Let's All Kill Constance (Crumley Mysteries 3)

Silence.

A shadow moved. A white shape motioned.

The tips of her fingers came out into the shadows and then her hand and then the slender arm.

Then, after a long silence, a deep breath, an exhalation, Constance said: “I’m coming down.”

Chapter Forty-Seven

The storm was gone. It was as if it had never been. The sky was clean, not a cloud anywhere, and a fresh breeze was blowing as if to clean a slate, or a mirror, or a mind.

I stood on the beach in front of Rattigan’s Arabian fort with Crumley and Henry, mostly silent, and Fritz Wong surveying the scene for long shots and close-ups.

Inside the house two men in white coveralls moved like shadows and I was put in mind of altar attendants somehow, the mind of a crazed writer freely associating, and I wished that somehow, wild as it seemed, Father Rattigan could be there, could be one of those white figures cleaning the house with a censer of incense and a rain of holy water, to re-sanctify a place that had probably never been anywhere near sanctified. Good God, I thought, bring a priest to cleanse a den of iniquity! The housepainters, inside, scraping the walls clean in order to apply fresh paint, worked steadily, not knowing whose house it was and what had lived there. Outside on a table by the pool were some beers for Crumley, Fritz, Henry, and myself, and vodka, if our mood changed.

The smell of fresh paint was invigorating; it promised a lunatic redemption, and an echo of forgiveness. New paint, new life? Please, God.

“How far out does she go?” Crumley stared at the breakers a hundred yards off shore.

“Don’t ask me,” said Henry.

“Out with the seals,” I said, “or sometimes in close. She has a lot of friends out there. Hear?”

The seals were barking, louder or softer I couldn’t say, I only heard. It was a glad sound to go with the fresh paint in an old house made new.

“Tell the painters when they paint her mailbox,” said Fritz, “to leave room for just one name, ja?”

“Right,” said Henry. He cocked his head to one side, and then frowned. “She’s been swimming a long time. What if she don’t come in?”

“That wouldn’t be so bad,” I said. “She loves the water offshore.”

“Swells after a storm, fine for surfing. Hey! That was loud!”

The kind of loud that made for a theatrical entrance.

With superb timing, a cab roared up in the alley behind Rattigan’s.

“God!” I said. “I know who that is!”

A door slammed. A woman came slogging across the sand that ran between the house and seaside pool, her hands clenched in tight balls. She stood before me like a blast furnace and raised her fists.

“What have you got to say for yourself?” Maggie cried.

“Sorry?” I bleated.

“Sorry!”

She hauled off and struck me a terrible blow on the nose.

“Hit him again,” Crumley suggested.

“Once more for luck,” offered Fritz.

“What’s going on?” said Henry.

“Bastard!”

“I know.”