Kiss and Kill

Chapter VI

Mavis was asleep when I got in, but my switching on the light awakened her. Sitting up, she glanced at her watch and gave me an inquiring look.

“It looks good,” I said. “She’s around forty and wants a man so bad, she’s ready to do anything to get one. She decided she wanted to marry me two minutes after we met.”

I started to undress.

“Does she have any money?” Mavis asked.

“Her husband left some insurance. I didn’t ask how much, but she implied it was twenty thousand at least.”

Mavis’s eyes lit up. “Have you worked out a plan yet?”

“Not yet,” I said. “But she’s overboard enough to rise to almost anything. I’ll dream up some kind of an investment for her.”

Mavis watched as I hung my suit up. “Is she pretty?” she asked finally.

“She’s forty, or close to it, and weighs a hundred forty-two pounds.”

“She could still be pretty,” Mavis said. “They say Venus di Milo weighed a hundred and forty.”

“Standards of beauty have changed since then,” I told her. “You can see for yourself tomorrow. You’re going to meet her. I told her my sister was with me. Incidentally, she thinks we’re staying in a motor court. We’ll have to move to one tomorrow. Do you still have the outfit you wore when we met?”

“Of course. I’ve worn it every time I played Mary Applebee.”

“Wear it again tomorrow,” I said. “We’re supposed to be in the middle-income class.”

I switched out the light and climbed into bed. Mavis moved to snuggle in my arms. “Love me?” she asked.

“Uh-huh.”

Her arms went about my neck and she pressed her body against mine.

“Not tonight,” I said. “I’m worn to a frazzle.”

The next morning we checked out of the Shamrock and moved to a motel. I had Mavis remove her wedding band and engagement ring. We registered in separate cabins as Samuel Plainfield and Miss Mavis Plainfield.

I had arranged to take Hannah to lunch and introduce her to my “sister.” We arrived at the house at noon, and I took Mavis inside with me. Mavis looked relieved when she saw the woman, deciding she wasn’t even in the running as competition. Why she had been worried in the first place, I don’t know, because even before she met Hannah, she knew she had a fifteen-year youth advantage.

Hannah greeted her politely, asked how she liked Houston, then inquired what had brought Mavis down there. This surprised me a little, as she hadn’t even asked me that. She hadn’t asked me anything at all, as a matter of fact, apparently being so overwhelmed by my appearance in her life that she was afraid questioning her good luck might awaken her from her dream and cause me to disappear.

Mavis said, “When Sam came down here, I just decided to come along. So I quit my job. I figured I wouldn’t have any trouble getting another one here. I’m a trained stenographer.”

I took both women to a moderately-priced restaurant downtown for lunch.

In Mavis’s presence Hannah was a little more subdued than she’d been the previous night. She didn’t even mention marriage. But she kept her bright eyes on me constantly, and there was a proprietory air about her that I could tell rankled Mavis a little.

Mavis didn’t show it, however. On the surface she was politely friendly to the woman. Hannah failed to detect the slight edginess beneath the surface politeness. As a matter of fact, she paid little attention to Mavis after their brief conversation at the house. She was too wrapped up in me.

After lunch we dropped Mavis off to do some shopping, and Hannah and I went back to her house for further discussion. The minute the door closed behind us, the woman flew into my arms. It was apparent we weren’t going to get any discussing done in the front room. I gave in gracefully and took her upstairs.

Later, lying side-by-side in bed, we finally got around to future plans. Hannah was all set to apply for a marriage license the moment I said the word.

“I think you’re the woman I’ve been looking for, Hannah,” I told her. “But I still think we ought to wait a short time until we’re both sure.”

“I’m sure,” she said, leaning over to give me a resounding smack on the cheek. “But you take all the time you want, honey.”

I said, “The only thing that bothers me is I don’t like the idea of living on a woman. I’ve only got a couple of thousand bucks. And you’ve got so much more.”

Her huge bosom pushed against my chest as she snuggled up against me. “You’ll pay your way by running the gym, Sam. Don’t worry about it.”

“You’ll still have all the money,” I said. “You own the house, the business, and you have the bank account.”

“I won’t after we’re married, honey. With me marriage is fifty-fifty. Gaylord and I always had everything in both our names. With you and me it’s gonna be the same. We split right down the middle. I’ll have a lawyer put half the business and half the house in your name. And change the rest that Gaylord left me over the same way.”

I said, “That insurance money ought to be invested instead of just lying idle in a bank.”

“It’s drawing good interest, honey.”

“Not what solid, gilt-edged securities would draw. I have a broker friend in New York who knows the market inside out. With ten or twenty thousand capital, I could build a fortune in a year.”

“Gaylord always said to stay clear of the stock market,” she said disapprovingly. “Neither one of us went for gambling.”

“There’s a difference between investment and gambling, Hannah.”

“Well, we’ll talk about that after we’re married,” she said. “No point even discussing it till then.”

I spent the rest of the day and that evening with Hannah. We dined at the house, as she said she wanted to demonstrate how well she could cook. She could, too. She served a delicious meal.

Several times I swung the conversation back to the subject of investments, but each time got the same firm answer. Despite her eagerness to get married, there was a grain of hard common sense in her. I’d been over-optimistic in thinking that merely taking her to bed would make her putty in my hands. Obviously she had no intention of loosening up with a single nickel until she had me safely married.

I got back to the motel about midnight to find Mavis waiting in my cabin. A freshly-opened bottle of whisky with about two ounces gone stood on the dresser next to a bowl of melting ice. Mavis was nursing the dregs of a highball. The ashtray next to her contained a half-dozen lipstick-stained butts. She had been waiting for some time.

She watched silently as I mixed myself a drink, then drained the last sip from her glass and held it out. I made her one too.

She sampled it before asking, “Any progress?”

I said, “It’s going to be tougher than I expected. It looks as though she has no intention of loosening up until after we’re married.”

Mavis frowned. “What are you going to do?”

I took a large swallow of my drink. “I thought that over on the way home. There’s only one thing to do.”

“What?”

“Marry her,” I said.

Mavis’s eyes grew wide. “Bigamy?”

“Why not? It’d be under a fake name. It wouldn’t affect the legality of our marriage even if I used my own name.”

“But you’d have to sleep with her,” Mavis protested.

I frowned at her. “This is business, Mavis. Don’t go sentimental on me.”

“Would you let me sleep with another man to work a dodge?” she demanded.

“I’d knock your head off if you suggested it,” I growled at her. “It’s not the same thing. And besides, you think I look forward to sleeping with the woman? You’ve seen what she’s like. It’s just business.”

“Monkey business,” she said hotly. “I won’t have it.”

I took a sip of my drink, eyeing her coldly over the edge of my glass. When I lowered it again, I asked ominously, “You’re giving me orders?”

She flushed. “I mean, I don’t want it. I’m asking you, Sam.”

I said bluntly, “You’re a little late. We’ve already been in bed together. In fact we haven’t been much of anywhere else except to the gym last night and to lunch today. When Hannah said in her letter that she was tired of sleeping alone, it was an understatement. She seems determined to make up for each month of widowhood in a day.”

Mavis’s face turned white. She said nothing.

“I had to,” I said roughly. “There was no other way to loosen her up. I’m not going to pass up twenty grand just because you’re jealous. You think I like making love to a fat, middle-aged slob?”

She still said nothing.

“Keep in mind who’s the boss in this family,” I advised her. “I give the orders and you take them. We’ll play this my way, and you’ll like it.”

Mavis gave her head a slow shake. Her face was still dead white. “We’ll play it your way, if you insist, Sam. You’re the boss. But you could beat me till I bled and I wouldn’t like it.”

“When did I ever beat you?” I asked ironically.

“Never physically,” she said in a low voice.

The next day I told Hannah I had decided I wanted to get married. We had our blood tests that same afternoon. This was a Friday, and we set the date for the following Wednesday. Hannah made no objection when I insisted on a quiet ceremony before a J.P. with Mavis as the only witness.

She also made no objection when I suggested Mavis live with us for a short time until she could find work and was able to afford her own apartment.

“It will be nice to have someone look after the house while we’re on a honeymoon, anyway,” Hannah said. “We’re going to take one, aren’t we?”

I told her we would if she liked. Hannah decided she would like a two-week trip to New Orleans.

Once during the few days before the wedding, Hannah inquired if I would like to make a daytime visit to the gymnasium and meet the personnel who would be my employees when I took over its management. I told her there would be plenty of time for that after we returned from the honeymoon, and she didn’t press the matter.

We were married as scheduled, Mavis standing up with us as the witness. As a wedding present I gave Hannah a twenty-five-dollar gold-filled bracelet and earring set. She waited to give me my wedding present until after we had returned to the house. Mavis didn’t see it, as she went directly to her room and left us alone the moment we walked in the house.

Hannah opened the drawer of a writing table in the front room and produced three documents. She handed them to me with a smile.

One was a deed to the house made out jointly to Samuel Plainfield and Mrs. Hannah Plainfield. The second was a deed to the gymnasium made out the same way. The third was a twenty-thousand-dollar paid-up life insurance policy on Hannah with a rider attached to it naming the insured’s husband, Samuel Plainfield, as the beneficiary.

“That was still made out to Gaylord before I had it changed,” she said. “If I’d dropped dead, I guess it would Ve just gone into the estate.”

I gave her a thank-you kiss.

“There’s more,” she said. “I told you everything would be fifty-fifty. Let’s go down to the bank.”

I drove her downtown to her bank. Inside, she led me to the safety-vault room, signed in and we were admitted through the gate to the vault. Checking the card Hannah had signed, the attendant located the proper box and inserted the master key. After inserting her key also, Hannah drew out a long, narrow, lidded box.

I followed as she carried the box to one of the curtained cubbyholes provided for renters of safety-deposit boxes.

Opening the lid, she drew out a stack of government bonds and proudly handed them to me. There were twenty-four of them, each with a maturity value of a thousand dollars. I did some fast mental arithmetic and figured out that their purchase price would have been eighteen thousand. As they were dated only six months previously, their present value wasn’t much more, and they wouldn’t mature for nine and a half more years.

The bulk of the insurance money, I thought, and wondered what she had done with the other two thousand.

She answered the mental question without my having to ask it aloud. “I’ve got two thousand in a checking account too,” she said. “You told me you had a couple of thousand, so you keep that in a checking account under your own name, and well be exactly even. Did you see how the bonds are made out?”

I looked at them again. They were co-owner bonds, made out to Hannah and Samuel Plainfield. Not to Hannah and/or Samuel Plainfield. She had arranged things so that it would take both our signatures to cash them.

I said, “Shouldn’t I have a key to the box?”

“What for?” she asked. “There’s nothing in it but the bonds. And it takes both of us to cash them. We’ll have to be together to cash them when they mature anyway. One key’s enough.”

I said a little faintly, “When they mature? I thought we were going to discuss investing the insurance money in some stocks.”

“Stocks, hell!” she said earthily. “Government bonds are safe. They’re staying right where they are for another nine and a half years.”

She meant it, I realized. She wasn’t nearly the sucker I had imagined. I don’t think she had the slightest suspicion that I was trying to take her. It was just innate good business sense that had caused her to arrange things to make it impossible. Everything was half in my name, but it would take her signature as well as mine to convert any of it into cash. And it was pretty obvious that even my most persuasive talking was never going to get her signature in agreement to sell anything.

It developed that she had made one more legal arrangement to tie everything up nicely. When we got back to the car, she asked me to drive her to her lawyer’s office.

“What for?” I asked.

“I had him draw up a couple of wills, honey. Mine leaves everything to you, yours leaves everything to me.

“That was generous of you,” I said dubiously.

“Just good business,” she said. “What if you dropped dead tomorrow? Your sister might inherit everything I just signed over to you. That wouldn’t be fair.”

I agreed that it wouldn’t. There wasn’t any logical reason I could give for refusing to sign a will, so I drove to her lawyer’s.

He was a relatively young man, and apparently Hannah had told him all about me, because he seemed to know about the plan for me to run the gym. He warmly congratulated me on our marriage and wished Hannah happiness. If he suspected from our difference in ages that I had married her for her money, there was no indication of it in his manner.

He had both wills already drawn up. We each signed, and his office girl signed as a witness.

In bed that night, lying next to the snoring Hannah and thinking of Mavis tying alone, and probably sleepless, just down the hall, I ruefully considered the predicament I had worked myself into. All that tantalizing wealth half in my name, and I couldn’t touch a cent of it.

There was one thing all in my name, though. The insurance policy.

I went to sleep on that thought.