Cover-Up Story (15 page)

‘Nice, hell! ' the Client snarled. ‘We're payin' them. Don't you keep forgettin' that.'

He wasn't an inspiring sight, leaning against the mantelpiece in crumpled pyjamas, unshaven and scowling. He looked more natural that way, but not very much like the Lonely Homesteader image. He might have lost a few fans, if they could have seen him like that. On the other hand, he might not. Some women like the blue-jowled brute type.

I ignored him. ‘Did you get any sleep?' I asked Lou-Ann.

‘Ah surely did.' She smiled wanly. ‘I took one of them pills the doctor left for me. It didn't work too good, but Bart wouldn't let me take another one. I guess maybe he was right. After a while, I went to sleep. They jest take a long time to work, I guess.'

‘You wanta be careful about pills.' Bart pushed himself away from the mantel and came forward. ‘They ain't nothing to fool around with. I don't like you having them at all. You better give them to me.'

A nasty little chill slid down my spine. There was nothing wrong with the words, nor with Bart's expression. Even his voice was smooth and properly concerned. But it was all phoney. All too pointed.

‘No.' A stubborn expression closed down over Lou-Ann's face. ‘I'll keep them. I'll be all right. You don't have to worry about me none. I'm not a kid.'

With Bart, she might be better off if she were. But the offer had been made and refused now. In front of witnesses. I felt a damp perspiration break out on my forehead, and tried to convince myself that it was just the tainted meat paste taking effect. But I couldn't make myself believe it. Nothing so cheerful.

‘Why don't you go lay down for a bit, honey,' Bart said, with laboured concern. ‘No need for you to be up so early.'

‘Maybe I will.' She smiled gratefully, but lingered. She didn't really want to exchange the life and warmth of company for a darkened room, but she was afraid of discouraging Bart by not responding enough. It was obviously the first time he had paid any attention to her since the shotgun was removed from his back.

‘You git along now,' Bart urged. ‘Have a little nap. You won't miss nothing. We'll all still be here when you wake up. Honest.'

‘All right, Bart,' she said, and disappeared into the room, leaving the door ajar.

Bart went over and closed the door firmly, then came back to us with a worried frown. ‘Ah'm really worried about that little gal,' he said confidentially. ‘She is so broke up over her poor Maw that she don't hardly know what she's doing.'

I avoided Gerry's eyes, and tried to stand firm against an impulse to run screaming all the way to Scotland Yard. What could I complain about, after all? A man was telling us he was worried about his wife. It was normal, understandable, and hardly a matter for the police. But not when that man was Black Bart.

It was my imagination. It had to be. There was absolutely no evidence that Bart could be planning anything. Just as there was no evidence that Maw's death had been anything but a traffic accident. Bart was far from the most savoury client we'd ever encountered, to say the least of it. But, while molesting children might not win him the Nobel Prize, it didn't necessarily make him a candidate as a murderer, either.

‘Ah know I ain't maybe been the
best
husband in the world,' he wound up with the understatement of the year. ‘But I sure aim to do better by her from now on. Yessir, these past few days have showed me jest how much she really means to me.' Face alight with resolution, he turned away.

Gerry murmured something to me, but not so low that the Client didn't catch it. He whirled back. ‘What did you say?' he demanded.

‘Cauld grue,' Gerry replied. ‘I said cauld grue didn't agree with me at this hour of the morning. It's what we had for breakfast,' he added hastily. ‘You wouldn't know, it's a form of Scottish porridge.'

‘Oh, too bad.' Mollified, the Client lost interest. ‘Maybe you can find something for it in the bathroom. They got all kindsa things in the medicine cabinet in there.'

‘That's a good idea,' Gerry said, and we both raced for the medicine cabinet. Of course, it was too simple. Bart wouldn't have been asking Lou-Ann for the pills if she'd left them in plain sight in the medicine cabinet. We went back to the living-room.

The Client had turned off the act and reverted to normal. He glared at us. ‘Where the hell
is
everybody? Why ain't they here? I called them same time as I called you.'

He strode to the telephone and snatched it up. ‘Try Room 437 again, will you – please?'

The door opened then, and the Cousins piled into the suite. ‘Bart,' Cousin Homer whined, ‘why'd you call us? Ain't we all rehearsed enough? You promised us we could take a day off and go shopping today.'

‘Shut up,' Bart said, intent on the telephone. He raked them with a contemptuous glance. ‘Where's No'ccount?'

Nobody met his eyes. The Cousins shuffled about unhappily. ‘We dunno, Bart.' Cousin Zeke seemed to have lost some invisible toss and had to reply. ‘We ain't seen him. Maybe he's gone out on one of them Tours of London.'

‘Or maybe he ain't up yet.' It was impossible to place the source of the murmur. All three seemed to struggle to hold back snickers.

‘Oh, there you are!' Bart's attention was diverted by the phone. ‘Where the hell have you been?'

The phone crackled wildly.

‘Yeah? Well, you drag it up here. Pronto!' He slammed down the receiver and swung to face the Cousins.

They weren't laughing now. They cringed across the room, trying to appear indifferent to his gaze. ‘Whyn't you come with us, Bart?' Zeke offered hopefully. ‘We was going over to that Harrods, they say they got everything there.'

‘Naw, I can't.' Abruptly, Bart remembered his pose. ‘I gotta stay here with Lou-Ann. She ain't been too good lately. I want to keep an eye on her.' His face, his voice, were suitably grave.

The Cousins obediently fell into respectful attitudes. ‘Poor kid,' Cousin Homer said, in a hushed voice. ‘How
is
she?'

‘Restin',' Bart said. ‘Leastwise, I hope so. She sure needs it. Good, normal rest, that is. She took some of them pills last night. And I don't believe that stuff does you any good at all. Worse than nothing, that stuff is.'

‘It ain't so bad, Bart,' Zeke defended. ‘It's right smart stuff. Ain't gonna do nobody no harm.'

I remembered now that Bart had thrown Zeke's sleeping pills overboard. Perhaps I was wronging him. Perhaps he honestly did have a ‘thing' about pills, and just wanted to get rid of Lou-Ann's.

‘That's what
you
say,' Bart sneered. ‘I seen you eatin' them like they was candy, days you got nervous. And Lou-Ann ain't got
your
constitution. She's delicate-like.'

He might have said more, but his voice had been rising, and the bedroom door opened. Lou-Ann stood there.

‘Howdy, boys,' she said. ‘Nice of y'all to drop over.'

‘Howdy, Lou-Ann,' they chorused, then stood abashed, as though in the presence of a skeleton at the feast. Bart was doing his work well. Already, people were less natural in her presence. That would shake her weak self-confidence even more.

A gentle tap sounded at the door of the suite. Bart frowned in that direction, but made no move. ‘Answer the door,' he snapped out, to no one in particular. The Cousins collided, leaping to open it.

‘Mornin', Bart. Mornin', Lou Ann. Mornin', Boys.' Crystal slid into the room. ‘Mornin' –' She turned to Gerry and me.

‘Never mind the roll-call,' Bart snarled. ‘Where the hell have you been?'

‘Been? I ain't been nowhere,' she said defensively.

‘Don't lie to me! You wasn't in your room last night. I tried to call you and the switchboard told me.'

‘Yes, I was, Bart. Maybe they was ringing the wrong room.'

‘Balls! And you wasn't there the night before, neither. What you playin' at?'

‘Now, Bart.' Lou-Ann moved forward protectively. ‘You can't tell for certain sure. Maybe that switchboard
did
make a mistake. Nobody's perfect –'

‘Least of all my sister.' He grinned evilly at Lou-Ann, momentarily forgetting his concern for her. ‘What's the matter – the alibi run out? Why don't you try tellin' me you been with her, playin' gin rummy the last two nights. 'Cept, this time, I
know
you ain't been. You been in here with
me
the past two nights.' He swung back to Crystal.

‘What's the matter? Ain't you had time to think up another story? Or maybe you been too busy to do much thinking? Or maybe you don't even care enough to try. It ain't nothing to you that yore poor brother's worrying himself sick about you and yore future.'

‘Now, Bart, that ain't so.' She was backing away slowly. ‘Honest, Bart –'

‘Don't you honest me.' He was advancing upon her. ‘You don't know the meanin' of the word –'

‘Bart, please don't, Bart.' Lou-Ann tried to halt his progress, tugging vainly at his arm. He shook her off.

The Cousins had abdicated. They huddled together a safe distance from the action. Now and again, they caught each other's eyes and a sardonic smile slid among them.

‘See here, old chap.' Gerry didn't like the way things were going any more than I did. But, being a natural ladies' man, he was going to try the Galahad routine. ‘Don't you think you ought –'

‘You keep the hell outa this!' The Client shot him a glare that would have halted a regiment.

‘Oh, well, if you feel that way about it –' Gerry retreated, as any wise man would have done.

‘This is a
family
affair,' Bart said. A snicker broke from the assembled ranks of Cousins. Bart sent them a glance that silenced them, too.

‘I'll tell you where you been, you little tramp,' he thundered. ‘You been with
him
!'

‘No, Bart, no,' she moaned. She had backed against the farther wall now, and she sidled along it. Frantically, her fingers groped behind her for escape. She was inches from one of the bedroom doors and possible safety.

‘Don't lie to me!' The backhand blow caught her on the side of the head and she staggered. Her hand caught the doorknob.

‘You good-for-nothin' little slut –' He raised his arm for another blow, and Lou-Ann caught at it from behind, desperately. ‘You think I ain't noticed
he
ain't been around, neither? You think I'm stupid, or something?'

Crystal clawed frantically at the bedroom door and it opened. Bart knocked her through it.

‘I know what you are,' he shouted. ‘I been watching you. You don't fool me none.'

‘Please, Bart –' Lou-Ann was still trying to calm him.

‘I
know.
' Bart charged through the doorway after her. Lou-Ann followed, clutching at him. There was the sound of another vicious slap. Crystal screamed faintly.

‘You an' Uncle No'ccount! You an' Uncle No'ccount! What kinda fool do you take me for? You think I don't know you go sneakin' off and sleeping with him every damn chance you get?'

The door slammed shut behind them.

I stared at the blank, forbidding door incredulously. ‘Crystal and Uncle No'ccount?' I turned to the Cousins. ‘He's mad, isn't he? Crystal – sleeping with Uncle No'ccount?'

Released from tension, the Cousins began to guffaw.

To shuffle about, slapping each other on the back, laughing uproariously.

‘Crystal – and Uncle No'ccount?' I repeated urgently, willing them to give me an answer. Although I realized the more they laughed the more I believed it. It was just the sort of thing to appeal to their sense of humour.

‘Hell, boy,' Cousin Zeke finally sputtered. ‘Why not? They's married, ain't they?'

‘Crystal and Uncle No'ccount?' The vision came to me of Uncle No'ccount onstage, coughing his dentures into that big red bandana. A shabby, broken-down bum. ‘But ...but ...those
teeth
! '

It was the funniest thing they had ever heard. They fell about.

In the other room, I heard Crystal sobbing.

They choked, they spluttered, they pummelled each other. They were never going to stop laughing.

‘Hell, boy, why not?' Cousin Ezra gasped out. ‘That's
all
he got missing!'

I WAS STILL pretty browned off when Sam come round to the office late that afternoon. ‘You might have let me know,' I said. ‘I'm tired of being made to feel a fool. If there's anything else I ought to know ...'

‘How much else do you think there
could
be?' Sam sank into a chair and slumped forward, arms on desk, chin on arms. ‘If there's anything else,
I
don't want to know it, either.'

‘But I can't understand it. What in hell is Bart so upset about if his sister is married to the man?'

‘Don't ask me,' Sam sighed. ‘I only majored in business science, not abnormal psychology. Sometimes I wish I'd taken that offer from IBM
– they
can't have problems like this.'

‘Perhaps it isn't too late,' I said wistfully, thinking of Cinecittà, and the warm, honest decent emotion of a fist shaken under your nose. ‘Perhaps we could
all
write the whole thing off and start over again.'

‘Not with a million dollars tied up already,' Sam said. ‘And that's just for openers.' He glanced at me obliquely. ‘I don't like to upset you, but the Agency wants to film the pilot and first couple of shows over here – production costs are a lot lower.'

The expression on my face must have given him pause. There was a short silence, during which I didn't look at him. ‘I've already arranged for the pilot film to be shot tomorrow,' he said tentatively. ‘We may be here an extra month.'