Fadeaway Girl

by Martha Grimes

  It was nice to be seen as harmless instead of dangerous. “I am. I won’t tell anything you don’t want me to. We’re off the record. Could he have taken the baby somewhere? Maybe also arranged?”

  “Sure he could have. He was working at the Belle Ruin earlier; then he left. Woodruff paid him to take the baby with him.”

  “And there was never any trace of her. But she still could be alive somewhere.”

  Carl Mooma turned to stare at me. “She? It wasn’t a girl; it was a boy.”

  “What?” I felt the rain then like ice on my skin. “But her name was ‘Fay.’ That was in the police report. I saw it when—” I didn’t want to add when I stole the folder out of the sheriff’s office.

  He smiled. “Yeah, well, a lot of people made that mistake. That was his name all right, but spelled f-e-y. It was like a nickname. The kid was named after his great-grandfather, named”—he studied the porch railing for a moment—“Raphael?”

  I couldn’t answer him; my mouth was dry. Raphael.

  41

  Carl Mooma gave me a ride back to the hotel, as he had to be in La Porte around six o’clock. He’d promised Donny he’d see him for supper and a few beers after.

  I was just too stunned to talk. I asked Mr. Mooma to let me off at the bottom of the hotel driveway, since that would save him some time.

  “If ever you’re in my neck of the woods again, drop by.” He tipped up the bill of his Mail Pouch tobacco cap and drove off.

  I stood there in a cloud of dust and gravel until his truck disappeared around a curve. Then I ran up the drive.

  For once, I was sorry Ree-Jane wasn’t gloating on the front porch, because Ralph Diggs would have been with her. I supposed I might as well call him that temporarily. Ralph Diggs. Rafe Diggs. Raphael Slade. “Fey” Slade.

  The newspapers had called the vanished baby “Fay,” so naturally people assumed it was a girl. I thought about Gloria Spiker: she’d said “her” when speaking of the baby. That she’d been told not to wake “her” up—or had she? Maybe she’d said “it.” Had either of the parents actually said “her” or had they said “Fey”?

  I set out to find him, although I wasn’t clear as to what I’d do once I did find him. First I tried his room. He wasn’t there and I resisted the temptation to look around. I went down the back stairs to the kitchen and asked Walter if he’d seen Ralph.

  “Up in the Big Garage I seen him.”

  The door was open, not all the way, not even half. More like a quarter. But to find it open at all was an occasion. I went in. The Tree girls were back with their satin slippers tied on. This time one was in a tutu, pink like the slippers. The other was in her regular clothes, a skirt and sweater, and looked enviously at her sister as they both twirled. Probably mad she didn’t have a tutu. I could have told her that her sister looked pretty stupid in hers so not to mind.

  He was standing talking to Will and Mill and seemed right at home. I gave Ralph Diggs a closer look now that I knew who he was, or at least was pretty sure I knew. Tawny hair, like Morris Slade’s, and his skin was as fine as my mother’s blancmange. Skin like that was wasted on a man; it was a girl’s face, a soft face.

  “That was the most spoiled girl I ever knew,” I heard Miss Flagler say once about Imogen Woodruff. “Everything about her was spoiled. Even her face.”

  A handsome, spoiled face. As if Morris Slade’s face had been tampered with, pulled about out of true.

  Will just jerked his head at me. He was looking down at something he seemed to be whittling. “Ralph’s helping with the production.”

  You mean Raphael. I was dying to say it, but of course I didn’t.

  Ralph Diggs’s eyes turned to ice. I think it must have been just a trick of the light. I hoped it wasn’t because he was reading my mind.

  He smiled, I guess you’d say “winsomely.” “Hi, Emma.”

  I did not “Hi” him back. I tried my own winsome smile, which was probably not at all winsome, just crooked.

  “Doing what?”

  “Magic. I told you.”

  “You’re the magician?”

  I tried to make my tone flat and unimpressed.

  He nodded.

  “What kind of magic do you do, then?”

  “Nothing extraordinary. I’m pretty much an amateur.” He laughed abruptly.

  “Well, you’ve come to the right place.” I laughed abruptly too. “Can you disappear?”

  Ralph looked at me uncertainly. Then he took a step toward me, put his hand behind my ear in a quick smooth motion, and pulled out a quarter. “What’s this?” he asked, as if surprised.

  I was supposed to be pleased and surprised. I will admit to being surprised, but I tried not to show it. Calmly I asked him how he’d done it.

  Slyly, he shook his head. “Sorry.”

  “The thing is, see, there wasn’t a coin behind my ear, so if you found one, that means you put it there.”

  Will was actually looking at me with interest. “How’d he put it there?”

  “When he reached there supposedly to find it.”

  “I had nothing in my hand.”

  “Of course you did. You’ve probably got hands as nimble as Mill’s.” I nodded toward the piano, where Mill had gone to play some tune for the Tree girls to twirl with. “The quarter was hidden someplace, that’s all. You palmed it.”

  “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” said Will, who’d gone back to whittling whatever.

  “I’ve got to go.”

  “Good-bye, Emma,” he called out when I was at the door.

  I didn’t “Good-bye” him either.

  I was almost looking forward to taking Aurora her tea. We’d certainly have something to talk about.

  Rafe Slade.

  What I couldn’t figure out was why he was here at the hotel. Why wasn’t he over at the Woodruff house? Unless he was picking a particular time to see Morris Slade. But that still didn’t say why he was here in the Big Garage hanging out with a couple of kids.

  Morris Slade and Ralph Diggs; Morris Slade and his son. Surely both of them turning up at the same time in Spirit Lake wasn’t a coincidence.

  Or was my imagination just running wild?

  I stopped outside the kitchen door. I finally agreed with Will about something: I didn’t know what I was talking about.

  42

  It was after five and Lola Davidow would be either in the kitchen stirring up a pitcher of martinis or in the back office drinking them. I first tried the office. It was empty. I grabbed up a bottle of whiskey and slipped out again, around the front desk and down the corridor to the back door. Then along the wooden walk to the door of the kitchen. I checked the bottle to see what I’d taken. It was 100-proof whiskey called “Apple Hollow” and according to the label was “cured in the keg.” I bet.

  I called “Hi” to Walter, then went to the refrigerator for a couple of ice cubes. Over this I poured a large measure of whiskey and topped it off with apple juice. I dusted some cinnamon over the top, then stuck in one of Lola’s swizzle sticks. I studied the drink for a moment and called it a “Hollow Leg.”

  “That’s good,” said Aurora, “real good. ‘Hollow Leg.’ You outdone yourself.” She took another mouthful, seemed to be turning it around as if it were a great wine.

  “It’s only apple juice.”

  She shook a bony finger at me. “Don’t forget the cinnamon. Gives it a bite.”

  “I’d say the bite comes more from hundred-proof whiskey.”

  “Lola Davidow ought to open a bar, make you head bartender.”

  “You’ve suggested that before. It’d really go down well with the vice squad.” I didn’t know if there was such a thing (certainly not in La Porte); I thought I’d heard Perry Mason refer to one. “Listen, remember about the police coming to the Belle Ruin the night of the Slade baby kidnapping?” I was holding off telling her about Ralph Diggs.

  “Yes, since you don’t let me forget it for as much as fiftee
n seconds.”

  “It was Sheriff Mooma. Why’d you say he was such a big fool?”

  “Did I say that?”

  She didn’t care whether she’d said it or not. Her face was tilted over her glass as if she were seeing treasure from the Titanic down there.

  “He’s not. I talked to him today for a long time. He’s no fool.”

  She held out her glass; it was still half full, but I guess she was preparing for the future. “Ready for another!”

  “I’m not. The baby’s name was Fey. How do you spell it?”

  She gave me a squinty look. “What? How do you spell ‘Fay’? Now there’ s a hard question. The hotel cat could tell you that.”

  The ice in her glass rattled as she took another drink.

  “The name was f-E-y, not f-A-y. It was a nickname for Raphael. A boy.”

  This surprised her as much as it had me. She actually gave some thought to it, actually set her glass on the table beside her chair. “Well, it’d make an investigation pretty hard if they didn’t even know the sex.”

  “There wasn’t really an investigation, remember.”

  “Told you that Mooma was a fool.”

  “No, he wasn’t. Isn’t. Mr. Woodruff asked him to hold off for several hours because he wanted to find out if his son-in-law was involved.”

  “You mean Morris Slade? Police ain’t supposed to do favors for people.”

  “You do if the governor asks you to.”

  “Lucien Woodruff was friends with the governor? Nothing but corruption city.” To irritate me into getting her another drink, she took her worn deck of cards out from her box of odds and ends. She also took out two little black boxes of tiny matches and slapped those down on the table.

  I picked one up. The top was shiny black with a French word—L’ennui—printed across it. “What are these?”

  “Matches. We can bet with ’em, seein’ you don’t have any money.” She started shuffling.

  “But what’s it mean?”

  “L’ennui? For goodness’ sake, you don’t know that song about fighting the old on-weeeee?” She sang the line. “Means weary. No, world-weary. Sick of life. Seven-card stud or spit in the ocean?” She riffled the cards and looked at me like the card shark she wasn’t.

  “Raphael,” I repeated. “Does that put you in mind of anybody?”

  “No.” Slap went one of the cards.

  Her lack of curiosity, after her initial surprise, was beginning to rankle. “Raphael was the name of Mr. Woodruff’s father.”

  That made her look up, again with that squint. “So? What’s he got to do with anything?”

  “There’s more obvious nicknames than Fey. Like Rafe, for instance.”

  She stared. “Now, wait. Are you sayin’ this good-for-nothing fella Lola Davidow just hired—?” She waved that away and went back to shuffling.

  “That’s what I’m saying. Ralph Diggs is Morris Slade’s boy, the one who was kidnapped. He was taken somewhere as a baby, but apparently no one knows where or to whom. Now he’s here. And maybe that accounts for Morris Slade being here too.”

  Aurora shook her head. “Girl, you got a wilder imagination than your crazy brother.” She started dealing out two hands.

  That was truly annoying. It sounded like Dwayne and the Sheriff.

  I picked up her glass and palmed my box of matches and marched down the stairs. Halfway down the long hall I heard her raspy voice singing about the old ennui and battling it by going on a spree. Aurora was out on a spree every day of her life.

  I looked at the stolen box of matches: L’ennui.

  That had a definite Emma-ring.

  43

  Except for the Sheriff, whose schedule was always changing according to the comings and goings of lawbreakers, the person who could best bring reason to bear on this story was Dwayne. Unfortunately, he also brought a lot of sarcasm.

  So the next morning, following my peach pancake breakfast, I was once again sitting on the tire tower, my arms hooked around my washed-out blue pedal pushers, my chin on my knees, waiting for Dwayne to come up for air.

  “I’m not going to tell you while you’re banging away on that engine or exhaust pipe or whatever.” He was under an old blue Chevy.

  “Okay,” he said.

  He did not mean Okay I’ll roll out from under; he meant Okay don’t. He enjoyed taking things literally to annoy me.

  Yet, I had already told him most of it, since I could not resist the telling, even if he could resist the listening. Yet, he was listening, I knew. There were times I thought he was even anxious about me.

  At last Dwayne stopped what he was doing under the car and rolled out.

  “Sometimes I think you save underneath-work for when I come around.”

  The oily rag was out and he was wiping down his fingers. “Me too.”

  “Ha-ha.” I hated when he reduced me to ha-ha’s. It’s a typical Ree-Jane response.

  “Okay, what’s next?”

  Narrowing my eyes, I looked closely at his face for a sign of amusement at my expense. I found it too, his mouth kind of twitching away from a smile, as if he were holding it back. “The baby’s name was Fey.” I had tricked Aurora with this. “How would you spell it, if asked?”

  “F-a-y. Same as if I wasn’t asked. That’s how you spell ‘Fay.’ You, of course, are about to spell it different.”

  “There’s a point here, you know.”

  “I hope so.” He stood with arms crossed, leaning against the Chevy, looking at me.

  “The point is, it’s spelled f-E-y. It’s a nickname. The baby’s real name was Raphael, according to Sheriff Mooma.”

  “That’s a boy’s name. You mean this kid was a boy?”

  Eagerly, I nodded.

  Dwayne thought this over. “First it was: she’s back. But that doesn’t work anymore, so now it’s: he’s back.” He looked at me. He was chewing gum that I didn’t even know he had in his mouth. Dwayne was subtle that way. “My God, girl, but you got enough ghostly characters roaming around to stage a production of Hamlet.”

  “What? They’re not my inventions!”

  “Uh,” he grunted. “And everyone thought the vanished child was a girl?”

  I said, stumbling about for meaning, “There weren’t that many ‘everyones’ to even have an opinion. The baby was only here for a day. His importance was born with his kidnapping. That’s what I’d bet. The baby didn’t mean a thing to anyone; he was invisible till he got kidnapped.”

  He was silent. Then: “Sorry, did I miss something? This Raphael—that’s supposed to mean something to me?”

  I guess it didn’t, since he hadn’t known about Mr. Woodruff’s father. So I told him, adding, as I had for Aurora, “Fey they called him as a baby. There’s a more familiar nickname than Fey, though, for Raphael.”

  “Ralph, I’d say.”

  “Or Rafe.”

  He chewed so slowly you could hardly see his jaw move. “You’re not supposing that this new guy you’ve got working at the hotel is this vanished child?”

  The vanished child. The disappeared baby. It was as if this defined them, as if they had no existence without the vanishing or disappearing. What did I mean? And why they? There was only one. “Yes. I think Ralph Diggs is who people thought was Fey Slade.”

  Dwayne was stock-still. It made me nervous. I thought he was about to say something, when Abel Slaw walked in with You-Boy. I jumped down from the tires when I saw Abel was working his way up to giving me a verbal licking about how a garage could be a dangerous place.

  I left before I gave him a verbal licking about danger.

  44

  I didn’t want to walk into town or even back to the hotel to call Axel’s Taxis. I was not about to ask Mr. Slaw if I could use his telephone, so I went to the pay phone next door, just in front of the lumber shop. Then I sat on the bench outside and waited for Delbert.

  Naturally, he wanted to know why I was at Hanna’s Building Supply, and I told him becau
se we were building an ark at the rear of the hotel grounds and were charging fifty cents for anyone who wanted to bring his pet to get blessed.

  Anyone else would have been questioning the whole ark-building plan, but not Delbert, who instead had to comment on Noah: “Now I don’t think he blessed the animals; I think his job was just to get ’em on board, march ’em up the ramp and inside the ship and that was all.”

  I slid down in my seat and did not contradict him, because that would encourage conversation. Probably, it served me right for the ark story. And I forgot that silence could encourage conversation as much as speaking.

  “So who’s doin’ the blessin’? I mean, who’s qualified? Who’s got the papers?”

  Delbert had been referring a lot to “the papers” lately, and I wondered why he’d got that bee in his bonnet; what he meant by it I certainly wasn’t going to ask.

  “Walter,” I said.

  Delbert’s neck was going to seize up if he didn’t stop turning it so fast. “Walter? You talkin’ about Walter Knepp? Him that works at the hotel?”

  “If you mean the Hotel Paradise, yes.” It irritated me I’d forgotten Walter’s last name was Knepp.

  We were driving by Arturo’s with its busted neon sign.

  “Don’t kid me,” said Delbert. “Walter ain’t got the qualifications for givin’ blessin’s.”

  “You mean the papers?”

  “What? What d’ya mean?”

  “Nothing.” When we came to the corner of the street where the Rainbow Café stood, I suddenly thought of something. “Delbert, have you driven anyone new lately? New to town?”

  “Like who?”

  I gritted my teeth. “If I knew who, I wouldn’t be asking, would I?”

  “Well, you could. It could be somebody you know and you’re keeping tabs on.” He pulled up to the curb and gave the transmission stick a smart little push upward, pleased with himself.

  If I didn’t get out of the cab quickly and bolt into the Rainbow, I’d strangle him.

  It wasn’t lunchtime yet, but the usual row of counter sitters were there silently studying the same menu that had been in effect since before I was born.