A Bullet for Cinderella (18 page)

“It’s the truth.”

“I don’t think it’s the truth at all. I think maybe you haven’t gotten any place. I think I’ve stalled around here too long. I think I’d like to hear your neck snap. I can do it so quick you’ll hardly know it happened. Maybe you won’t know it at all.”

“Wait a minute. Look in the closet in the bedroom. Her luggage is there.”

For the first time he looked uncertain. He turned out the bathroom light and went into the next room. He came back with the two suitcases. He shut the door, turned the light on again. He opened them and looked at the clothing.

“This is pretty good stuff. This belongs to her? What’s it doing here?”

“We were going to get the money and go off together.”

I could see him appraise that, and half accept it. “But I don’t like the idea of letting you go and get it. I can’t keep an eye on you.”

“Fitz, listen to me. I don’t give a damn about the money. You can have every cent of it after I get it. I’ll trade all of it for Ruth Stamm. Then see how it will be. You’ll have the hundred and seven thousand. They think George was a suicide. Maybe they’ll never find Grassman. I covered the body with hay. The barn is about to fall down. Nobody ever goes in there. They won’t look as hard for you. You’ll be a lot safer.”

“You’re lying. This is a stall.”

“It’s not. I’ll prove we were going to go away together when we got the money. Look for the small black box in
the bottom of the smaller suitcase. Under all the clothes. Yes, that’s it. Look under the partition.”

He took the money out. He riffled through it. He folded it once and put it in his shirt pocket. He looked at me for long moments, his eyes dubious.

I do not like to think about the next half hour. He put the gag back in my mouth. He had his strong hands, and he had the small sharp knife, and he had a sadistic knowledge of the nerve ends. From time to time he would stop and wait until I quieted down, then loosen the gag and question me. The pain and humiliation made me weep like a child. Once I fainted. Finally he was satisfied. He had learned how much I thought of Ruth. He had learned that I knew that we had to go where the money was hidden by boat. He knew that I had guessed we would start from the Rasi house north of town. And he knew that I knew no more than that.

After that he cut my hands loose. He was perfectly safe in so doing. I was too enfeebled by pain to be any threat to him.

“You’ll get the money. You’ll dig it up. You’ll come back here with it.”

“No.”

He took a quick half step toward me. I couldn’t help flinching. Memory of what he could do was too clear.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I don’t trust you to do what you promise, Fitz. I’ve got to know Ruth will be all right. I’ve got to know she’ll be safe. Or you don’t get the money.”

“I broke you this far. You want to be broken the rest of the way?”

“I don’t think you can do it.”

After a long time he gave a shrug of disgust. “Maybe not. How do you want it worked?”

“I want to see her. I want to see that she’s alive before I give you the money. It could be by the river. Then if you try to cross me, I’ll throw the money in the river. I swear I’ll do that.”

“You would, wouldn’t you? You’re making it rough. I can’t risk being seen.”

“I’ll see that we start off by boat at one o’clock. I don’t know how far we have to go or how long it will take. You could bring her to the Rasi house at two.”

“It’s a risk.”

“It’s isolated. There’s no phone there. At least I don’t think they have a phone. I’ll give you the money and I’ll see that you get a fair start. That’s the most I can do. I won’t try to make it any safer for you.”

“But you promise a fair start?”

“I promise that.”

He snapped out the bathroom light. I heard the door open, and then heard the outer door open and close. I walked unsteadily through the dark room to the front door. I opened it. The moon was gone. A wind sighed across the flats on the far side of the road. There was no sign that Fitzmartin had ever been there. The night was still. He was very good in the night. I remembered that.

There was a first-aid kit in the trunk compartment of my car. I got it. The small cuts had not bled very much. I cleaned myself up and bandaged the cuts. I ached all over. I felt sick and weak, as though I were recovering from a long illness. I kept seeing his eyes. His powerful hands had punished nerves and muscles. Even my bones felt bruised and tender.

I went to bed. I was certain that Ruth was still alive. I hoped his greed would be stronger than his wish to kill. I hoped his greed would last through the night. But there was something erratic about his thought patterns. There was an incoherency about the way he had talked, jumping from one subject to the next. He had a vast confidence in his own powers.

I wondered where he had Ruth. A half mile away. Across country. Maybe she was in his car, and it was parked well off a secondary road. Maybe he had found a deserted shed.

As I lay awake, trying to find some position in which I could be comfortable, I heard it begin to rain. The rain was light at first, a mere whisper of rain. And then it began to come down. It thundered on the roof. It made a
drench of the world, bouncing off the painted metal of the cars, coming down as though all the gates of the skies had been opened.

I
awoke at dawn. It was still raining. It seemed to be raining harder than before. I was surprised that I had been able to go to sleep. I took a hot shower to work the stiffness out of my muscles. The small cuts stung. My face in the mirror looked like the face of a stranger, with sunken eyes and flat, taut cheeks.

I prayed that Ruth was still alive. I prayed that she had lived through the night. I knew what would have happened the previous night had I not found Cindy. I would be lying dead on the tile floor. They would find me there.

I shaved and dressed and left the motel. I got uncomfortably wet in the ten feet from the motel door to the car door. I drove slowly into town, the lights on, peering ahead through the heavy rain curtain. I drove through town and found a gas station open on the far side. I had the car gassed up. Farther along I found an all-night bean wagon. A disc jockey in Redding was giving the seven-o’clock news. The plastic radio was behind the counter.

“… as yet on the disappearance of Ruth Stamm, only daughter of Doctor Buxton Stamm of Hillston. It is believed that the young woman was abducted by a man named Earl Fitzmartin, Marine veteran and ex-prisoner of war. Fitzmartin had been employed for the past year by George Warden, Hillston businessman. Fitzmartin was a newcomer to Hillston. George Warden committed suicide this week. But certain peculiarities about the circumstances of Warden’s suicide have led Hillston police to believe that it may have been murder. Yesterday the Hillston police, assisted by Gordon County police officers,
searched a summer cottage once owned by George Warden and found, under a cement garage floor, the bodies of Eloise Warden, wife of George Warden, and Henry Fulton, of Chicago. At the time of the Warden woman’s disappearance two years ago, it was believed she had run off with Fulton. Discovery of the bodies and of the Fulton car, which had been driven into the lake into deep water, has led police to believe that George Warden killed both of them after finding them together at the summer cottage.

“An intensive search is being made for Fitzmartin and Miss Stamm. Full details of the case have not yet been released, but it is believed that there is some connection between Fitzmartin and the bodies discovered yesterday at the summer cottage. It is expected that federal authorities will be called in on the case today. Miss Ruth Stamm is twenty-six years old, five feet eight inches tall, and weighs about a hundred and twenty-eight pounds. She has dark red hair and gray eyes and was last seen wearing a dark green skirt and a white cardigan sweater. Fitzmartin is about thirty years old, six feet tall, weighs about a hundred and eighty pounds. He has very blond, almost white hair, pale gray eyes. He may be driving a black Ford, license BB67063. Anyone seeing persons of this description should contact the police at once. Listen again at eight o’clock to WRED for complete local news.”

The disc jockey stopped and whistled softly. “How about that, folks? They give me this stuff to read and sometimes I read it and don’t even listen. But that’s a hot one. That one can grab you. Bodies under concrete. Cars in lakes. Suicides that aren’t suicides. A red-headed gal and an ex-Marine. Man, that’s a crazy mixed-up deal they’ve got down there in Hillston. That’s got all the makings of a national type crime. Well, back to the mines. Got to spin some of this stuff. But before I do, let me tell you a little something you ought to know, you good folks out there, about the Atlas Laundry and Dry Cleaning people right here in Redding, over on Downey
Street. If you’ve got clothes you’re really proud of, and I guess we all got one set of those good threads at least, then you—”

The fat young girl behind the counter turned off the radio. “That character,” she said amiably to me. “Ten minutes of commercials between every number. Drive you nuts. I just turn him on for the news. If you want, I can turn him back on or find something else.”

“No thanks.”

“How about that Stamm girl? I met her once. We had this dog, see. Got him when he was a puppy. But this highway, it’s bad to try to have a dog when you live on the highway. He got himself hit and we took him to Stamm’s. The girl was real nice. Pretty sort of girl. But Blackie was too far gone. Busted his back, so they had to give him a shot. Honest, I cried. And you know what I think? I think it’s a big deal for those two. I think she maybe ran off with that Marine. You can figure she wasn’t getting any younger. She’ll hear about all the mess she’s causing and she’ll get in touch. That’s just what will happen.”

“Could be,” I said.

“Of course it could be. You want more coffee, maybe? Sometimes I think I’d run off with anybody asked me just to get out of this rat race. That’s on my bad days. Isn’t this day a stinker, though? It keeps coming down like this, every creek in the county will be flooded. It gives me the creeps to think about those two buried under a garage floor all that time. I never knew her, but my sister knew her. She was in the high school with her, before my time. My sister says she did a lot of running around. The way I see it, mister, if a husband catches his wife and another man, he’s got a right to kill the two of them. It’s like what they say the unwritten law. When I get married, I’m not going to do any cheating. I guess it isn’t so bad if a man does a little cheating. They’re all alike, beg your pardon. But no woman with a home and husband and everything has any right to jump the fence. Don’t you think so? He made his big mistake burying the two of them like he did. He should have just got on the phone
and said to the police, ‘You boys come out here and see what I did and why.’ Then it would have been just what they say formalities. The way I look at it—”

I was saved by two truck drivers who came in from the big red combo that had just parked in front of the place. After she served them she came back, but I had finished.

As she gave me my change she said, “You remember what I told you, now. That girl and that Marine ran off some place. Drive carefully.”

I drove on through the rain. The cars I met were proceeding with great care. It should have been full daylight, but it hadn’t gotten appreciably lighter since first dawn. It was almost nine o’clock before I got to Redding. I parked near a drugstore and phoned her number from a booth in the back of the store.

She answered the phone at once. “Hello?”

“This is Tal.”

“I’m sorry. I’m afraid you have the wrong number.”

“I’ll be there at ten like you said.”

“That’s perfectly all right.” She hung up. Her last comment had been the tip-off. Somebody was there with her. She had answered as though I had apologized. I wondered if it would be all set for ten. I wondered if I dared try again. I went to the drugstore counter and had coffee. The counter was emptying rapidly as people went to work. I bought a Redding paper. The discovery of the bodies had been given a big play. The article filled in a little more background than the radio item, but essentially it was the same.

At nine-thirty I tried again. She answered on the second ring. “Hello?”

“This is Tal again.”

“Yes?”

“Is this deal off or on. What goes on? Should I be there at ten?”

“This coming Saturday? No, I’m very sorry. I have a date.”

“I’m at a pay phone. The number is 4-6040. I’ll wait right here until you can call me back.”

“No, I’m so sorry. Maybe some other time. Give me a ring.”

“Phone as soon as you can.”

“Thank you. Good-by.”

I took a booth near the phone booths. I went and got my paper and ordered more coffee. I waited. Two people used the booth. At five minutes to ten the call came.

“Hello?”

“Is that you, Tal? I couldn’t talk before. I’m glad you phoned. Make it ten-fifteen. What does your watch say?”

“Exactly four minutes of.”

“Don’t park out back. Park a block away. Start up at exactly ten-fifteen and go slow. When you see me coming, unlatch the door. Don’t waste time getting away from there.”

I began to be more nervous. I had no way of knowing what she was mixed up in. I knew her playmates would be hard people. I didn’t know how closely they would be watching her.

The rain had begun to let up a little. I parked a block away from her apartment house. I could see it. I kept the motor running. I kept an eye on my watch. At exactly ten fifteen I started up. I drove slowly. I saw a man in a trench coat across the street from the apartment house, leaning against a phone pole.

As I drew even with the apartment house, slowing down, she came running. I swung the door open. I didn’t stop. She piled into the car. She wore a dark coat, a black hat with a veil, and carried a brown case like a dispatch case.

“Hurry!” she ordered. Her voice was shrill, frightened.

I speeded up. She was looking back. I heard a hoarse shout.