Jack and Susan in 1933 (30 page)

Blossom stood up from the bed. “How did you know she was here?”

“Oh, news travels fast in a place like this…” Barbara strode forward and laid the flowers on Susan's breast, the way she might have laid flowers on her father's grave. “Susan, I hope you're not
too
much hurt. I trust there's no
permanent
injury to your brain. It really is the most incredible coincidence, your being found practically dead in the desert not two miles from where I'm staying.”

“It's not such a coincidence,” said Susan, giving Blossom a glance.
Follow my lead
, it said. “Blossom is my cousin.”

“You
are
joking,” said Barbara with affected astonishment.

Susan knew it was affected, because if this information had truly been unknown to her, Barbara would have moved heaven and earth not to show surprise.

“No, Barbara, it's the absolute truth. In fact, you may be even more astonished to learn that I own this ranch.”

Barbara put her hand to her breast and drew back several feet. “
No
…”

“It's true,” Blossom concurred with appropriate drama in her tone and gesture. “Absolutely
true
…”

“Of course,” Barbara went on, coming back to the bed and placing her hand on Susan's wrist as if surreptitiously searching for a feeble pulse in a wasting victim. “You know I've been looking for you all
over
Nevada.”

“Yes?” said Susan.

“I even hired a detective to find you,” Barbara went on.

“Mr. MacIsaac,” said Susan.

“This is
beyond
coincidence,” gasped Barbara. “You
must
have the powers of a medium!”

“Well, now that you've found me, I suppose you'll want Blossom to drive you into Reno so that you can telephone the Albany police.”

“Whatever for? What
ever
for?”

“So that they can start extradition proceedings against me,” said Susan.

“Oh, what nonsense, Susan. That's exactly why I've been trying to find you. I know you didn't murder Father. It was all a silly misunderstanding.”

“You mean your father isn't dead?” Blossom inquired.

“Oh no, not that part,” said Barbara. “Father really is dead. The part about Susan's having killed him.”

“If I didn't,” Susan asked. “Who did?”

“It was an anarchist plot,” said Barbara smoothly, rather as if she were explaining why she'd been late for a luncheon appointment, “timed to coincide with the inauguration of the President. Some Socialist friend of Richard Grace's apparently,” she explained, shaking her head as if to say,
That naughty chauffeur of ours
…

Susan said nothing. On general principles, she disbelieved everything Barbara Beaumont said. Only thumbscrews or the promise of immediate financial gain could make Jack's wife tell the truth. Anarchistic plots against Marcellus Rhinelander seemed implausible, to say the least. Susan didn't know what to believe, so Susan said nothing for the moment. She was glad, however, that Blossom pursued the matter.

“They've arrested the man?” asked Blossom.

“It was a woman,” said Barbara, and laughed gaily. “I was right about that part at any rate! So everything's turned out happily—for everybody.”

“Except for your father,” Blossom pointed out, “who's still dead.”

“And except for you and Jack, who are getting a divorce,” said Susan. “And except Harmon and me, who are also getting a divorce.”

Barbara laughed another little laugh, gayer than the last one. “I realize I was wrong about you and Father—
and
about you and Jack. So there's no reason for Jack and me to get divorced—so of course we're not. I really do adore the man, you know.” She sighed, as if contemplating the object of her adoration. “And since you
didn't
kill Father, there's no reason for Harmon to divorce
you
.”

Susan and Blossom exchanged glances.

“This is very strange,” said Blossom.

“It's just us giddy New Yorkers!” Barbara laughed.

“Whether or not Harmon still wants to be married to me,” said Susan, “I'm not at all certain that I want to remain married to him.”

“Don't say that,” cried a familiar voice just outside the door.

A masculine voice. Harmon's.

Susan sighed. It would be.

Harmon sauntered in with a bouquet of flowers even larger than Barbara's.

“I've been a fool,” he said. “An absolute fool. I don't know how I could
ever
have imagined—what I imagined. Susan, please forgive me. Please come back with me to New York.”

Blossom said to Susan, “I don't know where he came from. I don't even know who he is.”

“He's my husband,” said Susan to her cousin. “How did you know I was here?” Susan asked Harmon. She was not only bewildered, but, looking at Harmon now, embarrassed that she could have been such a fool as to marry him. She felt rather like one of the dreadfully obtuse heroines of Colleen's novels. It was obvious, too, that Blossom didn't think much of him.

“I didn't know you were here,” said Harmon. “But I came to Nevada to look for you, of course, and believe me, I would have gone to Alaska, or Timbuktu just as readily, and when I got to Reno, I couldn't find Barbara, I couldn't find MacIsaac, I couldn't find anybody, and then finally I ran into the princess, and she told me where Barbara was, so I came here in hope she could shed some light on the business and”—he stopped in apparent embarrassment—“and truth to tell, the flowers were for her, but it looks as if you deserve them more.”

“What I really need now,” said Susan, “is a little rest.”

“I can't go—and I
won't
go—unless you tell me you forgive me,” said Harmon. “And say you'll go back to New York with me.”

Susan smiled the sweet smile of an invalid. “Oh yes, if you'll wait a little while, till I can get out of this bed, I'll be happy to go back to New York with you.”

“Oh,” cried Barbara in a little ecstasy all her own, “we're all going to be so happy again! We'll have to take bridge lessons! I met the Culbertsons at a party once, and they said, ‘Barbara, if you ever decide—'”

Harmon interrupted her. “Barbara, let's go. Susan just told me everything I wanted to hear. Now the only important thing is for her to get well, so that we can all go back to New York and live happily ever after.”

“And take lessons from the Culbertsons?”

“Yes,” said Harmon, “anything.”

Blossom, startled by all this beyond the power of speech, was readying herself to leave as well, but Susan detained her. “Stay with me, Blossom, till I fall asleep. Please?”

“Of course,” said Blossom uncertainly.

Harmon kissed Susan on one cheek, and Barbara kissed her on the other, then left the room. Blossom closed the door tightly after them. She turned around, leaned against the door, and stared at Susan in the bed.

“So what do you think of my choice in husbands?”

“Truthfully? Not much.”

“You don't think he truly loves me?”

“I don't know anything about men,” said Blossom. “And I can't always tell when they're telling the truth… or when they're lying out three sides of their mouths at once. But it doesn't matter what I think about him, does it, really? You've already agreed to return to New York with him.”

“When I get out of this bed, I will,” said Susan.

Blossom looked disappointed in her cousin.

“Of course, I fully intend to be in this bed for the next three weeks and five days. Then the divorce becomes final, and I'll be happy to go back to New York with Harmon. As long as we're in separate cars on the train, of course.”

Blossom laughed. “You didn't believe him either?”

“Not for a minute,” Susan said. “There's something to all this, and I just don't know what it is. But at least I'm not still wanted for murder.”

“If you ever were,” said Blossom.

“Quite right,” Susan said, thinking of that possibility for the first time. Perhaps Barbara had fabricated the incriminating evidence of Susan's crime just as Mr. MacIsaac had fabricated the evidence of Harmon's infidelity. “But the question is, who tried to murder me last night?”

“Barbara?” suggested Blossom.

“Barbara has a fear of airplanes. And whoever flew that plane certainly knew what he was doing—”

“Your husband?”

“If he's so adamant about staying married to me this morning,” said Susan, “he wouldn't have tried to kill me last night.”

“That detective?”

“If he was hired
both
by Barbara and Harmon to find me, it wouldn't be him.”

“Maybe it was just some lunatic in a plane,” said Blossom. “Someone who—”

Her voice was suddenly drowned out by the noise of a motor somewhere directly above.

“Oh no,” said Susan, cringing in the bed. “Whoever it is, he's coming back.”

Blossom rushed to the window, and Susan staggered to her feet, realizing for the first time that her body ached almost as much as her head.

“He's landing,” cried Blossom. She grabbed Susan to keep her from falling.

Together they stared out the window at the biplane that was landing on a stretch of plain ground just beyond the corral. A dozen frightened horses neighed in their stables.

“Is that it?” asked Blossom. “Can you tell?”

“Yes,” said Susan, “that's the plane. I'll never forget the sound of
that
motor.”

The plane hit the ground, rolled on, slowed, and turned around, at last stopping at the side of the corral. The horses in the stables were frightened anew.

“He probably thought you were killed,” said Blossom. “And now he's coming back to make sure. The nerve…”

They watched grimly as the pilot hopped out of the cockpit and took off in a run around the corral fence toward them. He wore gray trousers, a dark leather jacket, and goggles.

He got close enough to the window to see Susan and Blossom, and he waved frantically, pulling off his goggles.

“I'll get the shotgun,” said Blossom, “and this time I won't load it with salt.”

“Don't,” sighed Susan. “It's Jack.”

JACK AND SUSAN

T
HAT SUSAN WAS
at the Excelsior Ranch was proof she loved him.

He'd sent her a single telegram, telling her to come here. No explanation then. No telegram, no telephone call, no letter since then. And still she was here, safe and waiting.

That was trust.

Trust like that came only from love.

He supposed that the woman standing in the window next to her was her cousin Blossom.

Blossom didn't look like a Blossom. Edwarda, maybe.

Both women disappeared from the window. He stopped and waited for Susan to run out and greet him.

Perhaps he'd even get an embrace. Even though they were both still married to others. He dared not hope for a kiss, but he thought that an embrace was entirely within the bounds of possibility.

What he got was Blossom with a shotgun.

“Inside,” she hissed. With nothing that approached friendliness. “Quick, quick, before anybody sees you.”

She poked the barrel of the shotgun in his back.

“You
are
Miss Mayback, aren't you?” he asked uncertainly, but moving forward all the while.

“Yes,” she hissed, and prodded him through the door of a small low building with gray stucco walls. “And don't waste your breath telling me who you are, because I know.”

He wondered why she seemed so displeased to make his acquaintance. Perhaps he'd landed the plane on some particularly valuable piece of land that only
looked
like cracked and lifeless desert.

The rifle barrel guided him down a short hallway, and then through an open door into a bedroom. He didn't need to be guided farther. Susan lay in the bed and regarded him with a cold eye.

“You look terrible,” he said automatically.

“There's a reason,” said Susan.

“Are you ill?”

“She's not feeling her best,” said Blossom, coming in with the shotgun. Holding it beneath her arm, as if she were reluctant to put it down within Jack's reach, she carefully shut the door, fished a key from the pocket of her dress, and locked it. She turned and regarded Jack with a beady eye. “Someone tried to murder her last night.”