Nothing More than Murder Read Free

cards and the stuff for my lobby display.
    I was shivering as I walked back to the hotel. Even thinking about Carol couldn’t warm me up.

3
    I t was a Saturday morning, a little over a year ago, when I first saw Carol. We had a kids’ matinee coming up at eleven o’clock and I was in the projection booth screening some stuff. I’d just made a change-over, and was putting a roll of film on the rewind.
    Elizabeth waited for me to look around, but she finally saw I wasn’t going to.
    “This is Carol Farmer, Joe,” she said. “She’s going to stay with us.”
    “That’s fine,” I said, keeping my eye on the film.
    “Our ladies’ aid group is helping Carol attend business college,” Elizabeth went on, “and she needed someplace to cut down on expenses. I think we can use her very handily around the house, don’t you?”
    I still didn’t look around. “Why not?”
    “Thank you, dear,” said Elizabeth, opening the door. “Come along, Carol. Mr. Wilmot has given you his approval.”
    I knew that she was laughing. She’d only brought Carol there to show me up. She didn’t need my approval for anything.
    Well, though, I passed old Doc Barrow, who runs the business college, on the street that afternoon; and he thanked me for being so generous in taking Carol in. I began to feel a little better, and kind of ashamed of the way I’d acted. Not on Elizabeth’s account but Carol’s.
    She was about twenty-five and she’d spent most of her life on a two-by-four farm down in the sand flats, raising a bunch of brothers and sisters that ran off as soon as they got big enough to be any help. Her father was serving a five-year stretch for stealing hogs. Her mother was dead. Now, she was starting out to try to make something of herself.
    We were changing programs the next day, and it was after midnight when I got home. But Carol was still up. She was sitting out at the kitchen table with a lot of books spread in front of her, and you could tell they didn’t mean a thing to her. Not as much even as they would have to me.
    She jumped up, all scared and trembling, like I’d caught her stealing. Her face got red, then white, and she snatched up a dish towel and began scrubbing at the table.
    “Take it easy, kid,” I said. “You’re not on twenty-four-hour duty around here.”
    She didn’t say anything; I don’t guess she could. She stood watching me a minute, then she snatched up her books and sort of scuttled over to a corner and sat down on a stool.
    She pretended to be studying, but I knew she wasn’t. I knew it because I knew how she felt—because I’d felt the same way. I knew what it meant to be nothing and to want to be something. And to be scared out of your pants that someone is going to knock you down—not because of what you’ve done but because you can’t strike back. Because they want to see you squirm, or they have a headache, or they don’t like the way your hair is parted.
    I opened the refrigerator door and took a look inside. It was full, as usual, with the leftover junk that passes for food with Elizabeth. Little plates of salad, bowls of consommé, sauce dishes of fruit, and nonfattening desserts. But way back in the rear I spotted a baked ham and a chocolate cake.
    I took them over to the table, along with some bread and butter and a bottle of milk.
    “You ain’t—you’re not supposed to eat that, Mr. Wilmot.”
    “Huh?” I almost dropped the carving knife.
    “Huh-uh. I mean, no, sir. Mrs. Wilmot said that was for tomorrow.”
    “Well,” I said, “ain’t that just dandy?”
    “Yes, sir. There’s some soup on the stove. That’s what I—we—what we’re supposed to have tonight.”
    I didn’t argue about it. I just went over to the cupboard and got two plates, and I filled one of them so full it needed sideboards.
    “Now, come over here,” I said, “and eat this. Eat every damned bit of it. If there’s any holler I’ll say I did it.”
    Christ, I wish you could have seen