"She said to come as we are."
"Then at least button my shirt."
Fourteen
ON THE way out, under a chilly spangle of stars, I had briefed Dana on how we'd handle it. She was to stay away from M'Gruder, target on his young Swede bride if possible. I would do what I could with M'Gruder.
The Barnweather place was a simple little quarter-million-dollar ranch house a few hundred yards into a lot of rocky acreage, with fifteen cars glinting in the starlight, music and festive sounds coming from the floodlighted pool area.
I sensed that Dana took a deep breath and braced herself as we walked toward the party jabber. There were infrared heaters focused on the broad terrace area at the house end of the pool. A gleaming, beaming little fellow in a red coat tended bar.
These were a pack of the young marrieds, the success-prone ones. The tense and girlish mothers of three and five and seven young, their beefier husbands, expansive with bourbon and land deals. About thirty-five people in all, forming and reforming their little conversational groups. Dress was varied, all the way from shorts and slacks to some of those fanciful ranch coats on the men, the pale whipcord jobs with the pearl buttons and pocket flaps. The audible talk had that Southwest flavor so quickly acquired by the people who move there from Indiana and Pennsylvania.
When we hesitated, a slender pretty woman came smiling toward us, holding one hand out to each of us. "Trav? I'm Joanne."
"And this is Diana Hollis." We had decided it was possible Lysa Dean had spoken of her girl Friday to M'Gruder, and the name was just unusual enough to stick in his mind.
"So glad you could come, dears. Come meet the group."
She steered us over for a drink first, and then swung us through the throng, rattling off the names and identifications. Glenn was one of the burly ones in whipcord. Joanne made a little more special thing of the introduction to their house guests.
Vance M'Gruder was a little balder, a little browner, a little taller than he had seemed in the pictures. He was a type. The totally muscled sportsman-muscles upon muscles so that even his face looked like it leather bag of walnuts. Polo muscles, tennis muscles, sail-handling muscles, fencing muscles-the type who does handstands every morning of his life, works out with professionals whenever possible, and has a savage and singleminded desire to whip you at anything you're willing to play with him, from squash racquets to tetherball. He had the personality to go with the body-a flavor of remote, knowing, arrogant amusement.
His young bride was one of the most striking females I have ever seen in my life. You had a tendency to speak to her in a hushed voice, an awed voice. The Swedes grow some of the finest specimens of our times. This Uika Atlund M'Gruder was big enough for M'Gruder to keep her in flat heels at all times. She wore a woolly tangerine-colored shift. Her arms were bare. The others were bundled in jackets, sweaters, tunics, shawls, stoles.
She looked as if she had enough animal heat to keep her entirely comfortable at thirty below. Her body, under the touch of the fabric, was ripe, leggy and entirely perfect. Without makeup, her features were almost those of some heroic, dedicated young boy, a page from the time of King Arthur. Or an idealized Joan of Arc. Her tilted gray-green-blue Icelandic eyes were the cold of northern seas. Her hair was a rich, ripe, heavy spill of pale pale gold, curved across the high and placid brow. She had little to say, and a sleepy and disinterested way of saying it. Her eyes kept seeking out her husband.
Over all that stalwart Viking loveliness there was such a haze of sensuality it was perceptible, like a strange matte finish. It was stamped into the slow and heavy curve of her smile, marked by the delicate violet shadows under her eyes, expressed by the cant of her high round hips in the way she stood.
Though by far the youngest person there, she at the same time seemed far older. She had been bolted to the bowsprit of an ancient ship for a thousand years. And every woman there hated her and feared her. The look of her confirmed my guesses about Vance M'Gruder. Wearing this one like a banner or a medal was the ultimate cachet of competitive masculinity. She had a strange primitive flavor of sexual docility. She was indentured to M'Gruder, totally focused upon him, yet were she taken from him by someone with more strength and force and purpose, she would shift loyalty without question or hesitation.
A man like M'Gruder would go to any length to acquire her. And he had. I was certain of that. I thought of M'Gruder's past habits and inclinations, and I wondered if, when his physical resources began to flag he would stimulate himself by corrupting her. A woman to him would be something owned, to use as he wished.
Later, standing in a group with M'Gruder, I looked over and saw Dana alone with Ulka, talking quietly to her. Ulka nodded. She was watching Vance. I could not get anywhere with Vance. I tried to play do-you-know with him, bringing up the names of some of the Florida sailboat bums I know. Yes, he knew them. Sure. So what. I guessed he could not become interested in trivia.
He had taken two horrible risks to acquire and keep the Viking princess. Maybe somebody was getting set to drop the noose on him and end it. Apprehension could make small talk almost impossible. I could not comprehend M'Gruder's promise to put this creature back into college. I found it hard to believe that a professorial type had spawned her.
In days of old whenever one of these rarities appeared, one of the king's agents would run to the castle with the news, and the girlchild would disappear forever into one of the royal suites, and her family would get a little stack of gold coins in exchange. In these more random times they are grabbed off by oil men, celebrity athletes, television moguls and M'Gruders. But the man who has one stays nervous, because, unless you are a king, you don't really get to own it. It is on temporary loan from providence.
Later I sat near Ulka in a big game room in the house while she carved and chewed her way through a huge rare steak, knife and teeth flashing, jaw muscles and throat working, her eyes made blank by a total concentration on this physical gratification. The effort made a sweaty highlight on her pale brow, and at last she picked up the sirloin bone and gnawed it bare, putting a slick of grease on lips and fingertips. There was no vulgarity in this hunger, any more than when a tiger cracks the hip socket to suck the marrow.
The party fragmented, and there was room enough for them to roam all the house and grounds, various degrees of alcohol dividing them more positively than social class or business interest. I had lost track of Dana, and I went night-walking in unhurried search. Skirting a tall cactus garden, floodlighted in eerie blue, I heard, off to my right, a conspiratorial rasp of female venom. "Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!" It was more contemptuous than indignant. I sought to move quietly out of range. I did not care how husbands were gutted in this desert paradise. I imagined it was done the same as elsewhere.
But the male voice stopped me. "All I want to know is where you..." The rest of the sentence was lost. He had raised his voice to cut her off and lowered it as she fell silent. But it was Vance M'Gruder.
"You are so smart! You are soooooo smart! 0h, God, what a brilliant mind I married!"
"Sssh, Ullie. Don't shout!"
"Maybe it was one of my Mexican boyfriends. How about that? Hah? How about that? And just what would you do about it?" Sweet voice of Ulka Atlund M'Gruder, bride of two months. And where was the sleepy remote smile? The placid acceptance? This was the malignancy of a taunting woman, an emasculating woman. He shushed her again and they moved off, out of range. I circled and discovered I had been near the path that probably led over to the guest house.
I admit feeling a certain dirty little satisfaction. It was as if the fox had made one leap just high enough and found out the grapes actually were sour. Here was this brown hard bundle of sport muscles trying to kid the calendar by wedding the glorious child bride, and now all his game-skills and all his money and his social standing were no defense at all against that killer-instinct which could launch her right at his most vulnerable point, his aging masculinity. Seeking paradise, he had embraced a sweet disaster.
The party dwindled. Laughter was drunken. A group sang "The Yellow Rose of Texas."
I stood with Dana, saying goodnight, and Joanne Barnweather swayed against us, and said, ''You all come riding tomorrow morning, you hear? Got lovely horses. Jus' lovely. Diana, sweetie, like I said, I got stuff'll fit you. Don' worry 'bout it. Jus' you all and us and the M'Gruders. You know what, Diana? Ulka liked you. She wants you 'long. How about that anyhow? To find out she likes anybody. Crissake, we've known Vance forever and we love the sweet ol' son of a bitch, and it was great he got loose from that limey dyke, believe me, but hones' I can't figure this Ulka. Sheese! A zombie, thass what she is. I shouldn't talk like this, but I'm a wee little bit stoned, sweeties. What you do, you get here like nine in the morning, okay?"
On the way home Dana said, "Horses scare me."
"How did you make out?"
"Didn't you hear? She likes me. But I never would have been able to tell. Trav, that child has very limited reactions, really. I had a friend who got like that once. They said finally it was a hypothyroid condition. She sort of drifted, slept fourteen hours a night and couldn't keep track of conversations. Believe me, dear, I tried. I really tried. I had about forty minutes alone with her. I tried to drop key words into it to get some kind of a reaction. After a long struggle I did find out that her husband played poker last Wednesday night. He loves a good poker session, she said. She said he didn't come back until Thursday just before noon. I practically had to shake her to get that much out of her."
I did not tell Dana I felt uneasy. I had the feeling the play was being taken away from us. I had made a move. Now either this was all innocence, or M'Gruder was making one. I resolved to handle myself as though he were making a move. Violence is the stepchild of desperation.
We both had to borrow gear. Glenn Barnweather's pants were too short in the leg and big in the waist for me. Dana had a slightly different problem with Joanne's twill britches.
The waist was fine and the length was good, but in thigh and bottom Dana filled them to bursting. The stable hands saddled the mounts while a rather shaky Joanne doled out therapeutic rum sours. Joanne assigned the mounts.
Dana, as a novice, got a rather plump and amiable mare. I was given a hammerhead buckskin with a rolling eye. He sensed a certain incompetence and tried to simultaneously nibble my leg and bash me into a post. I sawed him and kicked him into a dubious docility. By all odds, as we went clattering and snorting up a long baked slope, Joanne and Vance were the best of the group. Elbows in, heels correct, moving like a part of the animal. Glenn on a big red stallion was a close second. Ulka and I were about on a level. She looked glorious in pale blue denim with a white cowgirl hat on the back of her fair head, laced under her chin. Ulka seemed much merrier than on the night before. But Vance looked wretched. He had a greenish look under his tan. His eyes were bloodshot. With the air of a man under great tension he had knocked down three sours in rapid order before mounting.
Joanne chattered about the ranch and what they were eventually going to do with it. She pointed out where things would be. My damned horse kept trying to stumble to see if he could loosen me a little bit, then hurl me the rest of the way. For a time I rode beside Ulka. She dipped into a pale leather pouchpurse she wore looped around one wrist and got out cigarettes, leaned and gave me one, then leaned and after several near-misses, managed to give me a light. We smiled in wordless idiocy at each other.
Her big breasts bounced very firmly under the denim. Her classic nose was shiny. I lost her when my horse moved up from a canter into a full run. He didn't seem to like a canter. He tended to drop back into a spine-shattering trot, or suddenly go like hell. He kept me busy. Suddenly everybody, at Glenn's suggestion, went careening across rocky flats toward a distant stand of trees. My horse was beginning to take me a little more seriously. We were spread out. Dana was up with Glenn, hunched toward the horse's neck, perhaps grasping at the saddle horn, pale pants bouncing. Joanne was at my left and a half a length ahead of me.
That was when Ulka Atlund M'Gruder gave her terrible, piercing scream. The horses had violent reactions. I went up with mine and came down with mine, then spurred him forward and caught at Dana just as she began to slip off the side of her mare's neck, hauled her back toward the saddle. Glenn had taken off to the left.
I looked and saw M'Gruder's horse running wildly in that direction, with a terrible rag-doll figure bounding along the rocks beside the rear hooves. It slipped free and lay still, wet-shiny with some patches of red. Ulka dismounted and, screaming again, ran stumbling across the rocks to drop beside the figure. I dropped off and knotted my barbarous steed to a dwarfed bush. Dana's mare suddenly took off, heading for home. Joanne reined around and set out after Dana. I ran over to the body. It took one look to identify it forever as such. I pulled Ulka to her feet and walked her away from it. She was shuddering, over and over.
"He just leaned forward and slipped off," she said in her thin little voice with just a trace of accent. "He slipped off but his foot was caught. He just leaned forward and slipped off. Oh my God." She dropped onto her knees and haunches, face in her hands.
They brought the body back in a jeep and transferred it into an ambulance near the Barnweather house. The necessary red tape was handled with dispatch. We all agreed that M'Gruder had not seemed well. Ulka said that he'd had a stomach upset and had not slept. She rested in Joanne's bedroom. Joanne and Dana were with her. Her father was notified.
He would arrive in Phoenix Sunday morning to take her back to San Francisco. The funeral would be there. M'Gruder's lawyer was notified. Reporters hovered around, sitting in cars, looking irritable.
I sat in the terrace shade with Glenn Barnweather. He kept shaking his head and saying, "A hell of a thing, hell of a thing," and then fixing himself another stiff bourbon.
"He certainly had everything to live for," I said.
"Christ, you ought to see his place in Hawaii. Her place now, I guess. You know why it hits her so damned hard having it happen right now? I got woozy last night. If I'd gone to bed, I'd have been sick. I took a little walk. Sounds carry in the night. They were having one hell of a battle last night. Screaming at each other. I couldn't hear the words. It went on a long time. You wouldn't think she could get that worked up, would you? Maybe it was their first fight. I had the idea he was in charge. Maybe he thought so too. A man married two months and he can stay out all night for poker when there's that item home in bed, you know he has to be boss."
"Poker?"
"Down in town at the club last Wednesday. It's a regular thing. All-night session once a month. He dropped about two thousand. I got some of it. I would have had more, but he came back pretty good toward the end."
When you sell yourself something, and all the parts fit, you resent the hell out of having somebody kick the foundation out from under it. You want to grab the structure to keep it from falling down.
"He played all night long?" I said, looking at that big red earnest face, looking in vain for any hint of lie or evasion.
His fleeting grin was mildly lewd. "Well into the bright cruel light of day, McGee. I can understand anybody being startled, after a good look at that Swede bride. Maybe poor Vance had to take a breather. She looks like one hell of a project."
My pretty tower fell down. Fallacious suppositions make a hell of a jangle when they hit the dirt, particularly when you dislike the person you've nominated. I'd heard one little piece of that quarrel too, a piece that could be related to the previous Wednesday night. Maybe I'd heard him asking her where she'd gone that night. And she taunted him about Mexican boyfriends...
"Did Ulka have a night on the town too?" I asked him.
"She was going to, but not what you'd call a real swinging situation. One of Joanne's concert things. I miss every one I can. Cocktails and a dinner party and a concert party. It was all set up, and Ulka decided not to go, and Joanne went alone."
"Maybe Ulka went out later. Did they have a rental
car?"
"I loaned them the Corvette I bought Jo. It's the three-sixty and it's just too much car for her. It scares her. Vance was wondering about buying it and they could drive it to San Francisco and have the rest of their stuff shipped. Okay with me, but we didn't get around to making the deal. It's new. About fifteen hundred miles on it. It scares Jo. She gets absent-minded and gooses it and it scares her."
"Was that Wednesday night the only time they've been apart?"
"He stuck pretty close to her."
"They drive around in that car much?"
"We were keeping them too busy. What's this all about?"
I shrugged. "Nothing. Idle chatter." After some small talk, he fixed himself another drink and ambled off into the house. I went. down the path to the guest house. The Sting Ray was in the carport, top down. I looked at the speedometer, and then walked slowly and thoughtfully back to the main house. I couldn't tell Glenn what was on my mind. The toppled pieces of my theory suddenly looked good again. I was putting it back together, with a new name on it. The problem was motive. A weird guess stopped me in my tracks. I took long strides the rest of the way to the main house.
John D MacDonald - Travis McGee 04 - The Quick Red Fox Page 16