Fadeaway Girl (25 page)

“What about the friend, Prunella Rice? I guess you talked to her too?”

He nodded. “Sure did. She verified they were on the phone for around twenty minutes.”

“I talked to her. They told exactly the same story about the phone call, word for word.”

He waved the rain away like smoke and looked at me. “It was a put-up job; it had to be.”

“There never was a real kidnapping, was there? It was all an arrangement, wasn't it?”

He gave me one of those up-and-down looks people do when they're trying to figure you out. “You're pretty smart if you worked that out.”

“I didn't. Someone else did.” At this point I didn't know who, or care. I just wanted to get on with the story. “Go on.”

He started up rocking again. “This is where a kid named Robby Stone comes in. He worked there as both waiter and bellhop. What I think is Woodruff and his daughter paid him to take the baby away. Robby Stone's car was found just over the state line, in Pennsylvania. Accident, a bad one. The boy was killed. Whether the baby was thrown from the car or not in the car when it happened we'll never know.” He paused and looked at me. “Why am I telling you all this? And have you broadcast it in the paper? Maybe because you look so damned harmless. Pardon my French.”

It was nice to be seen as harmless instead of dangerous. “I am. I won't tell anything you don't want me to. We're off the record. Could he have taken the baby somewhere? Maybe also arranged?”

“Sure he could have. He was working at the Belle Ruin earlier; then he left. Woodruff paid him to take the baby with him.”

“And there was never any trace of her. But she still could be alive somewhere.”

Carl Mooma turned to stare at me. “She? It wasn't a girl; it was a boy.”

“What?”
I felt the rain then like ice on my skin. “But her name was ‘Fay.' That was in the police report. I saw it when—” I didn't want to add when I stole the folder out of the sheriff's office.

He smiled. “Yeah, well, a lot of people made that mistake. That was his name all right, but spelled f-e-y. It was like a nickname. The kid was named after his great-grandfather, named”—he studied the porch railing for a moment—“Raphael?”

I couldn't answer him; my mouth was dry.
Raphael.

C
arl Mooma gave me a ride back to the hotel, as he had to be in La Porte around six o'clock. He'd promised Donny he'd see him for supper and a few beers after.

I was just too stunned to talk. I asked Mr. Mooma to let me off at the bottom of the hotel driveway, since that would save him some time.

“If ever you're in my neck of the woods again, drop by.” He tipped up the bill of his Mail Pouch tobacco cap and drove off.

I stood there in a cloud of dust and gravel until his truck disappeared around a curve. Then I ran up the drive.

For once, I was sorry Ree-Jane wasn't gloating on the front porch, because Ralph Diggs would have been with her. I supposed I might as well call him that temporarily. Ralph Diggs. Rafe Diggs. Raphael Slade. “Fey” Slade.

The newspapers had called the vanished baby “Fay,” so naturally people assumed it was a girl. I thought about Gloria Spiker: she'd said “her” when speaking of the baby. That she'd been told not to wake “her” up—or had she? Maybe she'd said “it.” Had either of the parents actually said “her” or had they said “Fey”?

I set out to find him, although I wasn't clear as to what I'd do once I did find him. First I tried his room. He wasn't there and I resisted the temptation to look around. I went down the back stairs to the kitchen and asked Walter if he'd seen Ralph.

“Up in the Big Garage I seen him.”

The door was open, not all the way, not even half. More like a quarter. But to find it open at all was an occasion. I went in. The Tree girls were back with their satin slippers tied on. This time one was in a tutu, pink like the slippers. The other was in her regular clothes, a skirt and sweater, and looked enviously at her sister as they both twirled. Probably mad she didn't have a tutu. I could have told her that her sister looked pretty stupid in hers so not to mind.

He was standing talking to Will and Mill and seemed right at home. I gave Ralph Diggs a closer look now that I knew who he was, or at least was pretty sure I knew. Tawny hair, like Morris Slade's, and his skin was as fine as my mother's blancmange. Skin like that was wasted on a man; it was a girl's face, a soft face.

“That was the most spoiled girl I ever knew,”
I heard Miss Flagler say once about Imogen Woodruff.
“Everything about her was spoiled. Even her face.”

A handsome, spoiled face. As if Morris Slade's face had been tampered with, pulled about out of true.

Will just jerked his head at me. He was looking down at something he seemed to be whittling. “Ralph's helping with the production.”

You mean Raphael.
I was dying to say it, but of course I didn't.

Ralph Diggs's eyes turned to ice. I think it must have been just a trick of the light. I hoped it wasn't because he was reading my mind.

He smiled, I guess you'd say “winsomely.” “Hi, Emma.”

I did not “Hi” him back. I tried my own winsome smile, which was probably not at all winsome, just crooked.

“Doing what?”

“Magic. I told you.”

“You're the magician?”

I tried to make my tone flat and unimpressed.

He nodded.

“What kind of magic do you do, then?”

“Nothing extraordinary. I'm pretty much an amateur.” He laughed abruptly.

“Well, you've come to the right place.” I laughed abruptly too. “Can you disappear?”

Ralph looked at me uncertainly. Then he took a step toward me, put his hand behind my ear in a quick smooth motion, and pulled out a quarter. “What's this?” he asked, as if surprised.

I was supposed to be pleased and surprised. I will admit to being surprised, but I tried not to show it. Calmly I asked him how he'd done it.

Slyly, he shook his head. “Sorry.”

“The thing is, see, there wasn't a coin behind my ear, so if you found one, that means you put it there.”

Will was actually looking at me with interest. “How'd he put it there?”

“When he reached there supposedly to find it.”

“I had nothing in my hand.”

“Of course you did. You've probably got hands as nimble as Mill's.” I nodded toward the piano, where Mill had gone to play some tune for the Tree girls to twirl with. “The quarter was hidden someplace, that's all. You palmed it.”

“She doesn't know what she's talking about,” said Will, who'd gone back to whittling whatever.

“I've got to go.”

“Good-bye, Emma,” he called out when I was at the door.

I didn't “Good-bye” him either.

I was almost looking forward to taking Aurora her tea. We'd certainly have something to talk about.

Rafe Slade.

What I couldn't figure out was why he was here at the hotel. Why wasn't he over at the Woodruff house? Unless he was picking a particular time to see Morris Slade. But that still didn't say why he was here in the Big Garage hanging out with a couple of kids.

Morris Slade and Ralph Diggs; Morris Slade and his son. Surely both of them turning up at the same time in Spirit Lake wasn't a coincidence.

Or was my imagination just running wild?

I stopped outside the kitchen door. I finally agreed with Will about something: I didn't know what I was talking about.

I
t was after five and Lola Davidow would be either in the kitchen stirring up a pitcher of martinis or in the back office drinking them. I first tried the office. It was empty. I grabbed up a bottle of whiskey and slipped out again, around the front desk and down the corridor to the back door. Then along the wooden walk to the door of the kitchen. I checked the bottle to see what I'd taken. It was 100-proof whiskey called “Apple Hollow” and according to the label was “cured in the keg.” I bet.

I called “Hi” to Walter, then went to the refrigerator for a couple of ice cubes. Over this I poured a large measure of whiskey and topped it off with apple juice. I dusted some cinnamon over the top, then stuck in one of Lola's swizzle sticks. I studied the drink for a moment and called it a “Hollow Leg.”

 

“That's good,” said Aurora, “real good. ‘Hollow Leg.' You outdone yourself.” She took another mouthful, seemed to be turning it around as if it were a great wine.

“It's only apple juice.”

She shook a bony finger at me. “Don't forget the cinnamon. Gives it a bite.”

“I'd say the bite comes more from hundred-proof whiskey.”

“Lola Davidow ought to open a bar, make you head bartender.”

“You've suggested that before. It'd really go down well with the vice squad.” I didn't know if there was such a thing (certainly not in La Porte); I thought I'd heard Perry Mason refer to one. “Listen, remember about the police coming to the Belle Ruin the night of the Slade baby kidnapping?” I was holding off telling her about Ralph Diggs.

“Yes, since you don't let me forget it for as much as fifteen seconds.”

“It was Sheriff Mooma. Why'd you say he was such a big fool?”

“Did I say that?”

She didn't care whether she'd said it or not. Her face was tilted over her glass as if she were seeing treasure from the
Titanic
down there.

“He's not. I talked to him today for a long time. He's no fool.”

She held out her glass; it was still half full, but I guess she was preparing for the future. “Ready for another!”

“I'm not. The baby's name was Fey. How do you spell it?”

She gave me a squinty look. “What? How do you spell ‘Fay'? Now there' s a hard question. The hotel cat could tell you that.”

The ice in her glass rattled as she took another drink.

“The name was f-E-y, not f-A-y. It was a nickname for Raphael. A boy.”

This surprised her as much as it had me. She actually gave some thought to it, actually set her glass on the table beside her chair. “Well, it'd make an investigation pretty hard if they didn't even know the sex.”

“There wasn't really an investigation, remember.”

“Told you that Mooma was a fool.”

“No, he wasn't. Isn't. Mr. Woodruff asked him to hold off for several hours because he wanted to find out if his son-in-law was involved.”

“You mean Morris Slade? Police ain't supposed to do favors for people.”

“You do if the governor asks you to.”

“Lucien Woodruff was friends with the governor? Nothing but corruption city.” To irritate me into getting her another drink, she took her worn deck of cards out from her box of odds and ends. She also took out two little black boxes of tiny matches and slapped those down on the table.

I picked one up. The top was shiny black with a French word—
L'ennui
—printed across it. “What are these?”

“Matches. We can bet with 'em, seein' you don't have any money.” She started shuffling.

“But what's it mean?”

“
L'ennui?
For goodness' sake, you don't know that song about fighting the old on-weeeee?” She sang the line. “Means weary. No, world-weary. Sick of life. Seven-card stud or spit in the ocean?” She riffled the cards and looked at me like the card shark she wasn't.

“Raphael,” I repeated. “Does that put you in mind of anybody?”

“No.” Slap went one of the cards.

Her lack of curiosity, after her initial surprise, was beginning to rankle. “
Raphael
was the name of Mr. Woodruff's father.”

That made her look up, again with that squint. “So? What's he got to do with anything?”

“There's more obvious nicknames than Fey. Like Rafe, for instance.”

She stared. “Now, wait. Are you sayin' this good-for-nothing fella Lola Davidow just hired—?” She waved that away and went back to shuffling.

“That's what I'm saying. Ralph Diggs is Morris Slade's boy, the one who was kidnapped. He was taken somewhere as a baby, but apparently no one knows where or to whom. Now he's here. And maybe that accounts for Morris Slade being here too.”

Aurora shook her head. “Girl, you got a wilder imagination than your crazy brother.” She started dealing out two hands.

That was truly annoying. It sounded like Dwayne and the Sheriff.

I picked up her glass and palmed my box of matches and marched down the stairs. Halfway down the long hall I heard her raspy voice singing about the old
ennui
and battling it by going on a spree. Aurora was out on a spree every day of her life.

I looked at the stolen box of matches:
L'ennui.

That had a definite Emma-ring.

E
xcept for the Sheriff, whose schedule was always changing according to the comings and goings of lawbreakers, the person who could best bring reason to bear on this story was Dwayne. Unfortunately, he also brought a lot of sarcasm.

So the next morning, following my peach pancake breakfast, I was once again sitting on the tire tower, my arms hooked around my washed-out blue pedal pushers, my chin on my knees, waiting for Dwayne to come up for air.

“I'm not going to tell you while you're banging away on that engine or exhaust pipe or whatever.” He was under an old blue Chevy.