Too Black for Heaven Read Online Free Page A

legs in front of her and looked at them. They were nice legs. Everything about her was nice. Her toes and the tips of her fingers tingled. The angular outlines of the room began to blur. Perspiration beaded on her face and body faster than the ceiling fan could dry it.
    The cloying sweetness of magnolia sickened her. The heat-drugged silence made her head ache.
    After she’d shot Blair Sterling, what?
    In Chicago, in the first heat of her revulsion, it had seemed so simple. Dona brushed her hair out of her eyes. Now she wasn’t so certain. She couldn’t just drive somewhere and shoot a stranger without any apparent reason. If she did she would be held and questioned. They would take her to an interrogation room like those on the fourth floor of Chicago police headquarters and cold-eyed, over-polite detectives like those on Charles’ squad would question her. A detective would ask, “What’s your name, Miss?”
    “Dona Santos.”
    “Where did you come from?”
    “Chicago.”
    “When?”
    “Yesterday evening.”
    “And when did you first meet Blair Sterling?”
    “I’d never met him before.”
    “Then why did you shoot him?”
    “Because he’s my father.”
    “Go on.”
    “Because he raped my mother eighteen years ago right here in Blairville. At least, on his plantation. On the floor of a cotton gin.”
    Then another detective would take over.
    “You say this happened eighteen years ago? How do you know?”
    “She told me. She was only fifteen. Her mother had sent her on an errand to the cotton gin and Mr. Sterling was there and he forced her to submit to him.”
    “You were the result of this rape?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “So eighteen years later, you drive a thousand miles to kill Blair Sterling. Why?”
    “It’s difficult to explain.”
    “Try.”
    “I felt it was the only way I could get even for what he did to me.”
    “To you?”
    “Well, to my mother.”
    “What’s your mother’s name?”
    What could she tell the detective then?
    If she lied, the law would ferret out the truth. It would be only a matter of hours or days.
    She would be forced to say, “She calls herself Estrella Santos.”
    “The good-looking Spanish singer?” The detective would describe Estrella with his hands. “The gal who’s appeared on all the big TV shows?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Why do you say she
calls
herself Estrella Santos?”
    “Because it isn’t her right name. The name by which she was known here in Blairville is Beth Wilbur.”
    “Well, I’ll be damned. We still have a warrant for her, a warrant charging assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill.”
    Then what would they do to her, to Estrella?
    Dona realized she was holding her breath and exhaled slowly. Revenging herself on her father wasn’t going to be as simple as she had thought it would be. She would have to be subtle about it. She couldn’t tear down the whole pattern and structure of life Estrella had spent eighteen years in erecting.
    No. She took another sip of her drink. It wasn’t too important that her father die. A dead man felt no pain. What was important was to make him suffer; to humiliate and degrade him as she had been humiliated and degraded. But how?
    Her mind raced on. Her father didn’t know she existed. He liked pretty girls. A likely-looking girl had to be able to run like a deer to get away from him. She was a pretty girl. The first thing to do was to make a contact, meet him, study the situation.
    She planned what she would do. In the morning she’d drive out to the Sterling plantation and knock on her father’s door. He would come to the door and see that she was pretty. He would smile and say:
    “Come in.”
    In her earnestness, Dona spoke the two words aloud and discovered an actual door had opened. She lifted her lips from the rim of her glass and turned her head. His eyes discreetly averted, the huge Negro bellboy, who had carried her bags from the car, was limping across the worn carpet, carrying a