The Good Old Stuff (44 page)

“What was her address there?” Shay interrupted.

“It was a sort of rooming house. Wait a minute. I got it here in my wallet. Oh, here it is. Ten-eighteen Columbine Street. We checked her right out of there. The poor kid didn’t have much more than enough to fill one suitcase. I brought her back here. I live over on the River Road and the house isn’t much, so I contracted for a new house. We just moved into it ten days ago. No, eleven. We’ve been pretty happy. Best six months of my life.” Again his eyes held the hard glint of Pan.

“What is her full name?”

“Allana Montrose Garver.”

“Where from?”

“I don’t rightly know. Back East somewhere.”

“Relatives?”

“The poor kid is alone in the world. Leastways, she was.”

“You have relatives?”

“Neither kith nor kin. There was some second and third cousins, but I don’t know where they are. Haven’t for twenty years.”

Shay poured fresh drinks. Garver covered his glass with the top of his hand and shook his head.

“Now tell me about yourself,” Shay asked gently.

Garver sighed and looked into the past, his eyes clouding. “Got married when I was twenty. Mary died a year later when the kid came. The kid died two days after she did. I went back with my pa. When he died I took over the farm. When I began to do better with feed business and the cattle trading, I sold off a lot of the acreage. My partner is Sam Jarone. We’ve been doing well for the past eight–nine years. He handles the feed business, mostly, and I work out the cattle deals.”

“What are you worth?” Shay asked bluntly.

Garver looked startled. “I don’t know as I—”

“I must know everything, Garver.”

He didn’t like it. “Let me see. Real liquid stuff’ll go maybe four hundred thousand. About another hundred and fifty thousand tied up so tight it’d take a long time to get it loose.”

“A half million, eh?” Shay said dryly.

“I don’t think about it that way.”

“I hope you don’t mind if I do, Mr. Garver.”

“Well, I’m pretty careful about not throwing money around.”

“Now I must ask you some questions that you might not like. First—did Mrs. Garver know your financial position?”

Garver beamed. “No, she didn’t. That’s how I knew she fell in love with me for sure. I never did tell her until after we’d been married a month. That was when I changed my will and the insurance over.”

“She seemed pleased?”

“Why, she certainly did! Huggin’ me and kissin’ me for fair.”

“How was your money going to go before you changed it over?”

“The estate was going half to the Baptist Church and half to the State College and the Department of Farm Economics, and the insurance to Sam Jarone.”

“Much insurance?”

“Eighty-five thousand paid up. It was sort of partnership insurance, but bigger than it had to be. So when I transferred it, I took out forty thousand renewable term, with Sam as beneficiary. That’s what he has, with me named to get it in case something happens to him.”

“Did Jarone seem annoyed that you got married?”

Garver flushed. “Yes, damn him. He has been giving me a terrible time with all those nasty remarks of his. Way he tells it, I could be a hundred and ten years old marrying a kid of fourteen. Matter of fact, I’m forty-eight. Not too much difference there. Hell, when I’m seventy, Allie’ll be forty-two.”

“Are you expecting an increase in the family?”

“No, we’re not. I’ve been hoping, but it just hasn’t turned out that way yet. Can you find her, Mr. Pritchard?”

“Have you considered the fact that she might not want to be found?” Shay said softly.

“That’s a lie! Allie’s been happy with me. I’m thinking it’s this here amnesia and she wandered off, or else somebody took her off and I haven’t gotten a kidnap note yet.”

“Ryan is working on it?”

“He put her on the tape today. I tried to pay him to go at it with special handling and he said he couldn’t and sent me to you. Will you take it on?”

“The fee will be five thousand dollars. Plus expenses. And another five thousand if it goes over two weeks.”

Garver swallowed hard. He stared at Shay. “Say, you didn’t even blink when you said five thousand.”

“Should I have?”

“It’s a lot of money.”

“Allana’s a lot of girl, Mr. Garver. I’ll accept your check.”

“I’d have to think about spending that much money so fast.”

Shay looked at his watch. “Think about it for two minutes, Mr. Garver. And then you can leave if you decide it’s too much money.”

Garver muttered, “Five thousand, eh.” He brightened. “Say, I’ll give you a check for five hundred and three thousand cash. That way you don’t have to report it for taxes and the net to you’ll be about the same.”

Shay stood up slowly. “Mr. Garver, diddling the federal government in that manner smacks of shooting fish in a wash-tub. It isn’t sporting. And your two minutes are up.”

Garver scribbled the check, waved it back and forth to dry it. He handed it over. “Now what are you going to do first, Mr. Pritchard?”

“Tell you to go back to your affairs and keep your mouth shut and report anything unusual to me immediately. We may call on you later. You said you are out on the River Road?”

“A quarter of a mile north of Bliss Corners. On the left. My name’s on the mailbox.”

“Good day, Mr. Garver.”

We watched him go down the walk to the side drive, a man following a hypothetical horse across a nonexistent plowed field, his shoulders bowed by plow handles that weren’t there. Shay whirled an ice cube in his glass, frowning down at it.

“That was pretty heavy, wasn’t it?” I asked.

“For that he-goat? I was charging him for his marital bliss. Spread over six months it doesn’t come to much.”

“A pretty obvious situation,” I said. “She found out he was loaded so she grabbed him. But money doesn’t make some things easier. And so she left.”

“If you’re right, and I hope you are, it’s an easy five thousand. But I have a funny hunch about this.”

“Jarone?”

He shrugged. “Five after four. We need a woman’s opinion. Bets likes martinis and the pool. Tell Krimbow and phone her up, will you, Robby?”

“I know your curious charm, Shay, but Bets won’t come within a mile and a half of this place again and you know it.”

“A month has passed, Señor Moran. A full and lonely month. I suggest that you play up the forgive-and-forget angle.”

After he left the room, I perched my heels on the desk and dialed. After four rings, Bets answered.

“This is Robby, honey. Don’t hang up.”

Bets is a combination oil and air force widow, a dark angular cutie of twenty-nine who lives five miles up the road with maid, gardener, five-year-old daughter, and a portable typewriter on which she sublimates herself by turning out lurid
confessions for money that she does not need. For a time it looked as if she and Shay could make it, but on those two the rough edges just don’t rub off.

“Am I supposed to be mad enough to hang up? It just isn’t that important.”

“At five we’re using the old-fashioned glasses for martinis. The water in the pool was changed this morning, and we’re both bored and we have nothing lovely to look upon.”

“Tell that big clown to go look in a mirror for an hour or so. That ought to make him feel pleased.”

“Bets, you hurt me. We live too close, Shay says, for the war to keep going on. Let’s all be pals again.”

“He’s a bastard.”

“We both know that, but he’s cute sometimes. Like a tame bear. Come wallow in our pool, honey. Shay says to wear the bikini, the yellow one.”

“That one’s for looking, not swimming.” Her voice sounded friendlier.

“We’ll share the risk with you. Five-ish?”

She sighed. “I might as well. I’ve confessed myself into a hell of a corner, and I can’t seem to write my way out of it.”

We had
been out of the pool long enough for it to turn back into a sheet of green glass. Bets lay on the rubberized mattress on the apron of the pool, her almost boyish body a startling tan in the sunset light contrasted with the brave yellow of the skimpy suit. Her cheekbones are high and sharp enough to give her a gaunt look. Her eyes are hawk-hooded and her mouth is a wide, harsh slash. If she could get down three notes lower, she could sing baritone. She has never failed to give me a quickened pulse.

She and Shay had been distinctly cool until he had at last broken the tension by immersing her firmly and deeply. She had come up sputtering behind and had made a fair attempt to sit on his head. Then they were old friends again.

Our martini pitcher is as tall as a hydrant and seems to contain as much fluid. Shay serves too much liquor and drinks
too much himself, but he is never out of control and any guest who gets that way is having his last visit at Sharan Point.

Shay had padded off to the house. I was stretched out on the concrete at right angles to the mattress, stealing a bit of it as a rest for the back of my head. Bets’s fingers moved moonlight across my forehead, expressing nothing except in their rhythm, and that was more than enough.

“Belay it, woman,” I said. “Or I’ll have to go leap in the pool.”

Shay came back. I sat up. He handed her the picture of Allie.

“Please classify,” he said.

Bets held it so that the fading light caught it.

“Hmmm. I’d really have to hear her talk to do a good job. Let me see. Car hop, movie extra, commercial playmate. Hard to tell. But the little gal has been here and there and back again.”

“Farmer’s wife,” Shay said, laughter in his voice.

She sat up with a long, easy motion and stared at him. “Don’t tell me! That must be quite a farmer. What well did you drop him into?”

“I didn’t. He’s a remarkably unattractive little man pushing fifty. His fingernails are dirty and his breath is bad. Nor is his linen spotless.”

“Oil under his farm?”

“He has it, but the little girl didn’t know it until after she said yes.”

“Are you positive of that?”

“Even if he had told her he had money, he was in a situation where she would be likely to think he was lying. So I want a woman’s opinion. List the reasons that would cause that little item to marry the farmer, omitting money.”

Bets lay back and stared up at the dusk sky. She still held the picture between lean brown fingers.

“That’s not so easy, Shay. A girl gets lonely. But not that lonely. Here’s one. Masochism. Somebody lets her down hard. She takes her revenge by marrying into an impossible situation. But the gal doesn’t look like either the sentimental or the masochistic type. If you want melodrama, sometimes people have
to hide. And sometimes you have a person with legal problems. They can inherit only if married. The last item, of course, is a girl who is—shall we be delicate and say infanticipating?—who grabs the first security that comes along. That covers it, Shay. Like any of them?”

“It clarifies my thinking.”

“Why do you want to know all this?”

“She left, either alone or aided. The farmer is upset.”

“Maybe somebody raided the cookie jar and she’ll be home, contrite, tomorrow.”

“Could be. Tonight my subconscious will work on it. It does better than I do.”

She shivered. “Would somebody please mention getting dressed,” she said.

Krimbow had seared the steaks in his own incredible fashion. Bets ate like a female wolf. She phoned and checked on Prim, her little girl, and later I watched her play chess with Shay on the glassed-in terrace.

She played a slashing, vicious game, bringing all her power to bear at every point, ignoring defense to strike out. Shay parried and covered himself well, then moved onto the offensive when her attacks lost momentum.

I was watching their hands on the board. I saw her reach out and pick up a bishop. She held it in midair. It was not a proper piece to move at that point. Her knuckles were white. I looked at her and saw that she was looking into Shay’s eyes. Her face was expressionless.

In a flat voice she said, “You never did finish that last figure, did you?”

“The pose wasn’t right. That pose wasn’t for you. It wasn’t worth casting.”

“You said you would try another one.”

“You said you would never pose again.”

I gave my stage yawn and muttered good night as I left the room. No one answered me.

After I was in bed, I knew that they were up in the studio, the harsh lights bright above them, his big, thick-fingered hands molding the clay with surprising delicacy, Bets standing on the
raised platform, on the turntable that moved around at the rate of one inch a minute.

It had all started again between them. Over chess.

The roar of her station wagon, the sputter of gravel against the fenders, woke me later. Moonlight was white in the room. I heard a sound and went to the window. Shay Pritchard was swimming up and down the length of the pool, low in the water, his arms lifting slowly. I counted six laps and went back to bed and to sleep.

It was a small ranch-type house, sparkling new. Garver met us at the door, incongruous in those
House Beautiful
surroundings. His eyes were puffed as though he had slept badly. His face lighted up as he recognized us.

“Did you find out something already?”

“No. We want to look around,” Shay said.

He showed us the house. In the living room Shay went immediately to the magazine rack. Mixed in with the farm periodicals and cattle journals was an ample collection of glossy-paper true-crime magazines.

“Yours?” Shay asked.

“No, Allie liked those. She’d curl up like a kitten in that big chair over there, of an evening, and sometimes read that stuff until way past midnight. Her eyes’d shine funny-like over some of ’em. When we stayed up late I’d go out and scramble us a few eggs and put on a pot of coffee.”

“She didn’t like to cook.”

“I wouldn’t say she doesn’t like to. She just can’t do it so good. Me, I’m pretty handy around a kitchen from living alone all these years, so I do most of it.”

“I’d like a look at her clothes.”

Garver led the way back to the two bedrooms. He pointed to a big record player. “Bought her that for a wedding present. She wanted one bad.”