The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper

by John D. MacDonald

  She snickered. “My grandma kept telling me, she’d say, ‘Lorrie, when you got your haid in the lion’s mouth, just you lay quiet. You keep forgetting and it’s gone get you in bad trouble.’ ”

  “So?”

  “Mr. McGee, I got to do the late checkouts. Cathy wasn’t all as fine as I said. She said she felt far off. She worked slow and her tongue sounded thick and she said she felt like her skull was cracked open up on top. So Jase drove her on home, and I got two of her late rooms and three of my own to do up.”

  “Will you think about it, at least?”

  With an enigmatic smile she walked away slowly. She had her hands in the pockets of the uniform skirt. She scuffed her heels and went a dozen steps, then stopped and looked back at me over her shoulder, her smile merry and impudent.

  “I might see if there’s a thing worth knowing. But if there was and I told you and you told somebody I told you, if they come to me about it, they’re going to come up onto the dumbest black girl south of George Wallace.”

  Nobody looks far enough down the road we’re going. Someday one man at a big button board can do all the industrial production for the whole country by operating the machines that make the machines that design and make the rest of the machines. Then where is the myth about anybody who wants a job being able to find it?

  And if the black man demands that Big Uncle take care of him in the style the hucksters render so desirable, then it’s a sideways return to slavery.

  Whitey wants law and order, meaning a head-knocker like Alabama George. No black is going to grieve about some nice sweet dedicated unprejudiced liberal being yanked out of his Buick and beaten to death, because there have been a great many nice humble ingratiating hardworking blacks beaten to death too. In all such cases the unforgivable sin was to be born black or white, just as in some ancient cultures if you were foolish enough to be born female, they took you by your baby heels, whapped your fuzzy skull on a tree, and tossed the newborn to the crocs.

  And so, Mrs. Lorette Walker, no solutions for me or thee, not from your leaders be they passive or militant, nor from the politicians or the liberals or the head-knockers or the educators. No answer but time. And if the law and the courts can be induced to become color-blind, we’ll have a good answer, after both of us are dead. And a bloody answer otherwise.

  Thirteen

  I stopped in the driveway at 28 Haze Lake Drive at ten of three. As I got out of the car motion caught my eye and I saw Biddy waving to me from the window of the studio over the boathouse.

  She opened the door as I got to the top of the outside staircase. She seemed to be in very good spirits. She wore baggy white denim shorts and a man’s blue work shirt with the sleeves scissored off at the shoulder seam. The seams came about four inches down her upper arms. She had a little smear of pale blue pigment along the left side of her jaw and a little pattern of yellow spatter on her forehead. The familiar slow heavy breathing was coming over the intercom.

  “Maybe it’s the extra sleep you let me have, Travis. Or maybe because it’s a lovely day. Or maybe because Maurie seems so much better.”

  “Electrosleep?” I asked, gesturing at the speaker.

  “Oh, no. Just to get her to sleep and then I took it off. It’s more natural that way, even though I don’t really think she gets quite as much rest out of it.”

  I looked at the canvas she was working on. “Seascape?”

  “Well, sort of. It’s from the sea oats that used to grow in front of the Casey Key place, the way you could see the blue water through the stems and the way they waved in the breeze. It’s coming along the way I want it. We can keep talking while I work.”

  “So she’s much better?”

  “I’m sure of it. Strange how maybe something changed for her when she was lost and we were trying to find her. At least she didn’t go off and let somebody buy her too many drinks and get into some kind of nasty situation. I guess she must have been wandering around in the brush. But she doesn’t remember anything about it. She just seems to … have a better grip on herself. Tom is terribly pleased about it. I even think it might be all right to take her to the opening tomorrow night, but Tom is dubious.”

  “Opening of what?”

  “Maybe you noticed that big new building at the corner of Grove Boulevard and Lake Street? Twelve stories? Lots of windows? Well, anyway, it’s there and it’s new, and it’s a project Tom has been working on for almost a year now. He organized the investment group and got the land lease. The Courtney Bank and Trust will move into the first four floors next week, or start moving next week. Almost all the space is rented already. Tom is moving his offices to the top floor. It’s really a lovely suite of offices, and the decorators have been working like madmen to get it done in time. So tomorrow night it’s sort of a preview of the new offices of Development Unlimited, a party with bartender and caterer and all, beginning just at sundown. He thinks it will be too much for her, but if she is as good tomorrow as she is today, I really think we ought to try it. If she begins to act as if she can’t handle it, I can always bring her home. She is sleeping well now, because I made her swim and swim and swim.”

  I looked down into the back lawn and saw a chin-whiskered man in overalls and Mennonite hat guiding a power mower.

  “What did you want to ask me about, Trav?”

  “Nothing of any importance. I wondered if you know a Mrs. Holton. Janice Holton?”

  “Is she sort of … dark and vivid?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was introduced to her once, I think. But I really don’t know her. I mean I would speak to her if I saw her, but I haven’t seen her in weeks and weeks. Why?”

  “Nothing. I met her Sunday night after I left here, and she looks like somebody I used to know. I didn’t get to ask her. I thought you might know something about her, like where she’s from, so I could figure out if she’s the same one.”

  “I really don’t know a thing about her except she seems nice. She must have had quite an impact on you, if you came all the way out here to ask me that.”

  “I didn’t. I just had some odds and ends. That’s one of them. I wondered about something else. I don’t mean to pry. But remember, I’m sort of an unofficial uncle. Did your mother leave you enough to get along on?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Enough! Heavens. When she knew she needed the first operation, back before Maurie became so sick with that miscarriage, she told each of us how she had set things up and asked us if we wanted anything changed while she still had time. Some enormously clever man handled her finances after Daddy died, and made her a lot of money. There are two trust accounts, one for me and one for Maurie. After estate taxes and legal costs and probate costs and all that, there’ll be some fantastic amount in trust for each of us, close to seven hundred thousand dollars! So as soon as it’s settled and the Casey Key house is sold and all, we’ll start getting some idiotic amount like forty thousand a year each. I had no idea! It’s tied up in trust until each of us reaches forty-five, or until our oldest child gets to be twenty-one. If we have no children, then of course we just have access to the whole amount when we’re forty-five. But if we do, then each child gets a hundred-thousand-dollar trust fund when it gets to be twenty-one, and because, by the time you’re forty-five, you certainly know there aren’t going to be any more kids, the same amount is sequestered—is that the word?—for your kids, like if you have five all under twenty-one, then a hundred thousand would be set aside for each one for their trust funds, and you would get what’s left over.”

  “What happens if either of you die?”

  “All the money would be left in trust for the kids, if I was married and had any. And if not, the trust would just sort of end and Maurie would get the amount that’s in trust. God, Travis, it is such a horrid feeling thinking these past weeks what would happen if Maurie did manage to kill herself. Hundreds of thousands of dollars directly to me, and all that income from the trust. It’s spooky, because I never knew and
I never thought of myself that way. I knew there would be some, of course. But past a certain point it just gets ridiculous.” She turned from the painting, brush in hand, and smiled at me. “Dear Uncle, you do not have to worry about my finances.” Her face saddened abruptly. “Mother just didn’t have much of a life, the last six years of it. After we got back to the Key, after my father died, we’d take long walks on the beach, the three of us, every morning. She talked to us. She made us understand that Mick Pearson just could not have ever accepted a neat, tidy, orderly, wellregulated little life. He had to bet it all, every time. And I remember that she said to us that if she’d only had five years of him, or ten, or fifteen instead of twenty-one, she would still have settled for that much life with him instead of forty years with any other man she’d ever met. She said that was what marriage was all about and she hoped we’d both find something just half as perfect.”

  “Did she have her first operation here?”

  “Yes. You see, Maurie was almost five months pregnant and she’d lost the first baby at six months. It was an absolutely stupid accident the first time. She drove down to pick up a cake she’d ordered for Tom’s birthday and it was in July two years ago, and she was driving back in a heavy rain and she started to put on the brakes and the cake started to slide off the seat, and she grabbed for it and when she did, she stomped harder on the brake and the car slid and she went up over the curb and hit a palm tree, and the steering wheel hit her in the stomach, and about three hours later, in the hospital, she aborted and the baby was alive, actually, a preemie, but less than two pounds, and she just didn’t make it. It was very sad and all, but Maurie told me on long distance there was no point in my coming down. She recovered very quickly. So I guess mother thought she’d better come over and keep Maurie from running into any palm trees so she would have her first grandchild. After she was here a week or so, she noticed some bleeding and had a checkup and they decided they’d better operate. She had Dr. William Dyckes, and he is fabulously good. When we knew she was going to be operated on, I came down to be with her and do what I could. Then, three days after she was operated on, Maurie went into some kind of kidney failure and had convulsions and lost her second baby, and hasn’t been right since. While they were both in there, I flew up and packed and closed my apartment and put stuff in storage and had the rest shipped down.”

  “When was all that?”

  “A year ago last month. Or a lifetime ago. Take your pick. Dr. Bill operated on Mother again last March. And then she died on the third of this month.” She frowned. “Only eleven days ago, Trav! But it seems much longer ago. And it was, of course. They kept her so doped, trying to build her up at the same time, for the operation. She was so tiny and shrunken. She looked seventy years old. You’d never have known her. And she was so … damned brave. I’m sorry. Excuse me. What the hell good is bravery in her situation?”

  “Was there any chance?”

  “Not the faintest. Bill explained it to Tom and me. I had to give permission. He said he thought it might help her to do another radical, take out more of the bowel, cut some nerve trunks to ease the pain. He wasn’t kidding me. I know he didn’t give her much chance of surviving it. But … he liked Mom. And she might have lasted for another two months, even more, before it killed her.”

  I sat and made casual talk for a little while, watching her at work. She asked me to come to the party Tuesday evening. I said I might if I didn’t have to leave town before then. She said that if Tom wasn’t tied up, the three of them were going to drive down to Casey Key next Sunday, and she would look for that information about the Likely Lady.

  • • •

  I found the Boughmer house at 90 Rose Street without difficulty, but it was twenty after four when I walked up the porch steps and rang the bell. The blinds were closed against the afternoon heat. A broad doughy woman appeared out of the gloom and looked out at me through the screen. She wore a cotton print with a large floral design. She had brass-gold hair so rigidly coiffed it looked as if it had been forged from a single piece of metal.

  “Well?”

  “My name is McGee, Mrs. Boughmer. I called about talking to your daughter on that insurance matter?”

  “You’re not very businesslike about arriving on time. You don’t look like a business person to me. Do you have any identification?”

  I had found three of the old cards and moved them into the front of the wallet before I got out of my car. Engraved, fancy, chocolate on buff. D. Travis McGee. Field Director. Associated Adjusters, Inc. And a complex Miami address, two phone numbers, and a cable address.

  She opened the door just far enough for me to slip the card through. She studied it, ran the ball of her thumb over the lettering, opened the door, and gave it back to me.

  “In here, please, Mr. McGee. You might try the wing chair. It’s very comfortable. My late husband said it was the best chair he ever sat in. I will go see about my daughter.”

  She went away. It was a small room with enough furniture and knickknacks in it for two large rooms. The broad blades of a ceiling fan turned slowly overhead, humming and whispering. I counted lamps. Nine. Four floor and five table. Tables. Seven. Two big, four small, one very small.

  She came marching back in, straight as a drill sergeant. A younger woman followed her. I stood up and was introduced to Helen Boughmer. Thirty-three, maybe. Tall. Bad posture. Fussy, frilly, green silk blouse. Pale pleated skirt. Sallow skin. Very thin arms and legs fastened to a curious figure. It was broad but thin. Wide across the shoulders, wide across the pelvis. But with imperceptible breasts and a fanny that looked as if it had been flattened by a blow with a one-by-ten plank. Pointed nose. Mouse hair, so fine the fan kept stirring it. Glasses with gold metal frames, distorting lenses. Nervous mannerisms with hands and mouth. Self-effacing. She sat tentatively on the couch, facing me. Mom sat at the other end of the couch.

  “Miss Boughmer, I’m sorry to bother you when you’re not feeling well. But this is a final report on some insurance carried by Doctor Stewart Sherman.”

  “What policy? I knew all his policies. I was with him over five years. I made all the payments.”

  “I don’t have those details, Miss Boughmer. We do adjustment work on contract for other companies. I was just asked to come up here and conduct interviews and write a report to my home office on whether or not, in my best opinion, the doctor’s death was suicide.”

  “She was on her vacation,” Mom said.

  “Well, I was spending it right here, wasn’t I?”

  “And is there anything wrong with having a nice rest in your comfortable home, Helen?” She turned toward me. “It’s a good thing she didn’t spend her hard-earned money going around to a lot of tourist traps, because she certainly hasn’t worked a day since her precious doctor died. She doesn’t even seem to want to look for work. And I can tell you that I certainly believe in insurance, because we wouldn’t be living here right now the way we are if Robert hadn’t been thoughtful enough to protect his family in the event of his death.”

  Helen said, “I just don’t know what insurance it could be. He cashed in the big policies because he wanted the money to invest with Mr. Pike. And the ones he kept, they’d be so old I guess they’d be past the suicide clause waiting period, wouldn’t they?”

  I had to take a wild shot at it. “I’m not sure of this, Miss Boughmer, but I have the feeling that this could have been some sort of group policy.”

  “Oh! I bet it’s Physicians’ General. That’s a term policy and he had no value to cash in, so he kept it. And I guess there could be a suicide clause for the life of the policy. Do you think so?”

  “I would say it’s possible.” I smiled at her. “There has to be some policy where the problem exists, or I wouldn’t be here, would I?”

  “I guess that’s right,” the receptionist-bookkeeper said.

  “There was no note left by the deceased and no apparent reason for suicide. And the company is apparently not inter
ested in taking refuge in a technicality if the claim should be paid to the heirs. Would you say it was suicide, Miss Boughmer?”

  “Yes!”

  Her tone had been so wan the sudden emphasis startled me.

  “Why do you think so?”

  “It’s just like I told the police. He was depressed, and he was moody, and I think he killed himself. They interviewed me and typed it out and I signed it.”

  “I’ve interviewed Mr. Richard Holton and, prior to the tragic murder of Miss Woertz last Saturday, I talked to her about it too. They were both most vehement in saying that it could not possibly have been suicide.”

  “Like you said at first,” her mother said, “crying and raving and ranting around here, making a fuss like you didn’t make when your poor father died. You told me fifty times your wonderful doctor couldn’t have ever killed himself. You were going to find out what happened to him if it took the rest of your life, remember? And not two days later you decided all of a sudden that he had killed himself.”

  She sat with her hands clasped on her lap, fingers interlaced and rigid, head downcast. She looked like a child praying in Sunday school.

  “After I thought it over I changed my mind,” she said, and I found myself leaning forward to hear her.

  “But Miss Woertz didn’t change her mind.”

  “That’s got nothing to do with me.”

  “Is it your impression that Miss Woertz was a stable, rational human being, Miss Boughmer?”

  She looked up swiftly and down again. “She was a very sweet person. I’m sorry she’s dead.”

  “Hah!” said Mom. “To this child everybody is a very sweet person. She’s easily led. She’ll believe anybody. Anybody with half an eye could see that Penny Woertz was a cheap, obvious, little thing. Why, she couldn’t have cared one way or another whether Dr. Sherman killed himself or was murdered.”