Fadeaway Girl (17 page)

“Hi, hon,” she said. “ Want a Coke?”

“A chocolate milk shake, please.” I made a point of putting a dollar on the counter, though I knew Maud would give me one for free. But I could see Shirl up on her stool, smoking and watching, and Shirl never gave anything for free, unless she was in a really generous mood, which she hardly ever was.

The milk shake can jittered away, then stopped. Maud poured the shake into a ribbed glass into which she plunged a straw. The milk shake looked really thick and I knew she'd added extra ice cream. I took it back to the last booth, which always had a RESERVED sign on it. It was for the Rainbow's employees. I especially liked the booths; they were dark wood and so high-backed that you couldn't see people coming unless you leaned a little toward the aisle.

I had drunk the milk shake halfway down when Maud slid into the seat across from me. Right away I put the question to her: “Here's a kind of problem. Say you've got three people who are friends. A, B, and C. You're C. B tells you something about A that you find hard to believe. What's the most obvious way to find out the truth?”

She looked puzzled and got the pack of Camels from her pocket. “Ask A, I guess.”

“Yes. If C doesn't, but instead goes all the way around Robin Hood's barn”—one of my mother's favorite expressions—“to find out the answer, I mean like asking other people who might know but might not—then what does that tell you about C? Anything?”

Maud lit up a cigarette, exhaled a stream of smoke, and said, “Maybe C thinks A's feelings will be hurt?”

“But what else?”

Maud smoked and thought. It occurred to me then that all this A, B, C stuff was just another of my roundabout ways and that a lot of people would reach across the table and strangle me. So I told her what Miss Flyte had said about not wanting to know the answer.

“Ah. So C doesn't ask A because C doesn't really want to know, even though she thinks she does?”

I nodded.

She smoked. She said, “That's pretty good. I mean, I think Miss Flyte is probably right.”

“It's called denial.”

Where had he come from? How had the Sheriff managed to just
appear
that way?

Maud said, “How did you manage to creep up on us?”

The Sheriff sat down beside Maud.

I said, “What do you mean, ‘denial'?”

“That happens when you hide something from yourself. Alcoholics are masters of denial. They hide from the fact that they're alcoholics.”

“You sound,” said Maud, “like you just came from an AA meeting. Was it helpful?”

“Funny.” He turned back to me, as if I were the adult here and the only one he could talk to. “It's actually a complex state, denial. But let's simplify it by saying there's something a person just doesn't want to know or admit to or find out about himself.”

“Like if there's an obvious person to ask something, I mean a person who'd be most likely to know, but I don't ask him, but just ask a dozen other people instead.”

“You mean, you pretend to want to know?”

I frowned. “I guess.”

“For instance”—the Sheriff had removed his cap and was loosening up his tie—“if you keep pretending to want to know, you'll throw people off? Which is often what alcoholics do.”

“Well, but it's not so much trying to throw
other
people off, since they don't even get what you're talking about. No, it's more yourself, just yourself.”

Maud blew out another thin stream of smoke. “I have a copy of the Big Book under the counter if either of you need to consult it.”

The Sheriff smiled at me. “You have a perfect understanding of denial. So what are you denying?”

“Me?”

He nodded. “You.”

I played with my straw, bending and rebending it. He just sat there, fixing me with his cool blue eyes. The Sheriff definitely didn't move in roundabout ways.

He said, “I went to Cold Flat Junction and talked to Gloria Calhoun and her friend Prunella Rice. You were right about that phone call. It was planned in order to give Gloria an excuse for leaving the room. According to her—and it wasn't easy getting her to admit this, obviously—Imogen's father gave her a hundred dollars to leave the room for twenty minutes. She could say she'd had a phone call. She arranged to call Prunella Rice at exactly nine-thirty, while the dance was on.

“They didn't know the reason for this. They thought it was some game, some joke he was playing on the parents, or some surprise he'd arranged for them. But after the police were called, Woodruff told Gloria not to say a word or she might get in trouble with the police too. It sounded like a threat.”

I started to say, “Then they were—”

The Sheriff held off my voice with the palm of his hand out, pressing against my words. “As you can imagine, Gloria was flabbergasted when she got back to the room and found Morris Slade there and little Fay gone. It was right after that when Mr. Woodruff told her to keep her mouth shut. She was scared to death—both of the girls were scared. Lucien Woodruff was a formidable man.”

I said, “Then the three of them were in on it?”

He shook his head. “Not the three of them, the two of them.”

“Morris Slade,” I said, for some reason, disappointed in him, although I didn't know him. “Everyone thought he was no good.”

“Not Morris. Imogen.”

This did make me gasp, although ordinarily I'm not much of a gasper. “Imogen! The baby's mother!” I should have been enough into the Greeks and Medea not to be surprised by this.

He nodded. “Imogen and her father planned it.”

“Gloria Calhoun told you all this?”

The Sheriff 's smile was a little sour. “She didn't have much choice. But no, she didn't tell me all of it. Carl Mooma told me some. He was the sheriff back then. Donny's uncle.”

Carl Mooma.
I thought he was dead.

“Go on,” said Maud.

“Sheriff Mooma was pretty tight-lipped.”

I don't know why I felt oddly relieved.

“But there is more.” He looked at me.

The way the Sheriff said that, my insides started jittering away like the milk shake container. I wanted to slap my hands over my ears. He was going to tell us what had happened that night; he was going to tell the end of it, the dazzling truth, the end of the story.

But he didn't.

It was a dazzling something else.

“Morris Slade's back in town.”

M
orris Slade.

The Sheriff said he didn't know why he'd come back, but that he was staying in the Woodruff house in Spirit Lake.

I had an hour before I had to be at the salad table, which was so boring I would almost rather sit in Miss Bertha's lap. I stopped in front of the Marigold Flower Shop and thought about the Woodruff house. Would I have time to investigate it before I had to serve tonight?

I was still trying to work out reasons for a put-on kidnapping, a staged kidnapping. Will and Mill might have some ideas about kidnappings, considering the way they kept Paul up there in the rafters and how Will had whisked little Bessie off the croquet court.

I moved on to the Prime Cut, where Bobbi, the owner, was putting rollers in Mayor Sims's wife's hair. She was trapped there behind the window; she couldn't get up and walk away or turn away, as Bobbi had possession of her hair. I frowned deeply to show I thought she really looked bad, shook my head, and made a pained face to be sure she got it.

But then I grew tired of that and walked on and puzzled over the kidnapping. Why had Imogen and Mr. Woodruff done it? Was it some kind of revenge against Morris Slade? Why? Every question began with Why? and went unanswered.

I passed Axel's Taxis and waved to Wilma, the dispatcher, and she waved back. So did Delbert. My wave was not meant to include him, but he was getting in on it anyway. I guessed I'd have to take a cab to the hotel in fifteen minutes, so I went in and told Wilma I'd be back at five. I wasn't even looking at Delbert, who was reading a comic book, but he put it down and looked at his big turnip of a watch, then from it to the clock on the wall, and back again. He gave the watch a wind, as if General Eisenhower had told Delbert to wake him up at exactly 5:00 A.M. so he wouldn't miss D-day.

“Fifteen minutes. That'd make it right at five o'clock is what I figure.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yes, Delbert. Five.”

“It's fifteen to right now, you realize that. So if my watch is right—”

I left him talking to his watch and went down the three wooden steps.

Revenge against Morris Slade. I thought about this. But for Imogen, from what I'd heard about her, it was just too complicated a plan. If she wanted revenge against her husband, she'd just hit him over the head with the fireplace tongs or something. As for Mr. Woodruff, I had the impression he was smart enough, only he wouldn't put in all that effort just for revenge against Morris Slade. He'd just get rid of him somehow. Morris Slade could be bought off, he would think. I suppose almost anyone could be bought off. I know I could.

Now I was in front of Forbish's Shoes (SHOES FOR BUSY FEET the sign said). Mr. Forbish was fitting shoes on Helene Baum, who had a pie box sitting on the chair beside her. The store was dusk dark inside, as if it belonged in another solar system, but I could still pretend I saw how big Helene Baum's feet were. When she looked my way, I made my mouth into an O of surprise. But she was sitting too far in for me to tell if she could see my shocked face. Maybe we'd meet on the street one day and she'd pass me a few folded-up bills, saying that was for my not telling her shoe size.

I found an old stick of Doublemint gum in my pocket and stuffed it in my mouth and walked on. I thought probably I knew a lot about people they'd pay me not to tell. I walked up the other side of the street and then decided I had better get to the taxi rank and put in my time with Delbert.

Delbert made a big deal of the time: “Five P.M. on the nose!” as if he were responsible for my punctuality. As we drove out of town with the friendly faces of Braeburn's Tourist Home and Arturo's Restaurant sliding by, I wondered, If Delbert were to kidnap me, how much would some people think I was worth, and what would they pay to get me back?

I always sat behind him where he couldn't see me in the rearview mirror unless he craned his neck. He hunted my face out in the mirror the way I'd heard a pig goes rooting for truffles. He wouldn't last five minutes with Emily Dickinson, that's for sure, not with that screen between them.

“Do anything interestin' today?”

“No.” I hated open-ended questions like that; the questioner didn't care about the answer, only that the burden of conversation got to the other person, so the one asking could sit back and not do anything (and then call himself a good listener):
“You're a mountain climber? Tell me about it!” “You play the oboe? Tell me about it.” “You murdered your children? Tell me about it!”
Here I pictured the questioned one, Medea, plunging a knife into the questioner's chest and answering, “That's pretty much it.”

“That brother o' yours,” said Delbert, up and running again, “he puttin' on any more plays? That last one was a corker!”

“You mean you saw it?”

“Nah. I just heard. I ain't got time for stuff like that.”

I watched the scenery wander away and thought for a moment. “Gee, that's too bad because you were one of the characters.”

That got him going. He almost ran off the road. I guessed there wasn't a lot of drama in Delbert's life.

“What? What do you mean?”

“You were Creon.”

“Cre-un who? Who's he?”

“A cabdriver.” I was afraid he was so excited by all this he was going to stop the car. But he just flailed around, searching the mirror.

I said, “This was back in the old days of the Greeks.”

“The Greeks, they had cabs?”

“Chariots.”

“So this guy was drivin' a chariot? With horses?”

“No. You were driving a cab. It was right onstage, or part of it was, the front end that Will put together from scrap metal. It was cab number eighty-two. Medea took it to go to the Games.”

We were passing Britten's store then, and I waved to Mr. Root, but he was too busy with Ulub's recital to notice.

“So how'd people know it was me if I wasn't there on the stage?”

I considered this as the cab neared the Hotel Paradise driveway. “Because the character talked like you. And he worked for a Greek named Axel.” I had a sudden inspiration. “Listen: don't turn into the hotel yet. Turn right up here on Pine and then go along E Street.”

It was almost too much for Delbert, this shift in the usual route. He nearly tossed me into the trunk, braking like that. “What? What in God's name you want to go to E Street for?”

“Just do it, Delbert.”

He grunted, then sped up a little. “Cost you more; this here's a detour.”

We passed the Custis place and Mrs. Louderback's. The old Woodruff house, looking spick-and-span as always, sat on the next corner. The house hadn't been lived in for years, not since the Belle Ruin days. But it had been kept up; the grass was mowed and the house aired out by whoever Mr. Woodruff hired to do it. I only knew this because I saw old Mr. Bernhardt trundling slowly behind a mower and his wife, who did cleaning, going in and out. It was a beautiful house, with long windows right down to the floor, and a wraparound porch. The house was painted white, of course, with green shutters.