Who Has Wilma Lathrop? (2 page)

“I’m sorry,” Lathrop said.

He closed the door behind him and Wilma came into his arms, lifting her lips to be kissed. Her young body was soft, her perfume exciting.

She kissed him lightly. “I’ll forgive you this one time. What held you up, honey?”

“The Mandell affair.”

“The what?”

“The Eddie Mandell affair. You remember. I told you this morning. That kid in one of my classes who held up a drugstore.”

“Oh, yes. Eddie Mandell.”

Lathrop forgot that he was hungry and tried to hold her close, but Wilma wriggled out of his arms.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” she laughed. “Not with rib roast at ninety-eight cents a pound. You go and wash and I’ll put dinner on the table.”

THE TABLE
was set for a party. For some reason Wilma had used her best bone china and the sterling-silver flatware that the faculty of Palmer Square High School had given them as a wedding present. She’d even lighted candles. But in spite of the festive setting, it was one of the poorest meals she’d ever cooked.

Lathrop tried to eat and couldn’t. The mashed potatoes were lumpy. The biscuits had failed to rise. The roast was burned on the outside and too rare after the second cut. His swollen jaw made it difficult for him to chew. The cuts inside his mouth stung. He wondered why Wilma didn’t remark about his swollen jaw and the loss of his glasses. She was usually quick to notice small things concerning him.

He wondered if it could be the drinks and, if so, why she was drinking. She’d had a full pitcher of Martinis ready and had insisted that he open a bottle of sparkling Burgundy, because Burgundy went with a roast. She was the same, but somehow different. He wished he knew more about her than he did.

Twice during the meal he attempted to introduce the subject of the two men in the parking lot and both times Wilma forestalled him by recitals of the petty happenings of her day.

The butcher had tried to overcharge her. Did he know coffee had gone up again? The cost of just living was ridiculous. Then there’d been her accident. The reason she was wearing the black négligé was because when she had shopped that morning she’d forgotten to get flour. After she’d put the roast in the oven she’d run over to the little store on Kedzie and the janitor of the apartment building in the middle of the block had put salt on the walk in front of 3122 and hadn’t shovelled off the slush. In her haste she’d slipped and torn both of her stockings, a new pair she’d put on for the first time, and had got her dress soaking wet.

Lathrop sympathized with her. “That’s a shame. There ought to be a law. In fact, there is.”

Wilma leaned across the table and fondled his hand. “Just when I wanted everything to be perfect.”

Lathrop insisted everything was perfect. He wondered how long it took a man really to know his wife. This Wilma was new to him, and fascinating. There was an unfamiliar brittleness to her voice. In the flickering light of the candles, her eyes were overbright. From time to time, as she leaned forward, he wished the meal were over and the dishes washed and dried. The wine was making him lightheaded. They had, after all, been married only three months. He was glad when. Wilma pushed back her chair and suggested they go into the living-room.

“How about the dishes?” he asked her.

Wilma gestured vaguely with one hand. “That for the dishes. I’ll do them in the morning.”

Lathrop followed her down the hall. He was sorry he’d waited as long as he had to marry. Playing the field had been very unsatisfactory. And trying to fathom one woman was much more interesting than attempting to solve the trigonometric functions of ratios of an angle. He liked the intimate give and take of marriage. He liked Wilma, especially this new and brittle facet of her personality. It should prove to be an interesting evening.

“Know something?” he asked her.

Wilma looked at him over her shoulder. “What?”

“I love you,” Lathrop said.

“I love you,” she said soberly. “You may never know how much.”

“What kind of double talk is that?”

“It isn’t double talk. I mean it.” In the living-room Wilma went directly to the combination television and record player. “What will my lord and master have?” She consulted the TV guide. “I’ve Got a Secret’? Or would you prefer music?”

“Mood music,” Lathrop said.

“How about Carmen Cavallaro?”

“Cavallaro will do fine.”

Wilma stacked the spindle with records and sat beside him on the sofa. “That wasn’t much of a meal, was it?”

Lathrop laughed and took her in his arms. “You’ve cooked better.”

“I know.”

“What’s the matter, baby? Something bothering you? Or is this just one of those days?”

Wilma’s tensed body relaxed as she snuggled her cheek against his shoulder. “Just one of those days, I guess.”

“They come to all of us.”

Wilma fondled Lathrop’s cheek with her fingertips, then sat up and studied his face. “Who hit you? And where are your glasses?”

“I was not only hit, I was kicked,” Lathrop said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you since I got home. I was in a fight.”

“With whom?”

“A couple of guys in a parking lot.”

“What parking lot?”

“The one down at the Juvenile Court Building.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Lathrop was patient with her. “I’ve been trying to. But you’ve been so full of the butcher and the high price of coffee and falling down and snagging a new pair of stockings that I haven’t been able to get a word in.”

“Who hit your?”

“Two men.”

“Who were they?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then why did you fight with them?”

“I didn’t. They fought with me.”

Wilma wet her lips with her tongue. “What about? I mean, why should they fight with you?”

“I don’t know. I’d just finished my business with Judge Arnst and was crossing the parking lot to my car when a man stepped out from behind a Buick and asked me if my name was Jim Lathrop and if I taught maths at Palmer Square High School. I said that was correct and asked who he was.”

“What did he say?”

“He said it didn’t matter what his name was, but that he and his partner were friends of yours.”

“His partner?”

“Yeah. There were two of them.”

“Didn’t either of them give you his name?”

Lathrop shook his head. “No. But they were both big men. About my size. And I had an impression at first that they might be plain-clothes detectives.”

“But I don’t know any detectives.”

“That was merely my impression.”

“What did they look like?”

“It was too dark in the lot for me to see their faces, but as I said, they were both big men, well dressed.” Lathrop remembered something. “And one of them called the other Charlie. He made some crack about Charlie having fought professionally.”

Wilma’s fingernails dug into his arms. “What happened then?”

“Well, I tried to shrug them off and walk on to my car and one of them hit me and knocked me to the ground.”

It was the first time Lathrop had ever heard Wilma swear. “The bastards,” she said under her breath. “The dirty sons-of-bitches. What did you do?”

“I picked myself up,” Lathrop told her, “and asked the man who’d hit me what was the idea.”

“And what did he say?”

Lathrop quoted the man verbatim. “He said, That was just to show you we mean business. What kind of dumb clucks does Wilma think we are? … Tell her fun is fun, but not when the bite is too big.’ Does that make any sense to you?”

He felt Wilma as she took a deep breath. “No. No sense at all. Then what happened?”

“He asked if his partner had the envelope.”

“What envelope?”

Lathrop had hung his overcoat in the hall closet. He got the envelope from his pocket and returned to the sofa. “This one.”

Wilma fingered the bills in the envelope. “They gave you this?”

“That’s right.”

“What for?”

“To give to you.”

“But there are thousands of dollars in here!”

“I figured around five thousand.” Lathrop kissed the lobe of Wilma’s ear. “I was hoping maybe you knew the answer.”

“To what?”

“To what he said then.”

“What did he say?”

“He said it was from the Prentiss job. Just to show there were no hard feelings, but that they were getting a little tired of waiting for their cut from the big one. Then he said for you to meet them at Louie’s between one and two o’clock to-morrow afternoon. Then he hit me again and said, ‘Just to impress the time on your memory, here’s a little sample of what will happen to you if she goes on being greedy’.”

“What will happen to
you
?”

“That’s what the man said.”

“Then he hit you again?”

“He kicked me.”

Wilma continued to finger the bills. There was a far-off quality in her voice. “But, darling, it doesn’t make sense. Why should two men neither of us know say such a thing about me, then give you all this money?”

“I’m telling it just the way it happened.”

“What did you do then?”

“I fought back.”

“You hurt them?”

“I don’t know. I do know I was doing fairly well until one of them caught me by the legs and pulled me down. Then both of them really jumped me. It must have been five or ten minutes later when I came to, lying under a parked car.”

Wilma brushed his swollen chin with her lips. “You poor darling. What did you do then? Go to the police?”

“No. I wanted to talk to you first.”

Wilma protested, “But I don’t know any men like that. And there’s no reason why anyone should want to give me all this money.”

Lathrop slipped his arm around her waist. “You’re positive that you aren’t blackmailing someone in your spare time, sweetheart?”

“That’s not funny,” Wilma said. “It’s not at all funny. If you were down at Juvenile Court, there must have been officers around, and you should have gone directly to the police. Why didn’t you?”

Lathrop told her. “For two reasons. One, I didn’t want it to get into the papers. The Board of Education doesn’t approve of its teachers brawling in public. Two, as I said before, I wanted to talk to you.”

Wilma met his eyes. “But I don’t know anything about the men or the money.”

“That’s all I wanted to know.”

“And they said they’d harm
you
if I didn’t meet them at this Louie’s?”

“That’s what they said.”

Wilma laid the envelope on the coffee table. “You’d better go to the police the first thing in the morning.”

“Will do,” Lathrop said. “But I doubt if it will make any more sense to the police than it does to us. What was the name of that lawyer you worked for?”

“Mr. Ramsey. Carl A. Ramsey. In the New York Life Insurance Building on La Salle Street.”

“What kind of cases does he handle?”

“Mostly criminal cases. Why?”

Lathrop toyed with an idea. “Well, one of his clients might think you have knowledge or information you could use against him. You used to type briefs and confidential reports and things like that, didn’t you?”

“Of course. But I forgot them the minute I typed them. Besides, to make anyone think I was trying to blackmail him, I’d have to ask him for something.”

“That’s right.”

Wilma pushed the currency-stuffed envelope to the far side of the table. “Ugh. This has been a day. Would you know the men if you saw them again?”

“I think so.”

“Can you describe them to the police?”

“I can try.”

Wilma lay back on the sofa. “But I don’t know why we’re being so perturbed. They must have mistaken you for some other Lathrop. There are thirty-two of us in the phone book. I know. I counted them right after we were married.” Her eyes narrowed slightly. “You do love me, don’t you, Jim?”

“You know I do.”

Wilma held his hand to her heart. “And I love you. So much.”

Lathrop was pleasantly surprised. He had been right about the black net négligé.

She asked, “Did I show you what I did to my knees when I fell?”

“No,” Lathrop said, “you didn’t.”

Wilma unbelted her robe to show him her skinned knees. Lathrop kissed them to make them well. Then Wilma kissed his cut lip. It was two hours later and the stack of records on the player had played through. The machine had been silent a long time before he even thought of the two men or the envelope again.

He lay content, with Wilma’s head on his shoulder. The narrow couch was wide enough for both of them. He’d never felt so complete, so one with Wilma. The past hours had been beautiful.

“How come?” he whispered.

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Because I love you so much,” she breathed.

Lathrop patted her lightly. He liked this new Wilma. There were more facets to her character than there were in the three-quarter-carat diamond engagement ring he’d given her.

Wilma stroked his face with the tips of her fingers. “It’s been beautiful, so beautiful. But if you’re going to the police before you go to school in the morning, I suppose we ought to get some sleep.”

Lathrop arose from the couch reluctantly. “Goddam those two men.”

“Damn them,” Wilma agreed.

Lathrop tilted her chin. “You’re crying.”

She wiped her cheeks with the hem of the black négligé, then let it drop back to the floor. “All women cry when they’re happy. You don’t know much about us, do you, Jim?”

“No,” Lathrop admitted. “I guess not.” He laughed. “But where you’re concerned, I’m certainly willing to try.”

Whistling softly, he returned the currency-stuffed envelope to his overcoat pocket, then made sure the front and back doors were locked. When he entered the bedroom he found Wilma sitting on the edge of the bed, brushing her hair.

He watched her in the vanity mirror as he put on his pyjamas. He was a lucky man, even luckier than he’d realized. It hadn’t been entirely passion. Wilma loved him. It had been love that had lighted her eyes.

She fastened her golden pony tail with a rubber band. “You aren’t angry with me, are you, Jim?”

Lathrop sat beside her. “Why should I be angry with you? You are wonderful.”

Wilma searched his eyes. “You mean that, don’t you, Jim?”

“Of course I do.” Lathrop turned down her bed, slipped her slim legs under the covers, then pulled the blankets up to her chin. “Now you stay covered to-night. It’s plenty cold outside.”

Wilma made herself small in the bed. “I know. Just listen to that wind.”

Lathrop kissed her eyes, her nose, her lips. “Thank you.”

She slipped her arms out from under the covers and clung to him fiercely for a long moment. “Thank
you
. And good-night.

Lathrop brushed her lips with his. “Good-night.”

On the chance that she might need it before morning, he got a spare blanket from the closet and spread it over her bed. Then, after opening the window a few inches, he turned out the light and crawled into his own bed.