by Packer, Vin
“Whatever that means,” she said testily. He wasn’t sure himself what he had meant by the remark, whether or not he really did suspect her of an intimacy with Neal. Perhaps it was a projection of his own feelings where Liddy was concerned. He didn’t feel like thinking about any of it, but it was all just under the surface and came out in this senseless sniping. If they didn’t clear the air somehow, he knew, they were in for a real all-nighter.
She reached for the phone and dialed the number while Archie took the sheet with Sinister’s blood on it and stuffed it into the bathroom hamper.
“No answer,” she said when he came back into the bedroom. “I bet he’s out looking for Sinister.”
“Or he might be on a late date with Margaret,” said Archie. “Can you take a little more excitement?” He kicked off his loafers and sat cross-legged beside her on the bed, putting an ashtray between them. “I saw Margaret Dana tonight.”
“At Sbordone’s? How did you know it was her?”
“Not at Sbordone’s. After I dropped Mrs. Muckermann off, as I was going up to get you. She was parked down by the turn.”
“How do you know it was her, Arch?”
“She was in the Falcon with the penny on the door.”
“Alone or with Tuto?”
“She was alone. I didn’t get a good look at her. She was wearing a green scarf over her head. When I slowed up for the turn, she saw where I was headed and took off.”
“Why didn’t you tell me when we were talking in the kitchen?”
He said, “I wanted you to come home with me. I thought maybe you’d hang around if I told you. I didn’t know you’d hang around anyway.”
“I’m sorry, Arch.”
“I’m sorry, too, for that crack about your breasts.” “That was hitting below the belt, Archie.” He chuckled, and she said, “All right—it was above the belt. It was dirty pool just the same.” “I know,” he said gently. “I’m sorry.”
She said, “Archie? I hate everything, don’t you? The way we are with each other lately, and this thing with Neal and Margaret. What would she be doing there?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know … Maybe she was coming back for her clothes. Maybe she drove up the hill, saw you inside, and changed her mind.”
“Maybe she was coming back period.”
“In Tuto’s car?” Archie said.
“If it is his car … I wish we’d asked Neal about that Falcon.”
“I wish we’d stayed out of the whole damn mess,” Archie sighed. “We should have left the letters and the diary in that bag, and minded our own business!”
“Something’s fishy, isn’t it, Arch?”
“Yeah.” He put out his cigarette and began unbuttoning his shirt.
“Because he doesn’t seem concerned about where she is. He never wonders where she is. It’s as though he knows where she is, and he can’t do anything about it.”
“I know.”
“You know, Arch? He acts resigned … the way you were when Liddy was running around with everything in pants.”
“Liddy didn’t run around with everything in pants,” he snapped, “and I was never resigned.”
“You still aren’t resigned, you mean.”
“You can’t have it both ways, Dru.” He got up and took off his trousers. “If I’m still not resigned, how could I have acted resigned?”
“You used to talk about Liddy the same way Neal talks about Margaret, that’s all … how wonderful she was, how much style she had, how she could do this and that so well, and all the while you knew she was out catting around.”
The truth of what she said compelled him to shout. “Don’t stretch for the parallel! We don’t have to look for similarities between Neal and me any more! Mrs. Muckermann will see to that!”
Dru walked by him and got a fresh sheet from the linen closet in the hall. “He makes her sound so pure and righteous,” she persisted. “You’d think she was the Virgin Mary.” Was she as jealous now of Margaret as she had always been of Liddy?
Archie said, “You’d never catch Liddy swallowing a lot of garbage about astrology!”
“Of course not! Liddy’s far too intellectual for that! Why, she’s the darling of the literati, the dynamo of the drawing room, the conversationalists’ conversationalist, is old boobs-brain Liddy!”
“Call her what you want,” he said, “but you can’t call her gullible!”
Dru walked back in the bedroom, threw the sheet at him, and he caught it. As he shook it open, damning the fact they had strayed back into the argument, Dru said, “Call her madam. The hookers’ hooker—Liddy Denyven!”
Archie slapped the sheet to the floor in a gesture of futility and sat down naked on the bed. He lit a cigarette and sank his chin into his palm. “I’ve about had it, Dru,” he said.
“So have I,” she answered angrily. “You can sleep in here! I’m going to sleep—” and then she let out a long wail as her bare foot stepped in a spot of Sinister’s blood on the rug.
She ran and flung herself against Archie.
• • •
After the bedroom light was out Dru said, “Archie?” reaching for his hand under the sheet. “What?”
“I don’t like it out here.”
He turned toward her and put his arms around her. “You have to get used to the country,” he said. “Cats go after birds, dogs go after cats, vivisectionists go after dogs, old ladies go after vivisectionists. It’s survival of the fittest, honey.”
The last time he had seen Liddy, she had said, “Archie, I can’t see you in the country.” He had misunderstood, remember? He had thought she meant that she wouldn’t be able to see him if he moved away for the summer. Touched, he had looked at her for a long moment before she had restated the remark. “I can’t see you living in suburbia.” … Or had she done it purposefully, to tease?
Dru said, “I don’t mean just the wildlife. I mean everything that’s happened since we first drove out here. Our car was smashed; we haven’t been getting along; the Liddy thing; you’ve lost the show; whatever’s going on with Neal and his wife—it’s all bad news. This is the worst birthday party you’ve ever had, too. I’m sorry, Arch.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“He seems like bad luck, Archie.”
“Neal?”
“Yes. Maybe he’s the dark twin. You know? Dark and light and the duality of good and evil? I was reading something about that in that book by Zodiack.”
Archie stroked her arm and pressed his lips against her neck, remembering the way he had sat in the car outside Neal’s house earlier that evening, watching Dru set out the coffee mugs for Neal and herself. “Look at it from Neal’s point of view,” he murmured. “We weren’t exactly good luck to him. It’s probably been his worst birthday, too.” He wondered if that were true.
CHAPTER 18
“Virgo, the virgin—don’t you believe it!” Mrs. Muckermann laughed. “If she’s a Virgo, she’s nothing but a nymphomaniac. Your own wife was, wasn’t she?”
“Not Margaret,” he said, as Mrs. Muckermann backed him closer to the wall. She had Kendal attached to her stomach by an umbilical cord. Kendal snarled at Neal.
Mrs. Muckermann said, “I could name you names of men she knew that way.”
“No. There was only Forrest.”
Kendal bared her teeth, watching Neal intently.
“Come closer, Dr. Dana. I’ll tell you who else saw the wart.”
“Who? The dog won’t let me—”
“Kendal won’t hurt you.”
Neal moved forward an inch.
Mrs. Muckermann said, “There was Cliff.”
“Who?”
“Cliff——.” The last name drifted out of hearing.
“Say it again.”
“Cliff——.”
“I can’t hear you.”
“Cliff—ger.”
“I almost heard you. What?”
“Cliff Hanger,” Mrs. Muckermann answered, and
then Kendal lunged forward and sank her teeth into the flesh of Neal’s ankle.
• • •
Neal’s leg jerked and he woke up.
He lay there remembering slowly that this was Thursday, the day Penny was going for the results of her pregnancy test.
Then he remembered that he was to stop in and see Tom Baird on his way to the clinic. The policeman had called last night. There was something he wanted Neal to see, and something he wanted to discuss with Neal.
But what seemed even more important was the dream from which Neal had just awakened.
Ever since Saturday night, Cliff Bates had been much on Neal’s mind. He kept remembering a morning years ago when Cliff had been there after staying overnight. Cliff had started to go into the bathroom while Margaret was taking a bath. At the time, Neal had thought Cliff was just too absent-minded to hear her running the water and to realize the bathroom door was shut.
—Hey, Cliff, wait a second.
—What?
—Margaret’s in there.
—Oh? Oh. Sorry.
But just for a fraction of a second the expression on Cliff’s face had seemed to ask why that made any difference, as though there would be nothing new about Cliff sharing a bathroom with Margaret.
Margaret and Cliff?
No, Neal couldn’t believe that. It was even easier to believe Margaret and Forrest Bissel. Margaret had had symptoms of early menopause last winter; that could have thrown her way out of whack, could conceivably explain such erratic and erotic behavior. She had probably suffered a minor nervous breakdown, with Neal too distracted by Penny and the Doubleday business, to perceive it … It wasn’t like Margaret to be devious, irresponsible … certainly not promiscuous. And yet …
Neal got out of bed and went in to shower.
He could not control the unconscious; it would be there to taunt him and stage its little black comedies in his dreams, but he could continue to discipline his conscious thoughts. He was not going to indulge his suspicions and fears, his guilt or his anger. He left off thinking of Margaret and the graves out in the woods with Slumber Bags in them. He concentrated on the smell of Dial soap and the hot shower water needling his back. He was aware of a choking sound the toilet made as he flushed it—he had never noticed that before—and a certain blue cast to the white shaving cream he always used.
He dressed in a lightweight dark gray Hopsack suit, a white shirt, and a maroon and blue paisley tie. He left his felt bedroom slippers on while he went downstairs and fixed himself coffee, toast, and two four-minute soft-boiled eggs. He read a paper called “Pathological Weeping” by Phyllis Greenacre in a 1945 issue of The Psychoanalytic Quarterly as he ate his breakfast. Then he went back upstairs to brush his teeth, put his wallet in his jacket pocket, and slip his feet into his black calfskins, propping them against the footstool as he laced them. He combed his hair and took a clean white handkerchief from the top drawer of the bureau. The bureau was an old blockfront, a Goddard; Margaret and he had found it at an auction in—
Neal slammed the drawer shut without allowing himself to finish the thought.
• • •
Officer Baird said, “Have you ever seen a pin like any of these?”
Except for the different Zodiac faces, they were the same style. Neal pointed to the one with the virgin on its face. “My wife has one like that. It’s her Zodiac sign. Virgo.” “Do you know where she got it?” “She never told me.”
“It came from Harris Brothers. Shortly after your wife received it, she took it in for an adjustment. The clasp on the back didn’t work properly. None of the clasps do. That’s why Oscar Harris had planned to return the whole shipment to the manufacturer.”
“What do you mean after my wife received it?”
“I’m getting to that, Doctor … The entire shipment was stolen from Harris Brothers. They reported it, but they really never expected to see the pins again. Oscar thought the thief would at least have the good sense to dispose of them out of town … Then your wife walked in wearing one of them. Oscar asked her where she got it. She told him a friend had given it to her and told her it was from Harris Brothers. Oscar asked her who the friend was, and Mrs. Dana was evasive. She said it was just a friend. Well, Oscar didn’t want to embarrass her. He made the adjustment for her, and he reported it to me.”
“Did you ask my wife about it?”
“I didn’t have to,” the policeman said. “The next day someone else came in with the same pin. Linda Chayka. She told Oscar who gave her the pin. It was Forrest Bissel. She goes out with him sometimes.”
“I see,” Neal said.
“Do you?”
“What do you mean?”
“This isn’t easy for me, Dr. Dana. I’ve seen a few things—you can’t help it in my job—things I’d just soon not have seen.”
“Like what?” Neal asked, and then the policeman told him about coming across Margaret and Forrest in the Volkswagen, and about Minnie Nickerson’s description of a “Titian-haired” prowler.
“Ordinarily, I don’t pay a lot of attention to Minnie and her mother,” Tom Baird said, “but I’d already seen Mrs. Dana and Forrest down by the river. I’m damn sorry I have to embarrass you like this, Dr. Dana.” “I know. I’m sorry it’s necessary.”
“We picked Forrest up last Friday. He was released in five hundred dollars bail until yesterday when there was supposed to be a hearing. Some relative in Spring Valley put up the bail money. So he claimed. I don’t know if I believe that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Perhaps Mrs. Dana got the bail money to him … He’s skipped bail, Dr. Dana.”
“I see.”
“I know this isn’t—”
Neal interrupted. “Just go ahead.”
“This is what I think happened. They were planning to leave town together. She used your argument as a camouflage, so you’d think that was why she left. She went someplace nearby to wait until Bissel could get away. But Forrest was stalling her. We all know Forrest: he has a habit of stealing when he wants out of a situation. He wants to get caught. I figure he was trying to find a way out, back when he stole the pins. He was waiting to get caught. We picked him up, and I think Mrs. Dana got the bail money to him. Then I figure she talked him out of standing trial. Either way he’s headed for jail; she probably convinced him to have a good time with her first. I know it doesn’t make Mrs. Dana look very good, but I figure she must have gotten all mixed up in her thinking to be hanging around with him in the first place.”
Neal lit a cigarette. He said, “Do you really think my wife would run off with Forrest Bissel?”
“I’m afraid I do, Dr. Dana. According to Linda Chayka, Mrs. Dana planned to take him on some sort of camping trip.”
“Forrest told Linda Chayka about this?”
The policeman nodded. “Linda thought he was just a braggart, trying to impress her with this story of the older woman who was in love with him.”
Neal winced involuntarily at the words “in love with him.”
Tom Baird said, “But now she thinks that’s what happened. I went to see her yesterday, looking for Forrest, and she told me about it. I didn’t think it was that serious, Dr. Dana. That’s why I didn’t mention it on Saturday when you stopped by. I just didn’t think her disappearance had anything to do with him.”
“What did you think?” Neal asked, remembering the smile that had played on the policeman’s lips when Neal had reported Margaret’s absence to him.
“Oh, I suppose the thing with Forrest crossed my mind. But Forrest wasn’t missing then. I didn’t link the two together until I knew he’d skipped.”
“And you actually think they’re together?”
“Yes, Dr. Dana. There’s no need for it to become public information. I suppose there’ll be some talk. Linda Chayka will probably gossip, but then she’s not a very credible gossip, is she? I doubt she knows the same people you do, either.”
“Still-” Neal said.
“Yes, there’ll be some talk. Most people won’t believe it.”
“No, they won’t,” said Neal. “And those who will, won’t understand that Margaret deserves help now, not blame.”
“Yes,” Baird agreed. Then he said, “I don’t think there’s any help for Forrest. You did so much for him—and this is the way he repays you. He’s a bad apple.”
Impulsively, Neal decided to say, “The sister’s not much better. She comes to the clinic now and then. You know the type—always worried that she’s pregnant, and never certain which one made her that way.” Neal forced a little laugh.
The policeman shuffled through some papers on his desk and didn’t answer Neal. Neal had the sudden feeling that he was embarrassed, and then another idea came to his head: could there have been more behind the smile on Officer Baird’s face that day than the knowledge of Margaret’s affair with Forrest? Was it conceivable that the policeman had good reason to know that Margaret, too, had been the type Neal had just described? Perhaps on those few spontaneous visits to the Danas’ he had hoped to find Margaret alone. Perhaps there had been many occasions when he had.
May I ask you something, Margaret had been in the habit of saying, and Neal had often suspected there was a patronizing flavor to the question, for Margaret usually had her own way. But how blind to her ways could he have been? How imperceptive a man was Dr. Neal Dana?
For the first time in his life he felt he knew nothing at all about himself … and as for Margaret …
• • •
But he could not accept such a concept of her for long. Hours later, as Penny Bissel sat across from him in his office, he totally rejected all thoughts of Margaret as a promiscuous woman.
Sick, yes.
And it had been his fault; it had come about because of his neglect of her. His vanity had been to blame for Margaret’s involvement with Forrest, his insufferable fantasies of fame and sensuality.
While he listened to Penny, watching her face with that certain detachment which found new flaws in her features at every encounter, he determined to notify Doubleday that he was not prepared at this time to undertake the book.