Dragonfly

by Farris, John

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  At eight-thirty, Joe found Lucas Thomason taking breakfast on the veranda of the Barony with Spence Labeque, his campaign manager. Spence had the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled up, an opened attaché case on a wrought-iron chair beside him.

  After a preliminary scowl Thomason waved in Joe's direction.

  "Mornin', Dr. Bryce. Kindly allow us a few minutes here to clear up our business. Annabeth, give the doctor some juice and coffee."

  The chubby brown girl presiding over a serving cart smiled at Joe and poured grapefruit juice for him. He retired to a bench at the other end of the veranda, looking out over the still-misty garden to the glittery calm of Pandora's Bay. Any westerly move by Honey in her huge web of swirling clouds would change the complexion of the day quickly, but for now it was tranquil and sunny, with only the slightest hint of a chill in the morning air.

  Thomason was in a pettish mood, his voice rising and falling according to the aggravation that Spence Labeque's opinions or arguments visited upon him. A couple of times he rattled dishes on the half-inch glass tabletop with a pounding fist.

  "I know he's a war hero; you can't go to any function in this state without his God damned medals poking you in the eye! But he's also a snake in the grass. Personally I don't trust any man who sings his own praises as seriously as if they were the national anthem."

  A little later he disparaged another possible candidate for lieutenant governor by saying, "He's nothing but a pissant version of Jimmy Carter. There is no success for the humble, Spence. If there is, they don't deserve it."

  Presently Lebèque gathered up his papers and took his leave with a strained smile at Joe. Thomason remained hunched over the table wearing reading glasses and leafing through a speech in a blue binder until suddenly he looked up and around at his other guest. He gestured for Joe to join him, scratched his already-perspiring head where his hair was thinnest and said, "More coffee for both of us, Annabeth."

  Joe took a seat opposite Thomason.

  "Good morning."

  "Good morning. Any of that corned beef hash left, Annabeth?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Give some to Joe. How do you like your eggs, Doctor?"

  "Easy over."

  Annabeth went off to the kitchen. Thomason took off his half glasses and put them aside.

  "Sorry about my temper last night. I was more or less snatched out of a sound night's sleep."

  "Did he call you?"

  Thomason looked hard at him. "Did who call me?"

  "Abby said something to me about a man being on the beach with her. She didn't describe him. This morning I found some boot prints—about a size twelve, approximately where she said he'd been standing."

  Thomason shook his head in annoyance.

  "Nobody called me, sir. When I say I was snatched from sleep, it was a nightmare that did it. A nightmare in which Abby lay dying. Very real to me. I'm not usually afflicted with nightmares. So I got up and went looking for her."

  "How did you know—"

  "I'm not a fool, Doctor. I knew she had to be at the beach house."

  Joe nodded. "I have a lot to tell you. How is Abby this morning?"

  "She was asleep, thirty minutes ago. Exhausted, but I think she'll be all right, if her spine doesn't flare up."

  "I'd like to see her when she's awake."

  "Don't think that's the ticket, Joe. She was in a highly agitated state a few hours ago. What I want for her now is bed rest, and no visitors. I even chased Lizzie out of her room. Lillian will sit with her today; call me if I'm needed."

  "I want to say again that in my opinion Abby should be in a hospital."

  "I wish you would believe me," Thomason said earnestly, with no malice, "that hospitalization would not be in her best interests. I know that she talks a good game, keeping up her spirits, but the truth is that Abby is easily frightened. She doesn't cope well away from her home."

  "She had a dream of her own, about the accident. I think the experience was so intense, so harrowing, that in a fugue state she got up from my side last night and walked seventy yards to the edge of the ocean. It's the only way she could have gotten there, unless someone came into the house and carried her out. But Abby also thinks she walked."

  "I'm really astonished to hear you say something like that, because it is clearly a medical impossibility. She has not stood erect without assistance or taken a step for thirteen years."

  "Has Abby ever said anything to you about forgetting how to breathe?"

  Thomason looked at a yellowjacket that had ventured close to the table.

  "I don't understand what you mean by—"

  "Her words. We were at the Clemons house last night. Abby was on the walk in front of the porch. I went inside with Walter Lee for a couple of minutes. A preacher from the neighborhood church she was talking to alerted us. Abby said she hadn't been able to draw a breath for—it might have been half a minute. She said it was just as if she forgot how breathing worked."

  Thomason, without comment, fixed his eyes on Annabeth, who had emerged from the kitchen with a tray and covered dishes on it.

  "Abby was also complaining about a tingling of her lips. She says that's been going on for some time."

  Thomason dismissed this information with a slight wave of the hand.

  "There are so many symptoms, I couldn't relate them all. Some real, some probably imaginary. Not that Abby's a hypochondriac, you understand. Left to her own devices, she handles her disability very well." His triangular eyes contracted in quilted folds until there was only a gleam of a gaze, diamond-hard. After Annabeth served them and left them alone, he said, "Have you tried to have sex with Abby? That was the purpose of her being out there with you last night, wasn't it?"

  "No."

  "No to having sex?"

  "I don't see any reason why I should answer that, or what it has to do with our major concern."

  "Her lips get a little blue, they tingle, sometimes she can't get her breath. Hysterical symptoms. Want to know what I think? She doesn't know how to deal with you. Her emotions getting all stirred up, the, uh, sexual excitement. Abby has her routine, you understand, that she's accustomed to, that is both beneficial and stabilizing. You come along, her—let's say, her concentration is shattered; all right, let's also say she's convinced she's in love. There goes her stability. So she's sleeping with you, having all kinds of disturbing dreams, crawling out to the beach—"

  "I didn't see any evidence of that at all."

  "You never saw Abby on her feet, did you?"

  "Then it didn't happen. It did not happen. Pure and simple."

  Thomason reached for a toothpick in a glass container, and, holding his left hand to cover his mouth, picked at food impacted between back teeth with the other hand. A sudden gust of wind lifted a linen napkin from the table and blew it across the veranda. Then the air was calm again. Joe watched his untouched coffee cool. Thomason hunched his shoulders and looked thoughtfully east, toward Pandora's Bay and the ocean beyond.

  "What I believe, that storm out there's gonna turn itself around and bust us in the chops a couple of days from now."

  "It might."

  Thomason had begun to parcel out little silences like a miser counting silver from his purse.

  Eventually he said, "Charlene tells me the two of you have been working on Wayfarer. Reckon I'm at fault for letting her fall into such a sorry condition. Thanks for your efforts."

  "Thanks for your hospitality."

  More silence. Another little puff of wind, seemingly out of nowhere. A small yellow-breasted bird was blown over the veranda wall and veered away from where they sat.

  "Yes, sir, the winds of change are picking up. November of next year I expect to be a very powerful man in the sovereign state of South Carolina. Don't mean to brag, but I don't think there's a single thing that can stop me."

  "Congratulations," Joe said. He uncovered some warm raisin toast and buttered half a slice, although h
e had a knot in his stomach he didn't want to add to.

  "Can't stop the wind from blowing, can't stop the way a man and a woman feel for each other."

  "No, you can't."

  Thomason looked at Joe over his joined hands. "You feel for Abby the way she feels for you, Joe?"

  "Yes, I do."

  Thomason breathed out as if from something intolerably heavy pushing against his chest.

  "Well: I told Abby I never would say a word against you. I meant that."

  "Thank you."

  "But I never made any guarantees about your personal safety, should you hurt her in any way."

  "Dr. Thomason?"

  "Sir."

  "You don't have to convince me that you're a cutthroat son of a bitch. I knew it the first time I laid eyes on you."

  Thomason smiled in that curious, injured way of his. "Having reached this point of understanding in our relationship, I don't suppose I need offer you money in order to leave us to the peace we ordinarily enjoy."

  "Abby's money? Huh-uh."

  "I sincerely want to believe your integrity has spoken for you. If not, it's wise to remember that greed is the little bit of arsenic in one's daily bread."

  Joe had had his fill of demeaning looks and barbed epigrams. "When can I see Abby?"

  Thomason leaned back in his chair,yawning, hands clasped behind his head, not looking at Joe, not looking at him as if he'd never so much as heard his name, or knew that he existed. It was a chilling display of utter contempt by a man without fear, pious toward his every fault, strong in his sinecure. Joe's anger simmered, but he was cautious. The most plausible men, those with no apparent ragged edges or inconsistencies of personality, had to be watched as closely as you would watch a wasp's nest slowly building under the eaves of your house.

  "Oh, I expect long about four o'clock this afternoon she should have her nap out."

  Charlene was already at work on the Wayfarer, her blond hair in two milkmaid braids and partly covered by a Sherwin-Williams painter's cap as she applied primer to the sections of mahogany hull Joe had replaced yesterday.

  "I wasn't sure you were going to come," she said with a couple of quick looks, like stones skipped across the surface of a pond, to assess his mood. "So I got an early start. My aerobics class starts at eleven. If I don't stick with my aerobics, my buns and my morale go all to hell." She stopped painting and looked hard at her brush. "I think I need to trim this again. It's my favorite brush, but it's starting to shed." She stuck out her lower lip and blew at a nearly invisible strand of platinum hair that was loose and annoying her. "I heard there was a big commotion with Pamela early this morning. Is she sick?"

  "Nothing too serious," Joe said.

  "Luke sure was in a bad mood when I saw him."

  "He still is."

  She shrugged. "I just try to stay out of his way. If I see it coming. With Luke, you don't always see it corning."

  "How long have you been married, Charly?"

  She stepped back and looked critically at the work she was doing. "Seven blissful years." She took a cutting tool from a loop of her painter's coveralls, advanced the razor blade a fraction and set to work trimming stray bristles from one side of the inch-wide paintbrush.

  "Did you hear him get up in the middle of the night?"

  "Luke got up? I guess not. I was in my own room."

  "You didn't hear the phone ring?"

  "My phone? No. Luke has a couple of different lines in his room. I don't even know what the numbers are. He doesn't think I need to know." She raised her eyes. "Why did you ask that?"

  "I think someone called him about two, two-fifteen this morning to tell him that Abby was at the beach house with me."

  Charlene's eyes widened a little. "She was?"

  "I've been trying to persuade her to check into a hospital, Charly."

  "You just said it wasn't too serious."

  "The fact is I don't know."

  Charlene's cutting tool slipped and she winced, dropping the paintbrush. She looked at the damage to her left thumb. "Damn! Cut into the nail." She held out the thumb to him. A drop of blood had formed, matching the shade of her nail polish.

  He held her hand and blotted at the blood with a clean handkerchief. The cut was minor. He pressed gently to stop the bleeding. Charlene stared at him.

  "I don't usually remember my dreams," she said. "But last night I dreamed we were together, in one of those hot-air balloons. Sailing through the sky, like, a hundred miles above the earth. It was so peaceful. We sailed through some really beautiful clouds. Then you were outside the, what do you call it, the basket, your arms outstretched,floating right alongside the balloon. But just out of reach. I tried to pull you in. But you said, 'No, it's easy, you can do it.' I wouldn't,though. I couldn't climb out of the basket. I was too afraid of falling. And gradually you got farther and farther away. That's all there was to it. It was really a lovely, peaceful dream, except for my being afraid at the end."

  Charlene unwrapped her thumb gingerly and looked at it. "Stings a little," she murmured. She held him tightly and bowed her head over their joined hands:

  "I heard voices after I woke up," she said. "Below my windows, on the veranda. Luke was with someone. I could hear them talking, but I don't know what they were saying."

  "How did he sound?"

  "He wasn't angry or anything. It was just a discussion. Didn't last long. Luke thanked the other man. Then he said, 'Good night, Mr. Phipps.' And a little after that, I heard Luke's truck."

  "Mr. Phipps?"

  "I'm sure that's what Luke called him."

  "Do you know who he is?"

  "No. I've never met anybody with that name, and I'm good about remembering names, you have to know every single girl by name at the pageants, or they think you're a stuck-up cunt."

  Charlene raised his hand to her lips and gently bit a knuckle.

  "I saw you looking at me yesterday, you know, when my T-shirt was all wet."

  "I probably was. You're hard not to look at, Charly." He spoke truthfully, knowing all the time he had pushed the wrong button, as if he were in an elevator destined to crash.

  Her face opened to him like the face of a derelict, thieving child.

  "Joe, I'm all loose inside, I feel like I haven't had a man for ten years. I cleaned up down below before you came, opened all the portlights. Can't we just go down, go down, and pull the hatch closed after us, and I'll make love to you?"

  She bit her knuckle harder and breathed deeply. He didn't try to pull his hand away He felt desolate, yet responsive. Charlene came closer in her baggy coveralls, pressing against him, pressing his shoulders against the curved hull of the Wayfarer. Then her mouth covered his. Her kiss was greedy, a fiend of appetite; she bolted him like a dog at its dish.

  When they both had to pause for breath Joe looked away from her half-closed eyes and saw Abby in Rolling Thunder, stopped fifty feet away from the boat shed. He put a hand on one of Charlene's thick braids and tugged, and she turned her head.

  There were tears on Abby's face, little crystal drops in the sun, but she said in a clear, precise tone of voice, "The State Police found Frosty's body two hours ago. Would you mind very much driving me into town?"

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Abby rattled ahead of him in Rolling Thunder; Joe walked behind. She went recklessly fast, as fast as the four-speed motor would take her, along the serpentine brick paths, over the mossy speed bumps, wiping at her eyes with her free hand, so many tears—as if it were raining, but only around her face, within her solitary soul. Through the garden and around the house to the motor court she raced; he felt as if he were chasing her. Charlene had stayed behind, like a pillar of salt.

  Next to the blue minivan Abby stopped with a suddenness that tipped her forward. Then she collapsed, huddling in the chair, racked and coughing up her grief.

  When she could speak she said, not looking at him, "I thought you cared about me."

  "I do care."

&nb
sp; "Charlene—"

  "I was a little slow to duck, that's all."

  "Then—"

  "All Charlene wants is a way out of here, Abby."

  "You must have encouraged her."

  "I tried to keep it friendly. It probably came across as encouragement."

  Her breath escaped her like bubbles breaking from the gaseous depths of still water.

  "Abby, I had my feet on the ground, and I wasn't about to lose my head."

  "I know how Charlene is. But I never thought—I don't want to think about it now. Let's go. Please. I have to get this over with."

  "Where's Luke?"

  "In his car, the Cadillac. He has a meeting somewhere. His cellular was busy, I couldn't raise him."

  "Are you sure you're up to this?"

  "They wouldn't tell me anything on the phone. I have to know."

  The small lobby of the one-story State Police post in Nimrod's Chapel was filled with dark faces around Walter Lee, who sat slumped to overflowing in a molded plastic chair against a concrete block wall. He moaned as two women took turns sponging his face with the handkerchiefs they were wetting down in a drinking fountain.

  "I want to see Frosty. Where they taken my baby?"

  Members of his support group backed away when Abby rolled slowly toward him in her wheelchair. She picked up one of Walter Lee's hands from his lap and held it against her cheek. His pugilist's battered eyes opened redly.

  "Killed her, Miss Abby! Broke her neck and stuffed her in the trunk of my car. Who knows what else they done to her before?"

  -

  "Oh,Walter Lee."

  He roused himself from the torpor of grief and began to shout.

  "Who can tell me? Ain't there nobody here can tell me who killed my baby?"

  A uniformed black woman and a plainclothes detective wearing a blue-striped dress shirt with a collar that was one size too small came out of an office nearby; the uniform introduced herself to Walter Lee, who was rolling his head from side to side in his agony.

  "I'm Sergeant Oney Boston, and this is Lieutenant Esco Rich from the state Law Enforcement Division? You have our deepest sympathy. I wonder if we could—"