Mink Is for a Minx [1st Annual Edition: The best from Mike Shayne's Mystery Magazine]

Truck Drivers Like Girls by Dorothy Madle

The party at the O’Mearas’ nearly new ranch house was just getting a good start when six more guests arrived, people Rod O’Meara worked with. He had forgotten to tell Marian that he had invited them.

She welcomed them, saw to the disposal of their wraps, then fled to the kitchen. Rod was making six new drinks.

“I’m sorry, Tiger-cat,” he said. “I mentioned the party days ago and that bunch was committed elsewhere, for some dinner or other. I didn’t think they were coming. You may scratch me, but don’t be mad.”

“I’m not.” Marian stretched on tiptoe and nipped his ear. He set down the bottle and jigger to put his arms around her.

“You’re my favorite small blonde. If this weren’t our seventh wedding anniversary, I’d marry you.”

She opened the door of the liquor cabinet, then checked mentally the cold buffet waiting to be served after midnight.

“Rod, I allowed for two or three extra people, but not six. And there’s a run on bourbon. Famine and thirst will stalk this house tonight.”

He lined up the six glasses on a tray. “All right. Go in and circulate. There’s an all-night delicatessen on Oakland and Caldwell, and a superbar beside it. I’ll go and fetch.”

She took up the tray, then set it down again.

“No, you go in and make like a host. You know the new people and I don’t. I haven’t even got their names straight. Entertain them and I’ll slip out and get the stuff.” She crossed the hallway to the coat closet and he followed.

“You’re a pretty thing tonight. Don’t be gone long.”

“I won’t.”

Rod held the honey-color beaver coat, her anniversary present, and she slipped into it. The color matched her hair. Her long party earrings picked up flecks of green in her grey eyes.

“I don’t like you driving alone on a foggy night. Have you had your car checked lately?”

“It’s running fine.” Marian grinned up at him. “Anyway, you know nothing bad can happen to me on the road. If I stall or anything, a truck driver always appears — pouf! — out of the air or somewhere, and gets me going again.”

“I don’t believe in your friendly truck drivers. None of them ever helped me.”

“Naturally not. Truck drivers like girls. ’Bye. I’ll be quick, darling.”

She turned in the doorway. “You might look in on Midge and Teddy. They were sleeping like fat little angels half an hour ago, but the party noises might waken them.”

Marian backed her winter-splashed car out of the garage. A random harmony of voices, music, and laughter followed her into the road. The house looked festive, even elegant, with its big windows glowing and the guests’ cars lining half of the block.

Marian had not really wanted to move to the suburbs, but people kept saying country life was better for children. Now she wasn’t sorry. Entertaining a lot of people at once was fun, and they couldn’t have done it in the city apartment.

It seemed darker than usual as she drove toward the reddish cloud of bottom-lighted fog that marked the city. She turned on the radio. A jazz quartet was playing cool crystalline improvisations. Nice — but the music broke off.

“We interrupt to bring you a news bulletin. An attack tonight on Mrs. Doris Clift, twenty-nine, of seven-twelve North Inshore Drive, has led police to believe the psychotic killer who in three weeks has taken the lives of four Chicago women, may now be at large here in Meridian.

“Like the Chicago victims, Mrs. Clift was struck over the head and strangled. Her car had left the road and veered across a curb, a few country blocks from her home. But her assailant was interrupted by the approach of Frederick T. Sayers, forty-six, of five-eighty Smith Place, who was walking with his two Boxer dogs on leashes. Sayers told police he saw the stalled car as he emerged from beyond a clump of shrubbery, and heard moans. The dogs jerked away from him as a man jumped from the car and ran into the shadows, apparently cutting directly across a lawn. The dogs gave chase but came back to Sayers after the sound of a motor indicated the man had driven away.

“Sayers got only indistinct glimpses of the man, and he did not see the vehicle. Mrs. Clift, in serious condition at Saint Mary’s Hospital, could not be questioned. Her husband, Anthony Clift, an attorney, told police she was to have joined him and a group of friends at a downtown restaurant. She was in evening dress. One of her jade earrings had been ripped off, tearing an earlobe.

“Like the four Chicago women, Mrs. Clift is an attractive blonde.”

Marian shivered. She raised a hand to slip off her own earrings, but returned it firmly to the wheel. She would not get all jittery because a psycho was partial to youngish blonde women dressed for parties. The announcer’s voice droned on.

“A crumpled piece of paper found in Mrs. Clift’s car seems to indicate beyond reasonable doubt that her attacker was the Chicago killer. It had been torn in half. Pencilled heavily in black were the words ‘Repent, ye daughters of—’ and parts of scrawls that might represent words in an unknown or secret script. Psychiatrists who examined similar notes left with the Chicago victims said the use of a private language points strongly to a psychotic derangement of severe type.”

Marian snapped off the radio.

The highway had seemed strangely empty. Now, nearing the two stores, she realized she had half forgotten how dark and lifeless a city street can look two hours before a winter midnight.

She parked and ran into the superbar on her thin, glittering heels. Men lined on barstools turned to stare as she took two bottles of bourbon from a shelf, gave the bartender a ten and a five and waited while he put the bottles in a bag and rang up her change.

In the delicatessen next door she bought hastily, choosing cold meats, a cheese, a long loaf of rye bread. She hurried out, the two bags awkward in her arms, her purse dangling from her wrist. She jammed the bag with the bottles inside the larger one, freeing a hand to open the car door.

“Damn,” she muttered as a fingernail tip sheared off against a rim of the steering wheel.

She shoved the unwieldy bag along the seat and slipped in beside it. She should have put the stuff on the floor in back where it would be more stable, she supposed. But depositing it on the seat was quicker, and Marian was tense with impatience to get home, to touch her children’s sleeping heads and to be in her living room with her guests.

The dark had grown thicker, capsuling the glow of street lights inside their own haloes. Marian took her car keys from their place — deplored by Rod and illegal in their state — above the visor. The car started with the sputter, suggestive of post-nasal drip, which it always developed in damp and chilly weather.

Fog shortened the flare of her headlights. She left the curb and a truck, parked two car-lengths behind, started up at the same moment. It followed close at her rear, its headlights turned on bright, glaring back from her mirror into her eyes.

At first Marian felt only a mild annoyance. She kicked her own lights to bright and back to dim, to remind the other driver that he was violating the traffic regulations. The truck lights did not respond.

She shrugged. Marian’s frequent claim that truck drivers were homely knights dedicated to the succor of frail — though adept — women motorists had not been entirely a joke. Often in minor emergencies they had stopped to help. Now, just when her nerves were jangled anyway, she had to encounter a slob of a driver who seemed intent on blinding her.

But then, you couldn’t expect everyone to conform to an occupational pattern. Look at butchers. Once she had known a nice, sensitive butcher who painted in oils, assiduously avoiding the use of the color red.

But damn it, why didn’t a policeman flag down this creep and make him dim his lights? She had not seen a policeman, a highway patrolman, or a prowl car since she left home.

Her annoyance fizzed as she crossed an intersection and the truck stayed with her. She pulled to the curb, slowed almost to a stop, and signalled firmly for the truck to continue on. The truck pulled over too, and remained behind her.

She pressed the accelerator as hard as she dared in the tunnel of fog. Laboring noisily, the truck speeded up. Marion’s annoyance changed to real anger. Probably it was some juvenile delinquent acting out his hostilities on wheels borrowed from his hard-working Papa.

She had paid no attention to the truck when it had been parked on the street, and since then the glare had made it indistinguishable. But she knew it was not a very large one, nor a van. She had not seen the driver at all.

She would turn off Oakland and go out Shore Drive. Perhaps he would tire of his silly sport. If not, there ought to be traffic patrolmen there.

She turned right, suddenly and without signalling. The truck braked and turned after her. On the cross street she stopped for a barely visible stop sign. The truck stopped and started with her, keeping the distance unchanged. She suppressed a crazy impulse to slam into reverse and ram him with her rear bumper.

She swerved left into Shore Drive. The truck swerved with her. She blinked, eyes smarting from the mirrored glare. A small stalagmite of fear was edging up inside her anger. Possibly this was not a prankster.

Choosing Shore Drive had been a mistake, Marian decided. There was not another car in sight. At the right was a ledge, a slope of trees, a stretch of beach and then the lake, all greyed out by the fog. At the left was open park land, then a steep wooded cliff. On top of it, but invisible now, were perched grey stone mansions whose slit-windowed turrets peered down to the lake. They were inaccessible from this side. There was a long stretch of drive with no possibility of turning off except into the deserted park.

Now that Marian had let herself recognize her fear, it spread along her nerves like ice. She felt wetness inside her gloves, and fear pricked up along her spine like the fur of a frightened cat.

She speeded up to fifty, hoping desperately to hear the siren of a lurking prowl car. But there were curves ahead and she dared not maintain the speed. She braked, belatedly seeing the first curve. The bag beside her toppled and fell to the floor of the car. There was the sound of glass cracking and the sharp smell of whiskey began to fill the car. The truck’s tires screeched behind her, barely slowing in time.

“So if a cop should materialize he’d probably book me for drunkenness or something,” she said aloud. “That would be lovely. But there aren’t any cops. They all took off for Mars an hour ago. Stop talking, Marian O’Meara. You’re scared to death. You’re a gibbering mess of fright. Put yourself together.”

She gripped the wheel unnecessarily hard, slowing for the next curve.

“I never believed much in things that go boomp in the night and things that say boo. I do now, though.”

She tried not to imagine the face of the insane murderer in the truck — at last she had let herself admit that it probably was the psycho — which she had not even glimpsed in reality. A huge man with loose lips and little, mad red eyes?

But no, judging from the hell-fire messages he had left with his victims. More likely he was tall and gaunt, with thin lips and cavernous eyes, a self-tormented ascetic except when his hatred of evil turned into a wilder hatred of attractive women, because to him they were instruments of evil.

But I’m not, Rod. I’m not, Teddy and Midge. I don’t deserve this for anything, do I?

Silly. People don’t get chased by homicidal nuts because they do or don’t deserve it. They get pursued because something — color of hair, a way of walking, or being gaily dressed, reminds some split-off part of the psycho’s mind of what he hates or fears.

Marian was in the suburbs now, nearing the end of Shore Drive. There would be houses with driveways, with lights over front doors and people in lighted rooms who could be called. True, the business part of Brookdale would be closed and dark, but—

The filling station. That big lovely service station, filling a corner lot with its batteries of gas pumps, its white garage and its cheerful attendants! Only last Saturday night she and Rod had stopped there close to midnight. It had been open. A pleasant young negro had filled their tank, and he and a brisk red-haired young man had wiped the car windows.

With longing, with rising hope, Marian held up the two faces before the eyes of her mind. “Check your oil and water, Ma’am?” Strong young men, wholesome-looking young men, please be there.

She turned right into the station, seeing a gleam of light inside the garage, refusing to believe the pumps were unlighted. The filling station was closed. There was only a night light inside.

She swung out again, still wearing the truck like an appendage to her car. Its lights blazed back from her mirror and she dabbed with her glove at a trickle of tears on her cheeks.

As she swung back into the road she glanced at the gas gauge and froze. The needle was perilously close to “E.”

“Dear God, forgive me my carelessness, my rattling brains that don’t remember such things as keeping a full gas tank. Forgive me this one more time and make the gas last until I find help.”

The business street of Brookdale was deserted as she had known it would be. Damn those village fathers who vote every year not to allow a tavern in the town. It would be open now, with a juke box playing corn and a lot of beautiful, sloppy, jolly people at the bar. Would that offend the stuffy suburbanites more than the notoriety of a messy murder on their streets? But perhaps it wouldn’t come to that. They’d simply move her body, leave it somewhere in the city, and keep embarrassment out of Brookdale.

And where was the village police station? Marian had never thought to find out. Off on a side street somewhere, but she did not dare to leave the highway and search the dark cross streets.

She recalled a glimpse of the station, a genteel white phony colonial house complete with elms and marked with an unobtrusive sign — POLICE. She wouldn’t see the small sign in this darkness, nor would she recognize the building.

She drove on, between large houses set far back on landscaped lawns. Where was everyone? Lights gleamed dimly from some of the windows, but you could not be sure which houses actually had people — living, moving, waking people — inside. If she guessed wrong, there probably would be no second chance.

Headlights appeared suddenly as a car rounded a bend ahead, then a second pair. Two cars driving rather fast toward her. She slowed, sounded her horn, and gestured in frantic signals as the first car came near. It met hers and passed on. She braked to a full stop, hoping to attract attention in the second car. It slowed a little, then went on.

Marian allowed herself, briefly, to weep. In this over-populated world, was it impossible to contact a human being?

She swerved into a driveway that circled before a big square-built house with lights somewhere inside. The truck circled with her, keeping the distance unchanged. She stopped opposite the front door and leaned on her horn, sending blast after blast of sound into the stillness, quieting her own breath to listen for a response. A dog barked somewhere in the house.

Marian thought she saw movement, but the door remained closed. She rested her throbbing head on the steering wheel a moment, then straightened it, wiped her eyes with the back of her gloved hand and drove into the road again.

She was lost, she realized dully. She was still on Highway 31, but in her panic she had missed the turnoff that would take her home. Now, she thought with desolation, even if Rod should become worried and start out to look for her, he would never find her. Naturally, he would turn toward the city.

Time had stopped. Marian felt as if she had been driving on this road forever, through terrain that was ghostly and unfamiliar in the fog. There was no hope, and she hardly noticed a dim red gleam ahead. It went into focus as she approached and turned into Neon letters — BECK’S MOTEL. Vacancy. She turned into driveway edged with white wagon wheels. The truck followed.

She flung open the car door and ran toward a lighted entrance, her heels catching in ice-clotted gravel. In the office a woman with grey-streaked brown hair looked up from her magazine. “May I telephone?” Marian asked.

The woman gestured. “There’s a phone booth outside.”

“Please, I’m in trouble. A man in a truck is following me. He’s out there now, waiting behind my car. Can’t I call from in here?”

The woman got up and went to the door. For a moment Marian thought she was about to be sent out again into the nightmare. But the woman set the night latch instead.

“Use the phone on the desk.”

Marian dialed with frantic fingers. Rod’s “Hello?” sounded near, but it was a voice remembered with longing from a distant past. She realized she had not expected ever to hear it again.

“Rod... Rod—”

“Hold it, Baby. What’s wrong?”

“Come and get me, Rod. Beck’s Motel, Highway Thirty-one.”

“I know where it is. What’s the matter?”

“Quickly, please, please. Hurry.”

His voice sobered and sharpened. “Hang on. I’m coming.”

Marian swayed as she got up from the chair. The woman guided her to another one, went back to the desk and dialed.

“Highway patrol? This is Mrs. Beck. Better send some men to Beck’s Motel. There’s a man outside, tried to molest a girl. All right. Thanks.”

She crossed to Marian’s chair, put a hand under the shaking elbow and drew her up.

“It’s all right. Now go into the powder room and fix your face. Dash on some cold water and comb your hair. I’ll make you a cup of coffee while you’re gone.”

The powder room mirror showed a white face streaked with mascara and tears. Marian scrubbed, replaced the bitten-off lipstick and dusted powder onto the reddened nose. She found the comb in her purse but she had to steady her arm against the wall to control her shaking enough to use it.

She came out and the woman poured from an electric percolator on a stand beside the desk. Marian sipped gratefully. Then there was a shriek of brakes as Rod’s sports car swerved into the drive.

“Is that your husband?” Mrs. Beck asked, her hand on the latch.

“Yes— Oh, yes!”

Marian flung herself into Rod’s arms.

“The truck— Oh Rod, I think that maniac is driving it. He followed me all the way from the store, crowding up close. Finally I panicked and missed the turn—”

There was a scream of sirens, nearing.

“Wait, Rod—” she clung but he ran out, jerked open the door of the truck, reached inside. Two patrolmen on motorcycles screeched up as Rod dragged the truck driver out, stood him up, and towered over him.

He was a little man, elderly and frail. Perspiration stood in drops on his forehead, below a faded blue cap.

“All right, Pop, tell your story. Fast.” Holding the man by the scruff of his collar, Rod shook him a little. The other fist seemed itching to strike.

“Look quick — on the floor in the back of her car.”

The patrolmen stepped over to Marian’s car, and one of them opened the door. Their revolvers whipped out. Rod joined them, still holding the little truck driver by his neck.

“Come out of there,” a patrolman said.

A giant of a man, tall and heavily built, unfolded himself and came out. He stood rigid, expressionless, unresisting as one officer held him by the arm while the other searched him thoroughly.

“Let go of my neck, will you,” the truck driver said to Rod. The hand relaxed its hold and the little man straightened himself with dignity. “Your girl didn’t know she had a passenger, but I did.”

The patrolman’s hand went in and out of the big man’s pockets. A club like those carried by policemen, but smaller, came out of one pocket. From another came a half sheet of paper, torn diagonally. The officer’s flashlight beam picked up black pencilled scrawls that were almost, but not quite, words.

A station wagon with whirling red light on top rolled in the driveway, to a diminishing moan of siren. Two more highway patrolmen got out.

Suddenly the big man jerked free of the officer’s hand and ran. One of the revolvers coughed, and the man fell.

“You got him in the leg,” the lieutenant who seemed to be in charge said. “Load him in the wagon.”

There was no sound from the prisoner as he was lifted and put into the station wagon. The two officers got in, the siren howled again and the wagon drove away.

One of the troopers had his notebook out and the truck driver was telling his story.

“Name’s Fred Buxton. I make short hauls — it’s my own truck. I was parked in front of the store, meaning to go in and buy a sandwich to take along. The lady parked in front of me and ran into the liquor store. I saw this man get out of another car that was parked across the street, without lights. The lady came out again and went into the delicatessen.

“Instead of getting out of my truck and going on in the store I just sat there, because there was something I didn’t like about the way he watched her. When she went into the food store he opened her car door and crawled into the back. She came out and got in without looking, and drove off.

“What could I do? I’d be no match for him. But I figured if I kept close with my bright lights on, he’d stay down. I thought any minute we’d see a cop, but we didn’t. So I just kept on following. I was scared she’d panic and wreck herself, but she’s a pretty cool girl. A real good driver, too.”

Marian, safe in the tight circle of Rod’s arm, had stopped trembling. She told her story firmly, they gave names and ages and addresses. Then she walked over to the truck driver, put her arms around his neck, and kissed his cheek.

“That,” she said, “was for saving my life.”

She kissed him again, this time on the mouth.

“And that was for saying I’m a good driver.”

He returned the kiss with more fervor than his appearance would have caused a lady to predict

“You are, Miss,” he said. “And you’re pretty, too.”

He strutted a little, going back to his truck.

Rod parked his sports car in the motel lot, handed Marian ceremoniously into the right front door of her car, went around and got behind the wheel.

Steering expertly with one arm, he drove his wife back to their party. She had been away from it for an hour and ten minutes.