Free Murder is the Pay-Off by Leslie Ford

in the doorway with Carlson. The racing excitement that catching a sudden and unexpected glimpse of him always built up inside her was there now. She wanted him. If it weren’t for Janey— She turned away quickly, biting her lip until the salt tasted on her tongue. Then she stopped abruptly, suddenly aware that the ambulance had gone and she was there alone in the yard again, nothing but silence and the small sounds of the night around her.
    She drew a deep breath. You can’t do it, Connie. No matter how much she wanted Gus, it was something she couldn’t do. It was horrible. She saw Janey in her mind again, saw her, from halfway along the carpeted hall, there at her mother’s bedside table, with the bottle of pills in her hand. She saw her resisting them, putting them quickly back, shoving the drawer shut and stepping away. She could have spoken to her then. She could have said, “Hi, Janey—are you okay?” Or she could have done it when she saw Janey’s body stiffen and saw her twist her head around on her shoulder and hold it there tightly a moment before she took a quick step forward, pulled the drawer open, grabbed the piece of yellow tissue out of the box, picked up the bottle, and unscrewed the top, pouring the capsules into the tissue, twisting the ends together, and thrusting it into her bag.
    I should have stopped her then. She whispered it to herself. But she hadn’t. She’d even smiled, watching her. She put her hand up to her frozen cheek and rubbed it violently, horror seizing her again. She could still feel the smile on her face, and the upward tilt of her brow as she stepped quietly through the open door of her father’s room and waited there, in the dark, until Janey came running out, clutching her bag in both hands. She could still feel herself standing there, and feel the satisfied smile that was on her face. She shivered suddenly. It was something evil, hideous, inside her. She’d known it was wrong then, but it hadn’t mattered. Everything was working out perfectly. With Janey out of the way, everything would be just as she wanted it. But out here alone in the dark, where she had to stop and sit and listen to the sharp, shrill voice of the conscience she didn’t often bother to listen to, it suddenly mattered. It mattered a great deal.
    You can’t do it. You get what you want, but you don’t get it that way. Not even her father would approve of that. John Maynard was ruthless and he was none too scrupulous. She knew that. But this was callousness—plain and horrible.
    She thought of Janey, at home in the narrow brick house, the capsules in her hand. She wouldn’t take them right away. She’d resist them, the way she’d resisted the impulse to take them from the table drawer. Connie Maynard moved back to the car. She’d tell Gus, on the way home. She started to get in under the wheel. Somewhere behind the dark fringe of trees around the yard something slithered through the dry grass. A small animal squealed and was silent. There was no sound except the slithering movement in the grass. Across the darkness came the high pitch of the siren as the ambulance screamed through Newton’s Corner. Connie tried to swallow. Her throat was as dry as the hard, parched ground under her feet. Maybe she couldn’t wait till Gus came out and she drove him home. Maybe it was too late already—
    She ran across the yard, catching her foot in a dry rut behind the green truck, stumbling forward, catching herself again and running on to the door. “Oh, Gus?” She pulled the door open. “Gus, you’ve got to go home!” As she stumbled into the kitchen and saw Chief Carlson and Gus Blake as they whirled around from the passage door, staring at her, she was conscious that no sound had come from her throat.
    “Connie—for God’s sake!”
    She clenched her fists to control herself.
    “Gus—you’ve got to come home. I’m—I’m tired waiting.” She tried desperately to think what she could say.