The Woman Who Fell From Grace (6 page)

“I’ve missed your quaint little expressions.”

“It seems to me,” she recalled, “it was one of those shoots where everyone was hopping into the feathers with everyone else. Of course, that always happens on location, particularly with a love story.”

“Why is that?”

“We can’t tell the difference between real and make-believe, darling. That’s what makes us actors.”

“Which am I?”

“I like to think of you as a bit of both.”

“Why, Merilee, that’s the second-nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“What was the nicest?”

“ ‘You’re not the sort of man who I can see wearing anything polyester.’ ”

“As I recall,” she said, “neither of us was wearing anything, period, at the time.”

“Merilee Nash! You’ve been getting seriously ribald since you started hanging around with farm animals.”

“So that explains it.”

“Anything about Sterling Sloan?”

“Well, he died.”

“I know that. I was wondering if there was any chance it didn’t happen the way they say it did.”

She was silent a moment. “Oh, no, Hoagy … You’re not getting into something weird again, are you?”

“No chance. Housekeeper here just has some crazy idea.”

“I certainly don’t remember hearing anything.” She mulled it over. “I’m skeptical, frankly.
Oh
,
Shenandoah
has commanded so much attention through the years. If there’d been even a hint of scandal about Sloan, the sleaze-biographers would have been all over it by now.”

“That’s kind of what I was thinking.”

“Of course, I could ask around for you. Some of the old-timers might remember if there was scuttlebutt. Want me to?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“Not at all. It’ll give me an excuse to call them. Comfy down there?”

“Aside from a lousy set of rental wheels.”

“Possibly you’re a bit spoiled in that department.”

“Possibly that’s not the only department I’m spoiled in.”

We were both silent a moment.

“I’d better get back to Elliot,” she said softly. “Hoagy?”

“Yes, Merilee?”

“What was her name?”

“Whose name?”

“The girl you met tonight.”

“I … what makes you think she was a girl and not a woman?”

“A woman can tell.”

“Why, Merilee, if I didn’t know you better, I’d swear you were jealous.”

“I’d swear I was, too.”

“You never have been before.”

“I wasn’t forty before,” she declared, sighing grandly. “And more important, neither were you. Sleep tight, darling.” And then she hung up.

I undressed and climbed into bed. I was working my way through a collection of James Thurber stories, which is something I do every couple of years to remind myself what good writing is. I had just gotten settled in when I heard a car pull up in the courtyard outside. I turned out my bedside lamp and pulled back the curtain.

A big Mercedes 560 SEL sedan was idling out there in the moonlight with its lights on.

Two women got out, one tall, almost regal, the other short and thin. The driver pulled the Mercedes into the garage while the two women spoke briefly. Then the tall one went in the kitchen door of the east wing, closing it behind her. The other woman got into a red Pontiac LeMans that was parked there and started it up. The Mercedes’s lights went off in the garage. A man got out and closed the garage door and went over to the LeMans. He was stocky, with a heavy torso and short legs. He said something to the woman in the car, gestured for her to roll her window down. Instead she began easing the car out of the courtyard toward the driveway. He was insistent — ran out in front of her, waved his arms for her to stop. She wouldn’t. In fact, she floored it and made right for him. She wasn’t kidding around, either. He had to dive out of the way or she’d have run him over as she sped on down the drive. He landed heavily and lay there a moment. Slowly, he got to his feet and brushed himself off. He stood there watching the driveway for a long moment before he went in the house.

I turned over and went to sleep, Lulu comfortably ensconced in her favorite position. I didn’t stay asleep long. She woke me at three, pacing the bedroom floor, whimpering like she had on the plane. I told her to shut up and come back to bed. She wanted me to let her out. These things happen. I did, after reminding her to stay away from the peacocks. Then I went back upstairs to sleep.

I dreamt I was being smothered by peacock feathers.

A steady tapping at the cottage’s front door woke me. Grandfather’s Rolex said it was seven-thirty. I padded downstairs and opened it. A covered breakfast tray was waiting there for me on the doorstep. So was Sadie, my new friend, who sat poised on her haunches a foot away, staring at it intently. Lulu was stretched out a few feet from her, staring at her staring at it. Lulu and the tray came inside with me. Sadie did not.

There was a copy of that morning’s
Staunton Daily News Leader
to go with my scrambled eggs, country ham, grits, toast, juice, and coffee. The food was excellent. So was the news. Crime in Augusta County was down 11 percent over the past three months, according to Sheriff Polk LaFoon the Fourth. And veteran Hollywood actor Rex Ransom was definitely planning to attend the
Oh
,
Shenandoah
fiftieth-anniversary gala. Already my day was made. When I finished eating, I climbed into a hot tub and lolled there. I was still there at nine, when I heard someone pounding on my front door, and at nine-fifteen, when someone pounded on it again, louder. When I got out, I stropped grandfather’s pearl-handled straight edge and shaved and doused myself with Floris. I dressed in my charcoal silk-and-wool tickweave suit with calfskin braces, a white Turnbull and Asser broadcloth shirt, lavender-and-yellow bow tie, and my brown-and-white spectator balmorals. I emerged with my breakfast tray a few minutes before ten. That damned cat was still there on my doorstep. Gordie was sitting on the ground nearby tossing a ball against a wall and catching it in his mitt on the comeback. The red LeMans from the night before was parked by the kitchen door.

“Mornin’, Hoagy,” Gordie said glumly.

“Something wrong?”

“Thaydie’s awful hungry,” he replied. “Jutht wish I had a little milk to give her … I mean, she’ll
thtarve.
” His lower lip began to quiver.

I sighed. This was turning into a miserable job. Truly miserable. “I have some milk in my fridge,” I said grudgingly.

His face lit up. “Really?”

I went back inside and filled my empty coffee cup with milk and put it out for her. She lapped it up hungrily.

“Gee, thankth, Hoagy,” Gordie exclaimed.

“No problem.”

“Wanna play catch?”

“Don’t you have school or something?”

“I’m on thpring break. Throw me one? Jutht one? Huh?”

“All right, one fly ball. Go deep.”

He tossed me the ball and dashed across the courtyard toward the lawn. It was an old hardball, worn and frayed. The sight of it in my hand triggered a memory. Of another worn, frayed hardball, another little boy, another tall, distant man. A powerful and most unexpected wave of nostalgia crashed over me. Nostalgia isn’t generally my style. Especially for that time and that tall, distant man.

Gordie was waiting for me, pounding his mitt. I waved him deeper. Then I wound up and aired out the old javelin shoulder. I sent the ball high in the air, way over his head. The little guy went after it. He was quick. He was there waiting for it when it came down, mitt held high.

“Wow,” he hollered, trotting back to me with it, “I ain’t never theen anyone throw a ball tho far in my whole life!”

“It’s all in the mechanics,” I said, wondering just when the pain would stop shooting through my shoulder. “Not a terrible grab, by the way.”

“Thankth. Throw me another?”

“Later. Maybe.”

Inside, Fern was doing the breakfast dishes. Someone was typing in the adjoining office.

She squinted at me disapprovingly when I handed her my tray. “Honey, Mave’s been waiting over there for you nearly one hour. I knocked on your door twice. You deaf or you just got a death wish?”

“None of the above.”

She shook her head sadly. “Been nice knowing you.”

“Care to place a wager on that?”

“What kind of wager?” she asked, grinning at me.

“You have to make me licorice ice cream.

“And if I win? Because I don’t plan to lose. And honey, I sure don’t eat nothing gray.”

“Ten bucks?”

We shook on it. Then I headed for the old house to meet Mavis Glaze.

S
HE WAS SMILING.

Mavis Glaze always smiled. Her face was frozen that way. It happens sometimes when you have one lift too many. The skin was drawn across her cheekbones tight as Saran Wrap pulled over a bowl of leftover fruit salad. There was, however, no smile in the hard blue eyes that stared out at me from behind the writing table where her mother had created
Oh
,
Shenandoah
. The eyes were cold steel. She sat stiffly, her hands folded tightly before her on the desk, knuckles white. Every muscle in her tall, lean body seemed taut. You could have plucked an F-sharp off the cords in her neck. The lady wouldn’t bend in the wind — she’d snap. Even her copper-colored hair was drawn into a tight,
tight
bun. She had the same long blade of nose and cleft chin her brothers had. On them it looked better. She was not a pretty woman, though she was, for sixty, a handsome one. She was elegantly dressed in a double-breasted pantsuit of cream-colored raw silk with a white silk blouse. Her nails were painted salmon, as was her mouth. She wore no other makeup.

She glanced down at her wristwatch, then back up at me. “You are precisely one hour late, Mr. Hoag.” She enunciated every syllable as if she were speaking to a small, slightly deaf native boy. “My brothers led me to believe that you were a professional. Sadly, they were mistaken. Your behavior is anything but professional. It is unacceptable.”

“That makes us even.”

She glared down her nose at me. “I seriously doubt that,” she said witheringly.

“We had an appointment yesterday afternoon,” I said. “You didn’t keep it. You didn’t have the courtesy to reschedule it or to contact me so I could make other arrangements. You just kept me hanging around here, wasting my time. You’re lucky I’m here at all. And if you don’t start talking to me like your collaborator instead of the guy who pumps out your septic tank, I won’t be.”

Her blue eyes widened slightly. Otherwise she didn’t react. Until she abruptly grabbed one of the tulips out of the vase on the desk and snapped its stem in half. “Get out, Mr. Hoag. Get off my property at once. If I find you anywhere near Shenandoah in one hour, I shall call the sheriff and have you arrested.”

“You’d better call your brothers, too, while you’re at it. They’ll have to break it to your publisher that we didn’t hit it off. I’m afraid it won’t go down too well, since I was kind of your last shot.”

“Last shot?” She bristled. “Whatever do you mean?”

“You’re the laughingstock of the entire publishing industry, didn’t you know? You’re blowing the biggest sequel in history, and dragging your publishing house down with you. They’re very unhappy. And they’re going to be even more unhappy about this. But that’s your business, not mine. Nice meeting you, Mavis. Actually, it wasn’t, but it’s important to be gracious to one’s hostess. I learned that from your show.”

I started for the door, not particularly fast. She let me get all the way to the knob before she finally said, “Perhaps … perhaps we got off on the wrong foot. I-I apologize about yesterday. I assure you it won’t happen again. Sit down. Please.”

I sat down, round one mine.

She treated me to her frozen smile. It was starting to bring to mind Nicholson in
Batman
. “People have always misunderstood me,” she stated. “I’ve never cared about which fork they used for their salad. Simple, human consideration is what matters to me. Respect for your neighbor. Saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘excuse me.’ No one does anymore. It’s all ‘Me first’ now. They cut each other off on the highway. They give each other the finger. They urinate in the street. They gather in sports arenas for the express purpose of chanting obscenities at visiting players.”

“In New York we chant them at the home team as well. We like to think of everyone as the enemy.”

The blue eyes flicked over me suspiciously. “I understand you brought some form of animal with you.”

“Using the term loosely.”

“My brothers were extremely vague about it. It’s not vicious or something, is it?”

“I’ll have to tell her that one — she can use a good laugh.”

Mavis pursed her lips and frowned at me. “You’ve no notebook? No tape recorder?”

“Not to worry. If anything memorable is said, I’ll remember it. Chances are I’ll have said it.”

Her eyes flashed at me. “Are you always this unpleasant, Mr. Hoag?”

“Generally. And it’s Hoagy.”

“Well, I am not impressed by your attitude, Hoagy,” she said imperially.

I tugged at my ear. “My mother used to say that. Still does, come to think of it.”

“Are you close to your parents?”

“I make sure I call them at least once every decade.”

She stood up and moved over to the window and looked outside at the gardens. The peacocks were strutting around near one of the tulip borders. She watched them. “You may as well know this about me from the start — I never learned how to suffer weak willies or fools or mediocrity gladly. Or how to hold my tongue. I stand up for what I believe in, and what I believe in is doing one’s best and tolerating nothing less. If I were a man, I’d be held in high esteem. Since I’m a woman, I’m called a bitch.” She turned away from the window and faced me. “I respect talent. From what everyone says, you have it. Lord knows you don’t get by on your charm. A lot of men can’t work for a strong woman. Can you?”

“I’m here, am I not?”

She nodded, satisfied, and went back to the desk and sat down behind it. “James Madison was married in this room in 1794 to Dolly Payne Todd. This was a parlor in those days. They were all here to drink Madeira wine and dance the minuet and pay their respects to the Glazes. Washington, Jefferson, Monroe. My family’s history is Virginia’s history. The Glazes settled this valley, sat on the House of Burgesses, served in the Continental Congress. And this house is history, as well. John Ariss, the most important architect of the Virginia Palladian style, designed and built it in 1756. Jefferson himself designed the portico addition in 1767 to improve the upstairs ventilation.”