Honeymoon for Three

by Alan Cook

  Gil was actually somewhat miffed that Penny hadn’t told him where she was going. Presumably off with her boyfriend, but Gil didn’t know where he lived. He suspected she had left a forwarding address with the post office, but she could have left one with him, too. After all, he had been friendly to her. He liked renting to good-looking girls. He tried to be nice to them and respond to their requests about maintenance quickly. Pretty girls were used to being catered to. He was sure Penny had already forgotten him.

  At least, plants didn’t treat you like dirt. He would go work in his garden.

  ***

  Penny hummed to herself as she finished putting her clothes into the one small suitcase that Gary had allotted her for their trip. She was in the roomy, two-bedroom apartment Gary shared with a man named Steve. It sat on a small hill in Monterey Park. On a clear day you could see the long outline of Catalina Island from its balcony. At the moment, it was too smoggy to see much of anything.

  A 1962 Volkswagen Beetle wasn’t very large, and they had camping equipment, so one suitcase was all she could take. She didn’t care, though. She would go without any clothes if necessary—and that’s the way Gary preferred her.

  She grinned when she realized what song she was humming. “Dream,” made famous by the Everly Brothers a few years ago. That had been “our song,” the song she had shared with her boyfriend in school. Actually, with her boyfriends—and there had been many of them. With the same song for all, at least she never forgot what it was.

  She didn’t play games like that with Gary. He was different. Different than the four men who had proposed to her in the two years she’d been in California. One had expected her to accept the virginity of Mary, the mother of Jesus. She had laughed at him. Another said he pictured her wearing white gloves. She’d been forced to wear white gloves in her college dining hall, but this was the real world. She told him what he could do with his white gloves.

  Penny knelt on the suitcase with her full weight to force it shut and then latched it. The only piece of clothing she hadn’t put into it was her wedding dress. She would hang that up inside the car to keep it from getting wrinkled. When she’d been home for her summer visit, she’d spent a day with her brother and his wife. At some point, when talking about Gary, she’d casually mentioned that they might be getting married.

  “Do you have a wedding dress?” Barbara asked.

  “I have a new blue dress that Gary hasn’t seen.”

  Tim and Barbara hit the roof at the idea of a blue wedding dress. They rushed her out to a department store. Penny found a white, knee-length dress that fit her perfectly. Tim plunked a white hat on her head. So she returned to Los Angeles with a wedding dress in tow. In spite of that, she hadn’t quite believed she was going to get married, but apparently she was.

  Penny had finished vacating her apartment yesterday. She had brought the last of her stuff here, and now it lay scattered around the spacious living room. She reached into a box containing some letters and lifted out a brown envelope. She hesitated, wondering whether she should throw it in the trash, but then she fished two wrinkled pieces of note paper out of it.

  She placed them flat on the coffee table and smoothed them as much as she could. Both pieces had the name and address of a Las Vegas motel at the top. Not one of the big hotels. Just a rinky-dink motel Penny had never heard of. The messages on them were written in pencil. The handwriting was large and messy, as if a right-handed person had written them with his left hand or vice versa.

  The notes had been slid under the door to her apartment, one in late July and one just two weeks ago, in August. The first message read, “Don’t stick to one boyfriend. Play the field.” Penny had thought it was a prank note from one of the other tenants. She had shown it to her landlord and several other people, but she hadn’t been very concerned about it. She hadn’t shown it to Gary.

  The second note had scared her. It read, “I told you to play the field. You are walking on quicksand.” She asked her landlord if he’d seen anybody unusual on the day the note was delivered. He hadn’t. She no longer thought it had been written by one of the other tenants. The ones she knew were friendly and harmless. She asked several of them about a suspicious person on the premises. Nobody had seen anything.

  She’d considered going to the police, but what could they do? She still hadn’t shown the notes to Gary. Why? Because she was afraid he would get cold feet? No, he wasn’t the type to scare easily. But what if he thought the notes reflected a shady past that she hadn’t divulged. She’d been open with him about her past, but their relationship was new enough so that she still had visions of a revelation of some long-forgotten sin ruining it.

  Hopefully, she had escaped the writer of the notes. She put them back into the brown envelope. She couldn’t quite bring herself to throw them away. One reason the notes bothered her more than they probably should was a memory that haunted her from a year ago.

  Penny had just finished her first year of living and teaching in California. She flew home to Fenwick, Connecticut to spend the summer of 1963. This was not an ordinary summer. Emily, her best friend since nursery school and a fellow cheerleader, was getting married. Penny was to be her maid of honor.

  June, the wedding month, was busting out all over. Penny was excited for Emily, who had the looks and grace that Penny felt she herself lacked. A perfect nose, as opposed to Penny’s large one. And a good attitude toward marriage and children, which Penny had never had.

  The wedding preparations were exciting. Dress fittings, gossip sessions, a shower. And then, just two days before the big event, Emily’s body was found behind Fenwick High School by Darren Filbert, the school janitor. She had been strangled.

  That sent shock waves through the town of Fenwick. It was arguably the biggest news event since Lieutenant Gibbons scared off a Dutch sloop with a couple of cannon shots and claimed the area at the mouth of the Connecticut River for Viscount Saye & Sele and Lord Brooke in 1635.

  At the funeral, Emily still looked beautiful. Penny had the eerie sensation that she would awake and end Penny’s nightmare. But, she didn’t open her eyes. The lid of the coffin closed over her quiet form, forever, and she was lowered into the ground.

  Three weeks later, Darren Filbert was arrested for Emily’s murder. A bracelet belonging to her was found in his small apartment on Main Street. He claimed that he had discovered Emily’s body after she was dead. He could never satisfactorily explain why he took the bracelet, which was not worth much. In fact, he claimed he hadn’t taken it. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

  For Penny, that was a shock second only to Emily’s death. Penny had known Darren quite well. He was a big teddy bear of a man with not too much upstairs, but he seemed like a gentle soul, who trusted other people so much that he never locked his apartment. Penny and Emily were friendly toward him, partly because that was their nature and partly because Darren helped them.

  For example, he let Penny into the school one Saturday morning when she needed to get some megaphones for a football game. As head cheerleader, Penny was always needing favors, and people like Darren could be very useful to her.

  She didn’t have any qualms about going into the dark and empty school alone with Darren. Now she shuddered when she thought about it. Had she been naïve about this man or perhaps about men in general?

  Penny had another thought that had gnawed at her previously. She wondered whether, if Emily, who had been born to be married, couldn’t make it to the altar, how could she, Penny, accomplish it? Was there something or somebody out there who would stop her?

  ***

  “Please deposit one hundred dollars for the first three minutes.”

  It wasn’t $100, of course, but to somebody as parsimonious as Alfred, the operator’s request sounded like a small fortune. He carefully counted out the correct change from the coins in his hand and placed them in the appropriate slots of the pay phone. Someday when he was rich, he would live in a big house
with two telephones, not a dingy apartment without any.

  The coins chimed as they dropped, and the operator, satisfied, put through the call. After three rings, a female voice said hello.

  “Hello, Mrs. Singleton?” Alfred used his most persuasive voice. “This is Alfred. Alfred Ward. I went to high school with Penny. I just arrived in California, and I thought I’d look her up. I was wondering if you could tell me her address.”

  “Alfred? Your name sounds familiar. Were you on the basketball team?”

  “No ma’am. Listen, I’m on a pay phone—”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to run on. Penny lives in Lomita. I’ve got the address right here somewhere.”

  “If you’re talking about the apartment on Narbonne, she just moved out of there.”

  “She did? I can’t keep up with that girl. Well, she’s going on a trip. And in a couple of weeks she’s moving into a brand new place. In a city with a funny name. Terrence or something like that.”

  “You mean Torrance?”

  “Torrance. Yes, that’s it.”

  “Do you know what her address will be there?”

  “No. She’s hasn’t told me.”

  “You said she’s going on a trip?”

  “Yes. I think she’s going to visit some of the national parks, like Yellowstone. She’s always loved the outdoors.”

  “Do you think she’s already left?”

  “Maybe. School starts pretty soon.”

  Alfred thanked her and hung up. He heard the click indicating that the phone had eaten his money. Mrs. Singleton hadn’t mentioned Penny’s boyfriend. Penny wasn’t telling her everything. Of course, Penny was going on the trip with him. Her roommate was no longer in the picture.

  He had to find her boyfriend’s apartment. Fast. But how? What did he know about this guy Gary, other than that he was tall, thin, and probably had an innie bellybutton. All the girls liked guys with innie bellybuttons. He drove a green Volkswagen Beetle. Not much of a car. Alfred thought back to the Sunday morning breakfasts he had eavesdropped on. Penny had been excited about this Gary person from day one. She had told her roommate all about him.

  She had confided that he lived in Monterey Park and worked for IBM. Alfred walked to his car, which was parked near the phone booth. He kept a lot of maps in his glove compartment. He sorted through them until he found one of the greater Los Angeles area. Monterey Park was east of downtown L.A. He went back to the phone booth and dialed Information. When an operator answered, he asked her whether IBM had an office somewhere in the East Los Angeles area.

  After a twenty-second silence, the operator reported in the affirmative. Alfred wrote down the number. He hung up, his heart beating faster. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so hard, after all. Los Angeles only had one area code. He should be able to call the IBM office for a dime. He dialed the number.

  “Good morning, IBM.”

  “May I speak to Gary…? His last name has slipped my mind.”

  “Do you mean Gary Blanchard?”

  “Is he a tall, thin guy with short hair?”

  “Yes.”

  “That must be him. Is he there?”

  “He’s at a customer’s office. May I take a message for him?”

  “So he’s working today.”

  “Yes, he’s working. May I take a message for Gary?” She sounded impatient.

  “Uh, do you know when he’ll be back in the office?”

  “He didn’t say. May I take a message and have him call you?”

  Persistent bitch. “No thanks. I’ll call back.” He hung up.

  CHAPTER 3

  Gary was still walking on a cloud. He had finished his last day of work at IBM for two weeks—two weeks of fun and adventure with Penny. And oh yes—he was getting married. Well, most people got married sooner or later. Why not now? Living together in their own place would certainly save on rent.

  He parked his car in his reserved spot in the apartment lot. It was a big apartment building, but fortunately, it had plenty of parking. They would be able to leave Penny’s car here until they returned. Gary retrieved the mail from his box and walked to the apartment on the second level.

  As he entered, Penny ran to him and gave him a big hug and kiss. Now that was the way to be greeted when returning from the job wars.

  “How was your day?” Penny asked.

  “Outstanding, because I knew it was the last one I had to work for a while. How was yours?”

  “Good. I got all the maps we need from the Auto Club, and I have a pile of information about the parks.”

  “I hope it will all fit in the car.”

  “If it doesn’t, we’ll strap it to the roof.”

  Penny had prepared dinner for them in the small kitchen. She didn’t claim to be an expert chef, but she had cooked for Gary several times while they were dating, and he had survived. He appreciated her efforts.

  “Have you seen Steve?” Gary asked.

  “No. He hasn’t shown his head.”

  “Well, don’t worry about him. He’s probably shacked up somewhere.” Steve sometimes didn’t show up for a couple of days at a time during the summer when he wasn’t teaching school. He would also supplement his teaching income by selling sets of pots and pans to suggestive teenage girls for their “trousseaus.”

  Gary told this to Penny, and she said, “Speaking of trousseaus, I don’t have one. I haven’t had time to get one together. I noticed that you purchased a dozen T-shirts and pairs of underpants.”

  Caught, Gary could only laugh. “I’ve been meaning to buy some things and this seemed like a good opportunity.”

  They sat down to dinner at the table beside the kitchen. The menu consisted of hotdogs with all the toppings, baked potatoes, and corn on the cob, along with a celebratory bottle of cheap champagne. Gary couldn’t have been happier with it. He opened the champagne bottle with a pop and bounced the cork off the refrigerator. It reminded him of shooting woodchucks with a .22 on the farm back home.

  He filled two water glasses—he didn’t have champagne glasses. “To us.”

  “To eloping.”

  They clinked glasses and drank.

  Halfway through the meal, Gary noticed that Penny had become very quiet, which was unlike her. She was usually as bubbly as the newly opened champagne. He was about to make a quip about it, to attempt to lighten the suddenly oppressive atmosphere, when she spoke.

  “Gary, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

  “Uh-oh, here it comes.” Gary was trying to keep it light.

  “I received a couple of notes at the Lomita apartment.”

  “Notes from old boyfriends?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The way she said it sobered Gary up. He gave her his full attention as she described the circumstances of receiving the notes. She went and retrieved them from the envelope.

  “I also had several phone calls from somebody who didn’t say anything.” She placed the notes in front of Gary. “He just breathed into the phone.”

  Gary studied the pieces of paper and the scribbled words. He didn’t know whether to be concerned or not. They looked like the work of a prankster, but one could never tell.

  “Did you show these to the police?”

  Penny shook her head. “I showed them to the apartment manager and a few tenants. That’s all.”

  “You didn’t show them to me.”

  “I was afraid you’d wonder what kind of a crazy girl you’d gotten mixed up with.”

  “And you have no idea who wrote them?”

  “None.”

  “Did you tell anybody where you were going when you left your apartment?”

  “Nothing specific. I said I was going on a trip. I told the owner I had rented a new place, but I didn’t tell him where it was. I’m sure he’s completely harmless, but he often looked at me a little funny. As if he could see through my clothes. He was always asking whether there was anything he could do for me. And I’ve been thinking
about what happened to Emily.”

  “Emily. Your girlfriend who was….” Gary stopped, unable to say the word. He said slowly, “Well, it seems to me that you’ve successfully covered your tracks. I don’t think whoever did this will be able to find you. Unless—it’s somebody connected with your school. If something else happens after school starts, I’d be concerned, but until then—”

  “Gary, I don’t want to go into this marriage thing under false pretences. This may mean nothing, or it may mean a potful of trouble. If you want out, I’ll release you from whatever promises we’ve made.”

  Gary stared at Penny. Want out? That was the last thing he wanted. She was so serious about it. He stood up and took her in his arms. “I don’t want out. I want you. I love you.”

  He noticed that she was crying. “I hope you’re not crying because you want out.”

  “No,” she managed to say between sobs. “No. I never want out.” She buried her face in his shoulder.

  ***

  Alfred looked at his watch. It was almost six o’clock. Whatever hope he had nurtured that Gary would be coming back to the office had evaporated like water on a hot sidewalk. Not only was he not coming back, Alfred would bet anything that he and Penny were leaving on their trip tomorrow, even though tomorrow was Friday.

  Alfred had spent all afternoon sitting in his car in the crowded IBM parking lot. Other cars had come and gone constantly, driven by well-groomed young men in blue suits and rep ties and young women in blue skirts and jackets. This must be some sort of sales office.

  With his beard, hair that hadn’t been cut for too long, khakis, and old sweatshirt, he felt as out of place here as a mongrel at a dog show. He kept himself scrunched down in the front seat, hoping nobody would notice him. Even though he had seen a couple of other Volkswagens, if Gary’s car had pulled into the lot, he would have spotted it instantly, because he had recorded the license plate information the first time he had seen Penny get into the car at her apartment.