Mr. X (26 page)

“How is your mother doing?” she asked.

“Oh, God,” Ashleigh said. “I promise you, I’ve been thinking about your mother ever since you got out of my car. What was it, anyhow?”

“A stroke,” Laurie said. “What do the doctors say?”

“They say she died this morning. They better be right, because I just bought a coffin and a cemetery plot.” They stared at me in shock. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have put it like that. It’s been a weird day.”

Ashleigh said, “At least you were able to spend a whole day with her. Could she talk to you?”

“She was able to say a few things.” For a brief time, I found myself unable to speak. The Malaysian sourpuss removed their plates, and the Norwegian girl refilled our water glasses. Julian scurried up with the coffee and the wine.

Laurie asked, “Are you going to stay around after the funeral?”

“I might. I’d like to see more of the town.”

“Let me be your tour guide. After all, I’m in your debt.”

“Sounds like a great idea,” I said, and made myself stop looking at her. “Ashleigh, what’s happening with your project?” Her reasons for coming to Edgerton had entirely escaped me.

“If I don’t get anywhere in the next day or two, I’ll throw in the towel. The guy lives behind too many walls.”

“That’s Stewart,” Laurie said, explaining everything. “I wish I could have been more helpful.”

Ashleigh gave me a rueful smile. “We spent most of dinner trading dreadful husband tales.”

She had intended to pump her target’s estranged wife, and the estranged wife was more than willing to talk. The next exchange between the women brought another clarification.

“Laurie, you won’t be in any trouble, will you?”

Laurie shrugged. “I don’t care if Stewart knows we had dinner together. Grennie can’t hurt me.”

“Grenville Milton?”

“The one and only Groin Vile,” Laurie said. “And his wife, your mother’s old friend. Plus two other people who think I’m a terrible person. They left about five minutes before you got here.”

“Is Groin Vile a big old bald-headed character in a bow tie and a green linen jacket who thinks he owns the world?”

“You encountered our Grennie,” Laurie said. “I hope he didn’t
say
anything to you.”

“He told me that I probably wanted to act like a big shot and tip waiters with hundred-dollar bills. Then he advised me to visit the men’s room and spruce up.”

Laurie groaned. “Grenville felt
good
about it. His state of mind improved no end.”

“It took a turn for the worse when I called him an overbearing small-town shithead.” Laurie laughed, and Ashleigh opened her mouth in a disbelieving half smile. Julian, whom I had not seen approaching, placed my salad before me with only a trace of his former vivacity and retreated. “I must be on a roll,” I said.

“Julian has high moral standards,” Laurie said. “Everyone in Edgerton has high moral standards, except me. If I’d heard you call Grennie a shithead, I would have brightened up immediately. I gather he’s getting ready to dump Rachel. She’s been leaving sad little messages on my answering machine.”

She gave me an apologetic look. “When I married Stewart, Rachel Milton took me under her wing and helped me with the kinds of things she cares about, like finding a good hairdresser and the right caterer. She looked at me and saw herself.”

“Herself?” I said. “Oh, I get it. A younger woman, an outsider …”

Laurie Hatch’s dazzling face opened into beautifully ironic assent. “Rachel was too busy identifying to see that ambition had nothing to do with my marrying Stewart.”

“Ned, let me put your dinner on my bill, will you?” Ashleigh said. “It’s on the state of Kentucky. Laurie, thanks for a nice evening. I’ll call you soon.”

She signed the check. Julian asked if I would like a second
glass of wine. Laurie Hatch asked for another, too. Ashleigh pushed her chair away from the table.

I said, “I’ll walk you to the elevator.”

The other patrons watched us wind through the tables.

“I wish Laurie had suggested another restaurant.”

“Didn’t you get what you wanted?”

She smiled. “I called Laurie to see if she could confirm some details. I thought we’d do the whole thing on the telephone, but she said she was free for the evening. Basically, we spent the entire time complaining about our husbands.”

“Better than being alone.”

She tucked in her chin with a sharp little nod and pushed the elevator button. “It must be nice, having a woman like Laurie Hatch waiting for you.”

“I don’t think Laurie has any special plans for me.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

“Ashleigh, when dinner is over, I’m going to walk around for a while. That’s it.”

“You could come back here. I’m in room 554.”

I put my arms around her. “I need some time alone.”

Ashleigh bumped her head against my chest and pulled away. “I’m sorry about your mother.”

The elevator opened onto mahogany and dark mirrors. Through the half inch of space before the doors closed, I saw her sag against the rear of the car.

32

Vinnie glided a hand toward the far side of the room. I didn’t fool him for a second, but he had to admit I had good moves.

Laurie Hatch looked at me with a relaxed, self-possessed amusement imbued with the innate consciousness that seemed to radiate from her. Julian snapped the cover from my plate and executed an about-face and a formal departure.

“Remember the old Julian? Remember the pixie?”

Laurie’s flickering glance informed me that I had missed the
point. “Julian has to wait on Grennie and Rachel at least once a week. He puts up with more innuendos about masculinity than you’ll hear if you live to be a thousand.”

It was like having my windows cleaned, like putting on new eyeglasses. I said, “Ah. Uh-huh,” and cut into the steak.

Her smile changed. “I wish I’d been able to do more for Ashleigh. She’s so smart and dedicated. You two get on very well together.”
For a hitchhiker and the person who gave him a ride
.

“Ashleigh’s easy to get on with. She wanted to hear more about my mother.”

“I know how it feels to lose your mother. How is your father doing?”

“I wonder.” I smiled at her chagrin. “I never knew my father.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“I didn’t even know his name until yesterday, when my mother told it to me. I thought I might see what I can find out about him. My family isn’t too happy about that.”

“They don’t understand it? Or are they afraid of what you could find out?”

The question startled me. “They act like I’m being outrageous. They won’t talk about things I know they remember.”

“What could they be afraid of?”

“God knows. My family is … let’s say, eccentric.”

I had a memory-flash of Aunt Joy leaning forward and aiming a scrawny forefinger across the room to send Clarence’s wheelchair rolling a yard forward, a yard back. She squinted. The wheelchair floated four feet off the ground and swung from side to side while Clarence pushed his tongue in and out of his mouth in babyish pleasure.

That’s all I can do, now most of my strength is gone. At least I can get him in and out of the bath, because how else is an old lady like me supposed to handle a full-grown man? Wasn’t supposed to end up like this, Neddie. We used to be like royalty in this town
.

“I loved Aunt Nettie,” Laurie said, delivering me from the river-bottom and back to Le Madrigal.

“You can have her. Aunt May, too. Once you have May in your family, you never have to pay for anything again. May just picks it up for you. She’s a kind of magician.”

“What do you mean? She’s a kleptomaniac?”

“May’s beyond kleptomania. It’s like Zen, like a mystical kleptomania.”

Laurie appeared to contemplate the existence of a mystical kleptomania. “But you still want to do it, don’t you? You’re not afraid.”

A tingle of fear threaded my spine. “I want to find out whatever I can.”

I heard Joy saying,
Sylvan moved the family out of town, and he and Ethel had a batch of kids, but some of those children, my daddy said, they didn’t look human at all. The word for that in French is “épouvante.” I was always superior to my sisters in my command of the French language
.

“What was your father’s name?”

Speaking his name in public seemed a violation of my privacy, or of some ancient code. I said it anyhow. “Edward Rinehart.” It brought back the other name my mother had spoken, Robert. Who was
Robert
?

“What a great name. Swirling fog. A mansion on a rocky cliff above the coastline. A devastatingly handsome man in a trench coat and evening clothes. He never talks about his past. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you … Mr. Edward Rinehart.”

Feeling even more uncomfortable than before, I said, “I don’t think he was much like Maximillian de Winter.”

“Excuse me?”

“The husband in
Rebecca
. Grand house, rocky shoreline, unhappy secrets.”

“No,
I’m
sorry!
Rebecca
is one of my favorite movies. Laurence Olivier, of course, exactly.”

I had been thinking of Daphne du Maurier’s novel instead of the Hitchcock movie, but so what?

She placed her hand over mine. “I was going to show you the delights of Edgerton anyhow, so let’s see what we can turn up along the way. Together, we could accomplish more than you could on your own.” Her dead-level glance might almost have been a plea. “You’d be helping me, too. I need something to think about besides my stupid situation.” A moment of self-recognition silenced her, and she glanced away, then back at me. “Look, Ned, if I’m being pushy, or intrusive, or anything like that … or sort of crazy …”

And Sylvan told my daddy, Howard, don’t trust anyone but your kin and don’t trust them all that much, because you’ll be
lucky if some night I don’t come along and split your head open with an axe. I always thought it was likely that my daddy shot Sylvan with that revolver he was supposed to be cleaning at the time of his death
.

I told her she didn’t sound even faintly crazy, compared to some people in my family.

“All I mean is that helping you would …”

Would give her something to do besides brood about Stewart Hatch. “All right. Let’s help each other.”

“I’m free all day tomorrow. Stewart gets Cobbie on Saturdays. Which means that a hired flunkey pushes our son on the swings in Merchants Park until Stewart walks out of his office long enough to stuff Cobbie full of hamburgers and candy before delivering him to my house at eight
P.M
.”

We tried to work out where to meet. The park across the street turned out to be the place where the flunkey pushed Cobbie on the swings. Laurie suggested the front of the main library, four blocks up from the hotel and two blocks south, on the corner of Grace and Grenville.

“Grenville?”

“Half the streets in Edgerton are named after the families of people still walking around. Like Cobden Avenue? Stewart’s father was named Cobden Hatch, which is how Cobbie got his name, of course. When should we meet? Nine-thirty? A friend of mine, Hugh Coventry, who works at the library, volunteers at City Hall on the weekends. Everything’s closed, but he has access to all the offices, and he gets in around nine.”

I asked why she wanted to go to City Hall.

“Edward Rinehart should be in the records. And you might want to look at copies of your mother’s marriage license and your birth certificate. Nothing like hard data.”

“Nothing like a brilliant dinner companion,” I said.

Most of the people in the restaurant looked up as we moved toward the podium. Vincent’s smile barely concealed a leer.

In an alcove off the lobby, I went into a booth and placed two calls. Laurie Hatch was doing her best to look inconspicuous alongside a potted palm when I came out, and I hurried across the lobby and followed her through the revolving door. The doorman handed her yellow ticket to an eager kid in a black vest, and the kid raced down into the garage.

“Adventure beckons.” Laurie lifted her eyebrows in a comic, slyly conspiratorial glance.

The boy in the black vest jumped out of a dark blue Mercury Mountaineer and held the door. Laurie winked at me and drove away, and I walked across Commercial Avenue, going toward Lanyard Street and Toby Kraft’s pawnshop. According to Toby, long ago the street had been called Whore’s Alley, but these days all the best hookers were married to money and lived in Ellendale.