Vera Kelly Is Not a Mystery

by Rosalie Knecht

  I climbed the left staircase in front. Water pooled on the steps. The veranda, I saw when I reached the top, was silted in with dead leaves from the tree in front. It had not been swept in a long time. But on a round patio table near the door, an empty bottle of rum, some jam jars, and a mango skin attracted a fresh cloud of flies. I lifted the iron knocker and let it fall twice. There was no answer. I tried again. Over my shoulder, I could see Miguel in the car, leaning on the wheel, looking left and right.

  It was at that moment that the man with the rifle walked up the driveway behind the car.

  CHAPTER 16

  A small woman, her hair cut fashionably short to her jawline, wearing a wool coat a few seasons out of date, had been waiting all morning in the hallway outside the coroner’s office in the city building on Chambers Street in Manhattan. The building was strange, a labyrinth of veined brown marble, underlit and loud with echoes. Civil servants came and went through a vast atrium, sorting themselves into a warren of cramped, carpeted offices.

  She smoked while she waited. There was a machine that gave out numbers, and she held her number on its fragile pink paper in one gloved hand as if she had forgotten it was there. The hallway was cold and she didn’t remove her coat or hat.

  “You’ll have to give us more information,” they said at last when her number was called. “This will take a long time, if that’s all you have.”

  “That’s all I have,” she said. “I’ll wait.” An accent, a still face.

  The man with the rifle walked in no great hurry along the gravel drive and passed the car with a glance at Miguel, who stayed where he was. He came to a stop at the foot of the stairs and looked up at me, tipping the brim of a sun hat out of his eyes to do so.

  “You’re lost, miss?” he said.

  My mouth had gone dry. “No, not lost,” I said. I was above him but wished our positions were reversed. There was no obvious way off the porch except down the stairs. “I’m looking for the owners.”

  “There’s no one here to talk to you,” he said.

  I decided to come down. I did it smiling, watching my feet. “I just want to talk to them about this beautiful place,” I said. “I work for a movie studio.” I stepped onto the grass, got the cards out of my bag, offered him one. He was standing just too far away to take it, holding the rifle loosely at his side. He was about fifty, weather-beaten, the same height as I was. “They send me out to find places where they can film. My boss is taking meetings back in Santo Domingo but he said he would come out if I found something good. He pays big money to use a place like this.” I waved at the facade of the house. “Okay, it needs a little work, but the gardens, the mountain—it’s perfect.”

  He hadn’t moved, so I crossed the few feet between us and pressed the card into his hand, beaming. He scratched his forehead. Behind him, I saw Miguel in the car, tense, staring. I watched the man think.

  “Well, come in,” he said finally.

  “Oh, thank you!” I adjusted the strap of the camera case on my shoulder. “I would love to see the inside.”

  He looked carefully at my face. “You must be thirsty,” he said. “If you drove all the way from Santo Domingo.”

  I concentrated on keeping my face bright, open. “I am, to tell you the truth.”

  He led me back up the stairs and through the front door, which was decorated with hammered-iron hinges. It creaked open into a tiled two-story foyer. Overcast daylight fell through a transom window and, high above us, a hatch in the roof.

  “Oh, lovely,” I said.

  “This way,” he said. Away from the open spaces and windows, the place was dark. There were no lights on. We walked a long hallway, passing a parlor full of old furniture. A cot was unmade in the middle of the grand rug; a pile of water-stained Vogue magazines spilled from a chaise longue. The next room was a study with a dark polished desk, on which someone had left a propane bottle and a pair of work gloves.

  “Here’s the kitchen,” he said. It was bright after the hallway, and I squinted. A barefoot woman was standing over a pot at the stove, and she turned and started when I came in, then smoothed her hair back. It was a huge room, with two stoves and deep wooden counters, many windows set open to catch the breeze coming down the mountain, a thick steam in the air from whatever was in the pot, and a collection of damp brassieres and girdles hanging over the high backs of the chairs that lined the worktable.

  “Irma,” the man said, “the lady comes from a movie studio. She says they’ll pay to make a movie here.”

  “A few scenes of a movie,” I said, smiling. “If I can just talk to the owners? The Ibarras, yes?”

  “But they’re not here,” Irma said, dismayed. She looked back and forth between the man and me.

  “Not here?” I said.

  “Irma, the lady needs a lemonade, she’s come a long way,” the man said.

  “Do you know how I could get in touch with them?” I said.

  Irma searched in the refrigerator. So the electricity was still on.

  “How much money?” the man said abruptly.

  “Well, that’s for the contract,” I said. “But I’ve seen four hundred a day.”

  “Four hundred dollars?”

  “Sure. And usually a bit extra for expenses. A cleaning crew, a little landscaping.” When I was in the midst of a riff, it felt like turning a cartwheel: the same blank concentration. The same tension and smoothness. I was too aware of the heavy camera case on my hip and I deliberately didn’t touch it again, didn’t glance down at it. Irma had found a bottle of lemonade and was opening it with a church key from a hook on the wall. From outside there was a hiss: through the windows I saw a curtain of soft rain move down the mountain and across the yard, reaching the house with a spattering of drops and a low movement of air. Irma looked up and began to close the window, thought better of it, left it open.

  “The señores have gone to New York,” she said, turning back to the room again.

  “New York?” I tried to take that in. I had come all this way, and they had gone to New York. Outside the window, the horse we had seen earlier in the road trotted across the lawn, spooked by the change in the weather. A tree full of birds close by chittered and complained. I reached for the right thing to say. “When will they be back?”

  She shrugged. The man set the rifle down on the worktable and leaned against the counter, facing me, his arms crossed.

  “Did they leave a forwarding address?” I said. Because I was tense and wanted to stand, I pulled out a chair noisily instead and sat in it, leaning on an elbow planted near the rifle, as if I had already forgotten it, as if all I was thinking about was how inconvenient this was.

  “We handle the business while they’re away,” the man said.

  “Oh yes?”

  “Yes. We handle the money.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I see. But we would need a contract. Without the owners, there’s no liability insurance. Think what they could say when they get back!”

  Irma said, “They might not get back for a long time.”

  “They could sue us into the ground,” I said, taking a regretful sip of the lemonade. “The studio would never sign off on it.”

  “We can get you whatever papers you want,” the man said.

  I shook my head, pretending not to understand what he meant. “We would have to talk to them. It would all have to be signed, with witnesses. We could send someone to New York, that’s not a problem. You just have to—”

  “You don’t know how things are here,” the man said. “We don’t know who you are.”

  “Of course, of course,” I said. “I’m only making an offer.”

  “No, you don’t understand.” He uncrossed his arms. “We handle the business. If there’s money, it goes through us.”

  “We don’t know you,” Irma seconded in a soft voice.

  “It’s not safe dealing with strangers here,” the man said. “Maybe you don’t know.”

  “It’s the same the worl
d over,” I said, and then got up, because I didn’t think he was going to give. Maybe knowing that they were in New York was enough. The house was enclosed by rain.

  “Irma, show her the upstairs,” the man said suddenly.

  “The upstairs?” she said.

  “You’ll see,” he said. “It’s a beautiful house.”

  “I can see it is,” I said. I had been hot all along, but now I was beginning to feel queasy. I didn’t want to go up another set of stairs with this man, or with Irma. “I’m more interested in the grounds. The mountain is what we need.”

  He hesitated, then nodded. “Irma, show her the grounds.”

  Irma wiped her hands on a dishcloth and turned down the flame under the pot on the stove. “All right, for a few minutes.”

  “Don’t worry about the pot,” the man said. “Salvador will watch it. Where is he, anyway?”

  “God knows.”

  “I’ll find him,” the man said. “Miss.” He nodded at me and went out.

  In the quiet after his footsteps faded, Irma and I took a good look at each other. She was middle-aged, her hair black, her arms strong, wearing a housedress.

  “It’s raining,” she said.

  “I don’t mind,” I said. “It’s important to see everything.”

  “But your shoes,” she said, distressed, pointing at my sandals, which were flimsy and white.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I’ll find an umbrella,” she said.

  We left the kitchen and walked toward the back of the house, down an even dimmer hall. Here there were more signs of life, the elegant rooms that had been kept for entertaining clearly occupied with the work of living. In anticipation of the rain, someone had strung up a rope of laundry down a back stairway. Passing a solarium, we surprised a woman nursing a baby, her feet propped up on a gardener’s cart. I wondered how many people were living here. Irma searched in a boot closet and produced an umbrella and a man’s rain jacket, which she insisted I put on.

  The heat had not broken with the rain and I was stifled in the jacket. We walked out into the lawn. To the left, a set of white steps flanked by urns led down to an empty white pool. What I took at first for an accumulation of dead leaves at the bottom turned out to be half a dozen chickens huddled in the rain. Beyond the pool, the ground sloped upward, and where it could no longer be called a lawn, rows of banana trees were planted, their broad leaves waving softly in the new current of air. At a steeper elevation, the forest began. The mountain breathed over us, whitened by vapor, bare pale branches showing here and there in the dense canopy of leaves. To the right a little two-story cottage sat dark-windowed in its shadow, a lawn jockey by the gravel walk in front. It was out of step with the big house: white stucco, flat-roofed, without flourishes, like the houses in Santo Domingo. A child’s bicycle was overturned under an open shed at the side, among garden equipment stowed out of the weather. “That’s where the housekeeper stayed,” said Irma.

  “How long have the Ibarras been gone?” I said.

  She looked at me again, reading me. “A few months now.”

  So—not long after Mrs. Villanueva died. “And everyone else stayed?”

  She shifted away. I shouldn’t have said that. “An empty house attracts thieves,” she said.

  “Right, of course. They must be glad you’re here.”

  She turned toward the back of the big house again. She seemed uneasy and I wanted to get away. I was jumping ahead, thinking how long it would take to nudge this tour back around to the front of the house, back to the car. A bird was calling in the woods, something with a strident voice like a macaw.

  “I can’t tell you where they are because I don’t know,” she said abruptly. “But I can tell you who their man was.”

  “Their man?”

  She was shifting from one foot to the other, clasping her hands. She turned her anxious gaze on me again like a searchlight. “Octavio is stubborn, he doesn’t want to say anything. He has a hard head.”

  “Sure, sure.” Now I was looking back too, at the upper windows behind us.

  “They know a man in New York. He’s the one Dominicans talk to when they need something. People call him El Jabalí.”

  “What’s his real name?”

  She shrugged, agitated. “I don’t know. But everyone knows him. Every Dominican knows him. He’s the one who can get papers.”

  “The Ibarras didn’t have papers?”

  “No, their papers were taken after the war. They couldn’t travel. Señor Ibarra was a popular man. People talked about him running for president. Balaguer kept them stuck out here. He wouldn’t let them back in the city and wouldn’t let them leave the country either. We used to see cars—you know, unmarked? Every few days, out at the main road, they would pass by to spy on us. They were paying the man at the gas station to report on us.” She put her hand on my arm and led me away from the house, stepping around a coil of nylon rope in the grass, a capsized stepladder, a roll of chicken wire tied with twine. Here the grass was tufted with native flora and had bare patches where it had been grazed and scratched. “We’re running out of money here. Just find El Jabalí, yes? Every Dominican knows him.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It’s a long way to New York, isn’t it?”

  “From here? A few hours.” The winter afternoons were short. “Irma, I’m so grateful for your time, but really, I have to go. It’s a long drive back.”

  “Yes, of course. You don’t want to get stuck out here in the dark.”

  She walked with me around the side of the house, the veranda curving, stacked with more shrouded furniture. I was looking at my sandals, which were ruined as predicted, when we stepped into the front driveway. The car was gone.

  I stood there stupidly for a minute with my mouth open like a fish. “The car is gone,” I said.

  Irma moved nervously at my side, like a bird rousing. “Gone?” She took a few crunching steps on the gravel.

  “He was parked right here.” I looked up at the front veranda, and Octavio was standing there, empty-handed, watching me.

  “He’s gone,” he observed.

  “Did you see him go?” I said.

  “There’s a taxi man up the road,” Irma said. “We’ll send Salvador to get him.”

  “Can we telephone?” I said.

  “No, the telephone doesn’t work anymore. No money for the bill.”

  I let her lead me up the steps. My back was slick with sweat. I pulled the rain jacket off and hung it over the railing as I went up. This was impolite but I was scattered, my thoughts beaming out in every direction like radar. There was something not right about the way Octavio stood there. He appeared to be waiting. Waiting for what? Irma was making soft noises of disapproval about the driver’s fecklessness. I followed Irma past Octavio into the front hallway, to a small alcove with a stuffed chair, where she invited me to sit. I stayed on my feet, watching the door. I kept biting my lip, and tried to stop. Irma was ringing an electric bell that sounded somewhere deep in the house, muttering that Salvador never came when he was called, when the front door opened, and the man standing there was not Octavio but a uniformed police officer, and after him another, and another.

  The one in front said, “This is her?”

  I stepped back. The camera case swung at my side, held shut with its pearl snap; I was outnumbered and not going to use the gun; they would find it on me. Irma and I stared at each other. She hadn’t known.

  The policeman in front said, “We’ve come to talk to you.” He was a big man, broad. The two behind him looked younger.

  My vision had sharpened. I was watching a movie shot on good film. I was falling backward into a pool. I pretended the camera case meant nothing. I held my purse with both hands instead and one of the younger men stepped forward and pulled it out of my grip. The other snapped to attention, overcame whatever had kept him in the doorway, and gripped my arm, taking the camera case off my shoulder as he did so and dropping a Ba
kelite bracelet from one of my wrists onto the floor. I thought: If I die here—

  Octavio and the big man were conferring in the doorway, and Octavio was pointing away toward the back of the house. “There’s a cottage that’s empty,” he said.

  Irma was still staring. She hadn’t known and now she was afraid for me. My mouth was dry but I was trying to say something. Finally I did: “I left the jacket on the railing outside.” Why that? I wondered where Miguel had gone. Maybe Octavio had sent him away in preparation for calling the police. It was so spiteful of him. He must have been angry that I wouldn’t pay them for the house, that I kept insisting on talking to the Ibarras.

  “What is this about?” I said, remembering myself. “I haven’t done anything.”

  The big man opened the camera case and held the gun out on the palm of his hand, looking at me with something like pity, as if it were a shame that I was so stupid. “Why do you have this?”

  “Wouldn’t you?” I said.

  They pulled me toward the door.

  “I came here alone. I brought it for protection,” I said. “I work for a movie studio.”

  White sunlight fell on us as the door opened. The rain was beginning to clear, clouds scudding away from the invisible sea at the foot of the mountains. I was blinded, and bumped against the policeman who was holding my arm. In the driveway a goat raised its head and fixed me with the blank stare of its alien pupils. They were not taking me to jail. They were taking me instead to the cottage behind the house. Every story I had ever heard about the Dominican police was clattering and heaving in my mind like flotsam from a shipwreck. My knees were shaking, which slowed me down, and the man holding my arm began to pull me along behind him, making impatient noises under his breath. The sun vanished, appeared again. I saw the woman in the solarium again as we went around the outside of the house, looking out over some dead orchids in pots.