skeletons (6 page)

“Yes, sir,” I said. I wanted to be out of his chamber, I had things to ponder. “Well, goodbye, sir.”

“Goodbye.”

I turned to go.

“Mr. Butters.”

I turned back, seemed to see him clearly for the first time, and not as Tyler’s father, for there was no physical resemblance. Small, graying, balding, hidden somewhere in his sixties. Practically pipsqueak. His features were forgettable, his eyes vague behind the horn rims, his shirt and tie bought on sale. Educated and intelligent he might be, but he did not look a judge, a champion of the law chewing the hell out of juries and throwing strong men in the slammer.

Charles S. Vaught Jr. was exactly that—had always been, would always be. JUNIOR. Still, out of that juniority had jumped an unexpected passion.

“How is my girl?” The voice was lowered.

I lowered mine. “She’s fine.”

“Is she beautiful?”

“Absolutely.”

“Is she happy?”

“As she can be.”

“Do you love her?”

“I do. Or I wouldn’t be here.”

“What are you looking for?”

“Judge, I don’t know.”

“Then why—”

“Not for anything evil. I hate evil.”

“Take care.”

On the road to San Carlos that afternoon I was followed by a patrol car. I think they use “tailed” in crappy crime novels. When I slowed, he slowed. I kept the Rolls right at or below the speed limit. After I passed a sign saying I had entered Maria de la Luz County, he dropped off and I was picked up and “tailed” by another patrol car, probably from that jurisdiction. Ridiculous.

San Carlos was up higher, in pine country. The earth was red, smoke from a smelter defaced the sky, copper tailings the land.

2100 Tamarisk Drive turned out to be a clutch of low brick buildings secluded in pines at the edge of town. I parked. Down the street, the patrol car parked. I got out, noted a copper name plate at the gate: “Tamarisk—State of New Mexico.” Then I noted additionally that the place was fenced in with high chain-link and that every damned window in every damned building was screened with heavy wire mesh. Bells rang.

I had to lean against the car.

CRACKER CITY.

BANANALAND.

When I recovered I pressed a button, the gate opened, and I was presently inside an administrative office signing a visitors’ register and talking with a psychology Ph.D. who said yes, Tamarisk was a mental institution funded by fees from affluent relatives of the residents but operated by the state. I said I wanted to see Mrs. Charles S. Vaught Jr. and she said why. I had to go through the entire off-again-on-again-son-in-law routine.

“What’s wrong with her?”

“When she was first admitted, we used the term ‘dementia praecox.’ Now, to be more exact, it’s ‘schizophrenia.’ To simplify, let’s just say she—she has difficulty coping with reality.”

“How long has she been in?”

She referred to a card. “Since 1947.”

“My God.”

“It is a long time.”

“Does her husband, Judge Vaught, visit her?”

“No.”

“What about her daughter, Tyler?”

“No.”

“My God.”

“Of course, she might not know them anyway.”

“Are you saying she hasn’t had a visitor in thirty years?”

“Well, no. There was one, week before last.” The Ph.D. glanced again at the card. “A man from New York City. Mr. Max Sansom.”

“Wouldn’t you know.” I thought a minute. “Has she ever been out of here?”

The card again. “Twice. We don’t call them ‘escapes,’ just ‘unauthorized absences.’ We merely sigh and notify the police, who find them and return them, usually rather soon.”

She smiled indulgence. “The fence is high, but Helene’s a strong, spirited woman. The last time, two years ago, they located her in Santa Fe, at the summer opera, enjoying the second act of
Traviata.”

She sent me into a patio with a bench under a pepper tree and a fountain and, on its rim, a pottery turtle who reminded me of Chata, my Acapulco turtle. In a short while I was face to face with Mrs. Charles S. Vaught Jr. She wore a light blue sort of smock, evidently the uniform at Tamarisk. We were alone. I introduced myself and invited her to sit with me on the bench and hemmed and hawed about Tyler and marriage and divorce and remarriage.

“How is my dear girl?”

“Fine.”

“Is she beautiful?”

“Very.”

She smiled her pleasure, and I thought there’s nothing wrong with her, she’s sharp as a tack, what the hell is she doing here? “I understand you had a visitor recently, Mrs. Vaught. A man named Max Sansom.”

“What I loved most,” she replied, “was Chautauqua.”

“Chautauqua?”

“They played Harding every spring, in a huge tent.”

I almost fell off the bench.

“Your name is Butters?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Charley and I eloped, you know.”

BONKERS.

“We went to Albuquerque. I was twenty-three and Charley twenty-four. Then we had to drive home and face the music—tell his father. You see, my father killed three men. How he hated my father! And so of course he hated me.”

“Who hated you?”

“Why, Charley’s father. The old judge.”

“Why?”

“Because of the trials.”

“Did Max Sansom ask you about the trials?”

“I can remember one show, every attraction. There were the Kaffir Boys from Africa. They chanted and danced to drums.”

She had Tyler’s rare gray eyes. The difference was that after a moment or two of clarity, they darkened, clouded. She had Tyler’s posture, too. Proud and free. Her hair was white, though shampooed and set, her face lined, though cared for, but she could once have been as by God beautiful as her daughter.

“Do you love her?”

“I really do, Mrs. Vaught.”

“And the New York Marine Band. And the Folly Girls–skits and dramatic recitations—delightful! And a marvelous magician with white doves.”

“Max Sansom is dead, Mrs. Vaught. He was killed in a hit-and-run accident near Harding.”

“What did you say your name is?”

“Butters. Jimmie Butters.”

“That’s how my mother died—in an accident. The horse bolted, right on Gold Street, and the buggy crashed. She was thrown into a watering trough.”

“How awful. Can you tell me anything about the two trials, Mrs. Vaught? The one of your father, after the shoot-out, and the one of the four Mexicans after the raid on Columbus?”

She reflected, looking at the fountain and the turtle. “We came into his house—he lived alone because Charley’s mother was long dead. We told him we’d been married, and asked his blessing. He sat there for a time—I can see that terrible face to this day. Finally he asked us if the marriage had been consummated. We said yes. He shook his head. Charley, he said, I can’t believe I sired you. You are a cipher—have always been, always will be. I don’t know how you had the spunk to defy me, to marry the daughter of a drunk and a killer. It would have been better, my dear, he said to me, if you had died on Gold Street, when your mother did. You see, Mr. Butters, my father disappeared after the Villista trial—my mother’s father raised me. Vanished. Oh, there were rumors for years —that he was south of the border, that he was a sheriff in Utah, so on. But I never saw him again. My blessing? No, the old judge said, I will give you my verdict. You will leave my house now, and never enter it again. When you appear before me, Charley, I will treat you as impartially as I would any officer of the court. But I will never in my lifetime acknowledge the daughter of Buell Wood to be my daughter, and I will never again acknowledge you, Charley, to be my son. And then they had Mawson’s Moving Pictures, an entire evening of them. Scenes of Mr. Peary’s expedition to the North Pole. Whales and walruses and Eskimos. So informative. What nights those were, at the Chautauqua. We would go home afterward and be so stimulated we couldn’t sleep. We’d sit on our front porches and drink lemonade and sing lovely old songs. I can hear the voices yet, up and down the dark streets, under the mulberry trees.”

She paused. There had been nothing stagey about her recital. She might have been enumerating the week’s menus at Tamarisk.

“He stood then. I remember I was wearing a new cashmere sweater and skirt and spectator pumps—that was 1933. Black-and-white spectators. Go to your rented house now, he said to us. Take off your clothes and go to bed. I doubt if Charley knows what to do in bed yet, but you can teach him, my dear. Fuck. See what you get. I doubt you will get anything—I pray in fact you do not—a weakling and the bitch of a killer. But try. Enjoy yourselves. See what you get. Those were his exact words.”

She folded her hands. I became aware of the wind, a small incessant wind in the pepper tree above us. Suddenly I had to leave her, urgently, just as I had needed to bust the hell out of her husband’s chambers that morning.

“I must go, Mrs. Vaught. Thank you so much for talking with me. It’s been just great to meet Tyler’s mother.”

We stood together. She took my arm. “I like you,” she said. “I trust you. I didn’t trust the other one.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Did Tyler ask you to come to Harding?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“To find out what happened to Max Sansom.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“Why yes, what else?”

Helene Vaught smiled again. “You are a child. That’s why I trust you.”

Leaving 2100 Tamarisk Drive I was picked up again by the patrol car which had waited down the block. He tailed me to the Maria de la Luz County line, dropped off, and I was at once picked up by another car. When I slowed, he slowed. To call his bluff, as we neared Harding I put the Rolls up to sixty. After a mile he turned on his red lights and siren, pulled alongside, motioned me over. I parked. He got out of a Harding County Sheriffs Department car, came back to me in his big hat and boots. He said I’d exceeded the limit and I said of course, deliberately, because I wanted a chat with him. He asked for my license, and I said what for, he knew goddamned well who I was, which was why I’d been followed all the way to San Carlos and back.

He held out his hand. “License.”

I gave it to him. He began writing a ticket.

“I demand to know why I’ve been followed.”

“What kinda rod is this?”

“This rod happens to be a 1958 Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith two-door saloon. ‘Wraith’ is spelled W-r-a-i-t-h. I have been subjected to police harassment, and—” “Local address?”

“You know that, too. If you don’t, guess.”

“Ramada Inn.” He wrote it down. “What room?”

“Guess.”

“Sure, 112. Hey, how about that?”

“How about what?”

“Same room.”

“Same as whose?”

“Guess, buddy.”

“Why in hell didn’t you tell me she’s nuttier than a fruitcake? Why didn’t you say he’s a judge? She’s been in a happy academy up in San Carlos for thirty years, for God’s sake! And you’ve never once visited her and neither has he! Shame!”

I was on long-distance that night to Tyler, who was staying in my apartment. I’d called her twice before, from someplace in Ohio and from Joplin, Missouri.

“Jimmie, where are you?”

“Harding. Ramada Inn. The same damned room as our mutual dead friend Max—a sweet coincidence.”

“It’s no coincidence. Someone’s trying to tell you something.”

“I wish you had.”

“How are you, darling?”

“Peachy keen. I got a speeding ticket. Tyler, your good bed-buddy Sansom was hit by a slow-moving car probably drunk—I mean Max—and pulled under it and dragged and had his face scraped off and about every bone in his body broken. I talked to the county medical examiner and read the official report. Anything else is your macabre imagination—your father said so. So I’ve driven two thousand miles and shot a week for zilch and I’ve got a deadline coming up on the Frisby-Africa book. I’ll read the trial transcripts in the morning and be on my merry way by noon. Four days from tomorrow you can clamp me to your bountiful bosom and we’ll have our second honeymoon. Or our third. Then we’ll get married. Oh—try Bloomingdale’s for the trousseau.”

“But Jimmie, you’re not finished! You haven’t—”

“Yes I am, practically. This case is closed. I love you. And you better be true to me, Tyler, till I get there. Because listen, if you aren’t, if I find you’ve taken off again with some schmuck, there’s a librarian in El Paso named Annie Snackenberg I could buy a ranch and settle down and raise cattle and kids with. Say, do I have any important mail?”

“I love you, too. But haven’t you found out anything?”

“Sure I have. Your mother was mad for Chautauqua when she was young and your grandfather Vaught had a hernia when she and your father eloped and she didn’t trust Maxie when he dropped in on her but she trusts me and Buell Wood did a terrific vanishing act after the trial in 1916. Neither hide nor hair, ever again. Oh yes, a small item. After I talked to the medical examiner, he got on the phone fast to somebody called Pingo. Who’s that?”

“Pingo Chavez.” I could hear her thinking. “He phoned Pingo?”

“Who’s he?”

“The county sheriff.”

“Oh. What kind of a name is ‘Pingo’?”

“In Mexican, ‘Little Devil.’”

“Well, I’ll tete-a-tete with him, too.”

“No. Don’t.”

“Why not?”

She hesitated. “He’s dangerous, Jimmie. If anyone murdered Max, it was Pingo.”

“Come on, Tyler. A sheriff?”

“I warn you, Jimmie, don’t. Please.”

“The Sam Spade of the Southwest does not scare. I’ll take him by his tin star and shake him till he tears up my speeding ticket.”

To celebrate getting the hell out of Harding and safely back back to the arms of my blessed damsel I had some drinks and overslept the next morning and by the time I dragged into the courthouse it was almost noon. And when I asked Mrs. Helder, Clerk of the Court, if I might read the transcripts of the two trials, that of Buell Wood for the killing of three men in 1910 and that of the four Villistas after the Columbus raid in 1916, she pulled a long, archival face.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Butters. But we don’t seem to have them.”

“Don’t seem to–”

“No. They’re missing.”

“They re what?”