by Ed Gorman
Whittier Point was in favor when it was used by the kids of a grade school a block away. Then the grade school was consolidated with a larger school and Whittier Point was left to lie fallow. The city kept the grass mown on the area around the large pavilion but all the playground equipment was gone. Without supervision the city would be asking for a lawsuit; hell, even with supervision there’d been lawsuits. Hot weekends families still trekked up here, but on workdays it was often empty except for school-age lovers lost in their own obsession with each other.
Until nearly four thirty my only companions were quicksilver birds lighting on the empty picnic tables and two stray dogs who kept their noses to the cement floor as if uranium might be found under it.
For the first time I considered Richard Donovan a real suspect. Neil Cameron had been his rival for Vanessa. He’d been seen arguing with her not long before her murder. And he’d gone rich boy on me when I’d asked him if he’d killed her. Telling somebody you’re going to get world-class lawyers to save you doesn’t inspire confidence in your innocence.
And naturally I wondered why Nicole wasn’t here yet. Maybe she’d changed her mind. Maybe she’d decided that she’d angered her father enough already by talking to me.
I got up and started walking around the area outside the pavilion. The birds had that day’s-end sound, and a cordial, solemn weariness seemed to settle on the trees and grass and the small lake just over the west side of the hill. There were moments when I wanted to be a kid again, hurrying home to my collection of paperbacks and comic books, the only realm in which I was really myself. My dad would still be alive and he and my mom would be laughing about something adult just as I entered the kitchen and asked when supper would be ready. I could even put up with my bratty sister, whom I loved despite all my protests to the contrary.
Then I saw her.
The winding paved road ended in a steep grade if you wanted to veer off and reach the pavilion. But she rode her ten-speed with energy and skill. As she drew near she waved; the gesture was girly and sweet. But then the front tire swerved and she was quickly dumped on the grass.
I ran over to her. She’d been thrown facedown but she was quick to roll over on her back with her arms flung wide. She was gasping for breath. Her eyes fluttered as if she might faint. I knelt down next to her and felt her racing pulse. Her breath still came in bursts and a whimper played in her mouth.
“I guess I should’ve taken the car.” That she’d managed the sentence with such clarity reassured me she was all right. Still, it was strange that a girl of her age, in apparent good health, would be worn out to the point where she’d lost control of her bicycle.
I helped her to her feet and looked for any cuts or scrapes. She fell against me for a moment. I slid my arm through hers and walked her into the pavilion and sat her down. “I’m throwing your bike in my trunk and giving you a ride home. No arguments.”
“They’ll see us together.”
“I’ll let you off a ways before your estate.”
“God, this is so embarrassing.”
“It’s still ninety degrees. Could happen to anybody.”
“Our house isn’t even a mile away.” She touched her face. Body heat had emphasized the acne on her cheeks. Her white blouse was soaked in spots.
“I’ve got a cold Pepsi in the car that I’ve had about half of. How does that sound?”
“That sounds great.”
She drank it in sips, which was smart. The drink relaxed her, or seemed to. She leaned back and took one of those deep breaths that usually mean you’re feeling better—even philosophical—about some problem. “I guess it was kinda stupid on a hot day like this.” Then: “My dad really doesn’t like you.”
“That I know. But why did he kick Tommy Delaney out?”
She wiped her brow with the back of her tiny, corded hand. “Poor Tommy. I always liked him but I don’t think anybody else did. Except Marsha. She told me one day how bad it was at home for him. His folks always argued and sometimes it got violent. I guess his whole life was like that. She said that was why he liked being at our place so much. It was peaceful and it made him feel special, you know, with my dad being so wealthy and all. The funny thing is, it was my dad who started inviting him over. He’d show him off to his friends. He always gave a speech, too, about how Tommy was going to put the Hawkeyes in the Rose Bowl. But Eve hated him. She thought he was a moron. And that was the word she used. She worked on Dad until he started to dislike Tommy, too. I guess when Van was killed he decided it was a good time to get rid of Tommy.”
“Tommy’s not handling it too well.”
She fanned herself with her tiny hand. “That’s what I figured. He really isn’t some big dumb jock. He’s real sensitive, you know? I think he was in love with Van for a little while but he was smart. He gave up right away. I mean, it was hopeless. Then he fell in love with Sarah. Van wouldn’t even listen to him when he was telling her that Neil was sorry for being so mad all the time and how much he loved her. Tommy felt sorry for Neil, that’s why he stepped in. But I told him up front it wouldn’t work.”
“Why not?” But my question came automatically. I was thinking about Tommy being in love with Sarah.
“She wanted to humiliate Dad every way she could. And that meant being with a lot of boys. But I doubt she slept with more than one or two of them. She told me she hated sex because it reminded her of Dad.”
“And this was all because your dad married Eve?”
“Well—” She perched herself on the edge of the bench. She pursed her lips, looked away for long seconds then said: “There was something else, too. But now it doesn’t matter. Van’s dead.”
“Did this thing that doesn’t matter anymore affect you the same way it affected Van?”
She inhaled deeply through her nose. “I really don’t want to talk about it, all right?”
“It might help me.”
“My dad said it’s all over. That you’re only out to embarrass him.”
“At one time your dad and I were close to being friends.”
“That isn’t the way he remembers it.”
There was only one way in. “Does Eve go out much at night—alone?”
Getting to her feet was an effort. She wobbled on the first two steps. I caught her wrist gently and eased her back.
“Please let me go. I really don’t want to talk about this.”
“I just asked you if Eve went out alone at night sometimes.”
“What do you want me to say? Yes, she did.”
“How about your dad? Did he go out at night alone sometimes, too?”
“Of course he did. And still does. He’s an important man. He has to.” She broke suddenly, hands to face, quick dagger of a sob. “You know about their arrangement, don’t you?”
“Was that why Van hated him so much?”
This time she had no trouble standing. Or walking. She walked down the wall and finally seated herself on the low ledge at the end of it. She didn’t say anything for a time. She wasn’t crying now. She didn’t even look upset. When she looked at me all she said was, “I need a cigarette.”
I did the movie star thing and lighted smokes for both of us. I carried them down and gave her hers. She had her nice legs stretched out in front of her now. She was considering them. She didn’t seem to have much pride in herself. I hoped she at least realized that she had perfect coltish legs.
She smoked eagerly. “How did you find out?”
“Right now that doesn’t matter. How did you and Van find out?”
A bright smile. “We followed her. Private investigators. We wanted to get something on her. We thought maybe Dad would divorce her if we could prove to him she was unfaithful. And that was pretty easy. She went out with Bobby Randall several times. And we assumed there were others, too. It’s funny how it worked out, though.”
I waited until she was ready to talk again.
“Before we got to tell him, Van and I got the flu pret
ty bad. We were in bed because we were so sick. I was asleep late one night when Van came into my room. She was so sick she could barely talk. She said she’d started down the stairs to get some orange juice and then she heard something she couldn’t believe. I was so groggy I wasn’t even sure what she was talking about. She said that this party Dad and Eve were having tonight—the men were drawing numbers to see which one of them would sleep with another man’s wife. I couldn’t understand it at first. But Van wasn’t just beautiful, she kept up on things. She said this was what they called wife swapping and she said Dad was having a great time. They were going to pair off, then get together that weekend at Dad’s house up on the river. It’s three stories and sort of like a hotel. Then Van started crying. I helped her into the bathroom so she could throw up. She was that sick—sick about what Dad was doing. She got into bed with me—I used to do that to her when we were little. She just kept crying and I held her and rocked her and sometimes I’d cry, too.”
She turned and flipped her cigarette onto the lawn. “That was a couple of years ago and that’s when she started running around. She’d never been like that before.”
“Did you or Van ever confront your father about it?”
“Oh, sure. We could tell he was embarrassed. He promised he wouldn’t do it anymore. We both wanted to believe him. But then after about a month or so he started going out alone at night the way Eve kept doing. We followed him. He went to the same motel Eve did. The women were wives of his friends. Van used to scream at him and threaten to kill Eve. She always said that Eve shouldn’t ever have been allowed to live in the same house our mom did. I agreed with her completely. Completely.” Then: “Pretty shitty, huh?”
“Pretty shitty.” I don’t know why I was surprised that the Mainwarings had lied to me about the girls not knowing.
“He said we’d understand better when we were older. But neither of us believed that. That isn’t any way to live. It’s like he’s in his second childhood or something.” Then: “I guess I’ll take you up on that ride back home.”
“You want to head back now?”
“Yes, maybe I’d better. I’m really wasted for some reason.”
I remembered how she’d been in my car the other day, not at her best, either. But there were a variety of physical responses to loss and trauma.
“You feel up to walking now?”
“I’m not a baby.” Sharp, angry.
“I was just offering to help.”
“I know, it’s just—I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that. I hate being bitchy.”
“I can’t imagine you bitchy.”
Her whooping laugh was directed at me. “You’re one of those guys Van always told me about—the ones who idealize girls. You don’t want to be around me when I get bitchy. I was even worse than Van and that was pretty bad.”
“Thanks for the warning. Next time I’ll come armed.”
A soft summer giggle. “Well, I didn’t say I was that bad.”
With that she shoved off the edge of the wall. “Thanks for everything, Sam. I really appreciate it.”
I put my hand on her shoulder. “Let’s go get your bike.”
19
Three hours later I sat in a chair on Wendy’s patio watching the day slowly fade into dusk. Wendy had given me a kiss, a beer, and a promise that even though dinner would be late it would be something I really liked. She would meanwhile go visit her mother for no longer than an hour. Whenever her mom felt that nobody was paying her sufficient attention she had panic attacks designed to get her noticed. Since Wendy’s sister lived in Portland, Oregon, it fell to Wendy to be the noticer.
Dusk is always a melancholy time for me and I’ve never been sure why. Sometimes I feel the loneliness that has always been my curse, a loneliness that nobody can assuage. Tonight for company I had Wendy’s hefty cat Victor. He sat in the chair next to mine and swatted at everything that tried to assault his bastion from the air. He had yet to down a single firefly but he certainly kept trying.
I wanted to give myself up to the Cubs game that was just getting started on the radio. Misery loves company and nothing is more miserable than listening to the Cubs blow another season. But this was pregame yak and so I was left to the dying day.
It would have been nice to send my mind on vacation so that I could just sit here and be one with my surroundings but I was restless. I kept thinking about the night of the murder. None of the lovers Van had thrown over would have had a difficult time getting into that barn—there was easy access through the thin line of forest in the back. Anybody who’d followed her to the commune would have been able to swing wide and enter the barn without being seen.
I also thought about the effect Eve had had upon the girls. Imagine if you’d grown up with a sweet, attentive, understanding mother who died and was replaced by a stunning but vapid swinger. And even worse, that your father became a swinger, too. Hey, one Frank Sinatra is enough for this planet, man. Had Eve taken her vengeance out on Van?
Victor started purring when the back door opened, which meant his mistress and patroness had come home. She carried her drink on a blue cloth coaster over to Victor’s chair and nudged him aside so that she could sit down. He went unwillingly. As soon as she was seated he jumped on her lap.
“Feeling any better?”
“Not really. So much up in the air.”
“I ran into Mike Potter at the supermarket. I bought us some red snapper we can put on the grill tonight.”
“He tell you I’m crazy?”
“More or less. And he’s worried that you could get in serious trouble with the state if you keep pushing this.”
“I just want to make sure we get the truth.”
“I said that to him. He said, ‘If Sam wants to waste his time it’s up to him.’ But he smiled when he said it.”
“That was nice of him.”
“How about a back rub on the bed?”
“Are you trying to seduce me?”
“Maybe. Or maybe I’m just trying to distract you. You need to take a break.”
We fit just about perfectly as lovers. And when we finished, Victor was squatting on the bureau and watching us in the darkness scented with Wendy’s perfumes and sachets and creams. We’d had an audience.
“I never did get that back rub.”
“Too late, buddy. I’m going to grill us some red snapper. And you’re going to set the table.”
“This is just like the National Guard I go to once a month. Too many orders.”
“Don’t say that. They’re talking about drafting you guys. I saw it in the paper this morning. You must’ve seen it.”
“I’ll start setting the table.”
“So you’re not going to talk about it?”
“They’ve been predicting that for two years now. I’ll set the table.”
I went inside and started grabbing plates, glasses, silverware, and napkins. I was careful to limit myself to the second-best of everything. The plates had tiny chips and the shine was off the silverware. I didn’t blame her. Her only real asset was this house she owned. She basically lived on the income from the trust her husband had left for her. It had been the largesse of a decent but guilty man. Not his fault that he’d fallen in love with one of the girls his bully-boy father would never have approved of. He’d married Wendy because he was fond of her and because his family approved of her family. The trouble was that Wendy had been in love with him and had come undone when he’d been killed in Nam.
And Nam was on my mind now, as well. Not only because I opposed the savage, meaningless war—Ike’s “military-industrial complex” warning coming true in spades—but also because our post commander at the guard had given us notice that we might be called up. I’d lied to Wendy. Nam was in the offing. A number of guard units had already been sent there. At the rate our troops were being killed, the great dark god that was slaughtering the lives of soldiers and innocents alike was ever hungrier. It wanted more flesh an
d blood, and many of the men in the guard were at the right age for making patriotic sacrifices the chickenshit politicians could prattle about when reelection time came around again.
But talking about it with Wendy was difficult. Her husband had died over there. And that’s what worried her, the cheap irony of losing her first husband and then her husband-to-be in the same war. I didn’t blame her for the dread she faced in her nightmares but I also couldn’t do anything about it. Maybe we’d luck out. Maybe we wouldn’t be called up. But as General Westmoreland told more and more lies, and more and more of our troops died, I didn’t know how we would be spared.
She came in and opened the refrigerator. She slapped two pieces of red snapper on the counter and started preparing them for cooking. She was fast and efficient and fun to watch. She didn’t say anything.
“You not speaking?”
“No, because if I do speak you know what I’ll speak about and then neither of us’ll feel like eating. You know how worried I’ve been about it. The story in the paper just made it official.”
“Maybe it won’t happen.”
“Just let me prepare this fish and not think about anything else.”
A good meal and two glasses of wine later we both felt momentarily invincible and loving. We sat in chairs on the screened-in back porch and held hands like high schoolers. Victor appeared and sat on Wendy’s lap. The only music was the night itself: the breeze and the faint passage of cars and the even more distant sounds of airplanes approaching Cedar Rapids for landing. I felt old and logy and I didn’t mind it at all. I even considered the possibility—combine alcohol and fatigue and you can come up with the damnedest thoughts—that maybe, just maybe, things were exactly as they appeared. Neil Cameron killed Vanessa Mainwaring because he felt betrayed by her. And then he killed himself. Judge Whitney wouldn’t be happy with this because Cliffie would have won one. And even one would be too much for Judge Whitney. The Sykes clan represented all things evil to her.