Murder in a Hurry (12 page)

“No,” she said. “I'm not—” Then she looked down at the floor. The pans she had been carrying had slid to some distance from where she had fallen. The one containing food for the dogs had overturned; that which held the meat had not. And she realized the light was on again.

“I was going to feed them,” she said, and she pointed. “See, I was going to feed them.”

He looked at the pans, then at her.

“I've already given them water,” she said. “Look and see.”

He merely shook his head. But then he went to the pans and picked them up. He left the dried dog food where it lay and went back into the other room. When he emerged, it was with both pans, the dog-food pan refilled. He handed both pans to her. “All right,” he said. “Feed them.”

She did feed the animals, while he stood watching her. It was, she thought, a strange thing to be doing; an absurd, inappropriate thing to be doing. “The kittens?” he said. She stopped and looked around at him. “I did,” she said. “I—” Then, suddenly, unexpectedly, she was angry; her head hurt, her world was falling apart, and she was merely brightly, furiously angry. “Look for yourself, why don't you?” she demanded, and the anger was in her voice. But he merely shook his head; he said there was no point to this.

“The point is to get you out of it,” he said. “Clear out of it. Before something else happens.”

“I'll take care of myself,” she said. “You hear that? I'll take care of myself.” She paused. “Anyway,” she said, “how do I know it wasn't—wasn't
you?
Who else was here?
Was
there anybody else here?”

“Oh, for God's sake!” Brian said.

“
Was
there?” she repeated, standing facing him, ludicrously holding a sauce-pan in each hand, absurdly angry; desperately wishing she could make herself stop feeling as she did, saying what she did.

And then she saw that Brian Halder was flushing; thought,
why, he's angry too
.

“All right,” he said. “Do what you want to. Go where you want to.”

“You're damned right,” she heard herself say. “You don't need to tell me.”

She put the pans down on the floor. Then she turned, began to run toward the shop entrance.

“Liza!” he said. “Wait.”

“Not for you,” she said. “Not for you!”

Then she was at the door, tugging at it, heard his footsteps behind her, had the door open and was running through West Kepp Street, each step jarring horribly in her head, making a pain leap in her head. She had run to the end of the little street before she realized he was not following; that he had let her go. She stopped then; then anger ebbed out of her mind;
why, he let me go
, she thought.
I
didn't think—

She began to walk on, then; she walked slowly, now; walked through a kind of dull pain, which was only partly the real pain of her aching head. For some time she did not think where she was going and, when she did, it was only to think where she could go, and how, because she had left her purse back in the shop, left it somewhere in the rear room. I put it on a chair, she thought. I put it on a chair. I put it on a chair. The words had the rhythm of her steady walk. I put it on a chair. Six steps more. I put it on a chair.

The Norths were looking at blueprints.

“Far as I can see,” Pam said, “even when you take something off, it adds something on.”

Jerry North looked at a carbon sheet headed “Contractor's Lump Sum Proposal.”

“Maybe,” Pam said, “we ought to give up the roof.”

Jerry said, with gloom, that he doubted that would do it. The roof and the interior plumbing would be more likely.

“Of course,” Pam said, “we could just let the car sit out. That would take care of the garage.” She considered. “Probably the car too,” she said, thoughtfully. “Which would be better, maybe, because we'd be going up Seven to get there.”

Jerry put down the carbon sheet, and looked at Pam North.

“Seven?” he said. “You mean Route Seven.”

“Naturally,” Pam said. “The dangerous one. Because it hasn't any elbows.”

Jerry North shook his head slightly, as if to clear it. He thrust the fingers of his right hand through his hair.

“Listen, Pam,” he said. “Elbows?”

“On the sides,” Pam said. “Where did you think?” Then she, in turn, looked puzzled. “Elbows?” she said, as if she had heard the word for the first time.

“Oh!” Jerry said. He suddenly beamed at her. “Shoulders,” he said. “Shoulders!”

Then Pam North said “Oh.” She looked again at the blueprints.

“My parents,” she said, “had a house twice this big. And they had hardly any money at all. What's happened to things?”

“The unions,” Jerry said, “and I quote.”

“I don't believe it,” Pam said. “Do you?”

“No.”

“Then what
is
it?” Pam asked, and asked as if she, trustingly, expected to be told. “Last year it was too much. So we cut it down. So it costs more. And what was that funny one about square feet?”

Jerry thought a moment. He said she must mean the funny one about cubic yards.

“Earth excavation, unit cost of,” Jerry said, remembering. “One bid, eighty-five cents per cubic yard. Another bid five dollars per cubic yard.” He looked at Pam blankly, and she looked back, as blankly as her face permitted.

“Look,” Pam said, “are these people in business? Or what? I mean—”

“I know,” Jerry said. “I know what you mean.”

Pam folded the blueprints up. “Well,” she said, “it's nice here, too.” She looked around the apartment. “How many cubic feet, would you say?”

Jerry merely shook his head.

“I'll never see the inside of anything again without thinking of cubic feet,” Pam said. “At five dollars a cubic foot.”

Jerry started to correct that, but did not. It occurred to him that Pam's error was, this time, so minor, if existent at all, that correction would be foolish. He said they might as well go to bed, while they still had beds. And then the door buzzer sounded; sounded briefly, somewhat hesitantly. Jerry said, “What the hell?” and went to the door.

Liza O'Brien was very small, very pale; dust seemed to have been ground into the fabric of her woolen dress. She stood in the doorway and seemed to be trying to smile, but she swayed a little as she stood.

“Brian hit me,” she said, in a strange, faraway voice, almost as if she were repeating words she had learned. “I think Brian hit me. I—”

Her small body began to sag, and Jerry North caught her. But she did not faint, this time. Her eyes were wide open when he laid her on a sofa. They were wide open and looked up toward the ceiling, but seemed to see nothing.

7

Wednesday, 10:20
A.M.
to 12:45
P
.
M
.

Liza woke up in a strange room, a room hardly larger than her own, yet not her own; a room into which sunlight sifted through venetian blinds. She was puzzled, for a moment; for a moment obscurely disturbed. Then she remembered; then she moved her head to see whether it ached still. It ached only a little, now.

She was at the Norths' apartment; she had walked there from the shop and for a moment as she remembered this she remembered, too, the recurrent beat of her steps, the recurrent “I-put-it-on-a-chair.” She remembered Brian, bending over her in the dim light; remembered that he had started to come after her, and in the end had not. It should seem clearer today, she thought. But it didn't seem clearer. It seemed just as it had—muddled, obscure, frightening.

She was at the Norths' because she could walk to their apartment from the shop, because she had no money for a cab; no—she was at the Norths' really, honestly, because she had had to find somebody and had remembered Pam North's face. She had stood in the doorway and swayed, thought she was going to fall, had been lifted and carried to a sofa. Then there had been a doctor—hadn't there?—a large man with gentle hands; a man who had said, “Quite a bump, young lady. Quite a headache?” and then had said, “You'll be all right; you're at the tough age,” and had shaken two yellow capsules out of a bottle and told her to take them. And now she was here, in a room sifted with sunlight, waking up. She was wearing a very frail nightgown. Somebody knocked at the door and she sat up and said, “Yes,” and started to pull the sheet about her. But Pam North came in, with a tray, and smiled at her, and she let the sheet fall.

“Breakfast,” Pam North said, and looked at Liza with care. “You look fine,” she said. She looked again. “It's very nice on you, so far as it is,” Pam said. “I thought it would be, although I hadn't realized quite so much of it wasn't there. Jerry will love it.” She smiled, suddenly. “On me,” she said. “Anyway, I hope so. Orange juice, toast, coffee and boiled egg. Bacon?”

“I don't know how—” Liza began.

“Nonsense,” Pam North said. “Bacon?” Liza shook her head. She drank cold orange juice, hot coffee. She found she was hungry; that the egg, the toast, tasted much better than she could have imagined. “You'll do,” Pam told her. Liza started to speak and Pam shook her head. “Finish first,” she said. Liza finished.

“Did I tell you what happened?” she asked, then. “I can't seem to remember.”

“Part of it,” Pam said. “What you thought happened, anyway. It sounded to me as if you jumped.” Liza raised her eyebrows slightly. “To conclusions,” Pam said. “I don't mean about getting hit, of course. You didn't jump to that.”

Liza felt her head again. There was quite a bump.

“Look,” Pam said. “We've had to tell Bill, you know. Jerry called him this morning, before he went. You realize we had to?”

“Oh,” Liza said. “I—” She stopped and looked at Pam North. Then she smiled, faintly. “I suppose you did,” she said. “I know you did.”

“We never keep anything from Bill,” Pam North said, with virtue. Then she listened to herself. “Never anything important, anyway,” she said. “Not permanently, anyway.”

Liza nodded. It did not hurt to move her head.

“He's coming around,” Pam said. “Bill is. In—oh, in about half an hour. If you're up to it?”

“Of course,” Liza said, and started to get out of bed. The fragile nightgown fell away from her shoulders.

“You're pretty,” Pam said. “Such a nice way to be. And I was so right about the nightie.”

Liza showered, borrowed cream and lipstick from Pam's dressing table, put on the sheer-wool dress, which had been brushed, which would require more than brushing. She needed, she found, to be careful as she combed her hair. But she was all right; that way she was all right. She heard the door buzzer as she was finishing, went out to the living room and found Bill Weigand there, drinking coffee; found Pam North there.

“Good morning,” Weigand said. “I thought I told you to take care of yourself.”

“I'm sorry,” Liza said. “It was a fool thing to do. I got to worrying about the animals.”

“A foolish thing to do, Miss O'Brien,” Bill said. “I'll admit I thought we had things—well, under control. Apparently, I was wrong.”

“I'm sorry,” she said, again.

“Not you, particularly,” Weigand said. “Other things, other people.”

“Really, Bill,” Pam said. “Capote.”

Bill Weigand shook his head at Pam. He returned to Liza. “Now,” he said.

She told him what had happened at the shop; parts of it, under his questioning, she told more than once. She did not try to hide anything, or to change anything. He was particularly interested in the man she had seen outside the shop, thought she had seen.

“He seemed to be bent down,” she said. “As if he were trying to see into the shop, from the sidewalk, without going down the steps. But—I may just have imagined it. Imagined him. At first I thought he was a policeman.”

Weigand shook his head. There had been no policeman; it had not seemed necessary. Policemen are not in unlimited supply. And they had not supposed there was anything in the shop to interest anyone.

“We were wrong,” he said. “Apparently it interested—several people. Unless—”

“Two people,” Liza said, saying it herself, making her voice steady. But Weigand shook his head, quickly.

They didn't, he pointed out, know that. She might be making it worse than it was.

Liza tried to believe him; tried to be convinced that he believed himself.

“He does,” Pam North said, as if she were answering something Liza O'Brien had said aloud.

“Put it this way,” Weigand said. “There's nothing in what you tell me, Miss O'Brien, to suggest there wasn't a third man—a third person—there.” He smiled at her. “Nothing but your own fears,” he told her. “But tell me again—about coming to, finding Mr. Halder there.”

She told him again.

“Nothing,” he said. “It might very well have been as he told you. Most likely was.”

Again Liza tried to believe him.

“I'm having him come down here,” Bill Weigand said, then. “I didn't know, from what Jerry said, how you'd be feeling, whether you'd be up to leaving here. I'll have—”

“No!” Liza said. “Please no!”

But Weigand shook his head, and said he was sorry. It was already arranged, already started. Brian Halder might be there at any time.

“You see,” Bill Weigand said, “it isn't just between you and Mr. Halder, Miss O'Brien. I appreciate how you feel. But—I can't act on how you feel. You see that? I have to find out what happened. Make one story out of two stories; yours and his. This time, I think I can do it more readily with the two of you together. And—more quickly.”

“I can't,” Liza said. “Really, I—” She looked at Pamela North.