Murder with a Past

7

“If that refugee from a TV commercial thinks he can bluff me out of this...!” Sandra Jean was raging up and down the room. “I’ll show him.”

“Maybe he’s being your very good friend,” Tully said.

“And maybe Mercedes Cabbott is a member of the human race! Why, Dave, she put him up to this — isn’t it obvious? I’ll show her, too!”

There was a bubble of froth at the corner of her mouth. And her sister’s predicament, Tully thought bitterly, left her temperature unchanged. That’s what she thinks of Ruth.

As if she had picked up the name on her emotional radar, Sandra Jean said suddenly, “I’m not really worried — that woman won’t cast her precious sonny-boy adrift — it’s the way she treats me. You’d think I was Typhoid Mary. The old bitch wouldn’t act this way if I were Ruth.”

“Well, that’s one thing you don’t have to worry about,” Tully said. “You’re not.”

His tone seemed to calm her down. “I know I’m not, Davey. It’s been thrown up to me all my life. What the hell happened to this drink?” She went over to the bar and got busy again. “It’s always been Ruth this and Ruth that, all that’s pure and holy. In Mercedes’s case it’s easy to understand — she latched onto Ruth as a substitute for her daughter Kathleen, who becomes more and more of a saint the longer she’s dead — in Mercedes’s mind, that is.” Sandra Jean took her fresh drink to the sofa and curled up opposite him. “That’s all right with me...”

“I don’t think it is,” Tully said. “I think you hate Ruth. I think you’ve always hated her.”

Sandra Jean looked into her tall glass and considered this. “Maybe I do at that,” she said at last. “Maybe I always have, as you say. And that makes me out a stinker for real, doesn’t it?”

“Forget it,” Tully said, barely waving his hand. “Forget it. I hardly know what I’m saying.”

“Look, Davey,” the girl said, setting her glass down on the floor. He looked, and he saw a Sandra Jean ten years older, her face drawn down in bitter lines. “Did Ruth ever tell you that our mother died giving birth to me? Till the day he died Daddy never forgave me for it — I was the ‘cause,’ you see, for Mother’s dying. Poor Daddy had a tough time trying not to show it, and it’ll give you a short idea of the kind of cookie our father was when I tell you that his solution was to pretend I wasn’t there. So I never had a mother, and to my father I was a sort of nothing. Naturally, he gave all his paternal attention — and love — to Ruth, who could do no wrong. That’s what I grew up with — a guilt feeling about my mother’s death and having my big sister thrown in my face. And it’s still going on.”

“I didn’t know that.” Tully shaded his burning eyes. He had never more than tolerated Sandra Jean, being polite to her only for his wife’s sake; but now he realized that for some time he had even stopped thinking of the girl as a human being. She had become a sort of ambulatory annoyance — a tart-tongued irritant when her sister was around, a menace when she could corner him alone. He could not even flatter himself that she was sexually attracted to him. It was Sandra Jean’s way of tearing down everything around her that seemed to have some solidity. Now he understood why. “I’m sorry we haven’t got on better, Sandra,” Tully said.

“Are you now,” the girl said. She had been biting her lips; but now she retracted them in a curl of malice. She stooped and snatched up her glass. “And I love you, too, Davey my lad. Pros’t!” She tossed down the contents of the glass and deliberately dropped it on the sofa and jumped up. “On that moon-eyed note, dear brother-in-law, you are rid of me for the evening. Any more of it and I’ll throw up.”

“Where are you going?” It was her way of covering up, he knew, for having momentarily exposed herself.

“Back to the Cabbotts’ to play hell with Mercedes’s plans. She has no intention of turning Andy loose on an unsuspecting world, but the dumb bunny may not realize it unless there’s someone there to tell him. And that’s me. Say, call me a cab, will you? I was expecting Andy to drive me back.”

Tully silently rose and went into his den and phoned for a taxi. When he returned she was standing at the front door. “You’re not such a bad egg, Davey,” she said brightly. “Only a little on the raunchy side... I had you going with all that autobiographical crud, didn’t I, Dave boy?”

“It sounded real to me,” Tully smiled faintly.

His smile infuriated her.

“So what!” Sandra Jean snarled. “I don’t need you, Ruth or anybody else!”

About ten minutes after Sandra Jean drove away in the cab, the phone rang in the study. Tully raced for it.

“Yes?” he said hoarsely.

“Dave? Julian Smith.”

Tully sagged. The detective’s tone was good for nothing but more bad news.

“Did Ruth — did you—?”

“No, Dave,” Smith said. “No sign of her yet... Dave.”

“Yes, Julian.”

“I’m afraid I’ve sat on this just as long as it could be sat on. The Times-Call and the TV people have it. I simply couldn’t keep Ruth’s name out of it any longer.”

“Thanks anyway, Julian. You’ve been more than considerate.”

“They’ll be on your neck any minute... I don’t suppose you’ve heard from Ruth?” the Homicide man said suddenly.

“No.”

“Dave—”

“I said no!” Tully cried. “God damn it, don’t you understand English?”

Smith hung up softly and, after a moment, Tully followed suit. His hands were shaking violently. He was heading for the Scotch when the doorbell chimed.

Tully changed course and sneaked a look out the picture window.

Any minute was right. They were here. The press and the TV together. He opened the door.

One of them was the city editor of the Times-Call, in person; the other was chief of the news staff of the local television station. David Tully knew them both well. Jake Ballinger was a rumpled, baggy-pantsed old newspaperman from Chicago who had chosen to finish off his illustrious career on a small-town paper; Eddie Harper was a prematurely bald young TV flash who had put the local station on the state map in a big way. If Ballinger and Harper were covering the Cox story in person, Ruth and he were in for it.

They treated Tully very gently, offering sincere-sounding regrets for the occasion of their visit, easing into their questions:

— What do you know about this?

Nothing. I got back from upstate and walked right into the middle of it. I don’t know any more about it than you do.

— Where is Mrs. Tully?

I don’t know.

— You must have heard from her.

No.

— She didn’t leave you a note or anything?

No. But my wife is innocent. That’s the only thing I’m sure of.

— What makes you so sure?

Ruth couldn’t murder anybody.

— Then you have no proof that Mrs. Tully didn’t shoot this man Cox?

I don’t need proof. I know her better than anyone in the world. This is all a terrible mixup — mistake of some kind. It will be cleared up when she’s found.

— But you have no idea where she is?

No. I told you.

— And you haven’t any clue to her present whereabouts?

No, I said!

— How long has Mrs. Tully known Crandall Cox? (this was Jake Ballinger, solicitously.)

I’m not answering any Did-you-stop-beating-your-wife type questions! She didn’t know him! At all!

— Do you know that for a fact?

No, I don’t know it for a fact — how could I? I know it because she never mentioned a name remotely like that!

— But she must have known him, Mr. Tully (this was the TV news chief, gently). Cox called her by name, according to the witness the police have. By her first name, as I understand it.

— And your gun was used, Dave.

— So Mrs. Tully must have been there, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Tully?

I’m saying nothing further — nothing at all!

When the two newsmen were gone, Tully poured himself a stiff shot, and another, and then another. He had handled himself badly, he knew. Done Ruth’s cause an actual disservice. Most of all, perhaps, he had resented their pity, as Sandra Jean had resented his.

Standing at the window with the third drink in his hand, Tully felt emotionally naked. Where was Ruth? What was she doing? And why? Ruth’s cause... Did she have a cause?

He tried to keep his thoughts at bay, but they kept hurtling through his mind: Is she only a smoother version of Sandra Jean... conning me... insinuating herself into Mercedes Cabbott’s affections by playing on the old woman’s memory of a dead daughter... fooling the whole town... until an unsavory chapter in her past caught up with her...?

The phone rang again. He rushed into the den.

“Hello!”

“The Tully residence?” It was a woman’s voice, the wrong woman’s. “This is Miss Blake.”

“Who? Oh, from the Hobby Motel. Yes?”

“I ain’t there any more, Mr. Tully. I just moved to Flynn’s Inn — too many rubbernecks at the motel. Look, I read the paper. First time I saw you I figured you for class, and now I see by the paper that I was right — you’re a real big shot around here.”

“What do you want?” Tully asked curtly.

“Well, now, you know I told you I’d think real hard about Cranny Cox. I like to help people if I can.”

“Sure you do, Miss Blake.” He braced himself; this might be genuine, at that. “And you do remember something now?”

“Why don’t you come over to Flynn’s Inn and we’ll talk about it?”

“Do you know where my wife is?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Do you!”

She sounded quite unperturbed by his violence. “I like to see who I’m talking to. You better come over here.”

“What’s your room number?”

She laughed. “Room two two two. Just you come on up... alone, Mr. Tully.”

“What are you afraid of, Miss Blake?” For a wild instant he suspected some sort of trap.

“Witnesses,” she said simply. “You say nothing to nobody and come alone, mister, or don’t bother to come at all.”