Fadeaway Girl (21 page)

“
Both?
You can't be both the pilot and the copilot.”

It was Will's turn to heave a sigh. “For God's sake! I mean the copilot and the magician.” He pulled on the ends of the scarf. Paul made a gurgling sound. “Look, who wrote this play anyhow?”

I shrugged. “Walter?”

“Ha-ha. Me. I did. Mill and me.” He generously corrected himself. “Haven't you ever heard of imagination?”

Mill was back at the piano, picking up Will's word:

Long ripples of the notes came here.

Willy-nilly was right, and I was standing between them: Will and Nill.

Will forgot about suffocating Paul and joined Mill at the piano.

They harmonized, as if life were just one long duet.

I tried to plug in the here and now. “So why don't you have this Ralph be the magician?”

Mill stopped running ripples and they both turned to look at me as if I hadn't been there all along. This wasn't surprising, since people kept popping up out of nowhere these days.

The door to the garage actually opened—I mean it wasn't locked up as it always was when I came up here—and in walked Joanne and Peggy Tree. They had come just that morning with their mother, Priscilla. Their father never came, and I can't say I blame him. I wondered how many sets of girls there were around here, having just met up with the Evanses yesterday.

The Trees were the prissiest girls I'd ever run into. They were eleven and thirteen, which meant I was in charge of whatever fun they'd have (according to my mother and Lola Davidow, since I was twelve). If Peggy was what it was like to be thirteen, I would just go to sleep for a year and wake up fourteen.

They were both insufferable, but Peggy more so, since she thought being in her teens made her queen of everything. She lorded it over me and even tried to hang out with Ree-Jane, who was nearly seventeen by now. For once I admired her horrible manners: every time Peggy came around, Ree-Jane walked the other way.

Joanne wasn't quite as bad as Peggy, but that was only because she hadn't lived two years longer.

They took lessons in everything: horseback riding, tennis, ice-skating, piano (which gave Mill a few laughs), and ballet. They came into the garage dangling ballet shoes of pink satin. They weren't wearing that tulle-stuff ballerinas do, but their dresses were still flouncy. Priscilla claimed to be a children's clothes designer. I said if Mrs. Tree was a designer, I was Jim Beam. That got a big laugh out of Mrs. Davidow.

Priscilla joined in the cocktail hour, but she wasn't any fun. Mrs. Davidow was always rolling her eyes at Priscilla, who insisted she was an expert cocktail maker and once asked Lola Davidow if she knew how to make a “truly dry martini.” That was like asking John Dillinger if he knew the way to Chicago.

Even Miss Bertha mocked “the stuck-up Trees,” as she called them. She went so far as to straighten up and put her nose in the air, which, considering her hump, took a lot of grit.

I watched the Tree girls strapping on their satin toe shoes, and then the two started pattering around and waving their arms in the air.

“What are they supposed to be doing?” I asked Will, who was now sitting by Chuck in the so-called cockpit of the plane. Chuck was their lighting expert.

“We haven't decided yet.”

“You've got a couple of toe dancers on an airplane with a dead body and you don't know why they're
there
?”

“Well, we know one thing,” said Chuck, snuffling a laugh around in his nose.

Will joined in. “Yeah.”

Mill was down at the piano riffling away at “Paper Moon.”

Peggy and Joanne were circling around with their eyes closed, bouncing up and down on their toes to some tune in their heads that wasn't Mill's.

Paper moon. Trampoline. Toe dancers.

I could just imagine.

I
considered the best time to approach Morris Slade and decided on the cocktail hour, when people always seemed to be less on guard. That is, drinkers were. I certainly assumed Morris Slade was one. He had, after all, been a playboy.

I would present myself as working for the
Conservative
and wanting an interview for the story of the Belle Ruin. This had the disadvantage of being the truth. I'd rather have pretended to be selling Girl Scout cookies (the Girl Scouts being a bunch I would drop dead before joining). But here I was stuck with the truth.

Usually, a cocktail hour went from around five to six, although Mrs. Davidow could stretch that at either end, as could Aurora Paradise. It was not a good time for me, as I was supposed to be in the kitchen at five-thirty.

My work for the newspaper, however, gave me leeway. So I asked Walter, who was always in the kitchen, to tell my mother I'd be a little late, as I was interviewing someone for my article. I also told Walter to take a drink up to Aurora Paradise at five o'clock. It was ready in the icebox behind the big block of ice.

“What kind is it?” Walter was always interested in my drink menu. He was wiping a big platter. Doing dishes was a continuous process—washing, wiping—so Walter was always doing them.

I shrugged. “I just made it out of scraps. Some Jim Beam, some Gordon's gin, and some orange and pineapple juice.”

Walter thought about that at length. “You can call it a Gin Beam.”

“Good, Walter!” I clapped. “That's really good! She'll like that!” Aurora would like anything in a glass that could walk on its own.

 

I had the night before prepared my questions carefully and would not ask anything in a way that would put Morris Slade off; that is, not ask anything in an accusing manner the way police always did: “And where were you between nine o'clock and eleven o'clock on the night of the murder?” Would the person who'd done it answer, “I was in the room with the victim”?

I wanted to look businesslike, so I searched my wardrobe for something ironed. I found a plain blue-and-white checkered dress.

Usually, I looked wrinkled, even my hair. Even my face, if it had been lying against a pillow, as sometimes it was when I watched
Perry Mason.

I sat at my makeshift dressing table, a painted board balanced across twin dressers, and brushed my hair a lot. It was straight and hung to my shoulders and looked completely businesslike. I wanted to leave the flowery barrettes out, but then my hair would be flopping around and getting in my eyes and not like Veronica Lake's, either. My ears wouldn't hold it back the way I have seen women's ears do, like models and movie stars, as if their ears were made for that purpose. I pushed the barrettes back in. I then tried out several smiles and was satisfied with the one that looked friendly, but not overly.

 

It was half past four when I left the hotel grounds, and I took my time walking across the highway to the other side of Spirit Lake. The Woodruff house sat a few houses down and across from Mrs. Louderback's.

The single car parked at the curb was the red convertible I had taken for Morris Slade's when I'd driven by with Delbert. I decided I would stroll by once or twice, just to see if there was any life going on inside. Since it was not yet dark, I couldn't tell by inside lighting if any of the houses were occupied. Windows merely squared off interior darkness.

There were a few people here and there sitting out on their porches, fatly bunched on creaking metal gliders or glued into rocking chairs. They were extremely interested in me, as I was the only thing moving out here at the moment.

So here I now stood on the Woodruffs' porch, pushing a bell which chimed distantly inside as if church bells were ringing in another town.

Here I was, my questions prepared, my clothes, my hair, my smile prepared.

What I wasn't prepared for was Morris Slade himself.

H
e opened the door and said “Hello,” and I just stood there like a scarecrow, only ironed. Birds could have nested in my brightly brushed hair or perched on my barrettes, and I wouldn't have moved.

He said it again—“Hello”—with an even bigger smile, as if my silence amused him, although he didn't give the impression he was laughing at me.

I cleared my throat, which at least showed I could make a sound, balled up my fist in front of my mouth as if I were about to cough, rehearsed the word “hello” in my head to see if it was a real word, then blurted out: “My name is Emma Graham.”

My mouth snapped shut like Ree-Jane's silver compact. I would even have been glad—unbelievable!—for Ree-Jane's presence, if only to take up the slack.

Morris Slade took it up himself. “Emma Graham. That sounds familiar, for some reason. Please come in.”

I walked into a room full of shadows and plants. It was cool; it smelled green and somehow drenched. The silky rug I was standing on might as well have been water. I thought for a moment it had started to rain outside, but the whispery sound came from the turning palms of the ceiling fan.

I could have been in the Florida Keys with Humphrey Bogart in a hurricane, but I was in Spirit Lake with Morris Slade in air stirred by a fan. Either way, it had to be a movie.

He picked up an elaborately cut martini glass (one thing I can always identify), raised it a bit, and said, “Would you like something to drink?”

I almost said, “Whatever you're having,” but caught myself. “Yes, thank you.”

He turned to a highly polished table, walnut, or maybe cherry, that the fan veiled in moving shadows and which held a lot of bottles and an ice bucket (another familiar item).

“Coca-Cola? Root beer? Scotch?” He smiled.

I smiled back. “Coke, please.”

He picked up a glass, not a squatty, ordinary one, but one like his own, dropped an ice cube in it, and filled it with Coke. Then he set it on a table beside a rattan chair across from a matching sofa. “Sit down, why don't you?”

Why didn't I? I did.

So did he, on the sofa. “You've got a journal there.” He nodded at my spiral notebook. “You're a writer?”

I was astonished that he would say this, and more that he would say it without a hint of sarcasm or teasing. I was astonished right out of my trance. This person had had a lot of practice being wonderful.

“Well, yes. I mean I'm writing this long story for the
Conservative
. You know.”

He nodded. “The local paper.”

“I'm interviewing people.” But I didn't know how to get to it: the Belle Ruin. The kidnapping. I wondered, as I hadn't before (since I was too busy being me), if it might be truly upsetting for him. If he wasn't involved, if his baby had really disappeared . . . Why hadn't I considered his feelings before? Where was all of my smooth preparation? I looked down at my notebook.

Morris Slade had taken a cigarette case out of his jacket pocket and was tapping a cigarette against its silver surface. “I'm a person of interest here?”

I nodded. “See, this starts forty years ago, with the Devereau sisters.” I felt like I was walking a minefield. “There was Mary-Evelyn, first.”

“First?”

“The first death. They said she drowned. But she was murdered by her sisters.”

“My God.” He stopped in the process of bringing his lighter up to his cigarette. “This isn't just gossip? I mean, you're sure of it?”

I nodded.

“Rose Devereau was my half sister, but I hardly—. I was a lot younger than Rose.” He lit the cigarette, inhaled, exhaled. “It wasn't long after I was married that Rose was killed by her husband—or so it was assumed.”

“Ben Queen. No. Her daughter Fern killed her.”

The cigarette stopped on its way to the ashtray. Something jarred him here. “What? I didn't hear about that.”

“Well, nobody did. It's only recently been discovered.” I'd have liked to add
by me,
but didn't. “Ben Queen, Fern's father, knew it. He took the blame.”

“Good lord. How do you know all this, Emma?”

“It's the story I'm writing—well, part of it.” I picked up the gorgeous glass that held my Coca-Cola. It tasted a lot better than Coke usually tasted. Cold from the melted ice cube, the drink revived me a little. I moved into my smoothly prepared questions. “Now. You used to live in La Porte, didn't you?”

He smoked and seemed to be watching me through narrowed eyes.

I was twelve. What was to watch?

“I did, yes. I was born here, as a matter of fact.”

“But you haven't been back in twenty years. Well, I was told that.”

His smile was slighter. “You were told?”

“Someone said he was surprised to see you, that you hadn't been here in a long time. Since”—I went for it—“the Belle Ruin.”

He paused. He smoked again. “How does the Belle Ruin fit into this story about the Devereaus?”

Because I'm fitting it in,
I wanted to say. “I'll tell you how: Too many bad things happen around here. Three murders, an attempted murder, a kidnapping.” I paused, feeling sorrowful. “Your baby.”

Then I knew why I was fitting it all in. “I'm calling it ‘Tragedy Town.' ”

I
t had just come to me, and I wish it hadn't.

 

 

It was from that point, from the point of my merely saying it, that things began to change. I don't mean change in the sense of weather changing or fortunes being lost or made, or even luck turning. It was more in the way the world looked.