Pale Gray for Guilt (6 page)

She pondered it for a time. "Just one thing that bothers me, darling. How do you find… enough new clients?"

I told her how I had found the last one, by combing very carefully through all the local items in the fat Sunday edition of a Miami paper. Of the items I marked that looked interesting, one was an apologetic announcement from a stamp collector's club that Mr. So-and-So, a very long and complicated Greek name, the well-known restauranteur had, at the last minute, decided to withdraw from the exhibition and not show his complete and extremely valuable collection of Greek postage stamps, which had included the famous 1857 Dusty Rose, which had brought $21,000 at a New York auction house in 1954:

I'd called an officer of the Philatelic Society who said the old gentleman was not mad at anybody, that he took a lot of pleasure in exhibiting his collection and having it admired, and that though he had sounded upset, he had not given any reason for withdrawing.

It had taken a little more research to find out what company insured the collection. An agent who said he had never met the old gentleman gave me his card. So I took his card and his name and presented myself to the old gentleman and said we wished, to make a new appraisal of the collection. He stalled. The collection was in the vault at the bank. He was very busy. Some other time. So I said we had reason to believe he had disposed of some of the collection.

He broke down. He had been remounting the collection under glass for the exhibition. He had to leave his home for a doctor's appointment. He returned. Twenty-two of the most valuable stamps, including the Dusty Rose, were missing.

"So he was the patriarch of a big family, all very close, all sensitive to scandal, and his wife had died, and he had been remarried for two years to something of the same coloring, general impact and impressive dimension of the late Jayne Mansfield, a lassy big enough to make two of the old boy, and he was so certain she had clouted his valuable toys he'd been afraid to make a report to the cops or claim insurance. So I followed the lady to an afternoon assignation with the hotel beachboy who'd blackmailed her into heisting the stamps, and after I got through shaking him up and convincing him that the old gentleman had arranged to have her last two male chums dropped into the Florida Straits wired to old truck parts, he produced eleven stamps, including the gem of the collection, and was so eager to explain where and how he had fenced the other eleven he was letting off a fine spray of spit. I helped him pack, and put him on a bus and waved good-bye and had a nice little talk with the big blonde about how I had just barely managed to talk two tough old Greek pals of her husband's from hiring local talent to write a little warning with a hot wire across her two most obvious endowments. A cop friend shook the missing items out of the fence, and I told the old man it hadn't been his wife at all, and he had every reason to trust her. So he hopped around and sang and chuckled and we went to the bank and he gave me thirty thousand cash, a generous estimate of half the value, and he gave me a note that gives me free meals for life in the best Greek restaurants in four states, and the whole thing took five days, and I went right back to my retirement, and maybe three weeks later one Puss Killian came along and enriched it considerable."

"Pull over," she ordered. I found a place where there was room to park on the grass between the two-lane road and the canal. She unsnapped the seat belt, lunged expansively over, a big hug, a big kiss from a big girl whose eyes danced and sparkled in the fading daylight.

"Drive on," she said, snapping the belt. I did. "Whatever it was for, it was nice."

"Well, this is a very long day, and it was partly for way way back, having that coffee-with. And it was for getting so damned scarey furious-because maybe there isn't much real anger around any more. It's for appreciating mistletoe. It's mostly for being what you are, doing the nutty things you do, and letting me for once be… Sancho Panza."

"Please! Sancha."

"Of course."

It was nine fifteen. We had stopped in Okeechobee for a hasty meal of some fresh bass, fried in corn meal and bacon fat. I turned into the graveled drive and `a figure stepped out of the shadows into the headlights, raising a casual hand to stop me. Ranch hat, faded blue denim work jacket and jeans. She came to my side of the car and said, "McGee? I'm Connie Alvarez."

I got out, leaving the door open, shook hands, introduced Puss. Connie leaned in and shook her hand, then straightened again. In the glow of the courtesy light I had my first good look at her. A strong-looking woman, chunky, with good shoulders, a weathered face, no makeup, very lovely dark longlashed eyes.

"You would have helped them if they'd hollered, McGee?"

"All I could."

"Me too. Pride. Their lousy, stiff-necked pride. How many good people has pride killed? She's up there at the house thinking the roof has fallen in on her. She doesn't know it's the roof and the chimney and the whole damn sky, and it is a lousy time to have to tell her. What happened?"

"He was on his back on the ground and about five hundred pounds of scrap iron dropped on him from ten feet in the air. Head and chest, I'd imagine. I haven't seen him, and probably wouldn't know who I was seeing if I did."

"Jesus Christ, man, you don't tiptoe around things, do you?"

"Do you want me to?"

"I think already you know me better than that. Are they trying to call it an accident?"

"Suicide. He's supposed to have run a wire to the ratchet stop, lay down and yanked it loose. They found it still fastened and wound around his hand. Yesterday morning."

Suddenly her brown strong fingers locked onto my wrist. "Oh my dear God! Had he gotten the note she left him?"

"No."

I heard the depth of her sigh. "That could have done it. That could have been the one thing that could have made him do it. I think I got to know him that well. I think I know how much Jan meant to that poor big sweet guy."

"Not even that, Connie. At least not that way. He was murdered. But we've got to swallow the suicide story. All of us. We've got to act as if we believed it."

"Why?"

"Why do you think?"

"I think why use amateur talent when you can hire professionals."

"Rest your mind, Mrs. A."

"We'll talk after we get this sad thing done." She leaned abruptly into the car again. "You, girl. Do you dither? Do you bleat and snuffle and carry on?"

"Go grow yourself an orange, lady."

She threw her head back and gave a single bark of humorless laughter. "Maybe you'll both do." She pulled my seat back forward and scrambled into the back seat, rustling the discarded wrapping paper. "Let's go, McGee. The gate light turns off up at the house."

I wasn't prepared for a full half mile of drive, nor for the house at the end of it, big and long and low, with upswept drama of roof lines, something by Frank Lloyd Wright out of Holiday Inns. She had me park around at the side. "I'll have my people take care of the car and bring your gear in. You people use one bedroom or two."

"Two, please," said Puss.

"Well, at least the thundering herd is sacked out by now. Her three and my two." She looked up at the stars. And we squared our shoulders and went in to drop the sky down upon Janine, to change the shape of her world and the shape of her heart forever.

It was one thirty in the morning when Puss came walking slowly into the big living room, yawning. Connie and I had been sitting for a long time in the dark leather chairs near a small crackling of fat pine in the big fireplace of coquina rock. We'd done a lot of talking.

"I think she's good until midmorning anyway," Puss said.

"But Maria better sit there by her just in case." "She's there, Connie. If Jan wakes up, she'll wake us up. But it isn't likely."

Puss went over to the little bar in the corner, put two cubes in a squat glass, poured some brandy over them and then came over and shoved the footstool closer to me, sat on it and leaned her head against the side of my knee and yawned again. "She was trying to be so damn brave," Puss said. "She wouldn't let go, and she wouldn't let go, and then she did. And that's the best thing. Did you get the calls through, Connie?"

"I got that Sheriff and told him she knew and she was resting, and I'd call him back tomorrow and let him know what she's going to do next. I got her people and got them calmed down. She'll have to phone them tomorrow. And the boys have to be told."

"Jan said not to tell them," Puss said. "She said it's her job. She keeps asking how we can be sure he never got her note."

Connie swirled the ice in her drink and then slugged it down. "Know what I can't forget? Can't and never will? Five years and it's still so clear in my mind. Every word that was said. Oh, it was a typical brooha. Tommy and I had hundreds of them. Yell and curse, but it never really meant anything. We both had strong opinions. What we quarreled about that morning doesn't matter. After he went crashing out, I ran and yanked the door open and called after him. 'And don't be in a great big hurry to come back!' Maybe he didn't hear me. He had his jeep roaring by then. He never did come back. He didn't see the sinkhole and drove into it, and he stayed alive in the hospital two days and two nights without regaining consciousness, and he died there." She stood up, wearing a crooked smile, and said, "The guilts. That's what they leave you. Tomorrow is going to be a long rough day too, people. 'Night."

I was on the downslope into sleep when the bed tipped under Puss's stealthy weight and she slipped under the sheet and blanket to pull herself long and warm against me, fragrant and gentle, with some kind of whisper-thin fabric between my hands and her flesh.

"Just hold me," she whispered. "It just seemed like such a dark, dark night to be alone." Her words were blurred, and in a very little while her breathing changed and deepened and her holding arms went slack and fell away.

The four of us arrived in Sunnydale three days later, at a little before noon on Thursday. Connie Alvarez drove the lead car, a mud-caked black Pontiac convertible of recent vintage and much engine. Janine was beside her. When the road was straight, I had all I could do to keep them in sight. Puss mumbled now and again about Daytona and Sebring.

"The whole thing sounds so nutty," she said. "Do you really think that funny-looking little old judge knows what he's doing?"

"That funny little old Judge Rufus Wellington knows what everybody is doing. And he'll have had the whole morning to pry around." I braked at the last moment, pulled the rental around a bend and peered ahead for the distant dot that would be the Pontiac. "Have you got any questions at all about your little game?"

"Hah! Can the gaudy redhead from the big city dazzle the young, earnest attorney with her promissory charms? Will Steve Besseker, the shy counselor from the piney woodlands reveal the details of local chicanery to yon glamorous wench? I might have a question at that."

"Which is…"

"You were a little vague about the details, McGee. Do I give all for the cause? Do I bed this bumpkin if it seems necessary, or don't you care one way or the other?"

I risked a high-speed glance at her and met the narrowed quizzical eyes of sexual challenge. I said, carefully, "I've always had the impression that if the string on the carrot was too long, and if the donkey snapped at it and got it, he'd lose his incentive and stop pulling the load."

"I resent the analogy and approve the sentiment, sir."

But challenges have to go both ways or there is no equality among the sexes. "On the other hand, I imagine that you're the best judge of your own motivations, and you would be the best judge of the appropriate stimulus and response. Such situations vary, I imagine."

"Are you trying to be a bastard?"

"Aren't we both trying?"

After a thoughtful silence she said, "Just for the hell of it, McGee; what would be your reaction if I said I'd keep the carrot on a mighty short string?"

"Killian, I would have to admit that I am just stodgy and old-fashioned enough to enjoy being the dog in your manger. I like a kind of sentimental exclusivity."

"Romantic exclusivity?"

"If you prefer."

"I prefer, thank you. So be it. I am now motivated to defend my honor. So suppose you watch yours."

The appointment had been set for twelve noon with Mr. Whitt Sanders, the President of the Shawana National Bank and Trust Company. I saw the empty Pontiac in the bank lot and parked near it and sent Puss on her way, wishing her luck. When I went into the bank, I could see Connie and Janine sitting in a glass-walled office in the rear, facing a big man across a big desk. The receptionist took me back, tapped on the door, and held it open for me.

Sanders stood up and reached across the desk and gave me a bully-boy handshake. He had tan hair and a big, sun-reddened, flakey face, a barrel of belly, a network of smile wrinkles and weather wrinkles, big red hands like ball gloves, and eyes that seemed to have the same size and expression as a pair of blueberries. "Mr. McGee!" he bellowed. "Pleasure! Sit right down and rest yourself."

I did and he said, "I was just telling the ladies that my sympathy goes out to Mrs. Bannon in this tragic time. You can rest assured, Mrs. Bannon, that the bank is doing everything in its power to liquidate the properties in question at the maximum figure obtainable. Of course certain unfortunate situations in that area have made it a difficult piece to move at this time, but we have negotiated something which I think anyone would agree is more than fair. As a matter of fact…"

And in came little old Judge Wellington with his cream-colored ranch hat shoved back locks of white hair escaping in random directions, in his dusty dark suit and gold watch chain, carrying a briefcase that had perhaps first seen duty during the LincolnDouglas debates, his face remarkably like one of Disney's seven dwarfs, but I couldn't remember which one. "Hidey, Whitt," he said, "New paneling, eh? Purty."

"Rufusl I heard somebody say they thought they saw you over at the courthousel Glad to see you."

"No. I'm not going to let you get aholt of my hand, Whitt. Not with my arthritis laying quiet for a change. So set."

Whitt Sanders looked confused. "Rufus, if you wouldn't mind waiting outside until I finish with-"

"Finish with my client? Now, even a jackass like you knows you can't keep a lawyer away from his client."

"You are representing Mrs. Bannon!"

"Why not? Mrs. Bannon is a dear friend of Mrs. Connie Alvarez here, and Miz Connie owns and operates To-Co Groves up to Frostproof, right in my backyard, which you may have heard of even down here in the wilderness, it being near three hundred thousand trees, prime Valencia on sour orange root stock, and she has enough legal battles going at all times with the Citrus Commission and the growers association and the concentrate plant she's got a stock interest in to keep me right busy in my declining years."

Watching the bank president, I realized it is possible for a big man to slowly come to attention while seated, and even give the impression of saluting. Connie had taken me on a tour of the groves, and I could see why Whitt Sanders reacted. For the first year after her husband had died, a management outfit had operated the groves on contract Connie had spent every daylight hour with the crews and every evening studying, and at the end of the year she said she had been willing to take the risk of being able to do the job herself.

When we had come upon a trio of big spray trucks lumbering down the geometric lines, the nozzlemen garbed like astronauts, and I'd asked if bugs were a big problem, Connie had planted her feet, rolled her eyes skyward and chanted, "Kill off the burrowing nematode, the aphid, the rust mite, white fly, white fly fungus, Mediterranean fly, red mite, six-spot mite, rust mite, Texas mite, mealy bugs, cushion scales, black scales, soft scales, yellow scales, wax scales, snow scales, purple scales, dictyospermum, melanose, citrus scag, mealy bugs and orange-dog caterpillars, and keep killing them off, and if you don't get a hard freeze, you've got half a chance, man, of hitting today's market with a hell of a nice crop, which at today's prices costs me one dollar and sixty cents more per box to raise than I get for them." She had shrugged, scuffed at the sand. "I counted on the overproduction and set up a reserve. These prices are going to sink the half-ass operators and that'll cut production back to balance and bring back a fair price."

In the president's office the president said, "I didn't realize you were the Mrs. Alvarez."

"So I asked the judge if he could do anything to help my friend here, Jan Bannon."

Janine sat silent and motionless, dressed in darkness, and the blueberry eyes of Whitt Sanders seemed to slide uneasily past her.

Sanders said, at last, "I guess I don't know what you're driving at, actually. The business holdings don't fall into the estate because there was an actual foreclosure before the time of death, with all proper advertising and notifications. So title passed. It's a standard first mortgage agreement, Rufus. Title passed to the bank."

"That so?" said the Judge. "Funny. I got the impression that when I turn over to you the certified check I got here for ten thousand dollars in the name of Mrs. Bannon, that is going to cover back payments on principal, plus interest, plus fees and expenses, and leave a little over which you can apply on the next payment, and I got the impression that title is going to ease right on back to her."