Ride the Lightning (5 page)

He walked into the kitchen. It was still too warm in there. He got a Budweiser out of the refrigerator, then returned to the cooler living room before popping the tab on the beer can. No need for a glass. He sat in a corner of the sofa where he could feel cool movement of air, found that morning’s
Post
on top of the stack of papers, and checked the front section.

There was a photograph of Scott Scalla grinning while cutting a ribbon in front of a new factory in St. Charles. There was a piece about a county cop who had broken under strain and shot himself and his wife, and next to that a three-column article was advising people how to stay cool in the smothering grip of the present heat wave. There was nothing on Curtis Colt. He was old news and would be until a few days before his execution, when the media would get interested in whether he’d make a last-minute confession or order strawberries and pickles for his final meal. Murderers sure weren’t like the rest of us; it was fun and more than a little scary to peek into their minds.

Nudger sighed, sipped beer, and turned to the sports page to read about the Cardinals’ fourth straight victory. They’d won last night in extra innings. There was a photograph of Tommy Herr doing his muscular ballet over second base as he pivoted gracefully for the double play. Nudger thought Herr might be even smoother than Scott Scalla.

Claudia opened the door, pivoted neatly herself, and unloaded an armload of books and folders onto the table in the hall.

“Homework,” she said, grinning at Nudger. “It’s a little-known fact that teachers have more homework than their students. All this stuff has to be graded.” She was teaching summer school this year, a heavy schedule.

She looked great, wearing a simple navy-blue dress that set off her long dark hair and brown eyes. Her waist appeared especially slim in the sashed dress; her lean features were perfect except for a narrow nose that some might have found too long but that Nudger thought gave her a noble look and conveyed a subtle but volatile sexiness. Beauty was in the eye of the beholder, and Nudger liked to behold, then to hold.

He waited like a patient cobra until she got near enough, then pulled her down onto his lap and kissed her. She was heavy for her leanness, solid and strong. She returned the kiss, using her tongue.

“There are different kinds of homework,” Nudger pointed out. “Some on subjects more interesting than the English you teach.”

She climbed off his lap and primly straightened her dress. “It’s the afternoon.”

He glanced at the light streaming through the window and nodded. Afternoon, all right. A sex act might change all that, throw all the time zones out of whack.

“I’ve got some frozen spaghetti,” she said, switching on the dining room air conditioner so it would blow into the kitchen.

Nudger knew enough to give up. For now. “That stuff in the little plastic bags you drop into boiling water?”

She didn’t answer. He heard her clattering around in the kitchen. A piece of flatware hit the floor, bounced; water ran.

By the time he’d finished his beer and was done reading about the ballgame, she had two plates of spaghetti, some cloverleaf rolls, Parmesan cheese, and two glasses of red wine on the dining room table. Nudger was glad to see there was no garlic bread.

He sat down across from her at the table. “Did you see the girls this weekend?” The girls were Nora and Joan, her young daughters by her marriage to despicable Ralph Ferris.

Claudia nodded, striking viciously at the spaghetti with her fork. The Ralph effect. He wasn’t surprised when she said, “I saw Ralph, too.”

“How is he?”

“The same. A deceiving bastard.”

Nudger was glad to hear her speak so about Ralph. She used to speak derogatorily about him only infrequently. She’d thought everything that had gone wrong with their marriage, with their children, had been her fault. Ralph had helped her to think that, helped her down into hell. Which was why Ralph was indeed a deceiving bastard.

Nudger sipped wine, smiled. Ralph was also a fool. Claudia was a woman you could talk to, but one who didn’t press for answers or explanations. And Nudger seldom delved into her life where she’d made it plain she didn’t want him. Such mutual respect and trust was rare in a relationship where there was good sex.

“What do you think of Curtis Colt?” Nudger said.

Claudia swallowed a mouthful of spaghetti, washed it down with Gallo wine. “The guy who shot that old couple in a supermarket holdup?”

“Liquor store,” Nudger corrected. “My job is to prove he’s innocent.”

“I thought his legal counsel had tried taking care of all that in court, and Colt was found guilty and sentenced to death.”

“That’s the way it is, I’m afraid. His fiancée hired me to talk to the witnesses who testified against him, uncover enough doubt to stave off his execution in the electric chair.”

“Which execution is? . . .”

“Saturday.”

“Sounds as if you’re tilting at a windmill. The kind that generates electricity.”

“Cruel analogy, teacher.”

She smiled at him as she buttered a roll. “Were you looking for encouragement?”

“Nope. Objectivity.”

“That’s what you got,” she said. “Sorry.”

When they were finished eating, he carried the dishes into the kitchen while she loaded the dishwasher. Claudia was very efficient in the kitchen. He noticed the gutted plastic cooking bags in the trash.

“I’ve got to talk to more of the eyewitnesses when they get home from work,” he said.

“Uh-hm,” she said.

“That means I’ll be busy tonight.”

“Ah,” she said, pretending to have just gotten his drift.

She turned the dishwasher on fast load and walked with him into the bedroom. The air conditioner was already humming away in there; she must have switched it on earlier, while she was preparing supper. The wiliness of women. The malleability of afternoons.

The bed was unmade, and the closet door was hanging half open. Nudger kept a change of clothes at Claudia’s, and he saw his two ties—one blue-striped, one brown—hanging on the hook in side the door. Only there were three ties on the hook; his two had been joined by a solid-red tie. He remembered the cigarette butt in the living room ashtray.

“Whose tie?” he asked casually. “A present for me?”

“Tie?” Claudia finished unbuttoning her dress and stepped out of it. “Oh, that belongs to Biff. He forgot it and I stuck it there.”

“Biff?”

“Biff Archway. He teaches physical education out at Stowe School. He was here last night.”

“And took off his tie? What else did he take off?” Nudger realized he was only half joking; there was an edge in his voice that surprised him.

Claudia paused in unhooking her bra, bent sharply forward at the waist, and stared at him with her elbows back and out, as if she were an elegant bird that had just touched down in the bedroom. “Nudger . . .” There was a dark warning in her eyes.

He got undressed silently, slowly, waiting for the bedroom to cool. The window unit seemed to be doing an exceptionally efficient job.

Well, maybe Claudia was right to caution him. He admitted to himself that he’d demonstrated unreasonable jealousy over practically nothing. Made a prime ass of himself, not for the first time. Okay, he’d messed up; the heat and the wine might have had something to do with it.

Still, that red tie, slung luridly over his own . . .

When he got into bed beside Claudia, she was nude on top of the covers. Her body was pale and slim, her hip bones prominent. She had teacup-sized, pointed breasts, and lean but shapely dancer’s legs, though she had never danced. Nudger felt the increasing tightness in his throat, the warm stirring at the core of him. He stroked her shoulder, said, “Biff Archway?”

Claudia sighed loudly. More of a hiss, really. “Biff was in the neighborhood and dropped by to see me.”

“And took off his tie.”

“Nudger, you and I aren’t married. We’re not engaged. I don’t wear your class ring, like the girls wear boys’ rings at Stowe School, with adhesive tape wrapped around them so they fit. That’s very possessive.”

“Possessive? Sure. I thought we had an understanding. A commitment.”

She smiled at him, then propped herself up on one elbow and leaned over and kissed him. He felt the soft pressure of her breasts against his arm. Her long dark hair brushed the side of his neck, tickled. “We do have an understanding,” she assured him.

“Did this Archway make advances?”

“Advances?” She fell back with her head on the pillow and stared straight up at the ceiling.

“You know. Advances . . .”

“Jesus, Nudger! Sometimes I think you live in the nineteenth century. No, he didn’t make advances toward me; he came in here walking backward, and then he kind of sidled out.”

“That’s not a serious answer.”

She turned her head and looked at him, a bit sadly, he thought. “Seriously, I’m not going to answer you. You shouldn’t have asked.”

Nudger started to get out of bed. When he sat up he felt her hands on his shoulder, fingers clawing into his flesh, drawing him back. He sat for a long moment on the edge of the mattress, feeling her grip loosen.

Maybe he was making too much of all this. Maybe this Archway guy really did just happen to be in the neighborhood and dropped by, and it was hot so he removed his tie and it found its way into Claudia’s bedroom. On top of Nudger’s ties. Maybe. Nudger wondered if he should check the drawer where he kept his underwear.

He settled back down on the bed, amused at his own unreasonableness. Green-eyed fool Nudger.

Claudia wrapped her arms around him as he pulled the length of her lean body against him. The naked heat of her felt good in the cool room. They kissed, and he ran his fingertips ever so lightly over her erect nipples. She tossed her head and snuggled even closer against him.

Things were all right again.

Better than all right.

“So I’m a jealous middle-aged guy,” Nudger said, after about ten minutes. “We get that way when we see the dark at the end of the tunnel.”

She laughed softly, and he kissed her forehead and shifted so his body was poised above hers. The bed creaked, then was quiet, as if waiting.

“What else does this Archway teach out at the school?” Nudger asked.

“Physio-social analysis and adaptability.”

“What’s that?”

“Sex education.”

Nudger rolled heavily to the side, said, “
Damn!
”

V
I

dna Fine lived in the Hallmont Apartments, directly across the street from Olson’s Liquor Emporium. Hers was a one-bedroom unit facing the street, and on the day of the murder she’d heard shots and looked out her win
dow in time to see a man flee from the store, climb into a dark green car that was waiting for him at the curb, and fire a shot back from the speeding car as it left the scene. She’d told her story to the police, made her identification, given her deposition for the prosecution, and thought the affair was ended.

But here was Nudger, sitting across from her in her living room, asking questions. Pesky Nudger.

He smiled at Edna Fine and thought that she looked more like a middle-aged spinster than anyone he’d known. She was tall and unattractively angular, with a tiny pinched face, graying hair, and an austere look about her that suggested teetotaling, no sex except once during leap years, and stern morality in all matters. She wore rimless round glasses and had on a plain black dress suitable for funerals. A jury would sense that she might be bending over too far
backward in her effort to smite evil, and might hear her tes
timony with some dubiousness if they saw her. The prosecutor knew what he was doing when he’d taken her deposition and merely had her sworn testimony read into the record, so she wouldn’t actually appear in court. Colt’s lawyer, a guy named Siberling, hadn’t cross-examined her. Nudger would have to talk with Siberling.

Edna Fine’s small, antiseptic apartment’s furniture fit her appearance; it was dull, stiff, and unadorned. Nudger shifted uncomfortably on the wood-trimmed, straight-backed sofa and said, “Did you get a good look at the suspect’s face, Miss Fine?”

“You mean Curtis Colt?”

Nudger nodded.

Edna Fine smiled.

Wait a minute. It changed her entire appearance, gave her surprising warmth. The pinched face widened, and crow’s feet added humanity to the close-set blue eyes. Nudger liked her better. A jury might have, too; maybe the prosecutor had missed a good bet after all. And maybe Siberling had done some pre-trial investigation and was wise not to have put her on the stand.

She said, “Don’t think I’m so cocksure of my identification that you have to humor me as if I’m some kind of tightassed old maid.”

Nudger was constantly amazed by how appearances could deceive. The world was made up of distorting mirrors, things were the opposite of what they seemed. “Then you’re
not
sure?”

“I’m as sure as it says in my deposition. I went to the window after hearing shots, looked out, and saw this skinny little man carrying a gun run from the store and get into a car that drove away with him.”