Scratch Fever (23 page)

There was a gun in her hand, and she had a head wound. In the right temple, out the left.

“Julie never stops maneuvering, does she?” Nolan said, bending over the body.

“What?” Jon said. He looked shaken.

“Faking this as a suicide. I don’t think that’s a close-range wound. I think Julie shot her from the doorway. That’s judging from the angle of it, the powder burns, the entry and exit wounds. But the local people may not figure it out immediately. Hard to say.”

Nolan rose.

Jon knelt over the body. He touched the dead woman’s cheek. He closed her eyes.

“Kid. Let’s go.”

“Yeah. Okay, Nolan.” He rose, slowly.

“You might as well put on your shoes.”

“Huh? Oh. Yeah.”

His shoes were between the body and the dresser. He got them, then sat on the edge of the bed and put them on. The kid had been through a lot, Nolan thought. Maybe the girl was right; maybe they should just get the hell out. Go home.

Next to Jon on the bed was a stack of comic books.

“It never fails,” Nolan laughed. “You always manage to turn up some funny-books, don’t you?”

Jon looked at them. He picked them up and took them with him as they left the house. He held the comics under his shirt to protect them from the rain, as they went to the car.

Toni climbed in back and Jon got in front on the rider’s side. Nolan took the wheel again. Jon handed the comics back to Toni. “Put those on the floor or something, will you?” he said.

“Okay,” she said, smiling.

Both she and Nolan were amused by Jon’s managing to come away from this situation with a stack of old comics.

“Any of these valuable ones?” the girl asked, kidding him.

Jon didn’t seem to pick up on the kidding. “Very,” he said.

“What are you going to do with ’em?” Nolan asked. “Sell ’em?”

“I wouldn’t sell them. I wouldn’t ever sell them.” Jon opened the glove compartment and took out the box of .38 shells; he stuffed a handful of the shells in his pocket, put the box back.

“Let’s go find Julie,” he said.

17

SHE
would have to run.

There was no other choice. Nolan was here; his breath was on her neck; and this time he wouldn’t go soft and spare her, like that time at the cottage. This time he would kill her.

She knew that, and she could accept it, and she would eventually deal with it—deal with him—but now she had to run. She didn’t even know where she would go. Mexico, she guessed. Money still went a long way in Mexico. And when some time had passed, she could hire somebody to do Nolan, and Jon, as well. Some other expatriate American, maybe, who could sneak back in the country and get it done.

Or something. There’d be some way out of it. There always was. Plenty of options.

But right now, running was the only option she could come up with.

The Porsche slid going around a curve, and she slowed down; the blacktop was slick with rain.
Don’t panic now
, she told herself. But the rain and the darkness, crowding her on the narrow blacktop that led to the Paddlewheel, seemed to be on Nolan’s side.

She had been so sure she was on top of this Nolan situation, it made her smug; so sure she was in control of things, it made her complacent. When she thought about how she’d spent the morning and afternoon, she could kick herself: sleeping till noon, sitting in Harold’s study with a gin and tonic, explaining to him her plans for Nolan, playing down the role of that slug Infante. (In the version she told Harold, Infante would be on hand only as protection, in case Nolan didn’t uphold his end of the swap she would propose.)

Still, Harold had seemed morose; it was almost as if he had seen through what she told him, that he knew she really intended having Nolan and Jon killed. He had sat in his study all afternoon, listening to an old Beatles album,
Revolver
, he seemed to enjoy feeling sorry for himself, and the world, his lips moving to the lyrics of “Eleanor Rigby,” for Christ’s sake. What a jerk. She didn’t know why she’d put up with him for so long.

On the other hand, there was a part of her that liked him and his self-pitying ways. He wasn’t a stupid man—he certainly came in handy at the club, doing the books, handling the staff—and she liked having a big, reasonably competent man around, who depended on her, whom she could mother into submission. She’d always had a knack for finding men who needed a mother in a woman, and having all but raised most of her brothers and sisters, she was used to playing mother—though it occasionally struck her as ironic that she had never spent enough time with her own kid to really qualify in that department.

So as Harold sat in his study, listening to old Beatle records, she felt a weird mixture of contempt and affection for him—a man his age, sitting there feeling sorry for himself, losing himself in memories of high school. It was fucking pathetic. . . .

Around three she had called the motel to talk to Infante. She needed to go have a talk with him, alone, without Harold around, to fill Infante in on what her plans really were where Nolan and Jon were concerned. But the woman on the desk said Infante was out. It struck Julie as strange, but not suspicious, particularly, at least not at first. When she called back around quarter to five and got the same response from the desk clerk, she put aside her gin and tonic and her book on refinishing antiques and grabbed her coat. She stuck her little pearl-handled automatic in her purse and told Harold she would be back soon.

She knocked on Infante’s motel room door and got no answer.

The woman at the desk, a thin, plain woman about forty, doing the crossword puzzle in the Sunday paper, shrugged without looking up, saying all she knew was the night clerk had left a note saying the man in room 13 had requested not to be disturbed, and that if anyone called, to say he was out. Julie asked to speak to the night clerk, and was told she wouldn’t be on duty till midnight. When Julie insisted, the woman gave her the night clerk’s phone number, and she called her from a booth outside the motel.

“That’s right,” a sleepy female voice said. “He wasn’t
really
going anyplace. Just wanted some sleep. Like I do. Do you mind?”

“So he wasn’t going out?”

“I was supposed to say he was out and take messages.”

“I see. Tell me. Did anybody check in last night after two?”

“Everybody checked in last night after two. Couples, mostly. Get the idea?”

“Any singles? A man maybe?”

“No single men. There was this girl.”

“Girl?”

“Pretty brown-haired girl. Not real big.”

“What was she wearing?”

“I don’t know. T-shirt and jeans, I guess.”

“Do you remember anything specific? There’s money in it if you do.”

“Well. The T-shirt had the name of a rock group on it.”

“Oh?”

“Not some big group, like Kiss or something. A band from around here, whose name I recognized.”

“What was it?”

“The Nodes. Ever hear of ’em?”

Julie went back to the check-in desk and, for twenty bucks, the clerk tore herself away from her crossword long enough to give her the key to room 13. There Julie found a note, presumably from Infante, saying he’d gone out for a bite to eat and a movie. She looked around the room carefully. She noticed two things: there were no towels in the bathroom, and there was a damp spot on the floor near the bed.

She was driving back to the house, down the tree-lined country lane along which Ron also lived, when she noticed a car, apparently abandoned, pulled into one of the access inroads to a cornfield. She must have passed it before, on her way to the motel, but hadn’t noticed it. Now she did: a Mazda. Infante’s car.

She stopped and got out and had a look, not touching anything. It was empty; the keys weren’t in the dash. But she had a feeling the trunk wasn’t empty.

She got back in her Porsche.

Somehow that kid Jon had gotten a message to Nolan. Maybe there was another phone at the Barn, one she hadn’t known about. Maybe Jon had used Bob Hale’s private phone. That was probably it. Damn! Whatever the case, the kid had obviously got to Nolan, because Nolan was here already; Infante was dead, most likely; and she was shit out of luck.

She pulled into the driveway of her house and stood poised in front of the pillared structure like the heroine on the cover of a gothic paperback. There was no sign of Nolan yet. The only other car around was Harold’s Pontiac Phoenix, in the garage, where it was supposed to be. She went in the back way, through the kitchen, gun in hand. But there was nobody in the house except Harold, still sitting in the study, listening to Beatle records: “All the lonely people . . .”

“What are you sneaking around for?” he asked, turning down the stereo, eyeing the little automatic in her hand.

“He’s here,” she said, putting the gun back in her purse. “Nolan’s here.”

“Jesus Christ.”

She went upstairs and started packing a bag. He was at her side as she did.

“I’ll get in touch with you,” she said. “It may be a few months.”

“I’m not going with you?”

“No. The Paddlewheel is too good a thing to throw away. We’re going to try to hold onto it. You’re going to hold onto it for me.”

“Where will you be?”

“I don’t know yet. And when I do know, I won’t tell you. If you don’t know, you can’t tell anybody.”

That hurt him. “
Tell
anybody? What . . .”

“Look. Nolan will show up, and when he does, the less you know, the better, because you’re probably going to have to take some heat from him. But he’s not going to kill you or anything.”

“Well, that’s nice to know.”

“Harold. Just play dumb. You can handle it.”

“Your confidence in me is overwhelming.”

The bag was packed.

She put a hand on his shoulder. “You’ll come through for me. You always have.”

He smiled wearily; he nodded.

“Now,” she said, carrying the bag out of the room, heading down the stairs, Harold trailing after, “you go to the Paddlewheel. I’m going to need that getaway money.”

“The hundred thousand?” Harold said.

“Yes. I can live a long time on that.”

She was at the front door. He grabbed her arm. Softly.

“Don’t leave me,” he said.

“Harold,” she said, pulling away, “I’m not going to leave you. I’m just getting my butt out of here before it gets shot off. I’ll be back. I like my life here. I’m not giving it up easily.” She kissed him on the mouth, hastily, and said, “I’ll meet you at the Paddlewheel in twenty minutes, half an hour.”

“Where are you going?”

“To Ron’s.”

He grabbed her arm again, hard this time. “Why?”

“To tell her to let that kid go, that’s why. That should cool Nolan off a little.”