A Bullet for Cinderella (14 page)

She wanted to be kissed and I kissed her. There was an eagerness and warmth and sensuality about her that made it a shock to touch her and hold her. We rocked off balance as we kissed, caught ourselves, smiled a little sheepishly.

“For now,” she said.

I took the suitcases into the hall. She went on down. I waited there for fifteen minutes and then I went down. The clerk was very dubious about my leaving with suitcases. He seemed about to speak, but didn’t quite know what to say. I was gone before he had phrased the objection. I put the suitcases in the back seat and drove to Hillston. I ate at a drive-in on the edge of town. I took the suitcases back to my motel room. They were an alien presence there, almost as vivid as if she were there with me. I stowed them in the closet.

W
ednesday was a gray day. I had hidden Grassman’s body on Monday. It seemed longer ago than Monday. The memory was very vivid, but it seemed to be something that had happened a long time ago. I saw the suitcases when I opened my closet to get at my own clothes. I was curious about what she had packed. I felt guilty about opening them. Then I decided that I had earned the right to look.

I put the larger one on the bed and tried the latches. It wasn’t locked. It popped open. There were furs on top, silky and lustrous. She had packed neatly. Underneath the furs were suits, dresses, skirts, blouses. The bottom layer was underclothing, slips, panties with frothy lace
and intricate embroidery in shades from purest white through all of the spectrum to black.

The other suitcase was much the same. The clothing was fresh and fragrant with perfume. It was perfume that was not musky. It had a clean flower scent. I could understand how this was important to her. I remembered her speaking of the charity gifts of clothing, of the dirt in which she had grown up. She would want clothing, a great deal of it, and all fresh and clean. I found the black leather box in the bottom of the second suitcase. I opened it. Jewelry lay against a black velvet partition. Bracelets, rings, clips. I could not tell if the white and green and red stones were real. They were lustrous. They caught fire in the light. But I could not tell. I lifted the partition. There was money under it. Money in fifties and twenties and hundreds, a sizable stack of bills. I counted it. There was six thousand and forty dollars. When I replaced the partition the stones looked more real.

After the suitcases were back in the closet, I wondered what her thinking had been when she had packed the money in there. Perhaps she assumed I wouldn’t search the bags. I hadn’t intended to. Maybe she thought that even if I did search them and did find the money it would be safer with me than it would in the apartment. She could have been right. It was safe with me. Even had I been the sort of person to take it and leave, that sort of person would have waited for the chance of acquiring much more—a chance only Antoinette could provide.

I found the bird woman cleaning one of the rooms. I paid her another two nights in advance for myself and asked her to save the room next to mine for a friend who would check in on Thursday. I gave her one night rental on the second room.

As I drove toward town I found myself wondering if what Antoinette had proposed might be the best solution for me. It was tempting. I thought of the ripeness of her, the pungency of her personality, the very startling impact of her lips. There would be no illusions between us. She would make it easy to forget a lot of things. We would have no claims on each other—and would be
wedded only by the money, and divorced when it was gone.

After I ate I went to the hardware store. I parked a half block from it. I wanted to talk to George again. I wanted to see if I could steer the conversation toward Eloise and Mr. Fulton. I wanted to see if he would say anything that would make more sense out of the Grassman death. Obviously Fitz hadn’t contacted Antoinette. And she seemed confident that no one else could find the money. So it began to appear less logical that Grassman’s death had anything to do with the sixty thousand. Then why had Grassman been killed? He could have gotten into some kind of argument with Fitz. We had seen Grassman at the lake on Saturday. Somehow I had spoiled things with Ruth and so I had gotten drunk on Saturday and again on Sunday. Fitz could have killed him on Sunday, not meaning to do so. He could have loaded the body in his car and gone looking for some place to put it, and spotted my car. The California plates would be easy to spot. But by putting the body in my car, he would be eliminating any chance of my leading him to the money Timmy had buried.

But maybe Fitz was convinced that with the clue in his possession, with the name Cindy, he could accomplish as much or more than I could. He was a man of great confidence in himself. And not, I had begun to believe, entirely sane.

If Grassman had contacted Fitz, perhaps George could provide me with some meaningful clue as to why.

But there was a sign on the door. The store was closed. The sign gave no additional information. It was crudely printed on paper Scotch-taped to the inside of the door:
Closed
. I cupped my hands on the glass and looked inside. The stock did not seem to be disturbed. It could not mean closed for good.

It took me several minutes to remember where George lived. I couldn’t remember who had told me. White’s Hotel. I found it three blocks away. It was a frame building. It was seedy looking, depressing. It had once been painted yellow and white. I went into the lobby. Old men
sat in scuffed leather chairs and smoked and read the papers. Two pimpled boys stood by the desk making intense work out of selecting the right holes to punch on a punchboard while the desk man watched them, his eyes bored, his heavy face slack, smoke curling up from the cigarette between his lips.

“I want to see George Warden.”

“Second floor. The stairs are over there. A girl just went on up to see him a minute ago.” I hesitated and he said “Go ahead on up. Room two-oh-three. She takes care of him when he gets in rough shape. It’s okay. George got taken drunk the last couple of days. She tried to phone him and he wouldn’t answer the room phone so she came on down. Just now got here.”

I guessed it was Ruth. I wanted to see her. I didn’t know how she’d react to me. I didn’t want to talk to George with her there, though. I went up the stairs slowly.

When my eyes were above the level of the second floor, I saw Ruth running down the gloomy hall toward me. I reached the top of the stairs just as she got there. Her eyes were wide and unfocused. Her mouth was working. Her face was like wet paper.

I called her name and she focused on me, hesitated, and then came into my arms. She was trembling all over. She ground her forehead against my chin, rocking her head from side to side, making an odd chattering, moaning sound. After a few moments she regained enough control to speak.

“It’s George. In the room. On the bed.”

“Wait right here.”

“N-No. I’ve got to telephone. Police.”

Her high heels chattered down the wooden stairs. I went back to room 203. The door was open. George lay across the bed, naked. There was a rifle on the floor. A towel was loosely wrapped around the muzzle. It was scorched where the slug had gone through it. I moved uneasily around to where I could see his head. The back of his head was blown off. I knew that before I saw his head because I had seen the smeared wall. In the instant
of death all body functions had shared the smeared explosion. The room stank. His body had a gray, withered look. I moved backward to the door. I backed through it into the hall. I mopped my forehead. It was a hell of a thing for Ruth to have walked in on. They could just as well move the sign to this door, to this life. Closed. Closed for good.

I stood there in the hall and heard the sirens. The desk clerk came lumbering down the hall. Old men from the lobby followed him. They crowded by me and filled the doorway and stared in.

“Good Christ!” the desk clerk said.

“My oh my oh my” said one of the old men.

Some of the faces were familiar. I knew Hillis and I knew Brubaker and I knew Prine. Prine was not on top this time. He was taking orders from a Captain Marion. Captain Marion was a mild, sandy man who wanted everything cozy and neighborly. He had a wide face full of smile wrinkles, and a soft, buzzing voice, and little blue eyes sunk back beyond the thick crisp blond curl of his eyebrows.

Rather than individual questioning, he made it a seminar. I could tell from Prine’s bleak look that he did not approve at all.

They got us all down into a room in police headquarters. There was a stenotype operator present. Captain Marion apologized for inconveniencing anybody. He apologized several times. He shifted papers and cleared his throat and coughed.

“Well now, as I finish with you people I’ll tell you whether you can take off or not. Nothing particularly official about this. It’s a sort of investigation. Get the facts in front of us. Let’s see what we got here. First let me say a couple of words about George. I knew his daddy well and I knew George well, and I knew Timmy. George could have been a big man in this town. He was on his way in that direction, but he lost his grip. Lots of men never seem to get back on the ball after bad wife trouble. But I had hopes George would pull out of it.
Seems to me like he didn’t. And that’s too bad. It’s quite a waste. George was a bright man.” I saw Prine shift his weight restlessly.

“I got it right here on this paper that the body was discovered at twenty minutes after ten this morning by Ruth Stamm. Now Ruthie, what in the wide world were you doing down there at that White’s Hotel?”

“Henr—I mean Captain Marion, George didn’t have anybody to look after him. Every once in a while I’d sort of—help him get straightened out.”

“You used to go with Timmy, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did. I was trying to help George.”

“Did Buck approve of that?”

“I don’t think so. I mean I know he didn’t.”

“I see. Ruthie, what took you down there this morning?”

“I went by the store yesterday afternoon and there was a closed sign on it. It worried me. After I got home I phoned White’s Hotel. Herman Watkins was on the desk. He told me George was drinking. This morning I phoned the store and there was no answer. Then I tried the hotel. George wouldn’t answer the room phone. He does that sometimes. I mean he used to do that. I have a key. So I drove down and went up to the room. The door wasn’t even locked. I opened it and—I saw him.”

“What were you planning to do?”

“Get him some coffee. Get him cleaned up. Give him a good talking to, I guess. As I’ve done before.”

“Ruthie, you can stay or go, just as you please. Now then, I’ve got this other name here. Talbert Howard. You came along right after Ruthie. What were you doing there?”

I saw Ruth Stamm start to get up and then sit back down. “I wanted to talk to George. I saw that the store was closed, so I went to the hotel.”

“What did you want to talk about?”

Prine answered for me. “We had this man in last week, Captain. We thought he was another one of those people Rose Fulton keeps sending down here. This man claims he’s writing a book about men who died in the prison
camp where Timmy Warden died. This man claims he was there, too. He’s never written a book. He’s unemployed, has no permanent address, and has a record of one conviction.”

“For what?”

I answered for myself. “For taking part in a student riot when I was in school. Disturbing the peace and resisting an officer. The officer broke my collarbone with a nightstick. That was called resisting an officer.”

Captain Marion looked at Prine. “Steve, you make everything sound so damn serious. Maybe this boy wants to write a book. Maybe he’s trying.”

“I happen to doubt it, Captain,” Prine said.

“What did you want to talk to George about, son?”

“I wanted more information about Timmy.” I glanced at Ruth. She was looking at me with contempt. She looked away.

“What happened when you got there?”

“The desk clerk told me a girl had just gone up. I met Miss Stamm when I got to the head of the stairs. She was too upset to talk.”

“I got a look in that room myself. Hardly blame her. Terrible looking sight. All right, son. You can go if you want to.”

“I’d prefer him to stay, if you don’t mind, Captain.”

Marion sighed. “All right, Steve. Stick around, Mr. Howard. Now, Herman, we’ll get to you. The doc says he can fix the time of death about midnight last night. He may be able to get it a little closer but he says that’s a pretty good guess. Did you see George come in?”

“No, sir. I didn’t see him. It was a pretty noisy night last night. There were a lot of people coming and going. I heard George was doing his drinking at Stump’s, until Stump wouldn’t serve him any more. He left there about ten. Frankly, Captain, I was playing a little poker in the room behind where the desk is. I can’t see the desk from there, but I can hear the bell on the desk and hear the switchboard if any calls come in. That’s why I brought Mr. Caswell along with me.”

“I’m Caswell,” a little old man said. He had a thin,
high voice and an excited manner. “Bartholomew Boris Caswell, retired eleven years ago. I was a conductor on the Erie and Western Railroad. I’m not what you call a drinking man and I see George Warden come in. I was behind him, maybe half a block. I just happened to look at my watch because I wondered what time I was getting in. Watch said eleven twenty-seven. Doesn’t lose a minute a month. See it? One of the best ever made. Right now it’s eleven minutes of two and that clock on the wall over your head, Captain, is running two minutes slow.”

“Are you sure it was George?”

“Sure as I know my own name. Man alive, he was drunk. Wagging his arms, staggering all over. If it wasn’t for his friend he’d never have made it home.”

“Who was his friend?”

“Don’t know him and didn’t get a look at him. Stiff-legged man, though. Stiff in one leg. Like a limp. He horsepowered George right into the hotel. Time I came in, they were gone upstairs. The lobby was empty. I could hear some of the boys hooting and hollering and carrying on up on the second floor. So I went there. They were back in Lester’s room. He had himself two gallons of red wine. At least he started with two gallons. I had myself a little out of my own glass that I got from my room. It didn’t set so good on what I had been drinking. Didn’t set good at all. It like to come up on me. So I went on down to bed. Got into my room at three after midnight. Right then I heard a funny noise. Just when I was closing my door. It sounded a little like somebody dropped a book or maybe tipped over in a chair and thumped his head. I listened and I didn’t hear anything else so I went right to bed. It turns out that must have been when George shot himself.”