The Woman Who Fell From Grace

by David Handler

  “And Richard?”

  She swallowed and looked away. “What about him?”

  “He’s in love with you, isn’t he?”

  “Who told you?” she demanded angrily. “Did he tell you?”

  “He didn’t have to.”

  She gave her lower lip a workout. “He thinks he is. Don’t ask me why. Maybe because Mavis strips him of his self-esteem. Of course, he lets her do it. He never pushes back. Maybe that’s what it’s all about. Maybe he needs to feel … manly or something. I don’t know. I’ve never encouraged him. If anything, I’ve discouraged him, y’know?”

  I nodded. Trying to run a guy down with your car was certainly my idea of discouragement.

  “But he keeps pestering me,” she went on. “I’ve never had a married man pursue me this way before. Actually, I’ve never had any man pursue me this way. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Do you love him?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not as if we’ve ever … I mean, he and I haven’t … I do know he drinks too much. He’s not a very happy man.”

  “Who among us is?”

  “He’s actually offered to divorce her. He wants to take me home to England with him. He says he’s about to come into money of his own over there. Lots of it.”

  “Oh?”

  “Family money of some kind.”

  “I see. Does Mavis know about any of this?”

  Her eyes widened. “You wouldn’t … ?”

  “She won’t hear about it from me.”

  She smiled gratefully. She looked somewhat vulpine when she smiled. “I assume she doesn’t know. If she did, she’d fire me in a second, figuring I’d somehow engineered the whole thing to get back at her. Believe me, I don’t have revenge in mind. I just want to do my job. I guess the smart thing to do would be to find a new one.” She finished her iced tea and reached for the check. I let her have it. A deal’s a deal. “Still, I sometimes wonder if it would serve her right.”

  “If what would?”

  She showed me her pointy little teeth. “If I wrecked Mavis Glazes proper, perfect, civilized little kingdom for her.”

  They were lounging against my rental car in the public lot around the corner, jeans riding low on their hips, trying to look tough. And succeeding. No one else was around. Unless you count Gordie, who watched over us from the giant VADD billboard by the hardware store next door. There was a black-and-white photo of him looking as if he were about to cry. And underneath: If people didn’t drive drunk, he wouldn’t still be waiting for Mommy and Daddy to come home.

  “Hey, mister,” the crew cut said, grinning at me crookedly. “Y’all help us out?”

  “Be happy to,” I replied, unlocking the car and tossing my jacket inside. Good tailoring is hard to find. It’s a sin to waste it. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Couple of bucks for something to eat?” suggested the ponytail.

  “Okay,” I agreed. “Provided you fellows do a stranger a kind turn yourself someday.”

  “We’ll sure try,” the crewcut promised, enjoying this. He was certainly enjoying it more than I was.

  I took my wallet out of my trousers. Before I could open it he knocked it from my hands to the pavement. I looked down at it, then up at him, then over at the ponytail. “I have to hand it to you fellows — you’ve got real panache.”

  They stared at me blankly, waiting. There was a script to follow, and they expected me to follow it. They also didn’t know the meaning of the word panache.

  I looked back down at the wallet and sighed. “Okay, here goes … You want to pick that up?”

  The crew cut scratched his stubbly chin and thought it over. “You go ahead and do it.”

  “Okay. But just so you know for the future — this is not my idea of a kind turn.”

  I bent down for my wallet, bracing myself for the first one. It was a punch to my right kidney from the ponytail. It made my insides feel as if they’d exploded. I crumpled to my knees, gasping, and got a work boot to the shoulder, another to the neck, and then, as I pitched over onto my side, one smack in my bread basket. That one put me into the fetal position, fighting for breath. I hate getting hit. It hurts a lot. Besides, it really shouldn’t be part of my job description. I wondered if Bill Novak and Linda Bird Francke ever got stomped. Probably not.

  They patted me down roughly. Finding no notebook on me, they began searching the car, cursing to each other impatiently while I lay there, helpless.

  “Shit, where is it?” growled crew cut when they came up empty.

  “Musta passed it to the lady.”

  “Shit.” Frustrated, crew cut kicked me again — this time behind my right ear.

  This time things started spinning around. Then they went black.

  Lulu was standing over me, sniffing at my face. I tried to say her name. Nothing would come out. My hand reached for her but she pulled away from me.

  I opened my eyes. I was trying to pet Polk Four, who was crouched over me on the pavement sniffing at my breath to see if I was drunk. He’d already decided I was crazy. His sheriff’s vehicle idled there behind him in the lot, radio squawking.

  “You okay, Mr. Hoag?” he asked, brow furrowed with concern.

  My stomach ached and my shoulder, neck, and head throbbed. But I could breathe okay. No broken ribs. “Fine. Just banged my head on a steel-toed boot.”

  “How many of them were there?”

  “Four. Two to a man.”

  He handed me my car keys and wallet. They had taken my cash.

  “What did they get?” he asked.

  “Fifty, sixty bucks.”

  He shook his head, disgusted, and stood up and looked around, hands on his hips. He looked about eight feet tall standing there. “Heckuva thing, this happening in the middle of Staunton in broad daylight. Heckuva thing. You must not think too much of our little town now.”

  I sat up, groaning. “Oh, I wouldn’t go that far, Sheriff.”

  “Drive you to the hospital? That’s a nasty welt by your ear. Might have a concussion.”

  “I don’t hear any bells, two and two is four, and my name used to be Stewart Hoag.” I offered him my hand. “You could help me up.”

  “Fair enough.” He gripped my hand and hoisted me up onto my feet. I think it was better for him than it was for me. “Feel well enough to follow me?”

  “I don’t know. Where are you going?”

  “You should fill out a report. This’ll be a Staunton City Police matter. Be happy to run you over there.”

  “Maybe some other time.”

  “It’s the right thing to do,” Polk Four said firmly. “You should do it.”

  I limped over to my car and dropped slowly in behind the wheel. My jacket lay on the passenger seat. The stupid clods had torn the lining out of it. “It was murder, Sheriff.”

  “I can imagine it was pretty painful,” he said gently.

  “Fern O’Baugh. It was murder.”

  He leaned in through the open window, rested his elbows on the door. “Now look, Mr. Hoag,” he said patiently. “We’ve already been over this.”

  “I found some grooves in the banister posts at the top of the stairs. Flecks of paint on the floor. Somebody used a trip wire.”

  “Find the wire?” he asked skeptically.

  “Well, no. But I did find some wire in the kitchen. Anyone could have gone in there and —”

  “Listen to yourself, Mr. Hoag. You’ve got nothing. There’s no telling how long those flecks of paint have been there, or how they got there either. Posts could have gotten bumped with a vacuum cleaner or a piece of furniture.”

  “It was a trip wire.”

  He bristled. He didn’t like my stirring it up. Or maybe he just resented that I’d tried to pet his head. “I warned you about this once already, Mr. Hoag. I care about these people. I won’t stand for you upsetting them. Understand?”

  “Fully. You don’t want to step on any fine old corns.”

  “Now th
at’s uncalled for, mister!” he snapped. “I don’t deserve that! No way!” He stopped and paused a moment to collect himself. “You’ve been knocked around some. You’re not yourself.”

  “No, I am. That’s the depressing part.”

  “Be careful driving back to Shenandoah, okay?”

  “Will do, pardner.”

  “And don’t call me pardner!”

  He got back in his car and waited there, naming. I edged the Nova out of the lot and started for the outskirts of town. He peeled off with a screech in the other direction.

  I headed back to Shenandoah, wondering. How was it that Polk Four had happened along? Was he keeping an eye on me? Why? Who had hired the clods to get Alma’s diary from me? One of the more enterprising supermarket tabloids? A trashy television newsmagazine? It didn’t matter. Not really. What mattered was that whoever it was had good information. They knew I’d be picking up the diary at Frederick’s office, and they knew when. They had very good information. They had inside information.

  CHAPTER SIX

  MAVIS GLAZE LIKED TO patrol her realm twice daily on a hot-pink dirt bike, I guess to remind all of the birds and the bees just exactly who was in charge. She was zipping across the front pasture when I pulled the Nova through the gate. The sight of her perched regally atop her motorcycle, back stiff, nose high, smile frozen, gave a whole new meaning to the words bitch on wheels.

  Roy, the talkative old gardener, waved her down when she got to the ash-lined drive. He pointed to the outer wall over by the souvenir stand, where he’d left a shovel and wheelbarrow. She started over there with him. When she saw me, she indicated she wanted me to follow them. I did. Who was I to let her down?

  The two of them had their heads together by the wall. Roy was kneeling on the ground, one knobby hand scratching fretfully at some fresh soil there.

  “Roy seems to feel some form of animal life is getting in under the wall at night,” Mavis informed me. Her biker outfit consisted of a trim white cotton jumpsuit and belted suede jacket, with a flowered scarf over her head. “A fox, or perhaps a coon.”

  Roy gave me his blank stare, worked the chaw of tobacco in his cheek.

  “Not a matter we can afford to take lightly,” Mavis added. “It’s after the peacocks, you see.”

  “What will you do?” I asked.

  “We prefer not to put down traps,” she replied. “One of them might wander into it. Roy will have to hunt it down and shoot it.”

  He got to his feet and leaned over and murmured something to her, his lips barely moving.

  She nodded. “Your dog,” she said to me. “Keep it on a leash after dark, for its own safety.”

  “Thanks for the warning, Roy,” I said. In response he spat some tobacco juice at my feet. Maybe it was just his way of saying you’re welcome.

  Mavis didn’t care for it one bit. She turned her hard blue pinpoints on him and breathed fire. “Roy, I have told you innumerable times that if you must partake of that disgusting habit to please have the courtesy not to expectorate in my presence! Since I obviously have not made myself understood, perhaps docking you one day’s pay will make my point clear. I will not be spat at! Do you understand!”

  Roy bowed his head and nodded penitently.

  “See that you do!” She turned her back on him and marched briskly toward her motorcycle. I followed. “There was a delivery for you about an hour ago,” she said to me over her shoulder. “I had him leave it outside your room.”

  “Thank you.”

  She stopped and looked me over. “You look terribly pale. You’re not ill, are you?”

  “Nothing a short single malt and a half dozen tall ice packs can’t handle.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Don’t mind me.”

  She hesitated. “I’ve been thinking about the book. My book. I can’t think about anything else, really. I’m just so alive with ideas and sensations. I-I feel like an exposed nerve. Is it that way for you? When you write, I mean.”

  “On my good days.”

  “They’re coming so fast I can barely keep up. It’s thrilling. I can’t wait to tell you about them.”

  “And I can’t wait to hear them, Mavis. In the meantime, write them down in a notebook as they occur to you.”

  “That’s just what Mother did. She even kept a notepad by her bed at night. Father would tease her about it.” Briefly, her face softened at the memory. Then it abruptly hardened again. She climbed on her little pink motorcycle.

  “Nice little machine,” I observed.

  “It was a Christmas present from Richard.”

  “I’d have thought a horse would be more your style — strong, proud, classical.” I also couldn’t help thinking if she had a horse to kick, she’d do it less to people.

  “I never go near them. I was thrown by one as a girl. Rather badly — I broke my collarbone.”

  “I’d have thought you’d climb right back up.”

  “People often say that to me, mistakenly. It’s not that I am afraid. Fear doesn’t enter into it.”

  “What does?”

  “A horse failed me, Hoagy. Failure is a habit. I don’t believe in giving in to it.” She started up the motor and revved it. “I’m terribly upset about Fern. Such a loyal, dependable friend. Irreplaceable, as well. I’ve spent the entire afternoon on the phone with a host of agencies trying to find someone who can take over for her. They’ve checked Southampton, Palm Beach, Pasadena. No one seems available anywhere right now. I can’t imagine why.” She let out a long sigh. Then she turned the tiniest bit schoolgirlish on me. “Actually, that’s not true. I can. I don’t know how to lie to you. I wonder why. Perhaps because you’re not afraid of me.”

  “Why should I be afraid of you?”

  “The truth,” she confessed, “is that I am not considered a desirable employer. I am too hard on people.”

  A car came zipping up the drive from the gate. Charlotte in her red LeMans. She stopped beside us and rolled down her window and handed me the zippered canvas portfolio with Alma’s diary in it. Before I could thank her she’d floored it and was off for the house.

  “Interesting woman,” I observed. “I understand her father —”

  “Franklin Neene was a weakling,” Mavis snapped.

  “Still, you must have felt pretty awful about what happened.”

  “Why should I? I didn’t tell him to climb into his car and shut the garage door: I didn’t tell him to give up. That was his decision. His cowardice. Only a coward quits on life.”

  “It’s true, you know.”

  She gave me her frozen smile. “I’m glad we see things —”

  “You are too hard on people.”

  Her eyes flashed at me. “I can’t help being who I am. I’ve tried to be easygoing, accommodating. Someone who has lots of friends to laugh with, confide in. Someone who isn’t so … isolated … ” She looked away uncomfortably. “It’s not in my nature. A person must be true to his or her nature. I simply cannot tolerate weakness. There’s no place for it in my life — with one notable exception, of course. We all have our flaws. Richard happens to be mine. I’m afraid we can’t all be lucky in love.”

  “Careful. You’ll spoil what few illusions I have left.”

  “Maybe the reason you’re not afraid of me,” she suggested, “is that you don’t give a damn.”

  “Maybe the reason I’m not afraid of you is that I do.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me challengingly. “You puzzle me, Hoagy. I’d like to get to the bottom of you.”

  “Careful, I’m semispoken for.”

  “I meant,” she said sharply, “I’d like to figure out what makes you tick.”

  “Feel free. And let me know if you do — it would be nice to know myself after all these years.

  The sky was becoming dark and threatening now, the air raw. Rain wasn’t far off.

  Mavis looked up at the clouds and shivered. “I never learned how to cook. At Mother’s insistence — she fear
ed I’d be made a slave to some man. Thank goodness Charlotte volunteered to make little Gordie dinner tonight.”

  “Will she tuck him into bed, too?”

  “Gordie is a very, very lucky boy,” she pointed out.

  “I’m sure he reminds himself of that on a daily basis.” I tugged at my ear. “I happen to know a gifted, mature woman who has managed several prominent British estates. Hasn’t got a weak bone in her body. Also happens to be quite discreet.” As well as a born ferret for inside information, and just what I needed right now. “If my friend Pamela’s available, you couldn’t do any better.”

  Mavis pursed her lips. “I know Richard would adore having a fellow countrywoman. … She’s good, you say?”

  “She’s the best.”

  “I’d need references.”

  “She’d have them.”

  “Could she start right away? Time is of the essence. I’m expecting a thousand guests here for my VADD costume ball the night of the golden-anniversary premiere. The Quayles are flying in. Senator and Mrs. Robb. The Kissingers, the Buckleys. Patricia Kluge. Gore Vidal, Bill Blass, King Juan Carlos. Barbara Walters is taping a three-hour special for ABC. … I don’t know what I’ll do if —”

  “Shall I call Pam?”

  “I’d love for you to call her.” She placed her long fingers on my arm and left them there. “And thank you, Hoagy,” she said warmly. Or what was warmly for her.

  “All part of the service,” I assured her, glancing down at her fingers. She removed them, coloring.

  I only hoped Pam wouldn’t mind standing in for someone who had just been murdered.

  It was the Jag that was waiting for me outside the door of my guest cottage, the red 1958 XK150 drophead Merilee and I had bought when we were together, and which was hers now. It is a rare beauty, every inch of it factory original. Seeing it sitting there in the courtyard with its top down, sixty-spoke wire wheels gleaming, almost made me forget I’d been used as a soccer ball that afternoon. There was an engraved Tiffany note card on the tan leather driver’s seat: I wouldn’t want you to forget me, darling.