Maud was racking glasses, and Wanda Wayans was placing fresh doughnuts in neat rows on a tray on one of the glass shelves. I asked Maud if the Sheriff had been in yet for coffee. She said no, and looked toward the door.
“He’s just coming. Go on back.”
I did, and turned to see the Sheriff talking to Dodge Haines. Not one of the men sitting at the counter really liked the Sheriff. The Mayor was afraid he’d be out of a job if the Sheriff ever ran for public office; Bubby Dubois had been caught with the Sheriff’s wife; Dodge Haines was in fear of losing his dealership license; and Melvin Creek was a crook whom the Sheriff had arrested a bunch of times. But at times, to see them all glad-handing him, you’d think the Sheriff had just deputized them all and handed out keys to the courthouse.
Then he was at our booth. “Emma,” he said, with an unsmiling face and in an unsmiling voice as he slid into the booth. “What’s this about you going to see Carl Mooma?”
My mouth, open to say hello, said instead, “How do you know that?”
“Carl told Donny a reporter girl came to see him. You got Donny to tell you where his uncle lived.”
“Where he lives isn’t a secret, for heaven’s sake.”
“No, but I don’t like the idea of you going off on your own and talking to strange men.”
I threw up my arms in what I hoped was a dramatic gesture of disbelief. “Sheriff Mooma was there at the Belle Ruin the night the baby disappeared.”
“I know that.”
“And I’m writing a story for the paper, re-mem-ber?”
“You can get your information without going around talking to strange men. You’ve knocked on more doors in Cold Flat Junction than the Fuller brush man.”
“Oh, really? I guess you think Gloria Spiker’s dangerous, then.”
No need to bring up Jude Stemple and Reuben Stuck and Morris Slade. “And you don’t know a thing about reporting. Mr. Mooma was an eyewitness! Eyewitness, doesn’t that mean anything to you? In other words, it wouldn’t be hearsay, what he says, like it was for me about Isabel Devereau.”
As if by magic, Maud appeared and set down a cup of coffee for the Sheriff and a Coke in front of me. “What’re you on about?” This was directed to the Sheriff. She shook a cigarette out of her pack of Camels.
“He’s telling me not to go ‘Talking to Strange Men.’ ” I was seeing it now as a movie. Starring me.
“Are there some strange men? I wouldn’t mind talking to them myself.” A long look at the Sheriff made him turn and look grimly at her.
“You’re not concerned that Emma goes off on her own hook and into houses she doesn’t know anything about and starts jawing off about a crime being committed?”
“I don’t ‘jaw off.’ I’m good at disguising why I’m there.”
“ ‘Disguise,’ I can believe. You’ve got to stop playacting, Emma. That’s what you think life is—a play or a movie.”
Having just turned “Talking to Strange Men” into one, I was a little embarrassed. “No, that’s what Will does. He thinks life is—”
The Sheriff shook his head and bummed a cigarette off Maud. “Your brother stages plays. So did Ziegfeld. He doesn’t think he is the play. He can tell the difference between fiction and reality.”
“What? What?” I was leaning so hard up against the tabletop that my “what?”s came out in breathless spurts. “The difference between fiction and reality? Will can’t tell the difference between his own two feet. I’m the one that knows the difference. I have to look at things as they are to be a newspaper reporter.” That was a terrific answer, I thought.
The Sheriff didn’t. He too shoved himself up against the tabletop. “There are dangerous people out there, Emma—”
“Like Ben Queen?” I hoped my voice just dripped with sarcasm.
“You didn’t know Ben wasn’t dangerous.”
Well, I guess I had to admit that when I ran into him with a gun in his hand, I probably thought there was some danger involved. I didn’t know what to say, so I just made something up, having no idea what I meant. “Danger is what you make up to be danger.”
“Oh, well, then I’ll just turn in my badge and my sidearm.”
Maud shook her head, annoyed. “Oh, why don’t you two just give up? You’re always fighting.”
This shocked me, for we didn’t used to. Didn’t used to fight, I mean. I felt suddenly sad. He was right, I knew. I’d always known I shouldn’t go around knocking on strangers’ doors. And it wasn’t reporting either. I wasn’t working for the newspaper when I started investigating the old Devereau house. And look what happened there. Even though I thought he was being bossy, telling me what to do, still, I guessed he was really worried that something might happen to me.
“I think I’ll have some chili.”
“Me too,” said the Sheriff.
He never ate chili. I don’t even think he liked chili. So I guess this was a kind of truce we were calling.
Maud brought the chili and we ate it, happily making small talk.
And I completely forgot to tell him about the Slade baby, that it had been a boy. I also didn’t tell him about Ralph Diggs or Morris Slade, which I think I would’ve in better days.
Talk about talking to strange men.
I had missed serving lunch. When I realized it was noon by the time I finished my chili, I raced out of the Rainbow and around to the taxi stand, where Delbert was reading a comic, and Wilma, the dispatcher, was putting bright coral polish on her nails.
Delbert grabbed up his keys and we left.
Even while he was pulling away from the curb, he started in: “They have to come two by two? If they don’t, why build an ark? I mean you could just put up a tent for cover if you needed it.”
Being full of chili, I was pretty dozy and closed my eyes, if not my ears. Here was someone who didn’t give a hoot about reality sitting up there, driving.
That really miffed me, that the Sheriff thought my brother lived more in the “real” world than I did. Had the Sheriff ever visited the Big Garage? Every day, dawn to dusk, Will and Mill were in there giving the real world a run for its money.
Mrs. Davidow was in the kitchen, cigarette in one hand, some pale drink in the other, waiting apparently for her lunch, some version of her beef and grapefruit diet, to be served up. My mother was strangely unmoved by my excuse that I had had to wait forever for a taxi.
“You never have to wait for a taxi. Miss Bertha and Mrs. Fulbright have already eaten.”
“Fortunately, Ralph was here,” said Mrs. Davidow.
“ ‘Fortunately’? You’re paying him to be here.” Then I remembered that wasn’t strictly true.
There was a laugh behind me, a deep one. I hadn’t seen him, sitting in the shadow at the round table where I ate my meals, joined sometimes by Walter, there by the rear door. I didn’t like him sitting at our table.
Mrs. Davidow looked toward him with a simpering smile. “Well, he’s certainly earning whatever he gets.” My mother put two very succulent-looking hamburgers on the two plates, and Mrs. Davidow carried them over to the table herself. I’m surprised she knew how to carry anything but a glass. She was actually lunching with Ralph Diggs.
I smiled in Walter’s direction. “Well, I’ve always said Walter Knepp is as good as any waiter we’ve got. He can have the tip too, when he takes my place.”
Walter said, in his drawly way, “Miss Bertha don’t leave no tips.”
“I meant at the end of summer, when they go.” I hadn’t meant anything at all; it was just empty talk.
My mother had turned to take a plate down from the shelf over the stove. “Well, now that you’re here—finally—you can take your great-aunt’s tea up to her.”
Lucky me.
45
Aurora raised the little lid and looked in the teapot as if looking for more than tea leaves, set it back down and looked at the milk in the pitcher, raised the lid of the sugar bowl and frowned into it. She reminded me of a squirr
el looking for a hidden acorn.
Then she picked up one of my mother’s lace cookies and studied the holes and tiny slits made by its stretched thinness.
I slouched against the wall and asked a useless question. “What are you doing?”
“Checkin’ out my tea. What’s it look like?”
“Why are you having tea? You never have tea.”
She shrugged and bit the cookie. She plunked four cubes of sugar into her cup. “Milk’s cold. Must of come straight out of the icebox.”
“I’m so sorry. Next time I’ll milk a cow. Now: Raphael Slade.” I guessed she was thinking with that blind stare.
She actually rose up out of her chair a few inches, then fell back. The exertion had her munching another lace cookie. Through the crumbs, she said, “Why?”
“That’s what I’ve been asking myself.”
“Well . . . All right, the Slade baby gets kidnapped the night of the ball at the Belle Ruin. I was there, did I tell you?”
“A lot of times.”
“The belle of the ball, that was me.”
Aurora was ninety-one. She would have been around seventy. I guess if you’re not dead by then you’re the belle of the ball. I didn’t want her to get caught up in that. “You told me before that you were there when Sheriff Mooma came.”
“Indeed I was.”
“Okay: so Gloria Spiker told him she’d just stepped out to make that phone call and was gone for twenty minutes.”
She nodded and bit off another piece of cookie and studied the rest.
“She was lying and so was Prunella Rice. They were both paid to set up that phone call, so when Mr. Woodruff told Sheriff Mooma he just needed some time to work out whether Morris Slade had something to do with the kidnapping, he was lying too. Obviously, Mr. Woodruff knew what was going on and who was responsible, because he knew the phone call was bogus.”
Aurora was rocking now with both hands on the arms of her chair and a glint like splinters in her eyes. “That old Lucien Woodruff paid somebody to take the baby away.”
“Robby Stone. He was the bellboy that had the car accident.”
“You said they found his body, but not the baby’s.”
I nodded. “So I’m guessing Robby had already delivered the baby to someone.”
“Could’ve killed and buried it.”
I did not want the notion of a baby being murdered to hang around in my head too long. “Hardly. As the baby turned out to be Ralph Diggs.”
Now she stopped rocking. “Delivered, but nobody knows where.” She clucked her tongue. “Ain’t that the limit?” She took her deck of cards out of the pocket of her dark blue cotton dress. It was sprigged all over with tiny flower bouquets. She started slapping the cards down, probably more to help her think than from a desire for solitaire. “Why don’t you ask him?”
“Ask him? As if he’d tell me. Anyway, I don’t want him to know I know. I think Morris Slade was meant to be the guilty party in that so-called kidnapping.”
“Framed? God, I think maybe you’re gettin’ ahead of yourself. You haven’t got one speck of hard evidence. Did you get hold of that Oates fellow?”
I think Aurora was getting addled. “Get hold of him? How? That was back in your day. I told you I can’t pay a private detective.” I saw no reason to add that the Wood boys and Mr. Root were on the case.
After serving Aurora’s tea, I had a couple of hours until her drink serving. I decided to make a quick trip to Britten’s, to see if Mr. Root and the Woods were back.
They were. The three of them were standing together, smoking, or at least Mr. Root and Ubub were. Ulub and Ubub had their old suit jackets on, collars turned up. The collar of Mr. Root’s jungle plaid shirt was turned up too. They probably all thought they were searching for the Maltese Falcon. At least it was an improvement over poor Ulub reciting Emily Dickinson. The way they were huddled you’d think there was a dead body at their feet, or else a pile of money.
When they saw me, they made furious motions with their hands, waving me over to the conference.
“Hi. Did you find—?”
They all started talking at once, but Mr. Root was the only one I could understand.
“That Slade fella? We sure did. He—”
“E en at ow fat union—”
“Now, just you wait, Ubub; I’m tellin’ this.”
Ubub looked crushed. He had very large chocolate brown eyes, and looking crushed was one thing he did well.
Mr. Root backpedaled a bit. “I mean, just the beginning, you know, to put Emma here in the picture.”
“Ah en up er n a eur.”
We could stand here all day and all night at this rate. I said, “Let Mr. Root give me the facts, Ubub, and you two can interpret them.” Whatever that meant. But it seemed to mollify them. Sometimes I wondered at my able diplomacy. I think I was the only one who wondered at it.
“Right,” said Mr. Root. “You know where the son of a gun done went? Cold Flat Junction.”
That did surprise me. I don’t know where I thought he was headed for, but that wasn’t it. “Where?”
Mr. Root looked as if he’d invented the whole story, pleased as punch. “Queens’ house.”
I frowned. Then I remembered, of course: Rose Devereau Queen.
“We sat in the truck—at a distance, mind; he never saw us—and waited. Whoever came to the door stood talking to him a minute. Then he went inside and never come out for over an hour.”
Ubub blurted, “E usta ha omin a alk out?”
“Indeed,” said Mr. Root, nodding. “They musta had somethin’ to talk about, is right.”
Ubub looked pleased at his interpretation. Then he said, “En he c’m out, e ooked ad.”
“Mad? Bad?”
All three shook their heads. “Sad,” said Mr. Root. “Real sad.”
They would have talked about the death of Rose Queen. “Where’d he go then?”
It was Ulub’s turn. He spoke a shade more clearly than his brother. “En he ent t’ the iner.”
“What? Did you say the diner?”
“Sure did, and we was hot on his heels. Now, diners, that’s a place I feel right at home, right, fellas?”
I thought for a moment Mr. Root was going to snap his suspenders like Walter Brennan. Morris Slade in the Windy Run Diner. Oh, how I wish I could have seen it.
“He was havin’ coffee. Havin’ coffee and smokin’ a cigar. Tell you what: that was the best-smellin’ cigar I ever encountered. Looked expensive too. He clipped off the end with a gold thingamabob and just smoked away. People in there, hell, you’d’ve thought he was some foreign official or some member of royalty or other.”
Mr. Root went on: “So we had ourselves some coffee and some coconut cream pie—”
“Ah ate appa’.” Ulub wanting to set the record straight.
“Good pie,” said Mr. Root.
By now we were all sitting down, crowded onto the bench that could comfortably hold only three, listening to this story, Ulub and Ubub listening right along with me, as if they hadn’t actually been there and were hearing it for the first time.
“Now, the lady behind the counter that waited on us all, you could see she was all agog, seeing the likes of him in there. Well, you got to admit, Morris Slade looks pretty good.”
I had to admit Morris Slade looked pretty good.
Morris Slade and the Queens.
Added to the mystery of why he was here at all was what business he could have in Cold Flat Junction.
“Fey” Slade. It was a peculiar nickname to draw from “Raphael.” Why not “Ralph” or, even more likely, “Rafe,” as he was calling himself.
According to the police report, he was no more than four months old when he was taken. That’s if Sheriff Mooma was to be believed, and I saw no reason to doubt him.
I had just delivered Aurora her before-dinner drink and pondered all of this as she pronounced the Hollow Leg the best one yet. I’ll say this about her, she can be q
uite complimentary, but then I guess even Mrs. Davidow would be paying me compliments if her glass were three-fourths whiskey and one-fourth apple juice and, in this case, a tiny bit of crushed-up red chili, which gave it its kick. I mean, whatever kick the whiskey didn’t provide.
I studied the posters on the walls. Aurora had been a big traveler in her youth, sailing off on the Queen Mary and “almost” on the Titanic, she said, “But I canceled that. I knew something bad was going to happen.” Like the captain knew, when he saw that iceberg, I didn’t bother adding. The only second sight I can put up with is Mrs. Louderback’s.
The posters were not framed, but just put up with a sticky gum-like material behind each corner. They showed slim men and women looking rich and being gay in Brittany, the Côte d’Azur, Deauville, Capri, and places such as that. Above the beach in Deauville, where brilliant umbrellas fluttered in what must have been a warm breeze and a golden sun, a woman in a bathing suit waved to her friends farther down on the beach. Rich and happy people waved to other rich and happy people in the distance. Did women really dress like that in those airy-looking gowns, so thin and flat they looked like ocean waves themselves? And men in boaters and striped jackets happily handing these women down to patios covered with plum trees. Hanging around a chauffeur-driven car, a woman wrapped in white fur waved at someone else out there, dancing under the stars.
They all looked so fortunate that I had to wonder if it was really this life they were living, or if they were waving to me from latitudes I probably would never be lucky enough to share.
I was snatched back from Deauville by ice rattling in Aurora’s glass as she held out her hand and demanded another Hollow Leg. I didn’t protest; I couldn’t be bothered. I was making plans for tomorrow.
46
I was glad I was wearing a sweater because there really was a wind coming down Windy Run Road and it just about blew the metal-framed door of the diner back out of my hand. I knew the first comment would be of the just-blew-in variety.
Fadeaway Girl Page 20
