by Jane Langton
But instead of slowing down, Ed took on more and more of Joe Bold’s neglected duties. Parish visiting was one of them. Ed was a natural at parish visiting. He was already an old friend of the head nurse in Howie Sawyer’s ward at the County Hospital. Now he called on the eldest Ott boy, who was recovering from an appendectomy at Emerson Hospital. And then he drove into Boston to see Geneva Jones at Mass. General.
“Damn it, Ed,” said Geneva, “my face-lift was supposed to be a secret. What are you doing here?” But then Geneva clasped Ed’s hand and held it tightly. Going through the whole thing alone had been harder than Geneva expected.
It took a good deal of nerve to stop in at Wally Pott’s house to ask about Wally’s wife, but Ed had plenty of nerve. And he was worried about Arlene’s continued absence. There were rumors afloat that Arlene had fled, that Wally was a wife-beater. There were counter-rumors that Arlene wouldn’t run away, no matter what, that she would have thrown Wally out instead, because the house belonged to her, not Wally. Arlene’s neighbor Ethel Harris was upset about Arlene’s disappearance.
“Wally must have some idea where she is,” Ethel told Ed. “I wonder if she’s with her sister Beverly?”
But Wally claimed complete ignorance. When Ed knocked on the door and inquired politely about Arlene and asked how he could get in touch with her sister, Wally shifted his bare feet on the hall carpet and said, “I don’t know where the hell Beverly lives. Someplace down South.”
“May I come in?” said Ed, beaming at Wally.
“Well, I’m pretty busy,” said Wally.
But Ed was already inside, exclaiming at the elegance of Arlene’s living room, the glass coffee table, the split matched marble of the fireplace.
Wally gave up and waved him to the beige sofa. “She left me for good, that’s the truth of it. She just walked out, and I don’t know where the devil she’s gone.”
“Might there be letters from her sister? A Christmas card with her return address?”
Involuntarily, Wally Pott glanced at the tall desk against the farther wall. It was an expensive-looking dusty piece of furniture. The hinged front was closed, but Ed could see that a press of papers behind it had pushed it partly open.
“Oh, I don’t think there’s any letters.” Wally looked carefully back at Ed, keeping his eyes away from the desk.
If Ed Bell had been Homer Kelly, he would have jumped up, crossed the room in two strides, and poked in Arlene Pott’s papers, then snatched up the sheaf of unopened letters from Arlene’s anxious sister in Abilene, Texas, and shaken them under Wally’s nose. But Ed was not Homer Kelly, he was himself, and he didn’t think it courteous to doubt Wally’s word.
He made a polite suggestion. “Do you think perhaps you should call the police?”
“Oh, heck, no, not yet. She left me once before—came back in three, four weeks. I don’t want to make, you know, a big fuss.”
26
Went to chunk in the morning and heard Mr. Jackson preach upon the total depravity of human nature.
James Lorin Chapin
Private Journal, Lincoln, 1849
Paul Dobbs was still working at Gibby’s General Grocery. When he came limping back on the job after his motorcycle accident, the manager of the grocery department ordered him to unload huge pallets of canned goods from a tractor-trailer at the back door. Paul’s chest was still strapped with elastic bandages, still sore, and he felt aggrieved. He walked upstairs to Jerry Gibby’s office to complain, to ask for something else to do instead.
At that moment Jerry Gibby was on the phone, shouting at Bill Pope, the senior financial officer of General Grocery. “It’s Upshaw, right? Upshaw got you on my back? Listen, you better watch out for that guy Upshaw. You’re next in line, what do you want to bet? He’ll have your job next.” Slamming down the phone, Jerry looked around wildly at Paul. He was about to burst into angry sobs, and he didn’t want to do it in front of a stock boy. He yelled at Paul, “Get out of here! Go on, get the hell out!”
The truck driver at the receiving door was mad too. He had unloaded the whole order of canned goods himself, and it wasn’t the sort of thing he was paid to do. “Hey, kid, come on, take this up, to Gibby. He’s got to sign the invoice. Hurry up. I got to be in Rome, New York, by noontime.”
“Nothing doing,” said Paul. “I’m not going up those stairs no more. No way.”
“Well, somebody’s got to sign it,” said the driver testily. “Here, why don’t you sign it yourself?” He thrust the invoice at Paul. “See? Right here where it says thirty-eight cartons? Here’s a pen.”
Paul stared at the piece of paper, which was covered with rows of meaningless hieroglyphs. “Sign it?” he said doubtfully.
“Sure, why not? Right there where it says X.” The driver pointed with his big thumb.
“Well, okay.” Carelessly, Paul took the pen and made a meaningless scrawl.
“Thanks,” said the truck driver, snatching back pen and paper.
The next truck was a huge trailer from Pinecraft Paper Products, loaded with unwieldy boxes of toilet paper, paper towels, paper diapers, and paper napkins. The boxes weren’t heavy; they were just awkward. Paul lugged twenty or thirty off the truck, then stopped for a smoke.
“Hey,” said the Pinecraft driver, “get a move on.”
Paul merely grinned at him and dropped ashes on the floor.
But instead of getting mad, the driver walked back to the cab of his big truck and returned with a cigarette in one hand and a can of Pepsi in the other. Squatting down beside Paul, he looked up at the scraped raw face and the black eye. “High-school kid?” he said.
Paul laughed. “High school? Hey, I got no time for high school. My brother, he works in City Hall in Boston. I’m just filling in around here for a couple weeks, you know?”
The Pinecraft driver was interested. “Hey,” he said, “I got a suggestion.”
“No kidding,” said Paul. With mounting interest he listened to the truck driver’s suggestion and grinned in agreement, then unloaded no more boxes that day. When the driver produced the invoice, Paul made another scrawl across it and accepted five twenty-dollar bills.
The grocery-department manager didn’t show up in the receiving area until after lunch. Looking around, he was surprised to see the small number of cartons from Pinecraft. “Is that all? They usually fill up the whole end of the room here.”
“Oh, sure,” said Paul. “That’s all. Jeez, it nearly broke my back.”
“Who signed the invoice?”
“Mr. Gibby,” said Paul smoothly.
“Well, okay, then.” Taking out his case cutter, the grocery manager ripped open a carton of paper napkins.
27
Oh! the horrors of carelessness!
James Lorin Chapin
Private Journal, Lincoln, 1849
“Where is my sister?” The voice on the line was insistent. It was Arlene Pott’s sister Beverly, calling Ethel Harris from Abilene, Texas. Beverly had met Arlene’s neighbors, the Harrises, last year during her vacation trip to Massachusetts. “I keep calling Wally, and he keeps saying he hasn’t heard anything from her. But really and truly, Ethel, my sister wouldn’t just go off somewhere without letting me know.”
“I’m worried about her too,” said Ethel. “You know, Beverly, I hate to tell you this, but it’s plain as the nose on your face Wally is carrying on with another woman. There’s this practical nurse next door.”
The upshot of the telephone conversation between Ethel Harris and Arlene’s sister Beverly was that Ethel ran over to the Gibbys’ to talk to Imogene, and then Imogene Gibby called Homer Kelly, because it was common knowledge Homer had been a famous detective in days gone by.
Homer was sympathetic but cautious. “Have you called Peter Terry?”
“Who?” said Imogene.”
“The police chief, Peter Terry.”
“Oh, Homer, Arlene wouldn’t want us to do that. Maybe she’s just lying low so Wally won’t find
her. You know what he does sometimes—he’s a wife-beater. I think she’s afraid of him. Really, Homer, some men!”
“Well, that’s possible, I suppose. You know, Imogene, a lot of wealthy women who disappear turn up later on, looking like movie stars. They’ve spent a couple of months at some health and beauty spa or some expensive ranch for alcoholics, and they come back all dried out and tucked up and bleached and dyed and curled and massaged and vitaminized, ready for a glorious new life, until the whole effect wears off and they’re overweight again or sozzled into another stupor. Alas for their bright dreams! Alas for womankind! Alas for all our hopes for regeneration, rebirth, redemption, transcendence, exaltation, glory! Doomed, that’s what we are, Imogene, doomed to the sordid grind, the ghastly plodding life of every day, the dismal windswept darkling plain, the grating roar of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, at their return, up the high strand.…”
“Homer? Are you all right?”
“Oh, sorry, Imogene. Well, of course, I’ll see what I can do. I’ll go talk to Wally, if you like, and see if I can find out anything at all. Ed Bell told me he didn’t have much luck.”
“Oh, thank you, Homer,” said Imogene. “You’re a dear.” And Imogene hung up and ran next door, and then Ethel Harris and Imogene stared out the window at Wally Pott’s house. “The cactus,” said Ethel. “He used to put this big prickly cactus in the window whenever he wanted Josie to come over. But now it’s there all the time.”
Homer didn’t notice the cactus when he walked up to Wally’s house the next day, after parking his car in the woods a few hundred yards away. To his astonishment, he found the front door wide open, banging against the wallpaper in the front hall, tugged and released by gusts of early-September air.
Staring into the house, Homer rang the doorbell and listened to the chime. No one came. Wally didn’t seem to be home.
The temptation to walk in was very strong. Homer gave in at once.
As soon as his foot crossed the threshold, he was aware of the general sense of carelessness, of disarray. In the living room the flower arrangements were dead. Tumblers and empty bottles stood on the glass coffee table, which was littered with crumbs and sticky with rings. A sheet of newspaper blew aimlessly around the room in the draft from the open front door. It caught on a lampshade, then fluttered against a figurine on the mantelpiece. The figurine fell to the floor with a crash.
“Don’t blame me,” murmured Homer, feeling guilty just the same, staring around the room greedily, taking in the silk blouse on the back of a chair, the pink lipstick on the rim of a glass. To whom did blouse and lipstick belong? The platinum-blond nurse next door, the one Imogene Gibby had told him about?
Shrugging his shoulders, Homer walked up the carpeted steps in the stone tower and poked his nose into the four corner bedrooms. Three were neat and untouched, looking like flossy ads for expensive bedroom suites. The fourth was a mess. The lavender sheets on the bed were churned up. A baby-doll nightie lay on the floor. It didn’t look like a garment belonging to Mrs. Arlene Pott.
But the décor was obviously Arlene’s. Everything was lavender, the layers of draperies at the windows, the bedspread dragging on the floor, the boudoir chairs, the rug. Homer examined the objects on the dresser, the artificial flowers, the porcelain birds, the hand mirror. There was a jewel box overflowing with junk beads and bracelets. There was a plastic case wrapped around with an electric cord. Hot curlers, decided Homer, remembering a temporary aberration of his wife’s. The curlers were the secret of Arlene’s frizzy hair. If it was true that she had run out on Wally, why hadn’t she taken them with her?
Homer opened a drawer. It was jammed with lavender underwear, tightly packed. Closing the drawer, he had to stuff in the hems of slips. Abandoning the dresser, he turned to the closets.
There were two of them, his and hers. Like her drawers, Arlene’s closet was crammed with clothing. Her taste ran to polyester dresses in big flowery patterns. The floor was littered with her shoes, two pairs deep. Wedged into a corner were three sleek lavender suitcases and a matching cosmetic case. If Arlene had gone away, why hadn’t she used her luggage? Then Homer thrust his big face into the perfumed silky mass of Arlene’s dresses and pushed his arms through to the wall at the rear. Instantly he found what he was looking for, her collection of pocketbooks, hanging on hooks at the back. Dragging them through the dresses, he laid them on the bureau for inspection. There were six of them.
1. A black patent-leather pouch with a gold chain, empty.
2. A brown leather-like receptacle with silver clasps, empty.
3. A big straw satchel, empty.
4. A beige monster with buckles, zippers, and straps, empty.
5. A heavy canvas bag with zipper pockets, empty.
6. A half-size purple briefcase with wooden handles, bulging.
Eagerly, Homer unstrapped the purple briefcase, and Arlene Pott herself swelled up from the interior, unfolding in the spreading scent of her perfume. Chiffon scarves and a linen handkerchief with a crocheted border billowed out of the bag.
Homer dumped everything out on the dresser, then examined the tumbled pile. There was a lipstick, a powder compact spilling lavender powder, a blue pearl earring, a container of pills (One tablet three times a day for depression—oh, poor Arlene), a bangle, a bent spoon, a collection of supermarket coupons, a pocket hair spray, a hairbrush, a comb with two missing teeth, a card case with credit cards and a driver’s license (photograph of a lugubrious Arlene), a glasses case with gold-rimmed bifocals, a packet of tissues, a ballpoint pen, a broken pencil, a lottery ticket, a wallet with twenty-seven dollars in it, a change purse with three pennies and a button, a pamphlet on The Power of Prayer, and another pamphlet, Taurus: What to Expect in August. Inquisitively, Homer flipped open the astrological pamphlet to August first, the day Arlene Pott was supposed to have walked out on home and husband and gone off into the world alone. On August first all the men and women under the broad overarching protection of the constellation Taurus had been urged, “Stay at home, avoid long journeys, cherish your loved ones.”
Homer dropped the pamphlet on the pile of Arlene’s belongings, and stared at the litter on the dresser. If the woman had gone away to Reno or Honolulu or Los Angeles or Phoenix of her own free will, then she must have taken with her an identical collection of possessions in another bag—another driver’s license, another Visa card, another pair of glasses, another container of pills, another wallet. It seemed highly unlikely that she would possess duplicates of all these things. Homer clicked his tongue in pious disbelief.
Then he cocked his doggy head and listened sharply as a crash shook the house. Good God, what was that? Moving cautiously to the window, Homer peered down through the layers of curtains. A car had run into a corner of the garage. Curses boiled up. A woman laughed. Then she got out of the car. She had bright blond hair and white trousers. It was Mrs. Hawk’s nurse from the neighboring house. Wally Pott got out of the car too and walked ahead of her, carrying a paper bag.
If they found Homer inside, it would be a clear case of breaking and entering, even though he had merely walked in the open front door. Clumsily, Homer scrambled Arlene’s things into her pocketbook, then thrust the whole collection back through the slippery soft dresses in her closet.
Downstairs there were fumblings, hangings, the woman’s tipsy laughter. Loud talk drifted up the stairs from the direction of the kitchen. They had run out of bourbon, decided Homer. They had driven away on an errand so urgent they hadn’t even bothered to close the front door.
Softly he made his way out of the bedroom and examined the stairway. The stair carpet was thick. The house was new. There would be no telltale squeakings of treads or shiftings of supporting joists, even though Homer’s six feet six inches were fleshy with middle age. Creeping downstairs, he was grateful for the hilarity in the kitchen. “Whoops,” screeched the woman. There was a tinkling crash, then screams of laughter and loud guffaws. Poor Wally, tho
ught Homer sympathetically, slipping out the front door, poor grieving abandoned husband, sucking his lonesome claws in solitude forlorn.
So far, so good. Now it was merely a matter of ducking under the kitchen window and dodging past the vegetable garden into the safety of the hemlock grove.
Homer’s wife, Mary, was often distressed by her husband’s rude habit of staring, by his manner of swinging his big head from side to side to sweep his surroundings with a prying eye. Homer had a truly embarrassing inquisitiveness, a nosy way of sticking his finger in the hole where the stuffing was coming out of the sofa, or the kapok from some wretched person’s pride. Now, as he crouched past the vegetable garden, his attention was caught by the thick growth of weeds. Tsk, tsk, thought Homer, comparing Arlene’s garden with Mary’s vegetable patch at home. Mary’s was weedy too, but not like this. Here were bushes six feet tall springing up around the poles of the bean vines. Homer paused in his flight and leaned over the chicken-wire fence. It was clear that someone had cared for this garden in the beginning and then had stopped caring for it. Surely it was the missing Arlene who had planted the green peppers and the sprawling squash, who had so carefully tied up the now shriveled beans who had sown the seeds of the late-summer lettuce, bolted now into bitter towers.
How could the woman run away from a garden into which she had poured such devotion? Arlene should have stayed at home to harvest the zucchini before it grew so monstrous, she should have plucked the tender young lettuce, she should have picked the ripe tomatoes—if there were any tomatoes, only Homer couldn’t see any. It struck him as odd that there were no tomatoes, and he craned his neck, looking for them, then moved cautiously around the chicken-wire enclosure.