“There may be nothing to find out.”
“There’s something to find out. And maybe it won’t have anything at all to do with that Charlie or your Sis friend …”
“You snarl when you mention her.”
“Simple, inexplicable jealousy. Be flattered.”
“I’m flattered.”
“You’re even smug. As I was saying, it may not solve your mystery, but maybe I can solve the mystery of Maurice and Charity. The more I think about them, the more strange they seem.”
“Without sounding like your maiden aunt, Peggy, please be damn careful. Meddling got one person a five year jail term. Whatever he doesn’t want found out, he’s taking a lot of pains and money to protect. I don’t think it would be a healthy thing to have him find out you’re prying.”
She smiled up at me. “Thank you, Auntie.” And it did seem a little absurd in that reassuring warmth of the early sun.
“She’s been mixed up with the law.”
“Along time ago.”
“They’re both hiding from something, and they don’t want to be found.”
“Pure assumption.”
“Play it like dangerous, Peggy. Will you do that?”
“Sure. I like the protective bit. I like you, Sam. I like you one hell of a lot. Will you keep that in mind?”
“Permanently.”
“I am not a vacationing cupcake looking for a fast romp with no boring complications.”
“You didn’t have to say that, you know.”
“When I’m clarifying my own attitude, you hush up.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“This was the best evening I’ve had in this last fifth of my life, Sam.”
“It’s been hard to find this kind any more.”
“Since Sis?”
“For God’s sake!”
She laughed at me. “I can make you look like a wounded moose. That gives me a sense of power. When do I sneak out and meet you again?”
“Tonight?”
“When else? Same time, same place, same girl.”
I checked where we were. “Two miles shouldn’t be that short,” I said. “We’ve walked past the shoes and purse.”
“It’s all auto-hypnosis. I’ve read about it.”
We went back and picked up her stuff. As she straightened up she said, “Left one thing out, didn’t you?”
“Probably. But what?”
“Yesterday morning, when you stared at me in that strange way. It’s because I look like Judy?”
“How would you know that?”
“Nothing else could have made you react that way. Do I look too much like her?”
“What would be too much?”
“Where you wouldn’t really be seeing me. You’d be seeing a ghost.”
“No. I see you now. The face is different. The hair is different.”
“Something else is different, Sam.”
“What’s that?”
“The heart is different. I am a steady girl. I have the constant heart. You should run like a rabbit, Sam. When I make a commitment, all the cards go face up, and facing you. So if you have been trying to be a different person all night, trying to fit yourself to me, and you are not at all what you have been pretending to be, then you had best run. I mean it.”
“I think this is what I am, Peggy. Does anybody ever really know?”
“I can play ten thousand little games, but no big games. Am I alarming you?”
No eyes could be steadier than those of a green such as I had never seen before. The left one was set a half-millimeter higher than the right one, and the left brow had a slightly higher arch.
Without taking my eyes from hers, I said, “The eyelashes are like dark copper, but the eyebrows are darker.”
“I cheat with the eyebrows. With a pencil thing. I build up the upper lip with lipstick. I have two moles at the small of my back. I get very messy head colds. I’ve been known to throw things in anger.”
“I’m not alarmed, Peggy.”
She stepped back close to the tree, lifted her arms and said, “Let’s try this one for importance, Brice.” She dropped the purse, the shoes.
It was important. Perhaps a kiss—which is objectively a ludicrous thing, a joining of mouths—is a special form of interrogation and response. We told each other that this could never be a trivial thing. It could be a lot of things, tender, strong, savage and sweet. But never trivial.
The sound of the car heading north on Orange Road broke it up. I saw Luxey go by at the wheel of a county car.
“That’s the polite little man who didn’t want me to wander around in the dark,” she said.
“That’s the polite little man who collapsed me with a night stick.”
“That one?”
“A viper is a very small thing. So is a scorpion. So is a flu germ.” I picked up the purse and shoes.
“Thank you. I’m drunk on morning air and no sleep and being kissed, Sam.”
“It’s a good way to be.”
I walked her to the strip of Weber beach. A deeply tanned woman came down the narrow path through the sea oats. She wore a vivid yellow swim suit with a small skirt effect, and carried a matching beach bag. She was handsomely built, and I knew at once that this was the floozy hair Gus had seen in Charlie’s car. It was worn long, and it was as spurious as a new dime, lifeless as the flax on a store window dummy.
She registered shock and said to Peggy, in an aspirated croak, “I thought you were in bed asleep!” She seemed to be aware only of Peggy, but I could see the physical response to me, an arching of the back, a graceful hip-shot stance, shoulders squared to lift the breasts, belly pulled flat.
“Char, may I present Sam Brice. Sam, this is my sister, Charity Weber.”
Charity managed a dim smile to go with a look like that of a butcher about to grade and disjoint a side of beef. “How do,” she said. “Peggy, why are you dressed like that? When did you go out?”
“Last night, dear. Somewhere around ten. And I happened to run into Sam.”
“Where have you been?”
“Leading a gay, mad, dancing life, Char.”
The woman stared at her. I saw that the deep tan masked some of the corrosion of that face. “Are you drunk, darling?” she asked.
“Just happy. Char, I was going to sneak in and then sneak out again tonight to date Sam again, but now I don’t have to sneak any more, do I?”
Mrs. Weber was in an awkward spot. “Maurice says we have.… uh.… a responsibility to you, dear, so long as you’re our house guest. I don’t think he’ll approve of this. I don’t think he’ll like it at all.”
“What a shame!” Peggy said. “I’ll have to take the rest of my vacation in a local motel. I couldn’t upset Maurice.”
“You know you’re welcome to stay with us, darling.”
“And go out with Sam. I want that understood, Char.”
Charity Weber wheeled on me, suddenly she had everything working for her, the eyes, the mouth, the figure, all of it aggressive, provocative, flirtatious and ironic. I could see how that practised impact would have blinded Charlie Haywood to the difference in their ages, to the fact of her marriage. Innocent Charlie had been a mouse sandwich for a panther. For the sake of all that humid promise he would have marched woodenly off to pillage Fort Knox.
“You are a big beastie, Sam Brice,” she croaked.
“It keeps me out of sports cars.”
“Local, aren’t you, Sam?” she asked.
“Incurably, Mrs. Weber. I went out into the wide world but they didn’t appreciate me out there, and so I came home.”
“I compliment your taste, Big Sam. This lovely little sister of mine is a rare kind of creature. Do you sense that?”
“From the first.”
“And I have so few house guests, Sam.” She moved closer to me. “I do want to enjoy her while she’s here. I guess it’s only normal she should have the occasional date. You won’t be greedy will you?”
>
“I work for my living, Mrs. Weber.”
“I can spare her in the evening, Sam, but if you keep her out all night she’ll sleep all day.”
“It makes me feel strange to have you two splitting me up,” Peggy complained.
“I’ll be more conservative next time,” I said.
“You can come and call for me properly,” Peggy said.
“Just stop in front, Sam,” Charity said. “You don’t have to come to the door. I know it’s rude, but Mr. Weber doesn’t like callers. People upset him. He’s a very shy man. That’s why we aren’t … very social people.” She patted my arm quickly. “I think you’re going to be very nice about the whole thing, aren’t you?”
“Intensely cooperative,” I said.
She gave me a somewhat dubious look, then smiled and said, “You children say good night or good morning or whatever it is, while I swim.”
She tucked her hair into a yellow cap and walked into the immature surf.
“More cooperative than I expected,” Peggy said. “But what else could she do?”
“What else indeed, after that motel remark?”
“I guess that was rude. But I’m not their ward, and I’m not a child. Sam … darling. Is that as good to hear as it is to say?”
“Better.”
“Darling, I’ll solve your mystery for you. I’ll be an expert sneak.”
“A careful sneak, please. The broad in the yellow suit is a very hard piece of material, Peggy.”
“There’s something so lost about her.”
“And Mikoyan is probably a very disturbed man. But I wouldn’t try to hold his hand.”
“There’s nothing sinister about Char!”
“She didn’t mean any harm when she destroyed Charlie Haywood’s life. She just did it for the hell of it.”
“Go home to bed, Sam. You’re getting grouchy.”
I walked to the road with her, and walked down the road past Ack’s to my parked car. When I looked back she was still standing there, waiting for me to look back, so she could wave.
7
The alarm woke me up at two o’clock on Friday afternoon, and I was in the office by three. I took care of some appraisal reports. No matter what I was doing, Peggy Varden hovered pleasantly over one corner of my mind. Nothing she had been able to tell me about the Webers had been of any help. I wondered if there might be some helpful information on file over at the County Courthouse, some clues in the papers pertaining to the real estate transfer, possibly on the photostat of the recorded deed.
Vince Avery gave me the information on how to find it in the deed books, referring to the government lot line number. I went to the office of the County Clerk in the new wing of the courthouse. I found the photostat of the deed. The previous owner of record was Mr. Jason Hall of Tampa. He had sold that particular piece of property to the Starr Development Company, an Illinois corporation with the address given as a box number in Chicago. The necessary documents had been signed by a Mr. E. D. Dennison, treasurer of the company. I suddenly remembered that Dennison was the name of the man who had arranged the purchase of the land and the construction of the house.
I arrived at the office of the County Tax Collector at five minutes of five. I learned that the annual property tax bill, amounting to a little over fourteen hundred dollars, was sent each year to the Starr Development Company and was paid promptly by cashier’s check.
I drove back to my cottage, trying to make sense out of what I had learned. It was commonly believed that Weber owned the house and land. He could still own it, less directly, if he owned Starr Development. There might be some tax reason for having a corporation own the house. But, between Ack and Peggy, I was beginning to get a picture of a man who would not be likely to own a corporation.
At least I had some new information, but I didn’t have any idea what to do with it. By the time I had carried a tall drink out onto my small porch I remembered Lou Leeman. He was one of the very, very few who made a human response when I got into the trouble that wrecked my career. He was on the sports desk at the Chicago Daily Mirror. When the rumor spread through the Thump and Sprawl Industry, a lot of people heckled me for a statement. The rumors were so much worse than the actuality I wished I could tell them. But I had given my word.
It was Lou who came up to me in an airport terminal and said, “They tell me you won’t talk, Sam.”
“They tell you true.”
“Out like permanent?”
“Forever and ninety-nine years. My idea, you know. I got sick of the game.”
He squared himself away and cocked a smoky blue jaw. “I’ve watched you too long and too hard, boy. You never dog it. You’ve never been cute. It’s like a laboratory demonstration of a kind of character that has to run all the way through a man. So whatever it was, I would say you’re taking a fall for stupidity, not crookedness.”
“I just happened to give up the game, Lou.”
“If you ever can talk, and … if there was anything to talk about … who would you come see?”
“Some creep name of Leeman.”
I thought about Lou through half a drink, then went in and placed a person to person call. A cooperative long distance operator tracked him down at home.
“A voice from braver days,” he said. “Back when the world was young.”
“Does this long white beard muffle my voice too much, for God’s sake?”
“I guess maybe it’s blubber. What do you scale, Sam? Three hundred?”
“Two seventeen last time I checked it. Lou, you’re the only guy in Chicago who would do me a favor. But I want you to bill me for your time and expenses.”
“All I’ll ask for is a freeload vacation in Florida.”
“It’s a deal!” I told him to check out the Starr Development Company and one E. D. Dennison, treasurer of same. I gave him the post-office box number. He told me to wait while he looked in the phone book.
“No Starr Development and no E. D. Dennison listed, pal. Can you clue me on what I’m looking for?”
“I don’t know, exactly. I want to find out if it’s legitimate or crooked or what the hell it is.”
“But it is an Illinois corporation?”
“Yes.”
“Then I know where to start. Right at the capitol, at the Attorney General’s office, I got a good contact there.”
“When can you get on it?”
“Not until Monday morning now. Too late?”
“No. But as soon as you know a thing, Lou, phone me collect.” I gave him both phone numbers. We chatted a little while longer about other things, and then I went back to my half-drink.
At nine o’clock I stopped the wagon on the road in front of the Weber place. I could see lights through the plantings, but I could not see the house. I gave one genteel beep on the horn. Peggy did not exactly come out at a dead run, but she wasted no time. Yet, just as I started to open the car door on my side to go around and open the door for her, a familiar light blinded me.
“You again,” LeRoy said in a disgusted voice.
“Which part of my head do you want to beat?”
“Smart talk me, mister, and I’ll whip all parts of it up down and around. What you want around here?”
“He came to pick me up,” Peggy said in a flat and deadly tone of voice. “And he may do it quite often.” The light swiveled and steadied on her for a moment and then clicked out.
“I got to check anything that moves around here in the night time,” Luxey said stubbornly. “If’n he stops here forty times a night he gets checked out every time. That’s the orders I got given to me, ma’am. And you worried me all the night through last night, ma’am, the way you went wandering off onto the beach and never did come back. I didn’t know as I should tell anybody because it didn’t come under guarding the place. When I come on tonight I looked in a window and seen you and felt better.”
“Darn it, that’s so sweet I can’t stay mad at you. But I am mad at you for hitting
Mr. Brice on the head, officer.”
“You call me Depity. Depity LeRoy Luxey, ma’am. If’n this Brice weren’t so big he wouldn’t got hit so fast, but the size I am, I can’t stand around on one laig talking polite to a smart-mouth man in the dark what won’t answer questions sensible and comes at me. Frankly, I don’t care if he’s got hard feelings or not, but I just as soon you wouldn’t, ma’am, being as how you could understand how it is.”
“I got smacked for being stupid, Luxey. And that’s the story of my life.”
“From now on blank your lights on and off twice and I won’t bother you none,” he said, and he faded silently off into the shadows.
I started up as soon as Peggy was beside me. “Find a dark place and whoa this thing, Sam,” she said.
I pulled off to the left under the pines beyond the Turner place, and killed the lights. As I turned toward her, she dug herself into my arms and laced her small fingers together at the nape of my neck. “How’s this for restraint?” she asked with laughter behind her voice. “How’s this for demure and shy?”
“I’ve got to admit it’s efficient.”
After a miraculous darkness of long minutes she plumped back to her side of the seat with a great sigh of satisfaction. “Drive on,” she said. “I had to make sure I hadn’t imagined the whole thing. Where are we going?”
“I thought I’d ask you to name the kind of place and I’ll find it.”
“Sam?”
“Yes, honey.”
“Sam, you know I haven’t made my mind up or anything about you.”
“I know. But you will.”
“One way or the other, Sam?”
“I’m still right here, driving this car, ma’am.”
“You remember what I told you … about how I’m really a very moral kind of person, but people get the wrong idea?”
“I remember.”
“I want to see where you live.” She said it defiantly. I had to laugh at her. She didn’t want any misunderstanding.
“Stop braying, damn it,” she said.
“Peggy, my friend, I try not to spoil anything that’s worth anything. I was going to go through the same routine, only I was going to do it later in the evening, because I’d like you to see the place. I was even going to bring up the moral person bit, so you wouldn’t figure it for a fancy pass.”
Where Is Janice Gantry? Page 12