Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 49, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2004

“Why I’m throwing myself at a man who wouldn’t even tell me his name, I don’t know. I’m not ugly. I’m not desperate. What do you think it is?”

“Maybe we both need the same thing,” he answered with an air of soul-searching.

“What?”

“Redemption, peace... revenge.”

Her eyes finally returned to Memphis. It was as if something had finally struck a chord with her.

“Why do you stay here... with him?”

“He’s my father.”

“They say he killed your mother.”

“You’ve been listening to idle gossip. She wasn’t my mother. My mother died when I was a child. That was his second wife. You could say she was my stepmother, I suppose, but I was grown when he married her. She wasn’t anything to me.”

“Did he really kill her?”

She finally stepped away from the door and walked hesitantly across the room and stood close to Memphis. She closed her eyes, leaned against him, and let his arms allay her trembling.

“He killed my mother too,” she sobbed unexpectedly.

Memphis held her, not knowing exactly what to say.

“She... she overdosed with aspirin, but he drove her to it. It was the only way she could get away from him.”

“And that’s why you stay, isn’t it?”

“I stay because I hate him,” she whispered as if she couldn’t bear to hear herself say the words. “I stay because I want to remind him every day how much I despise him.”

Memphis held her tight. She would stay in this hole in the wall until it killed her in order to make her father suffer. Ray Mayweather was probably only one in a line of losers with whom she aligned herself in order to spite him. Nothing hurt a man worse that the thought of his daughter wallowing in a toilet with a maggot like Ray Mayweather. It was a slow death for her as well, and it was inevitable unless he offered her an alternative. He guided her toward the bed, and she didn’t resist. Afterwards, they would talk about alternatives because he had seen a light in her eyes that made him think that they might exist for him again as well.

Memphis settled in at the Fairfax Motel. Having failed at his initial plan to worm his way into Angus Haynes’s world by persuading him to give him a job, he accepted the inevitability of having to be there for the long haul. His venture hadn’t been a waste, however. The brief visit to Haynes’s home had given him insight into how the old man lived, who he trusted, and how he made things work. More importantly, he had eyes and ears now. Rufus could keep him informed of the old man’s activities.

The ensuing weeks had brought complications, however — Lena. Lena was there — in his bed, and more disconcertingly, in his heart. He would have to ask things of her, and he dreaded it. No matter what she said, Angus Haynes was still her father, and there was a price to pay when blood was crossed. That price could mean the end of them.

“Is this what you wanted all along? Is this what brought you here?” she asked repeatedly.

Memphis didn’t want to answer, because any answer he gave would be damning, even if it was a lie.

“Ray, me... you sought us out,” she continued.

“What difference does it make?” he finally countered. “I want what I want, and so do you. If you get what you need, why concern yourself with the process. If I didn’t care about you, I’d be doing this without you.”

Her spirit calmed. It seemed to be the nature of those who are damned by insecurity. They grasp any fiber that will hold their psyches together until the next challenge drags them down again. When her desperation demanded to know what he wanted of her, he told her — bank records, safe deposit key, whatever it took to find the money, he wanted it.

“He don’t do nothin’, Memphis. I think he crazy. This whole thing ain’t nothin’ but a waste of time,” Rufus complained. “He hangs around the house all day. He sends me on little dumb errands. Carl goes to the bank for him once a week. He’s on the phone a lot — sounds like out-of-town business, but I couldn’t hear none of it. You know something else? He goes and prays over his dead wife’s grave every Sunday evening.”

Memphis frowned in disbelief.

“Maybe his conscience is bothering him,” Lena speculated. “I hear people do that when they think they can see the end of their lives. You know he buried her on the property. The grave is just inside the treeline behind the house.”

“What?” Memphis exclaimed.

“This is the country, city boy,” Rufus laughed. “You can do whatever you want to do on your property, including burying your relatives.”

“He’s got fifty thousand dollars in his savings account, and ten thousand in checking. His safe deposit box just has legal papers in it — deeds, insurance,” Lena explained.

“Then it’s in the house,” Memphis said.

It made sense. You couldn’t put a quarter million dollars in cash in the bank without drawing attention. He could have spread it out in a lot of different places, but when a man kills for money, he covets it. He wants to keep it close to him. Angus Haynes was sitting on that money. He was sure of it.