Where Is Janice Gantry? (15 page)

Her blush was as pretty as the warm morning. “Darn you, stop hedging.”

“I liked Sis. I still do. I needed her. I got over needing her. It wasn’t anything anybody has to be ashamed of. You would like her too.”

She shivered. “It’s all so dark and creepy and strange, all of it. I don’t know what to think. Sam, I would feel better if you sort of kissed me. Not in an important way or anything. Just for close.”

And so I did. It was a special sweetness. It soon showed all the signs of becoming very important indeed, and so with simultaneous impulse, we ended it.

“I’ve known you at least ten years,” she said. “It’s so odd.”

“We have a twenty-four hour anniversary coming up.”

She held my wrist tightly. “Maybe you’ve sort of built the whole thing up out of nothing. I mean maybe Maurice and Charity are just … what they seem.”

“He was seeing her … Charlie Haywood was.”

“Which must have taken some very tricky planning.”

“She let him go to prison. He could have gotten the schedule from her. She couldn’t know about the boat breaking down. He was doing something she had talked him into doing. He took that risk for her.”

“She seems very nervous and restless, much more so than last year.”

“During the two weeks you were here last year, did Weber ever mention his background?”

“Never.”

“That’s too damn odd to be real, Peggy.”

“What’s in that safe?”

“Money, probably. So Charlie and Charity could run off together.”

“But she lives so well. And that has always been important to her. The luxuries. Servants, a big house.”

“You’re sensitive to the way people feel. What’s the relationship between those two, Peggy?”

“Well … they’re very quiet and sort of polite to each other. But … maybe I’m imagining it, but it’s like the way people would have to be if they were on an island and knew they couldn’t get off. Do you know what I mean?”

“I think so.”

“You have to adapt to something that exists, I guess, or wear yourself out fighting it. He’s in charge, Sam. There’s no question about that. She seems to wait for some clue from him before going ahead with anything, and she has a sort of anxiety about pleasi … no, not pleasing him … about not crossing him.”

“Any affection at all?”

“None! Not a smidgen. And no love either. But … pretty strong and pretty obvious in the sex bracket. I have the feeling it isn’t as hefty this year as last year, Sam, but I haven’t been here very long. He’s a very … I don’t know how to say it. An animal kind of a man. And it’s always at his option. It made me feel quite strange last year. It could be morning, afternoon or evening, and he would get a kind of lowering look, and pretty soon there’d be some word or gesture and off she would go with him, meek and humble and obedient. But it was all done in such a cold way.”

“And no clue to his background?”

“I think he’s quite an ignorant man, Sam. He has very little to say. When he forgets himself, his grammar is poor. He opens doors and things like that, but his table manners are frightful, really. He gobbles. Everything is gone in a minute. He has no … air of importance. I don’t know how to say it. I don’t want to sound like a snob. But he’s like a man who came to fix the drains and happened to move in and take over somehow.”

“What’s she like?”

Peggy shrugged. “I guess she’s seen and done everything there is. And some of it was nasty. From forty feet away, in her swim suit, baking beside the pool, she looks like a show girl. She knows how to walk and sit and stand. Sometimes, in a sort of frenzy, she fights that pool until she is almost too exhausted to climb out of it. She spends hours on her face and figure, nails and hair. When she talks she has too much fake animation in her face … a lot of business with the eyebrows … which is the show biz syndrome, I guess. I don’t know whether she strained her voice singing or whether whiskey did the trick, but it’s a kind of baritone whisper if you can imagine that. When you see her face close up, even when she’s using the forced animation, you suddenly realize it’s the most exhausted face in the whole world. Her eyes have been dead for a thousand years. Her teeth are capped. I don’t know why I came back here. My family has the vacation address. But they don’t know who she really is.”

“Much drinking?”

“He takes it easy. She starts about four o’clock and builds, so she’s quietly bagged come bedtime. But never sloppy drunk. Just very remote.”

“Does she ever go out alone in that convertible?”

“What convertible? There’s only one car, that four-year-old Continental. It hasn’t got much mileage on it, though.”

“That’s the way I think she met Charles Haywood, when
they went to Mel Fifer’s agency and bought a convertible for cash. Charlie was a salesman there. And maybe that gave her the freedom of action so she could meet him.”

“I guess it was sold. There’s only the one car. What would she do with a car? She never goes anywhere.”

“Not any more. How about the servants?”

“Three very nice, quiet, inconspicuous people. Stan Chase has all the instincts of a hermit. He coddles the
Sea Queen
as if he owned it. The Mahlers tend strictly to business, and they keep the relationship sort of … formal, but they are kindly people, I think.”

The sun had hoisted itself high enough to bring customers to the public beach. They stared at us with open curiosity.

“Let’s hike back,” she said, and yawned.

After a silent few minutes she said, “Sam?”

“Yes, honey.”

“Mmm. Unplanned term of endearment. Sam, I know what you want to ask and I can guess why you think you shouldn’t ask it of me.”

“Yes?”

“But I’ll do it anyway. I’ll be the girl spy, dauntless adventuress. And report to you, sir.”

“There may be nothing to find out.”

“There’s
something
to find out. And maybe it won’t have anything at all to do with that Charlie or your Sis friend …”

“You snarl when you mention her.”

“Simple, inexplicable jealousy. Be flattered.”

“I’m flattered.”

“You’re even smug. As I was saying, it may not solve your mystery, but maybe I can solve the mystery of Maurice and Charity. The more I think about them, the more strange they seem.”

“Without sounding like your maiden aunt, Peggy, please be damn careful. Meddling got one person a five year jail term. Whatever he doesn’t want found out, he’s taking a lot
of pains and money to protect. I don’t think it would be a healthy thing to have him find out you’re prying.”

She smiled up at me. “Thank you, Auntie.” And it did seem a little absurd in that reassuring warmth of the early sun.

“She’s been mixed up with the law.”

“Along time ago.”

“They’re both hiding from something, and they don’t want to be found.”

“Pure assumption.”

“Play it like dangerous, Peggy. Will you do that?”

“Sure. I like the protective bit. I like you, Sam. I like you one hell of a lot. Will you keep that in mind?”

“Permanently.”

“I am not a vacationing cupcake looking for a fast romp with no boring complications.”

“You didn’t have to say that, you know.”

“When I’m clarifying my own attitude, you hush up.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“This was the best evening I’ve had in this last fifth of my life, Sam.”

“It’s been hard to find this kind any more.”

“Since Sis?”

“For God’s sake!”

She laughed at me. “I can make you look like a wounded moose. That gives me a sense of power. When do I sneak out and meet you again?”

“Tonight?”

“When else? Same time, same place, same girl.”

I checked where we were. “Two miles shouldn’t be that short,” I said. “We’ve walked past the shoes and purse.”

“It’s all auto-hypnosis. I’ve read about it.”

We went back and picked up her stuff. As she straightened up she said, “Left one thing out, didn’t you?”

“Probably. But what?”

“Yesterday morning, when you stared at me in that strange way. It’s because I look like Judy?”

“How would you know that?”

“Nothing else could have made you react that way. Do I look too much like her?”

“What would be too much?”

“Where you wouldn’t really be seeing me. You’d be seeing a ghost.”

“No. I see you now. The face is different. The hair is different.”

“Something else is different, Sam.”

“What’s that?”

“The heart is different. I am a steady girl. I have the constant heart. You should run like a rabbit, Sam. When I make a commitment, all the cards go face up, and facing you. So if you have been trying to be a different person all night, trying to fit yourself to me, and you are not at all what you have been pretending to be, then you had best run. I mean it.”

“I think this is what I am, Peggy. Does anybody ever really know?”

“I can play ten thousand little games, but no big games. Am I alarming you?”

No eyes could be steadier than those of a green such as I had never seen before. The left one was set a half-millimeter higher than the right one, and the left brow had a slightly higher arch.

Without taking my eyes from hers, I said, “The eyelashes are like dark copper, but the eyebrows are darker.”

“I cheat with the eyebrows. With a pencil thing. I build up the upper lip with lipstick. I have two moles at the small of my back. I get very messy head colds. I’ve been known to throw things in anger.”

“I’m not alarmed, Peggy.”

She stepped back close to the tree, lifted her arms and
said, “Let’s try this one for importance, Brice.” She dropped the purse, the shoes.

It was important. Perhaps a kiss—which is objectively a ludicrous thing, a joining of mouths—is a special form of interrogation and response. We told each other that this could never be a trivial thing. It could be a lot of things, tender, strong, savage and sweet. But never trivial.

The sound of the car heading north on Orange Road broke it up. I saw Luxey go by at the wheel of a county car.

“That’s the polite little man who didn’t want me to wander around in the dark,” she said.

“That’s the polite little man who collapsed me with a night stick.”

“
That
one?”

“A viper is a very small thing. So is a scorpion. So is a flu germ.” I picked up the purse and shoes.

“Thank you. I’m drunk on morning air and no sleep and being kissed, Sam.”

“It’s a good way to be.”

I walked her to the strip of Weber beach. A deeply tanned woman came down the narrow path through the sea oats. She wore a vivid yellow swim suit with a small skirt effect, and carried a matching beach bag. She was handsomely built, and I knew at once that this was the floozy hair Gus had seen in Charlie’s car. It was worn long, and it was as spurious as a new dime, lifeless as the flax on a store window dummy.

She registered shock and said to Peggy, in an aspirated croak, “I thought you were in bed asleep!” She seemed to be aware only of Peggy, but I could see the physical response to me, an arching of the back, a graceful hip-shot stance, shoulders squared to lift the breasts, belly pulled flat.

“Char, may I present Sam Brice. Sam, this is my sister, Charity Weber.”

Charity managed a dim smile to go with a look like that of a butcher about to grade and disjoint a side of beef. “How
do,” she said. “Peggy, why are you dressed like that? When did you go out?”

“Last night, dear. Somewhere around ten. And I happened to run into Sam.”

“Where have you been?”

“Leading a gay, mad, dancing life, Char.”

The woman stared at her. I saw that the deep tan masked some of the corrosion of that face. “Are you drunk, darling?” she asked.

“Just happy. Char, I was going to sneak in and then sneak out again tonight to date Sam again, but now I don’t have to sneak any more, do I?”

Mrs. Weber was in an awkward spot. “Maurice says we have.… uh.… a responsibility to you, dear, so long as you’re our house guest. I don’t think he’ll approve of this. I don’t think he’ll like it at all.”

“What a shame!” Peggy said. “I’ll have to take the rest of my vacation in a local motel. I couldn’t upset Maurice.”

“You know you’re welcome to stay with us, darling.”

“And go out with Sam. I want that understood, Char.”

Charity Weber wheeled on me, suddenly she had everything working for her, the eyes, the mouth, the figure, all of it aggressive, provocative, flirtatious and ironic. I could see how that practised impact would have blinded Charlie Haywood to the difference in their ages, to the fact of her marriage. Innocent Charlie had been a mouse sandwich for a panther. For the sake of all that humid promise he would have marched woodenly off to pillage Fort Knox.

“You
are
a big beastie, Sam Brice,” she croaked.

“It keeps me out of sports cars.”

“Local, aren’t you, Sam?” she asked.

“Incurably, Mrs. Weber. I went out into the wide world but they didn’t appreciate me out there, and so I came home.”

“I compliment your taste, Big Sam. This lovely little sister of mine is a rare kind of creature. Do you sense that?”

“From the first.”

“And I have so few house guests, Sam.” She moved closer to me. “I do want to enjoy her while she’s here. I guess it’s only normal she should have the occasional date. You won’t be greedy will you?”

“I work for my living, Mrs. Weber.”

“I can spare her in the evening, Sam, but if you keep her out all night she’ll sleep all day.”

“It makes me feel strange to have you two splitting me up,” Peggy complained.

“I’ll be more conservative next time,” I said.

“You can come and call for me properly,” Peggy said.

“Just stop in front, Sam,” Charity said. “You don’t have to come to the door. I know it’s rude, but Mr. Weber doesn’t like callers. People upset him. He’s a very shy man. That’s why we aren’t … very social people.” She patted my arm quickly. “I think you’re going to be very nice about the whole thing, aren’t you?”

“Intensely cooperative,” I said.

She gave me a somewhat dubious look, then smiled and said, “You children say good night or good morning or whatever it is, while I swim.”