why I'm so late," Laura said. "And I felt like a fool with a Cadillac shoving me along. Thanks, Luis. Don't keep Polly waiting."
"Her whole confounded family will be on hand, the first of a series of parties to display Polly's conquest to the world," Luis said. "Wouldn't it be a dirty trick if I suddenly hustled off to Vegas with her, the way you two did it?"
He left by the rear door, breezily whistling. Laura said, "Darling, will you get the big aluminum tray for me, please? We'll carry everything out to the patio in one trip. And I'm sorry that you had to wait. I lost track of time until Mr. Brogdon called from the house to say it was six-thirty. Then my poor old car wouldn't start and he had to take those kids home-"
Tom Bern found the tray she wanted and brought it.
Laura smiled, with the tender curve of her lips. But there was a guarded watchfulness in her eyes.
She said, "I don't think I'll bother dressing. I'll just stay like this all evening if we aren't going to be doing anything in particular. I'd like to spend tonight just with you. Would that be all right, Tom?"
First the letters and the knowledge that someone was trying to wreck his marriage-now this lie, told with dismaying casualness to cover the time she had been away-to cloak whatever she had done. How long had she been spinning an invisible web of deceit around him-and for what purpose?
He said, "We'll do whatever you want, Laura."
His head ached maddeningly. His wits seemed tangled in skeins of dirty wool.
"Tom, you take the tray out to the patio, while I put the kettle on for iced tea," Laura said. "And what did Roseanne Short want?"
10
TOM BERN was up early on Saturday morning. He had not slept well. He had stared at the flickering TV screen in the den until past midnight with no idea of what he had been looking at. He had turned in to lie awake in the darkness, Laura quiet beside him. He had sensed she was awake also. Neither had spoken.
Her silence had worried him. Did she know he had been checking on her past? Were they engaged in some silent war?
He made coffee and drank it moodily, went out and turned on the lawn sprinklers, front and back. He located a bamboo rake and cleaned up the leaves from the pecan tree next door, then rolled the trash can to the curb for the weekly pickup. He continued to make work for himself, trying to escape his black thoughts.
Laura had been asleep when he had arisen. She came hurrying out of the house at about nine o'clock, wearing a print dress and open-toed sandals, no hose, working her hands into white gloves.
"Tom, Mrs. Carter is sick. I just had a call from her daughter-in-law. She is asking for me."
Another he?
"What's wrong with her?"
"She's a cardiac, has been for several years. I thought I told you, how she has to lie down and rest in the afternoon." Laura looked at her Chevrolet, bit her hp. "Oh, damn. I forgot. That battery-"
"I'll drive you," Tom said.
"But there's really no need. You'd have to wait for me-and there's no telling how long I may be there. Please, dear, if you can only do something about my car-"
He made a final effort. "But can you find the place."
"Yes. I've driven her home several times." He capitulated. "All right. Leave her phone number."
"It's in the memo book beside the bedroom phone." He used his car to push the Chevrolet to a service station. Inspection revealed a dead cell in the battery; he ordered a new one installed. Then her motor was rattling asthmatically and she was shifting gears.
Tom said, "If she needs any help, a nurse-"
"I'll find out. 'Bye, dear."
No farewell kiss. But she had always been rather shy about demonstrations of affection in public.
Tom Bern drove slowly back to his empty house. He had been there only a few minutes when George Fielding, the bank official through whom he had arranged the loan yesterday, came along.
Fielding, bound for a day of golf-his club was a cut below Tom's-produced with something of a flourish several papers and an envelope containing five hundred-dollar bills.
"Service for a valued client. Three places to sign and the money's yours. The balance has already been credited to your account."
Fielding wanted to linger. Tom managed to get rid of him. Fielding's arrival had given him more important work than gardening.
He got behind the wheel of his car and started toward the Bern family home.
The Bern house was two-storied, with gabled roofs, all wood. It dated back to the early part of the century and sat in some dignity well back from the street. Tom had had it painted and the roof renewed four years ago but it was shabby again. He left his car at the curb and walked slowly along a rutted driveway.
He tried the front door, found it locked. Claire's Studebaker was not in evidence, nor was the ancient Pontiac Randall used.
French doors faced across a narrow cement terrace toward the arroyo, on the side opposite the street. Tom tried one of these doors, lifting up and pushing. The old trick still worked-it swung open for him.
Tom walked into the big dining room, called, "Anybody home?"
Only echoes answered him. He smelled furniture polish and floor wax. The house's interior was immaculate, well-kept-but not by Claire. Randall had a strong, odd feeling for housekeeping, for furniture, drapes, linen. He could occupy himself happily for days at a time puttering about the place.
Tom investigated the house from first floor to attic, thinking that the place was too big, with taxes constantly mounting. But Claire had reacted violently each time he had suggested that it be sold, that she and Randall move into something smaller.
He heard her come into the house.
She asked, "Tom, what are you doing here?"
"Claire, do you recall years ago when the bunch I ran with put out a neighborhood newspaper-kid stuff-for a while?"
Claire frowned. "I don't think so. Why on earth you should suddenly be interested in such a thing I can't imagine. A newspaper? No, I don't remember at all."
But he had managed to remember a little since he had spoken to the man in the typewriter shop about the machine that had been used to write the first letter about Laura. He had no reason to suppose a connection existed between the note and his childhood-but he might as well ask the question.
"I must have been about thirteen. We got the paper out two or three times. Dad had just closed his real estate office and the stuff from it was moved here. We found some stencils and a duplicating machine, ran the paper off on that-had to quit when we put in an item about old man Bollard coming home drunk one night and falling into that ravine full of trash and muck behind his place. His wife raised hell with Dad and we had to quit."
He had just now remembered these details.
"Tom, I'm glad you stopped by," Claire said. "We've a lot to talk about." She moistened her lips. "Randall is gone again today-and he still refuses to tell me what he's doing."
"I'll check on him at the first opportunity," Tom said. "Right now I want to find a copy of that old newspaper if there's still one around. And there should be. I don't think anything was ever thrown away at this house."
"Why don't you go look in the barn?" Claire asked. "That's where all the stuff from Papa's office was put. I noticed it out there one day after-after the funeral-and covered everything up. It must still be there. Nobody has had any reason to disturb it."
"The barn? Of course."
He went out, crossed the rear yard. Claire accompanied him. What she referred to as the barn had once been the Aldridge carriage-house. It contained many of the effects of those who had lived here through nearly half a century. High on one wall, hung on a nail, were the wheels of the bicycle Tom had once ridden, its tires now cracked and flat.
He headed for a corner and a mound that was partially covered by a tarpaulin. Claire helped him remove it.
She remarked fretfully, "Somebody must have taken this off and didn't put it back right-"
Under the tarp were a swivel chair and dust-covered desk, several filing cabinets, a duplicator Tom remembered. He shifted things about, discovered a metal wastebasket filled with a hodge-podge of old paper. He dumped it, sorted through the papers, discovered what he was seeking.
It consisted of a long mimeograph sheet, grown yellowish and stiff with age, printed on both sides in black ink that was now faded. The heading across the top had been shakily drawn in block letters:the giralda times. And underneath: all the news-always.
He would have been amused at another time to discover this memento of his boyhood. Now its contents startled him. An item on the first page caught his eye.
Miss Granger, at the county library, is meeting a man in arroyo park after dark. We wonder who-
This, he thought, could have done Miss Granger's reputation no good.
He turned the sheet over. At the bottom of the second page he discovered what he was seeking: editor edith dowling. sports editor-thomas vernon bern.
More of it came back, then edith Dowling pecking at the typewriter. She was the one to whom the paper had been important. Had anyone else been involved?
"Luis?" Tom said aloud doubtfully.
"What?" Claire asked. Then: "I saw Luis last night. He was pushing Laura's Chevrolet with his Cadillac. Is he really going to marry that Brasher girl?" She reached for the paper. "Is this what you've been hunting?"
Tom looked around. "Claire, the typewriter is gone."
"Typewriter, Tom?"
"The one that was used to set this thing up," he said. "It came from Dad's office, too."
"I don't remember-" Claire began. Then her voice chopped off, her eyes widened and her mouth began to tremble. "That's really why you're here-because of that letter I brought you. You think that-that Randall or I-"
"Claire, please don't get upset. I was just thinking of old typewriters and remembered this one. But it's gone-"
And the covering tarpaulin had been pulled away. When? It could have happened years ago-or last week.
Claire whispered, "You must hate us-Randall and me-the poor Berns, dependent on you, to come here, to suspect us."
"If you'll only listen to me-"
Her voice rose. "It isn't here? Then we'll search every inch of the house for it right now. Come on." He hesitated for a fatal second.
Claire cried, "You've already done that. You've been through our rooms."
"Claire, for God's sake-I was just looking for you or Ran-"
But she was running from him at an awkward, knock-knead pace. He went after her. Claire scrambled up to the long rear porch, across it and into the house. She slammed the screen door, set its latch before he could follow her.
Tom said, "I really came to talk about money. I had to borrow-"
She was sobbing. Tears washed her cheeks, visible beyond the screen. "No-I won't talk to you. I don't ever want to see you again-"
She fled from the door, leaving him to curse himself and the mess in his life that had brought this about.
11
TOM BERN drove away from the house. He felt a weary pity ior Claire, who had sacrificed so much to hold the family together. She had been proud of him as a Marine officer, had been prouder still when he had joined forces with the city's leading financial firm. It must have seemed to Claire the Bern name was at last going to mean something. And it must seem now the world was disintegrating about her, a process which, in Claire's opinion, had inexorably begun at the time he had broken with Roseanne Short, married Laura Cotter and started his own firm.
But there was so much Claire did not know, would never know, about how it had all happened.
Driving moodily along, Tom Bern found himself reliving again the affair with Roseanne Short. Not last night's episode. The time he had nearly married her.
How long ago had it actually been? He had been away for a while, had come home and gone for a dip in the club pool. He had seen the girl in the white bathing suit. Her sleek blonde hair had reached almost to lightly tanned shoulders.
Males had clustered around her. He had elbowed his way in.
Well, Roseanne. Long, long time no see...
A dancing, measuring glint lurked in her pale eyes. Her lips curved responsively. He had first known her as a child. He now saw a full-blown beauty.
"If it isn't old Tom Bern-hello, old Tom Bern. Sit right down and give me an accounting of yourself."
Her eyes widened as she saw his scar. It was a rope-like welt about ten inches long, slanting across his back, the result of a Marine training accident. Tom explained. He learned in return that Roseanne's father was now retired, had come back after several years in Paris, where he had worked in foreign aid.
Tom Bern saw an effortless sophistication in Roseanne that was new to him-she had spent some time in Paris with her father. Luis appeared, eyes bold on her. He joined the conversation briefly, sauntered away.
Roseanne murmured, "He hasn't changed much-has grown some, though. I remember that the top of his head used to be about even with my chin."
"He has come into quite a bit of money since then."
"So I've heard," Roseanne said and dismissed Luis from the talk.
They dined together that evening, went to several crowded, smoky places that specialized in hot jazz. Her dress that night had fragile straps and exciting decolletage-it had emphasized her voluptuous contours. They danced a bit, drank a bit.
He unlocked her front door past midnight, reached out and pulled her to him. His hard lips forced hers apart while his hand found her breast, found exciting firmness, velvety yielding. She did not gasp and pull her mouth away until he thrust a shoulder strap aside and dipped his hand under her dress.
Then she said, "You're the same as before, Tom."
"You've a good memory," he said.
"I suspect you did that deliberately. A bridging of the gap, after all these years-"
Something of the sort had been in his mind.
She backed off. "Give me one more cigarette, please."
They smoked through a long and silent moment, bright moonlight partially on them. Roseanne sighed.
"I've been debating with myself how I should react when this happened. Tom, I don't want to be too easy for you. All your life you've had everything too easy-"
He snorted.
She continued: "It's true. And I really think I should tell you good night. Will it be years again before I see you-if I send you away?"
"I'm not going. And we have a date tomorrow night."
"No-I need some time to think about you. Seriously. I mean it, Tom."
"Tomorrow night. The night after that."
"Don't make it difficult for me. T have to think-"
He kissed her again. Her face tilted up to his. Her eyes were closed. She offered no resistance to his caresses, the bold venturings of his hands.
She whispered presently, "I'm afraid-"
He frowned.
"Not for the reason you may be thinking." Roseanne murmured ruefully. "I'm older than I was-damn it. I've known a little too much of the world-"
He looked at her, one eyebrow raised.
"I hope you'll never learn what I'm talking about," she said. And then, "We're too highly visible here. And there is a nosy old woman in a house just around the curve uphill who spies on me. I must go in. Good night, Tom."
He said, "I'll move my car a little farther along the road, where your nosy neighbor can't see it. Leave that door unlocked."
"No."
He started toward his car. She let him almost reach it. "Tom?"
He stopped but did not look around.
"I didn't want to go overboard so soon, but it was bound to happen." She sighed. "I'll leave the door on latch. But wait a couple of minutes. I want to be sure my father is asleep."
He moved the car and came back, let himself into the dark house, stood waiting.
"In here, Tom." She was in her bedroom. She stood by a window, a wash of moonlight about her. She no longer wore her dress-or much else.
She came to him with a throaty, unsteady laugh, her body eagerly offered. For the first time he became aware of the entirety of a woman-at least physically. She gave him a new dimension overnight, a maturity he had never known. His earlier essays at love became those of an adolescent-intuitively he knew that, for all their intimacies, he and Edith Dowling had never reached total fulfillment with one another.
Roseanne offered herself freely-but not quickly. He found himself adoring her endlessly with his hands and arms and lips, aware for the first time in his life that the road to utter fulfillment of desire could be long and devious. Before he finally impaled her he had worshiped her from the soles of her feet to the topmost strand of her lank, silken hair, pausing at all points between and all around her. His final invasion of her became a complement to an already intimate, inch-by-inch knowledge of her-by the time he entered her he knew the degrees of her body temperature in relation to his own, knew dimensions of her by sight, touch, sound and smell he had not thought it possible to discover in another human.
I've known a little too much of the world-I hope you'll never learn what I'm talking about....
Her words came back to him fleetingly as their oneness became absolute, as he found in her a reciprocity he had never even guessed at. His probing into her unearthed life, became more than flesh meeting flesh, assumed the mysterious properties of total merger-of creation older than time. He had a brief vision of their union as an art form--but no thought of artfulness entered his mind then, as it would later. But some part of that night was to remain with him for the rest of his life. He had never again slept with a woman-not even Laura-without seeking in her something of what he had found in Roseanne.
* * *
The affair had continued through the late spring and summer. Tom Bern had seen as much of Roseanne Short as he could. Tom and Roseanne were tacitly agreed on a wedding, taking delight in skirting the subject, pretending withdrawal was still possible.
"Maybe I'll just keep you. That should be fun."
"It might be. But-two establishments, darling? I'm to expensive. You couldn't afford maintaining me in sin."
Claire had been delighted. Roseanne was a valley girl, rated invitations to the best homes, the most exclusive gatherings. Claire Bern had thought the match most suitable.
Luis Preil had said, "Was wondering if you'd ever fall again, boy, after the way Edith Dowling gave you the brush."
"What brought up Edith?" Tom had asked.
"Only remembering that you seemed to have it pretty bad with her-and took it pretty hard when you learned that la Edith was romping in the clover with other guys."
The discovery had been hard to take, all right, considering his condition at the time and the mystery of Edith's behavior. But shortly thereafter Lieutenant Donna Ran-some of the Nurse Corps had entered his life.
"It's pretty real between you and Roseanne?" Luis had asked.
"Yes. You'll be best man?" Something had gone wrong.
What? He still did not know. He had had to leave town on business. Roseanne's father had died. Roseanne's subsequent attitude had bewildered him. The change in her had touched her manner of living. She had acquired a fast sports car, a mink cape, new clothes. It had become difficult for Tom to see her. Dates had been broken with no explanation. She had seemed to be away from home a good deal. So she had thrust him out of her life.
The time had come when he had had to tell her about Laura. By then their affair had actually ceased to be.
She had spared him the necessity of saying much, had cut in before he was more than well started.
"I hope-sincerely-that you'll be very happy. You're a pretty nice guy. All my memories of you are pleasant.
We two just wouldn't have made it. You'll have a much better chance with someone else."
"There is going to be talk."
"Oh, of course. But not for long-and I've a suggestion. Don't ever tell your wife the full truth about me."
He had accepted that bit of advice. He had not told Laura.
* * *
He stopped at a telephone call box and dialed Mrs. Carter's number.
Laura came on the line. "She's resting fairly easily, Tom. The doctor was here earlier. He doesn't hold out a good deal of hope. I seem to comfort her just by being here. I feel I must stay as long as I can."
"Any idea of when you'll be home?"
"Probably not until late. Is that all right?"
It had to be.
Tom drove on, stopped at a familiar apartment building-old brick, grown shabby with the years. He felt oddly shabby himself, all newness gone from his life. What suddenly seemed to matter was the past-the present had become a gulf in time that separated him from Laura almost as completely as if he had never known her.
He consulted a tenant directory, then took the elevator to the third floor. The door of the apartment he sought was slightly ajar.
He knocked and Edith Dowling called, "It's open. Come on in."
He entered on a scene of cluttered confusion. Two opened suitcases rested on a sagging divan. Nearby stood a scarred steamer trunk, open also, into which Edith was stuffing an armful of her possessions. She started, stared at him.
"My God, I thought you were the man for my trunk," she said. "Well, come on in. Sit down somewhere-that chair. Don't mind the things on it."
The things appeared to be a tangled mass of net brassieres and panties. Tom remained standing.
"You're going away again?"
"I sure am. To Texas. Do you know Texas?"
"Not particularly." He had flown over it.
"The place I'm going to consists of about a thousand miles of emptiness. The wind blows constantly and my skin will be like leather in no time at all. But do you know something? I'm going to get down on my hands and knees and kiss the ground-and promise I'll take root there and never leave. I'm getting married again."
"Congratulations," Tom said.
She laughed. "There's a word I wouldn't have thought I'd ever be hearing from anybody here-particularly from you."
Edith paused, blowing upward at her damp forehead, tugging somewhat self-consciously at her halter. Below it she wore slacks. Her hair was piled high for coolness. Her shoulders and midriff were bare. Tom noticed again what a fine figure she still had. In this unguarded moment she seemed quite young. Even her eyes seemed much less hard than when he had last seen her at the club and on the street.
"This man I'm marrying is fiftyish, fat and pretty bald. He smells of a cow most of the time. That's his business--cattle. He's not one of the big-rich Texans, though. He called last night out of a clear sky-the biggest surprise I ever had-to say he was in Los Angeles and meant to take me home with him. I'm going to make him the best damned wife that ever was. This time it's for keeps. Another chance for little Edith, one I never thought I'd be getting. I'm going to keep it in mind every minute-" She stepped to a bureau, took a package of cigarettes from its top, suddenly frowning. "Tom, what are you doing here?"
He moved toward her, offered his lighter. Then he brought the mimeographed sheet from his pocket. "Edith, do you remember this?"
She took it from him, cigarette dangling from her lips. She studied the sheet, turned it over, abruptly slapped her forehead.
"I had completely forgotten. So long ago-and how awfully young we all were. Where in the world did it come from?"
He said, "Your name is on it and mine-but there were other kids involved, as I recall. Do you remember any of them?"
She was reading. "Where did we ever dig up some of this dirt? Can you remember? I was only about thirteen at the time-who remembers that far back? You and I were involved, all right. I think one of the Aldridge kids, too."
"Toddy?" Toddy Aldridge had died five or six years ago in an auto accident.
"Could have been," Edith answered indifferently, handing the sheet back to him. "Look, what's this all about your sudden sweat over something that happened so damned long ago?"
"It's important to me, Edith. Did Luis help us in putting this paper out?"
She turned away from him, moved to pick up the tangled under things from the chair. "Luis? It seems to me that we did the paper before he started tagging around after you. But I don't really know-or care."
Then, moving on to the open suitcases: "Today I'm closing the books on all I've been here. Should never have come back to this damned valley again after what it did to me-but now I'm glad I did. I'm going to have the pleasure of kissing it goodbye forever. And I don't want to do any remembering of anything. Don't bother shutting the door as you leave. Just beat it."
He shook his head. "You owe me something." She spun to face him angrily. "I can't imagine what it could be."
The urge in him was as simple as it had been years ago when he had his first affair with her-before Roseanne had taught him the refinements of love and Laura love itself. Whatever love meant. Just now it seemed to stand for questions for which he had no answers.
He no longer even knew whether he possessed Laura--legally or emotionally.
He said, "We both owe each other what we are today." He studied her, saw a quick, involuntary appraisal in her eyes, followed by a mixture of apprehension and understanding. "We started something once," he said. "We never finished it. Perhaps it wasn't much-maybe we were fumbling and awkward. But whatever it was-we never gave it a chance. Whatever we had still lies between us-like an unborn child."
Edith laughed harshly, unbelievingly. "Are you trying to tell me you're sorry you didn't get me pregnant? I notice you haven't managed to beget children by Laura."
"That's not what I mean. But you were first to start looking in others for whatever we hadn't discovered in each other. Have you found it?"
Her eyes were defiant. But they also held something else-regret? The barest trace?
"In my case I suppose you could call the answer to that a matter of public record. Have you counted my husbands, Tom? Recently? Don't include my Texan. He's still an unknown quantity."
"Is he, Edith?"
His eyes locked with hers. She looked away first, finally laughed shortly.
"Actually-I guess he isn't. We've had an-arrangement. We know each other pretty well." She raised her gaze back to his. Her eyes were suddenly softer. "How about you and Laura? Don't tell me she suddenly doesn't answer."
"I don't know," he said soberly and she seemed startled.
Once more she looked away. "I'll be damned," she breathed softly and to Tom it seemed she meant it-that she really would be damned or expected to be. "Would you lock that door, Tom?"
She still did not look at him as he went to the door and snapped the lock. But when he came back she was watching him.
"Is there anything I can do?" she asked. "I mean-I guess my Texan can wait a few hours. I've made you wait a longer time-if you still hope for answers from me." She asked with sudden bluntness, "Do you?"
"I don't know," he said again but she read correctly the desire stirring in his eyes.
She reached behind her for the catches of her halter. "I could help you there, Tom-help you at least to make up your mind. There've been so many others-why not you? Are you angry at Laura?"
"I think so," he said.
She laughed again shortly, softly. "That's a minor switch. Most men when they come to me know damned well-or say they do-that they're mad at their wives. That's how I caught at least three of my husbands. But you don't really know yet whether you're unhappy, do you? You just want to know if you can be happy. Well, here-"
He could not see her hands but her shoulders made a small gesture and the halter fell from her breasts, baring them. He was a little startled to realize that her tanned breasts were much like Laura's-a little fuller, more boldly thrusting but firmly conical. Her waist tapered below them with no sign of softness or flabbiness-whatever she had done had kept her body in shape.
She ran her hands down her sides, rested them on her slack-clad hips. "You're looking at high-priced merchandise, Tom," she said with another laugh. "Healthy and vigorous-it hasn't been easy to maintain."
He took off his jacket, moved toward her. He managed a smile easily. "You look good to me, Edith-"
He took her into his arms. Her kiss had a practiced heat-he remembered that always in the past she had been the volatile one. Quickly ignited-as though fires consumed her before he ever touched her, were only intensified by contact. Somehow he had never been wholly able to reach those flames to quench them and had thought that she had held enough of life's heat for them both.
Perhaps this was where he had failed her.
He grew quickly naked and the suitcases were cleared from the divan. And Edith Dowling's murmurous acceptance of him was much as he remembered, although maturity had ripened her need. He performed upon her as he had learned to do that long-ago night with Roseanne, a technique he had since applied to and perfected with Laura-and was at first surprised, then oddly excited to find her impatient.
Her hands had found him instantly, covered him with a quick, hot searching while he was still exploring the nuances the years had wrought in her. Years and other men in whom she evidently had found no more than she had in him. Abruptly the thought cheapened her in the places he touched-without lessening his need.
"I'm a quick study, Tom," she murmured. "Let's get with it. There just isn't as much of me as there is of some women-"
Her teeth were nipping at him, her fingernails beginning to gouge gently. He finally invaded her and it was less a merger of beings than a battle of entities for survival. The physical friction and cleaving were there, the gradual exhaustion of their two separate selves into cooperative action-but the action remained paramount, carried through their separate, explosive releases, which were perfectly timed but not mutual.
And Tom had his answer. Edith Dowling could never have been what he looked for in life. Perhaps no woman could-if he parted from Laura.
He left her quickly.
Edith said, lifting herself from the divan, "I should have been a whore-I do enjoy being used so." She looked up at him, eyes honest and a little tired. "I don't have to ask you what happened, do I?"
He shook his head. "No-and if you did I wouldn't tell you. But I hope you'll be very happy."
"With my Texan?"
"With your Texan. And you've helped me today."
"Thanks." She made a face. "That's how it always goes." She sighed. "But I think I will be happy-and you've helped me, too."
He felt a little awkward as he began to dress. She had asked him earlier to leave and had phrased the request with some urgency. Now he wanted to please her. She drew on panties and slacks, refastened the halter, lit a cigarette.
He felt a deep, curious tenderness as he kissed her goodbye.
"Now you know," she murmured. "It was always there-all we could ever have ... all I could ever give to any man. Luckily my Texan is not too demanding. Now leave me alone for good, Tom-and I'll give you another name to think about."
"Another name?"
"Roseanne Short," Edith Dowling said. "She helped us when we were putting out that silly kid newspaper."
12
SEVEN O'CLOCK came, then eight and nine of the evening of this intolerably long day. Laura had not come home.
He had telephoned her at eight.
Laura had said, "The doctor was here again and gave her something to make her sleep. She hasn't yet dozed off. I'll leave when she does. Did you go out for dinner?"
"No. Made a sort of meal from the refrigerator."
"That makes me feel terribly guilty-not being there to fix something for you."
She was making an effort to keep up appearances. So must he-until he knew some answers.
"When you get home we'll both go out for a bite," he said.
He prowled about the house. Its echoing emptiness matched that of his life. He was tired, lethargic-and no wonder. Edith Dowling played no childish games. He had a sense of his life slipping away in these lonesome hours.
Tom found himself thinking of the relationship between Laura and Mrs. Carter.
Laura had been doubtful when he first suggested hiring a domestic. "Tom, I've never had anybody wait on me in my whole life. I wouldn't know how to act with a servant."
"You'll soon learn, honey. And we need somebody. I have to give dinners for business reasons and appearances are important. And you'll have ladies dropping in during the afternoon-part of the same rat race. Make it easy for yourself."
Laura had given in. She had called several agencies and had hired Mrs. Carter-the first to apply. And Tom had soon become aware that his wife and Mrs. Carter were something more than mistress and servant. What, exactly? Tom considered this question now-and the startling possibility Laura might have wanted someone other than himself as confidante, perhaps as adviser. How much might Mrs. Carter know about Laura that he did not know?
The door chimes sounded. Luis Preil entered with Pauline Brasher on his arm, both in formal attire-on their way, Luis explained, to some affair in celebration of their forthcoming marriage.
"This is the real thing, boy. Polly has got me in a dead gallop, morning, noon and night."
She giggled, clinging to his arm. Tom made an effort to show interest. "Have you set a date?"
They had not. "I think she's having so much fun showing me off that she doesn't care when she ropes and throws me. We stopped by to consult with Laura a moment. You may not know it yet but the Berns are giving us a cocktail party soon."
"She isn't here, Luis."
He explained.
Luis said, "You mean to say she's over in that slum just because an old woman had a fainting spell?" His heat seemed surprising.
"It's her problem-and mine," Tom told him shortly.
Pauline Brasher demurely requested the use of the Bern bathroom. Tom escorted her to it, came back to discover Luis had gone into the den. Tom felt a touch of annoyance. He repressed it-now was a little late for him to be annoyed at Luis's treating the house as though it were his own ... and treating Laura as though he had some claim on her.
Luis said as Tom entered the den, "Have you heard anything from Richards?"
"No," Tom said.
"I called him today. Sounded like he had a hangover. I couldn't get much out of him."
"Luis, I appreciate your efforts-but wish you would now lay off and let me handle Richards. There's an old axiom in business that if you act too hungry for a deal you're sure to lose it."
"Okay, if that's what you want."
Tom crossed to the street window and looked out, hoping Laura's car would sweep up the driveway.
Luis muttered behind him, "The old trout is showing me off like I was a stud bull with a ring through my nose."
"Speaking of rings, I didn't notice your fiancee wearing one."
"Difference of opinion between us. I want her to wear my mother's ring-matter of sentiment. Polly is holding out for something new and expensive. I'll probably end up giving in to her. Want Polly to have the best." He chuckled. "Especially after the way she has been so accommodating to me."
Tom Bern looked around at him. The crassness of the revelation that the girl had acquiesced to being bedded seemed startling, even from Luis. Luis changed expression at Tom's frown.
"What's wrong with that?" he demanded. "It's a general enough practice nowadays-and I'm damned well going to marry the girl. It's not the way it was with you and Roseanne."
Tom Bern faced him. "Luis, damn you. What you do is one thing. What you broadcast to the world is another."
"Not to the world, chum. You're my friend-or are you?" Luis went to the bar, poured himself a drink, swallowed it, looked off in the direction his fiancee had gone. "Women. What's keeping her?"
Tom studied him. Tom had never confided in Luis or anyone the details of his affair with Roseanne. There had been conjecture at the club, of course, but on a civilized level. Luis just now had been specific:-and the only way Luis could have found out intimate facts would have been from Roseanne herself. But that did not seem to figure. It was more plausible that Luis was guessing.
Luis said, "Damn it, don't look at me like that. Listen, are you and Laura in some kind of trouble? That talk at the club is dying down. Is it something money can help--the assessment you've got to pay, maybe?"
"How did you know about the assessment?"
"Laura told me."
But the tax notice had been mailed to his office. Laura did not know about it. Or at least, so Tom had assumed-he was reaching the point where he was not sure of anything.
"Write a check and pay the thing off," Luis said. "Charge it to my account. I've told you not to let yourself get into a financial bind with my dough there to pull you out."
"No, Luis," Tom said.
"Why not? You've bitten off a big chunk with this house and the way you live-and Laura deserves it. But you're also carrying Claire and Randall on your back, if it's putting you in a hole-"
"No," Tom said.
Pauline Brasher reappeared, smoothing down her skirt, make-up refurbished, a bright sparkle in her eyes--something of condescension in her glance at Tom Bern. She wore Luis's wealth rather loudly-to her Tom would be Luis's underling.
She took Luis's arm with a show of possessiveness and shortly took him away.
* * *
Laura called again at ten. "I just haven't been able to get away-but think I can leave soon now."
She sounded tired. Tom reached a sudden decision, went out and drove to Roseanne Short's house.
He'd stopped there on his way home from Edith Dowling's. Roseanne had been out, her house locked, the Thunderbird gone.
He had meant to give her the money she had asked for-perhaps ask her about the days when she had helped put out that kid newspaper. Strange that he had not remembered her in connection with the paper. But it was still a long and random shot that she would know anything about the missing old typewriter-or that the machine had anything to do with the poison-pen notes.
He passed the old Bern house. Lights showed on the lower floor. Randall's car was in the driveway. Perhaps he was serving in his passive manner as a sounding board for Claire's outrage at what had happened today. Tom tried to visualize the scene, then shut his mind to it wearily. Randall, he recalled, was up to something that would probably cost Tom money. He did not want to think of Randall tonight.
Then he was making the run down the hill into the arroyo and saw that there were lights at Roseanne's front windows, behind drawn shades. He reached the house, stepped from his car-and stopped dead.
The front door had opened. Light spilled onto the porch. Roseanne said something. A male voice responded. She spoke again, her tones nervous and strained.
The man came out to the porch, stepped a little to one side of the open door. Roseanne stood inside, clearly visible, no more than twenty feet away, light behind her.
She wore what appeared to be a blue negligee, nothing more. It was wholly open. Exposed were all the remembered curvings and hollowings of her body, a display of nudity seemingly accidental. But Tom Bern realized instantly it was not-something in Roseanne's posture said eloquently otherwise.
"-the last time, I tell you-" Roseanne was saying.
The man laughed. "I've heard that before. You'll still be around. I'll stop by Tuesday night."
"I won't be here."
"Sure. Your T-bird's in my shop."
"You can keep it."
"It'll be ready the first of the week. You'll owe me something for the repairs. And you'll see me again on Tuesday."
Tom heard a crunch of footsteps. The man was coming toward the road.
Still in the doorway, her body marbled by the flow of light about her, Roseanne said again, "I won't be here."
Tom started forward. "Just a minute, you."
The man stopped, swung toward him. Light revealed his face-Euel McGrath, he of the messy marital affairs, the man who had been with Roseanne the night of the dance.
Roseanne said, "Tom-" Her voice held a sick sound.
McGrath peered at him. "Oh. Bern." He laughed. "Didn't know you were on her list, too. She must have got her appointments mixed up tonight."
Tom was tight inside. His nerves were quivering. He felt close to nausea.
McGrath said, "If she conned you into thinking you were the only guy in her life, don't get griped at me. Go take it out on her. And I'll be a gentleman. I won't say anything about the others that have come calling here."
He started to walk on. Tom reached out to grip his arm.
"Not so fast."
The ugly truth here seemed plain enough but he wanted all of it.
Roseanne said, "Tom, please don't-
He looked toward her. She still was in the doorway but out of sight.
McGrath threw a punch.
It caught the left side of Tom's face. Knuckles skidded across his ear and cheek, shredding skin. The force of the blow drove him sideways and down to one knee.
Tom came up again instantly. He sank his left fist into McGrath's stomach and hooked a right into the face. He clamped a hand on McGrath's shoulder and punched savagely again, finding momentary release in the explosive action from the oddly tormenting thing his life had become.
McGrath sagged down, scrambled up unsteadily and backed off, blood pouring from his nose over his mouth and chin.
"What in hell is with you, anyway?" he said querulously. "I paid for all I ever got from her-and it's been plenty."
He turned and stumbled away. A motor caught, car fights flashed on at a distance from the house along the road, moved away.
The front door was closed. Tom went to it. He knocked and rattled the knob.
"Roseanne?"
From within came her haunted whisper, "Go away-go away!"
* * *
A purpling bruise showed on Tom's cheek. His ear had been ripped and bled as though it would never stop. He bent over the bathroom basin, bloodied several towels and finally managed to check the flow.
Perhaps a great deal had been cleared up tonight that had puzzled him in the past, he thought. Roseanne had probably gone through her father's estate more quickly than anyone had supposed. Perhaps the estate had never been as great as everyone had supposed. Roseanne's sudden unavailabUity to him, her frequent trips away were suddenly explained-she had been trading on her principal assets, her voluptuous beauty and the life she had learned in Paris.
Tom would not have seemed enough for her compared to what other men elsewhere had had to offer. Until at last she had been reduced to selling herself here, right in the valley, to men like McGrath-and to asking Tom for five hundred dollars to flee an inevitable scandal.
That she meant to use the money to leave the area Tom never doubted. She had fully intended to start a new life when he had last seen-and made love to her.
What had brought McGrath here tonight had probably been some unexpected trouble with the Thunderbird.
A small thing for which she had had to pay so large a price.
Tom would have to go back to see her again. He had not left her the five hundred. He had not asked her about the old typewriter-and now he had some new questions he wanted to ask about herself.
Laura came in at eleven-thirty. She looked tired. Her features were pale, her eyes dark-hollowed.
She said, "Not much change. I'm going back tomorrow-" She stared at his bruised cheek, the band-aid affixed to his ear. "Tom, what happened to you?"
He was fumbling for a he when the door chimes sounded. He went to investigate, thankful for the interruption, came back moments later. "It's the police. I have to go with them."
"The police?"
Tom said, "Roseanne Short has tried to commit suicide. She cut her wrists."
As it turned out, the policeman they sent for him had been misinformed. Roseanne had not tried to cut her wrists-but her throat.
13
SUNDAY morning. He made coffee and drank it standing at the breakfast bar. He had slept about an hour on the divan in the den. Laura had not denied him the bed but he had returned after two and he had not wanted to disturb her sleep. Or so he told himself.
She appeared now, wearing a blue dress, dark pumps, nylons. A small white hat nested in her hair. "Mrs. Carter's daughter-in-law just called. She didn't have a good night, is asking for me. I'm going to stop at some church-"
To pray for the woman to whom she was going, he wondered, or for her marriage?
"I suppose you'll be gone the whole day again?"
"I'm afraid so." She gave him a level look. "Why did the police want you last night in connection with Roseanne?"
"They found my name on her telephone pad. She had wanted me to get her some money."
He told her as much as he could without revealing what he had learned-or thought he had-of Roseanne's private life. And without incriminating himself in Laura's eyes. Memory was a cruel goad. As he spoke he remembered Roseanne in a white hospital bed, bandages swathing her throat, head tormentedly turning from side to side, her voice a rasping croak.
I didn't want you ever to know what I had become ... wanted to die....
He had been allowed only a moment beside her bed. Later he had listened to the official verdict from several presumably knowing persons.
She'll recover. Fortunately, a miss of the carotid-some damage to the larynx, but repairable. There'll be a scar ... however, it should fade in time. At the moment, only a replacing of the blood she lost ... good-looking woman ... wonder what reason she could have had for doing such a thing....
"Poor woman," Laura had murmured.
She looked again at his bruises. He had not yet explained them, nor did he offer to do so now. Nor did she ask. He could only guess at the thoughts behind the fleeting look of speculation in her eyes. Did she tie in his bruises with the police visit last night-or had she accepted his explanation at face value?
Did either of them believe any more what the other said? Or had they entered some silent world of wonder and suspicion? And of what did she suspect him? Where had he given himself away?
"Will you be seeing her again today?" Laura asked.
"I don't think so."
He had another errand today-another secret to be kept from Laura.
Laura started to leave, hesitated and came to brush her lips against his. Then she was gone. She almost ran out of the house and to her car.
He showered, shaved and dressed. He chose a medium-weight gray sharkskin from his closet rack. The day here was hot but it might be cool where he was going. And after today, Tom thought heavily, much of what had happened last night might cease to have any meaning a all.
He mentally reviewed the previous night, glad he had not had the chance to lie to Laura about last night. The truth might yet reach her ears-and whatever effect it might have he would be spared the additional embarrassment of explaining a lie.
A brusque young sergeant had been in charge of Roseanne's house. Tom had learned first of all that the reason Roseanne had not died was that nosy neighbor she had once worried about-Mrs. Strack.
Mrs. Strack, watching through a window, had seen the encounter between Tom Bern and Euel McGrath. She had gone out to her porch, witnessed Tom's attempt to talk to Roseanne and his departure. She had seen Roseanne-moments later-stumble through her front door and fall. Mrs. Strack had gone to investigate, had called the police from Roseanne's phone.
The sergeant had told Tom, "We're wondering why Miss Short came back out. Did she think you might still be waiting? You don't deny that you were the one who hammered on her door and then went away?"
"No."
"Mrs. Strack recognized you, of course. She said you've called on Miss Short before-several times during the past few days. Seems you're rather well known around here. But she did not recognize the man with whom you traded punches. Who was he?"
"No comment."
"Mr. Bern, you're not going to appear in a very good light if we don't have your full cooperation. There are reporters waiting for the story."
That was the point, Tom had thought. If McGrath's name appeared in print, so would other sordid details of Roseanne's life.
"We found a note, Mr. Bern."
The note had been more than the telephone-pad notation Tom had mentioned to Laura.
Dear Tom-I didn't want you ever to know what I had become, hoped you would never find out, can't live with it now...
"What was she referring to, Mr. Bern."
"No comment."
"Will you tell me, then, why you called on her those several times during the past few days that Mrs. Strack told us about?"
He had hesitated before mentioning the money Roseanne had asked for. The sergeant had been patient.
"Five hundred dollars? We found a number of overdue bills. They total about five hundred-"
"I don't know anything about them. She said she wanted the money to go away. In any event-I challenge your right to go through her things."
"Suicide is an act against the law. Also the bills were in plain sight on the sideboard. You said you made several attempts to deliver that money to Miss Short?"
"One attempt prior to tonight. She was not at home. I don't know where she was."
"I can enlighten you. She was picked up last night when she crashed her car into a fight standard on a public street. She was DWI-but was released late this afternoon on her own recognizance as a property holder of record, with a summons to appear in court next Wednesday."
The damaged car explained McGrath's appearance at her house. Tom remembered that she had told McGrath to keep it. She must have been planning to leave the drunk-driving charge behind her-along with the unpaid bills-and run as soon as Tom gave her the money. He recalled her earlier talk of freedom.
"Mrs. Strack has told us she has had numerous male visitors at night," the sergeant had gone on, "and that you and Miss Short were once engaged to be married."
The police were probably working on a theory that he had resumed his affair with Roseanne, that she had been cheating on him-that he had brought the money to pay those bills, had discovered the poacher here, slugged him, and Roseanne, in fearful reaction, had slashed her throat.
So be it. Let them think anything they pleased.
* * *
This time he flew to Reno. Again he had time to think on the plane, to anticipate with foreboding what he would learn on this trip, to consider again the tangle his life had become-a mess he was compounding.
He found himself shying away from the events since Claire had shown him the first letter about Laura. He had been backtracking not only Laura but himself-curiously without conscience, until now he wondered if he had ever had any. Was conscience merely an acceptance of convention-with penalties attached if one broke the rules?
He found himself reliving the days and weeks he had spent with Donna Ransome, after his accident injury during Marine training exercises.
He had been on maneuvers in the Orient and had been brought to the hospital at Sasebo.
* * *
Those first days he was in considerable pain, not caring about anything. He was aware of an offensively cheerful female nurse who outrageously violated his privacy.
He had recently heard from Luis Preil about Edith Dowling. Following fairly open affairs with several different men, Luis reported, she had eloped to Yuma with somebody of whom Tom Bern had never heard.
On a day when the nurse bent over him, rubbing his back, he reached out to investigate under the skirt of her immaculate white uniform. She evaded him deftly.
"As you were, Lieutenant."
It was said with a laugh. She probably had to cope with many roving hands. But something in her manner, her glance, made him anticipate impatiently the time when he would be up and around again.
He could not later recall the affair in sequence, step by step. There was a night in a dark hospital corridor. Harbor water gleamed outside, spattered with lights-a flattop and its escort. He was ambulatory then but still in pajamas and bathrobe. His lips pressed hard against hers. His palms tingled to the feel of a woman's body again after long continence. He would later remember Donna Ransome's startled, unsteady laughter.
Not approved therapy, Lieutenant, but morale-building nevertheless, I suppose...
Their first kiss. Then they would neck by night when and where they could, straining against each other, offering the wordless murmurings of lovers-until she managed to procure a key to a private examination room where they could meet.
They took hair-raising chances. Donna would often stand by a door, slip clutched against her body, listening to the measured tread of a passing guard. Both of them would be breathless in the knowledge of what disaster would result if they were discovered. But their passions were the more frenzied because of the dangers.
His status became convalescent. He had a considerable backlog of pay and leave due him. Donna had leave due also. They left the hospital, roamed Japan, gravely absorbed in its beauty, deeply absorbed in each other, a tall Marine, a vividly pretty woman in Navy blue.
By then he knew she came from a small town in Iowa, had trained at Cook County hospital in Chicago, had entered the Navy after being capped. A junior grade lieutenant, she was his senior in age by several years. A husband was in her past, a Navy carrier pilot who had died when his plane failed on a takeoff. Other men had been in her past also.
A few memories would always remain available to him, he knew even then.
Tom-a uniform skirt just isn't right for all this sitting on the floor. I don't mind the leg display-I've got darned good legs. It's just so uncomfortable...
You need a kimona. I'll get you one...
And he did, a gaudy thing of crimson and gold. The next morning he saw her at their hotel, half in it, half out of the garment. The sun was bright on its barbaric splendor and the velvety snowiness of her body. The Sea of Japan, dark-blue and glittering, filled the background. The moment had been breath-stopping.
Later she stood chin-deep in steaming water at the giant public bath at Onagawa, laughing.
Who said Oriental gentlemen aren't interested in naked American ladies? I feel like a slice of Swiss cheese-the holes that have been stared in me...
Her skin was very white, flawed only by a scattering of shoulder moles, a darkening of body hair. Her breasts were rather small but quite firm-pert, impudent, Tom thought, in keeping with her slimness, her manner.
She made love with practiced ease, intense and adept at its pleasures. Their lovemaking often came as an anticlimax to their continuous enjoyment of each other, as often as it had happened. A twining of legs, the pressure of her against him, her voice keening ecstatically.
She was older than he and accepted him, he felt, into some stream of experience he could never quite catch up with. There was something both solid and elusive about her, the firm tone of her quick muscles, the athletic resiliency that reached beyond her movements in passion-was part of the passion itself. Her emotions ran deep and real and she never confused him with any of the men in her past when his flesh was joined to hers. He was always Tom and she used his name in her cries of pleasure and satisfaction.
He never had to strive to surprise her-to her he was always new. But often as he lay spent in her arms, their bodies still throbbing in unison, he wondered what she was to him.
He tried once to make the simple act of sex serious for them both. He experimented with oral erotics which had taken in all of her. She submitted at first-then joined him, offering all her body orifices for his exploration and exploring him similarly with an unfeigned and consuming passion that startled him and ultimately spent them both. She served him with her mouth, her breath, her teeth and tongue until they both entered a world where sex lost all basic meaning, became impure ecstasy-and when they returned to earth he was a little sad.
And more exhausted than he ever had been in his life.
She was as drained.
That was once, Tom...
He knew she meant: Never again...
He began presently to talk of the future.
Why, I rather think I shall marry again, some day, Tom-but a good man will be required...
I hope I meet your qualifications....
Oh, eminently. You're what every girl dreams of, darling-the Ail-American boy grown tall....
The appraisal did not greatly please him.
It's not a wisecrack, Tom. You're good at games, big, strong, kind, considerate-a little too self-centered, maybe, but who would want you perfect? I don't think you've ever had a really bad jolt in your life-but when one comes perhaps you'll be able to stand up to it....
He did not press for a definite answer from her. He was content with the pleasant flow of the days, content to wait for their return to Sasebo.
There they discovered Donna had acquired a second bar, her full lieutenancy, to be suitably celebrated.
About five or six years more and I might be wearing a gold leaf-lieutenant commander. Think of it....
You'll be out of the Navy long before then...
We'll see, darling....
His orders came shortly thereafter. Donna came to see him off at the airfield, bringing a present, a heavy white silk scarf with his monogram in black. He had a gold locket on a fragile chain for her.
I'll write you. And as soon as I'm settled....
Yes, Tom. But let's not be in any great hurry. I haven't told you-there's a chance I might get some sea duty, a hospital ship. I'd rather like to try it for a while. I'd hate to say later I was in the Navy and never got my feet wet....
She kissed him quickly, stepped back with her bright smile, turned and walked briskly away.
* * *
He had sent her a card from Honolulu, a letter from San Francisco. Donna's reply had come a month later from Manila, where she had gone to join her ship. Over the next year they exchanged messages that were more and more widely separated. He could not remember who had written last.
Tom did not know what had become of the monogrammed scarf. Did she still have the locket?
Not love but its lovely counterfeit was what there had been between them, he told himself.
And which of his loves had been real? Had he known nothing but love's counterfeit with them all-including Laura?
I don't think you've ever had a really bad jolt in your life-but when one comes perhaps you'll be able to stand up to it....
Donna had said that. Had he finally received his jolt-and was he standing up to it?
It was past noon when he entered the bus at the municipal airport in Reno and after one when he reached the courthouse.
There, as he had hoped, at least one office was open, catering to the eager Californians who could not wait for the three days demanded by that state-the marriage-license bureau.
He made inquiry, using approximate dates he had gleaned by deduction from his conversations with Morris Lom and Herbie Day. An obliging clerk presently came up with what Tom Bern had feared he would find. A license had been issued in a town on the state line by a justice of the peace who had also performed the ceremony uniting Herbert Day and Laura Cotter in marriage.
He had his answer to the question he had locked his mind against when he had spoken to Herbie Day.
Laura had two living husbands. She was guilty of bigamy.
14
TOM walked out into the brilliant sunshine of the high Nevada desert. The discovery of the marriage made perhaps more bearable the circumstance of Laura's having yielded herself to the man on the night in the motel cabin before the accident-but only slightly.
Why had she deceived him? Why had she never mentioned a former husband-living or dead? And was it reasonable to suppose she would have accepted Nathan Lom's assurance that Day was dead without making further inquiry? Laura-to whom people mattered?
The blow of the actual discovery was not as shattering as he might have imagined it. Finding out the truth in impersonal black and white was easier than if it had come out in his conversation with Herbie Day.
Perhaps some instinct of self-preservation had kept him from putting the direct question to Day. He knew he had dreaded doing so-and might have killed the man for telling him the truth.
He felt oddly isolated, alone with his problem. The analyst in him-the properties consultant-made him want to delve deeper into causes, come up with more answers before he reached any ultimate conclusions. Why had Laura married Day? What about the sister Laura had never mentioned?
Tom taxied to the hotel where Day and Laura had worked as a dancing team. He found himself in a dimly lit supper-club room where an orchestra blared dissonantly.
Its leader paused reluctantly to listen, then shook his head.
"I've only been here a year-don't know anything about who might have been around before then. And hoofers? They come and go. Never heard of the pair you're talking about."
"Can you tell me of anyone who might have known them?"
"Oh, hell. Let's see. You might try the main bar, a guy named Marty. They say he knows everybody. But if you draw a blank-don't come back to me. I'm busy."
Marty proved to be a white-haired, crag-faced bartender.
Tom ordered a double whiskey. "And have something for yourself."
Marty smiled. "Never touch the stuff. I'll have a cigar instead-if, that is, what you're after isn't worth more."
At Tom's next words he opened a box of Uppmanns and selected one.
"What I know is worth about this much. She was a doll-looks, class, always a nice hello. Day? A cheap angle-shooter, tail-chaser; couldn't ever figure how they happened to team up. He got hurt, tallied out, I heard, but maybe not. And she drew that jolt at Carson-"
"Come again?" Tom said. This was new and unexpected. He thought of Dusty Kruger and cursed himself.
"The stir," Marty said. "The state pen at Carson City. It's where they put her away. What for?" He frowned heavily, shook his head. "Can't remember. I was out of the state for a while-had a little alimony trouble-and that might have been when it happened. Seems I recall talk later about her being out-but the talk could have been wrong."
Tom took it numbly.
Marty polished his mahogany counter. "Tell you somebody who could have the answers-Babe Shelton. She runs a hotel near here. Yeah, you go ask Babe Shelton."
* * *
An ordinary street doorway with the sign hotel over it identified the place. Tom climbed stairs to the second floor and halted. He looked around, saw no desk or clerk.
A woman's voice called, "In here."
He followed the sound to the right of the stairwell, saw an open door and a woman beyond it. She sat in a big armchair and was grossly fat, had hennaed hair, wore a wealth of clanking costume jewelry.
She said, "No vacancies, honey, if that's why you're here."
"You're Miss Shelton?"
She laughed, with an ample quivering. "Babe to everybody. I stopped being a miss when I was fourteen, six husbands ago. What's your problem?"
Tom Bern asked his questions again-with an effort.
The woman squinted shrewdly at him, eyes almost hidden by folds of flesh. "So right away I'm curious. Why are you asking? But not very curious. I get lonely up here-don't mind a visitor and a chance to gab. Sure, I knew Laura. She stayed with me here, several times. And she had to do a stretch at Carson, all right, a five and ten."
Tom said, "I beg your pardon?"
"Five to ten years. Pleaded guilty but it didn't help any. Half a dozen charges in all against her were cut to one and she drew the jolt on that. It could have been worse if they had thrown all those charges at her. Doing time in Carson is real rough. You know anything about that place? Well, it's pure hell for a woman, never more than four or five of them at a time, down there, none the kind a girl like Laura would choose for company. I paid her a visit when she was about six months in-the only one who ever did. Her hair was like hemp, her nails all-broken off and she had picked up a dozen pounds from the starchy food. Poor kid, she would have been ruined for sure if she'd had to serve her full sentence."
"What happened?"
Babe Shelton said, "Laura was pardoned. Another prisoner-a Piute woman-got hold of a knife, jumped a matron, laid her out and started to slice. Laura hauled the Piute off, a pretty brave stunt. That Indian was as big as a horse. It made talk for a couple of days and we had a governor who didn't mind cashing in on that. She had served thirteen months and three days when they let her walk out free-and I'd bet every dime I own it was time served for something she didn't do."
Babe Shelton fitted a cigarette into a long black holder. "Came here when they turned her loose, just passing through, she said, and wanted to thank me for that visit. I should have gone more than the once but am too damned fat to get around much. I told her she was going to stay with me for a while, fix herself up, put together a stake. I gave her a job chambermaiding. Laura stuck it out for five or six weeks, didn't tell me her next move when she left. But I could guess-she was going to look for her sister."
Tom supplied a light. "You knew Ellie, too?"
"Right. She stayed here, too, for a while. She was younger than Laura, looked a lot like her. Not like Laura other ways, though-a guy got her into his room one night without having to try very hard, then yelled bloody murder when she clipped him for a hundred bucks. I made her give it back and read her the riot act. I never let Laura know. Ellie moved out."
"Do you know if Laura found her again?"
"Nope. Never heard from Laura after she went away. Never heard anything about Ellie, either. You interested, too, in Herbie Day? All I can tell you is that he was a heel."
Tom debated with himself. Then: "Did you know that Laura married him the day before he was hurt?"
"Sure. Not that Laura ever mentioned it. But me, I make it my business to find out what goes on."
Tom suddenly wondered why Day himself had kept so quiet about the marriage to Laura, why he had not told Nathan Lom.
The woman frowned. "It didn't seem to figure, that marriage-though I learned a long time ago there's no telling what a woman might do. You should have known some of my husbands. But I've come since to see a possible reason. Laura and Herbie pulled out after Ellie. Then came news of his accident-next, Laura was back in Reno and had surrendered to the police."
Tom asked, "What was the charge at that trial?"
"Why, that she had worked a badger game-along with a crud named Barney Merz who was never caught--and maybe some other guy a time or two. You know what that racket is?"
"I've heard of it," Tom said.
Babe Shelton said, "I'll hand you something extra. You're not the only one who's been around asking for information. There was another guy-don't remember just when but not long ago. He didn't come to me-talked to one of my maids. Not about Laura. The one that interested him was Herbie Day. Some kind of private dick, I thought at the time-but I must have been wrong. Who in hell would pay good money to find out about Herbie?"
Tom did not know. He felt as though he were standing in the path of an avalanche with nowhere to run.
* * *
Tom Bern wheeled in at his own driveway at a little after three-tlnrty. Laura's Chewy was not in the carport.
He groped his way into the dark house through the kitchen, crossed the dining room and started toward the bedroom wing. He wanted to get out of his clothes, have a shower, a drink, put his thoughts in order.
He stopped. A strong odor of tobacco smoke came from the direction of the den.
Tom went there. He snapped on the lights.
The room was blue with smoke. Laura, on the divan, leaned to add a cigarette to a tray clogged with them. She wore tan slacks and a short gray jacket, a white blouse-and judging from the smoke had been sitting here for some time. Her features were chalky. Her eyes were blurred and red, her cheeks tear-streaked. She had been crying.
The desk drawer he had left locked was open. The items he had consigned to it were arranged on the desk top-the two letters, the photograph of Laura and Herbie Day, the receipt for the fifty dollars he had left for Day's use.
He spoke, with a harshness he was far from feeling, because of his raw throat: "You had no business prying in my desk."
"No." It came as a ragged whisper. "And what business did you have prying into my past?"
He moved on into the room slowly. He paused at the desk, looking down at the items there.
Laura stood up. "The first thing I saw was that slip of paper that told me Herbie is still alive. Tom, where have you been today? What else did you discover about me?"
The tension in him was such that he felt one slight additional pressure might crack him wide open.
"I've been to Reno. I talked to Babe Shelton."
She closed her eyes, swayed a little. He started around one end of the desk toward her. But Laura opened her eyes again; she put out her hand toward him, defensively, palm forward.
He stopped. "Laura, I had to know the truth."
"Of course. You were living with a woman whose past could destroy you. It was right you should learn what that past was."
"Well, I've found out."
She showed a strained grimace. "That I've never been your wife-and never can be." She began to move slowly away from him, trying to get the desk between them. "Lies make other lies, you must be thinking. You know, of course, that I told you one just last Friday-a stupid, senseless, frightened lie-that I was at the Brogdons'. "
"Why did you?"
She shook her head. "I've fouled up your life enough already. I won't add to it by saying anything more."
He said, "I've gone a little off the deep end myself. Maybe we can trade secrets."
"No, Tom. Why should you trade anything?" She started to move again. "There is only one way out of this, one thing that must be done. I must do it-"
She broke suddenly for the door. He went after her. His thigh caught a sharp corner of the desk and was painfully gouged. Then she was fleeing before him toward the entry. The front door slammed in his face as he reached it.
He wrenched it open. "Laura, for God's sake-" She did not pause or look back. She had left her car against the curb a little distance away. Its motor caught with a roar. Headlights glared. The Chevrolet flashed past while he was still in the doorway. Another car suddenly appeared close behind her.
Tom turned back into the house. He closed the front door and put his back against it. The silence beat at him like clashing cymbals.
15
THE INSISTENT jangling of the phone dragged him out of deep torpor. He stirred, discovered himself sprawled across the big bed in his and Laura's bedroom. Sunlight slanted into the room-he blinked at a bedside clock and saw the hour was past eleven. He had had a few drinks last night after more than a thousand miles of flying and a showdown scene with Laura. What he had endured during the past few hours had been coma rather than sleep-a transient and curiously transparent state of unconsciousness through which dreams he could not remember had intruded.
He lunged at the phone.
"Laura?"
But his caller was Miss Mogridge.
"This is the third time I've tried to reach you, Mr. Bern. Mrs. Hedges was here at nine o'clock. She left a few minutes ago. She said that if she does not hear from you by three this afternoon she will withdraw her account."
Tom rubbed his face. "I see. Anything else?"
"The garage called to say that your car is ready."
"All right, Miss Mogridge. I'll try to get in as soon as possible."
He lifted himself from the bed, saw that Laura's closet door was open, showing neatly racked dresses. Her mink stole was in its plastic bag. It had come out of summer storage only last week.
Tom crossed to her bureau. He pulled open drawers. Their contents seemed, as far as he could tell, intact. A glimpse through an open door of the dressing room showed him Laura's robe thrown over a chair. Her fluffy mules were on the floor. She had brought very little with her into their marriage. She had taken as little away.
Pain touched him. He found it almost welcome after the emotional vacuum that had characterized their relationship during the past days.
He splashed water on his face, had a glimpse of himself in a mirror. The bruise left by Euel McGrath's fist was fading. He stripped and showered, shaved, chose fresh linen and another suit.
He could not face breakfast at home, drove to the club. He ordered ham and eggs, a double shot of bourbon to precede the food. He chewed mechanically, with no sense of taste. He was puzzled by the agonizing loneliness he felt-since he was not at all sure he wanted Laura back. Or exactly what he wanted.
Monday was ladies' day and Luis was usually around. But the bartender had not seen him today-or Pauline Brasher.
A man came in, started toward the bar, saw Tom and changed direction. He was Evan Richards, the oil man. Unbidden, he pulled out a chair and sat down.
"See here, Bern, I want a word with you." The hectoring note in his voice touched Tom like a goad but he held still. "It's about all the talk-not only concerning you and the Short woman, which is bad enough-but there's also the talk concerning your wife and that's a hell of a lot more serious."
Tom noticed his cousin, Bruce Aldridge, had also come in.
"Come to your point, Mr. Richards."
"I must confess I was favorably impressed by you," Richards continued. "I discounted Preil's praise-he's your best friend and a good word was to be expected of him. I asked around about you, downtown-standard procedure on my part when I'm thinking of throwing important business to a man. The reports were good. I was prepared to deal with you. Then this other thing came up-"
Tom ordered another bourbon.
"A good reputation in business is absolutely mandatory," Richards said pontifically. "That includes the reputation of a man's wife. Our association, if it came about, would of necessity be a close one, with social as well as business contacts. And I have my own wife to think of, her sensibilities-"
Richards' young wife appeared as if on cue at the bar's foyer door. She waited for him there, tailored white shorts effectively displaying her tapered legs.
Tom eyed her. "Let me see if I understand correctly. You're still willing to give me your account."
"Perhaps. Subject to certain conditions."
"Which are?"
The man slapped the table. "I've just told you. Clear up the rumors."
Tom studied him with distaste. "My business and my personal life must stand on what they are."
"Are you saying that the gossip is true?"
"You heard what I said. Go away, Richards."
The man shoved back his chair. "You're damned right I'll go."
He paused. Tom had glanced again toward the sleek young woman in the doorway. She was as eye-stopping as Laura in shorts.
Richards' manner altered abruptly. Perhaps he was taking sudden thought of his own possible vulnerability to gossip-with his string of marriages behind him and the long-legged blonde at his entertainment suite downtown that Luis had mentioned.
Whatever the reason, Richards moistened his lips and said suddenly, "No need to fly off the handle. Maybe we can talk again later when things are-ah-more settled."
He moved to his wife, took her arm and ushered her out. Tom rose to leave, also.
Bruce Aldridge intercepted him. "I've got to talk to you, Tom."
"I'm in a hurry, Bruce."
"This will take only a moment. It's about a letter I received this morning."
Tom Bern stopped. "Typed in capitals, not signed?"
Bruce Aldridge's mouth tightened. "Have there been others?"
"Yes. I'm sorry you had to get one, Bruce."
"Tom, I want you to know I burned the thing immediately after reading it." An unexpected compassion showed in his cousin's manner. "I felt it was mandatory, so there would be no danger of anyone else's ever seeing it. You and I-well, we've never gotten along and it's too late to do anything about that. But such a vicious act--have you any idea of who is writing them?"
"No." And it did not seem likely, he thought, that the letters would continue.
"I happened to notice something that might help. The one I received was postmarked at the substation here yesterday."
So perhaps the sender was here in the valley-if that, too, mattered any longer.
* * *
Luis Preil's place was on his way back from the club. Tom made an unscheduled stop. He had nothing really to say to Luis. Still, Luis might have heard from Laura and, no matter how chaotic his present attitude toward Laura, he would like to know something of her plans.
Luis was not at home. A caretaker, a pallid-featured, pinch-mouthed little man, peered at him at the door.
"Mr. Preil is gone. He left a message for you I meant to deliver later while doing the marketing."
The man handed over an envelope addressed in an unfamiliar hand to Tom and Laura Bern. Tom ripped it open.
Polly and I decided not to wait. Gone to Vegas to get married. Wish us luck. See you when we get back which won't be soon.
Tom asked, "When did they leave?"
"Last night. Mr. Preil went out about twelve, came back with Miss Brasher. He was quite excited. They drove away around two."
Tom asked, "Was Mrs. Bern here yesterday-or last night."
"No, sir."
Tom drove back home. He wanted Mrs. Carter's address. He meant to stop only long enough to memorize it.
Then he heard his name called as he left his carport. Randall was coming toward him.
Tom stopped, inwardly bracing himself. Sight of his brother was a reminder of something that had not altered-Claire's and Randall's dependence on him.
Randall said, "I'm glad I caught you. Tried you at the office and the club. Something I must tell you."
"Ran, I'm in a great hurry-"
"This is my busy day also," Randall told him. "I'll try not to hold you any longer than necessary. Tom, you're not to send us any more money."
He was fussily neat, in a suit he had pressed himself, a shirt he had laundered and ironed himself.
Tom said, "You know that's a very foolish message for Claire to send me. Go back and tell her I refuse even to discuss the matter."
"It isn't Claire's decision," Randall said. "It's mine. We're selling the house. I should have forced that issue years ago, too-we could have gotten a better price. But a woman came around recently who would like it for a boardinghouse. I looked her up yesterday and she is still interested. I can get fourteen thousand from her."
"I've advised selling often enough, as you know," Tom said. He wanted to kick Randall up a tree. He was in no mood for added emotional problems and even good sense from Randall had to be gibberish. "And that price seems right. But in view of some things Claire has told me recently there is the danger-I hate to say this, Ran-"
"That I would lose the money?" Randall said. "But it will all go to Claire. She can get a small apartment somewhere on the lower end of the drive where the rents aren't too high, and be quite comfortable. As for me-I have a job."
"Oh, Lord," Tom said. Claire had been right. "I've told you not to become involved-and I can't talk about it any more now. But you're to forget whatever you're about."
"I don't blame you for feeling that way about me," Randall said. "You're thinking about what happened to me when I worked for the bank-and the insurance company-the resort hotel-and the time when I tried to sell stocks and bonds-"
The last-named venture had almost resulted in Randall's going to jail. He had gone into it without telling anybody and Tom had been forced to borrow heavily to make good the shortage in Ran's accounts. That had been when Randall had promised he would try no more, would stay at home.
Randall said, "I just never could handle money and it seemed I always had to. Claire and I always ran into shortages and you had to help me out. I hated those jobs. But I had to take them and make the attempt to live up to the family name. I was also trying to live up to you, Tom. You don't know what it's been to have a younger brother who's successful at everything-while I've been successful at nothing-" He shook his head. "I often wished it were possible for me to make a living doing the only things I've ever really cared for-keeping house, looking after furniture, linen, dishes, silver-and now I'm through wishing. I'm going to do it."
"What are you talking about?"
"Let me tell you about it. Two weeks ago I went over to the Huntington Gallery in San Marino one afternoon. They were having a display of china, wonderful pieces, including some really exquisite old Meissen-but that wouldn't interest you."
"I'm afraid not. Get on with it, Ran."
"I got to talking to a small white-haired man there. He told me that he had a large collection himself-a kind of private museum. And he needed a curator-a man who understood the value of his things and was not above doing the menial work of keeping them clean. A difficult combination, he told me, to find. He invited me to see his place. It was quite pleasant, a big house in Altadena, three in the family, five servants. I've been going over there every day, welcome just to putter around-was offered the job almost at once. But of course there was Claire. Then this matter about the house came through-"
"So now you've gone to work there."
"I start today," Randall said. "My pay will not be great but I'll have excellent quarters and my meals. I'll be able to give money to Claire. That added to her annuity-and with the money from the house in reserve-she should make out with no difficulty." He rubbed his chin. "I told Claire my decision on Saturday, when I came home and found her so upset. She was furious with me at first, of course. I had to be firm with her. That was unusual, my being firm with Claire."
"Yes," Tom agreed.
Randall looked away for a moment. "I'm hoping Claire will at last get married. She is only thirty-eight. She has plenty of time to start a new life. I'm doing it at forty-five."
Tom Bern wondered where and how he himself would start a new life-or if one existed for him. "Well, Ran," he said at last.
"Yes," Randall said. "I must get along to my new job. Goodbye, Tom."
His manner expressed finality. Another door was quietly closing, Tom thought-his relations with Randall and Claire, tenuous enough this past decade, were probably about at an end. All the doors seemed to be closing-including the one through which Laura had vanished.
"Goodbye, Ran," he said to his brother's back.
Then he went on into the house.
He came out a few minutes later. A black-and-white car with a large gold star on the door panel was braking to a stop at the driveway. A man in a khaki uniform got out and glanced toward him.
"Is your name Bern-Thomas Bern? I've a request from Captain Kruger, southeast substation, for you to meet him at the justice hall downtown at one-thirty."
Tom's throat was dry. "Why does he want me there?"
"I was authorized to tell you that it is about the matter of a Laura Cotter-and urgent. Want me to drive you in?"
"No, thanks. I'll drive myself."
The deputy pulled out of the way. Tom backed the rental into the street.
He felt numb, almost dazed. He had a premonition of some ultimate disaster looming ahead.
Laura must be with Dusty Kruger. The check requested by Tom Bern must have revealed a woman with a prison record, an unsavory charge in her past to which she had pleaded guilty and for which she had served time-and now a bigamist. What chance would she have if brought into court again?
And what chance did he have with his friends, his business-or the love he had so often sought, only to come up with its counterfeit?
16
THE AFTERNOON was cruelly bright and beautiful. A brusque wind whipped flags. The air was clear of smog. Tom entered the justice hall building, rode an elevator to the third floor, followed signs through a maze of corridors until he came to a door marked as Dusty Kruger's domain.
A woman in uniform greeted him. "You're Mr. Bern? Captain Kruger was called downstairs. He'll be right back. He said you could talk to Miss Cotter. I'll have her here in just a minute."
The room was small, held only a flat-topped table with four chairs arranged two and two on each side. A murmur of voices came through frosted-glass doors set in a side wall.
He took out a handkerchief and wiped his damp palms. His heart held a stuttering beat. Miss Cotter. Laura had given her maiden name. In an attempt to avoid implicating him? If so, she had failed. Or was there a subtler reason? Was the maiden name an indication that Laura, after running out of the house last night, wanted nothing more to do with him?
Tom tried to think, to make plans. He must get in touch with his lawyer immediately. Whatever came next required money. The Lincoln would have to be sold, a second mortgage placed on the house.
The door to his right opened. A woman came in. Her voice was high-pitched, petulant.
"Hot as the hinges in this hole. They haul you down, make you sit around for an hour, won't say a word what it's all about-"
"Hush up, Cotter," said the female deputy Tom had seen in the corridor. "Just mind your manners."
The woman faced Tom Bern.
She was not Laura.
But her-likeness to Laura was so strong he knew instantly who she was. The resemblance was not only in her features but in her eyes, the turn of her chin, the tilt of her head as she sized up Tom Bern.
"Hey-you're a lawyer?" she asked. "Well, it's about time. I've been ten days in this crummy can yelling my head off-a ass rap all the way. They can't keep me here and they've got to provide me a lawyer. I'm stony but let the county pay. It's their worry, hauling me in on nothing at all."
Laura was twenty-seven, this girl about twenty-three--years lived in a tearing hurry, the manner of their living plainly indicated as she came toward him with a practiced rolling of her hips, a loose quivering of breasts under a gray, short-sleeved, wrinkled seersucker jail dress.
About four years since Reno, years that must have been devoted to an assiduous cultivation of this calculating approach. Or perhaps she had not needed much practice.
She was quite pretty, like Laura, but with tightness about her lips, a basalt-like hardness at the backs of her eyes. She came closer still.
"Sit down, honey. I'll tell you all about it. Listen, we're going to get along fine. You'll see."
She came so close that he could feel her body heat. She was all but pressing herself against him. "Aren't you going to say anything? You're sure acting funny for a lawyer."
The female deputy was watching him with a frown. Tom wondered what sort of expression he was showing.
He knew he was feeling relief so great that it was turning him giddy.
"I'm not a lawyer," he said.
For the time it took to suck in a breath and briefly hold it, she stared into his face. Then she wheeled angrily on the deputy.
"What the hell is this? Are you running a pit show here-letting anybody in who wants to take a peek at me? Maybe I should make with some bumps and grinds, do a strip-"
The corridor door opened. Dusty Kruger came in.
Kruger took the girl's arm. "Knock it off, Cotter."
Her response was shrill obscenity, a jerking effort to break free.
Kruger said, "That's enough. Take her back in the other room."
The woman deputy pushed the still struggling girl through the door, closed it.
"Tom, sorry I set up that date and then wasn't here to keep it," Dusty Kruger said. He looked cool in a tan tropical suit.
"Captain Kruger. I didn't know you had gone so high in the world," Tom said.
He sat down, hands under the table to hide their tremor.
Kruger smiled, eased his weight onto a corner of the table. "Just got the promotion. And time moves along. It's been quite a while now since the Marines. You haven't changed much, though. I guess you're the kind who will never change. You must live right, Tom."
Yes-he was the Ail-American boy grown tall and somebody always came along at the right time to help him.
"Just what is this all about, Dusty?"
"Only a try at straightening something out," Kruger said. "I feel a little embarrassed at having to admit it, but the plain fact is, we goofed. Happens in the best-regulated departments, I suppose. We're usually pretty efficient. A matter of misplacing records, apparently, and a doping-off all around. At the time that I was telling you that the report on Laura Cotter was negative she was upstairs in a cell. She's been there for ten days now."
He paused. Tom watched him silently. Dusty Kruger had not brought him here only to apologize for an error in the sheriffs records.
"She was picked up about six weeks ago, rolling a drunk." Kruger continued. "The sentence was ninety days, suspended. Maybe a soft-hearted judge refused to look at her record very closely. Then another pickup, same offense and dead to rights. So now she's got to serve that sentence. As I said, she was upstairs in a cell, her package apparently pulled and then mislaid-we've a hell of a lot of them to keep track of-but somebody must have remembered the name and dug for it when I requested a check."
Tom offered his cigarettes. Dusty Kruger accepted one. Then the sheriff's captain displayed the paper he had brought with him. "Reason enough to remember; she has been in and out of here a good deal. This is her rap sheet. A mixed bag of arrests-vag, lewd, soliciting, suspicion of possessing drugs, car-stripping, drank-rolling-a whole string of petty thefts."
He squinted against smoke curling up from his cigarette. "And here's one I didn't even notice before-a badger-game charge. Dismissed when complainant refused to testify."
Tom tensed. Had that casual remark been made in the hope it would provoke an unguarded comment from him?
But Kruger continued, without further comment: "Laura Cotter-Ellie Cotter. She seems to have used one name about as often as the other. Additional aliases, Eleanor Cotter, Allie Cotter, Nora Merz-I wonder how that one got in there?"
Merz, Tom remembered, was the man mentioned by Babe Shelton as the accomplice in Reno. And why had the girl chosen to use Laura's name as well as her own? Had she once teamed up with Laura?
"Pretty lucky, a lot of dismissals on lack of evidence-she hasn't had to take too many falls so far," Kruger commented. "No big time yet. No real prison record. But it'll come-and probably before very long."
No big time-no prison record. So a report of another Laura Cotter, from Carson City, was not on file here.
Tom hoped achingly such luck, for Laura, would continue.
Kruger stood up. He folded the paper, put it into his pocket, dropped his cigarette and stepped on it.
"Tom, who is that girl?"
"I never saw her before in my life."
The big man put both hands flat on the table top, leaning toward him. "I was downstairs, had a look at you as you came in. What I saw was a man who might have been on his way to the gas chamber. Now you're behaving like one who has just been reprieved. I'll accept the fact that you never saw her before-and it seemed obvious she didn't know you-from what I saw and heard. But just whom did you expect to see when you walked into this room?"
Tom sat silent.
Kruger continued: "You asked me to check on Laura Cotter for you. My first theory was that, the business you're in, you were just trying to find out something having to do with one of your clients. But this Laura Cotter doesn't fit into your business-even as customer entertainment, tax-deductible. So I had a patrol out in your area do some checking. They didn't come up with anything except the possibility that somebody was watching your house last Saturday night. A guy in a car who pulled out too quick for them to shake him down-"
Tom started, remembering the car which had been close behind Laura's last night when she had driven away.
Tom pushed back his chair, stood up. "I'm grateful for all you've done, Dusty. Can I go now?"
"What about that girl in the next room?"
He hesitated. "Would it do any good if I were to provide the lawyer she's asking for?"
"No good at all as far as the sentence she's serving is concerned. She's got eighty days to go on that and no way out."
"Then she'll be right here for the next eighty days, and I can decide later," Tom said.
* * *
He turned in the rental car, rode a taxi to his garage and took delivery of the Lincoln, It was a black hardtop, a year and a half old, acquired after considerable thought as to the car he should drive. It seemed now to belong to a time of his life far removed from the present. The fact that the girl in Dusty Kruger's charge was not the real Laura Cotter had only bought him a little time.
How would he use it? The Tom Bern who had bought the Lincoln to complement his business image might have driven to his office in an effort to placate Mrs. Hedges. There still might be time to go back, make an effort at least to remain what he had been.
He slid under the wheel of the Lincoln and then sat there, not knowing what his next move would be. He told himself that he had done all he could. There was nothing left to him but to accept the fact that Laura was gone for good-or an explosive scandal would ruin the tidy world he had built. It would not be much of an explosion, really. His world had not been very large.
He hammered the wheel hard, bruising his fist. And with that act of physical protest came sudden memory.
The name of the small Midwestern town Laura had so seldom mentioned that he had always had difficulty remembering it-out of nowhere it leaped into his mind.
For another minute or so he sat quite still, while the past, all he had been, whispered persuasively again to let his search stop. Nothing he could do if he found Laura could change anything-except, perhaps, inside himself.
He started the motor, toed the accelerator hard-to seek the nearest freeway entrance, then to speed back to the valley. He would telephone Miss Mogridge, pack the few things he would need, close up the house. Then he would go where Laura was.
* * *
She had fled-she could not remember how many hours ago. Thirty-six, forty-eight, sixty? Her car had broken down. She had found transportation to the nearest airfield and flown to Vegas.
She could not even remember the name of the small airfield-but she could remember Luis waiting for her at the Vegas airport. She had telephoned him her destination, not because she expected to meet him there but because Tom might check with Luis where she had gone and Tom would understand her going to Vegas.
But Luis's meeting her had changed everything. Luis had had that Brasher girl-Pauline-with him. But he had quickly and almost gaily dismissed Pauline when he had found Laura. And now Laura sat beside him in his Cadillac and he was taking her home. Not home to Tom-but back to the place she had come from. She had seen no point in staying in Vegas after Luis had told her that he would break her story to the press whether or not she divorced Tom. Not that it would make headline news-but Luis knew some keyhole columnists. Enough of them to ruin Tom's career.
She glanced at his profile as he drove through the darkening dusk. She wondered at his pursuit of her-she had guessed, of course, that he had never really meant to marry Pauline Brasher. His engagement had been a cruel hoax on the girl and her mother, a gay smoke screen to cover his attentions to Laura. And here she was with him, at last too tired to fight, to resist.
He was tired, too. Although she had no clear concept of how much time had passed since she had fled Tom-she had slept catch-as-catch-can and days had merged into nights-she knew Luis must have driven like a maniac and also without sleep to have beaten her plane to Vegas. The breakdown of her car had, of course, delayed her. But she watched his fatigue-grim face now with something close to companionable compassion-after all their bitter arguing.
She saw his head nod, felt the car lurch, came out of her own semi-comatose state with a short scream. She made a grab for the wheel. Luis awoke, wrenched hard on the wheel. The car careened off the road, came to a sickening stop against a tree.
Luis glared at her from fatigue-glazed eyes. "You'll be the death of both of us. All right, so be it."
His teeth shone in white, desperate anger.
"No," Laura said quietly. "We passed a motel back there. Will this car run?"
He had killed the motor against the tree. But the starter worked. He backed to the road, turned and drove to the motel. They registered as man and wife-she no longer wanted to leave him. He was too helpless and so was she.
Later she held him to her in bed, thinking that this was how it had always been-Laura against the world. Laura against her sister, against Herbie Day and lastly against Tom-yes, and even Luis. But Luis was helpless now-he had no strength to hurt her and so she held him.
Little Luis. Not big enough to hide in Tom's shadow at high noon.
His lips nuzzled her breasts, mouthing the nipples, kissing them. She felt them grow erectile-from some depth of fatigue came a purely pagan response. She could sense the strength gathering in him-his mouth rose to cover hers, cling to her open mouth.
He rolled her under him, rose to cover her and she opened to receive him-partly to escape the long-standing menace of him, to contain and control it. And then his whole threat, the total danger of him was within her, probing, thrusting-and it was no danger, no threat at all any more.
It was, as the French would say, a fait accompli.
She moved with him, accepting him, controlling him, in her own way fleeing finally from him so that he could never again make her uneasy or frighten her. What more could he do than this? She let him lift her to sensation's peak-exploded with him-drifted down gently.
And slept.
17
TALL MOUNTAINS rose westward, snow veins showing here and there, grayish-green saplings of fir and spruce and pine scattered on the lower slopes. A fast Whitewater stream brawled beside the narrow blacktop road, racing through a series of foaming rapids. On the right and slightly ahead Tom saw the steel-blue glitter of a small lake.
He wheeled the Lincoln across a bridge into the dusty streets of the sparsely settled little town that was nestled at the mountains' base. The frame houses were old and featured steeply gabled roofs against heavy winter snows. Leaves were blowing now, brown and gold, and a chill bite was in the air. The late-summer warmth of southern California was a distant memory.
Laura had walked these streets, growing up. She had gone to the brick high school he had noticed in passing, must have had her first dates in a movie house on the main street and at the soda fountain next door.
He wondered what she had been like during those years before meeting and teaming up with Herbie Day. Probably a leggy, intense sort of girl, Tom thought, maybe the town beauty. She might have been spared the scars put on her by life and the penitentiary term if she had married one of the muddy-booted ranchers he saw grouped near their pickups on the main street.
He saw all of the town there was to see in the space of minutes and now faced the problem of finding her. He was wary of asking questions-she probably did not want to be found and small towns had active grapevines. He thought of Laura's love for her old Chewy and continued to drive, casting back and forth, checking service stations and garages, thinking that this would be a satisfying way to find her-through a small intimate knowledge of her. So much about her remained for him to learn information not to be gleaned from any source but Laura herself.
There were four service stations in the town, two garages. None offered a clue.
He found the fifth service station beyond town and close to the lake. The place was a small, unprepossessing place with two pumps, a grease pit instead of a rack. A long shack, obviously a roadside restaurant, adjoined the service area. A weathered sign read: cotter's-gas and eats.
Tom pulled off the road and stopped a short distance south of the place. He sat for some minutes studying it, noticing several new concrete-block cabins at the rear of the shack, a house still farther back.
Tom got out of the Lincoln and walked slowly forward. No one seemed to be minding the pumps. The sun had gone down behind the mountains but daylight lingered.
A door opened at the restaurant shack. Laura came out. She wore gray coveraUs and the blue baseball cap she had worn at home playing with the kids. She did not glance in his direction before she began to walk slowly away.
Tom called her name. Laura stopped. He saw her go rigid. Her head turned as though painfully. Then she moved to put her back against the wall of the shack, hands down at her sides, palms flat against the weathered wood. She looked worn and tired.
"Tom, why did you come here?"
"To find you. Perhaps for the first time."
Her smile was weary. "Semantics don't alter facts. You found me two years ago. All of me. I can't go back to that."
"I know. I haven't asked you to do so."
"But I can't go on with you, either. I was never your wife. I can't ever be your wife."
"Now who's using semantics? 'Wife' is a word-nothing more-the way you're using it. A legal term only."
Laura's eyes closed tightly for a second. She opened them again. "Tom-I want you to go to your car, turn it around and leave. I want you to forget me finally and for always. Do it now. Don't even look back."
A muscular spasm twitched her cheek. Fear shone in her eyes.
Tom Bern shook himself, looked around. He saw nothing to frighten her, "What if I told you I came here to find myself as well? Would you still send me away? I've learned more about Tom Bern since this trouble began than I've learned about you. I haven't reached the end." She was silent.
He asked, "This is where you grew up-in that house by the lake?"
Laura nodded jerkily. "An uncle of mine runs this place. He doesn't know about-what you've learned about me."
She was not afraid of her uncle. There were any number of places on this earth where one could hide from uncles. She was frightened of some pursuit-his?
"How long have you been here?"
She moistened her lips. "Two days. The Chewy broke down on the way. I sold it for what I could get-a hundred dollars. I came the rest of the way by plane and bus. Tom, go now."
He moved until he could see around the corner of the shack-and some of her fear touched him. He had the odd sensation of having finally and unexpectedly caught up with himself-to see Tom Bern as did the world that knew him most intimately.
Luis's Cadillac was as mud-spattered as Tom's Lincoln. It had been in some kind of accident-a front fender was smashed.
A door opened at one of the motel cabins. Luis Preil came out. He had seen Tom Bern. Tom recognized the look Luis sent him. It meant that Luis's mind was working in high gear.
Tom spoke first. "You've moved pretty fast. But you probably found out sooner than I did where Laura was heading. I learned from Babe Shelton a private investigator had been looking into Laura's past-at least looking for Herbie Day. One of your men? Did the same one hunt Laura down for you?"
Luis brought out a platinum case, extracted one of his gold-tipped cigarillos, taking his time.
"You never did really see yourself, did you, my friend? You were too busy being the success, the hero. You were the one who had to make like a detective to find us here. Laura herself told me where she was going when she left you."
Tom knew without looking at Laura that Luis was telling the truth. That first sickening glimpse he had had of himself when he had seen Luis's car behind the shack was taking on new dimensions.
But Laura said, "I only telephoned Luis to tell him I was going to Las Vegas for a divorce. I wanted to be rid of him. I thought he only wanted me because I belonged to you."
"And how wrong you were." Luis smiled. He put his gaze on Tom. "I had a time convincing this one that I really loved her. And that you didn't. That you were ready to suspect her at the first breath of scandal. Those letters-why didn't you confront her with the first one, ask her to explain? Let her try to work things out with you?"
"You wjote those letters," Tom said. "Did you use the old machine we had as kids when we put out that nasty little scandal sheet?"
Luis said, "I'm glad you finally recognize it for what it was. You were the sports editor-you didn't see it at all as a nasty little scandal sheet-until grown-ups stopped us from putting it out. You never could see things that were right under your nose. Maybe you still can't."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"That it doesn't really matter who wrote those letters. The important thing was how you reacted to them. Yes, I used the old typewriter with that in mind. You would have had better access to it than I. Until recently it was in Claire's barn. I might have had to demonstrate that you wrote the letters yourself."
Tom said, "In other words-if I had confronted Laura with the first letter you'd simply have told her I'd written it myself. That I'd somehow learned about Herbie Day and, instead of giving her a chance to explain, meant to destroy her with scandal. Whatever I did, Luis, I couldn't win-could I?"
"Again the important fact escapes you," Luis said.
"What you should have said is that you didn't deserve to win."
Luis paused, glanced at Laura. Tom also caught her movement in his peripheral vision. He looked and saw Laura start around the shack toward the row of cabins.
Perhaps Luis was right. Perhaps Tom had proven himself inadequate for her. But if Laura no longer needed him-she needed Luis even less.
He started after her.
Luis tried to stop him. Tom moved like an automaton-there was a calm madness in him. He noted that from somewhere Luis had picked up a little judo-evidently he had prepared for this moment and intended to make a real fight of it. Tom moved with Marine combat precision, knowing dispassionately somewhere deep in his awareness that if Luis did not go down before his fists he would have to kill the smaller man. But Luis went down and Tom walked over him toward Laura.
She had not turned to watch the fight. She entered a cabin-a different unit from the one Luis had left. When he entered he found a few of her things scattered about. Nothing that belonged to Luis.
She faced him. She said, "I lied to you again a little while ago. I traveled with Luis from Vegas. We made one overnight stop. He had an accident-"
"He just had another," Tom said.
He felt tired and soiled-and curiously uncaring. What mattered was that he had at last found the real image of himself. He was no longer Tom Bern, the grown-up All-American boy to whom everything came easy. Luis had shown him to himself as a looter of the superficialities of life, a man who walked upon water without getting wet He was drowning now.
Laura was eyeing him appraisingly. At last she asked, "Did you find what you came here for, Tom?"
"Yes," he said.
"Don't feel too bad," she told him after a while. "Luis had a great deal of charm. And he played on his friendship-his obvious affection for you-quite beautifully. It's hard to explain-but the image he projected was that if a girl loved you she had to love him, too, because he loved you. He was good at it. He must have made himself quite irresistible to those other women he mentionededith Dowling and Roseanne Short."
"What about you?"
"He was after me from the start. I went along with it at first-as I said, he was very good-until one night I realized what he was after. Then I felt sick. I guess I used some language that made him look into my past. I learned some words in prison and on the stage to describe certain kinds of men. He hired a private investigator to dig-but I didn't know about those letters and other things until I found them in your desk. Luis kept trying to wear me down-that afternoon, for instance, when I lied to you about the Brogdons. Then, last night, after he fell asleep at the wheel and hit a tree-I stayed with him. He was-oh, damn it-as rotten as he was he wanted me badly enough to kill himself-"
"While I was carefully treading water and hoping not to drown," Tom said. He walked to the cabin's only bed and sank wearily down on it. "We've both been sinking fast, Laura. Whom did you plan to divorce in Vegas-Herbie Day or me?"
"You," Laura said. "I thought if I started the proceedings and you agreed to it, we could do it quickly, before any scandal could touch you. Then I could fade out of your life."
He shook his head. "You're as bad as I am about not seeing things right under your nose. What made you think I wanted you out of my life?" He held out his arms to her. He said, "Damn it, come here."
It was the first time he had used that tone to her or sworn at her as though he really meant it. She seemed a little startled but came to him.
Then she was in his arms and his mouth covered hers. His kiss held no love as he had known the emotion. It burned with a raging need-lust like a refuge from all life's other demands. He felt her grow flustered in his arms, then angry-and then she was with him, sharing his hungers, answering his demands with demands of her own.
He found her under those gray coveralls and took her out of them-and they were flesh to flesh, familiar to each other, yet wantonly new. She was a Laura of prison cells and passions, a bigamous Laura of lies and truths and love-and he was a Tom Bern divorced from all the securities he had ever known.
In the morning he would call Shell and make arrangements with his old firm to take over the management of Tom Bern, Properties Consultant. He would come out of this with few assets beyond what he held in his arms. And some way would have to be found to free Laura of Herbie Day-and Ellie would never be an asset to either of them.
