Maybe if she learned about stock cars she’d become more alluring to him. She had heard stories about men’s sexual desires being reignited with such tactics. Maybe that was why they didn’t have a baby.
She won the hand of solitaire as he came in the back door. Buster scrambled up to greet him.
“Hi, honey.”
“Hi.” She turned her cheek so he could kiss it. “You know, I can double-clutch.”
He blinked. “You can?”
“I can take a corner on two wheels, too. I think I ought to enter the ladies’ stock-car races.”
“Juts, you hate stock-car races.”
She stared at her cards, now in four neat little piles. “Well—what do I have to do to be—uh—sexy to you?”
“You are sexy to me.”
“Black slip?”
“You don’t need a black slip.” He smiled. “What set you off on this tack?”
“I don’t know.” She gathered up the cards, straightening them out by tapping them against the tabletop. “You’ve been far away.”
“Oh, honey, I’ve got a lot on my mind.”
“Yeah, I know, and I never seem to be there.”
“You are.” He reached down and kissed her on the lips.
47
Gas rationing didn’t affect Mary Miles Mundis’s desire to show off. She tooled around town in a new 1941 Pontiac V-8 Torpedo sedan coupe in creamy burgundy with a tan pinstripe and tan interior. Harold bought the car in Baltimore for a good price because it had been sitting on the lot since the end of 1941 and the dealer, paying interest on his inventory, wanted to move it. Gas rationing killed car sales, and the automakers converted their factories for the war effort. No new cars.
Of course, Mary Miles Mundis just drove the Torpedo around town. There wasn’t enough gas to drive long distances in it, which was fine with her. The main point of the automobile was not to provide transportation but to excite the envy of her friends. In this she richly succeeded.
“Would you look at that? Just swanning about.” Louise slapped a comb against her thigh. “I’d look better in that car than she does. Her hair’s the wrong color.”
“She’ll dye it to match,” Toots Ryan said.
Wistfully Juts followed the progress of the beautiful machine as she stood next to Louise and Toots in the front window. “Must be great to have all that money.”
“She’s not that rich. She wants us to think she’s rich. Harold’s a contractor. His finances must be like a roller coaster.”
“Chessy says what with the war and all, Harold will make a fortune. He’s in there bidding for government contracts all over the state of Maryland, and since we’re so close to Washington he goes down there to oil palms.”
“You gotta hand it to Harold Mundis, he has ambition,” Toots noted.
“I’d be happy if Pearlie showed a bit more spunk,” Louis complained.
“Well, we know my husband has none, never will. He says once you hire other people, your troubles really begin.” She watched Mary Miles hit the brakes, and the taillights glowed bright red. “Of course, what are a few headaches for all that money?”
“We do all right. I don’t think we have headaches,” Louise remarked. “We’ve almost paid off Flavius.”
“Women have sense.” Toots flicked her tongue over her teeth. “Men waste time puffing up for one another. I declare, they spend more time trying to impress one another than they do us.”
“It’s a man’s world.” Louise sighed.
“Yeah, that’s why we’re having another war,” Juts sharply responded. “I don’t give a damn who runs what. I mean, if you can do the job, do it. Why it’s divided into men-do-this, women-do-that makes no sense to me. I’ve got more drive than Chester. I love him to death but he’s not Mr. Get-Up-and-Go. Right?” They nodded their heads and she continued. “I could go out and fight for government bids same as Harold Mundis but I couldn’t even get my foot in the door.”
“You don’t know anything about construction.” Louise popped her balloon.
“No, but if I did, it still wouldn’t do me any good.”
“That’s the whole point of marrying well, Julia. You never have figured that out. It doesn’t matter how smart a woman is. If she’s not married to the right man she can’t make him a success. All your ambition is never going to light a fire under Chester Smith. I told you that in 1927.”
“Richard doesn’t breath fire, either,” Toots said. Her husband worked on the loading dock for the Clarion.
“You can’t help your heart.” Juts stoutly took issue with Louise.
“Help it. Ignore it. Men are like streetcars, there’s always another one coming round the corner.” She paused for dramatic effect. “Love is the least of it—really.” Her voice dropped low.
“For you.”
“I love my husband, but if he hadn’t had prospects I wouldn’t have married him.” Her lips compressed. “I had the example of Momma. I wasn’t going to marry a do-nothing man.”
“Sounds to me like Hansford did too much,” Juts wryly replied.
“We’ll never know. They’re all buttoning their lips, aren’t they?” Louise sarcastically said. “Oh, who cares, anyway. I don’t care. Just a bunch of old people sitting around remembering stuff. About all they have is memories.”
“Louise, nobody knows what the future holds. It’s easier to look backward.” Juts folded her arms across her chest.
“That’s the truth.” Toots nodded. “Rillma says sometimes she wonders if Washington will be bombed. You just never know.”
“Men must be falling all over her in Washington.” Louise, for a fleeting moment, wanted to trade places.
“She’s met a fellow from the Free French army. He’s handsome, she says. Bullette. Pierre? Louis? I don’t remember. Says she works around the clock and that Francis is a good boss. He reminds her of Miss Chalfonte. ‘Do it right or don’t do it at all.’”
“Here she comes again.” Juts laughed as Mary Miles glided by.
“How many times has she come down Frederick Street this morning?” Louise craned her neck. “If she’s coming down our street you know she’s going out Baltimore Street, cutting back in the alley, coming down Hanover Street, and then going out the Emmitsburg pike. She’s going to make sure every single person in this town sees her.”
Juts waved just in case Mary Miles was looking in—which she was. She had to swerve to get back on the road. “Funny how spring arrived overnight,” Juts said.
“Spring and her new Pontiac.” Louise erased the old news on Gossip Central. “Guess I’ll put up that Mary Miles has a new car.”
“Better not,” Toots advised.
“Yeah, let her do it herself,” Juts agreed. “Boy, it’s deader than a doornail today. Fannie Jump even canceled her card game. Spring fever, I guess.”
“Is anyone coming in?” Louise asked.
Juts walked over and ran her finger down the time line of the big appointment book. “Not a soul. I say we take the rest of the day off. I’ve got spring fever, too.” Juts smoothed out the pages of the book. “Let’s go someplace.”
“Go where?”
“I don’t know. Anywhere.”
“We don’t have a car.”
“All we need to do is stand on the corner and Mary Miles is bound to cruise around again. We’ll hitch a ride.”
“She won’t want Doodlebug and Buster in the car.”
Juts stared down at the upturned faces. “Oh, hell, let’s go for a walk.”
They admired the daffodils peeping up at the base of the Confederate memorial. They marched straight down Hanover Street, determined to work up a big appetite for lunch. Buster barked, turned circles, and sat in front of the entrance to Trudy Archer’s dance studio.
“Isn’t that the cutest thing. He wants to dance.” Julia Ellen laughed. She whistled for him and he followed her down the road with a backward glance at Trudy’s door.
48
A paper moon,
a bottle of scotch, and a large green jar of bubble bath sat on Trudy Archer’s table. Chester had given her the moon and the scotch. The bubble bath was her own idea.
After dance class on Tuesday night, he would leave her apartment, only to sneak back on foot. Sometimes he brought Buster—his excuse for taking a walk. On those nights when Juts was in the air-patrol watchtower he would come late at night, when Runnymede’s houselights were turned off, and leave before sunrise. He knew everyone’s CAP schedule, which helped in his subterfuge. If he was really lucky he would catch a ride past the watchtower with one of the firehouse boys, since Trudy lived on the Pennsylvania side of the line. Then he’d hop out one or two blocks away in pitch-darkness and hurry to her tidy apartment.
Chessy’s knock—a-shave-and-a-haircut—on the back door sent Trudy to her feet. She opened the door and Chessy hastened inside along with Buster.
“I’m so glad you’re here.” She put her arms around his neck and kissed him, then led him by the hand into the bathroom, where a tub filled with iridescent bubbles promised an unusual evening.
Chessy had come tonight with the intention of breaking off the affair. Each Tuesday he geared himself up to tell her this had to end, but each Tuesday he’d melt in her presence. This Tuesday proved no exception.
He discovered that when he was with Trudy he didn’t think of Juts. However, when he was with his wife he often daydreamed about Trudy, her supple body and green eyes. Because Trudy was new to him he thought about her more. He knew he loved Juts, although she irritated him so much sometimes he’d get a headache. His bond to her was as much loyalty as love. Juts put up with the never-ending insults, direct and indirect, of his mother. Then again, worldly success eluded him, and she endured having to count every penny, which, given his wife’s expansive nature, had to be hard on her. She cooked, cleaned, and gardened, performing the typical wifely chores in her energetic fashion. Apart from telling him what to do and how to do it, he found no fault with his wife. Much as he desired Trudy, he didn’t see how he could walk out on someone who kept up her end of the bargain. It just wasn’t done in Runnymede.
As he slid into the tub and Trudy handed him a glass of scotch, he put his worry out of his head.
You only live once, he thought to himself.
49
Sheriff Wheeler and Sheriff Nordness were cooperating fully over the torching of Noe Mojo’s meatpacking warehouse. Each department carefully sifted through the physical evidence and then questioned potential suspects.
At first, Harper Wheeler had agreed with the general consensus that the crime was a kids’ prank fueled as much by alcohol as by gasoline. Harmon Nordness kept his mouth shut. Not that he didn’t think young men galvanized by Pearl Harbor weren’t capable of such an act, but somehow the evidence suggested someone more sophisticated than a kid soaking rags in gasoline cans.
Their joint work yielded questions and few answers.
Harper sat in a ladder-back rocker in front of the big fireplace at Bumblebee Hill. A soft twilight flowed over the rolling hills, but the night temperature dipped into the forties. The fire warded off the chill.
“Cora, thank you for this hot coffee. You make the best coffee in Runnymede.”
“Well, thank you, Harper. If you boys don’t need me I’ll be in the kitchen.” She was determined to sand and paint the small table that sat by the window. Deep hunter-green would be perfect and she thought she might add a yellow pinstripe on the edge with a small curl in each corner.
Harper clasped his hands together as if in prayer. “Hansford, I’ve run into a wall. Don’t expect you’ll be able to help, but you’re the last person in South Runnymede for me to question.” He plunged right in. “Where were you when the meat plant burned?”
“Here—in the house with Cora.”
“I didn’t mean to imply that you did it.”
“No offense taken. Anyway, it’s your job to suspect everyone.”
“Yeah—I reckon.”
“Do you know the history of that building, Sheriff?” Hansford slyly asked a question of his own.
“Sure do. Cassius Rife built it before the War Between the States, and then when he died Brutus kept it running.”
“As a coffee mill.” Hansford coughed, holding a crisply ironed handkerchief to his lips.
“Yes.”
“Coffee’s like the stock market, it has cycles. A man can make a fortune or lose one on a harvest in Colombia. I expect Cassius made another fortune.”
“I thought it was just a coffee mill, you know, where they grind the beans and bag ’em.”
“Oh, it was, it was. But he brought the green beans in by the railroad car. There’s a siding there.”
“Siding’s been unused since the late thirties.”
Hansford leaned back and put his feet up on a small woven-straw hassock. He left room for Harper’s feet. “Cassius built the mill long before I was born—February 13, 1869, if you need to know. Anyway, when I was a boy the place was hopping. All of Runnymede floated in the aroma of fresh-roasted coffee beans. Sure beat living in Spring Grove, I can tell you.” He laughed, mentioning the small town on Route 116 northeast of Runnymede, in which a paper mill spewed out the odors so peculiar to cooking pulp. “The business boomed until 1929 and then the old man was gone anyway. He died in, oh”—he raised his voice—“Cora, when did Cassius Rife meet his Maker?”
“Had to be around the time Julia Ellen was born. Maybe a little after 1905.”
“Well”—Hansford shrugged—“let’s say somewhere between 1905 and 1908. Anyway, I was still here when he died, so 1908 will take it on the outside. Brutus took over the mill, the canning factories, and of course, the munitions plant. He sold off the coffee mill in one of those dips in the market.”
“He sold it to Van Dusen in 1915.”
“Carlotta’s husband. He looked good in an Arrow shirt.” Which was Hansford’s way of saying there had not been much inside the shirt.
“Then Brutus bought it back five years later, for a tenth of what he sold it for, since Van Dusen had a box of rocks upstairs.” Harper smiled. “Nothing illegal about that.”
Hansford closed his eyes, then opened them. “Brutus knew that going in, Sheriff. Believe me. There’s no such thing as a Rife can’t smell a profit. After all, they’ve been making money from death—think about it. They see money in places we never look.”
“I don’t think Pole and Julius are that smart.” Harper referred to Napoleon Bonaparte Rife and his surviving brother, Julius Caesar Rife, who ran the conglomerate together. A third brother, Ulysses S. Grant Rife, had died by his own hand, and the oldest brother, Robert E. Lee Rife, born in 1899, had moved to San Francisco, where he ran the Stagecoach Bank. As it was, Julius and Pole spent as little time in Runnymede as possible, preferring the enticements of New York City.
“Here I’ve been poking around in the past with my little pick, just pulling nuggets out of the vein.” Hansford slowed his voice, lulling Harper, who underestimated the man.
Harper replied, “The insurance payment is contested because we can’t find whoever started the damn fire. Julius and Pole are breathing down my neck. You’d think they had enough money.”
Hansford shrugged. “I look at everything through a miner’s eyes. You got to dig deep on this one, Harper, and I mean dig.”
“I’ll bear your advice in mind. Thank you, Hansford.” Harper stood up.
Hansford held on to the arms of the chair and pushed himself up. “Are the Rifes trying to get money out of Noe?”
“No.”
“That’s unusual. Like I said, you ought to dig deep and notice if anyone poor suddenly has money.”
“I’ll bear it in mind, as I said.” Harper shook his hand and left … not fully understanding what Hansford was implying.
50
Days come and days go. Sometimes one will stick in the brain like chewing gum on the sole of your shoe. April 29 was that kind of day for Julia Ellen. Hitler and Mussolini wer
e meeting in Salzburg, and much as Juts pretended to be interested in current affairs, she was a lot more interested in her own.
Louise was taking pride in Maizie, who was becoming very popular at school. At fourteen her awkwardness could be painful, but since her peers suffered the same predicament they didn’t notice it about one another. Not only was she popular with the girls, she was popular with the boys. She also danced attendance on her sad sister.
Mary, a pretty girl, asked Maizie how she had become so popular. Maizie replied, “I listen to everybody and don’t interrupt.”
No doubt she had learned to listen because her mother, her aunt, and Mary fought for airtime, but she didn’t say that.
Juts painted the big window boxes out front of the shop, hung baskets, and arranged flowers between appointments. Buster dug up one lovely tub of pale pink tulips, receiving a spanking for his efforts. Both sisters worked hard that day, fueled by the fact that they had one more payment to Flavius Cadwalder before they would be out of debt.
By the time Juts dragged home she felt out of sorts. She lay down on the sofa, intending to read the Trumpet, when Chester came home early.
“Hi, hon,” she called out.
“Hi,” he answered from the kitchen. “Got off early. Want a drink?”
“No, I’m so tired it would put me right out.”
She listened as he cracked ice cubes, appearing with a scotch.
“I’m bushed.” He sat opposite her on the sofa.
“Don’t take your shoes off. That’s worse than mustard gas.”
He crossed his feet at the ankles, his shoes nearly touching her face. “We build fighter planes but can’t fix stinky feet.” He swallowed a bit. “Hey, what if we go to a movie tonight?”
Pooped as she was, she could always find the energy to go to a show. She fluffed up her hair while Chester finished his drink.
They made it just in time.
After the show, a soft mist curled around Runnymede Square.
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