The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 2

by Donald Harington

  On the day that her private sheriff’s deputy politely informed her that he was being recalled back to Jasper, the county seat, and that there wasn’t much danger she’d be kidnapped too—although he said to her in parting, “Watch your back, sweetheart”—she had another visit, this time from Bo Pharis. Bo even sat in the same porch chair that Vernon had sat in, and Monica again sat in the swing, although the weather had turned a bit chilly and they both kept their coats on.

  He started with a question, “Monica, honey, did you ever see the movie called The Seven Samurai?” She knew the allusion but hadn’t seen the movie, so she had to shake her head. Bo gave her a plot synopsis, and pointed out, “One by one, the Samurai are killed defending the village, until in the end there are only three left. I too lost my sheriff’s deputy this morning, but I’m not complaining, and I’m not nervous. You shouldn’t be, either. If we followed the script exactly, the remaining three would be Cast, Arch, and myself. But I don’t believe that life follows art. Do you?”

  She knew a lot about art, and she appreciated that Bo was being cultural with her, and was avoiding, at least for the moment, politics. “I always believed that art’s job was to follow life,” she said. “Was there a Samurai like me in the movie? How did she get killed?”

  “None of them were women,” he said. “You know, I’ve thought about renting that film from a video store and showing it to all of us. But it might disturb us. The capture of Lydia and Harry are just a bit too analogous to the movie.”

  “But in the end,” Monica said, “the village is saved, the bandits are destroyed, and goodness triumphs, right? That’s all that matters.”

  Bo smiled at her. “I’m glad you’re philosophical about it.” And then he abruptly changed the subject. “Now, if you will, tell me: what did Vernon say about me?”

  The question caught her by surprise, and of course she wasn’t going to reveal any of the contents of Vernon’s conversation with her to anybody. She certainly wasn’t going to tell Bo that his job was in danger. So she lied. “We didn’t mention you,” she said.

  “No? What did you talk about?”

  “Lydia, of course. He’s giving me her job. If that’s all right with you?”

  “Think you can handle it?”

  “What’s to handle? I don’t have anything to do, until we get the campaign back in gear.”

  “Okay, that’s the main thing I wanted to talk to you about. I am curious if Vernon mentioned me in any way, shape, or form, but my main motive for this conversation is to say this: certainly we hope the two missing Samurai will be restored to us, but we simply cannot afford to keep the campaign in hiatus. The election is less than a month away, and the Bradfield campaign is back in full steam. If we’re going to beat Bradfield, we’ve got to proceed with Plan B: the self-smear procedure revealing Vernon’s Vices.”

  “Try telling Vernon that. He won’t let us use it until Lydia is found.”

  “I’m afraid that Vernon and I are not communicating these days.”

  “Then how did you know that he’d talked with me?”

  “I was watching, from a distance. I saw the two of you here on this porch. For quite a while.”

  “Why aren’t you and Vernon communicating?” she asked with a straight face.

  “There’s been a misunderstanding between us,” Bo replied.

  “Is the misunderstanding named Jelena?” she asked.

  He shot her a look that was part astonishment, part annoyance. “So Vernon did talk to you about me! Did he say anything about me and Jelena?”

  Press secretaries, if they aren’t born that way, must learn to be good liars. But what she said wasn’t a lie: “Vernon was not my source of information about you and Jelena.”

  “Then who was?”

  “Bo, this is a small town. It’s a very small town. It’s practically an unpopulated town.”

  “Monica, I’m still your boss, and I request that you tell me not only who told it to you, but what was said.”

  “If newspeople are permitted to protect their sources,” she declared, “I think press secretaries should be able to protect theirs too. I’m not telling, sorry.”

  “Okay, but can you tell me what you know about me and Jelena?”

  “Just that you’ve put yourself in a compromising position for a candidate’s campaign manager. In other words, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

  He winced. And then he blurted, “But we’re in love!” Having blurted, he blushed.

  “Really? Does Jelena know this?”

  “She certainly does.”

  “Maybe she’s using you,” Monica suggested.

  “Using me? How?”

  “She doesn’t want to move to Little Rock if Vernon is elected governor. So maybe she hopes that you can help her avoid that. I mean, not that she hopes you can keep him from getting elected. But that if he does move to Little Rock, you can steal her away.”

  Bo Pharis studied her. “Monica,” he said, “you’re a lot more perspicacious than anyone gives you credit for.”

  She wasn’t completely sure what the word meant, but she knew she was being complimented. “You’re not planning to become Vernon’s chief of staff, are you?” she asked.

  “Heaven forbid!” he exclaimed. “I wouldn’t want to live in Little Rock if I were made CEO of Alltel!”

  “So what are your plans after the election? Are you going to take Jelena back to Cincinnati?”

  “I couldn’t go back to Cincinnati if I were made CEO of Proctor and Gamble!”

  “Then you plan to stay more in Stay More,” she declared.

  He smiled. “That’s not outside the realm of possibility.”

  “Well,” Monica sighed, “I suppose if we’re going to go ahead and publicize Vernon’s Vices, we might as well throw in all the juicy details of your affair with Jelena.” One thing Lydia had told her, before her disappearance, was that once all of the monotonous revelations of Vernon’s Vices had been piled up, they could get away with anything; they could reveal the affairs between Vernon and Juliana, and Bo and Jelena, without consequence, because if the public was truly inoculated against scandal, one more scandal wouldn’t even be noticed. (“We could even reveal,” Lydia had suggested to Monica, “that Vernon is using you more flagrantly than Bill Clinton used that other Monica.”)

  “I’d rather keep that quiet, if we can,” Bo said. “My hope is that with all the other tidbits in that flapping flock of a hundred albatrosses, the public won’t need to see the lame bird of the candidate’s common-law wife losing her heart to the candidate’s campaign manager.”

  Monica studied him for a moment before replying, “If you say so, I’ll do what I can to keep a lid on it.”

  “Okay. Tomorrow is VV-Day. Tomorrow we leak to the Bradfield people the whole list of a hundred of Vernon’s worst iniquities. How do we make the leak?”

  Monica knew it was a rhetorical question asked of himself, but since she was taking charge in so many other ways, she answered it for him. “Send Bradfield a fax from Harry. Tell him that Harry is being held captive by the Ingledew campaign—no connection with Lydia’s kidnapping—and that he’s alive and well but they won’t let him go because he had defected to Bradfield. He has escaped his captors just long enough to access this fax machine, on which he sends the enclosed: the list of one hundred trespasses of Vernon Ingledew.”

  “Monica, you’re a genius.”

  “If you say so.”

  That night she had a third visitor, in the middle of the night, in the middle, alas, of only one of her dreams, in which Lydia appeared to her and congratulated her on the way she had taken over the press secretary’s job. Lydia said she was alive and well and even happy, since she had her pets with her. “Where are you?” Monica called out, in the dream, and called it again louder, and then louder, and opened her eyes to see Sharon, who told her she must have been having a nightmare.

  But although that was only a dream, dreams have a way of getting us rea
dy for life, so it did not surprise Monica when, before breakfast, upon going out onto the porch to stretch and watch the sun come up over Dinsmore Hill, she found on the edge of the porch a heavy rock weighting down a folded sheet of paper, which she took and unfolded and discovered a message written to herself, and signed by Lydia. Her first thought, since she’d just suggested to Bo the idea of forging a fax under Harry’s name, was that somebody was playing a cruel joke on her. But it was unquestionably Lydia’s handwriting. And it said:

  Dear dear Monica: My captors are allowing me to write and send one note, like when you’re arrested and allowed one phone call. You’re my choice; you’re the one I want most to know that I’m still alive, and I’m not being mistreated or abused in any way, and I’m fairly well-fed, and as you may know I even have my precious cats and my dog with me, and they are just fine too. For whatever it’s worth, my fellow prisoner is Harry Wolfe, who hasn’t been acting like a prisoner at all.

  I am making a good guess that you’ve already replaced me as press secretary, and that doesn’t bother me the slightest. I know you can do a great job. My captors told me that you were virtually the commanding officer during the busy operations of the state troopers, sheriff, FBI, et al. You’re a multi-talented woman, Monica, and I’m proud of you, and proud if I was able to teach you anything during our long friendship. You will go far.

  I suppose it’s time to go ahead and put into effect the precarious Operation Vernon’s Vices, if you haven’t done so already. We should have started much earlier, but my kidnapping distracted everybody. I wish I could be there to make sure that it’s handled adroitly, but I have the utmost confidence in you, dear Monica.

  My captors wish for me to request of you that you do not reveal this message or its contents to anybody. You must agree to this. They say they will harm me if you do not. If you have received this message, and agree to keep it to yourself, indicate your willingness by opening the shade in your room’s window which you customarily keep closed. Just for one day and night. Burn this sheet of paper, now.

  I hope I’ll see you again, when the election is over, and I know our man Vernon is going to be victorious. Don’t waste any prayers on me, honey. Pray for him.

  Love, Lydia.

  How had this been delivered to her? She searched the dirt in front of the porch, and found a set of a man’s footprints, but could tell nothing about them. Possibly a plaster cast should be taken of them, but how could she request that without revealing the reason? It was terribly frustrating not to be able to tell anyone that Lydia was alive and well. But she went at once into her room and opened the shade that covered her window. It made her feel exposed, and she’d have to be careful tonight to turn off the light before undressing or anything. She did not like being ordered around, by Lydia’s captors or anybody, and for this reason she did not burn Lydia’s note but folded it several times and buried it in the bottom of her purse.

  Later that morning she called Cast Sherrill, who was staying, as usual, at his girlfriend Sheila’s house, having abandoned his room at the Ingledew double-bubble even before he’d become involved with Sheila and Bo had become involved with Jelena. Cast had speculated, to Monica, that the affair between Bo and Jelena might not have developed if he, Cast, had still been resident up there.

  Now she told Cast, who of course had replaced Carleton Drew as their media expert just as she had replaced Lydia and that creepy Garth Rucker had replaced Harry, that today was VV-Day, and that she was getting ready to use Larry’s fax machine to send “Harry’s” message to Bradfield, along with the list of a hundred of Vernon’s Vices. Monica wanted Cast to be prepared for the media blitz.

  “Have you cleared this with Vernon?” Cast wanted to know. “You know he won’t allow it as long as Lydia is missing.” Monica was in a bind. If only she were able to get word somehow to Vernon that Lydia was alive and well, Vernon might consent to the full resumption of the campaign. But the shade in her room was up, and open, a reminder to her that she was giving her solemn word not to reveal Lydia’s existence to a soul.

  A kindly soul, a fourth visitor, appeared to Monica later that morning. It was Arch, who had continued to stay at the house of Day and Diana, and who was nominally second-in-command, or, as far as Monica was concerned, since Bo was no longer on speaking terms with Vernon, and since Arch once before had been required to take command when Bo was missing, was now in charge. Monica liked Arch more than any other Samurai, next to Lydia. He was a person you could feel comfortable with, and open up with and feel close to, and trust and have confidence in, and who you could feel completely untroubled speaking prepositions at the end of sentences to.

  “How goes it?” Arch said, sitting himself down in the same captain’s chair where Vernon and Bo had sat. Somehow he seemed like he belonged to such a chair more fittingly than they had.

  “Well, in case you haven’t heard, it’s VV-Day,” she said.

  “That’s what Bo tells me,” Arch said. “Are we all ready?”

  “Except for having obtained approval from the candidate himself,” she said.

  “Which he won’t give without Lydia,” Arch observed.

  “Arch,” she said, and realized this wouldn’t be directly violating the covenant of the open shade, “I know Lydia’s alive. I just have a powerful hunch. Call it woman’s intuition, or better yet call it the result of being on the same wavelength with Lydia for many years. And also she appeared to me in a dream last night, and told me she was alive and well.”

  “I’ve never stopped believing she’s alive and well,” Arch said. “And not only that, but I think she’s probably being held somewhere in the vicinity.” He swept his arms to encompass the world around them. “Anywhere out there in some abandoned house or deep holler or the forest fastness, she could be a prisoner.”

  “But who is holding her? And why?” Monica said, and wondered, since her captors could deliver her message to Monica, why they hadn’t ever bothered to deliver a ransom note. Whoever it was didn’t need any ransom. Whoever—and Monica began to have a new suspicion—was too rich to need any ransom and must have some other motive.

  “I have a hunch,” Arch said. “Day and Diana and I were talking about it last night. The three of us were searching our memories to recall anything Lydia might have said the last time we saw her, which was at suppertime just before she went up to look at the grave at Daniel Lyam Montross. The four of us had sat around the table after dessert and we all had talked a while about Montross. Lydia had been reading about him in another of Harington’s novels.

  “Lydia and I had agreed beforehand that we wouldn’t reveal to Day and Diana the plot of the Samurai to dump all of Vernon’s Vices on the public, even though I knew that it had been Day’s idea in the first place.

  “But these were not the things that we remembered had been talked about after supper that night. It was Diana who recalled that Lydia had asked them—or us, including me—what we thought of Juliana’s plan to build a house and become a permanent resident of that part of Stay More that had belonged to her ancestors.

  “And it was Day who recalled the exact words that Lydia had spoken. ‘Do you realize Juliana Heartstays has no idea that all of us know about her affair with Vernon?’ And Lydia told us how she’d gone to interview Juliana, on the pretext that the public would be fascinated with the story of how Juliana was building a new home on her ancestral lands, which Vernon had given to her, and that the conversation had led to Lydia’s knowledge of, or suspicion of, Juliana’s affair with Vernon, and that Juliana had become upset and alarmed that Lydia knew.

  “And Lydia told us one other fragment of the conversation. It was my turn—not Diana’s or Day’s—to remember almost her exact words: that Juliana had said to her, ‘You had better keep it to yourself. If it gets out, I’ll hold you to blame for any trouble it causes.’”

  Things were meshing for Monica now. She said, “So Juliana went on believing that only Lydia knew about her affair with Vernon.”
/>
  “Right,” Arch said. “You’re starting to catch on. And you’ll recall also how Juliana had come to Stay More in the first place intending to wipe out all the Ingledews. You’ll recall how her manservant had a whole arsenal of weapons in the trunk of that Pierce-Arrow.”

  Monica wanted so desperately to tell Arch about Lydia’s message to her, which had convinced Monica that whoever was keeping Lydia was somewhere in the neighborhood. But she couldn’t violate that part of the open-shade agreement. She asked Arch, “So why didn’t the FBI consider them prime suspects?”

  “What did the FBI know about them? The FBI had to let them leave town along with several other people, like your hosts Larry and Sharon, and Ekaterina, but they had never said or done anything while they were in Stay More that would have made the FBI suspicious of them.”

  Monica told Arch about having read the FBI file on Juliana, which contained nothing suspicious or even interesting, except that her childhood had been marred by abuse, from both her father and an uncle. Juliana had never been in any trouble with the law.

  “Did they have a file on Ben?” Arch asked. Monica shook her head, and Arch said, “Maybe they should have. I suspect he may have had some trouble with the law.”

  “So you think that Juliana and Ben were the kidnappers, and that they’re still somewhere in the neighborhood?”

  “That’s my hunch,” Arch said, “and I’m going to follow it. Could you let me have a look at Harry’s room?”

  The past tense is coming to an end, Monica thought, knowing they were nearing the end of her chapter, after which time would shift. Time would take a dramatic leap into the present tense. She said, “I suppose we’d have to ask Larry and Sharon permission for that.” But Larry and Sharon had gone to Jasper for the day. So she took Arch into the house and let him into Harry’s room. There wasn’t much there: Harry’s suitcase, which contained a few changes of clothes and his shaving kit. He had left nothing much behind, and the FBI had already gone through it.