Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 35, No. 10, October 1990

Bill and I had gone through school together from kindergarten on, just as Andy and Laura Lee had. The difference was that the two schools were on different sides of the track, so to speak, and we had to go to Wyattsville High before the four of us could rub elbows. Maybe we wouldn’t have even then, except that Andy and Bill were outstanding football players and Laura Lee and I were pompom girls. Quite often we doubled after a game and went to a sock hop in the gym or had a hamburger and a malt somewhere. We became a regular foursome when we went to the University. All of us knew plenty of people on campus, but not as well as we knew each other.

Bill and I sat and talked about those days while we waited for ten o’clock and Ev Grant. “That first semester at Berkeley was really great,” he recalled. “I guess I was the one that broke us up when I took the night job at the Dixie Diner. It was nice eating regularly, but it sure cut into our dating. And to this day,” he added, “I can’t stand ham or yams or combread.”

“Your working evenings was only part of it,” I said. “Remember that Laura Lee spent Christmas vacation with that Tri-Delt from Piedmont and came back sure that she was in love with the girl’s brother. How long did that last? Two months? Three?”

“I’ve forgotten. Long enough for Andy to get into the habit of coming around and crying on your shoulder.” Bill finished his drink and stared into the empty cup. “I was jealous as hell. Did you know that? It took a lot of growing up before I could realize that you had been Andy’s salvation.”

“In what way?”

“If Andy hadn’t had a real friend to turn to,” Bill said slowly, “he could have dropped out of school, or he could have been snapped up by some smart girl who saw a chance to catch a rich rube on the rebound. You tided him over until Laura Lee came to her senses.”

It was while I was consoling Andy that Bill had started dating Rosalie, who also worked the late shift at the diner. Rosie was the daughter of a Fresno farmer and had never been out of the San Joaquin Valley until she received a scholarship to the university. Unsophisticated she may have been, but she knew a good man when she saw one, and by June she was wearing a little garnet ring that had belonged to Bill’s grandmother. By then, too, Andy and Laura Lee were pinned, and I had Sam Sommers’ two-carat diamond and a wedding band.

Sam was the finest man I ever knew. We never met on campus because he was in his last year of law when I was a freshman. It took an afternoon during Easter Week at Carmel to bring us together. Neither of us cared much for jazz or the dates who had brought us there, so we got to talking and then took off on our own. We found a little coffee house in Monterey and, after that, a seafood place. Then we drove for hours through the Carmel Valley, each telling the other all there was to tell. It was dawn before we got back to the apartment where I was staying with five other girls from Cal. Standing beside his car he took my hands in his and asked me to marry him and I said I would and he kissed me for the first time. It was a wonderful marriage, but it didn’t last long because Sam was one of the earlier casualties of the war. I stayed with his parents in San Francisco until 1948 when Father Sommers died. Mamma Sommers sold their wholesale grocery business then and went to live with a daughter in Santa Rosa. Having nothing to keep me in the city, I went back to Wyattsville on an exceptionally cold and foggy morning in February. Bill and Andy both had fine Navy records, both had been married for some years, and both had children. That was how things stood when I went to the bank and applied for a job. Luckily, the secretary Andy had inherited from his father was retiring and I took her place.

There was a discreet knock on the door that led from Andy’s office to the parking area. “That will be Ev,” Bill said heavily. “I’ll take care of this part of it.”

“Go with him, Bill,” I asked.

“Sure? What about you?”

“I have some things to do so that tomorrow won’t be too difficult for Laura Lee and the others.”

“Don’t stay here too long.” His big hand closed on my shoulder, and then he dropped his keys on my desk. “Leave these over the sunvisor,” he said. “I’ll pick the car up later at your place.”

I tried to close my ears to the macabre sound of Andy being wheeled out of the bank. Ev left by way of the alley, and then I went through to make sure Bill had locked the escape hatch. Andy wouldn’t need it again. Not ever. The room had a terrible, unearthly stillness now that he was gone. It was then that I became aware of the faint hum of the tape recorder. I turned it off, and then something — cupidity, perhaps — made me wonder what Emil Sondergard had said about the freeway. I rewound the tape, turned up the volume, and heard Andy say, “Is this attempted blackmail, Mrs. Metcalf?”