I went into the cottage and fed the cats. They were sulking, unhappy. “Get used to it, my friends,” I said. “Momma has to make a living.” Then I relented and promised Pancho some saffron rice when we got back to Manhattan.
I spent the next two hours attempting to straighten up the cramped cottage. As I did, I felt increasingly as if I had missed something important. I made a cup of tea and sat down on the rocker. Bushy leapt onto my lap to get scratched.
I knew it was something that Jo had said.
As the day progressed, that “something” began to fester in my head. I kept closing my eyes and reconstructing the conversations I had had during the past twenty-four hours. The clue was very close to consciousness but kept slipping away, like the name of an old friend or an old restaurant.
It finally caught up with me, as usual, after I had stopped worrying about it. I was doing the dishes in the tiny sink with one of the Brillo pads that Jo had so kindly left me.
On New Year’s Eve Jo had told me what a good friend Mona Aspen had been to herself and Harry. But at the cemetery Jo had told me what a wonderful friend Mona Aspen had been to herself and Harry and Ginger.
It could mean, of course, absolutely nothing. But it could mean an awful lot. Two people had been brutally murdered, and a stable girl was friend to one, lover to the other. I had to find out where Ginger had gone.
7
We were sitting at the kitchen table. In front of us was a carton marked “1985.” Beside the carton were piles of paper and two empty coffee cups and a plate with uneaten toast. We had been working for about an hour and had developed a procedure in our search. One of us would pick up a letter or note or bill, study it, then briefly recite the contents to the other. If not suspicious, we went on to the next one.
Jo was wearing Harry’s old volunteer-fire-department jacket; it was always freezing in their house. “That detective stopped by early this morning when I was in the barn. It must have been seven o’clock. He keeps bothering me about that list.” She paused in her recital and stared at one of her cats.
Then she continued. “I keep telling him that nothing was stolen that I know of. He doesn’t believe me. I am beginning to dislike that man. He’s devious. He also asked me if Mona and Harry were in business together. And then he asked about their relationship. I really did not like the way he used the word ‘relationship,’ as if they were in the Mafia.”
I laughed. Harry in the Mafia was a funny image. But I wasn’t really interested in Senay’s inquiries. I was interested in Ginger.
“What did you mean yesterday, Jo, when you said that Mona Aspen and Ginger were good friends?”
“Well, they were good friends. Mona was the one who sent Ginger to us for a job.”
“I’m confused, Jo. Was she living at Mona’s?”
“That I don’t remember. Maybe. But they were friends. Even when she was working for me, Ginger used to go over to Mona’s to help her out in a pinch. If a horse was really sick, or when the blacksmith came.”
“What is Ginger’s last name?”
Jo sat back with a testy flourish of her hands. “I honestly don’t remember. Why are you asking me all these questions about Ginger?”
I waited for a moment to let her calm down. “Where did she live when she was working for you?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Not far from here. But a lot of the time she just slept in the barn.”
“Jo,” I said, very gently so it would not appear to be a demand, although I was surely willing to make it a demand if Jo became difficult, “I want to talk to Ginger.”
The request startled her. “Well, I don’t know where she is.”
“Who would know?”
“Maybe Nick.”
“Who’s Nick?”
“Nicholas Hill, Mona’s nephew. You saw him at the cemetery.”
“Can we go there now?”
Jo exploded. “But here is where Harry is,” she yelled, plunging her hand into the pile of aging letters, bills, and notes.
“Calm down, Jo. Listen to me. I have the very uncomfortable feeling that the one person on earth who knew Harry and Mona best was the stable girl. Do you understand?”
Jo shook her head, keeping her face averted from me. “What a cruel thing to say,” she replied.
It was cruel. But I had no option. I was making a point.
Suddenly Jo’s face lit up and she said, “Wait, I remember her last name. It was Mauch. Ginger Mauch.” Then she said wearily, “Okay. Let’s drive over to see Nick. I don’t want to fight with you, Alice. We need each other.”
It was a two-minute drive from the broken-down Starobin farm to the freshly painted, well-manicured complex of buildings over which Mona Aspen had once presided. I followed Jo across a fenced field to the stable area. Nicholas Hill was just inside one of the barns, laboriously cleaning a shovel. I could see the heads of the racehorses as we entered. They were peering out of their stalls without much concern. A few were grabbing chunks of hay from hay nets hung outside their stalls.
Nicholas was a middle-aged graying man, well-dressed even when working. He nodded to us, but kept on cleaning the shovel.
I remembered that Jo had said he was a heavy gambler. He didn’t look like a man who would take large bills out of his pocket and bet them on a horse. But then again, I didn’t look like a woman who did cat-sitting. Nicholas banged the shovel on the ground to shake more dirt loose. His hands were large, lined, and powerful.
A slouch hat with a fishing feather tucked into it was precariously perched on his head. It was an odd hat for winter.
“We’re trying to find Ginger,” Jo said almost happily.
Nick let the shovel drop and stared at it reflectively. He seemed to think he was not doing a good job. Then he looked up, smiling at Jo, removed a glove, and blew on the hand. His actions were very measured, calm.
“I haven’t seen her since about a week before she left your place,” he finally replied.
“Do you know where she lives?” I butted in.
He smiled at Jo again as if they both understood it was a stupid question but one that could be expected from an outsider.
“I never knew,” he replied, “although she did stay with us for a while some time ago. But so what? She was just another wounded thing my aunt picked up. That was Mona, wasn’t it? Wounded birds. Wounded people. ‘Get out of the car, Nicholas,’ she used to say, ‘and see if that smashed squirrel is still alive.’ Of course, he had been dead for a week.”
I could tell by his tone—alternately bitter and loving—that it would be a long time before he would get over the death of his aunt.
“Anyway,” he continued, still looking at Jo, “when Ginger started to work for the Starobins, she got her own place. No, wait. It was before that. I remember she kept moving around from place to place, because she was always borrowing my pickup truck. Look, I never said more than ten words to that girl!”
What a strange thing for him to say. Why should he make such a comment? It was as if speaking to Ginger would implicate him in something. What was he afraid of? I didn’t trust Mona’s nephew one bit. A horse whinnied in a stall down the aisle, and then came two, three, four explosive sounds, like gunshots. Frightened, I stepped back, toward the entrance to the barn.
“Relax,” Nicholas said, “that’s only the new filly they shipped in from Philadelphia Park. Eye infection—nothing serious, but she’s crazy as a loon. She just loves kicking walls.”
A gust of wind blew down the center of the aisle, stinging our eyes and ears. Nick tried to pull his hat down on his head. “There’s coffee in the house, Jo,” he said.
As Jo shook her head, I asked, “Would you have any idea where Ginger is now?”
“Well, she used to be friendly with a guy named Bobby Lopez. He works in the Chevron station on Route 106. Do you know it?”
Jo nodded that she did, smiled at Nick, and we both started walking back toward the car.
We hadn’t gone more than twen
ty feet when Nick called, “Jo!” We looked back. He was leaning on the shovel, his face now a bright red from the wind. “Jo, do you think we’ll survive the winter?”
Jo stared at him dumbly for a moment, then walked quickly back to him. I saw them embrace. I heard sobs. I turned away. I didn’t want to intrude in their shared sorrow—but I felt a longing to be with them, to hold and be held. It was silly. What, really, had Mona and Harry been to me? Or I to them? And yet these two murdered people were beginning to envelop me in a peculiar way, as if there had always been another me—another Alice Nestleton longing to be part of them. The whole thing was perplexing.
Minutes later, we found Bobby Lopez sipping coffee in one of the repair bays of the Chevron station. At his feet was an enormous mongrel bitch with floppy ears who kept rolling over and over.
Bobby had a beautiful face with deep-set almond eyes. He didn’t appear happy to see us at all. His hands and arms were stained with a bluish grease. But he answered our questions with dispatch. Yes, he said, he knew Ginger. No, he said, he hadn’t seen her in weeks. Yes, he said, he knew where she lived.
When we asked where specifically, he balked for the first time. “Why do you want to know?” he asked suspiciously.
Jo was wonderful. She lied like a producer. She told Bobby Lopez that Ginger was still owed a week’s wages and she wanted to deliver the money to her.
He smiled grimly at us and lit a cigarette. He prodded the dog playfully. He stared at Jo, then at me. He seemed to be evaluating us against some standard.
Finally he said, “She lives over the Tarpon Bar in Oyster Bay Village. It’s right at the crossroads of the town. You can’t miss it unless you want to.”
His knowledge of her lodgings sort of dripped with the idea that they were both very close—lovers, in fact. Jo asked, “Where did you meet her?” And her voice was so incredulous that the mechanic bristled. He understood what she meant. How could a nice girl like Ginger end up with a grease monkey? Jo was making her class prejudice explicit.
“At Aqueduct racetrack, lady. We both used to work for Charlie Coombs.”
Bobby Lopez was right. One couldn’t miss the Tarpon Bar if one drove through the center of Oyster Bay Village. In a hallway next to the bar, we found Ginger Mauch’s name on a mailbox.
A very rickety staircase took us up. The landings needed paint. The floors were covered with pocked linoleum. The doors of the apartments were warped.
Ginger Mauch lived on the third floor in the rear apartment. The door was wide open. A few pieces of furniture were scattered throughout the single large room. The closet was open and empty. The drawers of the dresser were open and empty.
Ginger had obviously moved out in haste.
In one corner of the large room, in front of the window, was a pile of posters, clothes, records, and other items she had obviously discarded as not important enough to take with her. I could see some unopened cans of soup in the pile.
“Poor Ginger,” Jo said, sitting down wearily on a folding chair.
I was mystified. Why had she moved out in such a rush? Was she frightened? Of what? The more I tried to comprehend the stable girl and her behavior, the more elusive she became.
Jo stood up suddenly and walked toward the pile of discarded junk.
“Do you see anything, Jo?” I asked, because her move was purposeful.
Her foot had found something and was pulling it out from the pile, as if it was something dirty. It was a photograph of a laughing Harry standing in front of the barn, a calico cat draped around his neck like a muffler. He was smiling his wonderful smile.
“My God,” Jo whispered, “I’ve been looking for this photograph for a year. It’s the best photo Harry ever took. And that’s Veronica, the barn cat, on him. Harry told me the picture had just vanished, but he was lying. He gave it to Ginger. Why would he do that? And now she just left it in a pile of garbage.”
Her foot pushed the photo back into the pile. The corners were discolored.
I bent over to pick it up.
“Leave it. Please leave it,” she said, sitting back down on the flimsy folding chair, the color drained from her face.
I left it alone, and instead looked about the room. My gaze settled on the denuded wire hangers in the closet. The more elusive Ginger became, the more I realized I had to find her.
“Do you know Charlie Coombs?” I asked Jo, remembering what Bobby Lopez had said.
“The trainer?”
“Is he a trainer? I’m talking about the name Bobby Lopez mentioned.”
“Yes. Of course he’s a trainer. I know him. He used to lay up horses at Mona’s place. Just like his father did before him. A lot of trainers swore by Mona. She had a healing touch with sick horses, like Harry did with all animals. Old Man Coombs even used to call Mona when he had problems training a yearling . . .”
She paused, then added in a choked voice, “It seems like all the wonderful people are gone.”
I walked over to Jo and took her hand, squeezing it. “Come with me back to Manhattan, Jo, for a day or two. We’ll go to the Aqueduct. Charlie Coombs may know where Ginger is. If she worked for him before, maybe she went back to him.”
“I’m very tired, Alice,” she said.
“But Harry and Mona are dead, Jo, and we won’t find their killers in this pile of junk or in Harry’s pile of junk in the storeroom.”
Jo stared at me for a moment, then at our joined hands. “Okay, Alice. Why not? What else are old ladies for?”
8
I was sitting in my apartment watching Jo prowl. My apartment fascinated her. She kept walking from one end to the other, picking up things, putting them down. I didn’t understand her acute interest, particularly after a long day. Was it conceivable that a wise old woman like Jo thought the life of an actress to be exciting and glamorous, reflected somehow in her furniture and bric-a-brac? There was not one glamorous item in my apartment.
Finally she sat down on the sofa and said, “Well, I hope all the cats survive. The last time I left them with Amos, I was afraid he was going to eat them.” She stared down at Bushy as if contemplating Amos contemplating eating him.
It was nine o’clock in the evening. We were both very tired, and Jo had said we had to leave at five thirty the following morning because trainers exercise their horses really early. If we wanted to speak to Charlie Coombs, we had to catch him then.
“Do you want some tea, Jo, or something stronger?”
“Nothing, thank you,” she said, looking around again with that wide-eyed curiosity. Then she smiled. “You know, Alice, I just never thought your apartment would look like this.”
“Like what, Jo?”
“Well . . . so . . . so conservative.”
“Did you think I led a wild life in the big city, Jo?”
“I didn’t know what to think.”
“Men are scarce, Jo, at least at this time.”
“But you’re a beautiful woman,” she blurted. I didn’t know how to respond. Maybe she wanted me to recount my brief fling with promiscuity. But that had happened a long time ago, after my marriage had broken up, and I remembered little about it. Furthermore, it was none of her business.
When I looked at her again, she was crying. I closed my eyes and opened them again only when she began to speak: “You want to hear something funny, Alice? I was a virgin when I married Harry. And I never slept with another man. Only Harry. So if I die tomorrow or the day after, I’ll never really know if what Harry and I had was real love . . . or real passion. Do you know what I mean, Alice?”
“It’s not too late,” I quipped, and then was immediately chagrined at the stupidity of my remark.
She smiled at me. “Oh, I think it is. I think it is.”
Bushy was now circling the sofa, wondering whether to jump up on the strange woman who had captured his favorite place. He looked alternately confused and angry. His tail switched. His ears did what passes for a Maine coon cat’s dance.
I wen
t to the hall closet and pulled out pillows, a quilt, and a woolen blanket older than me that had been on my grandmother’s farm in Minnesota. It was a strange blue—like a frayed psychotic sky. I laid all the bedding on a chair next to the sofa, along with a clean towel for Jo. Then I went to sleep.
When we pulled up at the racetrack entrance gate the next morning, we found it manned by uniformed guards who were very suspicious. For some reason, I had always thought the racetrack was open, like a mall. I soon found out otherwise, for they would not let us in. First of all, Jo couldn’t get Charlie Coombs on the phone. He was somewhere on the racetrack but not available. Then, when she finally contacted him, we had to wait for passes to be made out. And then, after we were through the gate, we got hopelessly lost in the barn areas. “I haven’t been here in twenty years,” Jo kept telling me by way of explanation.
It was past six thirty when we reached Charlie Coombs’s stalls. Suddenly we were surrounded by horses that had just come back from their morning workouts. They were steaming from sweat in the freezing morning air. Young men and women stripped their saddles and bridles, covered them with blankets, and then started to walk them in slow circles around the stable area, guiding them with rope halters.
I had never been that close to racehorses before, and was staggered by their power. I could sense that they were only a step away from flight. These majestic beasts were capable of bursts of awesome speed. And even in the darkness I could sense their individuality—an eye, a turn of the head, a sudden distinctive whinny. Of course they frightened me, but I longed to make some kind of contact with all that power.
Jo pulled me out of an almost trancelike state, and together we entered a small, cluttered office. Seated behind his desk, Charlie Coombs was talking on the phone when he saw us, and he gestured emphatically with his hand that we should sit and wait.
People came in and out of the office without saying a word, wearing riding helmets or stocking caps, bundled up against the cold, their movements quick, almost choppy, as they used the coffee machine occupying the only uncluttered spot in the office. Next to the machine were containers of sugar and milk and a large cardboard box on which was crudely written: “If you drink coffee, pay for the coffee.” I saw no one drop any money into the box.
A Cat Tells Two Tales Page 5