The Prettiest Girl I Ever Killed (8 page)

I started to say that was the time of Sandy’s funeral and it would look bad if I didn’t go, but he walked out without even taking his change. Gladys Schmit stood at the door and I knew by her expression she wanted him to say hello so she could offer some schoolteacherish advice. Curt went out without seeing her. Gladys’s eyes turned cold and I knew he’d lost another friend….

I locked up at twelve-thirty and drove straight out to Lake Pillybay. Curt’s caution had made me wary; I knew how it would look if my car were found parked along a country road—new cream-colored Lincoln with sparkling chrome and white sidewalk. Lou had picked it out. I pulled off the road and hid the car behind a clump of hazel brush. I climbed to the top of a ridge and approached the cabin from the rear. It lay at the head of a little cove which was rarely used by the tourists, having a steep shoreline and no gentle slopes on which to build summer cabins. The cabin itself was crudely built of logs, used on summer weekends by our Boy Scout troop and the rest of the time by assorted tramps and lovers. The relics of the latter were very much in evidence when I got there; bottles and cans and cigaret butts, so I moved to the side of the water and sat on a rock. It had turned warm, and I took off my sweater and sat in the sun. As I waited, I thought: I should have brought a book, or some knitting. The very idea made me laugh aloud. I was excited and trembling inside. I didn’t realize how nervous I was until Curt’s voice spoke my name and I jumped at least six inches in the air. I turned and saw him approaching from behind, carrying a flat manila envelope in his hand. By the time he reached me I was calm enough to say: “I was wishing I’d brought my knitting.”

He sat on the ground beside me. “I checked to see if you might have been followed. Took me some time to find your car. Good job.”

I felt a faint thrill of gratification. “I could take up bird-watching, carry binoculars and a bird book. That would give me some excuse to prowl the hills alone.”

He studied me narrowly, then: “You’re kidding, but it’s something to keep in mind.” He picked up a pebble and tossed it into the water. “Gaby said you’d changed your mind.”

I looked down and stirred the dead grass with my foot. “It’s not that cut and dried. I want to know more. Particularly about Sandy, whether you think she was one of his victims.”

“I’m almost sure. I checked with Stubb Dixon at the tavern. He said she left at eight o’clock, about forty minutes after I left. She wasn’t drunk then, so she must have met a man with a bottle.”

I nodded. “Sandy had a habit of riding with whoever made an offer. Marriage didn’t change that.”

“Yes, it could have happened this way: the guy took her home, waited until George left the house, then went in and set the house afire. Or it may not have been the killer who took her home, just a guy who happened to see her. The killer could have been watching the house, waiting for his chance. I looked around, but the crowd had wiped out any sign of tracks. Her body was so badly burned there was no way of knowing how she’d died.” He shook his head. “That couldn’t be luck. The guy is smart as hell….”

“Why were you with Sandy?” I asked.

“Gaby drew a blank. Sandy kept hinting that she knew something….”

“She’s been hinting for twelve years.”

“Yes, anyway I met her, and she was still playing coy, wanted me to meet her the following afternoon. We made a date, but she was killed that night.”

“I think she was playing you along,” I said.

Curt shrugged. “Maybe. But she had certain things in common with Bernice and your sister. Married, playing around on the side. The guy might choose married women because they’ve got as much reason to hide an affair as the man. Unless they fall in love, that is, then they’re likely to say the hell with everything and bring it all into the open. That would give him a motive for murder.”

There was excitement in being near a man who burned with a purpose aside from making money and having fun. I wondered if I was really interested in finding the killer or if I just wanted to stay close to Curt and absorb some of his fire; I also knew that I had to give him something in return.

“You seem so certain of murder, Curt. I’d like to know why.”

“Got it right here.” He tapped the manila envelope. “But let’s get out of the open.”

I followed him away from the lake shore. Bending down, we entered a crab-apple thicket; the lake was hidden by tall dry grass. We were screened overhead by the brushy twigs of the crab apple. I laid down my sweater and sat on it, drawing my legs up beneath me. Curt sat down beside me and for a moment I wished there were no murders, that we were just lovers who’d come out into the woods with a picnic lunch and a blanket. Curt gave me a curiously penetrating look—as though he’d caught my thought—then bent his head and opened the envelope:

“It’s kind of dry and statistical. Are you sure—?”

“Yes. But one thing I’m curious about first. Where were you last night when I called?” He looked off into the distance. “Searching Gil Sisk’s house.” I gasped. “Gil’s
house?”

He nodded. “The night Sandy was murdered … well, let me go further back. There’s a hill about a quarter mile away from our house. It’s the only one nearby which has a view from a higher level than our house, a natural lookout if somebody wanted to spy on me. So I took some black thread and fastened it to trees and bushes so it ran around the top of a hill at waist level. Sheep and dogs and wild animals could go right under it. A cow or deer couldn’t, but they’d leave tracks. Well, the morning after Sandy’s murder, the thread was broken. I found footprints, not sharp to identify, but obviously a man’s. There were signs that he’d stretched full length and rested his elbows on the ground as though holding binoculars—”

“Why?”

“The marks were side by side. If he’d been holding a rifle, one elbow would have been behind the other, like this.” He rolled onto his stomach and demonstrated. I felt a chill, remembering the flash on the hill while Marty and I … If only someone had investigated, before the passage of so many years….

“How did that involve Gil?” I asked.

“Well … I’d noticed that Gil carried binoculars in his car. He said they were for girl-watching on Lake Pillybay, which sounded reasonable—”

“Considering Gil’s character,” I said dryly.

“Yes, but I wanted to check. So I searched his house; I was looking for some … relic which would show he’d had something to do with these girls. That’s a weird old house, you know—thirty-eight rooms, and I barely got started. There’s something in every room, going all the way back to his great-grandfather. It was like taking an inventory of the Smithsonian in a single afternoon. I didn’t find anything, but I’d like to finish; I’d like to clear him of suspicion—”

“Why?”

“I like him.”

“I don’t.”

He smiled at me. “Since you heard about Bernice?”

“Maybe.”

“He also had a few brief sessions with Anne and Sandy. He made no secret of it with me.”

My face burned. “The more I learn about him, the more I realize our friendship was a mistake.”

“You’re jealous.”

“I don’t think so. Disappointed …”

He laughed. “Velda, you give a man friendship and you expect it to fulfill all his desires.”

“It’s enough for me.”

“It’s a different situation. Think what would happen if the reproduction of the race depended on women. How often do they take the initiative?” He shook his head. “Anyway, you don’t understand a man’s approach. All the time Gil was talking to you about books and philosophy and everything else, he was looking at you and wondering how you’d be in bed, trying to figure out a way to get you there….”

I looked at him and wondered if he was doing the same, but I didn’t say it. I said: “You don’t believe that. Otherwise you wouldn’t have left Gaby there alone with him.”

“Gaby’s trained. She knows all the approaches. Anyway she had her own game going; she had to keep him occupied until I got back from searching his house. She couldn’t submit, because that would have used up her ace in the hole.”

I stared at him in amazement. “You’re
really
throwing in all you’ve got, aren’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean … if Gil is the killer, you’re risking Gaby’s life.”

“She has a gun. She knows how to use it.”

“She wasn’t wearing it yesterday with him, not concealed under her halter and shorts.”

He frowned. “I’ll tell her to be more careful. But even if Gil was the one who watched the house, he could be a simple garden-variety Peeping Tom. He’s taken with Gaby; obviously, since she’s a woman. We didn’t have curtains up then, and Gaby was sprinting across in front of the windows in the altogether….”

I felt a prickly embarrassment hearing Curt talk of his wife. For a moment I saw them in the intimacy of their home, doing what husbands and wives do, what Lou and I do on occasion. But was it embarrassment, or jealousy, the kind I’d felt about Gil? What did I want, for every man in the county to worship me from afar and be true? A high school attitude, Velda….

I said, apropos of nothing: “Lou was home when Sandy was killed.” He looked at me sharply. “What made you say that?”

“Just … in case you suspect him.”

“I suspect everybody—except myself. When did he get home?”

“He was in bed asleep when the call came about Sandy.”

“There would have been at least a half hour delay between setting the fire and the line ring. How long had he been home?”

“The engine of his pickup was cold.”

His eyebrows shot up. “You
checked
it?”

“I just happened to put my hand on it.” My face burned. “Curt, you don’t think I’d spy on my husband!”

“No, I didn’t think so.” He sighed. “Well, somebody killed her right under my nose and didn’t leave a clue. We’ll have to go back to the others.” He pulled the papers out of the envelope. “Here, if you’re still interested.”

I glanced at the pages dense with figures and printing. “Curt, I’m not a statistician. Just tell me.”

He took the pages from my hands. “Okay. Consider four hundred people living in Sherman, another eleven hundred in the surrounding farms. That’s fifteen hundred people. Now here … He pulled out a printed sheet. “I’ve got actuarial tables on accidental death. Scaling it down to Sherman’s size, you’d expect something like thirty accidental deaths during the last ten years. We’ve had forty-two.”

“Maybe we’re accident prone. It isn’t an ordinary community.”

“Okay, consider that. Go back ten more years, we’re only seven percent above the national average. Go back ten more, we’re exactly average. And so on, until we get back to where they didn’t keep statistics. We’re an average community in everything else. We have fewer deaths from smallpox, influenza, typhoid fever, and so on, just like the nation as a whole. We have more deaths from automobile accidents, slightly more than the nation as a whole. Suicides have gone up nationally; so have they here … but a little more than average. General farm accidents, household accidents, sporting accidents, we’re ten to fifteen percent above average.”

“What does it mean?”

“Some of them are murders disguised as accidents.” I stared at him. “Curt, I don’t have your faith in numbers, I guess. I can’t—”

He handed me a sheaf of papers. “Read these and then tell me. They take you back twenty years.”

I read:

Lester Lemonn, 53,
died of broken neck after car struck loose gravel on shoulder of highway. Presumed he swerved to avoid livestock. (Comment: Steering gear could have been tampered with. No record of autopsy, or of car having been examined.)

I looked up. “Curt, you’re not counting this sort of thing, are you? I mean, there are so many accidents.”

He nodded. “That’s right. So damn many. I’m assuming we have an average number of accidents. That leaves a dozen which were really murders. Go on, read.”

I went on:

Sally Niven,
32, found hanged in henhouse. Children at school, husband working. Presumed suicide. Apparently climbed up on box and kicked it away. Motive for suicide: depression, money problems. (Comment: Left no note, no record of having threatened suicide. Situation easily staged, possible rape-murder.)

Theodore Groner,
15, drowned. Swam for boat in middle of cove, apparently suffered stomach cramp. Witnesses in boat; Jerry Blake, Eli Black, Marston Odon, Gil Sisk, Rally Cartright, Louis Bayrd, Johnny Drew, and Harley Grove. (Number of witnesses make accident probable, but stomach cramps unlikely, since water was warm and victim had eaten nothing but peanuts for some time before swimming. Subsequent death of two witnesses Marston and Jerry, suspicious.)

Charles Hall,
19 and
Ruth Payson,
16, killed when car struck semi-trailer head-on. (Many possibilities here: jimmied steering mechanism, driver drugged with delayed action soporific.)

I looked up. “You mean a sleeping tablet which doesn’t take effect until later?”

Curt nodded. “Most of them don’t hit you for ten minutes anyway. Put an extra-thick gelatin capsule around it, and it might take a half hour longer. They ate hamburgers at the Club 75 before starting home. The driver could have been drugged then. Hall was known as a fast driver.”

“How do you know all this? It happened seventeen years ago.”

“Files of the county paper. It’s a small enough community so that every death rates a three-column spread.”

I returned to my reading:

Marston Field,
22, killed when tractor turned on him. Crushed chest cause of death. (But, he could have been knocked unconscious beforehand, as there were several bruises on him. Ravine was several feet from end of row. No witnesses.)

Anne Groenfelder Drew, 25,
found with throat cut outside Club 75. (Murderer still at large.)

I passed those two without comment. We’d been through them already.

Arnold Shaw,
24, and
LaVella England,
21, asphyxiated in parked automobile. Found in half-dressed condition, presumed that leaky muffler had let fumes seep through floorboard. (Comment: Could have been murdered by attaching hose to tailpipe, running it through bottom of car. No indication that muffler was checked to see that it actually leaked. Couple could have been unconscious when scene was staged, via pills. Double suicide ruled out; couple was engaged and had no problems.)