1960 - Come Easy, Go Easy by James Hadley Chase

Author:James Hadley Chase
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

chapter eight

I

I found Lola in the kitchen. As I came in, she turned and faced me. She looked pretty bad. There were circles around her eyes, her face was pale and drawn and I guessed, like me, she hadn’t had much sleep.

I was furious that she had been so stupid and thoughtless to have put on the get-up she wore.

“Do you have to show your body off like this?” I snarled at her. “Do you want every goddamn tongue to start wagging about us?”

She looked blankly at me.

“What do you mean?”

“Use your head!” I reached for her overall and threw it at her. “That trucker saw you just now. He said I had a sweet job. He knows we’re alone together. That’s the way talk starts. Before we know it, we’ll have the police here!”

Sulkily, she put on the overall.

“What have you done with him?” she asked, not looking at me.

“I’ve buried him. Now listen, we’re going to run this place together,” I said. “I won’t interfere with you and you’re not going to interfere with me. When I think it’s okay to move, I’ll go, and when I go I’ll open the safe and you’ll get the money.”

She looked sharply at me, her eyes glittering.

“When will that be?”

“I don’t know. I’m not moving from here until I’m satisfied the hunt for me is over. You’ll have to make up your mind to wait.”

Her mouth became sulky again.

“Carl has friends. They’ll want to know where he is.”

“Do you think I haven’t got that worked out?” I said, impatiently. “You will tell them he has gone to Arizona to investigate another filling station. We don’t expect him back for a couple of months. In the meantime you are running this place and I’m helping you.”

“And then? What happens? They won’t forget him. They’ll keep asking.”

“At the end of a couple of months you will get a letter from him. He’ll tell you he has found another woman he likes better than you and be is not coming back. That kind of bad news is believed because people want to believe it. Because he feels he has treated you badly, he is giving Point of No Return to you. You will continue to run it with me until I’m sure it is safe to quit, then when I’ve gone, you can get rid of it if you want to.”

“I have a better idea,” she said, resting her hips against the kitchen table. “Open the safe now and you can have the thirty thousand dollars Carl was going to give you. With that money you can get away.”

“No! I wouldn’t touch his money. I’m safe here and I’m staying here! When I’m ready, you’ll have the money, but not before.”

Two little spots of red showed in her cheeks and she started to say something but stopped as we heard the sound of a car pulling up.

Leaving her, I went out into the lunch room as the screen door pushed open. A heavily-built man, tall and beefy, with sandy hair, prominent blue eyes and around forty, came in.

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