Needful Things (Page 55)

Keeton held up one commanding finger. "Waiter? Bring me the check, please."

5

Nettle had stopped wanting to hurry home; she liked being in Buster and Myrtle’s house.

For one thing, it was warm. For another, being here gave Nettle an unexpected sense of power-it was like seeing behind the scenes of two actual human lives. She began by going upstairs and looking through all the rooms. There were a lot of them, too, considering there were no children, but, as her mother had always been fond of saying, them that has, gets.

She opened Myrtle’s bureau drawers, investigating her underwear.

Some of it was silk, quality stuff, but to Nettle most of the good things looked old. The same was true of the dresses hung on her side of the closet. Nettle went on to the bathroom, where she inventoried the pills in the medicine cabinet, and from there to the sewing room, where she admired the dolls. A nice house. A lovely house. Too bad the man who lived here was a piece of shit.

Nettle glanced at her watch and supposed she should start putting up the little pink slips. And she would, too. just as soon as she finished looking around downstairs.

6

"Danforth, isn’t this a little too fast?" Myrtle asked breathlessly as they swung around a slow-moving pulp truck. An oncoming car blared its horn at them as Keeton swung back into his lane.

"I want to make the kick-off," he said, and turned left onto the Maple Sugar Road, passing a sign which read CASTLE ROCK 8 MILES.

7

Nettle snapped on the TV-the Keetons had a big color Mitsubishi-and watched some of the Sunday Super Movie. Ava Gardner was in it, and Gregory Peck. Gregory seemed to be in love with Ava, although it was hard to tell; it might be the other woman he was in love with. There had been a nuclear war. Gregory Peck drove a submarine. None of this interested Nettle very much, so she turned off the TV, taped a pink slip to the screen, and went into the kitchen.

She looked at what was in the cupboards (the dishes were Corelle, very nice, but the pots and pans were nothing to write home about), then checked the refrigerator. She wrinkled her nose. Too many leftovers.

Too many leftovers was a sure sign of slipshod housekeeping. Not that Buster would know; she’d bet her boots on that. Men like Buster Keeton wouldn’t be able to find their way around the kitchen with a map and a guide-dog.

She checked her watch again and started. She had spent an awfully long time wandering around the house. Too long. Quickly, she began to tear off slips of pink paper and tape them to things-the refrigerator, the stove, the telephone which hung on the kitchen wall by the garage doorway, the breakfront in the dining room.

And the more quickly she worked, the more nervous she became.

8

Nettle had just gotten down to business when Keeton’s red Cadillac crossed the Tin Bridge and started up Watermill Lane toward Castle View.

"Danforth?" Myrtle asked suddenly. "Could you let me out at Amanda Williams’s house? I know it’s a little out of the way, but she’s got my fondue pot. I thought-" The shy smile came and went on her face again. "I thought I might make you-us-a little treat.

For the football game. You could just drop me off."

He opened his mouth to tell her the Williamses’ was a lot out of his way, the game was about to start, and she could get her goddam fondue pot tomorrow. He didn’t like cheese when it was hot and runny anyway. The goddamned stuff was probably full of bacteria.

Then he thought better of it. Aside from himself, the Board of Selectmen was made up of two dumb bastards and one dumb bitch.

Mandy Williams was the bitch. Keeton had been at some pains to see Bill Fullerton, the town barber, and Harry Samuels, Castle Rock’s only mortician, on Friday. He was also at pains to make these seem like casual calls, but they weren’t. There was always the possibility that the Board of Taxation had begun sending them letters as well. He had satisfied himself that they were not-not yet, at least-but the Williams bitch had been out of town on Friday.

"All right," he said, then added: "You might ask her if any town business has come to her attention. Anything I should get in touch with her about."

"Oh, honey, you know I can never keep that stuff straight-"

"I do know that, but you can ask, can’t you? You’re not too dumb to ask, are you?"

"No," she said hastily, in a small voice.

He parted her hand. "I’m sorry."

She looked at him with a wonderstruck expression. He had apologized to her. Myrtle thought he might have done this at some time or other in their years of marriage, but she could not remember when.

"Just ask her if the State boys have been bothering about anything lately," he said. "Land-use regulations, the damn sewage… taxes, maybe. I’d come in and ask myself, but I really want to catch the kick-off."

"All right, Dan."

The Williams house was halfway up Castle View. Keeton piloted the Cadillac into the driveway and parked behind the woman’s car.

It was foreign, of course. A Volvo. Keeton guessed she was a closet Communist, a lesbo, or both.

Myrtle opened her door and got out, flashing him the shy, slightly nervous smile again as she did so.

"I’ll be home in half an hour."

"Fine. Don’t forget to ask if she’s aware of any new town business," he said. And if Myrt’s description-garbled though it would surely b f what Amanda Williams said raised even one single hackle on Keeton’s neck, he would check in with the bitch personally… tomorrow. Not this afternoon. This afternoon was his.

He was feeling much too good to even look at Amanda Williams, let alone make chitchat with her.

He hardly waited for Myrtle to close her door before throwing the Cadillac in reverse and backing down to the street again.

9

Nettle had just taped the last of the pink sheets to the door of the closet in Keeton’s study when she heard a car turn into the driveway.

A muffled squeak escaped her throat. For a moment she was frozen in place, unable to move.

Caught! her mind screamed as she listened to the soft, wellpadded burble of the Cadillac’s big engine. Caught! Oh jesus Savior meek and mild I’m caught! He’ll kill me!

Mr. Gaunt’s voice spoke in answer. It was not friendly now; it was cold and it was commanding and it came from a place deep in the center of her brain. He probably WILL kill you if he catches you, Nettle. And if you panic, he’ll catch you for sure. The answer is simple: don’t panic. Leave the room. Do it now. Don’t run, hut walk fast. And as quietly as you can.

She hurried across the second-hand Turkish rug on the study floor, her legs as stiff as sticks, muttering "Mr. Gaunt knows best" in a low litany, and entered the living room. Pink rectangles of paper glared at her from what seemed like every available surface.

One even dangled from the central light-fixture on a long strand of tape.

Now the car’s engine had taken on a hollow, echoey sound.

Buster had driven into the garage.

Go, Nettle! Go right away! Now is your only chance!

She fled across the living room, tripped over a hassock, and went sprawling. She banged her head on the floor almost hard enough to knock herself out-would have knocked herself out, almost certainly, but for the thin cushion of a throw-rug. Bright globular lights skated across her field of vision. She scrambled up again, vaguely aware that her forehead was bleeding, and began fumbling at the knob of the front door as the car engine cut off in the garage. She cast a terrified glance back over her shoulder in the direction of the kitchen. She could see the door to the garage, the door he would come through. One of the pink slips of paper was taped to it.

The doorknob turned under her hand, but the door wouldn’t open.

It seemed stuck shut.

From the garage came a hefty swoop-chunk as Keeton slammed his car door. Then the rattle of the motorized garage door starting down on its tracks. She heard his footsteps gritting across the concrete.

Buster was whistling.

Nettle’s frantic gaze, partially obscured by blood from her cut forehead, fell upon the thumb-bolt. It had been turned. That was why the door wouldn’t open for her. She must have turned it herself when she came in, although she couldn’t remember doing it. She flicked it up, pulled the door open, and stepped through.

Less than a second later, the door between the garage and the kitchen opened. Danforth Keeton stepped inside, unbuttoning his overcoat. He stopped. The whistle died on his lips. He stood there with his hands frozen in the act of undoing one of the lower coatbuttons, his lips still pursed, and looked around the kitchen. His eyes began to widen.

If he had gone to the living-room window right then, he would have seen Nettle running wildly across his lawn, her unbuttoned coat billowing around her like the wings of a bat. He might not have recognized her, but he would surely have seen it was a woman, and this might have changed later events considerably. The sight of all those pink slips froze him in place, however, and in his first shock his mind was capable of producing two words and two words only. They flashed on and off inside his head like a giant neon sign with letters of screaming scarlet: THE PERSECUTORS! THE PERSECUTORS! THE PERSECUTORS!

10

Nettle reached the sidewalk and ran down Castle View as fast as she could. The heels of her loafers rattled a frightened tattoo, and her ears convinced her that she was hearing more feet than her own-Buster was behind her, Buster was chasing her, and when Buster caught her he might hurt her… but that didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because he could do worse than just hurt her. Buster was an important man in town, and if he wanted her sent back to juniper Hill, she would be sent. So Nettle ran. Blood trickled down her forehead and into her eye, and for a moment she saw the world through a pale red lens, as if all the nice houses on the View had begun to ooze blood.