Deep Water (16 page)

       Vic smiled a little, went to the back door and locked it. "I'd like to ask you to come to the house for a drink—"

       "Thanks," Horace interrupted in a negative tone.

       "All right," Vic said, smiling, but he again felt the creeping embarrassment, the shame, because Horace had turned against Melinda.

       "Thanks, not now, Vic. Why don't you come over to see us? I know Mary'd like to see you."

       "Not tonight, I think. I'll take a rain check. Be sure to give Mary my regards, though. How's the pear tree looking?" "Oh, better. Much better," Horace said.

       "Good." Vic had given them some of his own fungicide concoction to spray on their pear tree because its leaves had started to develop red-brown spots.

       They strolled out to their cars, talking about the likelihood of rain that evening. There was a hint of autumn in the air.

       "We would like to see you soon, Vic," Horace said before he got into his car.

       "You will," Vic answered, smiling. "My love to Mary!" He waved cheerfully and got into his car.

       Melinda was in the living room when Vic got home, sitting on the sofa with a magazine.

       "Good evening," Vic said, smiling.

       She glanced up at him sullenly.

       "Can I fix you a drink?" he asked.

       "Thanks, I'll do it."

       Vic had washed up and put on a clean shirt in his own room before coming into the house. He sat down in his favorite armchair with the newspaper. It was strange, and rather pleasant, to feel no desire for a drink at seven o'clock. He had not had a drink in three days. It made him feel secure and self-sufficient somehow. He was aware of a placidity that seemed to surround him, to show itself in his facial expression, while within he felt a steely hardness, a not entirely unpleasant tenseness whose components he did not really know. Hatred? Resentment? Fear? Guilt? Or was it simply pride and satisfaction? It was like a core in him. Another question was, had it always been in him or was it something new?

       Melinda came in with her drink "Trixie's bringing home stories now," she announced.

       "Where is Trixie?"

       "She went to a party at the Petersons'. Janey's birthday. She should come home with some fine stories tonight."

       "Am I supposed to go and get her or is Peterson driving her hack?"

       "He said he'd deliver her at about seven-thirty," Melinda replied, collapsing on the sofa so hard that her highball almost spilled.

       Her movement blew a roll of gray dust into view under the sofa. Vic looked at it with amusement.

       "I believe I'll do some vacuuming before dinner," he announced pleasantly.

       Melinda's incongruously brooding, sullen face made him smile all the more. He got the vacuum from the hall closet and plugged it into the wall by the phonograph. He whistled as he worked, enjoying the swift disappearance of the dust rolls under the sofa, of the square of fine dust that he had found when he moved the armchair. He enjoyed, too, the strain of his muscles as lie performed the humble, domestic chore of vacuuming his living room. He drew his stomach in, did deep knee bends to reach tinder the bookcase, stretched up tall to get the top of the curtains with the brush appliance. He liked exercise when he did something useful with it. He'd tackle the windows tomorrow, he thought. They'd needed washing for months. He was still vacuuming when Charles Peterson arrived with Trixie.

       "Hello!" Vic called out to him in the car."Won't you come in for a minute?"

       Peterson looked as if he didn't want to come in. Behind his shy smile, Vic sensed his unease. But he was coming in. "How're you this evening?" he asked as he approached the door.

       Trixie had run past Vic into the living room, clattering a noisemaker that she had acquired at the party.

       "We're fine," Vic said. "Can I offer you a beer? Some iced tea? A drink?" It was a fine picture that he and Melinda made, and Vic knew it: he in his shirt sleeves, vacuuming the living room, and Melinda on the sofa with a highball, not even looking particularly tidy in her cotton blouse and skirt and her sandals and no stockings.

       Peterson looked around a little awkwardly, then smiled. "How're you, Mrs. Van Allen?" he asked, a little fearfully, Vic thought.

       "Very well, thank you," Melinda said, with a contortion of her mouth that was supposed to pass for a smile.

       "These kids' parties—" Peterson said, with a laugh. "They really take more out of you than grown-ups' parties." He had a New England drawl in his a's.

       "You can say that again," Vic said. "How old is Janey? Seven?" "Six," Peterson said.

       "Six! She's tall for her age."

       "Yes, she is."

       "Won't you sit down?"

       "No, I'll be going on, thanks." Peterson's eyes were drifting everywhere, as if he could read in a corner of the room, in the disarray of magazines on the cocktail table, the real explanation of the Van Allen scandal.

       "Well, Trix looks as if she had a good time. Probably the noisiest one there." Vic winked at her.

       "I was not!" Trixie yelled, still talking at the top of her voice as she probably had at the party to make herself heard above twenty other screaming six-year-olds. "I've got something to 'tell—you'," she said to Vic, on a note calculated to pique his curiosity.

       "Me? Good!" Vic whispered enthusiastically. Then he turned 10 Peterson, who was making his way to the door. "How're the Hydrangeas doing?"

       Peterson's face lit with a smile. "Oh, they're fine. A little droopy for a while, but they've picked up fine now." He turned around. "Good night, Mrs. Van Allen. It's nice to see you."

       Vic smiled."Good night, Charley." He knew Peterson's friends called him Charley, and that it would please him if Vic called him that rather than "Mr. Peterson."

       "Good night," Peterson said. "See you again."

       It struck Vic that Peterson's smile was more genuine than when he had arrived.

       "My goodness," Vic said as he came back into the room. Couldn't you say good night to the man?"

       Melinda only looked at him slurringly.

       "Not very good for your public relations." He put his hands on his knees and leaned toward Trixie."And couldn't you say good night and thank you?"

       "I said all that at Janey's house," Trixie replied. She looked quickly at her mother, then beckoned to Vic to come into the kitchen with her.

       Melinda was watching them.

       Vic went with Trixie. Trixie pulled his head down to her and whispered roaringly in his ear, "Did you really kill Charley De Lisle?"

       "No!" Vic whispered, smiling.

       "Because Janey says you did." Trixie's eyes were shining with eagerness, with a pride and excitement ready to be released in a yell or a hug if Vic should just say that he had killed Charley.

       "You're a 'wild' one!" Vic whispered.

       "Janey said the Wilsons came over to see her mother and dad, and the Wilsons think you did it."

       "'Do' they?" Vic whispered.

       "But you didn't?"

       "No, I didn't," Vic whispered. "I didn't, I didn't."

       Melinda came into the kitchen. She looked at Trixie—the bored but intense look that held not a jot of anything that could be called maternal. Trixie didn't react to it at all. She was used o it. "Go to your room, Trixie," Melinda said.

       Trixie looked to her father.

       "All right, honey. Go," Vic said, tickling Trixie under the chin. "You don't have to talk to her like a flunkey, do you?" he said to Melinda.

       Trixie went off with her head up, pretending affront, but she would forget it in a matter of seconds, Vic knew.

       "Well," Vic said, smiling, "what's up?"

       "I thought you ought to know that the whole town's wise to you."

       "Wise to me. What do you mean? They all know I killed Charley, I suppose."

       "They're all talking about it. You ought to hear the Wilsons."

       "I 'feel' as if I have heard the Wilsons. I don't care to hear them." Vic opened the refrigerator."What've we got for dinner?"

       "There's going to be—there's going to be a public uproar about you," Melinda said threateningly.

       "Led by you. Led by my wife." Vic was getting some lamb Ili chops out of the freezing compartment.

       "Do you think nothing's going to happen? You're wrong!"

       "I suppose Don Wilson saw me drowning De Lisle in the swimming pool. Why doesn't he speak up about it? What's the use of all this murmuring behind people's backs?" He got out some frozen peas. Peas, a big salad of lettuce and tomato, and the chops. He didn't want a potato, and he knew if he didn't put potatoes on, Melinda wouldn't.

       "Do you want to bet I don't do something?" Melinda asked. He glanced at her, noticing again the circles under her eyes, the painful strain of her eyebrows. "Darling, I wish you wouldn't keep on like this. It's useless. Do something. Do something constructive, but don't worry around the house all day—torturing yourself," he added forcefully, borrowing a phrase from Horace. "I want to see you with circles under your eyes."

       "Go to hell," she murmured, and went back into the living room.

       It was a simple phrase, "Go to hell," certainly unoriginal and more or less vague, but it always disturbed Vic when he heard it from Melinda, because it could mean so many things—not always 'that' she was at a loss for anything else to say, though sometimes it meant that, too. He knew that evening that she was planning something: Collusion with Don Wilson? But of what kind? How? If Don Wilson had really seen anything the night of the Cowans' party he'd have said so before now. Melinda wouldn't be keeping quiet anything of importance that he had told her.

       Vic went back and finished his vacuuming with a zest. Melinda was a challenge, and he rather relished it.

       He fixed the entire dinner, including applesauce with an egg-white beaten into it for dessert. Trixie had fallen asleep in her room, and Vic did not awaken her, assuming that she had probably eaten more than enough at the Petersons'. Vic was very cheerful and talkative during the meal. But Melinda was thoughtful, she really did not attend to everything he said, and her inattention was not deliberate.

       About ten days later, at the beginning of the month of September when the bank statement came in, Vic noticed that over a hundred dollars more than usual had been withdrawn, by Melinda, of course. Some of her checks made out to "cash" were among the canceled drafts—one for $125—but there was no check with any addressee that would give him a clue as to what she had used the money for. He tried to remember if she had bought any clothes, anything for the house. She hadn't, that he knew of. Ordinarily he would not have noticed an excess of a hundred dollars in their monthly budget, but because he was so wary now of Melinda's actions he supposed he had examined the bank statement with more than the usual care. The $125 check was dated 20 August, more than a week after De Lisle's funeral in New York (which Melinda had gone to New York for), and Vic did not think it could have been for flowers or for anything to do with the funeral.

       Vic thought it possible that she had hired a private detective, so he began to look around for a new face in Little Wesley, a new face that might betray a particular interest in him.

Chapter 12

September was a quiet month, as far as social events went. People were busy getting a cellar floor repaired, cleaning out drainpipes, checking their heating systems in preparation for the winter, and corralling the workmen to do all this, which sometimes took a week. Vic was called to Wesley by the MacPhersons to pass judgment on an oil stove that they intended to buy. And Mrs. Podnansky had a dead squirrel in her well. She didn't use the well for anything except decor, and it was not that the water had to be clean, but the floating squirrel upset her. Vic got it out with one of his old butterfly nets attached to a rake handle. Mrs. Podnansky, who had been angling for it with a bucket on a rope for days before she called him, she said, was all aflutter with gratitude. Her nervous, rather sweet face lighted up and she had looked for a few moments on the brink of making him a little speech—a little speech about her confidence in him and her affection for him in spite of the talk around the town, Vic supposed—but all she finally said, in a mischievous tone, was:

       "I've a bottle of something awfully good in the kitchen. Calvados. My son gave it to me. Wouldn't you like to sample it?"

       And Vic was unpleasantly reminded of the extra pieces of cake that pitying hostesses used to force upon him. He smiled and said, "Thanks very much, my dear. I'm on the water wagon these days."

       The butterfly net, which Vic had not held in his hand for years, reminded him of the pleasure he had used to find in pursuing butterflies around the brook behind the house. He thought he should do some more of it.

       Twice Vic passed Don Wilson in town, once on the sidewalk and once when Vic was driving and Wilson was on foot. Both times Wilson gave him a sneaking smile, a faint nod, and what might have been described as a long look, and both times Vic had called out "Hi! How are you?" with a beaming smile. Vic knew that Melinda had been over to see the Wilsons several times. Perhaps Ralph Gosden had been there, too. Vic might have proposed asking the Wilsons to the house, except that they rather bored him, and besides he could feel that Melinda considered them her friends now, not his, and did not want to share them with him. Then one afternoon June Wilson came to the printing plant.

       She came in shyly, apologized for coming unannounced, and asked Vic if he had the time to show her around the place. Vic said of course he had.

       Stephen was standing at the press. He knew the Wilsons, and he greeted June with a surprised smile. Stephen did not stop his work. Vic took note of the way each had spoken to the other, looking for any coolness on Stephen's part, but he couldn't have said that he saw any Stephen was a very polite young man, however. Vic showed June a chase of Greek type, which he was going to make impressions of on tissue paper that afternoon and correct, showed her the storeroom, introduced her to Carlyle, and then they watched Stephen for a few minutes, until June evidently thought the proper length of time had passed, because she suggested that they go into his office. Once in there, June lighted a cigarette quickly, and said in a straightforward way: