Where Is Janice Gantry? (10 page)

He was surprised and shocked by the news. He hadn’t heard any newscasts or seen the evening paper, and for once, no one had called him. As I started to tell him an edited version of the whole thing, I suddenly realized that I was going to feel a lot better if I told someone the complete story. So I paused and started to go back to the very beginning of it, which was my relation with Sis …

“We can skip all that history, Samuel. I am aware of the precise period when you were indulging yourself with the almost too obvious charms of that husky maiden, and I suspect that under the circumstances it was a therapeutic venture for both of you. The Gantry family was indignant, but fortunately you and the lady went at it in such a sensibly private and circumspect way that you never had to discuss it with her pack of muscular brothers. And you two were capable of ending the romp without ending the friendship, a rare and refreshing sign of mutual maturity.”

“How the hell would you …”

“Even the Florence County raccoons are in my service, dear boy. Please continue.”

I enjoyed astonishing him with the report of Charlie Haywood’s visit. I covered every significant event, including my association with LeRoy Luxey and my talk with Cal McAllen. Kishi’s fourth silent visit made me aware of a slight numbness around the mouth, a familiar syndrome based on Ack’s martini formula. The Gulf rested silently against the white beach. The sun was down and, through the panes of the large casement window I could see a small patch of the
sea, gray-purple in what was left of the light, stretching out to a narrow crimson band across the horizon.

“It is a complex equation,” Ack said, “with so many factors missing it cannot yet be solved, but we can have the inescapable feeling that the answer, when we find it, will bear a relation to the Weber menage.”

“Your neighbors?”

“Not exactly. They are a quarter-mile south of here. And not exactly neighbors of anyone, Samuel. The semantics of the word imply some form of human contact. A morning nod, at least. But even that is missing.”

“Ack, do you know anything about them?”

“Do I know anything
useful
about them? This intrigues me enormously, Samuel. I have tried to focus my lense upon them. They are a challenge. They have a fetish for privacy. It has the stature of mania. The house and grounds and plantings were designed to achieve maximum privacy. They have been in residence a little less than four years. They have slept in that house every night, so far as I know. They have gone nowhere. The mode of existence is abnormal, to say the least. Most abnormal for monied people. I can tell you some odd things.”

“If you ever get around to it, Ack.”

He ignored me. He had gotten up to pace thoughtfully back and forth in a restricted area between crowded bookshelves. He was in his habitual costume for all informal events, a Churchillian jump suit with D.A.B. embroidered on the breast pocket. This one was slate blue. He orders them from some California outfit, and has them in all possible shades.

“Mail, for example. They receive a wide range of magazines, but not one of them is specialized, indicative of any field of interest. And they get the junk mail, of course. The circulars. Early each month Mr. Weber receives a registered letter, special delivery, from Chicago. About twice a month
Mrs. Weber receives a personal letter addressed in a female hand, mailed from Richmond, Virginia. They receive no other mail. Have they no friends, relatives, business contacts?”

“The question is rhetorical.”

“Finances. Land and construction were paid for by cashier’s check drawn on a Chicago Bank. They maintain no local bank account. The servants pay all local bills in cash. Even when he purchased a second automobile …”

“I heard about that. It made people think Charlie was after the cash.”

“But you don’t think so?”

“Maybe he was after the cash, but not for the obvious reasons. I don’t know. Keep talking.”

“They do not entertain local people and are not entertained by them. They never eat out. Aside from the very rare trips into town—such as the time the car was purchased—they leave the house only to go out on that boat. Such secrecy is a challenge to me, Samuel.”

“Of course.”

“And so I took the obvious course—cultivation of the servants. Their boat captain was hired in Miami. He never laid eyes on the Webers until he arrived here. He is a competent, silent, self-sufficient man. He hates women and worships boats and shrubs. It took weeks of care and guile to learn next to nothing. He is well paid. The Webers are good people to work for. When they are on the boat, they are quiet. They have very little to say to each other. He gets his room and board and a salary monthly in cash. Mr. Weber computes the withholding tax and the social security, and when it has to be paid, the other manservant buys postal money orders in the right amount and sends it in.

“The couple is named Mahler. Herman and Anna. They are a middle-aged German couple. They saw enough of violence in World War Two to want only a placid, quiet, comfortable
life. They are hopelessly content in this job. And they, too, never met the Webers until they were here on the Key. They were employed through a New York agency and interviewed by a man they have not seen since. They were delighted to hear my very bad German. Here is their report. The Webers are very nice people. They never quarrel. Mrs. Weber does not cook or plan meals. She reads magazines, watches television and swims in the pool. Mr. Weber reads magazines, watches television, swims in the pool and plays solitaire. They go to bed early. The attempted robbery was a terrible thing. The Webers were very upset about it.”

“Ack, does anybody ever come to see them from out of town?”

“Good question. Yes. Men. Sometimes one. Sometimes two. But it’s always the same two men. They come down about every three months, and stay two or three days. They fly down from the north and drive down from Tampa or Sarasota in a rented car, and leave the same way. Oh, and there are two private unlisted phones. One is used for local calls, to stores and so forth. Anna Mahler, who is in the main part of the house most of the day, has never heard the other one ring.”

“It sounds,” I said, “like one hell of a quiet life.”

“I admitted defeat at least a year ago, Samuel. Things may have changed at the Weber house, but I doubt it. Do you know what they look like?”

“I’ve seen them, Ack. When I’ve been out on the boat, I’ve seen that Matthews of theirs come along the channel, and out of curiosity I’ve put the glasses on them. What’s the name of that cruiser?”

“The
Sea Queen.
It’s one of those damnable names, so ordinary it slips right out of the mind.”

“In good weather she likes to sit up at the bow. In a swim suit she’s worth the long look with the glasses.”

“She’s a gloriously lovely woman. You’ve looked at Maurice Weber too?”

I shrugged. “I wouldn’t know him if I saw him on the street. Heavy, slightly swarthy, thick dark gray hair.”

“I’ve seen him just enough times to notice something very odd about him, my boy.” Ack sat in his chair again and gave me that look which warned me I should soon applaud his cleverness. “Money, Samuel, works a curious transformation on any man. When you have had money long enough, it works its gentle magic for all the world to see. It affects dress, posture, carriage, the modulations of the voice, even the way you light a cigarette or lift a drink. It enables the happy possessor thereof to radiate a quiet confidence, a not unpleasant self-esteem.

“I could not pin down what it was that bothered me about Maurice Weber until one day I happened to see him walking from his Gulf beach toward his driveway gate, and he had the same manner that those people have who trespass around this neighborhood during the summer. There is a manner of arrogant apology about the man. A great interpretive dancer might walk that way to express insecurity, suspicion, and a sort of peasant surliness. Money has made no mark upon him.”

“Aren’t you getting pretty far out?” I asked him.

“We must consider our instincts in all things. And you must remember, Samuel, that this couple have not been so conspicuous in their insistence on privacy that they have defeated their own purpose. It’s been cleverly done. They’ve not excited the curiosity of the community.”

“Yours.”

“But I am uniquely nosey, my boy. On the whole nobody knows them, or gives a damn about knowing them. If the Haywood incident hadn’t come up, the anonymity would be almost complete and perfect. I am suspicious and a cynic.”

“And so?”

“And so it has all been too cleverly planned to be accidental. It is neither a normal use of money, nor a way of living that could be a matter of free will.”

“But how about the people we are always reading about who die alone in houses full of fifty years of junk, and millions in the bank.”

“A type. The eccentric recluse. Withered, suspicious, less than sane. Spinsters of both sexes, Samuel.” He finished the final quarter-inch of martini. “These Webers are not of that breed. Neither of them have the look of the introvert. But, bless me, I can think of no plausible reason for their … masquerade.”

“They robbed a bank.”

“In the curious illogic of a television script, that might be acceptable. But this is the era of IBM, of records, card files, the implacable assignment of identification numbers to this and that. Certainly the size of the land transaction and the construction project would come to the attention of earnest little men in Jacksonville. And they would want some assurance that our Mr. Weber was entirely clean with Internal Revenue. If you have successfully looted a bank, it is a very poor time to indulge yourself in conspicuous consumption. We must assume a certain degree of legitimacy, wouldn’t you say?”

“I … guess so, Ack.”

“If we can continue to believe that the sudden disappearance of Miss Gantry is linked in some way to the unknown status of the Webers, then it becomes imperative to learn more about the Webers.”

“So I take a try at the safe?”

“Sometimes you are discouragingly dull, Samuel.”

“It was like a joke.”

“Where did young Charlie start?”

“What? Oh, with the wife.”

“And if that is the area of vulnerability, it could work again.”

“Sure, Ack. I’ll ring the doorbell and ask for her. When I get a chance I give her the big wink, like this. And the leer. And I say, ‘How about it, chick?’ ”

He gave me a look of frosty impatience. “Is all this just a trivial thing to you?”

“I’m scared, Ack. I’m scared to death about Sis. Millhaus and his boys tramped through the Weber house. There doesn’t seem to be anywhere to go from here. I keep thinking she’ll turn up with a plausible excuse. But that’s just a Pollyanna, and I know it. So I make funnies because I’m a little clutched. The guy with the spear through the gut saying it hurts only when he laughs. What I
really
want to do is go the hell home and forget it.” I could feel the martinis, trying to talk.

“So go home, Samuel,” he said.

“I can’t.”

“You don’t owe anything to anybody. Isn’t that your design for living, dear boy? Non-involvement? They wouldn’t let you climb the apple tree any more, so you went home to sulk. Coming back to life can be too painful.”

“Get off me, Ack. For Chrissake.”

“I want you to see that you cannot toy with a partial involvement. Get in all the way or get out all the way.”

I did not answer him. All the light was gone. I could no longer see his face. Kishi came in and turned on two lamps with dark red shades. “Ritter time before chow,” he announced.

After he left the room I said, “I won’t drag my feet, Ack.”

“All the Gulf beaches below the high tide mark belong to all the people, Samuel. Mrs. Weber swims alone at dawn. At other times she uses their private pool. The only other times I have ever seen her on the beach is after a storm stooping and pouncing with that particular avidity characteristic
of the shell collector. My abortive attempts to strike up a conversation went over like a clay glider.”

He went over to a glass-front case to the left of the fireplace, selected a shell and brought it back and handed it to me. It was about three inches across, conical, black with gaudy blotches of white.

“This one should do,” he said. “We must assume that extreme rarity would make her suspicious, if she knows anything about shells. And you will see that this one is not perfect. It’s a magpie, or
Livona pica.
It is very abundant as a Pleistocene fossil, but more rare now. Of course it is much too clean. You’ll have to soak it in salt water and pack it with beach sand. You can give it to her, if it seems to work.”

“The shell game,” I said.

“Plus your primitive charm, of course. Is beefcake in the proper argot? Women are supposed to have a special primordial response to any male who looks capable of slaying a saber-toothed tiger with a Stone Age ax.”

“Leroy Luxey would weigh about one hundred and twenty-nine, club and all.”

“Chow,” Kishi said firmly.

5

I
spent the first two hours of Wednesday morning on D. Ackley Bush’s hundred feet of Gulf beach, fuddling around in a faded old pair of swim trunks, feeling conspiratorial and foolish. Along the gentle crescent of the beach I could see the emptiness of the beach in front of the Weber place. The only soul I saw was a leathery old man two hundred yards north of me, spincasting with timeless patience.