The Drowner (7 page)

“Is Mr. Kimber taking it easier these days?”

He knew from her immediate change of expression he had gone a little too far. “Like I told you an hour ago, Mr. Stanial, I’m Mister Sam’s private and confidential secretary, and if you could tell me what it is you’ve got on your mind, I might save you a lot of waiting around. I know from the master index we’ve never had one thing to do with North Atlantic Mutual, and if you have any idea of selling him anything, you won’t get past word three.”

“I’m not selling anything, Miss Powell. This is just a routine insurance investigation.”

She went back and sat on the corner of her desk, folded strong brown arms and frowned at him. “But if it’s a routine thing, maybe you wouldn’t have to worry him with it.”

“The investigation is routine, but the particular… involvement… his relationship to it, is a personal matter and I think he’d rather I kept it on a personal basis.”

Her eyes widened momentarily and she pursed her lips. “Now it just wouldn’t happen to be insurance on that Mrs. Hanson, would it?”

Stanial faked clumsy surprise and said, “It’s a personal matter.”

“He won’t take kindly to you bothering him about her.”

“If anybody refuses to cooperate, all I can do is make a negative report.”

“So it is about her!”

“I didn’t say it was.”

“I guess he’s the one you have to talk to. I don’t know anything about that woman. And didn’t want to know.” A harshness had crept into her tone. She sat at her desk and rolled fresh paper into the typewriter. Stanial decided the big husky girl probably had emotional cause for complaint.

“Have you worked for Mr. Kimber long?”

“Three years,” she said abruptly.

Carefully casual, he said, “I guess it’s only natural you’d feel some resentment toward Lucille Hanson.”

For a few moments her hands rested on the keys. She turned and looked at him. It was not the expression he expected. It was a puzzled look. “Why should I resent her? I wouldn’t resent any of Mister Sam’s women unless they tried to hurt him some way, and if they did, I figure he can take care of himself. It’s man’s way to want women, and I don’t have to understand it, do I? I can feel sorrow and pity it should be so, but it is the burden man brought out of the Garden, and he sins and whether or not he is forgiven is up to God. And I don’t have to understand why there’s women who entice men and make them drunk on the dirty habits of the flesh, without even the words of the church to make it halfway clean in God’s eyes. But I don’t have to know anything about those women, or have any wonderment about them, Mr. Stanial. I’m sorry she died in the middle of her dirty ways before he got sick of her, so now he confuses mourning with his unsatisfied lust. But he’ll get over it, and there’ll be another one, and another one after that, and when the fires of the body begin to die, I pray he’ll make his peace with God and cleanse himself.” Her voice had taken on a singsong quality, faintly reminiscent of a revival sermon. She gave a small shiver and smiled at him and said in a normal tone, “There’s no cause I should resent that woman.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t understand.”

“Most people don’t understand. It doesn’t bother me. Evil doesn’t touch me, Mr. Stanial. It’s my fate men should come snuffling around me with all their winks and sly ways, staring at me and trying to brush their hands against me. God made me desirable to men so as to keep testing me. I am His lamb. When I was fifteen I spent two days and two nights on my knees asking Him if I should hide my body from the world of men and spend my life in prayer. But He told me to live in the world and spurn the tempters and the deceivers because from my example some of them might find the Kingdom of Heaven. My body is the temple of the Lord, and I keep it clean and strong and unsoiled.” Again she made the abrupt change from singsong to normal conversation. “I don’t expect many people to understand, Mr. Stanial.”

“Does Mr. Kimber?”

She sighed. “Sort of, I guess. The only thing he won’t allow is me preaching at him. He says we all have to go our own way and find out things in our own time. But, golly, it sure is taking him a long time to see the error of his ways. Sometimes I feel right discouraged about Mister Sam. And I get blue. But if I go out and run a few miles or swim a few miles and get myself tuckered, I feel better. You look like you have a strong healthy body, Mr. Stanial, but you’ve smoked two cigarettes since you sat down there, and it’s a shame you have to do that to yourself.” She frowned and shook her head. “I surely wish I knew where that man went off to. He might not even come in at all. I can’t promise you a thing.”

Paul stood up. “Suppose I phone back in and find out if you’ve heard anything.”

“I’ll be having Mrs. Nimmits bring some lunch in for me, so I’ll be right here all day. You want I should tell him what you want to see him about if he comes in?”

He smiled at her. “You will anyway, won’t you?”

“Sure, but I wondered if you’d ask me not to.”

“You do what you think is best, Miss Powell.”

It was quarter to eleven when Stanial turned into the shell drive at the Hanson estate on Lake Larra. The main house, completely screened from the road by the heavy tropical plantings, was an imposing but informal frame structure of weathered cypress trimmed with white, with a low modern wing in conflict with the roof lines of the older part. He parked and got out and looked toward the lake and saw the boat house through the trees. He found the mouth of the winding path, white shell under the shadows and the hanging beards of Spanish moss. The lake glinted blue beyond the boat house. He saw Hanson’s car parked off to the side, and saw the outside staircase leading up to the living quarters.

As Stanial climbed the stairs to the upper level, Kelsey Hanson, in shiny dark-blue swim trunks, appeared on the open landing and said, “Hold it right there. What do you want?”

Stanial stopped and looked up at him. Hanson was an impressive brute, sun-browned, heavily muscled, his hair and brows and lashes bleached almost white by the sun. He had an ugly, unfriendly expression on his face. Though the features were fleshy, it was a reasonably handsome face. He looked like the lifeguard getting ready to throw the ninety-eight-pound weakling off the beach. At his second appraisal, Stanial saw that the heavy tan disguised considerable physical deterioration. The waist was soft and had thickened. The fibrous muscles bulged under a recent layer of fat. The face untanned would have looked puffy and bloated.

“I want to talk to you about your wife’s insurance.”

“What about it?”

“There are some questions that I…”

“Put them in a letter, pal.”

“It will only take a few minutes of your…”

“You’ve used it all up already, pal. So turn around and paddle right back down the stairs.”

Stanial, grinning inwardly at the old doctor’s advice, glared up at Hanson and headed directly toward him, saying loudly and angrily, “You silly bastard, I’m investigating your wife’s suicide, and I’m not a door-to-door salesman, and I’m cleared with the police, and if you keep up this line of crap, I’ll give you problems you never heard of before.” As he took the last step up onto the landing, Hanson backed away from him.

“Why didn’t you say so, pal?”

“I just did.”

“You’ve got no idea the pests coming around here, trying to… Listen, Lucille didn’t kill herself.”

“That’s what we’re trying to ascertain, one way or the other, and if you can spare a little of your invaluable time, Mr. Hanson…”

“Hell, I’ve got nothing but time, fella.” Hanson’s smile was imploringly charming and self-deprecatory. “Come on in and set where it’s cool. I didn’t mean to get off on the wrong foot. No hard feelings. I’ve been under a terrible strain lately.”

Stanial had seen this disease before. Emptiness. Hanson seemed incapable of projecting any unqualified emotion. Anger, amusement, love, hate, jealousy—they would all be hollowed out and turned into masks by the basic uncertainty in the man’s eyes, his flavor of apology.

“No hard feelings, of course,” Stanial said and shook hands. He went inside with Hanson and refused the offer of coffee or a drink. It was a long studio room with dark rough paneling, heavy masculine furniture, built-in music system, coquina rock fireplace and a sizeable bar.

“Now what is this crap about Lucille?” Hanson demanded. “Who came up with a weird idea like that?”

“All we can say so far is that it’s a possibility. I understand you and she were legally separated.”

“For almost a year now.”

“Would you say it was her fault the marriage broke up?”

“Now wait a minute. I’m not convinced it was broken up for good.”

“You think she was going to come to her senses?”

“Well, I certainly hoped so. And I was willing to take her back the minute she said the word. As to it being her fault, I guess we were both at fault. I got a little out of line, I guess. And got caught. And she made too much of a big thing of it. Hell, it wasn’t as if I’d gotten serious about somebody else. It was just… you know… one of those things. They aren’t important unless you want to make them important. And Lu never seemed to really fit in down here. At first I thought she would. And I guess she did too. Anyway, we were taking a one-year break, and I’ve got no proof she wouldn’t have come back to me.”

“You were going to try to get her back?”

“Certainly!”

“In spite of the fact she’d become intimate with Samuel Kimber?”

Hanson flinched as though he’d been struck. “You’ve been prying around, Mr.…” He looked at the card Paul had given him. “Mr. Stanial. You’ve got no proof of that.”

“It’s a reasonable certainty, Mr. Hanson.”

“I… I guess so. But it’s the kind of thing you don’t want to think about. I just can’t understand it. Lucille was such a… careful person. Fastidious. You know? And a good education. And that guy Kimber is twice her age, and he’s a great big crude son of a bitch. How he ever got her into the sack I’ll never know. That was the last time I saw her to talk to. Five or six months ago, after people had started to gossip about them. I had to find out if it was so. But she wouldn’t even answer any questions. She was polite and she smiled at me, and she said we’d made a bargain that she would wait one year before asking for a divorce, and when the year was up she would tell me what she had decided to do. I told her I’d heard she was running around with Sam Kimber. She said you hear all kinds of things if you listen long enough, and then she got into her car and drove away. That was the last time I ever saw her.”

“But you’d have taken her back, even if it was true?”

“What the hell is that to you?”

“Just investigating possibilities, Mr. Hanson. What if she wanted to come back and thought that by her relationship with Kimber she’d spoiled her chances. And then, out of guilt and remorse, she killed herself.”

“Oh no. She
knew
I’d take her back.”

“Because she knew that if you didn’t, your father was going to throw you out?”

Hanson looked startled. “Who the hell
have
you been talking to, friend? That might be the story going around, but it isn’t true. Sure, old John threatened that, but he’s been threatening it ever since I was seventeen years old, and the old lady has never let him do it. Why should he follow through this time? I’d take her back because… I wanted her back.”

“Would you say she was emotionally unstable?”

“Lucille? Well, about a few things I guess. She always took everything too seriously. Not many laughs. I don’t know if that means anything.”

“So she probably took Mr. Kimber seriously.”

“I… Yes, I guess she would.”

“And then if he decided to end the affair?”

Hanson looked at him with an almost anguished irritation. “I don’t know what the
hell
you’re trying to do. I didn’t know she
had
any insurance. Who gets it, anyway?”

“Her mother and her sister equally.”

“Honest to God, Mr. Stanial, I can’t see Lu killing herself, or doing it that way. She was as strong a swimmer as I am. Drowning yourself isn’t easy when you’re at home in the water. All your instincts are against it.”

“Then isn’t it more logical than an accidental drowning?”

“That’s hard to take too, but that’s what everybody says. It would make more sense to say somebody drowned her. But not too much more sense. Middle of the day. That isn’t as big a lake as this one. How could you know somebody didn’t have a pair of binoculars on you? From where she drowned, you can see the houses across the way. And how in the world would anybody do it without leaving a mark on her? Lu didn’t look husky, but she was a strong woman. Maybe she had too much heat and passed out in the water. Or had food poisoning and fainted. Everybody who wanted to give me the needle would tell me how damn sassy she looked lately. Maybe she was taking pills for something and took too many. How the hell are you ever going to find out?”

“If we can establish a reasonable assumption of suicide, we’ll fight paying off on the double indemnity provision.”

Hanson grimaced. “That makes it a lot clearer, pal. Why should I help you save your cruddy money?”

“The company’s money, not mine.”

“If she left a note, it would save you a lot of trouble.”

“Maybe she did.”

“What does that mean?”

“Kimber has a lot of local influence, and he wouldn’t want to be mentioned in anything like that, would he?”

“What are you smoking lately?”

“If she mailed you a note, it might make you look bad, Hanson.”

Hanson looked genuinely startled and then he laughed, but it was not a mirthful sound. “Could I look much worse no matter how the cards fall? And Kimber isn’t that big, and never will be.” And then, abruptly, Hanson changed personalities. It had been a long time since Stanial had been caught off guard. Yet he began to see why the kind of woman who had written those letters could have seen something of value and substance in Kelsey Hanson. “I’ve lost things here and there, Stanial. Chances, mostly. And when they’re gone, it’s the easiest thing in the world to tell yourself you didn’t want them anyway. But I wasn’t thinking of Lu as a chance. Old John was, I guess. I didn’t know she was a chance until she was gone and I knew I’d blown it. So I tried to tell myself I didn’t want her anyway. Sometimes, I guess, the old rationalizations stop working. But I wanted another crack at the chance Lu represented. I wanted it so bad I ached. Not on account of the old man’s threat. For me, this time. I don’t like myself very much, Stanial. I thought I might see if I could find out why, and maybe it would be a starting point… to something or other. I started out with great dedication, taking courses, trying to find some meaning to me and some meaning to life. And when I had some half-answers, I was going to go to Lu and tell her. But those cerebral types didn’t have the answers, and the answers weren’t in their books. I tried a psychiatrist, and after four sessions he told me my problem was emotional immaturity based on there always being somebody around to clean up the mess for me. And he said a couple of years of deep analysis might help, but no guarantee. So I sold myself another dream. I’d worked it out my own way. But I wasn’t working anything out. I was using the tragic figure image on some earnest juicy little college girls, telling myself I was relegating sex to its proper perspective, and telling myself one of them would come up with a bull session idea worth checking out. But Lu died. And it killed that little part I was playing. And I don’t know what the hell to do with myself now. Poor little rich boy. I got the years to use up now. Somehow.” He gave Paul an odd smile. “And I’m not looking forward to one damn minute of any one of them, pal. I muffed the last chance there was.”