Six
THE DINING room at Eden Beach had a wing like a small greenhouse, with an opaque roof. Broadleafed plants in big cement pots provided the illusion of privacy for each table.
I arrived for brunch at one thirty, and while I was still examining the menu, a pair of unordered Bloody Marys arrived, complete with celery stalks for stirring. A few moments later the lady herself arrived and slid into the chair across from me. She looked shy and a bit worn. Her lips were puffy and there were bruised patches under her eyes.
We looked at each other in that moment which has to set the style for the whole relationship. I had guessed that perhaps we would have a bawdy little chat about how we had missed arranging a nooner, and how exhausted the male might be, and how badly lamed the female.
But from the look in her eyes I knew that was not the way to go, and knew that I would have relished that kind of talk as little as she. So I hoisted the glass. "To us."
"To us," she said, and we touched glasses. The drink was spice-hot and delicious.
"It's going to be kind of difficult and awkward, keeping control of my staff, Travis. I really want us to be very very discreet, very careful. This job does mean an awful lot to me."
I smiled at her and said, "You are implying, of course, that these fun and games are going to continue."
She flushed and said, "Don't you want to? I thought we were-"
"Hey! I was afraid you might have second thoughts. Remember, I was sent into the game as a substitute for the doctor."
"That's not fair!" she said angrily. I kept smiling. Anger faded. She laughed. "Well, maybe that was the way it started. Okay. Let's say I got lucky."
"We both got lucky. It has to happen like that sometimes."
She reached and touched my hand, her eyes glowing, then looked and saw a waitress coming and yanked her hand back.
"Look," she said in her business voice, "I have to finish this and run. I really do. I am getting some kind of a short count in supplies, and as it isn't my people, it has to be the wholesaler, and I had him hold the next truck. I have to go down there with my bookkeeper and prove to him he's got thieves in his warehouse. I talked to Prescott Mullen this morning-by the way, he looked kind of shrunken and uninteresting-and gave him your name and told him you were checking out how Ellis got killed and said you'd find him sometime today."
"Thank you."
"We always put a sprig of mint in the half grapefruit. All the time Prescott was talking to me, Marcie Jean stood there smiling, with a piece of mint leaf stuck on her front tooth."
"I've thought it over and decided she does have a fat face."
She patted my hand. "Thank you, dear. You know the old joke about the ideal wife?"
"Deaf and dumb and owns a liquor store?"
"Right. Well, you've got an old lady now that runs a hotel, and she's entitled to put dear friends on the cuff, so you better count on coming across the state at pretty regular intervals, hear?"
She got up, touched a fingertip to my lips, and hurried away.
I found Dr. Prescott Mullen on the beach, sitting in a sling chair under a big blue and white umbrella. The bride was face down in the shade beside him, a towel over her head, her legs and back pinked by fresh sunburn. Her new rings winked in reflected sunlight. I introduced myself and he told me to pull another chair over, but I sat on my heels, half facing him.
"I'm just doing a favor for a friend," I told him. "Ron Esterland is suspicious of the timing. If Ellis had outlived his daughter, a lot of money would have moved in a different direction."
"Some of it to him?" the doctor asked.
"Yes. But I don't think that's the primary motive."
"So what is?"
"Anxiety. Guilt. A sense of loss. He's sorry they didn't get along, and he's sorry his father didn't live to see him make it as a painter."
Prescott Mullen looked thoughtful. "I suppose in some sense it would be an easier murder to justify than if the man was healthy. How many months was he robbed of? If I had to guess, I'd say six at the outside. And the last six weeks would probably not have been what you'd call living."
"What was his attitude toward his illness?"
"He seemed to think of it as a challenge. To him the cancer was an entity, an enemy, a thing that had invaded him and plotted against his life. I was no fan of Ellis Esterland. He was a highly competitive organism. I used to wonder how Anne could put up with him, why she didn't just walk out."
"When did you last see Esterland?"
"Mid-June. About five weeks before he was killed. He looked better than I expected him to look. But he was in pain. He wouldn't admit it. I know he was in great pain."
"How could you tell?"
"Observation. You see a lot of pain, you know what it looks like: Sudden sweats. Quick little intakes of breath. A sudden pallor. I think he could probably handle more pain than most, just out of arrogance and pride. He was a stubborn old man. I knew there would be more coming, and it might get to the point where he couldn't handle it. I tried to get him to admit the pain, and I tried to tell him it would get worse. He told me not to worry about it. He said he was fine. I remember giving him a little lecture about the psychology of pain."
"Would he have arranged to get himself killed rather than admit he was hurting?"
He shook his head slowly. "No, I can't see Esterland in that role. I gave him a lecture about the effects of the hallucinogens on pain. We know now that cannabis can quell the nausea some people feel during chemotherapy and radiology. Cannabis and hashish and LSD have an interesting effect on the subjective experiencing of pain. Intense and continuing pain seems to the patient to be a part of him, something swelling and burning inside of him, taking him over. The hallucinogens have the odd effect of making the pain seem aside and apart from the patient. The pain may be just as intense, but it is, subjectively, off to one side. Pain creates a terrible and consuming anxiety, on some very deep level of the brain. Pain is nature's warning that something is terribly wrong. If anxiety is quelled by any hallucinogen, then pain, though still as intense, becomes less frightening and consuming. That may be the answer. I thought Ellis was fighting the pain relievers because they would dull his wits, dull his perceptions of the world. He wanted to stay just a little brighter than anybody else he knew. I urged him to find a private source for hallucinogens and experiment with them. I explained that it would leave his mind unimpaired but would enable him to handle pain better. I told him that it was the best way for him to get any enjoyment out of the time he had left."
"Did you tell him how long he had left?"
"I told him my guess. That was our relationship from the start. Total candor."
"Maybe the pain got worse and he took your advice and went up there to make a buy. That's why he didn't take Anne or tell her why he was going."
"And somebody cheated him and killed him? Possible. I can tell you that if he did buy something, he would take it secretly, and if it helped, he would never have told Anne or me. It would have been his private solution. It would leave his macho image unimpaired."
"Lovely guy."
"Prince of a fellow," Mullen said, grinning. "McGee, I like your reconstruction. It seems to fit what I read about the circumstances of his death. The news accounts implied he was keeping some kind of appointment at a highway rest stop."
"Did you recommend any particular substance?"
"I think I told him that hashish would be easiest to manage, and probably reasonably available in the Miami area."
"Everything you ever heard of is available in Dade County. But he couldn't get much with two hundred dollars."
"That's all he had?"
"Anne gave out that figure, and she kept the accounts."
"I have the feeling that Ellis Esterland could put his hands on money in one form or another without Anne knowing about it."
"Okay, suppose he was carrying five thousand dollars. If Anne had known that and reported it, the local authorities would have been thinking
about a buy that went wrong. There could have been contacts they could have developed. In his condition, at that point in the progression of the disease, how much pain do you think he should have been feeling?"
He thought it over. "Enough to send me running for the needle, whimpering all the way."
The big bride rolled over, clawing the towel off her head, looking blankly and stupidly at the two of us. One nipple showed above the edge of her white bikini top. Prescott Mullen, smiling, reached down and tugged the fabric up to cover her. A few tendrils of russet hair curled out from under the bikini bottom.
"Whassa time, sweetie?" she asked in a small sweet voice.
"Three fifteen, lambikin. This is Travis McGee. My wife, Marcie Jean Mullen."
"Oh, hi," she said. She prodded her pink thigh with an index finger as she sat up, watching how long the white mark lasted. "Honeybun, I better get the hell off the beach. I think the sun kind of reflects in under the umbrella from the sand and sun and stuff." She stood up, yawned, swayed, and then lost her balance when she bent to pick up her towel. She yawned again. "Marcie Jean Mullen. Still sounds strange, huh?" She beamed sleepily at me. "Used to be Marcie Jean Sensabaugh. Hated every minute of it. Be a rotten world if you had to keep the name you were born with." She picked up her canvas bag and looked inside. "I got a key, honeybun. See ya in the room."
"Pretty lady," I said when she was out of earshot. "Congratulations."
"Thanks. She's a great girl. Absolutely perfect disposition. No neuroses. Healthy as the Green Bay Packers. And an absolutely fantastic pelvic structure. She was a delivery-room nurse."
"That's interesting."
"We've talked it over. We want as many kids as we can have. She's twenty-three and I'm thirty-six, and as near as we can tell, she's two months pregnant right now. We agreed not to get married until we were sure we could have kids. I don't want her to have them too close together. It wears a woman out too much. They should be two years apart. Okay, she'll be twenty-four when our first one is born. Her mother had her last baby when she was forty-four. So, with a two-year spacing, we could have nine or ten. Of course, her mother had one set of twins."
"It's nice to see people get their lives all worked out."
"I always wanted a big family. It was a case of finding the right girl before I got too old to enjoy the kids. As it is, if we stay on schedule, the last kid won't get out of college until I'm about seventy-eight."
"That's cutting it pretty close, doctor."
"I guess it is. But I come of long-lived stock. Both of my grandfathers and one of my grandmothers are still living. Late seventies and early eighties."
"It's something to look forward to, all right."
"I think of it as a very precious responsibility. It's really the only immortality we have. Did you ever think of that?"
"I guess I think of it all the time."
"Are you married?"
"No."
"Then you better find a healthy woman right away, Mr. McGee. Or you won't be young enough to enjoy your kids."
I stood up and shook hands with him. "Thanks a lot. That's probably a very good idea. Nice to have had this chat with you, doctor."
"If I can be of any help, please call on me. Funny thing. Ellis was dying and I didn't particularly like the man, but it made me furious that somebody had the gall to kill him. My patient!"
That night in Annie's cabana, she had thrown a pale green towel over the lampshade. It gave the room an underwater look.
The fan overhead made a small ticking sound. The waves were louder. A mockingbird tried silvery improvisations. She was saying, "And so, of course, Sam couldn't believe that any of his people were stealing. It had to be my people. He acted as if he was doing me a big favor, checking that big order item by item. But then the discrepancies began to show up. Short cases, opened and resealed. And his face sagged and his voice got tired. I felt so sorry for him. All his people have been with him for years and years, and he has been so good to them. And it did look as if one person couldn't have done it. It had. to be two working together. I got credits on the other shortages we had picked up. He was really depressed when we left. I found myself wishing I wasn't a boss. But not for long. Not for long. You talked with Dr. Mullen, I hear."
"Had a nice chat. Have you got a fantastic pelvic structure?"
"My God! I don't know. You mean for babies. Well, I'd have a little problem, I guess. I always heard I would. My mother had two Cesarian deliveries. Why?"
"Would you be prepared to watch your final child graduate from college when you are sixty-five?"
"Hell, no! He can carry his diploma home to his poor old mom. What is this about, darling?"
So I told her the conversation with Prescott Mullen. At first she was incredulous. Was I sure he wasn't joshing? When I convinced her that he was totally serious, deadly serious, in fact, she went into something close to hysteria. That then subsided into a giggling fit, and that turned into hiccups.
"Poor big old brood mare-hic-can hear him saying-hic-roll over, Marcie Jean-hic-time to start number six-hic. And I wanted to get myself into a deal like that?-hic. Oh, God."
I poured her more wine, and she sat on the edge of the bed to drink it out of the far side of the glass, holding it in two hands like a child. There was a pale narrow stripe across her back matching the pallor of her buttocks.
She lay back again, saying, "All gone. Thanks."
"Were you there when he gave Ellis the argument about maybe he should try hash or LSD for pain?"
"Oh, yes. The last time he saw him. In June."
"Did you know Ellis was in pain?"
"I didn't know how much. He'd get up in the night and go up on deck. Sometimes he would get up from a meal and go walking. His face would twist. But he wouldn't let it twist if he knew you were watching. Prescott told me Ellis was probably in a lot of pain. After Prescott had gone back north, I tried to get Ellis to do what he had suggested. But he got angry with me. He wouldn't listen. He said he wasn't going to baby himself. He said he was not going to turn into a junky at the very end of his life. He said it was demeaning."
"After talking it over, both Dr. Mullen and I have the feeling he went up there to Citrus City to make a buy. We think that was what the long-distance phone call was about."
"But wouldn't it take more money than he had?"
"What makes you think he had only two hundred dollars, more or less?"
"But I took checks to the bank! I knew what we had and what we needed. I paid the bills. I made the deposits."
"Let me ask it another way, Annie."
"I've never let anybody else in my life call me Annie except you."
"After he was killed, it was up to you to go through everything on the boat. You and the man from the bank. Tell me this. Did you come across anything-anything at all-which led you to believe that maybe there were some money matters you didn't know about?"
"How did you know about that?"
"Know about what?"
"The Krugerrands. Those big gold coins from South Africa, guaranteed one ounce of pure gold in each one."
"I didn't know about them at all. I just had the idea that he was the kind of man who would have to keep secrets from everybody, even you."
"There were ten of them. Worth, I don't know, five or six hundred dollars each at that point. There was no clue as to when or where he got them, or at what price. They were way in the back of the hanging locker, in the pocket of one of his old tweed jackets that he never wore any more. When I lifted it out, it was so fantastically heavy. It made me so damn mad, him hiding something like that, like some sneaky little kid. But what has that got to do with anything, dear?"
"Where there were ten, there could have been twenty, or forty. The ten you found were worth from five to six thousand dollars. What if he took half of what he had stashed?"
"Could be. Yes. Yes, damn it! Damn him."
"So I'll go on from there, assuming he left half of them home and took half for the bu
y. And see what I can turn up. And I will look into the question of bikers, hard core."
"How?"
"I have a contact who has good reason to trust me."
"Who?"
"I am very glad you don't mind my calling you Annie."
"I see. Okay. When are you leaving, dearest?"
"Midmorning, I guess."
John D MacDonald - Travis McGee 19 - Freefall in Crimson Page 6