Judge Me Not (9 page)

Teed meekly took the key off his ring and handed it over. “What are you going to do?”

“Clean up after you. Rinse your diapers. What do you think?”

“I checked it pretty carefully, Rogale.”

Armando heaved a great sigh and sat down. “Look. So help me, I believe you. I believe that it happened exactly the way you said it did, and only the fates kept Seward from barging in while you were still snoring. So, let’s be practical. There’s maybe five hundred nice clean fingerprints out there. Hers. Even if you tried to remove them, you wouldn’t know where to look. Inside of the bathroom medicine cabinet. Thumbprint on the underside of the john lever. Maybe I’ll just go out and burn the son of a bitch down. Arson, added to all my other crimes. Look, you got a girl you can take out there?”

“What do you mean?”

“If they don’t pick you up this afternoon, you get yourself a girl and get out there. Play house. Settle down. I’ll be through by then. She better be a girl with nothing to hide, a girl who doesn’t care if the cops lift her prints. The more stuff she leaves around, the better. Lipstick, panties, hair on the hairbrush. You got one, or have I got to rent you one?”

“It seems pretty cold-blooded.”

“So is the way they electrocute a man. If they cut you when they shave your leg, they even put iodine on it. It’s as cold-blooded as can be.”

“You don’t have to try to scare me, Rogale. I’m already scared.”

“Can you get a girl?”

“On that short notice, no.”

“Stay here. I’ll use an outside phone. I’ll be back.”

Rogale was back in fifteen minutes. He said, “This is a line of business I never thought I’d be in. A good thing I got contacts. It will cost you a hundred bucks. She’ll be in the cocktail lounge at the Hotel Deron at five o’clock, ready to take off. Look in the booths on the left for a tall girl. They told me she has brown hair and her name is Miss Heddon.”

“Is she pretty?”

Armando looked at his watch. “I better get going. You should care if she looks like a hop frog, Morrow. Don’t get her out there until about six-thirty. That’ll give me time.”

After Rogale had left, leaving Teed feeling dazed, he went out and cashed a check. When he got back Miss Anderson said that a Captain Leighton had phoned, and had left a number to call.

Leighton said, “You get a little reprieve, Morrow. Two kids who know you because you played catch with them one Saturday afternoon happened to notice the guy who left the car. They say it wasn’t you. To kids all grownups look alike, except the ones they know, so there’s no description. You’re off the hook until they figure that out.”

When Leighton hung up, it was five minutes to five. Teed went in and told Powell that he was going out to the lake again. Powell looked disappointed. “I wanted you to go over some stuff with me tonight, Teed.”

“I’d rather not go. But this is orders from my lawyer.”

“Care to explain?”

“Not quite yet Powell. I’m sorry. I’m just trying to get off the hook on this car business.”

“Tomorrow then. How about the assessment survey?”

“I’m just no good today. I didn’t do over a tenth of it.”

Powell shrugged and smiled. “O.K., I won’t push you.”

Teed got into his car and drove to the hotel. He found a parking space in the middle of the next block. He felt an odd flutter of excitement that ran up his spine, tingled at the nape of his neck. He could see the sense of Rogale’s idea, but the artificiality of the situation bothered him. He was both repelled and intrigued by the idea of the coarse, cold-eyed creature who would be waiting for him.

The cocktail lounge had a sidewalk doorway and he walked in quickly. The bar was thronged at this hour. There were six booths along the wall at the left. Four were empty. There were three men in one of the booths, a girl sitting alone in another. She was a tall girl, and her hair was brown, but nothing else matched his conception. She wore a dark-green tailored suit, a silver fox fur, a pert green hat with a veil. Her face had a look of fragility, delicacy, and breeding.

He paused uncertainly and turned slowly toward the bar. Then, with a mental shrug, he walked quickly to the booth. “Miss Heddon?”

Calm, deep-blue eyes and a slow smile. “How do you do. I’m Barbara Heddon.”

He sat down awkwardly. “Teed Morrow, Miss Heddon. I’m a little late, I guess.”

“Not very. Shall I hurry this, or do you want to order yourself a drink, Teed?”

“I’ll have a drink, Barbara.” He signaled the waiter, ordered a stinger.

She was completely at ease. Her brown gloves lay across the green purse that matched her suit. Beside her cocktail glass was a silver combination cigarette case and lighter. She accepted his cigarette gravely, leaned forward for the light, holding the veil out of the way of the flame. She did not touch the rest of her cocktail until his came, then lifted her glass as he did, smiling across the rim at him.

“If you’ll excuse me a moment, Teed, I have a phone call to make.”

“Of course.” After she walked away, into the lobby, tall and with a certain flair, a certain elegance, Teed sat down. He wondered if the long arm of coincidence had produced two Miss Heddons at the same time and the same place. Her tone of voice, her accent, matched her look of assurance and breeding.

She was back quickly, slipping into her side of the booth as he tried awkwardly to get to his feet.

“Another drink, Barbara?”

“Yes, thank you.”

She looked at him with a pretty frown. “Teed, we aren’t getting acquainted, are we? We’re acting like a pair of European diplomats.”

“Well, you took my breath away, Barbara. God knows what I expected. Certainly not you. You’re very lovely.”

For a moment there was a slightly bitter twist to her mouth. “And you’re quite willing to be seen in public with me, I suppose.”

“Sorry. I did sound pretty stuffy, didn’t I?”

She smiled. “For that touch of sympathetic imagination, Mr. Morrow, I shall tell you about my phone call. I give myself an expensive luxury. It’s called selectivity. I phoned to say that I was not going to develop a headache.”

“Now we’re both flattered.”

“A society for mutual admiration, Teed. And thank you for not being Mr. Smith. Thank you very much for not being a Mr. Smith. Very truly yours, Barbara.”

“Now a question. Is it a … oh, a customary thing for you to be willing to go out of town like this?”

“Hardly. But you were vouched for. Highly recommended, I suppose is the right way to say it.” She smiled, and then her mood changed with surprising rapidity. “And, of course,” she said, “I am also filled with curiosity. You look like one of those precious and indomitable males who go around swelling out their chests and telling their less favored brethren that they never have to pay for it.”

It was the first hint of coarseness, but the shot was very well aimed.

“Ouch,” he said. “One of that same type must have bitten you once upon a time.”

“Now I say ouch,” she said. “Never lead with your right, Barbara.”

“We better call a truce before somebody gets battered. Ready?”

She nodded. He paid the check. She had a small overnight bag on the bench beside her. He carried it out, placed it on the back seat of the car, held the car door for her.

As he got behind the wheel he said, “Shall I leave the top down?”

“Please,” she said. She took her hat off. Her hair was a cap of brown curls. When they drove up out of the valley the last rays of the setting sun touched her hair and brought out red touches that were like hidden flame.

“Teed?”

“Yes, Barbara.”

“What do you think of pacts?”

He grinned. “Diplomatic, suicide? What color?”

“Pull over and stop for a minute. Let’s whip up a pact.”

He stopped the car, turned to face her, his left arm resting on the top of the wheel, right arm along the seat back. She turned in the seat to face him, and all the light had gone out of her blue eyes. They looked dead, long buried.

“It is a standard gambit, Teed, that sooner or later you will ask me how I got into the oldest profession. Men seem to have a compulsion to ask that question. So, let’s have a pact. Don’t ask me, and you won’t make it necessary for me to invent some tragic song and dance just to satisfy your curiosity. Teed, just take me for … granted.”

“Any pact involves a concession on both sides, Barbara. I think I probably would have asked you. Now I won’t. But you have to agree to something too. You have to promise
not to pretend to any emotion or any excitement that isn’t genuine.”

“Aren’t you being stupid? Aren’t you cheating yourself, Teed?”

“How so?”

“I’m as cold as those monsters they dig out of glaciers. You’re the first … customer I’ve ever told that to. Now that I’ve said it, I think maybe you better take me back to the hotel. I don’t want to cheat you.”

“I’d rather keep on with it, Barbara, and have each of us keep our side of the pact. Maybe this will be a little platonic jaunt into the country. I really don’t care, one way or the other.”

“Then don’t pay me until I ask you to,” she said harshly.

“It’s a deal, Barbara.”

Her smile came slowly. She rested her cheek for a moment against the back of his hand. “Drive the car, mister.”

He drove into the first village just as the market was about to close. She came in with him and they selected steaks and frozen vegetables. He was amused by the way she watched the meat scale as the steaks were weighed.

Teed carried the bag of groceries out. It was cooler in the hills, so he put the top up.

“Barbara, a confession. Willing to listen?”

“Of course.”

“I’ve got a devious motive for taking you to the camp. I want you to do something for me. When we leave, I want the camp to look as though you had been there. Lipstick on the towels, bobby pins on the floor, nail polish on the bathroom shelf.”

It was too dark to see her face. “Thanks for being honest.”

“You’ll do it?”

“Of course, Teed.”

“Then there’s no question of my not paying you, of course. I’m paying you for agreeing to leave your imprint on the place.”

“If you say so.” She was silent for a few minutes. “You’re using me to make someone jealous, I suppose?”

“No, Barbara.”

“Then you’re using me to cover up the traces of someone else. That’s the only other answer. Probably some righteous wife who can’t manage to restrict it to her own bed.”

“Don’t be so bitter, Barbara.”

“Why not? Aren’t professionals in any field bitter about amateur competition?”

“Please don’t ever tell anyone what I asked you to do.”

She laughed flatly. “That’s funny. You said that as though you believe you can actually trust me.”

“Strangely enough, I do.”

She rested her fingers lightly on his arm. “Teed, we’ve got to stop hacking at each other. Got any ideas?”

“Sure. Try this idea for size. You’re a girl I’ve known for years. I’ve talked you into a picnic and a moonlight swim, and we’re telling each other that’s all there’s going to be. But I have some pretty advanced ideas, and you’re wondering just how hard you’re going to fight for your honor. O.K.?”

“Gosh, I don’t know whether I like that game or not.”

“You’ll love it. Say, remember old Albert?”

“Albert?”

“Sure. The guy you stood up so you could go on the sleigh ride with me. You remember
him!
”

“Oh, Albert! The one with the pimples. The one that looked like a startled owl. Whatever happened to him?”

“He’s got a job sitting on public buildings to scare away the pigeons. Making a big success of it, too.”

“I always knew Albert was going places. I just
knew
it!” she said.

She moved so close to him that her thigh was warm against his. She threw back her head and laughed with delight. In the onrushing darkness of the mountain road her laughter was young, warm, heartbreakingly vulnerable.

They discussed the mythical mutual acquaintances of their imaginary past, and then he slowed for a familiar narrow lane, shifted into second, finding to his relief that there was no car there, meaning that Rogale had finished, had left.

She carried the bag of groceries and he took the overnight case. “Better wait at the foot of the steps until I get some lights on, Barbara.”

“Doesn’t the air smell wonderful up here? I’m going to be hungry as a wolf.”

As he had hoped, Armando Rogale had left the key in the door. He found the light switch. She walked in, put the groceries on the drain board, turned and smiled at him. Once again they had become cautious strangers, tasting their reaction to each other in this new environment.

Teed sensed her uncertainty. “It’s—quite cozy,” she said hesitantly.

“For guests,” he said, “I have to give up the master bedroom. You will note that it also serves as the living room, dining room and rumpus room. Come here.”

He took her over, opened the door onto a bedroom so tiny that the double bed almost filled it. He said, “This is my bedroom, and I shall give it up as a dressing room as soon as I get swimming trunks on.”

“Hey, did you mean that about a moonlight swim? I saw the moon coming up but … say, isn’t that lake cold?”

“Still contains heat from the summer. It’s just the air that’s cold. I don’t suppose you have a swim suit.”

She frowned. “No. But the undies are nylon. They’ll dry fast. We going to have a fire?”

“Sure.”

“Well, go put on your trunks. And then go get in the lake. Those steps I saw when you turned on the light. They go down to the water?”

“Down to a dock. You can dive off it.”

“If I get up the nerve.”

“I’ll put you in, if you start to chicken out.”

He changed to shorts in the small bedroom, grinned at her as he went through the living room and out the door. The night wind was frigid. He trotted down the steps, wasted no time getting into the water. It took his breath at first, but it was much warmer than the air. The moon was above the southern horizon, its gold paling to silver blue. Wind ripples lapped against the oil drums on which the dock floated.

When he saw her coming down the steps, he swam in toward the dock. His eyes were used to the moonlight and he saw that she was beautifully constructed, not in a classic way, but in the way made believable only through the efforts of the dreamers who draw the women for gas station calendars. Long smooth limber legs joined sweetly to a
torso so short-waisted as to barely escape being out of proportion. Breasts so high, so widely spaced, so firmly heavy that they added a measure of frailty to slim shoulders, to the slenderness of waist.