Blow Hot, Blow Cold

5

With the roast in the oven, Nancy was at odds’ ends. She wandered about the house, even going upstairs to make the bed; but all the while there was a little voice in her head that kept asking where Lila was.

“How the hell should I know?” Nancy said.

She was coming downstairs again from straightening the bedroom when the persistent little voice suddenly reminded her of what Mae Walters had said on the telephone. Mae had said something about asking Larry, hadn’t she?

“That’s right,” the voice said. “She did.”

“But he isn’t home.”

“Then show a little initiative. He told you last night he was going to his office. He’s probably still there, sulking.”

“I’m sure Larry wouldn’t thank me for meddling in his marital problems.”

“He might actually appreciate it. If Lila’s left him and Larry doesn’t know it, he’d be grateful to you for telling him.”

Having been convinced by the little voice, Nancy determined to earn Larry Connor’s gratitude. Conveniently, David having gone to the club in Jack Richmond’s Corvette, the vintage Chevvie which was the Howell family’s sole vehicle was available in the garage. To Nancy’s gratification, it started immediately. She drove downtown, a mere few minutes’ drive.

Larry Connor’s office was on the ground floor of a small brick business building in mid-block on Main Street. The day being Sunday, she was able to park directly before Larry’s office. His plate-glass window had his name on it in bold gold lettering. The monk’s cloth window curtains were drawn.

Nancy knocked three times on the street door. The monk’s cloth remained unruffled; the Venetian blind behind the street door remained closed. Well, what did I expect? Nancy thought; but on the chance that Larry might still be sleeping the sleep of the utterly miserable, she drove around the corner to the alley that ran behind the business block and up the alley to mid-block, where she turned off into the small private parking area. Startled in spite of herself, she saw Larry’s Buick parked in his private space.

She got out of her Chevvie and walked across the alley and knocked on Larry’s rear door. Still no answer; and when she tried the door, it was locked. He wasn’t asleep after all. With his Buick in the lot, he was obviously hanging around the neighborhood somewhere, too heartsick or sullen to go home.

And what am I doing here? Nancy asked herself.

But in some inexplicable way she was committed.

Her first assumption was that Larry had gone over to the cocktail lounge of the hotel to take on a manly load; but then she remembered that on Sundays the lounge was closed. He might be killing time in the lobby, of course, reading the Sunday papers or watching television. She decided to look there after having a peep at Applebaum’s Cigar Store, which was another favorite hangout for the temporarily homeless.

Larry was not in either place. Nancy even checked with the hotel clerk on the chance that Larry might have taken a room instead of sleeping in his office; he had not.

Well, I’ve done my duty, Nancy said to herself. He was probably in one of the bars that violated the Sunday closing law; and if he was, he could jolly well make it home by himself, even if he had to do it on his hands and knees. She had gone to considerable trouble, Nancy thought, but there were limits to good neighborliness; knocking on the back doors of illegally operating booze parlors defined one of them.

So Nancy drove home and stowed the Chevvie in the garage and let herself in the front door. Checking the roast in the kitchen, she noticed a can puncher lying on the counter by the sink, from which she made the logical deduction that David was back home and drinking more cold beer, damn him; whereupon Nancy marched grimly out the kitchen door into the backyard and, sure enough, there was David. And not only David, but Jack Richmond, too — didn’t he ever have a house call to make? — and they were both drinking cold beer, after having obviously consumed a large number of previous cold beers at the club. Nancy could always tell when David had been consuming a large number of beers because, at such times, he always had a cringing look when he saw her.

“Hello, men,” Nancy said calmly.

Jack Richmond started to rise as a gentleman should, but the deck was apparently tilting. He sank back in the yard chair with a groan, and Nancy sat down in another after moving it pointedly to a place some distance from where her husband was seated.

“You want a beer, lovey?” David asked. He wore the cringing look, all right.

“No,” Nancy smiled. “There’s what’s left of a pitcher of gin-and-tonic in the fridge. I’ll have some of that, please.”

“Permit me,” Jack said gallantly.

This time he mastered the deck, though not without lurching. While he was gone the Howells sat in total silence. Finally the good Dr. Richmond came back with the pitcher in one fist and a glass in the other, walking on a tightrope. He carefully poured from the pitcher and carefully handed the glass to Nancy.

“Thank you, Jack,” murmured Nancy.

“Think nothing of it, m’dear,” said their guest with a leer.

“Why in the devil,” growled David suddenly, “are you making whole pitchersful of gin-and-tonic in the middle of the day?”

“Because, darling,” Nancy replied after a hefty slug, “I had nothing to do and no one to do it with. Except to drink, which is something you can do beautifully alone. I know, dearest, that’s the way wives become alcoholics. Through boredom.”

“Oh-oh,” said Dr. Richmond.

“Hell,” said David Howell.

“And did you have a nice golf game?” Nancy purred.

“Yes, we did!” her husband said. “We played eighteen holes, and I shot a ninety-two.”

“Is that good, dear?”

“It’s not bad for a now-and-thenner,” he replied shortly.

“Oh, it’s very good,” said Jack Richmond.

“It must be exhausting to play eighteen holes of golf on a hot day,” Nancy said. “I suppose it’s practically essential afterward to have a large number of cold beers in the club bar?”

“It is far and away the most essential part of the whole business,” Jack said enthusiastically. “Sometimes, in fact, the golf can be dispensed with entirely.”

“What I would like to know,” David demanded, “is why you had to make so much. Were you planning an orgy or something?”

“So much what, darling?” Nancy said.

“You know what! Gin-and-tonic, that’s what!”

“Oh, it doesn’t spoil, dear. It keeps perfectly in the refrigerator.”

“It keeps better in the bottle!”

“But I was going to share it with Lila.”

“A generous gesture,” Jack Richmond said. “You couldn’t have done anything to please Lila more. Lila is a great gin-and-tonic gal. In fact she’s a gin gal, and to hell with the tonic.”

“Like you and golf,” Nancy said.

“Exactly,” Jack said happily.

“Why didn’t you?” David said.

“Why didn’t I what?”

“Share it with Lila.”

“She wasn’t home, that’s why, and to the best of my knowledge she still isn’t. Have you two seen her?”

“No, thank God,” Jack said.

“Which reminds me,” David said, “that you weren’t home, either, when we got here. Where have you been?”

“I went downtown to talk to Larry, but I couldn’t find him.”

“Is old Larry gone, too?” Jack asked.

“He flew the coop last night after the party.”

“No!”

“Yes,” Nancy said. “I saw him leaving.”

“He’d had another fight with Lila,” David said.

“Good for him,” Jack said. “I don’t blame him for cutting out. I only blame him for always coming back for more. If I were Larry I’d cut out for keeps.”

“It’s all very well to blame Lila,” Nancy said primly, “but I’m not so sure it’s all her fault. If you want my opinion, there’s been far too much criticism of her lately.”

Jack took a swig from his can, then shook it with an air of abstraction. He set the can precisely on the grass.

“Lila,” he said, “is an avaricious, vindictive, cold-blooded bitch.”

He said this in the kindliest professional tone of voice, a doctor making an unpleasant diagnosis. Still, it was a kind of shock. Of course, Jack had drunk quite a lot of beer.

“What I’d like to know,” David said to Nancy, “is why you went downtown looking for Larry.”

“Because I thought Larry ought to know Lila was gone.”

“Damn it, what’s so unusual about someone’s being away from home? I simply can’t understand why it concerned you. Are you sure that’s the only pitcher of gin-and-tonic you’ve made?”

“I don’t believe I would keep returning to that subject, David. I was concerned because their air-conditioner was off and the house was hot. It may seem reasonable to you for a person to turn the air-conditioner off when she’s going out for a while, but it doesn’t seem reasonable to me. I’ve got a feeling something is wrong.”

“Turned off the air-conditioner, eh?” Jack said wisely.

“Oh, a fuse blew,” David said.

“I don’t think so.”

“You say old Larry cut out last night?” Jack said. “I’ll bet Lila cut out right afterward. The whole thing’s blown to hell, if you ask me, and what we’d better do is let it strictly alone.”

“That’s right,” David said. “Strictly.”

“Do you think so?” Nancy said. “It may interest you boys to know that I disagree. I think we should go over and look through that house. As a matter of fact, that’s just what I’m going to do, whether you two come with me or not.”

“If you’ll excuse my saying so,” Jack said, “I think it would be a lot smarter if we mind our own business.”

“Second the motion,” David said. “How about another beer, Jack?”

“I—” began Jack.

Nancy said, “I’m going over right now. David, are you coming or not?” She rose grimly, waiting.

David sighed and rose, too. “Jack, help yourself to the beer. We’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“I may as well come along with you.” Jack also rose, sighing. “As a good neighbor, I suppose I ought to get involved in any trouble you two get yourselves into.”

They crossed the hedge, and Nancy went ahead of Jack and David through the back door of the Connor house onto a small landing from which three steps led up to the kitchen and six steps went down to the basement. Nancy suggested that the two men check the fuses in the basement, and waited for them on the landing. When they came back David said, “Nothing wrong with the fuses. The unit has simply been turned off. Lila’s flown the nest, all right. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Nancy said, “I am going upstairs and look in Lila’s room, and that’s all there is to it.”

She did so, followed uneasily by David and Jack, but that was not all there was to it — not by far. They went through broiling rooms to the stairs and upstairs into a hall that was sizzling and down the hall to the door of Lila’s bedroom. The door was shut, and Nancy pushed it open and immediately saw that her odd feeling of calamity had been right on the beam, as she had somehow known it would be.

Lila was in her room, dead. She was lying on the floor beside the bed, as if she had slipped off in dying, or had fallen against it. She was in a pale pink, translucent nightgown, and from its breast protruded the handle of what appeared to be a knife and which must, from its location, have pierced her heart. Around the handle, spread raggedly through the thin stuff of the nightgown, lay a dark seepage that looked stiff and dry.

Nancy felt as if someone had whopped her suddenly in the belly. She uttered a harsh wheezing cry that trailed off to a whimper and collapsed in her husband’s arms.

“My God,” said Dr. Jack Richmond huskily. “Old Larry’s finally gone and done it. By God, Lila finally drove him to it.”