But you do mean to get rid of him. Don't you?
She certainly did. He had hurt her. That was strike one. He was dangerous. That was strike two. She could trust no one else to do it, strike three and you're out. Still, she continued to look at the Pathfinder with fascination. Scott had researched gunshot wounds for one of his novels - Relics, she was quite sure - and she'd made the mistake of looking into a folder filled with very ugly photographs. Until then she hadn't realized how lucky Scott himself had been that day in Nashville. If Cole's bullet had hit a rib and splintered -
"Why not take it in the shoebox?" Amanda asked, pulling on a rude tee-shirt (KISS ME
WHERE IT STINKS - MEET ME IN MOTTON) instead of the button-up one Lisey liked.
"There are some extra shells in it, too. You can tape it shut while I'm getting the meat out of the freezer."
"Where did you get it, Manda?"
"Charles gave it to me," Amanda said. She turned away, seized a brush from her not-sovain vanity, peered into the mirror, and went at her hair furiously. "Last year."
Lisey put the gun, so much like the one Gerd Allen Cole had used on her husband, back in the shoebox and watched Amanda in the mirror.
"I slept with him two and sometimes three times a week for four years," Amanda said.
"Which is intimate. Wouldn't you agree that's intimate?"
"Yes."
"I also washed his undershorts for four years, and scraped the scaly stuff off his scalp once a week so it wouldn't fall on the shoulders of his dark suits and embarrass him, and I think those things are a hell of a lot more intimate than f**king. What do you think?"
"I think you've got a point."
"Yeah," Amanda said. "Four years of that and I get a Hallmark card as severance pay. That woman he found up there in the Sin-Jin is welcome to him."
Lisey felt like cheering. No, she didn't think Manda needed a dip in the pool.
"Let's get the meat out of the freezer and go to your house," Amanda said. "I'm starving. "
13
The sun came out as they approached Patel's Market, putting a rainbow like a fairy-gate over the road ahead. "You know what I'd like for supper?" Amanda asked.
"No, what?"
"A big, nasty mess of Hamburger Helper. I don't suppose you've got anything like that at your house, do you?"
"I did," Lisey said, smiling guiltily, "but I ate it."
"Pull in to Patel's," Amanda said. "I'll spring for a box."
Lisey pulled in. Amanda had insisted on bringing her house-money from the blue pitcher where she kept it stashed in the kitchen, and she now extracted a crumpled fivespot. "What kind do you want, Little?"
"Anything but Cheeseburger Pie," Lisey said.
XIV. Lisey and Scott
(Babyluv)
1
At seven-fifteen that evening, Lisey had a premonition. It wasn't the first of her life; she'd had at least two others. One in Bowling Green, shortly after entering the hospital where her husband had been taken after collapsing at an English Department reception. And certainly she'd had one on the morning of their flight to Nashville, the morning of the shattered toothglass. The third one came as the thunderstorms were clearing out and a gorgeous gold light began to shine through the breaking clouds. She and Amanda were in Scott's study over the barn. Lisey was going through the papers in Scott's main desk, aka Dumbo's Big Jumbo. So far the most interesting thing she'd found was a packet of mildly risque French postcards with a sticky-note on top, reading, in Scott's scrawl, Who sent me THESE THINGS??? Sitting beside the blankeyed computer was the shoebox with the revolver inside. The lid was still on, but Lisey had slit the tape with her fingernail. Amanda was across the way, in the alcove that held Scott's TV and component soundsystem. Every now and then Amanda heard her grumbling about the haphazard way things had been shelved. Once Lisey heard her wonder aloud how Scott had ever found anything.
That was when the premonition came. Lisey shut the drawer she had been investigating and sat down in the high-backed office chair. She closed her eyes and just waited, as something rolled toward her. It turned out to be a song. A mental jukebox lit up and the nasal but undeniably jolly voice of Hank Williams began to sing. "Goodbye Joe, we gotta go, me-oh-my-oh; we gotta go, pole the pirogue down the bayou..."
"Lisey!" Amanda called from the alcove where Scott used to sit and listen to his music or watch movies on his VCR. When he wasn't watching them in the guest room in the middle of the night, that was. And Lisey heard the voice of the professor from the Pratt College English Department - in Bowling Green, this was, only sixty miles from Nashville. Not much more'n a long spit, Missus.
I think it would be wise if you got here as soon as possible, Professor Meade had told her over the phone. Your husband has been taken ill. Very ill indeed, I'm afraid.