Voices in the Dark (24 page)

This wasn’t what she wanted to hear. “What are you talking about?”

“A very exclusive place. Privileged. Your mother-in-law is there.”

She continued to stare at him, but her essential self floated away like the monarch that had passed between them.

She backed off, turned slowly, and on hurt heels returned to Chief Morgan, who stood with a thumb wedged in his belt and an unsettled expression on his waiting face.

“Did you hear?”

“Not all of it,” he said.

“He killed my daughter,” she said.

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

The chief took a step forward and said to Dudley, “I have to take you in.”

Dudley edged toward blueberry bushes denuded of their fruit by jays. “Please don’t.”

“I have to.”

Dudley fled.

“It’s all right,” the chief said, slipping his hands into his pockets. “I’ll get him later.”

“It’s not necessary,” she said.

• • •

Myles Yarbrough returned with the Sunday papers, dumped them into a chintz chair, and said, “I met with him. Things are going to be all right for us.” Color long absent had returned to his face, along with a bit of life to his receding hair. “Did you hear me, Phoebe?”

She had heard him quite clearly. She sat on a creamy white sofa with her legs drawn under her. The bandage was gone from her face. The bruised and broken skin was violet circled in yellow, but the swelling had subsided.

“He was reasonable,” Myles said. “But of course he had to be.”

She was slow in looking at him, slower still in replying. Her voice had a smooth, thick texture. “He knows what I was, Myles. He was one of my clients.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

He pulled up an ornate footstool, sat on it, and caressed her ankles while viewing her in a manner she did not want to be viewed, as if she were a portrait other men had painted, her likeness idealized. Whenever he embraced her, it was as if he were lifting her off an easel.

“It might even have worked to our advantage.”

His advantage, not hers, though that was expected. Their marriage had been machined on quid pro quo. For her, a fur in her closet, diamonds in her jewelry box, an annuity in her name; for him, a prized courtesan.

Smiling, he gripped her foot and gently squeezed her toes together. “In any event, you’re my ace in the hole. We’ll never starve.”

It was an old joke she had never appreciated. “I’m forty years old, Myles.”

“I’m only kidding,” he said, his face altering in the instant. “I’m sorry.”

She could see that he was. And she knew that he loved her in some boyishly perverse fashion that suited him well. It was a side of his nature hidden from himself but not from her. Her passions, which he considered amusements, were in another room, a wall brightened by books. She had read them all.

“What did you get from him?” she asked, though she really did not want to know.

“A loan, interest-free, a year to pay back. By that time I’ll be on my feet.”

She casually kicked his hand off her foot. “You extorted him.”

“I negotiated a settlement like any lawyer would. He assaulted you, Phoebe. That’s a criminal offense, not to mention the civil suit we could’ve brought.”

Abruptly she rose from the sofa and stood on long, shaky legs visible inside an open white robe. “You did wrong, Myles.”

“What do you mean?”

“You pushed him. He’ll neither forgive nor forget. He’ll get back at us.”

“How?”

She sorted through the Sundays, brought up the
Times,
and extracted the book review section. “How, Myles?”

“Yes, how?”

She turned pages. “He’ll tell everyone in this town about me. It’s only a question of when.”

• • •

Chief Morgan hooked a left onto Wainright Road and drove Beverly Gunner to the cemetery. It was where she wanted to go. Inside the cemetery, where the geometry of erect stones looked like the low ruins of a lost time, she directed the way, this lane, then that one, and then she said, “Pull up.” Pausing, she collected strength, which now seemed easier to come by. She managed a smile. “Shall we?”

They stepped out into the swelling sunshine. A cardinal, scarlet on the run, vanished into the blue. A jay that sounded berserk squawked from the distance. Morgan offered his arm, but she didn’t need it.

“This one,” she said, stopping, and they stood before her daughter’s modest stone, an inscription that read
sweetness that now belongs to god
. “I’m not a believer, but I wanted those words.”

He was watching her closely, as if she were on the brink of nervous collapse, which she wasn’t. She was simply reliving moments in a field when Fay had been picking a nosegay of violets and other delicate wildflowers in bloom, a gift for her daddy. The chief murmured something that didn’t carry.

She said, “Paul never comes here, and he doesn’t like it when I do. He says it’s morbid.”

“We do what we have to do.”

“Yes, that’s exactly right.” She was crying, good tears, not bad ones. His hand was in motion on her back.

“Shall we leave?”

Back in the car, which the sun had heated, she sank deep into the seat. Her collapsing hair shaded her face, and she pushed part of it away with the astonishing sensation that she was breaking threads, severing connections. The chief was staring at her, his face almost an intrusion.

“Mrs. Gunner.”

“Yes, James.”

“Back at the pond you said you know, but how do you know?”

She smiled, for that was not something easily answered, nor was she sure it had an answer.

“I need something substantial, Mrs. Gunner.”

“I don’t know what that means anymore,” she said with a smile.

“Are you holding anything back, something I didn’t hear at the pond?”

“What would be the advantage?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “but all of a sudden you’ve changed.”

“Yes, I have, haven’t I? You’ve helped me, James.” Her smile was nervous. “I feel odd calling you James.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t.”

“You don’t want me to?”

“It’s up to you.” He wiped the sweat from his brow. “But you must tell me what’s in your mind.”

She touched his wrist, patted it. “I have to sort it out.”

He started up the car. As they drove out of the cemetery she found herself humming a tune that hadn’t popped into her head in twenty years or so.

• • •

A half hour later, alone, Chief Morgan motored up a straight drive and glided to a stop. Kate Bodine was bent over a flower bed near the last stall of the garage. He did not get out of the car. He waited for her to come to him. When she didn’t, he said, “I know, I have no right.”

Removing her garden gloves, she straightened. “You’re taking a chance.”

“Where is he?”

“Playing golf. Or seeing another woman. It’s not like him, but it’s possible.”

“Does it bother you?”

“Not so strangely, it doesn’t.”

He watched her slow approach, sunlight slipping in and out of her blond hair. Her mouth was set tight, as if she no longer wanted the burden of his confidences, his suspicions. “How’s the writing going?” he asked.

“I thought ideas would rush into my head like music. They don’t.” She placed a hand on the window ledge. “I have an interview coming up with WBZ. It’s radio, not TV, but I’ll do anything.”

“I’ll miss you.”

“I haven’t got it yet, but it looks good. I’ve told Harley. He didn’t seem interested.” She leaned forward, both hands on the window ledge. “You planted seeds in my head, James, but I must tell you, I don’t think Harley could ever have wanted his son hurt.”

Morgan nodded. “Please. Sit in the car with me.”

“It looks hot in there.”

“It is.”

She strode around the front of the car and slipped in, leaving the door open. She was wearing shorts. Her knees were grass-stained. “What’s the matter, James?”

“I don’t know what I’ve got myself into. One moment I feel I’m on the right track, the next I feel foolish. Worse than that, I feel responsible for the state of other people’s minds.”

“Maybe you should worry about your own. You look like hell. Don’t you shave anymore?”

“I feel I’m a player in something I don’t understand.”

“You’ve made me share the feeling.”

“I’m sorry.” He dropped a hand on her. “I should talk only to myself, but when I do that I never know when to shut up.”

“Your hand is sweaty. Are you making a pass?”

“I’ve been doing that since the first time I saw you.”

“All I want, James, is to get back into the business, or near enough.”

“At least you know what your business is. Mine’s becoming a mystery.”

“You tell me only bits and pieces. The rest I don’t know.”

“Nor do I.”

She crossed her thighs and locked his hand in place. “That’s far enough, James.”

“Yes,” he said sadly, “I knew it would be.”

• • •

Beverly Gunner yanked at curtains to block the sun, and in the shadowy room she stood before a mirror and saw only parts of herself, which deepened a feeling of estrangement. From herself. From the world, which operated, she had no doubts, at the lowest moral level. Then a light came on, and her parts connected. She viewed herself quickly to make sure she had not been rearranged.

“What’s going on?”

The voice came from her husband. Behind him were her sons, who were trying to get a look at her, as if she were a sideshow. She lit a cigarette and stood with her feet planted wide apart to show she didn’t give a shit about any of them.

“Look,” he said, “are you sick or something?”

“When have I been right?” She spoke through smoke. She glimpsed her eldest. “When have I? Can you tell me, Gustav?”

“Leave the boys out of it.”

Her shoes were too small, tight at the toes, cruel at the heels, and she kicked them off with agonized effort, one almost hitting him. “I want to be young again, do you mind?”

“Do what you want.”

“Do what I want? Maybe you won’t like that.”

He turned to the boys. “You go on,” he said and shooed them off. Then he stepped in and shut the door behind him. “You dropped an ash.”

“My prerogative.”

“You got something to say, Beverly, say it.”

“I met the man who killed our daughter.”

She didn’t know what she had expected, but she received nothing other than an oppressive stare that was shrewd and calculating, playing for time. The silence was forceful. It thrust itself upon her and anchored her to her sore feet.

“Do you know what you just said?”

“Oh, yes.”

“The police chief’s mixed up in this, am I right?”

His sudden smile shouldn’t have surprised her, but it did. He was a genius, as his father had been, and his mind moved ten times faster than hers.

“You spilled another ash,” he said.

“So I did.”

At college, Victorian literature, she had read that in the best of worlds men are muscles of iron and women etherealities, their decisions never their own. Their own restraints see to that.

“So he had you meet this man. A vagrant, right?”

“His name is Dudley,” she said.

“Then this man and you, you’re both crazy. Certifiable.” His smile increased. “Do you know what I mean, Beverly?”

She did and had, for now, nothing more to say. Her look slammed a door on him.

11

MONDAY MIDDAY, THEY CAME BACK. REGINA SMITH HEARD THE slam of car doors and peeped through the drapes. Patricia’s black hair was molten in the sun, and her bicycle pants were a bright second skin. Anthony’s shirt hung loose, his ballooning trousers tapering to his sandaled feet. Everything wonderful about youth clung to them. They were too absurdly beautiful for their own good, which gave her an unwanted sense of her own accelerating years. She took time to get her face straight and then positioned herself. The front door opened. Her dark eyes swept in the two of them.

“Did you enjoy yourselves?” Her voice was pruned, pointed at Patricia, who stood up to it.

“Weather was great. That’s why we stayed longer than expected.”

“How nice for you.” She aimed her eyes solely at Anthony, who showed less stamina, his energy, she imagined, consumed in copulation. “And how about you? Was it lots of fun?”

Patricia stepped forward. “Be careful, Tony. I think my mother has a hair across.”

“That’s enough, Patricia!”

She let them go. She watched them ascend the stairs to their rooms, nothing more to be said for the moment. In the corner bathroom she picked up a tube and did her lips. She brushed her hair, which wasn’t as glossy as her daughter’s but was still vibrant and would grow lush if she let it, which was the way Patricia’s father had liked it. The week before they divorced, he had turned forty and had furry dice hanging from the rearview of his Corvette. The last time she had seen him, a theater in New York, he had worn a young new wife on his arm, large smiles on their faces, as if they’d just gotten it off. How sweet!

She mounted the stairs.

She entered Anthony’s room without knocking, a presumptive right now that he had betrayed the family. He stood clean as a knife in skin-biting Jockey briefs, the pouch too explicit to ignore.

“Put some pants on,” she said.

“I was just getting ready to take a shower.” He was flustered, grabbing his voluminous slacks. He got them on quickly. “You should’ve knocked.”

“You forget, this is my house.”

“My father’s too.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t include you.” Her gaze ground into him. “You, my friend, have taken advantage. You’ve made fools of your father and me.”

“No,” he said, “I wouldn’t do that. I respect you and Dad. I especially respect you.”

She smiled at him with derision, confident that in his imaginings she was ladylike in loving his father, knees only slightly lifted, eyes appropriately closed, decorum in her climaxes. Along with lies waiting to be told, she saw on his face the flush of naivete, a babe in the woods.

“I warned you, didn’t I, Anthony? I told you to keep your hands off Patricia, but you did what you wanted.”

“No.”

“You, my friend, are a liar.” Her voice, though low and contained, struck with as much force as if she’d reached in and squeezed his testicles. His recoil was immediate and painful. “My real concern for Patricia is disease. You
have
heard of AIDS, haven’t you?”