THE PHONE rang several times but June Dixon didn’t bother answering it. The only ones who might call her would be people at the desk or in the kitchen and if it was anything important they could either send somebody upstairs to the apartment or they could go to hell.
She walked across the room to the window and looked out across the lake again. She had been doing that ever since the small hours of the morning, after she had tried drinking and she had not been able to finish even the first one. She wished that she could drink, that she could get drunk and stay that way for a week. It might help.
God, why did she always have to stare out there at that raft? There were a lot of other things to look at, such as the girl stretched out on a blanket with her halter off, the life guard who had a nice job because it was up high and he could look down at the girl, or the dozen or so people who were out fishing in boats. But she knew why she kept looking at the raft. She might as well admit it. He was male and she was female. It had been a moment of wanting for her, too; a moment that still made her tremble whenever she thought about it.
Quickly, she turned away from the window, refusing to think about it any more. Male and female? She laughed. Animal and animal. She had no business thinking about Fred Sharpe, that way or any other way. He was a murderer. The state police said he was and their opinion ought to be worth something. The troopers were good fellows and she knew all of them because they came up to the Acres to go fishing, once a while. McGuire had even asked her to go out with him once. He would not lie to her, nor would his fellow troopers. Fred Sharpe had murdered a woman and he would have to pay for it.
She walked around the room, touching things. Red’s things. His magazine rack, the chair in which he used to sit when watching television, the books he had liked to read. They were loaded with poignant memories, every one of them. Memories which had been making her cry before because they gave her the feeling of being so completely alone, so unsure. But something seemed to have changed. She had to admit it to herself. Something was different.
All morning she had been touching Red’s things, looking at them, trying to evoke from them the spark which had been present before. She could discern no response within herself. The spark was gone and the pain was no longer a part of the memories. Red had been her husband and he was dead. It was so simple, so sudden and complete, that it seemed disloyal.
She was just no good, she told herself. She was no better, she argued to herself, than any cheating, two-timing wife making a mockery of marital ties, marital loyalty. Of course, her own husband, Red, was dead. But she should be faithful to his spirit, shouldn’t she? She should be loyal to the memories, surely — to the love and the passionate intimacies she and he had shared.
She thought of the way Red used to kiss her at night, in the darkness of their room, when he awoke sometimes to slake the desire aroused by the touch of her warm body during the night. He would roll over, plant his lips on hers, kiss her until she shivered in responsive ecstasy …
Normally, remembering such scenes, June would go limp in a transport of ardent yet hopeless hunger — a hot driving lust for the caresses of a man long dead.
Now, this morning, the memories created an urge, all right — but not the same one, and not one she could justify to herself. Her body craved — go ahead, June, admit it to yourself — the touch not of Red, her husband alive or dead, but that of Fred Sharpe!
She laughed. Not only unfaithful, at least in spirit. But unfaithful with a killer. What lechery!
Or, after all, was he a killer?
Really, he did not seem the type.
She found a cigarette and lit it. All right, admit that to herself too. The police said Fred had committed a murder but deep in her heart she couldn’t believe it. She didn’t care what the troopers said, honest and capable though she knew they were. Fred just was not the kind. He was a whole lot like Red had been, big and good, the type of man that needed someone to want him, guide him, perhaps mother him. It was obvious that his wife did not want him. If a woman loved a man, she would stick by him no matter what he did, or was supposed to have done. The news reports on the radio had hinted that Rita Sharpe was a spiteful wife, vicious and vindictive toward her husband. Why did they have to put that stuff on the air, anyway? Why couldn’t a man be permitted to suffer, if suffer he must, in dignity?
June shrugged and crushed the cigarette in an ashtray. She ought to go down to the kitchen and have a good, wholesome fight with the chef, or work the desk and contend with customers. She ought to do almost anything except hang around the apartment thinking about Fred Sharpe. She was mentally playing with fire, and she knew it. Unless she forgot about him she could suffer as much as he might suffer. Of course, she couldn’t be tried for the murder of that woman and she couldn’t be punished for it. But unless she forgot about Fred, the horrible affair could become a part of her, a thing that would walk with her through the light of every day and the darkness of every night, a thing that could get so big inside of her that every time an inch of Fred Sharpe died an inch of her would die also.
“Damn you, damn you — Fred Sharpe!”
She hated him! He was a murderer and she hated him. He had been a friend of Red’s and she should have let him know about Red’s death as soon as it had happened and then Fred would have stayed away. If Fred Sharpe had never come to Mission Acres, her life would still be so easy, so simple. She could sell the hotel, or if she didn’t want to sell it she could stay on and earn a good living. Her father had built the hotel up from nothing but no one, not until now, had made a great deal of money out of it. Each year the earnings had gone back into the place — a new golf course one year, a new kitchen the next, a dredging job on the lake — but, finally, the place was earining money, big money, and there wasn’t anything financial for her to worry about. All she had to do was hire the right people, fire the wrong ones and live the way she wanted. Even since his death, Red had been with her every moment, keeping her company like a shadow on the ground. She had counted on it and she had wanted it that way. She didn’t mind the tears or the agonizing loneliness. It had been a part of her love for Red; a part that would never die, she had thought. But now she could not cry any more, not for Red, and the empty feeling of loss had slipped away. She had felt it leaving her the instant she had met Fred Sharpe. And a moment after the police had taken him away she had known that the metamorphosis had been completed. She wanted him.
“Damn you!”
Tears surged into her eyes.
She told herself that she was being an utter fool. She was young, some people called her pretty, she owned Mission Acres and there ought to be some good in life ahead of her somewhere. She would get control of herself. In a week, in a month at the most, she would forget all about Fred Sharpe. She wouldn’t listen to the radio and she wouldn’t read the papers. She would simply forget about him, as though he had never existed. She wouldn’t pay any attention to his trial. She wouldn’t bother herself with what happened to him
Slowly, June Dixon crossed the room to the phone. It would be easy to pick up the phone, to give the operator her lawyer’s number in New York. It would be easy, also, to tell Mr. Crane that she wanted him to plan a defense for Fred Sharpe, that she didn’t care how much it would cost as long as Fred got a fair trial. But she knew that little of this was the truth. She wanted more than she would ask of Mr. Crane. She wanted Fred Sharpe to go free, because — innocent or guilty — she wanted him the way any woman wants her man.
She reached for the phone and hesitated, her body trembling.
This call, if she made it, could change her whole life, Despite all of her efforts, regardless of the fact that she might hire the best lawyers, Fred Sharpe might die for his crime. She would be aligning herself with a man charged with a brutal murder — her business could feel the affects of such a course, she could lose many of her friends. And, in the end, there might be nothing left for her. Nothing whatever, except her infatuation for a man who was proved a killer.
It was, she decided, an infatuation of the body and not of the mind. She had been brought up strict and clean, advised by her mother to kiss a young man only in the presence of others, to wear dresses instead of tight fitting sweaters, to speak of sex in the same voice used when one speaks of a major disaster. This had been her code and she had grown up by it, lived by it, until her first night married to Red. That had been her first night with any man. Later, she had learned to accept Red’s body as an important part of their marriage, and still later had come to look forward to their intimate moments with burning anticipation. She had desired to have children. However, Red had not wanted children and there had been none. She was sure she could make Fred Sharpe want him.
She closed her eyes, still trembling, and reached for the phone.
This was insane and wrong, going against everything she had ever believed, everything she had ever been taught. Fred Sharpe was said to be a killer, a ruthless man who had murdered a woman, and yet she wanted him more than she had ever wanted anything, or anybody, in her life before. She kept telling herself that he was innocent, that he hadn’t done this awful thing, but the facts were there and in all logic they could not be ignored. He would go to trial and he would be punished and she would be punished with him. She would be condemned to live within herself forever more, wanting him free, wishing that they could be on that raft again, that the moon would stay hidden this time, that his arms would lock around her and never let him go.
June Dixon sighed and dialed the operator.