They were both insufferable, but Peggy more so, since she thought being in her teens made her queen of everything. She lorded it over me and even tried to hang out with Ree-Jane, who was nearly seventeen by now. For once I admired her horrible manners: every time Peggy came around, Ree-Jane walked the other way.
Joanne wasn’t quite as bad as Peggy, but that was only because she hadn’t lived two years longer.
They took lessons in everything: horseback riding, tennis, ice-skating, piano (which gave Mill a few laughs), and ballet. They came into the garage dangling ballet shoes of pink satin. They weren’t wearing that tulle-stuff ballerinas do, but their dresses were still flouncy. Priscilla claimed to be a children’s clothes designer. I said if Mrs. Tree was a designer, I was Jim Beam. That got a big laugh out of Mrs. Davidow.
Priscilla joined in the cocktail hour, but she wasn’t any fun. Mrs. Davidow was always rolling her eyes at Priscilla, who insisted she was an expert cocktail maker and once asked Lola Davidow if she knew how to make a “truly dry martini.” That was like asking John Dillinger if he knew the way to Chicago.
Even Miss Bertha mocked “the stuck-up Trees,” as she called them. She went so far as to straighten up and put her nose in the air, which, considering her hump, took a lot of grit.
I watched the Tree girls strapping on their satin toe shoes, and then the two started pattering around and waving their arms in the air.
“What are they supposed to be doing?” I asked Will, who was now sitting by Chuck in the so-called cockpit of the plane. Chuck was their lighting expert.
“We haven’t decided yet.”
“You’ve got a couple of toe dancers on an airplane with a dead body and you don’t know why they’re there?”
“Well, we know one thing,” said Chuck, snuffling a laugh around in his nose.
Will joined in. “Yeah.”
Mill was down at the piano riffling away at “Paper Moon.”
Peggy and Joanne were circling around with their eyes closed, bouncing up and down on their toes to some tune in their heads that wasn’t Mill’s.
Paper moon. Trampoline. Toe dancers.
I could just imagine.
BYE, BYE, BLACKBIRD
33
I considered the best time to approach Morris Slade and decided on the cocktail hour, when people always seemed to be less on guard. That is, drinkers were. I certainly assumed Morris Slade was one. He had, after all, been a playboy.
I would present myself as working for the Conservative and wanting an interview for the story of the Belle Ruin. This had the disadvantage of being the truth. I’d rather have pretended to be selling Girl Scout cookies (the Girl Scouts being a bunch I would drop dead before joining). But here I was stuck with the truth.
Usually, a cocktail hour went from around five to six, although Mrs. Davidow could stretch that at either end, as could Aurora Paradise. It was not a good time for me, as I was supposed to be in the kitchen at five-thirty.
My work for the newspaper, however, gave me leeway. So I asked Walter, who was always in the kitchen, to tell my mother I’d be a little late, as I was interviewing someone for my article. I also told Walter to take a drink up to Aurora Paradise at five o’clock. It was ready in the icebox behind the big block of ice.
“What kind is it?” Walter was always interested in my drink menu. He was wiping a big platter. Doing dishes was a continuous process—washing, wiping—so Walter was always doing them.
I shrugged. “I just made it out of scraps. Some Jim Beam, some Gordon’s gin, and some orange and pineapple juice.”
Walter thought about that at length. “You can call it a Gin Beam.”
“Good, Walter!” I clapped. “That’s really good! She’ll like that!” Aurora would like anything in a glass that could walk on its own.
I had the night before prepared my questions carefully and would not ask anything in a way that would put Morris Slade off; that is, not ask anything in an accusing manner the way police always did: “And where were you between nine o’clock and eleven o’clock on the night of the murder?” Would the person who’d done it answer, “I was in the room with the victim”?
I wanted to look businesslike, so I searched my wardrobe for something ironed. I found a plain blue-and-white checkered dress.
Usually, I looked wrinkled, even my hair. Even my face, if it had been lying against a pillow, as sometimes it was when I watched Perry Mason.
I sat at my makeshift dressing table, a painted board balanced across twin dressers, and brushed my hair a lot. It was straight and hung to my shoulders and looked completely businesslike. I wanted to leave the flowery barrettes out, but then my hair would be flopping around and getting in my eyes and not like Veronica Lake’s, either. My ears wouldn’t hold it back the way I have seen women’s ears do, like models and movie stars, as if their ears were made for that purpose. I pushed the barrettes back in. I then tried out several smiles and was satisfied with the one that looked friendly, but not overly.
It was half past four when I left the hotel grounds, and I took my time walking across the highway to the other side of Spirit Lake. The Woodruff house sat a few houses down and across from Mrs. Louderback’s.
The single car parked at the curb was the red convertible I had taken for Morris Slade’s when I’d driven by with Delbert. I decided I would stroll by once or twice, just to see if there was any life going on inside. Since it was not yet dark, I couldn’t tell by inside lighting if any of the houses were occupied. Windows merely squared off interior darkness.
There were a few people here and there sitting out on their porches, fatly bunched on creaking metal gliders or glued into rocking chairs. They were extremely interested in me, as I was the only thing moving out here at the moment.
So here I now stood on the Woodruffs’ porch, pushing a bell which chimed distantly inside as if church bells were ringing in another town.
Here I was, my questions prepared, my clothes, my hair, my smile prepared.
What I wasn’t prepared for was Morris Slade himself.
34
He opened the door and said “Hello,” and I just stood there like a scarecrow, only ironed. Birds could have nested in my brightly brushed hair or perched on my barrettes, and I wouldn’t have moved.
He said it again—“Hello”—with an even bigger smile, as if my silence amused him, although he didn’t give the impression he was laughing at me.
I cleared my throat, which at least showed I could make a sound, balled up my fist in front of my mouth as if I were about to cough, rehearsed the word “hello” in my head to see if it was a real word, then blurted out: “My name is Emma Graham.”
My mouth snapped shut like Ree-Jane’s silver compact. I would even have been glad—unbelievable!—for Ree-Jane’s presence, if only to take up the slack.
Morris Slade took it up himself. “Emma Graham. That sounds familiar, for some reason. Please come in.”
I walked into a room full of shadows and plants. It was cool; it smelled green and somehow drenched. The silky rug I was standing on might as well have been water. I thought for a moment it had started to rain outside, but the whispery sound came from the turning palms of the ceiling fan.
I could have been in the Florida Keys with Humphrey Bogart in a hurricane, but I was in Spirit Lake with Morris Slade in air stirred by a fan. Either way, it had to be a movie.
He picked up an elaborately cut martini glass (one thing I can always identify), raised it a bit, and said, “Would you like something to drink?”
I almost said, “Whatever you’re having,” but caught myself. “Yes, thank you.”
He turned to a highly polished table, walnut, or maybe cherry, that the fan veiled in moving shadows and which held a lot of bottles and an ice bucket (another familiar item).
“Coca-Cola? Root beer? Scotch?” He smiled.
I smiled back. “Coke, please.”
He picked up a glass, not a squatty, ordinary one, but one like his
own, dropped an ice cube in it, and filled it with Coke. Then he set it on a table beside a rattan chair across from a matching sofa. “Sit down, why don’t you?”
Why didn’t I? I did.
So did he, on the sofa. “You’ve got a journal there.” He nodded at my spiral notebook. “You’re a writer?”
I was astonished that he would say this, and more that he would say it without a hint of sarcasm or teasing. I was astonished right out of my trance. This person had had a lot of practice being wonderful.
“Well, yes. I mean I’m writing this long story for the Conservative. You know.”
He nodded. “The local paper.”
“I’m interviewing people.” But I didn’t know how to get to it: the Belle Ruin. The kidnapping. I wondered, as I hadn’t before (since I was too busy being me), if it might be truly upsetting for him. If he wasn’t involved, if his baby had really disappeared . . . Why hadn’t I considered his feelings before? Where was all of my smooth preparation? I looked down at my notebook.
Morris Slade had taken a cigarette case out of his jacket pocket and was tapping a cigarette against its silver surface. “I’m a person of interest here?”
I nodded. “See, this starts forty years ago, with the Devereau sisters.” I felt like I was walking a minefield. “There was Mary-Evelyn, first.”
“First?”
“The first death. They said she drowned. But she was murdered by her sisters.”
“My God.” He stopped in the process of bringing his lighter up to his cigarette. “This isn’t just gossip? I mean, you’re sure of it?”
I nodded.
“Rose Devereau was my half sister, but I hardly—. I was a lot younger than Rose.” He lit the cigarette, inhaled, exhaled. “It wasn’t long after I was married that Rose was killed by her husband—or so it was assumed.”
“Ben Queen. No. Her daughter Fern killed her.”
The cigarette stopped on its way to the ashtray. Something jarred him here. “What? I didn’t hear about that.”
“Well, nobody did. It’s only recently been discovered.” I’d have liked to add by me, but didn’t. “Ben Queen, Fern’s father, knew it. He took the blame.”
“Good lord. How do you know all this, Emma?”
“It’s the story I’m writing—well, part of it.” I picked up the gorgeous glass that held my Coca-Cola. It tasted a lot better than Coke usually tasted. Cold from the melted ice cube, the drink revived me a little. I moved into my smoothly prepared questions. “Now. You used to live in La Porte, didn’t you?”
He smoked and seemed to be watching me through narrowed eyes.
I was twelve. What was to watch?
“I did, yes. I was born here, as a matter of fact.”
“But you haven’t been back in twenty years. Well, I was told that.”
His smile was slighter. “You were told?”
“Someone said he was surprised to see you, that you hadn’t been here in a long time. Since”—I went for it—“the Belle Ruin.”
He paused. He smoked again. “How does the Belle Ruin fit into this story about the Devereaus?”
Because I’m fitting it in, I wanted to say. “I’ll tell you how: Too many bad things happen around here. Three murders, an attempted murder, a kidnapping.” I paused, feeling sorrowful. “Your baby.”
Then I knew why I was fitting it all in. “I’m calling it ‘Tragedy Town.’ ”
35
It had just come to me, and I wish it hadn’t.
Tragedy Town.
It was from that point, from the point of my merely saying it, that things began to change. I don’t mean change in the sense of weather changing or fortunes being lost or made, or even luck turning. It was more in the way the world looked.
I stood on the pavement outside the Woodruff house after Morris Slade had driven off in his red sports car, and I sort of seized up, the way an engine does, the way the engine of Dwayne’s truck did once. Or it was like getting a muscle cramp. I could not seem to get to the next thought. Maybe this was really writer’s block, even though I wasn’t writing.
I just stood there staring into the gray light. Everything looked rinsed by rain, not clearer and brighter, but sadder. When a thought did come, it was of the Waitresses. It was strange to me I could not remember how many there were. Usually I saw three of them. But it could have been four or five. They probably did not all come at the same time, yet I always saw them together, a flock of bright birds, flying into my small life and then flying away.
I had to get my feet moving toward the hotel. When my feet did move, it was with an old person’s shuffle. I just didn’t want to go much of anyplace. I wanted to lie down in the grass or lean against the fence and do nothing, except think over what Morris Slade had said. Or not said.
“That’s pretty terrible, Emma. When did all of this happen? And to whom? The little Devereau girl was drowned, you said. Ben Queen’s daughter. And Rose.” He looked away at that, his cigarette busy with an ashtray that stood on a tall brass pillar. “An attempted murder? Whom did that happen to?”
“Me.”
I told him the story, in every bit of detail I could think of. I must, he said, have been terrified, and yet I’d been almost unbelievably self-possessed.
I agreed.
“And Ben Queen saved you?” Yes. He thought for a long time. “Ben Queen is a good man. I never did think he killed Rose. He loved her too much.”
When I say he fell silent, falling is a lot like what it was, as if he had been up here in the half-light and then suddenly dropped into something murkier and far more troubling.
“That’s what I thought too,” I said, and then found myself in the same troubled waters. I felt things were hard for him, and couldn’t bring myself to mention the Belle Ruin again.
But he did: “The Belle Ruin. Is that part of your story?”
My mind quickened, and I said “Yes” before he could change his. “A big part. It’s the most mysterious thing that’s ever happened around here.”
He smoked and looked at me for a while. “You’ve got a theory, haven’t you?”
“Well . . .” I looked off through one of the long windows where I made out the thin silver threads of a spider’s web. Where were my roundabout ways? Why weren’t they helping me now? A tiny spider dangled from the end of a thread. My vision seemed to have increased by about a thousand percent.
He said, “There were a lot of theories. One was certainly that the kidnapping never happened.” For the first time he picked up his glass and drank.
All that came to mind was that Lola Davidow would never have let a martini sit idly by that way. “I know; I heard that too. And that Mr. Woodruff paid off the police not to investigate.”
He just looked at me. Then he said, “It really did happen, though.”
“There was never any ransom demand?”
“No.”
We sat for a little bit in silence and then he glanced at his watch and apologized and said he had to go; he had an appointment.
I realized, after the car drove off, that I had missed my golden opportunity. Why hadn’t I asked him why he was back in La Porte? What had brought him here? Oh, he said he’d be glad to talk to me again, that, very briefly, he and his wife had never found out what happened to their child and it had been awful, the worst thing that had ever happened to him.
So I plodded along, irritated with myself.
But then I thought, Morris Slade hadn’t really wanted to talk about the kidnapping or about Baby Fay.
You can’t hang around in Tragedy Town for long or you might never leave.
36
I next tried out the idea of “Tragedy Town” on Miss Flyte and Miss Flagler.
Miss Bertha and Mrs. Fulbright were the only guests for dinner that night, and they were done by six-thirty. I phoned for a cab ahead of time and was climbing into it before seven.
I had told my mother I wanted to see the movie at the Orion. What movie? she asked, tryin
g to keep a grip on my movie education.
“Public Enemy,” I said, “with James Cagney.”
“That’s an old movie, isn’t it? It’s much too violent.”
You’d think she’d never spent a day at the Hotel Paradise. Ten minutes up in the Big Garage would make James Cagney look like her best pal.
“I guess it is,” I agreed, and went into town anyway.
I told Delbert to drop me off at the Orion Theater. Delbert (as always) wanted to know what I was doing going into town in the evening.
“If I want you to drop me at the Orion, what do you think?”
“You gonna see that James Cagney movie? That’s what I want to see. I like them gangster shows.”
“I like men with guns.” I said this despite my vow never to give Delbert any informatin to chew over. My world had altered; things were just popping out. I’d have to watch myself.
Delbert liked the “men with guns” comment; he hee-hawed and slapped the steering wheel as if I’d just said the funniest thing.
I don’t know why I’d said it, unless men with guns seemed an obvious part of my sadder worldview.
When I piled out of the cab in front of the Orion, Delbert asked me what I was going to do until the movie started, which wouldn’t be for another half hour.
“Shoot up the place,” I said, and slammed the door.
As well as their morning coffee break, Miss Flyte and Miss Flagler often had dinner together in Miss Flagler’s kitchen after their work-day was done. Their shops were dark in front, their living quarters lighted behind.
However, Miss Flyte’s plate-glass storefront window was never completely dark. She owned the Candlewick, and there were always candles burning in it after dark. Not real ones, of course, but electrified ones; still, their small lights gave the impression of flickering flames.
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