Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith (best books to read now .TXT) 📕

       Trixie had run past Vic into the living room, clattering a noisemaker that she had acquired at the party.

       "We're fine," Vic said. "Can I offer you a beer? Some iced tea? A drink?" It was a fine picture that he and Melinda made, and Vic knew it: he in his shirt sleeves, vacuuming the living room, and Melinda on the sofa with a highball, not even looking particularly tidy in her cotton blouse and skirt and her sandals and no stockings.

       Peterson looked around a little awkwardly, then smiled. "How're you, Mrs. Van Allen?" he asked, a little fearfully, Vic thought.

       "Very well, thank you," Melinda said, with a contortion of her mouth that was supposed to pass for a smile.

       "These kids' parties—" Peterson said, with a laugh. "They really take more out of you than grown-ups' parties." He had a New England drawl in his a's.

       "You can say that again," Vic said. "How old is Janey? Seven?" "Six," Peterson said.

       "Six! She's tall for her age."

       "Yes, she is."

       "Won't you sit down?"

       "No, I'll be going on, thanks." Peterson's eyes were drifting everywhere, as if he could read in a corner of the room, in the disarray of magazines on the cocktail table, the real explanation of the Van Allen scandal.

       "Well, Trix looks as if she had a good time. Probably the noisiest one there." Vic winked at her.

       "I was not!" Trixie yelled, still talking at the top of her voice as she probably had at the party to make herself heard above twenty other screaming six-year-olds. "I've got something to 'tell—you'," she said to Vic, on a note calculated to pique his curiosity.

       "Me? Good!" Vic whispered enthusiastically. Then he turned 10 Peterson, who was making his way to the door. "How're the Hydrangeas doing?"

       Peterson's face lit with a smile. "Oh, they're fine. A little droopy for a while, but they've picked up fine now." He turned around. "Good night, Mrs. Van Allen. It's nice to see you."

       Vic smiled."Good night, Charley." He knew Peterson's friends called him Charley, and that it would please him if Vic called him that rather than "Mr. Peterson."

       "Good night," Peterson said. "See you again."

       It struck Vic that Peterson's smile was more genuine than when he had arrived.

       "My goodness," Vic said as he came back into the room. Couldn't you say good night to the man?"

       Melinda only looked at him slurringly.

       "Not very good for your public relations." He put his hands on his knees and leaned toward Trixie."And couldn't you say good night and thank you?"

       "I said all that at Janey's house," Trixie replied. She looked quickly at her mother, then beckoned to Vic to come into the kitchen with her.

       Melinda was watching them.

       Vic went with Trixie. Trixie pulled his head down to her and whispered roaringly in his ear, "Did you really kill Charley De Lisle?"

       "No!" Vic whispered, smiling.

       "Because Janey says you did." Trixie's eyes were shining with eagerness, with a pride and excitement ready to be released in a yell or a hug if Vic should just say that he had killed Charley.

       "You're a 'wild' one!" Vic whispered.

       "Janey said the Wilsons came over to see her mother and dad, and the Wilsons think you did it."

       "'Do' they?" Vic whispered.

       "But you didn't?"

       "No, I didn't," Vic whispered. "I didn't, I didn't."

       Melinda came into the kitchen. She looked at Trixie—the bored but intense look that held not a jot of anything that could be called maternal. Trixie didn't react to it at all. She was used o it. "Go to your room, Trixie," Melinda said.

       Trixie looked to her father.

       "All right, honey. Go," Vic said, tickling Trixie under the chin. "You don't have to talk to her like a flunkey, do you?" he said to Melinda.

       Trixie went off with her head up, pretending affront, but she would forget it in a matter of seconds, Vic knew.

       "Well," Vic said, smiling, "what's up?"

       "I thought you ought to know that the whole town's wise to you."

       "Wise to me. What do you mean? They all know I killed Charley, I suppose."

       "They're all talking about it. You ought to hear the Wilsons."

       "I 'feel' as if I have heard the Wilsons. I don't care to hear them." Vic opened the refrigerator."What've we got for dinner?"

       "There's going to be—there's going to be a public uproar about you," Melinda said threateningly.

       "Led by you. Led by my wife." Vic was getting some lamb Ili chops out of the freezing compartment.

       "Do you think nothing's going to happen? You're wrong!"

       "I suppose Don Wilson saw me drowning De Lisle in the swimming pool. Why doesn't he speak up about it? What's the use of all this murmuring behind people's backs?" He got out some frozen peas. Peas, a big salad of lettuce and tomato, and the chops. He didn't want a potato, and he knew if he didn't put potatoes on, Melinda wouldn't.

       "Do you want to bet I don't do something?" Melinda asked. He glanced at her, noticing again the circles under her eyes, the painful strain of her eyebrows. "Darling, I wish you wouldn't keep on like this. It's useless. Do something. Do something constructive, but don't worry around the house all day—torturing yourself," he added forcefully, borrowing a phrase from Horace. "I want to see you with circles under your eyes."

       "Go to hell," she murmured, and went back into the living room.

       It was a simple phrase, "Go to hell," certainly unoriginal and more or less vague, but it always disturbed Vic when he heard it from Melinda, because it could mean so many things—not always 'that' she was at a loss for anything else to say, though sometimes it meant that, too. He knew that evening that she was planning something: Collusion with Don Wilson? But of what kind? How? If Don Wilson had really seen