The back door opened and shut. The pup was being given some air, some room to scamper. He was not housebroken yet. His manners were atrocious.
Pop Bronson had walked to the car with her as they left the cemetery. He’d taken her arm, peering in through the veil. “You know how I feel, my pet. I’m not going to try to tell you. See here, I hope you’ve given up that idea of meddling in that Schneider business.”
“Of course I haven’t given up.”
“He’d shaken his buffalo head, rubbed the wire-wool thatch, frowned. “You were always a sensible young one—up to now.”
“It seems eminently sensible to me to try to clear my husband’s name.”
“If Bob Luttrell were here, Amy, you know what he would say.”
“If he were here, he’d be doing something about it.”
Again a peering, worried glance. “You’re hardening, Amy. You’re getting tough, bitter.”
The smoldering fire had leaped at his words. “Let’s just say I’m sticking to my purpose. Do you still want to go with me to Ensenada?”
“Amy!”
“You didn’t mean it, then. You were kidding me. You thought I was hopped up, excited for a moment, and that the feeling I had, the resentment, the determination to dig for the truth, would die away. Well, you were wrong, Pop. It hasn’t gone away. It never will.”
The sun had shone in his pale blue eyes, the tired puzzled eyes of an old man who would rather rest than argue with an obstreperous woman. Behind them, beyond the railing of steel spikes painted black, lay the smooth green hill in which they had buried Robert Luttrell. Pop Bronson had looked back at that hill, a baffled look, as if seeking some communication with the dead. “You’re going down there?”
“I’m going to talk to Schneider’s son if I can find him. I’ve talked to everybody else. I think I got a lot of lies. Maybe from Schneider’s son I’ll get a little bit of the truth.”
“Well, then . . . of course I’ll go.” He seemed to make up his mind. “Sure, we’ll do it together.”
In that moment Amy had made up her mind not to take him. It wasn’t that there was any disloyalty, any hindrance of her purpose, in Pop. It was that she sensed in him a querulous impatience; he’d want her to hurry, he’d rush things. He’d ask blunt, demanding questions, and perhaps not get the answers she needed.
“I’ll let you know.” They were at the car now. Elizabeth had had the door open for Amy. Pop’s eye had settled on the girl.
“There’s another thing, Amy. You’re causing some embarrassment in the Juvenile Headquarters. You can’t keep a runaway. She has to go back to them. They want her.”
“Let them come and get her, then,” Amy said stubbornly.
“You can’t defy the whole town!”
“Yes I can. I can call them liars—which they are—and hypocrites, and connivers at murder, and if I’m lucky I’ll make it all stick.”
He had put a hand under her elbow to help her into the car, an old-fashioned gesture, almost Victorian the way he did it, courtly. “The town can call names back, Amy.”
“I don’t care what they say about me.” She tried to keep the ferocity out of her voice, but some of it got in anyway; she saw Pop Bronson flinch. “Part of it I know already. They’re saying I’m a freak because I don’t stay home to cry, to grieve about my husband. I’ve outraged their delicate sensibilities. I didn’t want to lean on them, to wallow in their sympathy, or to answer their sly questions about Robert, or to have a bunch of women calling in a steady stream, bringing pies and cakes as if I were running a pastry shop. I didn’t collapse. I didn’t let the Police Department run the funeral, nor pay for it, as if I had suddenly become a moron. I went to see the family of the man who died with my husband—as innocent as he, or I’ll eat the trial transcript—and now I’ve taken in the kid.”
She was leaning from the car window, throwing the words into his face. He said gently, “Sometimes women who really love their husbands break down with grief, Amy. Really break down and have to let other folks take over.”
The wheel of the car seemed white-hot under her clenched hands. “I’m not like that, Pop. Sometimes it strikes me that all this has honed me down fine, to a thin little edge. A knife’s edge, waiting for vengeance.”
“‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,’ ” Pop quoted softly. In that moment Amy almost hit him.
She roused from the reverie. Elizabeth had come in again with the pup, had knelt with him in the middle of the floor. She had tied something around his neck like a collar. The pup was trying to get his teeth into it, bending his head, snapping at the frayed ends.
“I made him a leash,” Elizabeth said. “He doesn’t like it. I guess he’s too young to lead, anyhow.” She began to unwind the bit of rope.
Amy put out a hand. Her voice was suddenly tight, quick. “Let me see it.”
Elizabeth looked up in surprise, then, after a moment, scrambled up and came over to the couch. “I found it outside by the drive.”
“Yes. I threw it there.” Amy was staring at it. Her incredulous thoughts spun out: How it has grown. She let it drop to the cushion beside her. By no stretch of imagination could she believe that this was the same wisp of hemp that she had found strung to the doorknob. What minor insanity was going on?
“Does it mean something?” Elizabeth’s eyes were on her face.
“No—it’s just a scrap of old rope.”
“It looks new.” Elizabeth reached for the thing.
“Let it alone!”
Elizabeth drew back her hand. A frightened expression crossed her face, and her hands twisted on her belt.
“I didn’t mean to snap at you,” Amy said contritely. “Take the thing out and put it into the incinerator. We’ll burn it tomorrow morning with the trash. Right now we have to think about getting ourselves something to eat.” She rose from the divan, took her gloves and purse and hat into the bedroom, then came back, went into the kitchen, and tied on an apron.
Elizabeth came in from the back yard. She watched Amy take food from the refrigerator. She had on the new dress Amy had bought for her, dark blue taffeta with an organdy collar. With a soft touch she brushed the skirt. “I’d like to help with dinner. I ought to change my dress, though. I might get something on it.”
Amy gave her a smile. “You don’t have to help cook. You can help with the dishes afterward. That’s the job I don’t like.”
“I’ll set the table, then.” She walked over to the cupboard, avoiding the pup, who had taken a notion to nip at her ankles. “I have other things at home, working clothes.”
Amy remembered the mess on the floor of the smaller bedroom. She’d have to go there with Elizabeth to sort out the things which were still usable. And yet she’d rather that Elizabeth didn’t see the snarled clothes, didn’t glimpse the hint of meanness behind the dirtying of the immaculate garments. Perhaps she could make a brief trip alone, to straighten the house before the girl saw it. Mrs. Tzegeti’s bed should be put in order—as much order as was possible. At the same time she could investigate that torn stocking left by Cunninghan’s secretary, a minor puzzle as senseless as the rope that kept turning up, always lengthening a bit meanwhile.
“We’ll arrange to go to your house soon,” Amy promised.
“There are several things I ought to do.” Elizabeth put dishes on the table: two plates, two cups, two saucers, the salt-and-pepper shakers, the brown pot that held sugar, the pitcher of cream. “Papa’s roses will need watering. He was always so proud of them, how well they grew. And the little light under the crucifix—Mama didn’t want that to go out, ever.” She spoke seriously, reminding herself of the chores left to her by these dead people.
Amy found herself examining the child’s words, evaluating them, as she had every remark made by Elizabeth, in the hope that there would be a clue, a hint that the child knew where her father’s mysterious journal had been hidden. But, as usual, the tone of Elizabeth’s voice, though grieving, held no secrets,
no reserve. There was a matter-of-factness that couldn’t have been counterfeited.
Amy thought of putting the question direct, but hesitated. She remembered how she had felt at the questioning of the police. She wouldn’t have Elizabeth including her in their category.
When Elizabeth had gone to sleep Amy stole out to the car, backed it with as little sound as possible from the garage, and drove to the Tzegeti house. She didn’t have to try the keys—there were lights on and the front door was open. Mrs. Arkuto, the woman she had frightened about the phone, was working in the living room with a broom and dustpan. She had her head tied up in a blue cap. She looked grim. Amy went up the steps, rapped on the doorframe. Mrs. Arkuto straightened with a jerk, squinted against the light. “Who’s out there?”
“I’m Mrs. Luttrell.”
Mrs. Arkuto took another squinting look, then backed toward the door leading to the kitchen. “Don’t you come any closer.”
“I’m sorry I had to scare you the day Mrs. Tzegeti was dying. I wanted to get help quickly for her, and Elizabeth said you wouldn’t let strangers in.”
Mrs. Arkuto hefted the broom as a weapon. “You go away now.”
“Elizabeth is at my house. She wants some clothes.”
“She wouldn’t want those clothes. Anyhow, the police have them. They were here yesterday, making a secret, carrying out things inside of sheets. You’d think they’d found a hundred bodies here, the way they acted.”
“Yesterday?” Amy clutched the doorframe, remembering the wild disorder, the shameful meanness, the evidence of rapacious haste. “When yesterday?”
Mrs. Arkuto cocked her head to one side. “Around noontime.”
After my visit here, Amy thought. She wondered if someone had seen her car parked before the hedge and given an alarm, perhaps identified her so that the police knew she had been here. The chief’s wife would know by now and would be remembering Amy’s brusque manners, the way she had gotten rid of the visitors, her obvious desire to be let alone. Yes, the whole town could be talking by now. She shrugged it off. “Did you talk to them?”
“I asked them if I could get at the cleaning of the place. The girl, she won’t want to come back here to live, even if they’d let her. She’ll need to sell the place. If it’s clean, the yard tended, she’ll get a better price.”
“She wants the roses watered.”
Mrs. Arkuto’s eye was scornful. “I did that yesterday, before they let me get inside.”
“You didn’t find any . . . any journal or diary, did you?”
“A diary? You mean Mr. Tzegeti’s diary?” The tone was on guard, bristling, angry.
“Yes.”
“You too, huh?” Mrs. Arkuto’s mouth pursed up with disdain.
“What do you mean?”
“Three others—and now you. Why don’t you ask Elizabeth?”
“I don’t think she knows.”
“Then I don’t know, either.”
Amy tried to make her voice placating. “Who were the others? Can you describe them?”
For an instant she thought Mrs. Arkuto wouldn’t answer. The woman turned her back, pretended to notice some dirt on the floor, swept it carefully into the pan, then raised slowly. “Well . . . for one—a redheaded man.”
Fogarty.
Mrs. Arkuto examined the contents of the dustpan. Her attitude implied that Amy was hindering her at an important job. “A nice lady, very refined, smelling sweet. She said she was from the Welfare Bureau.” Mrs. Arkuto laid the broom against the wall and made a waving motion about her head. “All silver here. Her hair. Shining.”
Mrs. Schneider.
“And then a little man. What is the word?” Mrs. Arkuto searched her mind, frowning. “Yes, deformed. He was deformed.”
Cunninghan.
Why should the lawyer have come here inquiring, since Mrs. Schneider, who was his client, had done so in person? Could it be that the two did not quite trust each other, hadn’t planned a common campaign? Mrs. Schneider’s remark to Neece in the café had surely referred to the diary, Amy thought, and in her imagination she had called up the conference that must have ensued. The air of hurry could be explained by supposing that Mrs. Schneider had known, somehow, that Mrs. Tzegeti had been poisoned and was dying, that the one person who must know the whereabouts of the journal would soon be out of reach. But if Mrs. Schneider had come here independently of her hireling, Cunninghan, it could mean that she didn’t trust him to put forth his best efforts, or that some schism had come between them.
Mrs. Arkuto swept the space under the immaculate white washing machine. “To all of them I say, I don’t know. I never heard of a journal, not from Mr. Tzegeti before he went to jail, and not afterwards from the woman. She was quiet. She kept to herself. How should I ask her about a book written by her husband, even for the lady with the silver hair?”
“You mean—she came to you before Mrs. Tzegeti died?”
“Oh yes. A long time ago. She was the first, and I had forgotten her until this other one came, the little man, the deformed one.”
“What about the redheaded man?”
“He came last night.”
Amy glanced around the place. Mrs. Arkuto had brushed and dusted; either she or the police had removed all traces of the havoc Amy had seen here. “Did you get a glimpse of anything the police took away?”
The woman shook her head. “They told me not to talk, either. But I have nothing to talk about. I can think, to myself”—she tapped her forehead grimly—“I can think that Mrs. Tzegeti wouldn’t take a thing to kill her, and I can believe that maybe Mr. Tzegeti didn’t do what they said he did to the man Schneider. But know?” She shrugged, her lips tight. “I know nothing except they seemed like good people. And the child, the little girl, she was always neat and loving.”
Amy looked at the bare room. Mrs. Arkuto had put a fresh candle in the vigil light. The crucifix and other ornaments were free of dust.
In this little house three people had lived, the three Tzegetis. It must have been a simple existence. There would have been much to draw them together, to keep them close. Barriers shut them in, the wall of language, of custom, of habit. Here they had been united, sure of each other, certain of love and understanding and help. The one incongruous note was the large white washing machine. It stood there like an intruder, baldly utilitarian, streamlined, glistening with newness. Amy studied it curiously. She wondered if Mr. Tzegeti had bought it before he went away, an initiation for the woman and the girl into the world of modern American gadgets they must learn to need and to use.
“When did they get that?” She indicated the machine to Mrs. Arkuto.
The woman looked at it indifferently. “I don’t know. A long time, months, maybe. He bought it.”
Amy thought, I was right. He was trying to Americanize the woman and the child in the direct, practical way a man would. He was teaching them to use the products of the Great American System. He was inducting them into a more businesslike approach to life’s problems than praying under a crucifix.
Mrs. Arkuto had been watching, had seen Amy’s glance settle on the vigil light. She set down the dustpan. “You want to say a prayer for Mrs. Tzegeti? Now?”
Amy hesitated, feeling awkward. “Yes, I guess so.”
“Okay.” Mrs. Arkuto flopped down on her knees. She somehow made Amy think of a cow, folding its legs under, careful of its large carcass. She crossed herself, bowing her head.
Amy knelt, a little more slowly and with less practice.
How do you ask God to give you vengeance?
In this house, where bumbling but decent people had lived whose faith had given them no protection against the rottenness of the world, how did you beg revenge? Did you receive the grant of your eventual success as a sword through your soul, as a fire behind your eyes, or as a vision of Mrs. Tzegeti in convulsions on a bed straight out of a Polish garret?
Amy’s nails bit into her palms. There was sweat on her face, stinging her skin;
and under her ribs her heart thudded. Hatred welled in her brain, a blind flood bitter as hemlock.
Mrs. Arkuto crossed herself and stood up. “For her I have said many prayers. I will say many more.”
Amy’s mouth was dry, her brain burning. She thought of her husband, of the Tzegetis, dead together in this strange mixed-up business; but the thought had no emotion in it. Memories were pale, they had no ghost of the power behind the drive that scorched her. “I’ll find whoever it was.” She got slowly to her feet. “Somehow, I’ll find him.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE FOG blew about them. The air was cold and tasted of the sea. In the vacant lots the weeds were frosted with moisture, and here and there a dead cobweb seemed strung with diamonds. Amy stopped on the driveway to pull Elizabeth’s coat close and to button its collar. The pup made diving motions at a clod.
Elizabeth asked anxiously, “When we return from Mexico and come to the border, will they let me in?”
Amy said, “I suppose they might have to drag out some red tape if they knew the truth. They wouldn’t keep you out, but there might be a delay. We’ll just lie to them. When the officer asks what state you were born in, say California.” She paused, frowning. “No—wait. It’s a long word. You might betray a bit of accent with it.”
“I haven’t much accent left,” Elizabeth pointed out.
“No, but some. And border officials have to be quick and suspicious. Let’s see. Try saying, ‘Maine.’ ”
“Maine . . . Maine,” Elizabeth repeated glibly.
“You’re fine.” To herself Amy thought, I’ve made a passing somewhere, over some invisible line; I used to be so damned conscientious, so unnecessarily honest. Now I don’t care. I just want results—quick.
“Won’t they ask for our papers?”
“They never did, on trips I made to Tijuana.” Elizabeth separated the garage key from the others and walked over to the door. Then she heard the car behind them in the street, the slow tires on the gravel in the unfinished gutter. A door slammed. Amy waited, aware that Elizabeth had moved close to her and remembering, as she was apt to at odd moments, the nagging idiocy of the bit of rope.
Nets to Catch the Wind Page 10
