* * *
“I thought you ladies’d never come!” Helen Greer tapped her foot atop her porch steps. “You’re only an hour late, that’s all.”
“We—” started Francine.
Lavinia clutched her arm. “There was a commotion. Someone found Eliza Ramsell dead in the ravine.”
Helen gasped. “Who found her?”
“We don’t know.”
The three maiden ladies stood in the summer night looking at one another. “I’ve got a notion to lock myself in my house,” said Helen at last.
But finally she went to fetch a sweater, and while she was gone Francine whispered frantically, “Why didn’t you tell her?”
“Why upset her? Time enough tomorrow,” replied Lavinia.
The three women moved along the street under the black trees through a town that was slamming and locking doors, pulling down windows and shades and turning on blazing lights. They saw eyes peering out at them from curtained windows.
How strange, thought Lavinia Nebbs, the ice-cream night, the Popsicles dropped in puddles of lime and chocolate where they fell when the children were scooped indoors. Baseballs and bats lie upon the unfootprinted lawns. A half-drawn, white chalk hopscotch line is there on the steamed sidewalk.
“We’re crazy out on a night like this,” said Helen.
“Lonely One can’t kill three ladies,” said Lavinia. “There’s safety in numbers. Besides, it’s too soon. The murders never come less than a month apart.”
A shadow fell across their faces. A figure loomed. As if someone had struck an organ a terrible blow, the three women shrieked.
“Got you!” The man jumped from behind a tree. Rearing into the moonlight, he laughed. Leaning on the tree, he laughed again.
“Hey, I’m the—The Lonely One!”
“Tom Dillon!”
“Tom!”
“Tom,” said Lavinia. “If you ever do a childish thing like that again, may you be riddled with bullets by mistake!”
Francine began to cry.
Tom Dillon stopped smiling. “Hey, I’m sorry.”
“Haven’t you heard about Eliza Ramsell?” snapped Lavinia. “She’s dead, and you scaring women. You should be ashamed. Don’t speak to us again.”
“Aw—”
He moved to follow them.
“Stay right there, Mr. Lonely One, and scare yourself,” said Lavinia. “Go see Eliza Ramsell’s face and see if it’s funny!” She pushed the other two on along the street of trees and stars, Francine holding a handkerchief to her face.
“Francine,” pleaded Helen, “it was only a joke. Why’s she crying so hard?”
“I guess we better tell you, Helen. We found Eliza. And it wasn’t pretty. And we’re trying to forget. We’re going to the show to help and let’s not talk about it. Enough’s enough. Get your ticket money ready, we’re almost downtown!”
* * *
The drug store was a small pool of sluggish air which the great wooden fans stirred in tides of arnica and tonic and soda-smell out into the brick streets.
“A nickel’s worth of green mint chews,” said Lavinia to the druggist. His face was set and pale, like all the faces they had seen on the half-empty streets. “For eating in the show,” she explained, as the druggist dropped the mints into a sack with a silver shovel.