Georgia on My Mind and Other Places (31 page)

“I’m sorry, Tom.” I interrupted his description of the “$1.00 Trans-Mississippi” commemorative stamp, one of his favorites. “But I’ve got to pay the check and go now. I promised Mrs. Lockyer that I’d be over to see her this evening at her apartment.”

He nodded. “Ready when you are, Rachel.”

He seemed to assume that he was going with me. I hadn’t intended it, but it made sense. If I were considering adding him to the payroll it was a near-certainty that Eleanor Lockyer would want to talk to him. (Though I was not sure that I wanted to expose him to
her
.)

The Lockyer apartment was out in yuppie-land on Massachusetts Avenue, far from any subway stop. Tom Walton’s car received an incredulous look from the guard at the main entrance, but when we told him who we were going to see he couldn’t refuse to let us in. We parked between a Mercedes 560 and an Audi 5000. Tom carefully checked that all his car doors were locked.

As we went inside and entered the elevator I decided that the second cup of coffee had been a mistake. I have an incipient ulcer, and my stomach hurt. Then I decided that the coffee was not to blame. What was getting to me was the prospect of another meeting with Eleanor Lockyer.

She was on the telephone when the maid ushered us in, and she took her time in finishing the conversation. We were not invited to sit down. She was obviously preparing to go out, because she was wearing a long dress and a cape that my year’s income would not have paid for. I introduced Tom Walton as someone who was helping me with the investigation. She gave him the briefest of glances with bored gray eyes, dismissed him as a nonentity, and waved her arm at the table.

“Jason’s mail for the past two days. I haven’t looked at most of it, but you probably want to open it all and see what’s there.”

“I’ll do that,” I said. Tom Walton began to edge his way over to the stack of letters and envelopes.

“Right. You’ve been working on this for four days now. I hope you have results. What have you found out?”

“Quite a bit. We’re making good progress.” The tone in her voice was so critical I felt obliged to overstate what I had done. “First, we can rule out any possibility of kidnapping. Wherever he went, his trip was planned. The woman who cleaned the apartment in Baltimore is sure that there are a couple of suitcases missing, along with his clothes and toilet articles. She also thinks there are some spaces in the bookcases, but she can’t remember what books used to be there, though they were in the middle of a group of books about single-celled plants and animals. Second, he’s almost certainly still somewhere in this country. His passport was in his study here. Third—the absolute clincher, in my opinion—he left his notes for the rest of the semester with his teaching assistant at the university. Fourth—”

“But
where
is he?” she interrupted.

“I don’t know.”

“And you call that
progress?
You’re telling me he could be anywhere in fifty states, millions of square miles, and you’ve no idea where, or how to find him. That’s not what I’m paying you for. What good does that do me?”

“It’s part of the whole investigative process. We have to rule out certain possibilities before I can explore others. For instance, now that we know he wasn’t abducted against his will—Mrs. Lockyer, I don’t know an easy way to ask this; but is there any chance that Jason Lockyer might have had a girlfriend?”

She didn’t laugh. She sneered. “Jason? Why not ask a sensible question? He has the sex drive of a lettuce. One woman in his life is too much for him.”

You’d be too much for most people.
But that’s the sort of thing you think and don’t say. Fortunately I didn’t have to ask a “sensible question” because we were interrupted by a loud whistle from Tom Walton.

“Look at this letter!” he said. “Professor Lockyer is going to be awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society, for his work on bacterial DNA transfer. That’s really great.”

It was a breakthrough, of sorts. It proved that Tom Walton was interested in something other than postage stamps.

But it did nothing for Eleanor Lockyer. She changed the direction of her scorn. “That’s just the sort of nonsense I’ve had to put up with for five years. Bacteria, and worms, and slimes. If anyone deserves a medal it’s
me
, having to live with that sort of rubbish.” The buzzer sounded. She looked at her watch, then at me. “I must say, I’m most disappointed and dismayed by your lack of progress. You have to do better or I’m certainly not going to keep on paying you for nothing. Get to work. Look at this apartment again, and go over that mail with a toothcomb. When you are finished here Maria will let you out. I have to go. General Shellstock’s limousine is waiting downstairs and the general asked me to be on time.”

She was turning to leave when Tom Walton said quietly, “Walter Shellstock, by any chance?”

“Yes. He’s visiting Washington for a few days.”

“Say hello.”

“Hello? You mean from
you
?”

“Sure. Wally Shellstock’s my godfather.”

It was a pleasure to watch Eleanor Lockyer’s reaction. Her bottom lip went down so far that I could see the receding gum-line on her lower teeth, and she said, “
You.
You’re . . . But who . . . ?”

She had forgotten his name, or never registered it when I introduced them.

He realized her problem. “Well, in business I just use Tom Walton. But my full name is Thomas Walton Shellstock. Actually it’s Thomas Walton Shellstock the Fourth, though I don’t know why anyone would care about counting the numbers.”

“The
Pennsylvania
Shellstocks?”

“That’s right. Well, have fun with Wally.” Tom turned back to the pile of letters, peering at each one and ignoring Eleanor.

I’ve never seen a woman so torn. The buzzer sounded again, this time more urgently. She turned toward the door, but then she hurried back and took Tom by the arm.

“Thomas, I’m having a small dinner party here next week. I’d love it if you could come.”

“Send me an invitation. Rachel has my address.”

“Of course. You and . . .” She turned to give me a look of frustration. It meant, I sure as hell don’t want to have to invite
you
, you’re the hired help—but I’m not sure what your relationship is to Thomas Walton Shellstock, and if you two are screwing I may have to include you just to get him.

“Both of you,” she said at last. Tom didn’t give her another look, and finally she went out.

“You’d really come to her dinner party?” I said. I had a lot of questions but that seemed like the most important one.

“What do you think? Saying ‘send me an invitation’ is a lot easier than saying no in person.”

“What are the Pennsylvania Shellstocks? She almost dropped her teeth.”

“Ah.” He had finished looking at the stamps on the unopened letters, and now he was sitting idly at the table. “‘Old money, my d-dear,’” he said in a falsetto. “‘The only
real
kind of money.’ That’s what people like Mrs. Lockyer say—and that’s why I don’t use my full name. We happen to have rather a lot of it—money, I mean, no thanks to me. Isn’t she revolting?”

“I wondered if it was just me. When I hear her talk about her husband it doesn’t sound like she wants me to find him. It sounds like she wants me to prove he’s
dead
.”

“I don’t understand why they’re married at all. You said he’s in his sixties, she can’t be more than forty.”

“Forty-five, if she’s a day,” I said. Pure malice. “His first wife died—he’s got grown-up kids, and contacting them is on my agenda. Eleanor knew a good thing when she saw one. No responsibilities, lots of money—so she grabbed him.”

“No children in this marriage?”

“Perish the thought. Children, my dear, they’re such a
nuisance
. And having them is so
messy
.”

He was laughing without making a sound. “And worse than that, my dear, I’m told it actually
hurts
. Rachel, it’s none of my business but I think you have a problem.”

“Mrs. Lockyer? Don’t I know it.”

“I wasn’t thinking of that. From what you said it’s quite obvious that Jason Lockyer disappeared because he wanted to disappear. If he intended his wife to know about it he’d have told her. So now you’re trying to go against what he wanted, just to please her. Doesn’t that give you fits?”

“Tom, she’s my
client
.”

“So drop her, my dear.”

“Right. And find at the end of the month I can’t pay the rent. I’m in a funny business, Tom. Some of my clients are people you’d cross the street to avoid meeting. And I won’t even touch the worst cases, the bitter divorce settlements and the child abusers. But the nice, normal people of the world don’t seem to have much need for detectives.”

There was a conscience inside all that fat, because after a moment he shook his head and said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that, it’s not my business.”

“No, and it never will be. Know why, Tom? Because you’re
rich
.” I was angry but most of it was guilt. He was right, I shouldn’t be hounding Jason Lockyer just to please Eleanor Lockyer. “You don’t have the same pressures on you. I saw your face when I offered you three hundred and fifty dollars a day to work on this. A lousy three-fifty, you thought, that isn’t worth bothering with. Why do you run that stamp store at all if you don’t need money? Why don’t you do something
important
?”

There must be a branch of etiquette that says you don’t harangue near-strangers; but poor Tom Walton didn’t feel like a stranger, so I unloaded on him.

After a few moments he sighed. “All right, all right. I’ll help you look for Jason Lockyer. And why do I run the stamp store? I’ll tell you, I do it to
avoid
conversations like this—with my own damned family. They’re all overachievers, and they went on at me for years, telling me to go out and change the world—run for public office, or buy a position on the New York Stock Exchange, or win a Nobel Prize.” His voice was becoming steadily louder. “I don’t want to do
any
of those things. I want a nice, peaceful life, looking at interesting things. And no one else is willing to let me do that! That’s one nice thing about stamps. The family accepts that I’m running a business, they stay away and the stamps don’t
harass
you.”

That was the moment when I began to revise my opinion of Tom Walton. I had neatly pegged him as a pleasant, shy, introverted, and slightly kooky young man, preferring stamps to people, silence to speeches, and solitude to most types of company. I didn’t think he knew how to shout. Now I saw another side of him, stronger and more determined. Anyone who got between Tom and what he wanted was in for a tough time.

Maria had heard the noise from another room of the apartment—she could have heard it from
any
room, and maybe out in the street. She appeared at the door and politely asked us if we were ready to leave. We were. Both of us became subdued. Thomas Walton Shellstock (the Fourth) drove me back to my apartment on Connecticut Avenue. We didn’t speak.

As he stopped in front of the building he said: “I hate all this, Rachel. Really hate it. I’m not interested in looking for Jason Lockyer, and if I see his wife ever again that will be too soon.”

I reached over and switched off the ignition key. “I know how you must feel,” I said. “But I hope you’ll decide to stick with it. It would be easy for you to say to hell with it, and quit. I feel the same way myself, but you know I can’t do that. For one thing I need the money, and for another I could get a complaint that will cost me my license. And I need your help on this—you can see I’m floundering. Please, Tom. Don’t back out now.”

It was unfair pressure, and I knew it. After a couple of silent moments Tom lifted his head to look up at the front of the building.

“Oh, hell,” he said. “If you want to, bring that lousy golliwog stamp around to my store tomorrow morning.”

(Looking back, I see this as the critical moment when I began to use Tom Walton’s essential niceness to ease him out of his shell. And if it was also the first step in saving or destroying the world, that’s another matter—I certainly didn’t suspect it at the time.)

I opened the door and stepped out. “Thanks, Tom,” I said. “You’re a real nice guy and I won’t forget this. See you about ten o’clock. Good night.”

I walked away quickly. I wanted to be inside the lobby before he could tell me he had changed his mind.

* * *

I had taken the liberty of carrying Jason Lockyer’s newly arrived mail away in my purse from the Lockyer apartment. After all, Eleanor had just about ordered me to take it away and study it.

After two coffees and that conversation with Tom Walton I knew it was going to be difficult to go to sleep (yes, I have a conscience, too). I didn’t even try. I spread out the mail on the kitchen table and began to go through it piece by piece. About half-past eleven I had a breakthrough, courtesy of the U.S. Postal Service. It’s rare to thank the USPS for slow service, but I was ready to do it.

Although the letters had all been delivered to Lockyer’s apartment that morning or the day before, one of them had been
mailed
nearly three weeks earlier. It should have reached Jason Lockyer long before he left for parts unknown, but of course it hadn’t.

It bore a first-class postage stamp and a near-illegible postmark. I could make out the date and the letters “CO”—Colorado—at the bottom, but the town name was impossible. The handwritten envelope was addressed to Professor Jason Lockyer. Inside was a second envelope, this time with nothing written on it—but there was a golliwog stamp in the upper right corner. And inside
that
was the following typed message:

I think it’s time to give you another progress report, even though it’s sooner than I said. Seven and Eight are running along so-so, nothing much different from what you heard about in my last report. But Nine
—
you’d never believe Nine if you didn’t see it for yourself. It’s still changing, and no one can estimate an end-point. The crew are supposed to go inside in another week. Marcia says we’ll be in no danger and she wants us to stay there longer than usual. She’s done something new on the DNA splicing, and she believes that Nine is moving to a totally different limit, one with a Strange Attractor we’ve never seen before. She thinks it may be the one we’ve been searching for all along. Me, I’m afraid it may be the ultimate boss system
—
the real Mega-Mother. Certainly the efficiency of energy utilization is fantastic
—
more than double any of the others, and still increasing.