Needful Things (81 page)

Myrtle Keeton, who'd had her own errand to run that afternoon, was lying on her bed upstairs in a troubled semi-doze when the horn began to blow. She sat bolt upright, eyes bulging in terror.
“I did it!”
she gasped. “I did what you told me to do, now please leave me alone!”

She realized that she had been dreaming, that Mr. Gaunt was not here, and let out her breath in a long, trembling sigh.

WHONK! WHONK! WHOOOONNNNNNK!

It sounded like the Cadillac's horn. She picked up the doll which lay next to her on the bed, the beautiful doll she had gotten at Mr. Gaunt's shop, and hugged it to her for comfort. She had done something this afternoon, something which a dim, frightened part of her believed to be a bad thing, a
very
bad thing, and since then the doll had become inexpressibly dear to her. Price, Mr. Gaunt might have said, always enhances value . . . at least in the eyes of the purchaser.

WHOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNKK!

It
was
the Cadillac's horn. Why was Danforth sitting in the garage, blowing his horn? She supposed she had better go see.

“But he better not hurt my doll,” she said in a low voice. She placed it carefully in the shadows under her side of the bed. “He just better not, because that's where I draw the line.”

Myrtle was one of a great many people who had visited Needful Things that day, just another name with a checkmark beside it on Mr. Gaunt's list. She had come, like many others, because Mr. Gaunt had
told
her to come. She got the message in a way her husband would have understood completely: she heard it in her head.

Mr. Gaunt told her the time had come to finish paying
for her doll . . . if she wanted to keep it, that was. She was to take a metal box and a sealed letter to the Daughters of Isabella Hall, next to Our Lady of Serene Waters. The box had grilles set in every side but the bottom. She could hear a faint ticking noise from inside. She had tried to look into one of the round grilles—they looked like the speakers in old-fashioned table radios—but she had been able to see only a vague cube-shaped object. And in truth, she hadn't looked very hard. It seemed better—safer—not to.

There had been one car in the parking lot of the little church complex when Myrtle, who was on foot, arrived. The parish hall itself had been empty, though. She peeked over the sign taped to the window set in the top half of the door to make sure, then read the sign.

DAUGHTERS OF ISABELLA
MEET TUESDAY AT 7 P.M.
HELP US PLAN “CASINO NITE”!

Myrtle slipped inside. To her left was a stack of brightly painted compartments standing against the wall—this was where the daycare children kept their lunches and where the Sunday School children kept their various drawings and work projects. Myrtle had been told to put her item into one of these compartments, and she did so. It just fit. At the front of the room was the Chairwoman's table, with an American flag on the left and a banner depicting the Infant of Prague on the right. The table was already set up for the evening meeting, with pens, pencils, Casino Nite sign-up sheets, and, in the middle, the Chairwoman's agenda. Myrtle had put the envelope Mr. Gaunt had given her under this sheet so Betsy Vigue, this year's Daughters of Isabella Activities Chairwoman, would see it as soon as she picked up her agenda.

READ THIS RIGHT AWAY YOU POPE WHORE

was typed across the front of the envelope in capital letters.

Heart bumping rapidly in her chest, her blood-pressure somewhere over the moon, Myrtle had tiptoed out of the Daughters of Isabella Hall. She paused for a moment outside, hand pressed above her ample bosom, trying to catch her breath.

And saw someone hurrying out of the Knights of Columbus Hall beyond the church.

It was June Gavineaux. She looked as scared and guilty as Myrtle felt. She raced down the wooden steps to the parking lot so fast she almost fell and then walked rapidly toward that single parked car, low heels tip-tapping briskly on the hot-top.

She looked up, saw Myrtle, and paled. Then she looked more closely at Myrtle's face . . . and understood.

“You too?” she asked in a low voice. A strange grin, both jolly and nauseated, rose on her face. It was the expression of a normally well-behaved child who has, for reasons she does not understand herself, put a mouse in her favorite teacher's desk drawer.

Myrtle felt an answering grin of exactly the same type rise on her own face. Yet she tried to dissemble. “Mercy's sake! I don't know what you're talking about!”

“Yes you do.” June had looked around quickly, but the two women had this corner of that strange afternoon to themselves. “Mr. Gaunt.”

Myrtle nodded and felt her cheeks heat in a fierce, unaccustomed blush.

“What did you get?” June asked.

“A doll. What did
you
get?”

“A vase. The most beautiful cloisonné vase you ever saw.”

“What did you do?”

Smiling slyly, June countered: “What did
you
do?”

“Never mind.” Myrtle looked back toward the Daughters of Isabella Hall and then sniffed. “It doesn't matter anyway. They're only Catholics.”

“That's right,” June (who was a lapsed Catholic herself) replied. Then she had gone to her car. Myrtle had not asked for a ride and June Gavineaux did not offer one. Myrtle had walked rapidly out of the parking lot. She had not looked up when June shot by her in her white Saturn. All Myrtle had wanted was to go home, take a nap while she cuddled her lovely doll, and forget what she had done.

That, she was now discovering, was not going to be as easy as she had hoped.

WHHHHHHOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNKKKKK!

Buster planted his palm on the horn and held it down. The blare rang and blasted in his ears. Where in hell's name
was
that bitch?

At last the door between the garage and the kitchen opened. Myrtle poked her head through. Her eyes were large and frightened.

“Well, finally,” Buster said, letting go of the horn. “I thought you'd died on the john.”

“Danforth? What's wrong?”

“Nothing. Things are better than they've been for two years. I just need a little help, that's all.”

Myrtle didn't move.

“Woman, get your fat ass over here!”

She didn't want to go—he scared her—but the habit was old and deep and hard to break. She came around to where he stood in the wedge of space behind the car's open door. She walked slowly, her slippers scuffing the concrete floor in a way that made Buster grind his teeth together.

She saw the handcuffs, and her eyes widened. “Danforth, what
happened?”

“Nothing I can't handle. Pass me that hacksaw, Myrt. The one on the wall. No—on second thought, never mind the hacksaw right now. Give me the big screwdriver instead. And that hammer.”

She started to draw away from him, her hands going up to her chest and joining there in an anxious knot. Quick as a snake, moving before she could back out of his reach, Buster shot his free hand through the open window and seized her by the hair.

“Ow!”
she screamed, grabbing futilely at his fist.
“Danforth, ow!
OWWW!
”

Buster dragged her toward him, his face clenched in a horrible grimace. Two large veins pulsed in his forehead. He felt her hand beating against his fist no more than he would have felt a bird's wing.

“Get what I tell you!”
he cried, and pulled her head
forward. He thumped it against the top of the open door once, twice, three times.
“Were you born foolish or did you just grow that way? Get it, get it, get it!”

“Danforth, you're hurting me!”

“Right!”
he screamed back, and thumped her head once more against the top of the Cadillac's open door, much harder this time. The skin of her forehead split and thin blood began to flow down the left side of her face.
“Are you going to mind me, woman?”

“Yes! Yes! Yes!”

“Good.” He relaxed his grip on her hair. “Now give me the big screwdriver and the hammer. And don't try any funny business, either.”

She waved her right arm toward the wall. “I can't reach.”

He leaned forward, extending his own reach a little and allowing her to take a step toward the wall where the tools hung. He kept his fingers wrapped firmly in her hair as she groped. Dime-sized drops of blood splattered on and between her slippers.

Her hand closed on one of the tools, and Danforth shook her head briskly, the way a terrier might shake a dead rat. “Not that, Dumbo,” he said. “That's a drill. Did I ask for a drill?
Huh?”

“But Danforth—
OWW!
—I can't
see!”

“I suppose you'd like me to let you go. Then you could run into the house and call Them, couldn't you?”

“I don't know what you're talking about!”

“Oh no. You're such an innocent little lamb. It was just an accident that you got me out of the way on Sunday so that fucking Deputy could put those lying stickers up all over the house—is that what you expect me to believe?”

She looked back at him through the tangles of her hair. Blood had formed fine beads in her eyelashes. “But . . . but Danforth . . .
you
asked
me
out on Sunday. You said—”

He jerked hard on her hair. Myrtle screamed.

“Just get what I asked for. We can discuss this later.”

She felt along the wall again, head down, hair (except for Buster's fistful) hanging in her face. Her groping fingers touched the big screwdriver.

“That's one,” he said. “Let's try for two, what do you say?”

She fumbled some more, and at last her fluttering fingers happened on the perforated rubber sleeve which covered the handle of the Craftsman hammer.

“Good. Now give them to me.”

She pulled the hammer off its pegs, and Buster reeled her in. He let go of her hair, ready to snatch a fresh handful if she showed any sign of bolting. Myrtle didn't. She was cowed. She only wanted to be allowed back upstairs, where she would cuddle her beautiful doll to her and go to sleep. She felt like sleeping forever.

He took the tools from her unresisting hands. He placed the tip of the screwdriver against the doorhandle, then whacked the top of the screwdriver several times with the hammer. On the fourth blow, the doorhandle snapped off. Buster slipped the loop of the cuff out of it, then dropped both the handle and the screwdriver to the concrete floor. He went first to the button which closed the garage door. Then, as it rattled noisily down on its tracks, he advanced on Myrtle with the hammer in his hand.

“Did you sleep with him, Myrtle?” he asked softly.

“What?” She looked at him with dull, apathetic eyes.

Buster began to whack the hammerhead into the palm of his hand. It made a soft, fleshy sound—
thuck! thuck! thuck!

“Did you sleep with him after the two of you put up those goddam pink slips all over the house?”

She looked at him dully, not understanding, and Buster himself had forgotten that she had been with him at Maurice when Ridgewick broke in and did his thing.

“Buster, what are you talking ab—”

He stopped, his eyes widening.
“What did you call me?”

The apathy left her eyes. She began to retreat from him, hunching her shoulders protectively. Behind them, the garage door came to rest. Now the only sounds in the garage were their scuffling feet and the soft clink of the handcuff chain as it swung back and forth.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered. “I'm sorry, Danforth.” Then she turned and ran for the kitchen door.

He caught her three steps from it, once again using
her hair to draw her to him.
“What
did you call me?” he screamed, and raised the hammer.

Her eyes turned up to follow its ascent.
“Danforth, no, please!”

“What did you call me? What did you call me?”

He screamed it over and over again, and each time he asked the question he punctuated it with that soft, fleshy sound:
Thuck. Thuck. Thuck.

Ace drove into the Camber dooryard at five o'clock. He stuffed the treasure map into his back pocket, then opened the trunk. He got the pick and shovel which Mr. Gaunt had thoughtfully provided and then walked over to the leaning, overgrown porch which ran along one side of the house. He took the map out of his back pocket and sat on the steps to examine it. The short-term effects of the coke had worn off, but his heart was still thudding briskly along in his chest. Treasure-hunting, he had discovered, was also a stimulant.

He looked around for a moment at the weedy yard, the sagging barn, the clusters of blindly staring sunflowers. It's not much, but I think this is it, just the same, he thought. The place where I put the Corson Brothers behind me forever and get rich in the bargain. It's here—some of it or all of it. Right here. I can feel it.

But it was more than feeling—he could
hear
it, singing softly to him. Singing from beneath the ground. Not just tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands. Perhaps as much as a million.

“A million dollars,” Ace whispered in a hushed, choked voice, and bent over the map.

Five minutes later he was hunting along the west side of the Camber house. Most of the way down toward the back, almost obscured in tall weeds, he found what he was looking for—a large, flat stone. He picked it up, threw it aside, and began to dig frantically. Less than two minutes later, there was a muffled clunk as the blade struck rusty metal. Ace fell on his knees, rooted in the dirt like a dog
hunting a buried bone, and a minute later he had unearthed the Sherwin-Williams paint-can which had been buried here.