Bring Back Her Body (7 page)

FOR
the second time in as many nights Cain found himself on the Peninsula. Only this time he took his car via the ferry. From the highway, Lisa directed him along the narrow black-top road that twisted around and ended in front of the farm. From there they went on rough gravel through a thin grove of timber. Cain cut the motor and coasted down a slight slope to the garage beside the house. There was only one light showing from an upstairs window.

Cain sat quietly with his hands on the wheel studying the big, sprawled place. It was a two-story house with a one-story wing off the rear. The night was clear with a fairish moon shining whitely down on the buildings, giving them a softened look. The one light was all Cain could see.

“The caretakers live in that wing?”

“Yes, when they’re home.” Lisa pointed to the lighted window. “That looks like the bath between the two bedrooms.”

“Two?”

She smiled. “It isn’t as big as you think. There are just two bedrooms upstairs. Toby has one and the other is huge and full of bunks. He likes his guests to be uncomfortable and embarrassed when they stay with him.”

“Damn Toby,” he said. “I wish I’d hit him harder.”

“You may get a chance to hit him again,” she said. “Shall we go see?”

They went together to the porch and Cain pressed the doorbell. There was a chime from inside but no answering footsteps. He listened a moment and pressed the bell again. He thought he caught a faint sound but nothing came of it. There was only silence.

“Let’s try the caretaker’s side,” Lisa suggested.

But that was dark and their knocking raised no one. Cain said, “Maybe he saw us and is hiding out.”

“Not Toby, if he didn’t want to have anything to do with you he’d tell you so with a gun. He wouldn’t hit you but he’d come close.”

“To hell with Toby,” Cain said and went back to the front door. He rattled the knob but it held. Swearing softly, he circled the house, throwing the beam of his pencil flashlight on the windows. He made the full circuit and found Lisa by the porch. “Tight as a drum,” he said.

“What did you expect to find — Paula?”

“Maybe. Maybe Toby. How do I know?” Cain demanded. “It was your idea we come.”

“Why so it was,” she said. She started for the car, a frown marring her forehead. “I guess we go get our glad rags on for Munger after all.”

Cain hated to give up. He scowled at his car and then at the garage in front of which it was parked. And because he was stubborn, he tried the garage door; it slid upward with no fuss.

“No car,” he said. His light swept the interior, hovered and stopped near the back. “Look …”

Standing on end was the crude coffin he had shut Toby in the night before. Cain went up to it and Lisa followed. He reached out to open it and let his hand fall back. “Locked,” he said. He bent down. “That’s a different lock than the one last night, I’ll swear it.” He gave Lisa the flashlight and had her hold it while he tugged at the lock.

“I suppose Toby put on another. He’d have kicked the other one to pieces getting out.”

“Probably. But why put on another?” Cain demanded. “The thing had served his purpose.”

“Toby does odd …” She stopped. “My God!”

Cain heard it too, a shrill, metallic shriek, rising in pitch to the point of agony. It stopped abruptly. Cain was out of the garage and heading for the house, Lisa following. She stopped as the sound rose once more and then was cut off. It was shorter this time but the pain of it made her ears ache. She hurried to catch Cain.

She saw his long legs take him around the corner of the house. There was a crashing sound before she reached it and then she heard Cain’s footsteps hammering from inside. When she made the corner all was quiet again. Then a light came on, flooding out through a downstairs window. Lisa stopped. The French windows of the library were open. In a moment she saw why: Cain had kicked them in with his big feet to gain entry.

In slacks, sweater, and sneakers, Lisa was as agile as most men. Without hesitation, she ran forward, jumped, caught the sill and pulled herself belly down over it. She tumbled into the room and scrambled to her feet. The light came from the hall. She listened a moment, thinking she heard footsteps again but the noise she made out was indefinable, hard to locate.

In the hall she noticed a light on above, shining down from the landing through the stairwell. Then the lights went out — all of them. She hurried upstairs, getting out the flashlight, and taking the steps two at a time and then pausing on the landing for breath. Three doors faced her — the two bedrooms and the bath. She tried the bath first. It was empty, though the steamy smell of a recent bath or shower hung in the air. She saw a crumpled towel by the wet bathmat on the floor and that was all. Turning she tried the bedroom to her left.

The door opened onto blackness. Quickly she aimed her light inside. She saw the unmade, empty bed, the masculine clothing strewn about. Toby’s room. She shut the door and tried the other. It gave easily. The line of bunks, two-tiered along two walls, the dressers, the chairs — all were impersonal. But, she noted, some of the bunks were messed up, unmade.

No one. She felt the rising panic threatening to choke her and involuntarily she felt her throat constrict and then the sound come out. “Cain!” My God, she thought, I sound like a bawling calf. “Cain!”

There was silence. She had her mouth open again when “here” came faintly and hollowly from in front of her and beneath her. From the bath, she thought, and went there again. “Here!” It was a little louder this time.

She knew now. The square door of the laundry chute was just to her right. She opened it. “Cain?”

“Uh?” There was a grunt in his voice. He swore.

“How did you get down there?” she asked stupidly. The relief made her shake a little.

“I walked down. Uh — damn it! Ouch!”

There were more sounds, scuffling, a slap of flesh on flesh, a curse of pain from Cain. Lisa said brightly, “What are you doing?”

“Making love to a naked woman if she’d hold still!” he flung at her. There was another slapping sound.

Lisa turned and fled down the stairs, rounded the corner of the bannister behind the stairs and jerked open the door to the basement. Automatically she tried the switch there. There was no light. She started down, carefully, afraid to stumble on the steep stairs, her flashlight probing ahead of her into the thick darkness. She could hear strong breathing now. There were no more slaps, no more curses, just the harsh breathing that comes from dogged effort. Her light caught a corner of the pool table, the edge of the bar. Then somewhere glass tinkled and she turned the light that way. She had a glimpse of flesh, white buttocks, the blur of a leg in rapid movement. Before she could raise the light it went spinning from her hand and someone drove a knee or a shoulder into her, knocking her off balance. She reached as a foot came down on her stomach, felt an ankle torn from her grasp, sought for air. A heel struck her forehead, rapping her skull against the stair.

She pushed herself up, staggered forward into the darkness after the little pinpoint of light that was her flash and crashed head on into someone. For a moment there seemed to be a dozen flailing arms and legs and then she was down again. This time she had cloth in her hands and she hung on grimly, dazed but determined. Whoever it was above her suddenly came down on top of her. She sucked in a great, triumphant gasp of air and rolled over, pressing the other person flat.

“Cain!” she howled. “I got one!”

“Me!” he said and suddenly twisted out from under her and rolled free. She let him go, listening to him clamber up the steps and charge off somewhere. She lay where she was, crying softly, not from fear but from near hysteria. She wanted to laugh and she could only cry.

She was sitting up, gurgling into the darkness when heavy footsteps clumped down the stairs and Cain’s voice came to her in steady vituperative swearing. He found her flashlight and pinned it on her and she sat and blinked and giggled at him. He swore some more and went somewhere and in a moment the overhead light came on brightly. Lisa blinked into it and began to laugh. The more she laughed the more she wanted to laugh and in a moment she was rolling on the linoleum of the floor, gasping for breath.

She felt Cain’s hand sting her face and the laughter caught in her throat and stopped. She took a deep breath and then she was all right again. She got slowly to her feet.

“I’m sorry, Cain. Honest I am. I thought I was helping.” She started to giggle again, thinking of throwing herself on this great crane of a man, fighting him so determinedly. She cut the giggles off sharply.

“My car,” he said and his language became sulphurous. “She got into my car stark naked and drove off. And here we are.”

“Who?” Lisa demanded.

“How would I know who? It was dark. I don’t recognize women by the feel of their hides.”

“Paula probably,” Lisa said. “Drunk.”

“Why drunk?”

“When Paula is sober she’d have megrims before she’d let even a woman see her bare knee. She’s very odd.”

“To hell with Paula,” Cain said. “This woman was sober — I couldn’t smell any liquor and I was all over her. Besides …”

“Start at the beginning,” Lisa said quickly. The thought of Cain doing battle desperately in the dark with an unclothed woman almost set her off again.

Cain said, “Those screeches, remember?” She did. He pointed to the laundry chute. A metal foot locker rested on the floor, one end in the chute. “She shoved two of those damned things down that tin throat. They made it but put up an awful howl.” Cain laid hands on one and jerked. It came out squealing, a miniature of the sound they had heard. The other tumbled into the place the first had occupied. “See?”

“Those are Toby’s,” Lisa said. “So?”

“I broke in the window and started up the stairs for the bath but there was a noise from below. I finally found the damned stairway down and I got about two steps and the light went out in the basement. I had to feel my way back up and find the light switch. I’d brightly closed the hall door. I no sooner snapped it on than it went off again. We played that game for a few minutes and then it stayed on so I took a chance, opened the door for the hall light and started down the stairs and then all the lights went out.”

“Yes,” Lisa said, remembering.

“I got to the bottom and I heard someone. She was over there by the master switch. I stayed close to the stairs, figuring to block her, and tried to find my damned flashlight.”

“You gave it to me.”

“So I did. Anyway, it was a cat and mouse sort of thing. It couldn’t have lasted over a minute but it seemed like an hour. I heard a foot scrape near me and made a dive and caught something and then you started bellowing. Whoever I had went up like a rocket then. I nearly lost her. Finally we got wrestled into the middle of the room. And …”

“You told me it was a woman when I was upstairs,” Lisa said. “Did you know then?”

“I knew on the first grab. There are some ways in which a man and a woman differ.”

“Uhm,” she said, mocking him. She had to laugh a little.

Cain glowered at her and scouted around the room and came back, two diaphanous pieces of lingerie dangling from one great hand. “I got this on grab two.” He handed her a brassiere of very fragile violet material. “And this the last time. That’s when I let go for good.”

She took the panties. They were pretty badly torn. “Flimsy,” she said. “They match, don’t they.”

“Have you seen them on someone,” he said.

“No. Sorry.”

“She was like an eel,” Cain said as if he were apologizing.

“What did she smell like?” Lisa asked interestedly. She could close her eyes and see Cain reaching and clawing with his huge hands, finding he was getting a bit too intimate even for the circumstances — or so he would think — drop his grip and grab again. She could conjure the vision but she didn’t dare or she would have hysterics again.

“Smell like? People, I suppose.”

“No. Her hair, perfume, sweat?”

“Ah,” Cain said. “I got a faceful of hair and that was sort of sweet. And she was dusty. Bath powder, I think.”

“She bathed,” Lisa agreed. “Then I guess we interrupted her and she had time to get on her underwear and …” She stopped. “Only there weren’t any clothes in the bathroom.”

“The bedrooms?”

“I don’t think so.” She told him about her search.

“We’ll go check,” Cain said, “after we look at these foot lockers.”

He manhandled one more into the open, found it unlocked and lifted the lid. He stared for some time at the contents, looked at Lisa, and then dragged out the other. He opened it. Their bewildered gazes met.

“God!” she said. She looked a while longer and then began to laugh again. Cain gave her a worried look and instead of slapping her went to the bar, reached down and found a fifth of something and brought it back. He twisted the cap off and thrust the bottle at her.

Lisa drank, gasped, sputtered and drank again. “Rum! Good rum.”

Cain took the bottle and looked at the label. “Demerara,” he said in awe. “Hundred and fifty-one proof, about eight bucks a bottle. He keeps a nice cellar.” He sniffed and sighed reluctantly, setting the bottle on the pool table.

“Go ahead, Cain, you need a drink after that.”

“No,” Cain said. He looked into the trunks again. Lisa slyly put the bottle in his hand. Concentrating, Cain took a pull at it without removing his eyes from the trunk.

“Who,” he asked thoughtfully, “would go to so much trouble for this stuff?”

He took out the contents piece by piece: Wax faces, whole and broken, bits of paper mache, wire, paints, brushes. “Start your own waxworks,” Cain said.

Lisa no longer felt like laughing. Now somehow, it was frightening. She took a drink and Cain followed suit. He busied himself emptying the other trunk. At the bottom he located a wax mask which he brought out carefully. It was crushed on one side but the features were recognizable. It was Toby Patton.

“Paula did that,” Lisa said. “And I’d swear she did the one that we saw in the coffin. Toby kept it in his living room. She’s very clever.”