Corpus Delectable

Eleven

Her polished little voice said, “Hello?”

I didn’t speak right away, letting her listen to the emptiness of the open phone line. Her voice went up a notch: “Hello?... Who is calling, please?”

I frown on certain language in the presence of a lady; but I had to remember that McJunkin, or whoever was behind him, would not have been civilized with Lura Thackery. They’d have left no doubts in her as to her position and their intentions.

As McJunkin might have done, I let out a heavy breath and said softly, “You cruddy, big-mouthed bitch.”

The alien idiom caused her to shrink in silence. My pulse rate picked up a beat. Her failure to question the reason for the call or demand the identity of the speaker meant that she believed she knew who was calling and why. My first hunch about Lura Thackery had been correct.

“You were warned to stay away from Ed Rivers,” I said.

“I didn’t go to him,” she said in a voice edged with panic.

“You talked to him.”

“He came to me. You’ve got to believe me!”

“Rivers isn’t telling it that way,” I said. “Then he’s lying. He’s trying to fool you. I gave you the diary, didn’t I? I promised to mind my own business.” Diary?

I pulled erect in my office chair. Whose diary? Jean Putnam’s?

“Why do you keep hounding me?” Lura was saying. “Why don’t you leave me alone?”

“You’re in it whether you like it or not,” I said through the handkerchief.

“I don’t want to be in it!” Her voice had gone shrill.

“That’s tough. Rivers is the one who might make the kind of trouble I don’t like. The cops, they got rules. They’ll handle you with kid gloves. Rivers makes his own rules sometimes.”

“You’re scared of Rivers!” she cried.

“Listen, you crummy slut—”

“And you hate me... I know it... Everyone hates me. My mother. My father. Even the psychiatrist.” She was nearing hysteria. “You’re looking for an excuse to make me like Jean. Why should I do anything more for you?”

“Because I say so, creep. You got to take your pick. Me or Ed Rivers.”

I slipped the handkerchief from the phone and quietly hung up.

Unhappily, I sat. I hadn’t liked doing it. I was sorry for the misty-eyed girl with the transluscent skin who had walked too closely to the dark edges of life.

I waited, giving her time. Ten minutes. Twenty.

I began to frown at the phone. Then it rang. I let it ring a second time before I picked it up.

“Nationwide Detective Agency,” I said. “Ed Rivers speaking.”

“This is Lura Thackery.” Her voice was unsteady, with intermittent snubbing sounds, the aftermath of hard sobbing.

“I’m glad to hear from you,” I said. “Are you?” she said remotely. “You’ve got me in trouble, you know.”

“Have I?”

“Talking about Jean’s diary. Going around trying to find it. Who told you about it?”

“Why the interest, Miss Thackery? I though you were going to keep yourself nice and clean, like a cutely starched little girl.”

“You beast,” she sobbed. “You jungle animal!”

“Want to tell me about the diary?”

“I want to live,” she pleaded. “I don’t want... what happened to Jean. I want you to stop making an effort to get me killed.”

“I didn’t hold the gun that put the bullet in Jean Putnam’s back,” I reminded her. “Therein lies your danger — not from me.”

“You!” She sobbed, her voice thick with raw bitterness. “If Jean hadn’t been going to see you, none of this would have happened.”

“Why not accept what’s happened,” I suggested, “and go on from there?”

“Go on to what? You weren’t able to keep Jean alive!”

“I didn’t have the chance. I might have with you.”

She broke into uncontrolled weeping. Mingled with her sobs were ragged words. “I wish you didn’t exist... had never been born... I wish you were dead!”

“Miss Thackery, if I accommodated everybody who’s wished that, I’d need the total lives of half a dozen cats. The fact is, I continue. I intend to continue long after the man who has threatened you is gone.”

“Words... empty words... how many stupid words have been given me in the face of cold reality... words for as long as I can remember.”

“The cold reality of Ben McJunkin won’t go away because you wish it, Miss Thackery. But words might help — your words.”

“You’re trying to confuse me,” she said, weeping, “because you hate me.”

She was cowering behind defenses she’d built out of neurotic material. Trying to get through to her was like attempting to cut a shadow with a knife.

“I know how the image of McJunkin must appear to you,” I said patiently, “grotesque and evil and all-powerful. The image is the more terrifying because it comes at you from a world outside your knowledge and experience.”

“You can’t know how I feel.” She sobbed.

“Maybe I can,” I soothed. “I’m trying very hard.”

“I have the evidence of what he did to Jean,” she said, “and all you can give me is words. It doesn’t matter to him what he does now.”

I remembered words McJunkin had spoken against my ear, with a gun against my back. “You mean the murder of one person is like taking out a license to murder many?”

“Yes... he... almost the words he said to me.”

At least, I had one thing at this point. There was no remaining shred of doubt now that it was Ben McJunkin who had terrorized her.

“Then you must surely realize, Miss Thackery, that he’s got to be stopped. For your own sake. Because he feels he has a license to kill.” I gave her a second to think about it. “You are living because he extends to you the privilege. With a man like McJunkin how do you know when or on what whim he will decide to revoke the privilege?”

“I won’t listen! You enjoy being cruel to me!” My lips pulled flat against my teeth. Okay, I thought, if I can’t appeal to your courage, Miss Thackery, we’ll try a play on your cowardice.

“Get this, stupid,” I said coldly, “I don’t enjoy being anything to you, because you’re a nothing. Living by permission of a punk is all you deserve. Jean Putnam, the friend you’ve turned your back on, had more worth in her little finger than you’ve got in your whole being. You’ve convinced me I shouldn’t give a damn what happens to you. That’s the way you want it, that’s the way you’ll get it.”

“What are you saying to me?” she cried. “I’m sick of you. I’m through with you. The hell with you. McJunkin can’t afford to let you live indefinitely. If you’re too dumb to see that, I couldn’t care less. So long, Miss Thackery — and happy dying.”

“Wait!” she screamed softly. “Don’t hang up... Please don’t hang up.”

“I don’t think we have any more to say. I wanted to help you in order to help myself. You ought to be able to see that. But it’s a two-way street. And I don’t need your help nearly as much as you need mine. You’ll sit and wait to die because you’ve cut yourself off from help. But I’ve got ways and means. I’ve taken care of myself so far. I can continue to do so. I’ll get to Ben McJunkin eventually. You’d better hope I do before he ends your waiting. He might take more time with you than he did with Jean Putnam. You never know. He might decide to tear your clothes off and have some fun before he puts the period on your life sentence.”

“I can’t stand any more of this! I can’t... I can’t!”

“Then put a stop to it.”

She broke into a fresh fit of weeping. It wasn’t just a woman crying. It was the expression of an animal in raw torment. I wanted to drop the phone from my ear to get away from the sound.

“Let me think...” She sobbed. “Give me some time... come to see me... at six o’clock.”

“I’ll be there, Miss Thackery.”

Cradling the phone, I got up and crossed the office to get a drink of water. There was little joy in my brief and partial triumph over Lura Thackery. I felt as if I’d been touched by something alien, like brushing into a sticky cobweb in the darkness.

At five-fifty-five that afternoon, while Tampa readied for another gala Gasparilla evening, I parked in front of the apartment building on Calmwaters Boulevard.

The door was open at the first apartment I passed. The noise of gay people and bright music spilled into the corridor as a cocktail party got off the ground.

The sliding door of the self-service elevator separated me from all the happy people. The wooden-paneled box with the thick carpeting purred me up to the second floor. The door sighed open, and I walked the short distance to the Thackery-Putnam apartment.

I laid my thumb against the buzzer, waited, and tried again.

By the fourth buzz, my blood pressure had risen a notch. I hadn’t broken down her ingrained habit of flight, of never facing anything, after all. I wondered how much distance she’d been able to put between herself and Tampa during the afternoon. Trying to run far enough from a thing like murder was hardly a rational act; but then, she was hardly a rational girl.

I glanced the length of the corridor. It was very quiet. I slipped my key ring from my pocket and separated the thin steel from the keys.

I didn’t need the steel. When I tried the knob, it turned. The door was unlocked.

I slipped inside the apartment and stood a moment, listening. With Lura Thackery, odd possibilities became probabilities. I wondered fleetingingly if the snarl of the door buzzer had brought an upsurge of fear and uncertainty in her, causing her to cower motionless in the apartment.

I checked out the possibility by moving from the door and taking a quick glance through the apartment, including the outside balcony with its furnishings of glass and wrought iron.

My first guess started to hold water again. She’d apparently flaked out.

The back of my neck warmed from frustration, disappointment. I needed Lura Thackery almost as much as she needed me. I doubted that she would have had the temerity to read another person’s diary, but she could vouch for the fact that one had existed with Jean Putnam’s personal report of what she had seen and heard during her last days on earth.

If there had been a diary, there might have been other things. A letter. A jotted note or phone number. A name in an address book.

I started with the desk and bookcases. The most I got was an idea of their diet from an old grocery order Jean or Lura had written and an acquaintance with the kind of books they’d read.

I moved into the bedroom, where the far wall was a circular arch of windows and the furnishings were as feminine and dainty as lace. The nightstands and dressing tables yielded a partly empty package of cigarettes, a few soft-cover books for end-of-the-evening relaxation, and a generous supply of cosmetics that looked expensive.

The closet door slid silently open under my touch.

My first guess spilled all its water instantly. Lura Thackery hadn’t run away.

She was crouched on the floor of the closet. With the removal of the supporting closet door, her thin form began to move. She rolled to one side, slowly at first like a streamer of delicate cloth floating downward. With a soft bumping of her shoulder, she came to rest half in and half out of the closet.

I dropped to one knee, touched her face, turned her head slightly.

Her neck was swollen almost out to her chin. Across the swelling lay a deep crease. The crease ran around her neck, all the way to the nape.

That’s where the ends of the loop of wire stuck out.