Fadeaway Girl

by Martha Grimes

  “Yes, I am.” I shouldn’t have had to remind him that one of those sisters almost killed this poor child, me. “You remember she tried to kill me? She was crazy, of course. She thought I was Mary-Evelyn. So I guess she had to finish killing me.”

  He slapped his hand against the carriage return. “Now, maybe we should get the dates of all these things right.”

  Oh, how boring. It was the atmosphere I wanted to get right, the feelings, the looks of things. . . .

  “Because you just might have something here, Emma.”

  I knew I did. My mind was loaded down with pinballs, so that I could hardly move. “What I came to do today was search around in the archives”—I liked this word; it was weighty, like my mind at the moment—“for more details. You said before you thought Morris and Imogen themselves might have taken the baby somehow.”

  “I wouldn’t’ve put it past Morris Slade.” He narrowed his eyes against the smoke from his cigarette and looked grim. “That boy was a gambler. He was forever at that poker club, ‘club’ being what they called it. He’d bet anything just to stay in the game, anything. Had a lot of debts, I’d guess.”

  “But no ransom was ever asked for.”

  “None we know of.” He shook his head. “I should’ve spent more time on this, but we were short on reporters then.”

  I tried to think of what could have been more important back then than a disappeared baby from a grand hotel. You could have written books about it. My mind sparked at the mere idea. I slid off the desk. “I want to search around the archives and see if I can figure out the connection.”

  “You got a head full of ideas, Emma.”

  Since I didn’t have a face full of prettiness, I thought it just as well.

  The back room was as musty as ever, perhaps even mustier in my eyes because it contained the past, and nothing could compare with the past. The comforting words of William Faulkner came back to me, that the past wasn’t dead; it wasn’t even past. I had typed out his exact words and put the slip of paper on my mirror. It was Dwayne, over at Slaw’s Garage, who was the big William Faulkner reader. He called him “Billy.” A mechanic, even a master mechanic, reading William Faulkner was something to note.

  Not that I’d actually read Faulkner, except for a few story beginnings (so I could impress Dwayne), or words rooted out here and there. I wasn’t actually going down the mines myself as much as I was panning his words for gold.

  Faulkner’s words were delaying the last episode of the “tragedy.” I was trying to look at things the way he did, trying to find words like “bugswirled” and “stumppocked.” Trying to think up words like that was holding up the writing, but I couldn’t help myself.

  From one of the shelves stacked high with old papers, I dragged out the edition with the story of the Slade baby’s kidnapping. The paper was so old I thought it might crumble in my hands. No, I didn’t think that; I just wanted to make up a word like “crumbcracked.” I would have to stop doing this, making up things to fit words.

  I doubted I would find anything new in the newspaper accounts, as I had seen them before. And anyway, I’d seen the police report. I lined up the papers: the account of the “tragic accident” that wasn’t an accident, but a murder—the drowning of Mary-Evelyn Devereau in Spirit Lake; the murder of Rose Devereau Queen in Cold Flat Junction; the shooting of Fern Queen over near White’s Bridge; the attempt to murder me in Spirit Lake (this written by yours truly); the kidnapping of the Slades’ baby; the burning down of the Belle Rouen Hotel. That’s an awful lot of violence for a couple of small towns.

  Connecting all of this, I thought, might be the Girl, the mysterious Girl who came and went. I had seen her six times now, twice at the old Devereau house—once at the edge of the wood and later on the other side of the lake. It was the odd way she’d looked, unmoving, statue still. I remembered her from a distance, a lake away, and up close at the railway station, on the platform in Cold Flat Junction, where she boarded the train that stopped there on its way to Hebrides and points north. What struck me about her—I mean, after the way she looked—was that she carried nothing except for a tiny purse. No suitcase, no coat, nothing, so it was as if, like me, she lived not too far from the train station.

  It surprised me that my friends in the Windy Run Diner hadn’t noticed her, for she was the spitting image of Rose Devereau Queen, who was held to be the most beautiful girl Billy and Don Joe and Mervin, all of them in the diner, had ever seen.

  Thinking about this resemblance, and Rose’s daughter, Fern, I decided, well, the Girl must be Fern’s daughter. But Fern was not at all pretty. Rose’s looks had skipped Fern, I decided, and carried on to the Girl.

  I imagined a line of light around her, the way she looked carved out of her background. She looked misplaced. Yet at the same time the background seemed to absorb her and she became a necessary part of it.

  I got up from the table and the newspapers and went to the table by the door that held the past copies of magazines like Life and the Saturday Evening Post. I had seen the cover before and wanted to see it again. It was right on top, where I’d left it. The cover showed a woman in red against a red background, a black wrought-iron fence in the foreground, and a black mailbox. She was mailing a letter, or probably a Christmas card, for it was clearly a Christmas issue. Light snow was falling, the flakes just a few white dots, coming down here and there.

  Mr. Gumbrel once told me the artist had done a lot of these illustrations for magazines. His name was Coles Phillips and he was famous for them. I went through the stack but didn’t find another of them. Red against red, the outline of her coat was invisible. She blended into the background.

  It was a trick of the eye, I guess. I could pick out the whole figure if I wanted to, if I looked at it in a certain way. Only there was something restful about seeing it as the artist intended, letting the red coat fade into its background.

  He called them Fadeaway Girls.

  5

  I was too tired out from all of that thinking to put up with Delbert, but I had no choice, as Axel had “just left” to pick up a fare on Red Bird Road.

  I sat in sullen silence in the backseat, hoping that would discourage Delbert from talking, but of course it didn’t. I considered lying down in the well of the floor between front and rear seats to make him think I’d fallen out of the cab when he went over that last bump in the road.

  He was going on about the First National and my business there. “You come into money, ha-ha?” and “Maybe you was robbin’ it, well, I could’ve been drivin’ the getaway car, ha-ha.” And on and on, saying dumb things that made me feel like they were eating up the air that I needed for breathing, chomping all the oxygen out of it.

  “I had to get something out of my safe-deposit box.”

  “Huh?”

  In the rearview mirror I could see Delbert’s beady eyes narrow with suspicion. “Safe-deposit? You got valuables? I don’t believe you got valuables.” He gave a scornful snort.

  I was down in the seat now, playing out strands of hair to see the sun through; the sun turned their color, which according to Ree-Jane was mousy brown, to a kind of burnt umber. I had no idea what color that was; I just liked the sound of “umber.” And the sound made by “burnt” along with it. I didn’t care what it meant, really. I guess that was why writers like William Faulkner went around making up words.

  “Well?” said Delbert. “What valuables?”

  “Delbert, if I needed a safe-deposit box, I’d hardly be going around telling people what was in it.” By now, we were in Spirit Lake, coming up on Britten’s Market. “Stop!” I yelled.

  Delbert braked so hard it threw us forward.

  “Gawd sakes alive!” he said, white in the face.

  I smiled. “I’d prefer to get out here.” I went into my change purse and brought out three quarters and handed them to him.

  “You coulda just said you wanted me to stop.” Grudgingly, he thanked me for the quarter tip.


  Mr. Root was still on the bench, Ulub still on his feet, his book raised high. I knew he was reading poetry.

  Mr. Root had set Ulub upon a course of reading aloud, thinking it would help his speech predicament. Ubub, Ulub’s brother, had been excused from this practice, as Mr. Root did not find Ubub’s speech problem nearly as bad. It was a little easier to understand Ubub, but not so easy that he couldn’t have stood a few lessons in elocution. As far as I was concerned, it didn’t make sense to put either one of them through this, but Mr. Root was determined. Of course, I will admit Mr. Root’s ear was more finely tuned than mine. He was the only person who could understand either of them without much thinking about it. It was rather amazing.

  Their real names were Alonzo and, I think, Robert. They had been christened “Ulub” and “Ubub” by Dodge Haines and Bubby Dubois and the other uncharitable sorts who held up the counter at the Rainbow Café. They’d taken the nicknames from the license plates of “the boys’ ” old pickup trucks: UBB and ULB. But “the boys” were too good-natured to mind this bit of meanness.

  I crossed the highway, waving to them, and on the other side, had to watch Delbert coming back and honking, “shave-and-a-haircut, honk honk!” That was Delbert being funny.

  I didn’t wave. As I went up the grassy embankment where the bench was, I heard Ulub recite:Ah unthuse memunse eh ah ah on.

  I liked the way he did this with gestures, arm flung above his head, hand against heart. I didn’t understand a word except for “I” at the beginning and “an” toward the end.

  “Pretty good, Ulub,” said Mr. Root.

  Actually, Ulub sounded much as he’d always sounded. We’d all spent some time deciding what poet would be the best for this job. One of the first had been a poet I’d never heard of, Vachel something. Ulub came across a poem of his in some old book lying around their house. The poem was “The Congo.” Mr. Root liked it because it had a real beat to it; he could tap his foot to it.

  I recalled that Will had made drums by stretching thin canvas (or was it dead human skin?) over empty beer kegs. I don’t know what they’d used the drums for, but they were still in the Big Garage. So I said we should all troop up there and borrow them. (I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere with this request on my own.) When they saw it was all of us, and heard the request, Will actually smiled and let us in. This, I knew, was so they themselves could do the drum beating while Ulub read “The Congo.” Which they did. They were loud and insistent to the point where Ulub forgot the poem and went into a kind of Indian-on-the-warpath dance.

  So we decided “The Congo” was not the best choice for Ulub’s reading. I suggested Shakespeare.

  Mr. Root shook his head. “Too old-timey.”

  Robert Frost?

  Another shake. “Too easy.”

  My storeroom of poets was about as full as my safe-deposit box, but I knew Robert Frost wasn’t “easy.” My mind hunted around for one of his poems. “He can’t be easy, not if he’s considered our greatest living poet.”

  Mr. Root was already thumbing through his battered book and came upon a poem. He read the first lines of “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Then he snapped the book shut, as if he’d proven his point.

  “Mr. Root, that’s one of the most famous poems in the language; that’s the one about the woods—”

  “Famous and woods don’t necessarily cut it.”

  Mr. Root was as old as forever but he had a modern way of speaking sometimes.

  He went on: “I’ll bet any one of us could write a poem this good, couldn’t we, boys?”

  Considering who “anyone” was, he’d better not bet too much on it.

  “Yes sir, we could walk over to the lake and the woods where that Devereau house is and write us a poem right there.” He pounded one small fist into the other hand.

  I said, “Mr. Root, let’s just choose another poet.” Though I couldn’t see what easiness had to do with Ulub’s reading one or another.

  “Well . . .” He was miffed but he turned some pages. “Here’s this Wordsworth fellow going on about the daffodils. Try this, Ulub: a host of golden daffodils.”

  Ulub tried it: “Ah ghost uh oldna duvudus.”

  Mr. Root said, “See? Now that’s too easy. It don’t give Ulub enough range.”

  The back of a Rice Krispies box would give Ulub enough range. If I hadn’t first heard the line, I don’t think I’d have known “knee” meant “sea.”

  Then it was that Mr. Root decided to go back to Emily Dickinson, a poet he had earlier discarded as too crazy. “How does ‘space toll’? What’s ‘an amethyst remembrance’?” But now he was back with her. He read off:I know a place where summer strives

  With such a practiced Frost . . .

  We all stood or sat there while Mr. Root debated in his own mind about this poem. He drummed his fingers on the book, stared at the sky, murmuring hmm hmm and repeating words from it. “ ‘Practiced Frost.’ Now that’s got some zing to it. Ulub, you try that right there.” He turned the book for Ulub to see.

  Ulub saw and Ulub said: “mon uh ah macused mros.”

  “Good,” said Mr. Root. “That’s got just the right amount of hardness to it.”

  So Emily Dickinson had the honor of just enough hardness and if she’d been alive and around I would have liked to invite her to a reading.

  Today, Ubub had gone into Britten’s and brought back bottles of Nehi grape and handed them around. Mr. Root asked Ulub to repeat the Emily Dickinson lines he’d been reciting when I came along to the bench.

  Ulub cleared his throat and solemnly raised the book.

  Nee ee ear nees er aisee ack,

  Eoden eefly ost.

  “Hot spit!” exclaimed Mr. Root. “See? That little lady knows about poetry, don’t she?” He turned to Ubub, who was drinking his Nehi grape. “What d’you think? Pretty good, wasn’t it?”

  “Mritty wood.” Ubub nodded with enthusiasm.

  Mr. Root said, “You hear how much better he sounds.”

  I didn’t, but I said I did, then said I had to get back to the hotel to wait tables.

  6

  My mother was making soufflés, a bad sign, for it usually meant a dinner party. Vera, our head waitress, was also there, so there was definitely an increase in dinner guests. She was in her black uniform, long sleeved and white cuffed. All I ever wore was a short-sleeved blue uniform, or a white one that would have made anyone with more compassion look like a nurse.

  I said hello to Walter, who was behind his big sink, the huge dishwasher making the kitchen sound like a building site. It clattered away beside him. But if not for the dishwasher, I’d be beside Walter, dishrag in my hands. Even Ree-Jane had been forced to wash dishes once or twice before we got the dishwasher. She complained all the while and picked on Walter. But Walter wouldn’t rise to the bait; he just went on saying, “I reckon so.”

  I wondered if Walter was the exact opposite of Aurora Paradise. Maybe of all of us. I stopped poking at a lettuce to ponder this. The lettuces were, to quote Mrs. Davidow, who seemed to set lots of store by them, “personal Bibb lettuces”—baby Bibbs—for we were serving each guest a whole small lettuce. To hear Mrs. Davidow talk, you’d think they walked all the way from our vegetable garden, shaking off soil as they came.

  Ree-Jane called Walter a retard, but he wasn’t; he was just slow. He might have been anywhere from thirty to forty-five. He wore black-rimmed glasses and lived alone in a big house that sat at the curve of the highway where Spirit Lake starts to fold into the far outskirts of La Porte.

  Lola Davidow was in the kitchen with her martini, which reminded me that this was Aurora’s cocktail hour too, and now would be a good time to get her drink going, while Mrs. Davidow was not in the office. Mrs. Davidow had dressed up in pink linen and powdered her face. She had one of those wonderful fair complexions that powder lies across like a fine veil.

  She came to oversee the baby Bibbs, telling me to be careful. Careful? It was a lettuce. All I c
ould picture was throwing one like a tennis ball across the kitchen to Walter and have him bat it back. We played tennis in my mind for a minute until Vera walked in with a reminder I hadn’t done the butter patties.

  I said how could I while I was doing the salads and she just squawked and walked away like a rooster. Never had I known anyone so this-and-that as Vera. My mother was a perfectionist, true, but she didn’t have her ten fingers into everything around: the butter patties, the Pyrex coffeemakers, the ruby goblets, the place settings, the plates, glasses, coffee cups, and so on.

  I finished the twelve “personal” lettuce salads, which were no fun because I wasn’t allowed to stick things on them like hard-cooked-egg faces. I tried dressing them up with a slice of black olive on top of each until Vera saw them and told me to remove them, which I did; when her back was turned I hid the olives inside the tight little lettuce leaves.

  What would be wonderful would be Miss Bertha finding hers and thinking it was a bug. I studied an olive slice, then searched the jar for an end slice, which would not have the hole in the middle. I found one, more buglike. I exchanged it for the one with the hole, tucking it into the salad I would serve Miss Bertha.

  In life, just as in my mother’s Angel Pies and Ham Pinwheels, it’s the little things that count. Father Freeman once said to me, “God’s in the details.” The Sheriff said, on the other hand, “The devil’s in the details.” So it made no difference which one of them was planning something, God or the devil, it was the details that mattered.

  I patted Miss Bertha’s Bibb lettuce and took the ice-hard butter patties into the dining room.

  Again, I remembered Aurora’s drink. Mrs. Davidow was on her second martini, so that meant she planned on staying in the kitchen. I grabbed up a ruby goblet, rooted some ice from the butter patty dish, and tossed it in. I hightailed it through the long hall to the lobby and the back office.

  Ree-Jane was standing by the fireplace again, posed with her arm draped across the mantel, talking to herself. She had changed into one of her expensive Heather Gay Struther dresses, this one a pearly blue with a crowd of knife-sharp pleats in the skirt.