“Over a month afterward, Harv. She’d moved into that apartment in the old Carey place on Lemon Street, and she’d just started working mornings, reception work for Doc Nile. Kelse wasn’t being too regular about the support, but she had some cash money she could take out of a trust thing up north, seventy-one hundred and some dollars, and she had the idea if she could put it to work down here it would be maybe a little more income. She’d heard all the rumors about everything I touch turning to money, and we’d met socially a couple times, so she came to the office for advice. I told her I wasn’t any investment adviser. Truth of the matter, I figured her for just another one of that crowd, the Yates and the Keavers and the Bryes and all. Maybe I was a little rough, and it was like a last straw for her, and she put her face in her hands and started snuffling. Pretty young woman. That light hair and all. So I softened up and rode her around some looking at this and that, and she told me a little at a time how her dreams had gone to hell in a hand basket. So I took her in on that warehouse thing, a seven thousand piece of it that started bringing her ninety a month right off. We felt good being with each other, and I could talk easier to her than almost anybody. Because we were together so much, the talk started, but nothing went on between us, me forty-seven with growed children and Kitty dead since fifty-three, and her just twenty-seven. You got an anxious look in your eye, Harv, and you look a little sweaty, but you better settle back down because I’m giving you no details. I was in Jacksonville for the hearings, staying over a weekend for law talk, alone in a hotel room, depressed on account of how they fixing to chew me up up there, and so I just reached out and took the phone and called her, woke her out of bed at eleven at night on a Friday and told her I was so low I could walk under a gator without taking off my hat, and told her where I was and to get to me the fastest way she knew how. There was a long long silence and then a little click of her hanging up. Late Saturday I came dragging back from all that tax talk and went in and there she was setting in my room, pale as chalk. Tried to smile and tried to say something, but the tears just started running down her face. I don’t know about love, Harv. It’s a word gets kicked around. We never waved it in folks’ faces. We made each other feel good, and she was more woman than you’d figure her for. I don’t know if I would have married her because it never did come up. But I know I’m going to miss her long as I live.”
After a long silence Harv moistened his lips and said, “Yesterday?”
“We’d spent the night out to that shack of mine beyond Beetle Creek and had two cars there on account of me having to go early to Lakeland on business, and her coming in to work. I wanted her to quit working but she said if she did she’d feel trampy. Never would take a dime from me, nor any present except little stuff, and gave me much as I gave her. She left first and I wrenched off the breakfast stuff and went on off to Lakeland. When I got back to town, got out of the car, first man I see is Charlie Best. About three o’clock, and he said she was dead. I couldn’t make my legs work, see clear or think straight. And got as drunk last night as I’ve ever been.”
“Did she say what she was going to do after she left Doc’s office at noon?”
“We were supposed to go to a movie at the drive-in yesterday night, and I was to pick her up at the apartment along about six to eat first. I don’t remember her saying anything about what she was going to do in the afternoon.”
“Did you ever go swimming there with her?”
“I’m not much for swimming, as you know, Harv. We took picnics there a few times, and I’d watch her swim. I’d joke her a little about that place, saying as how it was land I’d held onto long enough and I was going to get it platted up and sold off. Too many people using it, littering it up. She’d never quite know if I was serious. She’d swim and we’d eat the picnic and she’d take her a little nap in the sun while I’d watch over her, thinking on how lucky a man could get sometimes.”
“She was a good swimmer they say.”
“She slid easy through the water and was never puffing when she come wading out.”
“This is just a routine investigation, Sam.”
“Like you keep saying, Harv.” Sam Kimber rose slowly to his full six and a half feet. “One little favor I want to ask you, Harv. Lucille and me, we got to trust each other pretty good. With this tax persecution and all, she was doing a little private book work for me, and it’s some records I need. I want to get into that apartment and get them.”
“Where are they? I’ll see you get them, Sam.”
“I don’t rightly know. I told her not to leave them laying around.”
“What do they look like?”
“Suppose you just clear it so as I can go get my records, Harv.”
Sam waited, hoping his tone had been convincingly casual. Until today he wouldn’t have been as wary of Harvey Walmo. But Harv had turned into an unknown quantity. He wondered if the tax suit had anything to do with it. He could guess the rumors Harv had probably heard. Sam Kimber is in bad trouble. They’re trying to nail him for fraud, and if they do, they’ll strip him clean and maybe even send him up. But if that was the way Harv was thinking, he was in for an unpleasant surprise after all the dust settled. Sure, the Jacksonville boys were threatening fraud, but they didn’t have much chance of making it stick in court. It was just a big difference of opinion on how some things should have been handled. They’d built their case quietly the way they always do, and then sprung the big audit and asked for eight hundred and twenty-two thousand dollars, back taxes, penalties and interest. Coming up with that would really strip him down. But what you did was swing your own tax boys and legal boys onto the firing line and start dickering. Their latest demand was about three hundred and forty thousand, and the counter offer was a hundred and seventy thousand, with three months to raise it in cash money. Gus Gable guessed the compromise settlement would be in the neighborhood of two hundred and twenty-five thousand. After all, as Gus had explained, they had the complete and detailed personal balance sheet, and to demand much more than that would force Sam to divest himself of so many income-producing properties, they’d be killing off the goose they expected to keep producing those golden eggs in future years. It would be a squeeze to raise that much, of course, but it could be done without upsetting any apple carts.
But there was that one little item he’d sneaked out from under them, the one that if it appeared on the personal balance sheet would go right into the kitty, right into Uncle’s waiting hands. And that was the hundred and six thousand cash money. When they’d jumped him, they’d gotten court orders sealing the boxes they knew about, but they’d missed the two prime ones, mostly because Sam had been so careful about setting them up. So he’d taken the quick trips to Waycross and Pensacola, and packed the cash into the little blue airlines bag and then wondered exactly what the hell to do with it. And after considering and discarding a dozen frail plans, he’d merely turned it over to Lucille and told her to hide it in the apartment, and to quiet her curiosity he told her it was cash money, but not how much. He told her it was land promotion syndicate money entrusted to him on a deal so secret there weren’t any papers of verification around, and he couldn’t take the risk of it being grabbed by the tax people and used as evidence of fraud against him. He said he could prove it wasn’t his, but in so doing he’d have to say so much he’d spoil the deal they were working on.
This satisfied her and she said she’d put it in a safe place and forget it. It was funny, he thought as he watched Harv make up his mind, that having Lucille gone made the money a lot less important. There were a lot less things to do with it, somehow. But it was a good big piece of cash, a useful tool for future ventures.
Harv sighed and wrote a note to Mrs. Carey asking her to let Sam into the apartment to get some personal items. He handed the note to Sam, saying, “I told her to keep it locked up until the law tells me who the stuff in there belongs to. She’ll have folks coming down. I guess they’ll work it out with Hanson.”
&nb
sp; After he had firmly, politely, smilingly closed the door in Mrs. Carey’s face and he was alone in the small apartment, Sam Kimber suddenly felt sick and weak. He sat on the couch, and he could imagine that at any moment he would hear the clink of dishes in the small kitchen and then that tuneless little happy humming sound of hers, the tock of her heels on linoleum. The apartment held no sensual memories. She had firmly labeled it out of bounds. But her presence was almost tangible. And it was worse when he began his search with the bedroom closet. There was a scent of her there, and her clothes on the hangers were all familiar to him. When he was certain the blue bag was not in the closet he trudged over and sat on her bed, trying to think of where it might be, but trapped in converging memories of the woman, the teasing, the quickly amorous smile, the saucy flaunt of skirt and hip. And how sometimes she was grave and sad, unmoved by his clowning. She had been a fragile-looking woman, because of her delicacy of feature, narrowness of waist, small-breasted figure. But she had been lithe and strong and fit. She disapproved of her own figure, deploring the breadth of hip, the heaviness of her thighs. Objectively he could see they were out of proportion on any perfectionist basis, but not as much as she believed, a sweet and hearty weight now lost forever, and he groaned aloud and startled himself with the sound of it in the silence of her room.
It did not take him long to satisfy himself that the bag was not in the apartment. There was no place left to search which could contain an object of that size. He was puzzled. Perhaps she Had not felt right about it being hidden in the apartment and had taken it somewhere else. But had she done that, he was certain she would have asked him first. She had enjoyed letting him make decisions. She had told him many times he was the first man in her life of any force and authority, the first man to make her feel like a girl.
When he went out, Mrs. Carey was waiting, key in hand, her shrunken face pinched into a mask of churchly disapproval. “Took you long enough. Get what you were after?”
“Yes, thank you.”
She gave the lock a decisive twist and said, “Old enough to be her paw, Sam Kimber.”
“True enough, Martha.”
“Can’t count the times she never come home at all. Maybe she was with you every time. Maybe not. No fool like an old fool when it comes to prancing after a blonde head.”
“Has anyone else been in the apartment since it happened?”
“Not unless they come with a key. I live in the front and this is in the back, and if I was to keep track of all comings and goings I wouldn’t get my work done.”
“Is that her key you have?”
“There’s two to each apartment, good locks, and this is the spare. You tell Harv I want her key back, or I want the money to get a spare made.”
“Did you see her at all yesterday?”
“From afar. We weren’t never close. Seen her go by the corner walking back from Doc Nile’s maybe some after noon, then scooting out in that car of hers at maybe half past. Wasn’t to home night before last at all, come back in the early morning in a different outfit she wore leaving, so I guess she had some other place she was living too, but I guess you’d know more about that than me.”
“I guess I would,” Sam said and winked in a way that drew a shocked gasp from Martha Carey.
“Shameless!” she hissed.
He walked out and got into his big pale Chrysler. He drove slowly down Lemon Street, turning the air-conditioning to high, opening all the automatic windows for a moment to let the baked air escape. When he closed them again the car seemed to drift in an unreal silence through the dazzle of heat of early afternoon. He drove down through the center of the small city past the empty cars and the empty sidewalks and the bright glare of the store fronts. He hesitated as he neared the driveway to the parking lot behind his office, but then continued on. He went to the end of Citrus Avenue, drove around the small park past the Moorish arches of the public buildings and, several minutes later, realized he was out on the Brower Highway, passing the shopping centers and drive-ins, heading toward the place where she had died. Ten minutes from town he made his right turn. A half mile further he turned left into an overgrown sand road. Foliage brushed the side of the car and he drove three hundred yards through land he owned, down to the lake shore. It had always been known as Dayker’s Lake until the promoter who developed the far shore engineered a name change to Flamingo Lake. He owned this half mile of lake front, untended, unimproved. He was glad to see no other cars parked there.
So, if she left the apartment at half past twelve, she would have arrived here at quarter to one, if she came directly here. Parked where I am right now. Probably put her swim suit on before she left the apartment. Wore that wrap-around skirt thing over it. Got out. Tossed the skirt into the car. Carried her stuff down to the little patch of sand. Towel, beach bag, little radio. Settled herself. Then walked into the water, tucking her hair into a swim cap. Three steps and up to her waist, then deep.
He walked down to the sand. He wondered if he was trying to punish himself. Did she yell for help? What good did this do? He heard a motor sound and looked up the shore line and saw a blue rowboat approaching, propelled by a small outboard motor. There were two young boys in it, wiry and brown, their hair bleached almost white by the sun. He heard one of them clearly over the chug of the motor. “Right up there is where she drownded, right out from where that guy is standing. And Jug didn’t have his tanks or nothing, just a mask and flippers and he found her the second time down. He found her before those cops ever even got the boat launched to drag for her. Right about here, I think.” The larger boy cut the motor off and the boat slowed quickly. They stared at the water.
“How deep is it?” the smaller one asked.
“Jug says twenty feet.”
“Was she down there a long time?”
“Long enough.”
“How come that damn Jug got in on it anyways?”
“He saw all the people and come over and he had his mask and flippers in the boat like he always has. It was about two o’clock, I guess. I didn’t even get to see her. But I saw the ambulance leaving anyways.”
“Jimmy, if she was alone, how come anybody knew she drownded?”
“You’re pretty stupid.”
“Who says I’m stupid?”
“Some other people come to swim, see? And there’s a car parked and a towel and a little radio playing and everything, and nobody around. They look around everywhere and get nervous and start calling and nobody answers, and they think maybe somebody has gone off in a boat, but there’s no sign of a boat and it had rained in the night and all they see is bare foot prints going into the water. So somebody drove back to the gas station and called the sheriff. And more people came flocking around. And Jug came over and found her. They say she probably had a cramp.”
Sam Kimber went slowly back to his car, backed around and drove away. It matched the report in the paper. Everything fitted fine. Except the small problem of a missing hundred and six thousand dollars. And no way to tell anybody it’s missing. And somehow that makes the whole thing look wrong.
He drove back to town, parked behind his office building, unlocked the rear door and rode to the top floor in his small private elevator. It was a four story building he’d put up five years ago when he decided to leave the lonely house he’d built for Kitty. He’d had the Sam-Kim Construction Company put it up on Central Federal money, then lease the whole thing to Kimberland Enterprises on a long term lease, so Kimberland could turn around and sublease the two bottom floors. He’d worked a zoning exception so he could put his bachelor quarters and his private office on the top floor. The working staff of Kimberland Enterprises, Sam-Kim Construction and Kitty-Kim Groves and some of the other odds and ends worked on the third floor.
He went into his kitchen and opened a cold can of beer and stood at the window looking west toward Lake Larra. She’d lived out there in the Hanson place for a few short years with Kelsey Hanson. Along that shore of the lake it was a di
fferent kind of money. Solid old money, brought down out of solid old companies up north. Not my kind, he thought. Not the scrambling kind of money a lucky cracker boy can make if he comes out of the sloughs at the right time with a claw hammer, an old truck, a pocket full of nails and brass enough to believe his personal trend is up.
He realized he had forgotten lunch, so he ate a wedge of cheese and opened a second can of beer. A few more memories of her up here, because this wasn’t out of bounds. She never rested quite easy in her mind about it, scrunching way down in the front seat driving in or out. The shack was best, way out at the end of noplace. She was most loving out there, most likely to be able to bring it about for herself out where there wasn’t some part of her mind listening to sounds in the building.
With the beer in his hand he stalked through the living room, the big room that Lucille had said the pansy decorator from Orlando had made look like the lobby of an art movie house. As he pushed open the soundproofed door into the ante-office, he heard the busy clatter of the typewriter. It stopped abruptly as Angie Powell gave a great leap of surprise and put her hand to her throat. Mrs. Nimmits was at the corner table running a tabulator, and she said, “I swear, Mr. Sam, if you come through that door forty times a minute, Angie here would try to hop outen her skin every time.”
“I didn’t even know you were in there,” Angie said accusingly.
Sam Kimber walked into his large office with Angie close at his heels, her hand full of notes. She closed the door behind her. He sat down, finished his beer and dropped the can in the wastebasket and said, “What new disasters we got today?”
As was her sometimes irritating habit, she gave him the least important messages first, pausing for instructions after each one, making memos to herself in her book. Angie Powell was six feet tall in flats, a big, glowing, earnest, pink and white girl in her early twenties with lavender eyes, large shiny teeth and dark golden curly hair. She was a superb swimmer, diver, bowler, water skier, tumbler, skater, dancer and secretary. And she was overpowering; there seemed to be so very much of her. She lived with a harridan mother and a father so tiny, so wispy, so self-effacing as to be almost invisible. She was an only child. She had worked for Sam for three years, the last two as his secretary, and she was entirely devoted, entirely loyal, full of good spirits but essentially humorless.
The Drowner Page 3