Murder in the Wind (18 page)

She performed the single positive act of her lifetime on the night that Frank Stratter paid his unsuccessful call on June Anne. Hope knew that Frank was wanted by the police for something. That did not matter to her. She asked with unexpected boldness and was accepted. It did not occur to her that his acceptance was a gesture of revenge against June Anne. She was fifteen when Frank took her away to Miami with him. She was not interested in the city. She did not concern herself with what Frank and Billy Torris were doing. She was satisfied to be wanted, to eat and sleep and live, and accept this new life.

It was too bad that they had had to leave the apartment. She had grown to feel quite at home there. And it had frightened her a little—not very much—when Frank had made her bring those men back to the darkness from the bars. She hoped she wouldn’t have to do that very often. It didn’t seem right.

She rode along in the truck, her hands clasped loosely in her lap, heavy white thighs stretching the cotton dress, wipers flapping at the rain, truck swaying in the wind.

She thought of her father’s grove and she wondered vaguely how they were. She had no desire to ever see them again. Particularly June Anne. She realized she was getting very hungry and she wondered if she should turn around and wake Frank up and tell him. But Frank might get angry. When he got angry he would hurt her by pinching or hitting her. She balanced pain against hunger and decided she could wait a while.

She swayed forward when Billy stepped on the brake. She saw the police car ahead, the blinking red light. She saw the man beckon them on. Frank knelt in back, his head between them, voice sharp as he said, “Okay. Keep going. Down that road. That’s where he wants us to go.”

They caught up with the other slow-moving cars. It was a narrow wet, rutted road. When the cars stopped she got out with the others and the wind caught her and tumbled her into the ditch. The force of the wind shocked her. It was almost the same panicky unbelieving shock as when Seral had first forced her down on the dirt floor of the tool shed. The feeling that this cannot be happening, not really.

Then the great green top of the tree came swinging down at her. She could not get out of the way. It came down with a great wet sighing smashing sound, driving her down into the ditch, hurting her face, thumping hard against her hip. A big man tore the branches apart and got hold of her and pulled her out. She stumbled and he caught her. Her cheek was bleeding and she was crying. He examined the cheek and told her it was just a scratch. Her bruised hip made her limp a little. She could see that the cars couldn’t get out. She didn’t know what they were going to do. The wind was frightening. They climbed over the tree and went back into an old house. It was boarded up and quite dark in there. All the people came in. She stopped crying and felt quieter inside. Frank had a white strained look. Billy seemed very nervous. She stood between them and the three of them leaned against a wall.

After a while a sort of fat-looking man made the boys work. People brought things in, suitcases and things, and the boys had to help carry them upstairs. She felt tired and hungry. She eased herself down gingerly and sat with her back against the wall and felt as if some time, pretty soon, she would begin crying again. And she kept thinking of the grove. She wished she could stop thinking about the grove.

Frank Stratter meekly obeyed the orders of the big mouth who had taken charge. He carried endless suitcases up the creaky stairs and put them in the narrow hallway. There were four small upstairs bedrooms that opened off the hallway. Upstairs the wind sound seemed louder, and he thought he could feel the house sway.

He met Billy at the head of the stairs and Billy said, wide-eyed, “What are we going to do?”

“Shut up!” The kid was getting too nervous. This would be as good a time as any to take off, to leave the pair of them right here. With a hurricane coming in, the police were going to be too damn busy to bother looking for any fugitive from Miami law. He decided he would find the right chance and take off. He had what was left of the money they had gotten in Bradenton. And the clothes he wore. And a pocket knife with a four-inch blade. Nothing else. And it was pretty obvious that some of these people would be carrying a nice chunk of cash. The couple from the Mercedes for example. Or the big-mouth with the Cadillac. He knew he’d feel better if he could take off with some of that money. And it looked like it would be one hell of a long time before anything he did here could be reported.

The tactical problem was complicated by leaving Billy behind. The kid would talk. And that might cut down the time margin. Also, it would rule out New Orleans. And he wanted badly to go to New Orleans. He wished he had told the two of them they were headed for some other city. He wished he had a gun.

He stopped suddenly, half way down the stairs and wiped the palms of his hands on the thighs of the khaki pants. There was one way that would diminish all complications. When he thought of doing it, the breath was shallow in his throat. Billy stopped behind him and said, “What’s the matter?”

Frank turned. “Go on back up. I want to talk to you.”

They went into a far corner of one of the small bedrooms. “We can’t stay here, kid. When they come in to get all these people out of here, they’re going to ask a lot of questions. Who are you? Where did you come from? Like that.”

“I guess they will,” Billy said.

“So we don’t stay.”

“It’s pretty rough out there.”

“And it’s rougher on the road gang, kid.”

“I guess it is. When… when do we go?”

“It’s going to get darker. I want a good chance to take some money off these folks. Then we light out. We can make it to the highway okay. Then we take our chances from there. Okay?”

“Hope’ll be pretty scared to go out in this.”

“She’ll have to come along. We’ll have to make her come along.”

Billy looked dubious. “All right, Frank. Anything you say. But how do we get another car?”

“We’ll get one. Now go on down and get another load.”

Frank watched the kid leave the room. He wiped his hands again. He felt a trembling anticipation within himself. He put his hand in his pocket and clenched it around the closed knife. You wondered about doing it. How it would be. There could never be a safer time or place. Three of them would go into the dark storm wind. Only one would reach the highway. Even if the bodies of the girl and the kid were found soon, the details would be all confused. He wondered if it would be easy to do. Or hard. He imagined it might be pretty easy to do. He thought of the dream sky and the way he saw his name in the giant glowing letters.
Frank Stratter.
He thought of the swing of the brush hook. He felt again the jolt of his foot as he had kicked the man. This might be easy to do. Just once. Just to see how it was. And maybe never do it again. Because it was a damn fool thing to do. If they found out about it, they really came after you. And when they caught you, they killed you.

He stretched his shoulders, arched his chest, sucked his belly in and thumped himself in the pit of the stomach where the trembling feeling was strongest. He went downstairs. On the next trip up he carried a child’s crib.

Virginia Sherrel had not been particularly aware of the big man until he came over to her and asked her if her keys were in the car. She took them out of her purse, and handed them to him. “This one is for the trunk. Really, I could get the things myself. Mr. Flagan seems to feel that women are helpless.”

He took the keys. “His conditioning, I guess. Southern womanhood or something. Anyway, it is rough out there. And he gave you a job being doorwoman.”

She smiled up into his face. He had a look of massiveness, of implacability. There was the slightest glint of amusement in deepset eyes, a surprising hint of sensitivity in the set of his wide firm mouth. “I’ll bring everything in.”

“Is it necessary?”

“This is flat country, but I think the water is going to come a lot higher. Don’t let me make you nervous.”

“I’m not in the least bit nervous.”

He stared at her, then smiled again. “You don’t look the type who is too stupid to be scared.”

“Well! Thank you.”

“I guess you’re just a remarkably steady woman. We may need you around here.” He turned and left. She kept smiling for a few moments after he left, and then the smile faded. It was rarely that any man gave such an impression of enormous quiet competence. She wondered what he did for a living. He very obviously did not work behind a desk. There was no hint of softness.

She opened the door for them as they came in laden with luggage. It took nearly all her strength to hold the door against the twisting clutch of the wind. Had the door been on the windward side of the house, it would have been unusable. When they came in they looked frayed and breathless.

When the big man called Maiden brought her things in, set them down, she saw the box that contained the bronze box of ashes. It shocked her that they should be brought into this house—and it surprised her to think that for a little time she had forgotten them. For a few hurtful seconds she missed David so intensely that she nearly cried out in the suddenness of pain. For this was the sort of thing that David could and would have risen to. His gaiety would have been infectious, his courage unquestioned. Calamity had always sharpened his wit and his perception. It was almost as though the life he led had never demanded enough of him. In spite of his look of blond frailty, he had been planned for a more violent age. Perhaps, during the Korean war, before she had known him, he had lived completely. He had been a naval aviator, a fighter pilot.

Maiden stood close to her and said, “Is something the matter?” His perception surprised her.

“No. Nothing’s the matter, thank you.” She forced a smile. And then began to wish she had told him. But that was absurd. You did not tell a man you had just met that you were disturbed because he had brought your late husband’s ashes into a room where you stood.

He studied her for a few moments and then said, “Know anything about hurricanes?”

“Just what everybody knows, I guess.”

“It’s pretty dramatic out there right now, and not too bad yet. Not as bad as it’s going to be. It’s worth taking a look at. If you wish, we could go out and take a look at it. When you understand something, it isn’t quite as terrifying.”

“I don’t think I’m terrified, Mr. Maiden, but I would like to see it.”

“I’ll keep you from being blown away, Mrs. Sherrel.”

They went out into the full noise of the gale. It caught hard at her as they passed the corner of the house, and his hand was strong on her upper arm. They climbed over the fallen tree and went to the shelter of the blue and white convertible. From there they could look west through a wide gap in the trees. All the sky was a strange dark coppery color. Long cloud banks moved swiftly toward them. Her eyelashes were pushed back against her eyelids, her black hair snapped at the nape of her neck. When she tried to speak the words were blown out of her mouth.

He had to speak loudly, his lips close to her ear, to be heard. “The name comes from
huracan.
That’s a Taino word. It means evil spirit. See those higher clouds? Altostratus and altocumulus. With clear spaces between. They’re moving east. They radiate out from the eye. Now see the low stuff? It’s moving northeast. That puts us in the bad quadrant, where you can get the worst violence. This is a small one. The eye won’t be more than four or five miles in diameter and it ought to be off in about that direction.” He pointed slightly northwest. “And not too far off the coast Those cloud ridges will go up to seven or eight miles high. Oh-oh, here comes another rain squall.” The first wind-driven drops stung her face. Maiden opened the car and they got in. She slid over under the wheel. The rain struck so violently it sounded like hail. The car rocked with the push of the wind.

“When is the worst coming?” she asked.

“In an hour. Maybe a little more, a little less, the way it looks.”

“How do you know so much about it?”

She saw a faint grimace, like a fleeting expression of distaste. “It used to be sort of a hobby, meteorology. I had the usual gadgets. Wind velocity, rainfall, aneroid barometer. Drew my own weather maps. But… I gave it up.” His expression changed. For a moment he looked almost boyish, “This is the first one of these babies I’ve ever seen.”

The clouds overhead were very black. There was a sudden piercing blue-white flash, a great crack of thunder. She started violently and forced a smile and said, “Is it supposed to do that too?”

“Sure. It does everything. It has everything. Electrical disturbances, tornadoes.” The blackness moved swiftly by. Another one was coming. In the interval the rain ceased and the day was temporarily brighter, but it was the brightness of dusk, and was suffused with the odd coppery glow so that the colors of all things looked strange, unreal.

“We better get back,” he said, and opened the car door. He started to step out, and then turned and frowned at her and said, “We’re going to have to wade back. Look here.”

She looked. In that short interval the water had come up a frightening distance. It was nearly to the car hubs. Maiden did an astonishing thing. He cupped his hand, scooped some up and tasted it.

“What in the world?” she said.

“Salt. We’re getting this from the Gulf. They must be catching hell along the coast.”

She took her shoes off. He took them from her and put them in the side pockets of the jacket he had put on. He helped her out. Her feet were toughened from walking on the beaches. There was a dip before the house where the water was deeper. She clung to him, holding her skirt above her knees with her other hand. They went into the house, into the relative quiet of the house where the thousand evils of the wind were muffled. She felt warm and glowing and oddly drowsy.

“I guess that was a fiasco,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

She looked at him in surprise. “But it wasn’t! I loved it! I wouldn’t have missed it.”