Death's Sweet Song by Clifton Adams Page A

hadn't changed things. I couldn't possibly just pack up and leave with Paula; that would look too fishy now, right after the robbery. But she was in my blood and something had to be   worked out.
    I walked over to her and she stood there looking at me with that tight little smile at the corners of her swollen mouth. Then she reached out and touched my shoulder, and she said, “You've got guts, Joe Hooper.”
    Staying there was idiocy, but I couldn't seem to move.
    “I like a man with guts,” she said huskily. “I like a man to be strong.”
    “What about your husband?”
    She made a small sound. “Karl spent a long stretch in Leavenworth, and—do you know why? Because he was afraid to pull the trigger. He let the cops take him because he was afraid to shoot.”
    “That isn't what I meant. What do we do now, you and me?”
    Like a lusty young animal, she wrapped those white arms around me. She was fire in my arms. The taste of blood was in my mouth when I kissed her.
    “What do you want to do, Joe? About us.”
    “I want to hold you just like this and never let you go. But that's impossible now. Within a few hours cops are going to be swarming all over this part of the country, and they're going to be asking a hell of a lot of questions.”
    “Then you want me to go tonight with Karl?”
    “It looks like the only thing for the present. How can I get in touch with you as soon as things cool off here?”
    She thought for a moment. “I have a sister in Missouri. Mrs. Stella Bundy, Box Three-forty, Route Three, St. John, Missouri. She'll know how to find me. Can you remember the address?”
Chapter Eight
    It was almost five o'clock when we got back to the cabins and Sheldon was fit to be tied. He grabbed his wife and jerked her out of the car as though she were a bag of groceries. “Goddamn you!” he snarled. “Where have you been?”
    He looked as though he were going to tear her head off and she just smiled. “Don't get excited, Karl. You know where we've been.”
    He knew where she had been, all right. Or he was guessing pretty close to it. A family ruckus was the last thing in the world I wanted right now, and I didn't like the ugliness in his voice. I stepped out of the car and said, “Did you ever try to get rid of a body, Sheldon? You don't just dump it in a gully. You have to do it exactly right or it's too damn bad. I didn't know it was going to take this long, but it did, and there's nothing we can do about it.”
    Glaring at me, he took one deep breath, then he flung his wife against the side of the car and went into the cabin. “Well!” Paula said softly. “You'd almost think he was a man, wouldn't you, when he's mad?”
    I said nothing. The sky along the eastern edge of the prairie was beginning to pale, and I could feel all the strength going out of me. I felt a hundred years old. I didn't let myself think about the things that would start happening within the next few hours. That robbery was going to turn Creston upside down and shake it, and I just hoped that I would be able to ride it out.
    Then Sheldon came out with the luggage. He threw it into the car without a word and Paula glanced at me and shrugged. “Maybe we'll meet again, Mr. Hooper,” she said dryly.
    She smiled again and slipped onto the front seat beside her husband. Karl Sheldon looked at me once. He didn't say a word, he just sat there and looked at me with all the hate that was in him. Then, with one savage movement, he jammed the Buick into gear and they were on their way.
    I stood there for maybe five minutes. I watched as the Buick slammed violently onto the highway, spewing gravel and dust into the still morning air, and I listened with relief as the car dropped behind a small rise and the roar became a drone, and the drone became a hum, and the hum became nothing. Silence.
    Strangely, I felt nothing. I stood there and the pale sky became suddenly bloody as the violent sun lifted into a widening sky. Finally I turned and