She stood in the doorway, waiting. She had taken off her hat. Her red hair
went well with the green dress. She looked pretty good.
“He wanted your husband to sign his pension papers,” I said. “He’s going to
make trouble. He wanted to know where he could find Jenson.”
She didn’t say anything. Her face remained expressionless.
“I told him he was somewhere in Arizona. He said he had to get his papers
signed or he wouldn’t get the pension. When I told him he would have to
wait, he said he would write to the Arizona police and ask them to find him.”
That jolted her out of her sulky indifference. She moved into the room,
shutting the door behind her. She walked over to a chair and sat down. The
skirt of her green dress rode up over her knees. She didn’t attempt to pull it
down. I didn’t even look twice. I had too much on my mind to bother about a
pair of pretty knees.
“So …” She drew in a deep breath. “So much for your bright idea. Well,
you’d better start thinking up another idea, hadn’t you?”
“Let’s quit fighting,” I said. “Ricks could make a lot of trouble for both of us.
He’s coming here tomorrow night to talk to you. Between then and now we’ll
have to decide what we should do about him. So stop fighting me and start
thinking. We’re in this jam together, even if you don’t think so now. If the
police come here, I’ll be in trouble and I’ll take care you’ll be in trouble too.
How are we going to keep Ricks quiet?”
She reached for a cigarette and lit it. She let the smoke drift down her nostrils.
“Why worry about him? Open the safe, take your share and get out. I’ll go
too. When he comes here again, we’ll have gone.”
“Is that the best you can do?” I said impatiently. “You’ve got that money on
the brain! How can we walk out and leave this place deserted? Talk sense!
Imagine someone coming here for gas and finding the place locked and
empty. Imagine Ricks coming here. He would tell the police and there would
be an investigation.”
“We could sell the place.”
“Could we? Is it yours to sell?”
She frowned at me. “What do you mean?”
“The only way you could sell it is to prove Jenson is dead and he has willed it
to you. How are you going to prove he is dead without the police finding out
he was murdered?”
“He wasn’t murdered! It was an accident!”
“You tell that to the police and see what happens!”
Her hands turned into fists. I could see by her expression that at last it was dawning on her the kind of trap we were in.
“Give me my share of the money and I’ll go,” she said. “You can stay here.
What’s the matter with that? You can say I’ve gone to join Carl in Arizona,
leaving you here to run the place.”
“Do you imagine Ricks would believe that? First, Jenson disappears: then
you, and I have the place. He’d tell the police I had murdered you both to get
it. They might not believe him, but they would come out here and investigate
They would find out who I was. They might even find where I buried Jenson.”
That really jolted her.
“You aren’t telling me you have been mad enough to bury him here!”
“Where else do you imagine I have buried him? You didn’t’ help me, did
you? How could I have got him in the Station wagon? He weighed over two
hundred pounds. I buried him in the repair shed, and if they suspect I have
murdered you two, they’ll start digging. If there’s one thing they are good at
—it’s digging. They could find him.”
She ran her fingers through her thick hair with a movement of exasperation.
“What are you trying to tell me?” she demanded, her voice shrill. “That we
have to stay here forever!”
“We have to stay here. I don’t know for how long. If we leave now, we’re
sunk. They’ll dig the whole place up and they’ll find him, and then they’ll
come after us. Our one hope is to stay here and make my story stick that he
had gone off with another woman.”
“I’m not staying!” She pounded her fist on the arm of the chair. “I’ve had
enough of it! I want that money! I’m going to have it!”
I waved my hand towards the safe.
“Go ahead and help yourself,” I said and got to my feet. “The money’s there
if you can open the safe. Maybe when you have thought more about it, you’ll
see I’m talking sense. You think about it.”
I walked out of the bungalow, leaving her, white-faced, her eyes pools of fear
and rage.
From then on until midnight, I sat by the pumps, waiting for trade. The hot
wind blew around me, stirring the dust and the sand, making my body feel
gritty and uncomfortable.
As I sat, staring into the darkness, my mind probed at the problem without
getting anywhere. At least, now I didn’t feel entirely alone. The lights in the
bungalow remained on. I was sweating it out, but she was too.
At half past midnight, I decided to go to my cabin and try to sleep. No truck
nor car had come through during the past two hours. There seemed no point
in sitting there in the hot wind waiting any longer. As I started towards my
cabin, the light in the lounge of the bungalow went out and the light in her
bedroom went up. She too, had the same idea.
I took a shower. It helped a little, but not much. I lay on the bed. I saw her
light go out I tried to shut my problem out of my mind and go to sleep but it
was useless.
The sound of my bedroom door opening jerked my mind out of its panicky thinking.
I half sat up, staring towards the door lit by the moonlight coming through the
window.
A shadowy figure moved into the room. It was Lola. She paused in a puddle
of moonlight that lay on the floor. She had on a green silk wrap which she
held tightly round her.
We stared at each other, then she came to the bed and sat by my side.
“If we have to stay here together,” she said, her voice an intimate whisper,
“there’s no need for us to remain enemies, is there?”
She leaned over me, her mouth seeking mine…
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