The Baxter Letters

by Dolores Hitchens

  “About Mr. Shima. For not telling the police he had asked you about me. I appreciate that very much.”

  He paused with his hand on the wrench, and frowned, exactly as if she had asked him about something of which he knew nothing. “Well, you’re welcome,” he grunted, as if not quite sure what she expected him to say.

  “An officer came last night, asking if we had seen anything from the windows.”

  “Mrs. Burch, I got an awful lot to do—”

  “Yes. I understand.” She retreated in confusion.

  On the bus, she decided that Mr. Keeley could think about only one thing at a time and that this morning he was thinking of the Winkler kid—whoever that was—and had completely forgotten Mr. Shima. And that was a relief.

  At the office, it took less than five minutes to understand that the news of Mr. Dunavan’s promotion was on the grapevine and that her own involvement in it was also known. She got some curious stares from other members of the steno pool. She got some significant, pointed glances, plus eyebrow raisings, from the better dressed and better coiffed—these glances directed, she felt, toward her nothing-hair and baggy hem and runover heels.

  I’ve got to shop—

  Mr. Dunavan came for her. He did not summon her in the manner his new position might seem to include. He escorted her through the barrier gate in the same old way. Once in his office, though, they got right to work. Things he had been doing at this level had to be finished or at least put into such order that his successor wouldn’t be puzzled as to what to do. There was a hard two hours’ dictation before they paused for a coffee break.

  “You can see,” he said, “I’m changing already.”

  “Of course you’re not. I know that we have to get these things out of the way.”

  This was the time, right now, when she should tell him about the officer’s visit of last night. She started to speak but the words wouldn’t come, and then she thought, the interruption might destroy some train of thought, some sequence of ideas he had. There was a tense, inner-thinking look about him today, as if he had plans all laid out in his head.

  The girl page brought their coffee and left.

  He stirred the cup absently. “Have you ever been to Miami?” he asked abruptly.

  “No.”

  “I may have to fly down there for a couple of days. Do you have any objection to going?”

  What could she say? Tom would just have to understand. This promotion meant everything to them. “None at all.”

  “Fine.”

  “Mr. Dunavan … have you ever been to Miami?”

  “Once. I was working on a yacht, a summer job, trying to get through school. The yacht went to Miami and then we started for some island in the West Indies, and then the owner got sick—she was quite an elderly lady—and we headed back for New Orleans.”

  “Is … is New Orleans where you grew up?” There was about him, for her, something out of the West, the lean rangy look of the western man, a man who knew horses, who looked at distant ranges—nothing suggested New Orleans to her imagination.

  “I went to school for a couple of years in Louisiana,” he said. “But it wasn’t my home.”

  “I’ve never been there, either.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” he said. “The nice thing about being so young is that you have all those years ahead to see and do everything. And plenty of time to dream about doing it and seeing it, first. Sometimes I think the dreaming is more fun than the getting.” He said this last with what she thought was a wry inner look at his own thoughts.

  I’m not all that young, she wanted to say. And then it struck her that she didn’t feel young at all, not in the way he meant, that adventurous lighthearted expectation of wonders to come. It seemed that that feeling had suddenly got behind her, left in some cranny of her life, abandoned. And that now most of the time she felt old and harried. Shabby. And tired.

  I’ve got to shop. I’ve got to shop.

  It would be horrible upstairs, the cow-country kid with split seams—

  “You look worried,” he said gently.

  She tried to think of a way to say it. “I guess I need help.”

  “Still worried about your uncle?”

  “No. It’s still about how I look, and how I want to be worthy of—of going upstairs with you—”

  He laughed abruptly, and then when he saw the flinching, the welling of tears that filled her eyes, he swung around and looked out of the window. “I’m sorry, Miss Hamilton. Terribly sorry. I shouldn’t have laughed just then. I know how you must feel. I’m almost in the same boat myself. Or should be. But the closer I come to the big move, the more indifference I feel. And I wish you could feel the same way. That’s really all it deserves.”

  “Mr. Dunavan,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady, “when people here look at you they see intelligence, a brain, ability. But with me, they just see a steno who doesn’t keep herself very well.” She brushed at a straggling lock impatiently. “I know I don’t measure up, that I’m not smartly turned out. There must have been a shortage of help for me even to have been hired.”

  He looked at her for a moment in a way that made her think he was giving up about something. “Your roommate can’t help?”

  She felt herself flush to the roots of her hair. “No.”

  “Then I’ll make a suggestion. Pick out the girl in the steno pool whose appearance you like most, and ask her to give you some advice. She might seem a little catty at first, but in the end she’ll be pleased to be considered an authority. Ask her where to go to have your hair remodeled, and whether she might go along on a couple of trips to look at dresses and things. Until you get the hang of it all.”

  Was he making fun of her a little bit? Jennifer couldn’t tell. “It would seem like a … an imposition to ask anything like that.”

  “Believe me, she’ll be flattered. Of course she’ll tell everybody, but you shouldn’t care about that. Just be careful which one you pick. I’ve already expressed my opinion.”

  He wanted her to stay the way she was. Manlike, he couldn’t see the difference between the way she got herself up, and the rest of them, the neat, sleek, glossy girls who exuded an air of fashion knowingness.

  “I’m not sure I’ll do this,” she said finally, “but if I do, I’ll be most careful in the one I choose.”

  “How about Miss Vonn?” he asked as if testing her.

  “I’d be a fool to copy her. But she might be very good at telling me what I’d look good in.”

  “True. There is a routine,” he warned. “You have to make time for it. I’m not deaf so I’ve gathered a few smatterings. There’s something called a comb out that takes about every other noon hour. I’m not exactly sure what it is but I think it fills holes left in the hairdo by hair that’s trying to behave normally.”

  “You have been just teasing,” she decided.

  “No, I haven’t.” He seemed suddenly reserved and brusque. “In the end, you have to please yourself. It’s just that … there’s someone there I don’t want to get lost.” He didn’t laugh, he went on looking serious, but she thought that somewhere inside he was awfully amused.

  When she returned to the steno pool with the bulging notebook, Miss Vonn said, “Someone’s been trying to reach you. Persistently. She finally left a phone number.” Miss Vonn lifted a slip from her basket and laid it at the edge of her big desk for Jennifer to read. It was a number Jennifer couldn’t remember having seen before. “You can get a line at the switchboard,” Miss Vonn suggested, a concession she usually reserved for old employees and special pets of hers. There were a couple of private booths behind the switchboard.

  In the booth, Jennifer asked for the number. A woman’s voice came on the wire immediately, rather breathlessly. “My name is Kate Appleton. I live in Far Rockaway. Does that mean anything to you, Mrs. Burch?”

  Jennifer was momentarily at a loss. This woman was calling her Mrs. Burch, here at the office where she was Miss
Hamilton. The woman’s name was familiar, of course, because she’d seen it on one of Uncle Bax’s letters. But was she supposed to reveal this? She didn’t know what to say.

  “Mrs. Burch? Are you there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Perhaps I’ve caught you by surprise. I know that you are very young, perhaps also inexperienced. I don’t want to frighten you.” The tone had softened. “But I must talk to you. Today. There is so little time. So much danger. Do you know that you may be in danger?”

  “I … No, I don’t”

  “Be very careful. Above all, don’t stay in your apartment alone at any time. Do you have a letter addressed to me?”

  The abrupt change of subject again brought Jennifer up short. Was Mrs. Appleton supposed to receive her letter eventually? Did Uncle Bax want her to know that she had a letter coming? Jennifer frowned over the questions, and then thought, to hell with it; this woman sounds awfully worried and afraid. “Yes, I do have.”

  “It mustn’t be delivered to me. Please come right down as soon as you are allowed to leave for lunch. I will come up to you on the sidewalk and speak to you if it is safe. Please do this, Miss Hamilton.”

  Stung, resenting the change of name, Jennifer said, “You seem to know a great deal about me.”

  “Mr. Shima found out a great deal about you,” the voice said in her ear. “He was very clever, very adept, at finding out things about people. He told me much of what he knew about you. You see, Mr. Shima was my cousin.” The line went dead.

  Exactly at noon, standing in the shade just beyond the building’s entrance, Jennifer tried to catch sight of someone who resembled Mr. Shima, the way a cousin would. She also looked around for Mr. Fallon or Sara, just in case, but there was no sign of them. A woman came close, brushing her—a small slim woman with pale skin and blonde hair going gray, dressed in a blue suit and a pancake-type little black hat. “Follow me,” the woman said softly. Nobody could have looked less like Mr. Shima.

  Two blocks away the woman turned into an arcade and stopped, her back to a shopwindow. As Jennifer approached she said, “Please go on into the little café at the other end of the passage. Take a rear booth. I’ll come if no one is following us.”

  For some reason it had all begun to seem kind of silly to Jennifer. I’m not the type, she thought, to be ducking around corners, losing the one who’s tailing me, hiding, and all that. I’m too ordinary. And then she thought of Mr. Shima and what had happened to him, and the precautions Mrs. Appleton was taking seemed all too meager. She went into the café, which turned out to be Italian, small and dark, smelling of wine and onions and the deliciousness of good spaghetti sauce. A Mama-mia behind the cash register gave her a smile and nodded her on inside. The back tables were very dark and overhung with strings of sauce-makings. She slid into a chair.

  Mrs. Appleton came in several minutes later and took the opposite chair. For a minute they just looked at each other. Jennifer thought that Mrs. Appleton must once have been very pretty in a soft blonde way, and the way she moved and carried herself spoke of careful training in her youth. Now she must be at least fifty. And tired.

  “My dear,” she said after a moment, softly, frowning a little, “you are indeed very young. And I can understand why my cousin was so confused. You don’t look at all like the kind of person who would be involved in anything with Baxter Webb.”

  Was this meant to put her on the defensive? “In which case, I might say that you don’t look like the kind of person who would be involved with Mr. Shima.”

  “He was my cousin.”

  “Baxter is my uncle.”

  A ghost of a smile touched Mrs. Appleton’s lips. “You have evened things up very neatly. And it is true, Bartholomew had his weaknesses.” She stopped speaking as the waiter came and took their order, didn’t resume talking until he was well away. “He was no saint. But then, none of us were." She closed her eyes briefly as if to shut off some unwelcome memory. “You will want some identification from me, isn’t it so?”

  “I would like some, please.”

  Mrs. Appleton opened her handbag and took out a passport in its leather folder. To Jennifer’s surprise, this was an American passport. Mrs. Appleton let her examine it at leisure.

  “You don’t look at all like Mr. Shima,” Jennifer offered, as Mrs. Appleton tucked the passport out of sight again.

  “Our mothers were sisters. My mother married a man of Swedish descent, mostly, though there was French in there somewhere, too. Bartholomew’s mother, my aunt, married a man who was half Korean. That’s why he looked somewhat Oriental, and quite unlike our side of the family. Do you have my letter with you?”

  “No.”

  “It is at your apartment?”

  “I’m not sure whether I’m supposed to tell you where it is,” Jennifer admitted, “since I don’t know what this is really all about. Uncle Bax has left me very much in the dark. But I guess I’ll tell you anyway. Yes, it is at the apartment.”

  “Have there been any …” Mrs. Appleton paused, apparently trying to choose a word. “… any odd occurrences, any attempt to enter your apartment, any strangers—I don’t suppose you would even notice. These people wouldn’t let you notice.”

  “What people?” Jennifer demanded flatly.

  “Didn’t you have other letters to deliver?”

  “Yes.” And why don’t you just break down and tell me all about Uncle Bax and his tricks and how you came to be on his mailing list, Jennifer thought, staring into Mrs. Appleton’s pale blue eyes. “There are other letters. Among them, yours. I don’t think Uncle Bax wants me to tell you about the other letters, though. He seems quite firm in his idea of keeping all these people separate.”

  “He can’t, any longer. People in a fix like ours don’t stay in compartments, Miss Hamilton. Terror is a great leveler.”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  Mrs. Appleton’s tired eyes flickered. “Dying.”

  “Who killed your cousin?”

  “I don’t know. Honestly. Truly, Miss Hamilton, I don’t know who did the murder. He was trying to contact you, there at the end. He had done a lot of following, asking, and I think he had decided finally that he could trust you. At least, he phoned me that he had decided to trust you. He was going to tell you the story, as much as he knew of it. He said that if Baxter were really back in Nueva Brisa that he could be working with a man of … of great power and cruelty there. And that perhaps Baxter was being paid to contact you and to ask for the delivery of those letters. That, in fact, he might have revealed the existence of the letters for just such purpose.”

  “All this mystery—” Jennifer felt her temper rising. “What is in those letters?”

  “Almost nothing,” Mrs. Appleton half-whispered. “A word or two. ‘The Tiger has grown fangs again.’ Something like that. The letters in themselves are not important. It’s the fact that they are delivered—” She shivered suddenly, and glanced toward the door. “When you get home tonight, please burn the letter which is addressed to me.”

  She gripped the purse, half-rose from the seat, began to glance around for another exit.

  “Something happened a long time ago,” Jennifer said, trying to hold her there. “In Central America. My uncle was in on it, but he wasn’t alone. All of these years he has kept track of the rest of you. But if there is so much danger, if you were all so frightened, why didn’t you go away, really far away, and change your names? Assume different personalities?”

  “We did. We did.” Mrs. Appleton, standing now, swayed and grasped the table’s edge. “These names on the envelopes are not ours.”

  Jennifer remembered asking Mr. Dunavan if Mr. Shima had used other names, and his answer, Yes.

  “Baxter didn’t keep track of us. We kept in touch with him. He was to warn us if … if danger threatened. But my cousin is dead. Danger doesn’t threaten, it’s here. Miss Hamilton, I’m going to have to leave. I have an … an overpowering sense of being watched. Often no
w I have this feeling.” She bent her head, pinched the bridge of her nose, her eyes squeezed shut, as if some hurtful pressure were inside. “If you can, meet me here tomorrow when your office closes. And be careful.” She walked quickly away toward the front door, pausing there only for a moment to pay the Mama-mia for the lunch she didn’t intend to eat.

  The waiter came with their orders. Jennifer tried to eat. She also tried to think, to sort out what this strange woman had told her. It all seemed highly unbelievable, a silly suspense tale, badly managed, that had gone off the track. The thought of Uncle Bax as a kind of pied piper, leading a group of old co-rascals to disaster, was ridiculous. And yet, Uncle Bax was exactly the kind of bumbler who might do just that. And the unalterable fact remained, a grim rock amid the rest of the rubbish, that Mr. Shima was dead. He had not stuck a thin blade into himself, working it this way and that, destroying heart, lungs, arteries and nerves. It had been done to him.

  Mrs. Appleton’s spaghetti steamed across the table; the glass of wine she had ordered shone with a purple gleam. Jennifer couldn’t eat, but she felt the wine might help. She downed it, ordered another. It’s all too much, she thought. I can’t handle this business about Uncle Bax right now. I have to get ready to go upstairs with Mr. Dunavan, to become a proper, decent-looking secretary. I have to get my hair done, and buy clothes and eye-shadow. I can’t worry about Uncle Bax and his letters and where he is right now—

  I have to ask Mr. Dunavan, she decided, how to go about finding out about Nueva Brisa. There should have been something in the papers a long time ago, some leak or hint of scandal, violence, treachery, a fact or two compelling enough to be remembered by somebody. She could go to the Public Library after work, of course. But hadn’t Mr. Dunavan said that he had a friend who worked for a newspaper?

  She paid the Mama-mia for her lunch and the extra wine and went out into the arcade. It was empty, dusty, the traffic of human beings on the sidewalk at the end of the tunnel like the sweep of puppets being pulled along on their strings. The wine had gone to her head. She waited in the shadows for another shadow to show itself, but there was nothing and it was time to return to the office.