Vanish in an Instant (2 page)

2

One wing
of
the house was dark, but in the other wing lights streamed from every window like golden rib­bons.

The place was larger than Meecham had expected, and its flat roof and enormous windows looked incongruous in a winter setting. It was a Southern California house, of red­wood and fieldstone. Meecham wondered whether Virginia had planned it that way herself, deliberately, because it reminded her of home, or unconsciously, as a symbol of her own refusal to conform to a new environment.

The driveway entrance to the house was through a patio that separated the two wings. Here, too, the lights were on, revealing hanging baskets of dead plants and flower­pots heaped with snow, and a barbecue pit fringed with tiny icicles.

Mrs. Hamilton's eyes were squinted up as if she was go­ing to cry at the sight of Virginia's patio, built for sun and summer and now desolate in the winter night. Silently she got out of the car and moved toward the house.

Meecham pushed back his hat in a gesture of re­lief. “Quite a character, eh?”

“I like her. She's very pleasant to me.”

“Oh?” He stood aside while Alice stepped out of the car. “You're a little young to be a hired companion. How long have you worked for her?”

“About a month.”

“Why?”

“Why? Well . . .” She flushed again. “Well, that's a silly question. I have to earn a living.”

“I meant, it's a funny kind of job for a young girl.”

“I used to be a schoolteacher. Only I wasn't meeting . . .”
any eligible men
were the words that occurred to her, but she said instead, “I was getting into a rut, so I decided to change jobs for a year or so.”

He gave her a queer look and went around to the back of the car to unlock the luggage compartment. Mrs. Hamil­ton had gone into the house, leaving the front door open.

Meecham put the four suitcases on the shoveled drive and relocked the compartment. “I suppose you know what you're getting into.”

“I—of course.
Naturally
.”

“Naturally.” He looked slightly amused. “I gather you haven't met Virginia.”

“No. I've heard a lot about her, though, from her brother, Willett, and from Mrs. Hamilton. She seems to be—well, rather an unhappy person.”

“You have to be pretty unhappy,” Meecham said, “to stab a guy half a dozen times in the neck. Or didn't you know about that?”

“I knew it.” She meant to sound very positive, like Mrs. Hamilton, but her voice was squeezed into a tight little whisper. “Of course I knew it.”

“Naturally.”

“You're quite objectionable.”

“I am when people object to me,” Meecham said. “I've forgotten your name, by the way, what is it?”

Instead of answering she picked up two of the suitcases and went ahead into the house.

Mrs. Hamilton heard her coming and called out, “Alice? I'm here, in the living room. Bring Mr. Meecham in with you. Perhaps he'd like some coffee.”

Alice looked coldly at Meecham who had followed her in. “Would you like some coffee?”

“No, thanks,
Alice
.”

“I don't permit total strangers to call me Alice.”

“Okay, kid.” He looked as if he was going to laugh, but he didn't. Instead, he said, “We seem to have started off on the wrong foot.”

“Since we're not going anywhere together, what does it matter?”

“Have it your way.” He put on his hat. “Tell Mrs. Ham­ilton I'll meet her tomorrow morning at 9:30 at the county jail. She can see Virginia then.”

“Couldn't she phone her tonight or something?”

“The girl's in jail. She's not staying at the Waldorf.” He said over his shoulder as he went out the door, “Good night, kid.”

“Alice?” Mrs. Hamilton repeated. “Oh, there you are. Where's Mr. Meecham?”

“He left.”

“Perhaps I was a little harsh with him, challenging his abilities.” She was standing in front of the fireplace, still in her hat and coat, and rubbing her hands together as if to get warm, though the fire wasn't lit. “I'm afraid I antago­nized him. I couldn't help it. I felt he had the wrong atti­tude toward Virginia.”

The room was very large and colorful, furnished in rat­tan and bamboo and glass like a tropical lanai. There were growing plants everywhere, philodendron and ivy hang­ing from copper planters on the walls, azaleas in tubs, and cyclamen and coleus and saintpaulia in bright coralstone pots on the mantel and on every shelf and table. The air was humid and smelled of moist earth like a field after a spring rain.

The whole effect of the room was one of impossible beauty and excess, as if the person who lived there lived in a dream.

“She loves flowers,” Mrs. Hamilton said. “She isn't like Willett, my son. He's never cared for anything except money. But Virginia is quite different. Even when she was a child she was always very gentle with flowers as she was with birds and animals. Very gentle and understanding . . .”

“Mrs. Hamilton.”

“. . . as if they were people and could feel.”

“Mrs. Hamilton,” Alice repeated, and the woman blinked as if just waking up. “Why is Virginia in jail? What did she do?”

She was fully awake now, the questions had struck her vulnerable body as hailstones strike a field of sun-warmed wheat. “Virginia didn't do anything. She was arrested by mistake.”

“But why?”

“I've told you, Paul's wire to me was very brief. I know none of the details.”

“You could have asked Mr. Meecham.”

“I prefer to get the details from someone closer to me and to Virginia.”

She doesn't want the facts at all, Alice thought. All she wants is to have Virginia back again, the gentle child who loved animals and flowers.

A middle-aged woman in horn-rimmed glasses and a white uniform came into the room carrying a cup of coffee, half of which had spilled into the saucer. She had a limp but she moved very quickly as if she thought speed would cover it. She had a spot of color on each cheekbone, round as coins.

“Here you are. This'll warm you up.” She spoke a little too loudly, covering her embarrassment with volume as she covered her limp with speed.

Mrs. Hamilton nodded her thanks. “Carney, this is Alice Dwyer. Alice, Mrs. Carnova.”

The woman shook Alice's hand vigorously. “Call me Carney. Everyone does.”

“Carney,” Mrs. Hamilton explained, “is Paul's office nurse, and an old friend of mine.”

“He phoned from the hospital a few minutes ago. He's on his way.”

“We are old friends, aren't we, Carney?”

The coins on the woman's cheekbones expanded. “Sure. You bet we are.”

“Then what are you acting so nervous about?”

“Nervous? Well, everybody gets nervous once in a while, don't they? I've had a busy day and I stayed after hours to welcome you, see that you got settled, and so forth. I'm tired, is all.”

“Is it?”

The two women had forgotten Alice. Carney was look­ing down at the floor, and the color had radiated all over her face to the tops of her large pale ears. “Why did you come? You can't do anything.”

“I can. I'm going to.”

“You don't know how things are.”

“Then tell me.”

“This is bad, the worst yet. I knew she was seeing Margolis. I warned her. I said I'd write and tell you and you'd come and make it hot for her.”

“You didn't tell me.”

Carney spread her hands. “How could I? She's twenty- six; that's too old to be kept in line by threats of telling mama.”

“Did Paul know about this—this man?”

“I'm not sure. Maybe he did. He never said anything.” She plucked a dried leaf from the yam plant that was grow­ing down from the mantel. “Virginia won't listen to me any more. She doesn't like me.”

“That's silly. She's always been devoted to you.”

“Not any more. Last week she called me a snooping old beerhound. She said that when I applied for this job it wasn't because Carnova had left me stranded in Detroit, it was because you sent me here to spy on her.”

“That's ridiculous,” Mrs. Hamilton said crisply. “I'll talk to Virginia tomorrow and see that she apologizes.”

“
Apologizes
. What do you think this is, some little
game
or something? Oh, God.” Carney exploded. She covered her face with her hands, half-laughing, half-crying and then she began to hiccough, loud and fast. “Oh—damn—oh—damn.”

Mrs. Hamilton turned to Alice. “We all need some rest. Come and I'll show you your room.”

‘‘I'll—show—her.''

“All right. You go with Carney, Alice. I'll wait up to say hello to Paul.”

Alice looked embarrassed. “I hated to stand there listen­ing like that. About Virginia, I mean.”

“That's all right, you couldn't help it.” A car came up the driveway and stopped with a shriek of brakes. “Here's Paul now. I'll talk to him alone, Carney, if you don't mind.”

“Why—should—I—mind?”

“And for heaven's sake breathe into a paper bag or some­thing. Good night.”

When they had gone Mrs. Hamilton stood in the center of the room for a moment, her fingertips pressing her tem­ples, her eyes closed. She felt exhausted, not from the sleep­less night she had spent, or from the plane trip, but from the strain of uncertainty, and the more terrible strain of pretending that everything would be all right, that a mis­take had been made which could be rather easily corrected.

She went to open the door for Paul.

He came in, stamping the snow from his boots, a stocky, powerfully built man in a wrinkled trench coat and a damp shapeless gray hat. He looked like a red-cheeked farmer
coming in from his evening's chores, carrying a medical bag instead of a lantern.

He had a folded newspaper under his arm. Mrs. Hamil­ton glanced at the newspaper and away again.

“Well, Paul.” They shook hands briefly.

“I'm glad you got here all right.” He had a very deep warm voice and he talked rather slowly, weighing out each word with care like a prescription. “Sorry I couldn't meet you—Mother.”

“You don't have to call me Mother, you know, if it makes you uncomfortable.”

“Then I won't.” He laid his hat and trench coat across a chair and put his medical bag on top of them. But he kept the newspaper in his hand, rolling it up very tight as if he intended to use it as a weapon, to swat a fly or discipline an unruly pup.

Mrs. Hamilton sat down suddenly and heavily, as though the newspaper had been used against her. The light from the rattan lamp struck her face with the sharp­ness of a slap. “That paper you have, what is it?”

“One of the Detroit tabloids.”

“Is it . . .?”

“It's all in here, yes. Not on the front page.”

“Are there any pictures?”

“Yes.”

“Of Virginia?”

“One.”

“Let me see.”

“It's not very pretty,” he said. “Perhaps you'd better not.”

“I must see it.”

“All right.”

The pictures occupied the entire second page. There were three of them. One, captioned
Death Shack
, showed a
small cottage, its roof heavy with fresh snow and its win­dows opaque with frost. The second was of a sleek dark-haired man smiling into the camera. He was identified as Claude Ross Margolis, forty-two, prominent contrac­tor, victim of fatal stabbing.

The third picture was of Virginia, though no one would have recognized her. She was sitting on some kind of bench, hunched over, with her hands covering her face and a tangled mass of black hair falling over her wrists. She wore evening slippers, one of them minus a heel, and a long fluffy dress and light-colored coat. The coat and dress and one of the shoes showed dark stains that looked like mud. Above the picture were the words,
held for question­ing
, and underneath it Virginia was identified as Mrs. Paul Barkeley, twenty-six, wife of Arbana physician, al­legedly implicated in the death of Claude Margolis.

Mrs. Hamilton spoke finally in a thin, ragged whisper: “I've seen a thousand such dreary pictures in my life, but I never thought that some day one of them would be ter­ribly different to me from all the others.”

She looked up at Barkeley. His face hadn't changed ex­pression, it showed no sign of awareness that the girl in the picture was his wife. A little pulse of resentment began to beat in the back of Mrs. Hamilton's mind:
He doesn't care—he should have taken better care of Virginia—this would never have happened. Why wasn't he with her? Or why didn't he keep her at home
?