Let’s All Kill Constance

“Yes, no, I don’t know, except it scares me. Look.”

Her name, up front, had a red ink circle around it, plus the crucifix.

“Book of the Dead, plus a list of the soon possibly dead?”

“Holding it, how does that book feel to you?”

“Cold,” I said. “Awfully cold.”

The rain beat on the roof.

“Who would do a thing like this to you, Constance? Name a few.”

“Hell, ten thousand.” She paused to add sums. “Would you believe nine hundred? Give or take a dozen.”

“My God, that’s too many suspects.”

“Spread over thirty years? Sparse.”

“Sparse!” I cried.

“They stood in lines on the beach.”

“You didn’t have to ask them in!”

“When they all shouted Rattigan!?”

“You didn’t have to listen.”

“What is this, a Baptist revival?”

“Sorry.”

“Well.” She took the last swig in the bottle and winced. “Will you help find this son of a bitch, or two sons of bitches, if the Books of the Dead were sent by separate creeps?”

“I’m no detective, Constance.”

“How come I remember you half-drowned in the canal with that psycho Shrank?”

“Well …”

“How come I saw you up on Notre Dame at Fenix Studios with the Hunchback? Please help Mama.”

“Let me sleep on it.”

“No sleep tonight. Hug these old bones. Now …”

She stood up with the two Books of the Dead and walked across the room to open the door on black rain and the surf eating the shore, and aimed the books. “Wait!” I cried. “If I’m going to help, I’ll need those!”

“Atta boy.” She shut the door. “Bed and hugs? But no phys ed.”

“I wasn’t planning, Constance,” I said.

Chapter Three (#ulink_0c39dc63-a322-526b-a3d2-db6dd561d637)

At two forty-five in the middle of the dark storm, a terrific lightning bolt rammed the earth behind my bungalow. Thunder erupted. Mice died in the walls.

Rattigan leaped upright in bed.

“Save me!” she yelled.

“Constance.” I stared through the dark. “You talking to yourself, God, or me?”

“Whoever’s listening!”

“We all are.”

She lay in my arms.

The telephone rang at three A.M., the hour when all souls die if they need to die.

I lifted the receiver.

“Who’s in bed with you?” Maggie asked from some country with no rains and no storms.

I searched Constance’s suntanned face, with the white skull lost under her summer flesh.

“No one,” I said.

And it was almost true.

Chapter Four (#ulink_f2de248b-84be-55dd-a0cd-eb8259967d0b)

At six in the morning dawn was out there somewhere, but you couldn’t see it for the rain. Lightning still flashed and took pictures of the tide slamming the shore.

An incredibly big lightning bolt struck out in the street and I knew if I reached across the bed, the other side would be empty.

“Constance!”

The front door stood wide like a stage exit, with rain drumming the carpet, and the two phone books, large and small, dropped for me to find.

“Constance,” I said in dismay, and looked around.

At least she put on her dress, I thought.

I telephoned her number. Silence.

I shrugged on my raincoat and trudged up the shoreline, blinded by rain, and stood in front of her Arabian-fortress house, which was brightly lit inside and out.