The Dreadful Lemon Sky (5 page)

I went into the front office of Superior Building Supplies. A slender and pretty girl in a dress made of ticking was taking file folders out of a metal file and putting them into a cardboard storage file. She straightened and looked at me and said in a nasal little voice, "It isn't until Monday."

"What isn't?"

"The special sale of everything. They're taking inventory over the weekend. And right now."

"Going out of business?"

She went over to her desk and picked up a can of Coke and drank several swallows. She gave me a long look of appraisal.

"We sure the hell are," she said finally. She shook her gingery hair back and wiped her pretty mouth with the back of her hand, then belched like any boy in the fifth grade.

A man came through the open door that led back to the warehouse portion. He had a clipboard in his hand. He was sweaty and he had a smudge of grease on his forehead. Lots of redbrown hair, carefully sprayed into position. Early thirties. Outdoor look. Western shirt with a lot of snaps and zippers. Whipcord pants. Boots. A nervous harried look and manner.

"We're not open for business, friend. Sorry. Joanna, find me the invoices on that redwood fencing, precut, huh?"

"Cheez, I keep telling you and telling you, it was Carrie knew where all that-"

"Carrie isn't here to help us, goddammit. So shake your ass and start looking."

"Listen, Harry, I don't even know if I'm going to get paid for this time I'm putting in, right?"

"Joanna, honey, of course you'll get your pay. Come on, dear. Please find the invoices for me?"

She gave him a long dark stare, underlip protruding. "Buster, you've been talking just a little too much poremouth. Just a little too much. And you've been getting evil with me too often, hear? I think you better go doodle in your hat. I'm going to go get my hair done. I might come back and I might retire. Who knows?"

She slung her big leather purse over her shoulder. He tried to block her way to the door. He was begging, pleading, insisting. She paid no attention to him. There was no expression on her face. When he took hold of her arm she wrenched away and left, and the glass door swung shut.

Harry went over to a big desk and sat in the large red leather chair. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. He sighed and looked at me and frowned. "Friend, we are still not open for business. We are even less open than we were. Let me give you some sound advice. Never hump the help. They get uppity. They take advantage."

"I came by to ask about Carrie Milligan."

"She used to work here. She's dead. What's your interest?"

"I heard she was killed. I'm a friend of hers from Fort Lauderdale."

"Didn't she used to live there?"

A bare-chested young man in jeans came out of the warehouse area and held up two big bolts. "Mr. Hascomb, you want I should count every damn one of these things? There's thousandsl"

"Hundreds. Count how many in five pounds and then, weigh all we got. That'll be close enough."

The boy left, and Harry Hascomb shook his head and said, "It's hard to believe she's dead. She worked day before yesterday. That's her desk over there. It happened so sudden. She really held this place together. She was a good worker, Carrie was. What did you say you want?"

"She came to see me two weeks ago. In Fort Lauderdale."

He was so still I wondered if he was holding his breath. He licked his lips and swallowed and said, "Two weeks ago?"

"Does that mean anything?"

"Why should it mean anything?"

I did not know where to go from there. The loan of money seemed all at once frail and implausible. I needed to find a better direction. "She came to see me because she was in trouble."

"Trouble? What kind of trouble?"

"She wanted to leave something with me for safekeeping. It happened it wasn't the best time for me to try to take care of anything for anybody. There are times you can, and times you shouldn't. I hated to say I couldn't. I was very fond of Carrie Milligan."

"Everybody was. What did she want you to keep?"

"Some money."

"How much?"

"She didn't say. She said it was a lot. When I heard about her being killed in that accident, I began to wonder if she'd found anybody to hold the money. Would you know anything about anything like that?"

Once again Harry went into his motionless trance, looking over my shoulder and into the faraway distance. It took him a long time. I wondered what he was sorting, weighing, appraising.

At last he shook his head slowly. "My God, I wouldn't have believed it. She must have been in on it."

"In on what?"

He undid a snap and a zipper and fingered a cigarette out of his Western pocket, popped it against a thumbnail, lit it and blew out a long plume of smoke. "Oh, shit, it's an old story. It happens all the time. You never expect it to happen to you."

"What happened?"

"What's your name again?"

"McGee. Travis McGee."

"Don't ever go partners with anybody McGee. That's my second piece of advice for you today. Jack and I had a good thing going here. My good old partner, Jack Omaha. It wasn't exactly a fantastic gold mine, but we lived very well for quite a few years. And then the ass fell right off the construction business. We had to cut way back. Way way back. Trying to hold out until conditions improve. I think we might have made it. Things are looking a little bit better. I've always been the sales guy and Jack was the office guy. Anyway, he took off two weeks ago last Tuesday. On May fourteenth. Know what he was doing before he took off? Selling off warehouse stock at less than cost. Letting the bills pile up. Turning every damned thing into money. The auditors are trying to come up with the total figure. I'm a bankrupt. Good old Jack. Come to think of it, I guess he had to have Carrie's help to clean the place out. She only worked two days that week. Monday and Friday. Went out sick Monday afternoon. Came back in Friday. That was the day I finally decided Jack hadn't just gone fishing, that maybe he was gone for good. When did you see Carrie?"

"Thursday."

"It figures. I never figured her for anything like that. Even though she and Jack did have something going. No great big thing. It was going on for maybe three years, like ever since she started working for us. Just a little something on the side now and then. An over-nighter. What we used to do, we'd send the girls, Carrie and Joanna, on another flight up to Atlanta, and then Jack and me would go up to catch the Falcons and stay in the HJ's next to the stadium. Just some laughs."

"And you think that was the money Carrie wanted me to keep for her?"

"Where else would she get it? Maybe Jack wanted her to run away with him. He was more hooked than she was, you know. Think of it this way. She helps him and gets a nice piece of change, and everybody thinks Jack took it all. When the dust settles, she can get the money and who'd know the difference?"

"Except she's dead."

"Yes, there's that. I want to make one thing clear, McGee. If you come across that money it belongs right here in this business. It was stolen from this business. It was stolen from me, and if you find it, it belongs right here."

"I'll keep that in mind."

He squashed his cigarette out. "None of this had to happen," he said softly. "I wake up in the night and think about it. If I'd had the sense when the money was rolling in, I would have put it in a safe place. Instead I farted it away on boats and cars and houses. If I'd kept it, I could have bought Jack out when things got slow. I could have squeaked through. In the night I think about it and I get sweaty and I feel like my gut was full of sharp rocks."

"What will happen?"

"I have to sell off what we've got left and throw it in the pot. It gets divided up among the creditors. I guess I'll lose the house too, maybe the cars. Then I'll start hitting my friends for a job. That son of a bitch said he was going fishing Tuesday and he'd be in Wednesday, and he said he had some money lined up to tide us over. I wanted to believe him. By Friday I got worried. I got some phone calls about bills I thought were paid. I called Chris. Jack's wife. She didn't know where the hell he was. She thought he was off in the boat somewhere. I phoned the marina and the boat was tied up there, nobody aboard. You know what? I just remembered. I had Carrie check out the bank accounts. She acted like she hated to tell me he had cleaned them out. He'd left ten bucks in each of them. He's a wanted man. I brought charges. I signed papers. It was on the news. I hope they find the son of a bitch, and I hope he has a lot of money left when they find him."

"You never thought Carrie was involved?"

"Not until you told me about her being in Lauderdale when I thought she was sick in bed. Not until you told me she wanted you to hold a lot of money for her. I swear. I mean I thought Jack was smarter than let some girl in on a thing like that. I wouldn't ever give Joanna any kind of leverage. I guess it was just that she kept a close enough eye on the books, he couldn't work it without her help. And, knowing that, she cut herself in pretty good. Maybe she.was afraid Jack might come back to her for the money."

"Did you case her as a thief?"

"Her! I thought I was surrounded by friends. I guess they decided that since the business was going to fold no matter what anybody did, the thing to do was grab the goodies and run. Like maybe running into a burning motel and grabbing a wallet. Shit, maybe I would have cleaned the place out first if I'd thought of it before Jack did. And if I knew how. I wonder where Jack is now. Brazil?"

For once Meyer followed my standing instructions. He came in and folded his arms and leaned against the wall beside the door. He didn't say a word.

"We're closed," Harry told him.

I said, "He's with me."

Harry stared at him. Meyer stared back, letting his underlip and his eyelids sag. With all that hair and with that inch of simian forehead he looked so baleful as to be almost subhuman. Of course the effect is ruined if he opens his professorial mouth.

Harry swallowed and said, "Oh. Uh… what kind of work are you in, Mr. McGee?"

He rolled a yellow pencil under his palm, the flat sides clicking against the top of the desk. I let him roll it four times before I said, "Oh, I guess you could call it investments."

He smiled too brightly. "Want to buy a nice building-supply business?"

I gave it a slow four count while the smile faded.

"No."

The kid came out of the warehouse again. "For Chrissake, there's supposed to be almost two dozen wheelbarras and I can't find a good goddamn one out there."

"Wait a second," Harry said. He took a sheet of letterhead, turned it over, and with a marking pen printed C L O S E D on it, and put pieces of Scotch tape on the corners. He stood up and said to me, "Nice to have met you, Mr. McGee."

"I'll stay in touch," I said. It didn't seem to make him happy.

After we left I looked back and saw him tape the sign to the inside of the glass door.

Meyer said, "What kind of fantasy were you selling him in there?"

"I was making it up as I went along. I was throwing in stuff to keep him talking. I dropped the loan idea."

As I drove slowly back toward town, I briefed Meyer on what I had learned. Then it was his turn. He gave it such a long dramatic pause, I knew he had done well. Why shouldn't he do well? I have busted my gut to learn how to make people open up. Meyer was born with it. A loving empathy shines out of those little bright-blue eyes. Strangers tell him things they have never told their husband or their priest.

He said that the secretary to the president of the Bayside Ladder Company Inc., was one Betty Joller and, being Carrie Milligan's best friend, Betty was all racked up over the accident. Once upon a time Betty and Carrie and girls named Flossie Speck and Joanna Freeler had shared a little old frame house on the waterfront, at 28 Mangrove Lane. When Carrie moved out, they had gotten another girl to share rent and expenses. Meyer couldn't recall the new girl's name.

Anyway, Carrie Milligan was at the Rucker Funeral Home on Florida Boulevard, and there was to be a memorial service for her tomorrow, Saturday morning, at eleven o'clock. The sister, Susan Dobrovsky, was down from Nutley. She had arrived late last night. Betty Joller had picked her up at the airport and taken her to the Holiday Inn.

"You did well!" I told him. "Very very well." It made him beam with pleasure.

I found 1500 Seaway Boulevard. I reminded him that Carrie had lived in 38B. I dropped him off and told him to see what he could get from the neighbors, and then work his own way back to Westway Harbor, and wait for me there if I wasn't back yet.

There were two cars in the carport at the Omaha place, and a fairly new cream-colored Oldsmobile in the driveway. A little wrought-iron sign was stuck into the parched grass, spelling out THE OMAHAS.

They give the development houses names. This was probably called The Executive or The Diplomat. It looked like eighty to ninety thousand, the top of the line for the neighborhood. Purchase would guarantee membership in the Carolridge Golf and Country Club. You could read the house from the outside. Three bedrooms, three and a half baths, colonial kitchen, game room, cathedral ceilings, patio pool, fiberglass screening.

I pushed the button and heard the distant chimes inside. Bugs keened in the heat. Some little girls went creaking and grinding past on their Sears ten-speeds, giggling. Somebody was running some kind of lawn machinery three houses away. A cardinal was sitting on a wire, saying T-bird, T-bird, T-bird-cool, cool, cool. I pushed the button again. And finally again. Just as I was about to give up, a woman opened the door. She had a broad, coarse, pretty face. She wore fresh lipstick, a sculptured blond wig, tiedye jeans, and a white sunback blouse with no sleeves.

"Mrs. Omaha?"

"Yes. We were out in the back. I hope you haven't been ringing the doorbell long?"

"Not very long."

"I didn't know you'd come so soon. What happens is I keep getting a dial tone all the time, even when I'm trying to talk to somebody." She had a thin little-girl voice. She had the dazed glazed manner of someone awakened from deep sleep. Her mouth was puffy, her eyes heavy. The fresh lipstick missed its mark at one corner of her mouth. The sculptured wig was slightly off center. There was a red suck mark on the side of her throat, slowly disappearing as I looked at it. "I'm not from the phone company," I said.

Her gaze sharpened. "Oh, boy, you better not try telling me you're selling something. You just better not try that."

"My name is McGee. Travis McGee from Fort Lauderdale. A friend of Carrie Milligan."

She was puzzled. "So what? What do you want here?"

"Did I come at a bad time?"

"Brother!"

"Suppose I come back later?"

"What for? Carrie is dead, right? Jack took off. Let's say they were very very good friends and I couldn't care less."

"I was talking to Harry over at Junction Park. He says Jack cleaned out the partnership accounts on May fourteenth. Carrie came down to Lauderdale to see me on the sixteenth. She was jumpy. She thought she was being followed. She gave me some money to keep for her."

"How much?"

"Maybe some other time would be…"

"Come on in, Mr. Gee. It's real hot this afternoon, isn't it?"

I followed her through the foyer to the long living room. She filled the rear of the stretch jeans abundantly. As she walked she reached up and patted the wig. The draperies were pulled shut. The subdued daylight came from the outdoor terrace area where, through the mesh of the drapery fabric, I could see a screened swimming pool as motionless as lime Jell-O in the white glare.

A tall and slender man stood in front of a mirror, combing his dark hair down with spread fingers. He wore a pair of quiet plaid slacks and a white shirt. His necktie hung untied. Over the back of a nearby chair I saw a dark blazer with silver buttons.

He said, "Honey, I'll get in touch again about the…"

He spotted me in the mirror. He whirled and said, "Who the hell are you?"

"This is Mr. Gee, Freddy."

"McGee," I said. "Travis McGee."

"This here is Fred Van Harn, my lawyer," Chris explained.

I put my hand out. He hesitated and then shook hands and gave me a very pleasant smile. "How do you do?"

"Honey I asked him in because he says he's got some of the money. Maybe he's got all of it. Tell him he has to give it to me, dear. Mr. McGee, it's my money."

I looked at her in astonishment. "I haven't got any money!"

"You said Carrie gave it to you to keep for her!"

"She did, but I gave it right back. I couldn't accept the responsibility."

"How much was it?" Chris Omaha demanded.

"I'm sure I wouldn't have the slightest idea. She said it was a lot. She didn't say how much. What is a lot to one person is not a lot to another person."

Chris said, "Oh, Goddamn everything." She plumped herself down on a fat hassock which hissed as she sat on it.

Freddy said, "Do you know who did agree to keep the money for her?"

"She didn't say who she was going to try next."

"Where did this happen? And when?"

"On Thursday May sixteenth, at about three or four in the morning aboard my houseboat moored at Bahia Mar in Fort Lauderdale."

"Why would she come to you?"

"Perhaps because she trusted me. We were old and good friends. I loaned her my houseboat for her honeymoon."

Freddy had long lashes, rather delicate features, olive skin. His eyes were a gentle brown, his manner ingratiating.

"Why did you come here, Mr. McGee?"

"I had a long talk with Mr. Hascomb. I just thought Mrs. Omaha would like to know about Mrs. Milligan coming to me. I thought it might answer some questions about her husband."

"You wouldn't listen to me, would you?" the woman said to Freddy in a whiny and irritating voice. "I told you that Milligan slut had to be in on it somehow, but you wouldn't listen to me. I happen to know as a fact that Jack was screwing her for years, even though he didn't know I knew, and-"

"Be quiet, Chris."

"You can't tell me to be quiet! You know what I think? He cleaned out the business and mortgaged everything in sight, this house and even the boat, and she was going to run off with him, but she probably had some boyfriend and they decided it was safer and easier to chunk my husband on the head and throw him into-"

He moved close to her. "Shut up, Chris!"

"I can put two and two together even if you can't, Freddy, and let me tell you one thing-" She didn't tell him one thing. He was one very fast fellow. He had a sinewy hand and a long whippy arm and a very nice clean pivot. He slapped her so fast and so hard I thought for one crazy moment he had shot her with a small caliber handgun. It knocked her completely off the hassock. She landed on her hip and rolled over onto her shoulder and ended up face down on the carpeting. He got to her quickly, turned her, and pulled her up to a sitting position. Her eyes were crossed. The impact area was white as milk. I knew it would turn pink, then red, and finally purple. She was going to be lopsided for quite a few days. A little trickle of blood ran from the corner of her mouth down her chin.

He sat on his heels, holding her hand, and said, "Darling, when your attorney tells you to be quiet, there might be a very good reason for it So you have to learn to be still when he tells you to."

"Freddy," she said in a broken voice.

He pulled, her up to her feet and turned her toward a doorway and gave her a little push. "Go in and lie down, darling. I'll come in and say good-by in a few minutes. Close the door, please."

She did as ordered. He turned mildly toward me and said, "Now let's understand where you fit, Mr. McGee. You just wanted to get involved?"

"Doing my duty as a citizen."

"I'm familiar with your type. The smell of money brings people like you out of the wood work. I can't think of a way you can work any kind of a con in this situation. So give up and go home."

"I'm familiar with your type too. I saw the way you tied that tie. Very quick and neat. Ready Freddy, servicing another client. I bet you're in and out of those clothes as often as a fashion model."

I saw the little flare behind his eyes and hoped he would try me. I tried to look smaller and slower than I am. Finally he smiled and looked at a microthin gold watch gold-clamped to a lean and hairy wrist.

"With a deposition at four o'clock, there's no time for schoolyard games, my friend."

"Nor will there ever be, eh?"

A sudden flush made him look healthier, and then pallor turned him gray-green. "I think you'd better leave, McGee. Now!"

So I left that enchanting place. Pale shag, silk lampshades, velvet wing chairs, brocade, imitation Tiffany stained glass, Japanese lacquer, gilt mirror frames. Somehow like a matinee in a department store. Van Harn looked about thirty, or a shade under. The lady looked well over. They were consenting adults, consenting to afternoon games in the tangly bed under the long exhalation of the air conditioning.

As I backed out a phone truck pulled up. I smiled and waved at him and wondered what kind of reception he'd get. Good luck, fella. Must be an interesting line of work.

It was quarter to four. The yellow Gremlin was hot enough to bake glaze on pottery. The steering wheel was almost, not quite, too hot to touch. I stopped wondering what to do next and ran around for a mile or two trying to get cool in a hot wind.

I found a shopping center and discovered that they had left some giant oaks in the parking lot. This runs counter to the sworn oath of all shopping center developers. One must never deprive thy project of even one parking slot. And, wonder of wonders, there was an empty slot under one tree, in the shade. As I got out of the Gremlin, a cruising granny glowered at me from the airconditioned, tinted-blue depths of her white Continental.

I found pay phones in a big Eckerd Drug, the phone stations half hidden by huge piles of pitchman's merchandise.

At the Holiday Inn they had a Miss Dobrovsky registered in Room 30, but she did not answer the phone. I looked up Webbel, who had driven the truck. There were about fifteen of them, but no Roderick. I wondered why Susan Dobrovsky would stay in the Holiday Inn instead of in Carrie's apartment. Squeamish, maybe. But sooner or later she would have to decide what to do with Carrie's personal belongings. That made me think of personal arrangements, and so I looked up the number for the Rucker Funeral Home and asked for Miss Susan Dobrovsky. After a long wait the man came back on the line and said that Miss Dobrovsky was busy with Mr. Rucker, Senior. I told him to tell her to wait there for me. Wait for McGee. Right there.

Rucker's Funeral Home was from the orange plaster and glass brick era. It had arches and some fake Moorish curlicues along the edge of the flat roof. A small black man was listlessly rubbing a black hearse parked at the side entrance. There was a large cemented area at the side and in back where doubtless they shaped up the corteges. I saw Carrie's bright orange Datsun in the parking lot on the other side of the building. On one side of the home there was a savings and loan branch, and on the other side a defunct car wash. I stuck my yellow Gremlin beside the orange Datsun, wondering if the industrial abrasive was still in the trunk. The bright colors screamed at each other.

She was sitting on a marble bench in the hallway just inside the front door. She looked enough like Carrie so that I was able to recognize her at once. She was a taller, younger, softer version of Carrie. She had on a dark gray tailored suit, a small round hat. She carried a purse and white gloves. Her eyes were swollen and red. She looked dejected and exhausted. But she was a marvelously handsome lady.

"I'm pleased to meet you, Mr. McGee."

"Did Carrie write you about me?"

"No. It was just… she phoned me long distance over a week ago, one night about ten. I was getting ready for bed. She talked a whole hour. It must have cost a fortune. She was funny. She kept laughing and saying silly things. Maybe she was drinking. Anyway, she made me get a pencil and paper and write down how to get in touch with you. She said that if anything happened to her, it was important I should get in touch with you. She said I could trust you. She said you're a nice person."

"She was in a loyal minority, Miss Susan."

"I… I don't know what to do about this," she said. She took a sheet of letterhead paper, folded once, out of her dark plastic purse and handed it to me. It was a heavy, creamy bond, and the statement of account had been typed with a carbon ribbon electric, flawlessly. It added up to $1677.90. It contained all manner of processing charges and service charges and mortuary overhead charges. It contained a coffin for $416 including tax, and it included an embalming fee, crematorium fee, death certification fee.

"She wanted to be cremated. It's in her will even. I can't pay all that. He has some kind of installment note he wants me to sign. He seems very nice… but…"

By being very firm with a chubby sallow fellow I gained an audience with Mr. Rucker, Senior. If you shaved Abe Lincoln and gave him a thick white Caesar hairpiece, and left the eyebrows black, you would have a reasonable duplicate of Rucker, sitting there in perpetual twilight behind his big walnut desk.

His voice was hushed, gentle, personal.

"I should be pleased to go over the billing with you, sir, item by item. Let me say I am glad the little lady has someone to help her in this time of need."