Hard Case Crime: The Vengeful Virgin Read Free Page A

at them.
    On the way, I stopped off at Timothy’s Radio Supply and signed for four different kinds of intercom units, and told the guy he’d probably have a nice sale on his hands. I drove past the front of the house slowly. It looked different in daylight. Just a house, with palm trees out front, and St. Augustine grass, and the sloping ramp leading to the front porch.
    Well, I could be wrong.
    I turned in the drive and parked under a tree. The Australian pine hedge between the drive and the neighboring house ran from out back clear to the street. Everything was quiet. I felt low. I had planned to do this whole job myself. It meant carrying TV sets, putting up an antenna, wiring, the works. It wouldn’t be easy.
    “Hello, there.”
    “Hi.”
    She was on the porch, waving.
    It didn’t make me feel any better, seeing her. I couldn’t get it out of my head; something like that, doing what she was doing, prisoned for Christ only knew how long with an old bastard who wouldn’t die.
    “Morning,” I said. “How’s everything?”
    “Fine.”
    She was really a knockout this morning. She had on a pair of black toreador pants, skin tight, with little slits at the calf. On top she had somehow managed to squeeze into a thin white sleeveless sweater, so nobody could possibly miss what she had up there. She had plenty. She wore sandals, and a bright smile. Her hair was auburn, all right, and brushed to a sheen.
    She came off the porch and around front and along the drive.
    “I was expecting you earlier. I phoned, but they told me you’d left.”
    “I wish now I’d come earlier.”
    That didn’t get me anywhere.
    “I’m very anxious to get started,” she said. “It’s like Christmas—buying all these things.”
    I got out of the truck and came around to where she stood. I opened the door and hauled the loose-leaf notebooks and the carton of pamphlets off the seat.
    She said, “I suppose I could have come down to the store. Doctor Miraglia comes twice a week. That’s when I go out to shop, and everything.”
    “I see.” I didn’t ask her what “everything” was.
    “But I like it this way,” she said. “If it’s not too much trouble for you.”
    “Well?”
    “Well.”
    I grinned and nodded toward the house, and she nodded, and started walking that way. I followed her inside. “We can check through this stuff first,” I said as we entered the living room. “You can kind of make up your mind. Then we’ll get down to brass tacks.”
    “Swell.”
    The bedroom door was closed. But I could see him in there, in my mind’s eye, staring bleakly into the past....
    “Good morning, Ruxton.”
    Something stopped ticking inside me for a second, then started again. It was Spondell. He stood in the dinette, staring at me with those eagle’s eyes. He had on a blue corduroy bathrobe and slippers, and his hair was combed. He held a cup of coffee.
    “Well,” I said. “Glad you’re feeling better.”
    He started to say something, but she jumped in fast with the lifeline. “Victor, you’d better toddle back to bed, now. You’ve been up over a half hour. You know what Doctor Miraglia said.”
    “The hell with him.”
    “Now, Victor.”
    “All right, baby.” He grinned. “Glad to see you, Ruxton—you old son of a bitch.”
    “Victor!”
    He had already turned away. He set the coffee cup on the dinette table and walked on through the room to the bedroom door without looking at us. He opened the door and went through and closed it.
    “I’m sorry,” she said.
    I went over to the couch and sat down, and put the carton and the loose-leaf notebooks on the floor.
    “He says things like that to everybody,” she said. “He seems to think it’s funny.”
    “Gave me a jolt, seeing him.”
    She came over by the couch, speaking quietly. “I think he tries to prove he’s strong by talking like that. He hasn’t been quite right—mentally—for some time. I hate to say it, but I think he’s getting worse. He was