Chase: Roman

chain latch was also properly in place. He drew the drapes on all the windows and tested the sliding glass terrace doors, though it didn't seem likely that Judge would lasso one of the terrace railings and climb three floors on a rope. It was as simple as that in melodramas, but rarely in real life.
        ‘Scotch,’ she said, handing him a glass.
        They turned out all the lights, turned on the light-boxes against the far wall and sat on the floor with their backs against the sofa, watching the changing patterns.
        She said, ‘Maybe now you have enough to go to the police.’
        ‘The grenade?’
        ‘Yes.’
        ‘You forget that I was in the army. If they live up to their past performance, they'll say I brought it back to the States, illegally, and they'll slam me in jail for a few days.’
        ‘Without the grenade, then?’ she said. ‘Maybe you still have enough to give them.’
        ‘What? The fact that he wore a pinkie ring, that Mike's girl friend says she thinks he made a pass at Mike, that someone got a university report on me by using a false name?’ He tasted the Scotch. ‘We still haven't got a name.’
        ‘A description, though?’
        ‘They'll say it's something else, or that I'm making it up.’ He put his drink down on the coffee table at his side. ‘I won't give them the chance to treat me like that again. When I go back to them, it'll be to make them eat their own - own hats.’
        Glenda laughed and drew up her knees. ‘Hats, huh?’
        He smiled and said, ‘Look, we can't do anything more until we talk to those boys, and they're probably not home yet. Let's just take a little while to relax and talk about other things. For instance, I don't really know what books you read, what kind of music you like, whether or not you like to go dancing-’
        ‘Oh, brother,’ she said, ‘are you asking to be bored.’
        But he was not bored as the evening went on, for he found a freshness in her outlook that lifted his own spirit and made his problems fade. Now and again they kissed, and he sat with his arm around her, but they did not begin necking. It was almost as if they had made a tacit agreement to forgo even that degree of serious contact at least until this affair had come to a conclusion and Judge had been located.
        Forty-five minutes later the telephone rang.
        Chase said, ‘Damn those persistent ex-suitors of yours!’
        ‘More likely my mother,’ she said.
        She went to the phone and picked it up. ‘Hello… Yes?’ She was silent a moment, listening. ‘I don't like this.’ More silence. ‘Now it's your turn to listen to me-’ She stopped in mid-sentence, stared at the receiver for a moment and hung up.
        ‘Wasn't your mother, was it?’ Chase asked teasingly.
        ‘No,’ she said. ‘It was Judge. He wanted to tell me that he knows what we're probably doing in here. He said he'd kill me first, then you, then Louise Allenby. He congratulated you on finding and disarming the grenade, and he says it won't be so simple the next time. He told me to have a pleasant evening.’
        

    Eleven
        
        Norman Bates, Mike Karnes's friend whose name was first on Louise Allenby's list, was at home when Chase called him shortly after midnight, though he twice said he had been on his way to bed when the phone rang and was not even as cooperative as Jerry Taylor. In the end, it did not matter if he wanted to cooperate or not, because he had never heard Mike mention any homosexual advances or any man who had followed him around.
        The last boy, Martin Cable, was in bed. His mother said, ‘He works six days a week during the summer, and he needs his sleep.’
        ‘I'd only take five minutes of his time,’ Chase said.
        ‘He's already asleep. I won't wake him now.’
        He said, ‘Could you tell me where he works?’
        She said, ‘You the same man who called here earlier?’ ‘Yes,’ he said.
        She was silent a moment, then said, ‘He starts at eight in the morning at Governor's Place Apartments. He's one of the lifeguards at the pool.’
        Thank you,’ he said, but he realized that she had already hung up.
        ‘No luck?’ Glenda asked.
        ‘We'll have to see him in the morning.’
        She yawned. ‘To bed, then. What with my mother's visit and the little scene with the grenade, I can hardly keep my eyes open.’
        In bed, they held