The Dreadful Lemon Sky Part 13

As I turned her around she said, "He used to worry so much about the money we owe on the marina. He used to fret and fume. Hey! What are we doing now?"

"It's siesta time. This is called getting you ready for your three o'clock nap."

"Don't you think you better move back onto your houseboat?"

"Right now?"

"Well... not exactly right now, okay?"

By Sunday afternoon the air conditioning was making good headway against the dampness aboard the Flush. A milky light and blurred outlines of nearby boats shone through the Pliofilm. The carpeting had been jettisoned, and Meyer had samples to study, before rendering advice.

The ninth day of June. I hadn't adjusted to the five-day gap in my memory. I was being hustled along too fast into the time stream. Ears ringing. A sweet and greedy lady to be with.

"Make some sense of things," I asked Meyer. He stopped playing solitaire with his carpet samples. "I cannot come up with an overview," he said. "I can sense no paradigm that later events will prove out. I can construct no model from what we have."

"Thanks."

"Believe me, it's nothing."

"I know. I know."

"How about this blue? Indoor-outdoor. Won't fade."

"It's truly lovely, Meyer."

"Come on. Don't you care how it's going to look?"

"Intensely."

"All things considered, you should be jollier, Travis."

"Than whom?"

"Than whom has not such a handsome lady tending his convalescence."

"I feel disoriented. I have a dull ache in the back of my head, and I live in a motel."

Further discussion of my melancholy was terminated by the arrival of Jason-Jesus with Susan Dobrovsky. She looked sallow and subdued, with smudges under her eyes and a listless manner. Jason was being very firm and forthright. The protector. No social strokes. No discussion of the weather. He planted his feet and got right into it. "Susan and I have been developing a useful dialogue about her situation here. We've decided that it is more important for her to get away, to get back to Nutley, than it is to hang around while Van Harn takes care of the last little legal details regarding Carrie's death."

She sat on the edge of the yellow couch which was going to have to be recovered. "I want to leave," she said, in a very small voice. "Everything here has been so rotten."

"Mr. McGee, Susan told me that you told her that you owed Carrie some money. You paid off the funeral home in cash. Is there more money Susan should have?"

"Yes."

"How much?"

"What's your special interest in this, Jason?"

"Somebody has to care about situations like this. People have to take care of people."

"Granted. Let me talk to Susan alone. Meyer, why don't you go topside with Jason?"

When they had left and the Pliofilm curtain had fallen back into place, I went over and sat beside her on the couch. She became very still, quite rigid. It seemed a curious reaction. I touched her arm and she made a huge flinching motion, ending up two feet farther away from me.

"Hey" I said. "Whoa. Settle down."

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's just that I'm not reacting to things... normally. To being touched by anybody. I can't help it."

"What happened to you?"

She gave me a wide, bright terrible smile. "Happened? Oh, I was a guest at the V-H Ranch yesterday and the day before. That's all. Mr. Van Harn raises Black Angus and breeds horses. He has twelve hundred acres out there, and the old Carpenter ranch house was built out of hard pine in nineteen twenty-one and it's still as solid as a rock. I... nothing... can't..."

She bent abruptly forward, face in her hands, hands resting on her knees. I reached to touch her and pulled my hand back in time.

"Were you forced?"

Her voice was m.u.f.fled. "Yes. No. I don't know. I don't know what to say. He kept after me and after me and after me. It went on and on. I got so tired. So I thought... I don't know what I thought. Just that if I let him that would be the end of it."

"Susan, I have to know something. Did he ask you anything about Carrie?"

"There wasn't much talking."

"Did he ask you anything at all about Carrie?"

"Well, he wanted to know the last time I'd talked to her, and so I told him about the long phone call, the one I told you about too. He made me remember everything she said. One part that I told him was about you. You know. Carrie said to me that if a person named Travis McGee got in touch with me I was to trust him all the way."

"Did he seem interested in that?"

"Not any more than in any of the rest of it. He just kept me going over it and over it until he saw there wasn't any part of it I hadn't told him. That was the only talking there was, mostly."

"When did this conversation take place?"

"Yesterday, I think. Yes, yesterday. Early in the morning, I think. I remember the sounds the birds were making. Early sounds."

"How did you get back?"

"He drove me in and let me off at the Inn. He had a meeting. Maybe it was three o'clock yester day afternoon. Jason came over this morning. I... told him about it. I wanted to tell somebody about how d.a.m.ned dumb I was."

"How did Jason react?"

"He wants to go kill him. What good would that do anybody? I shouldn't have gone out there with him. Joanna told me enough about him so I should have been careful, more careful. Mr. McGee, is there any more money? And you still have Carrie's rings. I remember Mr. Rucker giving them to you. He tried to give them to me and I couldn't take them then. I can now. Is there any money?"

"A lot of money."

"A lot?"

"Ninety-four thousand dollars in cash."

Her face went quite blank as she stared at me. She rubbed the palms of her hands on her forearms, one and then the other, "What?"

"Ninety-four thousand two hundred, less six hundred and eighty-six fifty that I paid Rucker. Ninety-three thousand something."

She rubbed the palms of her hands together. She narrowed those tilted gray-green eyes. She swung her hair back with a toss of her head. "Where would... Carrie get that?"

"From something she was involved in."

"From smuggling marijuana?"

"Did someone suggest that to you?"

"Betty Joller. It had something to do with why she left the cottage and went to live at that Fifteen Hundred place, Betty said. Would she make that much all for herself?"

"It's possible."

"She always wanted to have a lot of money."

"On the other hand, maybe the money is Van Harn's."

Her sallow round face looked stricken. "Would she be mixed up with him in anything? I wonder if he ever... made love to my sister. Jesus! That word doesn't fit. Love!"

"I wouldn't know."

She looked thoughtful. "She was always a stronger type person than me. I mean she could probably handle that kind of a man better than I could. Being older and married and so on. I never knew about men like that. He just kept confusing me. I guess I want that money now. Where is it?"

"In a very safe place."

"Can you get it for me?"

"Do you want to travel with that much in cash?"

"Oh. No, I guess not."

"I can get it to you later. What are you going to do with it when you get it?"

"I don't know. Put it in a deposit box, I guess. I don't know about taxes and so on. And her estate. On the phone something she said made me think she gave you some money too."

"She did. I hope it's going to be enough to get my houseboat fixed up. It was a fee for services. I am trying to find out who killed her."

"Who killed her! You're confusing me."

"Fly out of here. Fly home. I'll bring the money."

"When?"

"When I find out what went on here."

"And you'll tell me? Did somebody actually kill Carrie?"

"It's a possibility."

"Because of what she was doing? Because of the smuggling?"

"I would think so. In the meanwhile, Susan, not one word to anybody. Not even Jason."

"But I am very-"

"Not even Jason. d.a.m.n it, she told you to trust me. So trust me. Don't stand around dragging your feet."

"Well, then. Not even Jason."

As I went out onto the side deck with her, I saw Oliver trotting toward the Flush. He looked solemn. "Judge Schermer wants to talk to you, Mr. McGee."

"Send him along then."

"Oh, no. He wants you at his car. He's up there by the office."

Twelve.

IT WAS a spanking new Cadillac limousine, black as a crow's wing. It had tinted gla.s.s. I saw the black chauffeur walking offstage toward a shady bench.

A young woman stood beside the car. She put her hand out. "I'm Jane Schermer, Mr. McGee. Sorry to disturb you like this, but my uncle is anxious to talk to you."

She was a young woman with a sunburned flavor of ranchlands, cattle, and horses. She had a prematurely middle-aged face, doughy and slightly heavy in the jowls. She was oddly built, tall and broad, with vestigial b.r.e.a.s.t.s and very little indentation at the waist. The accent was expensive finis.h.i.+ng school, possibly in Pennsylvania.

Jane opened the rear door and said, "Mr.McGee, Uncle Jake."

"How do you do, Judge Schermer," I said politely.

"Jane, you go take a little walk for yourself. This is man talk. Give us fifteen minutes. McGee, come on in here, but don't sit beside me. You can't talk to a man sitting beside you, d.a.m.n it. Open up that jump seat and sit facing me. That's fine. Please don't smoke."

"I had no intention of so doing."

He chuckled. "No intention of so doing. You ever read for the law? Can't get the stink out of the upholstery."

He looked ludicrously like Harry Max Scorf. He looked as if somebody had taken Harry Max and inflated him until his skin was s.h.i.+ny-tight and then had spray-painted him pink. His round stomach rested on his round thighs. He wore khakis and a straw ranch hat. The motor purred almost soundlessly. The compressor for the air conditioning clicked on and off.

"You're one sizable son of a b.i.t.c.h, aren't you?" he said. "That's some G.o.dd.a.m.n pair of wrists on you. You go about two twenty-five?"

"Few people guess it that close."

"I guess a lot of things close. It's been a help over the years."