The Girl In The Plain Brown Wrapper Part 3

6.

BRIDGET PEARSON apparently heard the sound of tires on the driveway pebbles and appeared from behind the house, on the lake side. She wore yellow shorts and a white sleeveless top and had her hair tied back with yellow yarn. Her sungla.s.ses were huge and very black. apparently heard the sound of tires on the driveway pebbles and appeared from behind the house, on the lake side. She wore yellow shorts and a white sleeveless top and had her hair tied back with yellow yarn. Her sungla.s.ses were huge and very black.

"So glad you could make it! We're out back. Come along. Tommy fogged the yard before he went to work, and there's hardly a bug. He should be along any minute."

She kept chattering away, slightly nervous, as I followed her out to the slope of lawn overlooking the lake-sh.o.r.e. Tall hedges of closely planted punk trees s.h.i.+elded the area from the neighboring houses. There was a redwood table and benches under a shade tree, a flouris.h.i.+ng banyan. The two-story boathouse was an attractive piece of architecture, in keeping with the house. There was a T-shaped dock, iron lawn furniture painted white, a sunfish hauled up onto the gra.s.s, a little runabout tethered at the dock. The makings of the picnic lunch were stacked on one end of the redwood table. A charcoal fire was smoking in a hibachi. She pointed out the pitcher of fresh orange juice, the ice bucket, the gla.s.ses, the vodka bottle, and told me to make myself a drink while she went to tell Maurie I'd arrived.

In a few moments Maureen came out through the screened door of the patio, moving down across the yard toward me, smiling. Her dead mother had written me that she was stunning. In truth she was magnificent. Her presence dimmed the look of Biddy, as if the younger sister were a poor color print, overexposed and hastily developed. Maude's blond hair was longer and richer and paler. Her eyes were a deeper, more intense blue. Her skin was flawlessly tanned, an even gold that looked theatrical and implausible. Her figure was far more rich and abundant and had she not stood so tall, she would have seemed overweight. She wore a short open beach robe in broad orange and white stripes over a snug blue swimsuit. She moved toward me without haste, and reached and took my hands. Her grasp was solid and dry and warm.

"Travis McGee. I've thought of you a thousand times." Her voice was slow, like her smile and her walk. "Thank you for coming to see us. You were so so good to us a long time ago." She turned and looked over her shoulder toward Biddy and said, "You're right. He isn't as old as I thought he'd be either." She stretched up and kissed me lightly on the corner of the mouth and squeezed my hands hard and released them. "Excuse me, Travis dear, while I go do my laps. I've missed them for a few days, and if I stop for any length of time, I get all saggy and soft and nasty." good to us a long time ago." She turned and looked over her shoulder toward Biddy and said, "You're right. He isn't as old as I thought he'd be either." She stretched up and kissed me lightly on the corner of the mouth and squeezed my hands hard and released them. "Excuse me, Travis dear, while I go do my laps. I've missed them for a few days, and if I stop for any length of time, I get all saggy and soft and nasty."

She walked out to the crossbar of the T and tugged a swimcap on, dropped the robe on the boards and dived in with the abrupt efficiency of the expert. She began to swim back and forth, the length of the crossbar, so concealed by the dock that all we could see were the slow and graceful lift and reach of her tanned arms.

"Well?" Biddy asked, standing at my elbow.

"Pretty overwhelming."

"But different?"

"Yes."

"How? Can you put your finger on it?"

"Maybe she seems as if she's dreaming the whole scene. She sort of... floats. Is she on anything?"

"Like drugs? Oh, no. Well, when she gets jumpy, we give her a shot. It's sort of a long-lasting tranquilizer. Tom learned from one of the doctors and taught me how."

I watched the slow and apparently tireless swimming and moved to the table to finish making my drink. "There's nothing vague or dazed about her eyes. But she gives me a funny kind of feeling, Biddy. A kind of caution. As if there's no possible way of guessing just what she might do next."

"Whatever comes into her head. Nothing violent. But she is just... as primitive and natural as a small child. Wherever she itches, she'll scratch, no matter where she is. Her table manners are... pretty d.a.m.ned direct. They get the job done and in a hurry. And she says whatever she happens to be thinking, and it can get pretty... personal. Then if Tom or I jump on her about it, she gets confused and upset. Her face screws up and her hands start shaking and she goes running off to her bedroom usually. But she can talk painting or politics or books... just so long as it's things she learned over a year ago. She hasn't added anything new this year."

We heard another car on the pebbles and she went hurrying off around the corner of the house. She reappeared, talking rapidly and earnestly to the man walking slowly beside her. A certain tension seemed to be going out of his posture and expression, and he began to smile. She brought him over and introduced him.

He was tall and wiry, dark hair, dark eyes, a face that had mobility and sensitivity, and might have been too handsome without a certain irregularity about his features, a suggestion of a cowlicky, lumpy, aw shucks, ear-ly-jimmy-stewart flavor. His voice did not have the thin country whine of Mr. Stewart, however. It was surprisingly deep, rich, resonant, a ba.s.so semi-profundo. ba.s.so semi-profundo. Mr. Tom Pike had exceptional presence. It is a rare attribute. It is not so much the product of strength and drive as it is a kind of quality of attention and awareness. It has always puzzled and intrigued me. People who without any self-conscious posturing, any training in those Be Likable and Make Friends courses, are immediately aware of you, and curious about you, and genuinely anxious to learn your opinions have this special quality of being able to somehow dominate a room, a dinner table, or a backyard. Meyer has it. Mr. Tom Pike had exceptional presence. It is a rare attribute. It is not so much the product of strength and drive as it is a kind of quality of attention and awareness. It has always puzzled and intrigued me. People who without any self-conscious posturing, any training in those Be Likable and Make Friends courses, are immediately aware of you, and curious about you, and genuinely anxious to learn your opinions have this special quality of being able to somehow dominate a room, a dinner table, or a backyard. Meyer has it.

He shed his lightweight sports jacket and pulled his tie off, and Biddy took them from him and carried them into the house. With a tired smile he said, "I've been worrying all morning about how Maureen would react to you. It can be very good or very bad, and no way to tell in advance. Biddy says it's been fine so far."

"She looks great."

"Sure. I know. Dammit, it makes me feel... so disloyal to have to act as if Biddy and I were keeping some kind of defective chained up in the cellar. But too much exposure to outsiders shakes her up." His quick smile was bitter and inverted. "And when she gets upset, you can be very very sure she's going to upset the outsider, one way or another. She's going to find her way out of the thicket. Someday. Somehow."

"It must be pretty rough in the meanwhile, Tom."

"And there's another reason I feel guilty. Because most of it lands right on Biddy. I'm out of here all day working. We've tried and tried to find somebody to come in and help out, somebody kind and patient and well-trained. We've interviewed dozens. But when they find out the trouble is maybe in some psychiatric area, they back away."

Biddy had returned and was busying herself with the food. I asked what luck they were having with the doctors. He shrugged. "They raise your hopes, then say sorry. One recent diagnosis was that a calcium deposit was diminis.h.i.+ng the flow of blood to the brain. A series of tests, and then he says sorry, it isn't that at all. The symptoms just don't fit anything in their books. But I have some people who keep checking, writing letters."

"Excuse a painful question, Tom. Is she deteriorating?"

"I keep wondering about that. I just don't know. All we can do is wait and watch. And hope."

Maurie stopped swimming, put her palms flat on the dock, and came vaulting up, turning in the air to sit on the edge, lithe as a seal. She got up and smiled up the slope at us. She used the short robe to pat her legs dry, then put it on, pulled her swimcap off, and shoved it into the robe pocket, shaking her hair out as she walked. As she approached Tom Pike her slow, floating a.s.surance seemed to desert her. She came to him with downcast eyes, shoulders slightly hunched, her welcome smile nervous, her walk constricted. She made me think of a very good dog aware of having disobeyed her master and hoping to be so engaging and obedient that the infraction will be forgiven and forgotten. He kissed her briefly and casually and patted her shoulder and asked her if she had been a good girl. She said shyly that she had been good. It was a most plausible att.i.tude and reaction. She was the wife and no matter how lost she had become, she could not help knowing that she no longer measured up to what they both expected of her. It seemed more an awareness of inadequacy than a conscious guilt.

Mosquitoes were beginning to regroup under the banyan shade. Tom went and got the little electric fogger and plugged it into a socket on one of the flood lamps and killed them off, commenting to me when he was finished that he hated to use it because it was so unselective. "When I was a kid, we'd sit on the screened porch on a summer evening and see clouds of mosquito hawks-dragonflies-darting and swooping, eating their weight. Then the bats would begin when the sun went down. So we've killed off the mosquito hawks with the spray and we've killed the other bugs the bats ate, and now there's nothing left but billions of mosquitoes and gnats, and we have to keep changing the spray as they get immune."

"You grew up around here?"

"In the general area. Here and there. We moved around a lot. Steaks ready, Bid? Time for one more drink, then, Trav. Let me fix it for you. Maurie, darling, you are supposed to be tossing the salad, not sampling it."

She hunched herself. "I didn't mean... I wasn't-"

"It's all right, darling."

At one point while we were eating, one scene, like a frozen frame, like a color still, underlined the strange flavor of the relations.h.i.+ps, of the mnage. Maurie and I were on the same bench on one side of the picnic table, r Maurie on my left. Biddy was across from me. Maurie was eating very politely and properly, and I glanced over and saw the two of them watching her. Husband and kid sister, looking at the wife with the same intent, nervous approval, as a couple might watch their only child plodding through a simple piano solo for visiting relatives. Then the frozen frame moved once again as Biddy lifted the poised fork to her lips and as Tom Pike began chewing again.

Later, as Biddy was saying something to me, Tom's low voice in a sound of warning, saying merely "Darling!" made Biddy stop abruptly and look quickly at Maureen. I turned and looked at her and saw that she had hunched herself over her plate, head low, had picked up her steak in a greedy fist, and was tearing and gobbling at it. She dropped it back onto her plate and sat, eyes downcast, while under the shelter of the edge of the table she wiped her greasy fingers on the top of her bare thigh, leaving streaks of sheen across the firm brown.

"You forgot again, dear," Tom said in a gentle voice.

Maurie began to tremble visibly.

"Don't get upset, honey," Biddy said.

But suddenly she wrenched herself up and away, striking the edge of the table so solidly with her hip that drinks and coffee slopped out of the gla.s.ses and cups. She ran toward the house, sobbing audibly in her blundering, hopeless flight. Tom called sharply to her, but she did not look back or slow down. Biddy got up quickly and hurried after her.

"Sorry," Tom said. "I guess you can see why we don't... Biddy will get her settled down and..." He pushed his plate away and said, "Ah, the h.e.l.l h.e.l.l with it!" and got up and walked down toward the lake sh.o.r.e. with it!" and got up and walked down toward the lake sh.o.r.e.

He was still there when Biddy came walking back out. She sat opposite me. "She's resting now. In a little while she won't remember what happened. I want to have Tom look at her and see if he thinks she needs a shot. Is... is he all right?"

"He acted upset."

"It's because she was doing so well."

She stared down toward the silent figure by the lake sh.o.r.e. I was at an angle to her that gave me a chance to see more than she would have wanted me to see. Her face had a soft and brooding look, lips parted. It was adoration, wors.h.i.+p, hopeless helpless yearning love. I knew why she had started to go to pieces in the c.o.c.ktail lounge. It was a situation nicely calculated to fray her to the breaking point, to have been for a year in this house with the deteriorating wife, the concerned and suffering husband. Loyalty to the big sister. And a humble self-sacrificing love for the husband.

After a little while we all went inside. Tom went up and looked at her and came back and said she was sleeping. He sat for a moment, glancing at his watch.

"Nice to meet you, Travis. Just... sorry that it had to be... to be..." His voice thickened and his mouth twisted, and he suddenly buried his face in his hands. Biddy hurried to him and shyly, hesitantly, put her hand on his shoulder.

"Tom. Please, Tom. It will work out."

He sighed and straightened up and dug in his pocket for a handkerchief. His eyes still streaming, he said in a husky voice, "Sure, honey. It will all be peachy dandy by and by." He mopped his eyes and blew his nose. "I apologize for myself too. See you around." She followed him out and I heard him saying something about getting home late. The car door slammed. He drove out. She came back into the two-level living room. Her eyes looked moist.

"He's... quite a guy, Travis."

"Little tough to go back to the office and sell stocks and bonds, I guess."

"What? Oh, he hasn't done that in a long time now. Over two years. He started his own company."

"Doing what?"

"It's called Development Unlimited. It's sort of a promotion company. They do a lot of land-syndication things. I don't really know how it works, but it's supposed to be a wonderful idea for people in high tax brackets, like doctors and so on. They pay a lot of interest in advance when they buy the land, and then they sell it later for capital gains. Tom is very clever at things like that. And they set up shares in apartment houses and do something very clever about depreciation and losses and cash flow and all that. He tried to explain it to me, but I have no head for that kind of thing. I guess he's doing well because he has to go out of town a lot and arrange deals in other places too. To have Maurie the way she is makes... his success so kind of hollow. He is really a marvelous human being."

"He seems to be."

She wanted to show me her studio and her paintings. But she was making too obvious an effort to entertain me. The s.h.i.+ne had gone out of her day. I said I should be getting along. I wrote out my address for her and told her to send me the name of the man who had bought the Likely Lady Likely Lady when she went through her mother's papers. when she went through her mother's papers.

We stood out by my car and told each other we hoped we'd see each other again someday. Maybe we did did hope so. Hard to say. hope so. Hard to say.

I got back to the Wahini Lodge at three. I stretched out on the bed and told myself that it had to be the end of the obligation, if there was any. I had taken a good look. It was a sorry little situation. Prognosis bad. When you can't identify the disease, the prognosis is always bad. And two nice people, Tom Pike and Bridget Pearson, were stuck with it. Maybe if Maurie could knock herself off in such a way that Tom wouldn't blame Biddy and she wouldn't blame him or herself, they might be able to make a life. A lot of widowers have married kid sisters and enjoyed it.

The restlessness was back in full force. I didn't want to go home to Lauderdale. I didn't want to stay where I was. And I couldn't think of anywhere to go. I felt like a bored kid on a rainy day. Maurie kept sliding into my mind and I kept pus.h.i.+ng her out. Go away, woman. Have a nice sleep.

I went into the bathroom. I glanced at my toilet-article kit atop the pale yellow formica of the countertop, and my random restless thoughts were gone in an instant, and I was totally focused, the back of my neck feeling p.r.i.c.kly and cool.

Caution is like the seat belt habit. If you are going to -use seat belts, then you'd better make it automatic by latching your belt every single time you get into the car. Then you stop thinking about the seat belt and you do not have to make any decisions about seat belts because you are always strapped in.

I have a lot of little rituals that are completely automatic. They are the habits of caution. A lot of these habits are seemingly casual and accidental arrangements of things. When I leave the toilet kit open, the last thing I usually replace in it is the toothbrush. I am a brush-last type. I lay it, bristles-up, across the other items in such a way that it is fairly stable and is on a perfect diagonal, aimed from corner to corner out of the case. When I reach into the case in the morning to take the stuff out, I am not consciously aware of the precise placement of the toothbrush. I am suddenly very aware, however, if it is not in its proper place and alignment.

I reconstructed the morning. By the time I came back from breakfast, the maid had done the room. I had been in the bathroom, and had the brush been in the wrong place, I would have noticed it. I studied the new position of it. No pa.s.sing truck, no sonic boom, could have moved it so far from its proper position.

All right. So somebody had been messing with my stuff, poking around. Petty thief with a pa.s.skey. Very easy to prove. All I had to do to prove it was lift the soap dish. (Only m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.ts use those sorry little slivers of lilac that motels call soap.) Two twenties, folded twice. I unfolded them. There were still two. A dumb thief would take them both. A slightly less stupid thief would take one.

If you are in a line of work where people can get very emotional about the fact you are still walking around and breathing, a forty-dollar decoy is a cheap method of identifying the visitor. Had the money been gone, it would not have been absolute a.s.surance that it had been a visit by a sneak thief. A professional of enough experience and astuteness would take it anyway, knowing that if I had left any little trap around the place, the missing money would be a false trail.

I went back to the bed, sat on the edge of it and glowered at the carpeting. I had brought nothing with me that could possibly clue anybody about anything... My temporary address was known to Biddy, Tom Pike, the car rental girl, and whoever they might have told or who might have questioned them.

Biddy and Tom knew that I would be away from the motel at lunchtime. Tom would have had time to come to the motel before going home. Looking for what? Helena's letter? Work on that a.s.sumption and stay with it until it breaks down. But why? What could be in the letter? Unless Biddy was one h.e.l.l of an actress, she hadn't known there was a letter until I told her. Seemed doubtful that Helena would mention having written me a letter. It was too highly personal a letter, for one thing. D. Wintin Hardahee had known for sure. And maybe a nurse had known. Forget the why of it, at least for now. Start at a known point or with a known angle, which is the basis of all navigation.

I knew that it could be some foul-up in identification. Maybe I looked like somebody somebody was looking for. Maybe it had been a little once-over by the law. Maybe there was a nut on the loose with a toothbrush fetish.

I phoned Mr. D. Wintin Hardahee, of Folmer, Hardahee, and Krantz, located in the Courtney Bank and Trust Company building on Central Avenue. I got through to his secretary, who said that Mr. Hardahee was in a meeting. She did not know when it would be over. Yes, if I wanted to take a chance on coming in and waiting to see him, that was all right, but if the meeting lasted past five, he would not be able to see me until Monday.

I was going to walk very lightly and keep looking and listening for anything off-key in my immediate area.

And I was no longer restless. Not at all.

7.

AT FOUR THIRTY Hardahee's matronly secretary came into the paneled waiting room to lead me back to his office. As middle partner in the firm, he had a corner office with big windows. He was round, brown, bald, and looked very fit. He had some tennis trophies atop a bookcase. He spoke in the hushed little voice I remembered from our phone conversation, a voice that did not suit him at all. He leaned across his desk to shake hands and waved me into a deep chair nearby. Hardahee's matronly secretary came into the paneled waiting room to lead me back to his office. As middle partner in the firm, he had a corner office with big windows. He was round, brown, bald, and looked very fit. He had some tennis trophies atop a bookcase. He spoke in the hushed little voice I remembered from our phone conversation, a voice that did not suit him at all. He leaned across his desk to shake hands and waved me into a deep chair nearby.

"She was a fine woman. Shame to go that way," he said. He seemed to be slightly wary and curious. "Is there any way I can help you, Mr. McGee?"

"I just wanted to ask a couple of questions. If any of them are out of line, just say so."

"I'll tell you what I can. But perhaps you should understand that I was not Mrs. Trescott's personal attorney. Her affairs are handled in New York, legal, tax and estate, and so on. Apparently she telephoned or wrote her people in New York and asked them to recommend someone here to handle a confidential matter for her. A cla.s.smate of mine is one of the partners in the firm she had been dealing with up there, so when they gave her my name, she phoned me and I went to see her in the hospital. Perhaps they'll call on me to handle some of the estate details at this end, but I have no way of knowing."

"Then, you didn't tell anyone about the letter and the check?"

"I told you that she wanted it handled as a confidential matter. She wrote a check on her New York account and I deposited it in our escrow account. When it cleared, I had a cas.h.i.+er's check made out to you, as she requested. She gave me a sealed letter to go with it. If you were not the recipient, I would disclaim knowledge of any such transaction."

"Sorry, Mr. Hardahee. I didn't mean to-"

"Perfectly all right. You couldn't have known how it was handled until I told you."

"I told her younger daughter about getting a letter from her. I had lunch there today, with the Pikes and Miss Pearson. I a.s.sumed from Helena's letter that she was staying there before she went into the hospital this last time."

"That is correct."

"Can I establish a confidential relations.h.i.+p too? I guess I could as a client, but I don't know what kind of law you work with, Mr. Hardahee."

"Both the other senior partners are specialists. I'm the utility man. Play almost any position."

"Do you represent Tom Pike directly or indirectly in any way? Or either of the daughters?"

"No one in the firm represents them in any way."

"Very quick and very definite."

He shrugged. "I try to be a good and careful attorney, Mr. McGee. When I got a note from Walter Albany in New York saying Mrs. Trescot might contact me, once I established who she was, and her condition, it struck me that because Tom Pike has many contracts in the legal profession here it might develop into some sort of an inheritance problem. So I checked our shop to make certain we wouldn't be in any conflict of interests if the transaction led eventually into a dogfight."

"And you based that guess on her having gone through New York to find a local attorney instead of asking her son-in-law?"

He ignored the question. "A client has to have a legal problem. What's yours?"

"I'm in One-O-nine at the Wahini Lodge. When I returned this afternoon, after being at the Pike home, I discovered by accident that somebody had gone through the stuff in my room. Forty dollars in cash was untouched. No sign of forcible entry. Nothing missing."

"And thus nothing you can report?"

"That's right."

"What is the legal problem?"

"In her letter Helena Trescot asked me to see what I could do to keep Maureen-Mrs. Tom Pike-from killing herself. It was a confidential request. We're old friends. She has confidence in me. So did her first husband, Mick Pearson. A dying woman can ask for a dam-fool favor, I guess. So I came up and checked. I had a logical reason for getting in touch. Imaginary but logical. So I looked the scene over and Mrs. Pike is in a pretty spooky condition, but there isn't anything I could do that isn't being done. I had to make sure, because Helena did did ask me. So I was at the point of deciding I should check out and leave town when I found out somebody had gone through the room." ask me. So I was at the point of deciding I should check out and leave town when I found out somebody had gone through the room."

"Looking for the letter? Because they knew there had had been a letter, and it made somebody uneasy not to know what was in it?" been a letter, and it made somebody uneasy not to know what was in it?"

"That was one of the things that occurred to me."

"As if somebody might be concerned about an inheritance situation?"