Cat's-Paw, Inc.

by L. L. Thrasher

  “Tom Dickon Harry?” Allison collapsed against me in a fit of giggles. While she was distracted I slipped my hand up under the Oregon Rain Festival T-shirt she had changed into when we got back to the motel. I unhooked her bra then slid my hands up her sleeves, found her bra straps and pulled them down through the sleeves and over her wrists. I plucked the loose bra from beneath her shirt and tossed it on the other bed. She ignored the whole procedure but I was pretty sure she noticed. The giggles ceased abruptly.

  “What’s your middle name?” she asked.

  “O’Brien. So is Carrie’s. It’s our mother’s maiden name.”

  She was resolutely ignoring my caresses. “You don’t look Irish. You should have red hair.”

  With my hands on Allison’s breasts and my brain god only knows where, I opened my big mouth and said, “That’s a nice bit of ethnic stereotyping coming from a blonde Italian.” I added a very heartfelt “Shit!” as she pulled away from me, her face pale and stiff with fear.

  “I’ve known since Wednesday night,” I said quickly. “I haven’t done anything about it.”

  She drew a long shaky breath. “How did you find out? That policeman you talk to…”

  “I found your ID. The cops don’t know about you yet. Not who you are anyway. They’re looking for a woman. You left your nightgown behind.”

  She started to get off the bed but I grabbed her wrist and pulled her back against me. “Don’t get all upset, babe. You’ll make yourself sick again.”

  “Why haven’t you told the police?”

  “I’m not sure. I wanted to give you some time. You weren’t in very good shape.”

  “But you’re going to make me go to the police, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t want to make you do anything.” I stroked her hair. She wasn’t crying but she felt rigid against me. I held her quietly and after a while she seemed to relax a bit although she was clutching my hand tightly.

  “Allison? Who was Carl Vanzetti?”

  “My father.”

  I looked at her in surprise. “Your father? He would have been over fifty when you were born.” She nodded. “What about your mother?”

  “She was much younger, of course. Oh, you mean where is she. She died in a car accident when I was five.”

  “What about other relatives?”

  “I don’t have any.”

  “Aunts, uncles, cousins?”

  She shook her head. “There’s no one on my father’s side. I don’t know anything about my mother’s family. I think when she married Daddy she didn’t have anything to do with them anymore. I don’t remember much about her. She had blond hair and blue eyes but I don’t look like her. I remember her laughing a lot. She always seemed happy. I hope she was. She was only twenty-four when she died.”

  Twenty-four. Nineteen when her daughter was born. And more than thirty years younger than her husband. An unusual marriage. I hoped she had been happy, too.

  We were quiet for a few minutes. Allison was probably thinking about her mother. I was thinking about the question I didn’t want to ask and the answer I didn’t want to hear.

  I slid downward on the bed so I was no longer sitting but lying on my side. Allison followed me. She was facing me, very close to me, her head on my arm. I put my other arm around her waist and looked into those beautiful night-sky eyes.

  “Did you kill your father?”

  She didn’t answer. She turned her face against my shoulder and wept.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  She didn’t cry for long. She got some Kleenex from the bathroom, then stretched out beside me again.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she said.

  “You should start by telling me about it.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “I don’t think you have much choice. I’m all you’ve got on your side right now. The cops are sure to ID you one of these days and you’re going to need some help.”

  She sighed. “I didn’t kill him.”

  “Who did?”

  “It doesn’t matter who did it.”

  My turn to sigh. “Start at the beginning, babe.”

  She took me literally. Allison was born in New York City and lived in a Manhattan penthouse until her mother’s death. She had few memories of those years. “I remember a park my mother took me to, with swings and a slide, and a Christmas tree with silver bells all over it, little things like that. She died in May so I had just turned five. I know we had a cook and a housekeeper. And a chauffeur. He died in the accident, too. I think Daddy lived with us but he was gone most of the time. I remember him coming home after the accident and telling me I was going to live with his mother. And I remember the airplane trip to Grandmother’s.”

  “Where did she live?”

  “In Minnesota. Near St. Paul. I stayed there for two years, until she died. She was very old and she never left her room. I went to a private school during the day and the servants took care of me at home. I only saw Grandmother on Sundays when I had tea in her room.”

  “Where was your father then?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t live there. He visited once in a while. When Grandmother died, he came to get me.”

  “Where did you go then?”

  “To school,” Allison said bitterly. “For the rest of my life.”

  “In Connecticut? That’s the school’s address on your driver’s license?”

  “Yes. You know the kind of place you think of when you hear someone threaten to send their son to military school?” I nodded and she said, “That’s Fanhaven Academy, except it’s for girls. It’s small and I think it’s very expensive. All the students are rich. Their parents are rich, anyway. They’re movie producers, foreign diplomats, business tycoons, the Jet Set.” She sat up, turning to face me. “The newspaper said Daddy was a criminal. The FBI was looking for him.”

  “You didn’t know that before?”

  “I didn’t know what he did.”

  So much for my idol-with-the-feet-of-clay theory.

  “So you lived at the school,” I prompted.

  “Yes. One of my girlfriends described it pretty well. She said people send their daughters to Fanhaven so they’ll grow up untouched by human hands.” She smiled. “Some of the girls call it Fanny Haven. It doesn’t really work of course, because the girls go home during summer and on holidays. You’d be surprised how wild their lives are when they’re not at school.”

  I didn’t think I would be surprised at all but I didn’t say anything.

  “I’m the only one who lived there permanently,” Allison said. “I don’t mean I was all alone during vacations. There are always girls who have to stay for a summer or at Christmas because their parents are working or went abroad or something. But I’m the only one who never left.” She traced one of the fleur-de-lis patterns on the bedspread. “I didn’t have a home to go to. Daddy took me there when I was seven years old and I never left until Sunday.”

  He put her in a private school and there he kept her very well. “Where was he all those years?”

  “I don’t know. He never told me anything about his life. He said he was in the import business and traveled all the time.”

  “How often did you see him?”

  “Twice a year. Once during the summer and once at Christmas. He’d show up in the afternoon and take me out to dinner then he’d leave and I wouldn’t see him again for six months. He never wrote or called and I never knew how to get in touch with him.”

  She lay down beside me on her back. I supported myself on one elbow and watched her face.

  “I got presents from him on my birthday and at Christmas. When I was younger, I thought he actually sent them to me. Then I realized the school bought them. He just gave them the money. Except for my diamond.” She tugged the stone from beneath her shirt and looked at it, turning it so the facets caught the light. “He gave it to me last Christmas. He said it’s from my mother’s wedding ring.

  “I know I shouldn’t
complain. I was taken care of. No one was ever mean to me. I don’t even remember anyone ever being mad at me. And if I wanted anything, all I had to do was ask. Daddy gave the school a lot of money, I guess. I got anything I wanted. Except for a car. I asked him for one last Christmas and he said I had to wait until I leave school. Anyway, I was treated very well. It’s just that there was no one…” She blinked back tears.

  I expected her to say “No one who loved me,” but she said, “No one I belonged to.”

  After a moment she said, “So, that’s where I’ve been all my life.”

  “Until Sunday. Tell me about Sunday.”

  “It started before that, actually. I finished all the high school courses in May but you don’t have to leave Fanhaven just because you graduate. I think they’ll keep you forever as long as someone pays the bills. But I wanted to leave. I was just so tired of being there. I wanted to live in a house, or an apartment, a home. I thought Daddy would come for my graduation, but he didn’t.

  “I waited all summer to see him so I could talk to him about leaving school. He usually came at the end of June but he never showed up. There’s a lawyer who handles the money. I talked to him but he didn’t know how to get in touch with Daddy. All he had was an address in New York and it was one of those mail-forwarding places. I wrote but he never answered.

  “Then, last Saturday, he finally called. He told me he was leaving the country and he didn’t know how long he would be gone. He told me I have to stay at Fanhaven until I’m eighteen and then I can go to college or do whatever I want. He said he’d support me as long as I needed him to, but he didn’t know when he could see me again.”

  Allison separated a thick section of her hair and began to braid it tightly. “I was really upset. I asked if I could leave school and get an apartment and he said no, I’m not old enough. He said I had to stay at school until April. I was upset, I was crying and I couldn’t talk very well. I asked if I could call him back when I was calmer and he gave me the number. Area code, telephone number, and room number. I didn’t think anything about it until later, when I was ready to call him. Then I realized I could find out where he was. For the first time in my life, I could find out where he was.

  “I called the telephone operator and she told me the number was in Mackie, Oregon, and I got the name of the hotel when the desk clerk answered the phone. I told Daddy I’d do what he wanted, I’d stay at Fanhaven until my birthday. He said he’d write to me and maybe in a year or so I could visit him.”

  She threaded her fingers through the braid she had made and worked it loose. “I hardly slept at all that night. I kept thinking about knowing where he was. And I decided to go see him. I don’t really know what I expected him to do. Take me with him maybe or at least I could make him understand that I just couldn’t stay at school any longer.

  “I had some money. I get an allowance every month but the school supplies everything I need so I don’t spend much and I just keep it in my footlocker. I couldn’t take a suitcase so I stuck some things in the biggest purse I have. Sunday morning I told Mrs. Mayhew—she’s the headmistress—that I wanted to go to an art show. I go places by myself a lot. It’s a small town and they trust me. I’ve never been in any trouble at school. So I took a cab into town then I took the train to New York City and went to the airport.”

  At the airport, Allison was told there were no commercial flights into Mackie. The closest they could get her was Pendleton but she would have a layover in Portland. She had never heard of Pendleton so she bought a one-way ticket to Portland. From the Portland airport, she took a cab to the bus depot, where she bought a ticket to Mackie. She had less than forty dollars left by then.

  “What were you going to do if your father was gone when you got there?”

  “Call Fanhaven. They’d make sure I got home.”

  “I don’t understand what the school’s doing. It seems to me the mysterious disappearance of a student at a ritzy private school would rate a little news coverage. For all they know, you were kidnapped.”

  “Well, no. I left a note in my room.”

  “Ah. You left that part out.”

  “Well, I did. I just said I was going away for a few days by myself and they shouldn’t worry about me.”

  “Even so, they would have filed a missing person report, just to cover their asses. They must be going crazy by now.”

  She nodded. “Daddy started to all them when I got to the hotel but then he said something about letting them sweat it out overnight. I guess he was mad because they let me get away.”

  She closed her eyes. She was pale and looked tired. I let her rest for a minute. A private school that had misplaced a rich man’s daughter was going to be trying hard to find her. Vanzetti’s death probably hadn’t made the news east of Chicago but eventually someone in Connecticut was going to find out that Allison bought a plane ticket to Portland. Portland Police Bureau would be routinely notified to be on the lookout for a runaway named Allison Vanzetti. It would take the Portland cops about half a second to connect her with Mackie’s murder case. I was surprised it hadn’t happened yet.

  “Allison?”

  She looked at me, her eyes the color of the sea on a stormy night. The skin beneath them had a faintly bruised look that hadn’t been there before. “Tell me what happened in Mackie.”

  “It was about eight o’clock when the bus got there but it was eleven o’clock to me and I was exhausted. I hardly slept Saturday night and I couldn’t sleep on the airplane. I saw the hotel when we drove through town so I just walked over from the bus depot. Daddy’s room number was 301 and I was sure it would be on the third floor so I didn’t talk to anyone in the lobby. I just took the elevator upstairs and went to the room. He was… he wasn’t angry really. He was shocked to see me, of course, and he seemed almost frightened. I didn’t understand that. First he told me I had to leave right away, then he decided I could stay overnight but I had to go back to Connecticut in the morning. We didn’t really talk very much. He seemed nervous and I was so tired. And I felt awful because I came all the way out here and it didn’t do any good. He was sending me back to school.”

  She pulled the pillow from beneath her head and put it lengthwise on top of her, gripping it hard with both hands. “I went to bed but I couldn’t sleep very well. Daddy was pacing around the room and he had the television on part of the time. Once when I woke up, he was lying on the other bed. He had the covers pulled down but he was dressed and he was just lying there. I asked him what was wrong and he said… he said, ‘I wish I had done things differently.’” She squeezed the pillow tighter until her fingers met in the middle.

  “I guess I fell asleep because the next thing I knew, he was shaking me and telling me to get dressed. It was about four o’clock and I felt really confused and sleepy. I got dressed in the bathroom and then he told me to stay behind the curtain and be very quiet. Do you know how the rooms are there? With the curtains?”

  I nodded. I’d been in the Mackie Arms plenty of times. The rooms they call suites are just larger than average hotel rooms. The beds and bathroom are at the end away from the door. The front part of the room is furnished like a sitting room. Mounted on a ceiling-hung traverse rod between the two sections of the room are wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling drapes that can be closed to separate the two areas.

  “I stood behind the curtain like he told me to. Everything was so strange, Zachariah. I didn’t know what was happening and Daddy seemed so scared. The lights were off where I was but they were on in the other part of the room and there was a little gap where the curtain didn’t come together completely in the middle and I could see into the room where Daddy was. He was standing by the door. Nothing happened for a long time. At least it seemed like a long time. Then, he must have heard footsteps in the hall because he opened the door and a man came in. They stood right inside the door and talked, not for very long, just a minute or two. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Daddy had the television on again a
nd they were very quiet. But I could tell they were arguing. Then the man left.

  “Daddy told me he was going to take me to a hotel in Pendleton. I put my sweater on and picked my purse up and then there was a tap on the door, very quiet. And Daddy… he looked so scared and he told me to stay behind the curtain and be absolutely quiet. So I did. There was still that little gap and I saw what happened.”

  Allison’s fingers were bloodless, skeletal against the white pillowcase.

  “What happened, babycakes?”

  She took a deep breath and spoke in a rush “Daddy opened the door and it was the same man again and he pulled out a gun and shot Daddy. A lot of times. Four times, it said on the news. And then he left and Daddy was on the floor and his eyes… he was… there was blood and his eyes… I knew he was dead. I walked through the curtain and he was… he was… lying there and I knew he was dead and the door was standing open and I walked out and closed the door and went down the stairs and then I was outside in a parking lot. I saw a restaurant across the street. I don’t remember its name.”

  “Sparky’s. Mackie’s only twenty-four-hour restaurant.”

  She nodded. “I went inside and I stayed in the restroom for a while and then I sat at a booth and ordered tea. Nobody paid any attention to me. They were all looking across the street. There were police cars at the hotel. And an ambulance.

  “I think it was about five o’clock by then. I heard an old man talking to the waitress. He told her he was going to Allentown to babysit his grandchildren because they had the chickenpox and his daughter couldn’t afford to take time off from work to stay with home with them. I went outside and waited and when he came out I told him my car was broken down and I needed a ride to Allentown. He drove me out there in his truck. He didn’t ask me any questions. He talked about his grandchildren all the way. I felt sick when I saw Allentown. There’s nothing there. I told him to let me out at the gas station and he did. And you know the rest.”

  I knew the rest. What I didn’t know was how much of her story was the truth. I believed everything up to the point where the other man came into the picture. Allison’s eyes were closed, her hands still squeezing the pillow hard. I got off the bed and stood at the window. Beyond the parking lot was a neat row of columnar arborvitae. The mountains were no longer out. Flat gray clouds covered the sky.