Fadeaway Girl

by Martha Grimes

  “Well, look what that wind out there just blowed in!”

  This was Evren, sitting on his usual counter stool between Don Joe and Billy.

  For several boring minutes, while I studied the pies in their glass case, they all talked about the weather. Then Mervin came in without his wife. (I was glad to see) and said hello to everyone and slid into his usual booth.

  Louise Snell smiled and asked, “You want lunch, Mervin, or just coffee?”

  “Coffee, thanks. Too early for lunch.” Then he thought better of it and said, “Maybe a waffle, Louise, to hold me over.” He kind of laughed, then smiled at me, tipping his head in greeting, as if it were a hat. “How are you, Emma?”

  Evren answered for me: “She nearly got blowed to Alaska.”

  Don Joe put in, “One of our fifty states. The other bein’ Hawa-ya, if I remember correctly.” He stared at me.

  I crimped my mouth shut. He was never going to let it rest that I’d corrected him about the forty-eight states. I let “Hawa-ya” be, though I was sorely tempted. When Louise Snell asked me if I’d like a piece of pie I said no, I’d like a doughnut. I’d taken to heart what Mervin had said; it was a little early for lunch. It had better be, if I was to get back to serve it.

  I tried to come up with some easy way of getting talk around to the stranger in the tan suit with a cigar.

  “So what you up to this mornin’, girl? You finished writin’ that story yet?”

  This came from Don Joe, to Billy’s obvious displeasure, for he always wanted to be the one to ask first. It was the perfect subject, one that I’d almost forgotten about because I’d hardly worked on it for nearly two weeks. “No, I haven’t finished. That’s one reason why I came. I need to talk to the Queens again. And I’d like to talk to their cousin. I hope he’s still around.” I munched my doughnut.

  Interest sparked. Here was a fresh topic. Billy waded right in. “Now he wouldn’t be a tall blond fella, kinda citified type?”

  “Citified? He probably is, as he’s from New York.”

  Mervin said, “I’d not call him blond, Billy. No, his hair’s more tawny, you know.” He was looking at me. “All shades of blond and light brown.”

  Billy had swung around on his stool to face Mervin. “Mervin, is them specs you got on in need of cleanin’? ’Cause you don’t see very well in ’em. That hair was blond hair if I ever did see blond hair.” He swung back to face the counter.

  Then Evren dared to say, “Well, now, I think Mervin’s got a point there—”

  Billy glared at Evren, and Evren drank his Coke. “Pretty soon you’ll be sayin’ the man was drivin’ a Ford.”

  Don Joe got a swallow of coffee spewed out of his nose when he laughed. He said to me, “He was drivin’ a Porch.”

  I wanted to say he drove a Porch all over Hawa-ya, but I held my tongue.

  Louise Snell, who, like Mervin, had good sense, said, “Yeah, and all of you looked like you was six years old, gawking out of the window as he drove off.”

  “You got to admit, Louise, we don’t get many of them kinda cars around here.”

  “Good thing too, the effect it had. And it’s ‘Porsche,’ Don Joe.”

  “What is?”

  “The car. You were callin’ it a Porch.”

  “No, I never—”

  Mervin said, “Wasn’t a Porsche, anyway.”

  Billy fumed. “Now just where do you get off sayin’ that, Mervin?”

  Mervin shrugged. “It wasn’t big enough. That was one of those Italian automobiles.”

  Before Billy could contradict this, I said, “Did he say anything about going to see the Queens?”

  “No. We asked him—Billy did—if he was from around here,” said Don Joe, interrupting himself to blow on the fresh coffee that Louise Snell poured into his cup.

  Billy picked up on this. “Said no, that he was from over to La Porte. Born and bred there. But now he was living in New York City. Manhattan, he said. He just come back for a visit.”

  I was surprised Morris Slade would talk to them. But I guess their questions were just the usual ones, hardly what you’d call probing.

  Billy went on. “He said he knew the Queens from when he lived here. In La Porte, I mean.”

  “He’s related to ’em.” This flat statement came from Mervin, who was now eating the waffle Louise Snell had set before him.

  “What?” Billy swung around to confront Mervin, as he always did. “Now, Mervin, the man never said he was any relation.”

  “Emma just said he was a cousin. He looks like ’em.” Mervin frowned a bit, his forkful of waffle suspended before him. “I mean like Rose Queen. He looks like her.”

  The counter sitters all looked dumbstruck by this comment. As a matter of fact, I felt struck dumb too, that Mervin would notice such a thing.

  Anytime Mervin claimed a knowledge of Rose, Billy got huffy. “Mervin, we been over this before. You ain’t exactly a Junction native; you’re a newcomer—”

  (I bet there weren’t many of those around.)

  “—and you never did know Rose Queen.” Billy considered himself the expert on Rose.

  “I saw pictures of her in newspapers. That man looked enough like her to be her twin.”

  Billy was completely discombobulated (a favorite word of my mother’s) and just swung back and forth on his stool, trying to contradict this. “Rose Queen was murdered twenty years ago. You wasn’t even here. So you saw a picture in an old paper. Now, are you sayin’ your memory’s that good you can see her face enough to compare it with his?”

  “It’s not my memory that’s that good. It’s her face. You’d not forget her face.”

  The suggestion that Billy had forgotten her face nearly sent the man flying off his stool. He was red in the face and balling up a fist.

  Louise Snell said, “Oh, for God’s sake, Billy. Mervin just has an eye for things.” She was wiping down the counter.

  “You don’t think I got an eye? Sure, I noticed he looked like Rose. Of course I did.” He muttered something else over the rim of his coffee mug.

  They were irritating me. “Why didn’t somebody just ask him? Why didn’t you say, ‘You wouldn’t be related to Rose Queen, would you?’ Or Devereau. It’d be Rose Devereau Queen, wouldn’t it?”

  This was something else to mull over. Now they all looked discombobulated, even Mervin, a little. So I gave them an out. “You probably didn’t want to appear nosy, that’s why.” No it wasn’t. They were some of the nosiest-appearing people I’d ever known. But they had their roundabout ways, just like me. We were like jays that would rather have to crack open a sunflower seed than be presented with the nut inside. Maybe that’s why I liked to come here, to be with people with roundabout ways.

  I could tell it annoyed Billy that somebody else was accounting for Rose Queen. He shrugged and again muttered something I didn’t hear.

  I had my stub of a pencil, but I’d forgotten my notebook, so I took a couple of paper napkins from the holder. I put money down for my doughnut, swung down off my stool, and said good-bye.

  “Well, how are you, Emma?”

  I was glad it was George Queen who came to the door instead of his wife, Sheba, who didn’t especially like me, although she did serve me cookies when I was here before. I’d managed to get rid of them. My mother’s cookies had spoiled me for anyone else’s. I think I crumbled up Sheba’s and tossed them off the porch.

  “How are you, Mr. Queen? I’m real sorry to bother you again.”

  He held wide the door. “No bother at all. Come on in.”

  I did. Last time we had sat on the porch, which I much preferred. The walls of rooms hold you in more and hold in what you say. They’re stricter.

  The rooms seemed dark. The one we went into held dark brown and olive green chairs and a sofa—I think horsehair or something that had an ugliness to it—with thick arms and cushions that looked like no one ever sat in them, and all of them looking as if they were daring you to do it.


  Mr. Queen sat down in one of the chairs and motioned me to another. I sat gingerly on the edge. The upholstery was rough and scratchy.

  “You still being a reporter, Emma?” He smiled.

  It was as if reporting were a holiday costume you put on and took off. But I had found most people didn’t understand the writing life. However, his question did remind me that I hadn’t finished, had barely started, my next installment.

  “Yes, I am. It’s why I’m here. You remember about the Belle Ruin and the kidnapping?”

  He nodded. “That little baby. The Slade kid.”

  “I’m still trying to get details. . . . I’m looking for the backstory.” I loved that word; it was fast becoming my favorite.

  “Backstory?”

  “About Imogen and Morris Slade. You know—what their life was like. They lived in New York City, I think.” It came to me there was no reason to be asking George Queen about Morris Slade. There was no way I should know Morris Slade had been here, or even that Morris and Rose were related. He’d be no relation to these Queens. But I had to keep on at this point. “And they lived here, of course. I mean in La Porte. I understand Morris Slade was brought up there. His wife’s family had a house in Spirit Lake. All that, that’s backstory.”

  “Well, now, this is a coincidence.”

  No, it wasn’t. I breathed easier.

  “It was only just yesterday Morris Slade came to see us—”

  I made my eyes wide. “Really?” I took out the napkins and pencil stub. It didn’t look very professional.

  George Queen went on. “He seemed a nice-enough fella. I can’t figure why people took against him so much. Like Sheba did.” He inclined his head in the direction where Sheba must have been and I hoped would stay.

  “She took a dislike to him years ago when she was a teacher and him a student at Colonel Henry E. Mott High School. It’s out there on 219; you’ve seen it, I imagine.”

  I was trying to take notes, which was hard with just the napkin.

  “Sheba said he was stuck-up and runnin’ after every girl in school.” He seemed to like the idea, for he smiled. “Then grown up, he was a real playboy.”

  Playboy. That word again. “How was he? I mean, a playboy?”

  George Queen scratched his head. What little hair remained to him was gray bristles. “Oh, chasin’ after girls, drinkin’, goin’ to clubs.” He lowered his voice. “It didn’t help any that Fern had this terrible crush on him too.”

  Go on, I thought. He didn’t. So I prompted. “Now, his mother. I think I heard she was a Souder?”

  “Yeah, she was. Married old man Devereau after that Ralph Slade died. Rose was her daughter. Devereau was married before to . . . hell, I can’t remember. Anyway, those sisters of hers, they were the first wife’s children. Guess she died too. Anyway, Rose and Morris is half sister and brother.”

  “So that’s how you knew him, because Rose was his sister. Half sister.”

  George Queen shook his head. “I never did know him all that well. It was Ben knew him. And of course Rose more than Ben.”

  Oh, I thought, as if air had just whooshed out of me, or as if I’d suddenly sat on one of those trick cushions. “They were friends, you mean.”

  George Queen was fishing in his pocket for something, probably cigarettes, but not finding them. “Well, no, I don’t know as they were exactly friends. . . .” He stopped talking, frowned.

  “Is your brother Ben around here, Mr. Queen?” What could I lose, asking?

  He shook his head. “I don’t know where Ben is. All that prison stuff took a lot out of him.”

  That prison stuff would take a lot out of me too.

  “Anyway, he’s cleared of killing Rose, thank the good Lord. And will be of killing Fern, I’m sure.” He sighed.

  But apart from that sigh, there hadn’t been much sorrow shown over Fern Queen. And I think there had been something terribly wrong—maybe Devereau wrong—with Fern, given the murderous Isabel Devereau. I could hardly blame them if they couldn’t feel sorry Fern was dead, when she’d caused so much grief. I remember the Sheriff saying that a gene must have come down that missed her mother, Rose, but “blasted that girl to kingdom come.”

  I’d like to have asked about Fern “going off” for several months, but I didn’t know how to introduce that.

  I was even more sure than George Queen that Ben hadn’t killed Fern, because I knew who killed her: Isabel Devereau. The police would like an eyewitness to it; apparently my testimony wouldn’t be convincing enough, as it was hearsay. Hearsay evidence. Shot at out on the lake by crazy Isabel, and all the Sheriff could say was “hearsay evidence.”

  Unfortunately, Mrs. Sheba Queen chose to come into the room just then, standing hands on hips, looking as if she might be going to rearrange the furniture.

  “You recall Emma, don’t you, Sheba? She’s writing up a story for the newspaper in La Porte.”

  Fiddling with one of the antimacassars on the sofa back that I guessed were there to protect the furniture from people’s oily heads, she kind of nodded as she straightened it and then sat down. She said, “Well, I don’t think Morris Slade is any proper topic for a child, George.”

  But George Queen hadn’t mentioned Morris Slade.

  Her eyes bored into me as if she were suspicious of my being a child. Was I possibly something else? An elf, maybe? Sheba Queen did not like me.

  “Why not? What did he do?” I asked in my innocent, elflike way.

  “Never you mind, young lady.”

  If there was anything I hated more than being called “young lady” it was not being told gossip. “It’s just that I should put it in my account if it’s connected—”

  But she was wagging her finger at me. “We’ll just leave that subject rest.”

  No, we won’t. “Mr. Queen says you were one of Morris Slade’s teachers at Colonel Henry E. Mott High School.”

  She pleated her skirt with two thin fingers. Her smile was as crimped as her skirt. “Tried to be.” She sounded awfully self-satisfied for some reason, even more than Aurora Paradise when telling me of yet another suitor begging her to be his. I wondered if everything came down to love (“sex,” I should say, but I didn’t know enough to say it more often), love and money.

  “Thing about Morris was, he wouldn’t ever put his mind to anything for long enough to learn it. Oh, he was charming and all—”

  Yes, Morris Slade was definitely on her mind. And I wondered where in heaven’s name he’d come by all his charm, since I’d never seen any in the Souder branch of the family, at least not in Souder’s Pharmacy, except for the Evening in Paris window display.

  She went on, “Thought he was the bee’s knees, Morris did.”

  Bee’s knees! I wrote that down with such a wallop I tore the napkin. That was going into my account no matter what! She was still talking.

  “—and you’d’ve thought certain females on the faculty would’ve demonstrated more sense than to let that boy pull the wool over their eyes with his little Christmas presents of cologne and such—”

  Bought at a discount in Souder’s or merely snatched out of the window, I supposed. Yet, somehow I could believe the opposite of this, of Morris chasing the girls and kowtowing to the teachers. I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t the other way around: the girls doing the chasing, the teachers the kowtowing. If he was anything back then like he was today. My mind’s eye caught at him for a few silent seconds and then let go.

  “But they didn’t see through him,” said Sheba. “No, sir. I did.”

  And I knew in a flash that Sheba didn’t get any Evening in Paris cologne or any other “little presents” from Morris Slade. That was what told against him. Well, it was kind of sad, or would have been if I’d felt inclined.

  She went on: “And I told him he would not pass my course if he was absent again and not to give me any of his made-up excuses.”

  I’d noticed Mr. Queen opening his mouth to say something, then shutting i
t again. That Sheba Queen must have found Morris Slade near-irresistible was clear, even though she was fifteen or twenty years older than he. I tried to dam the flood of words: “So then, Mrs. Queen, what do you think happened to Morris Slade’s baby back on that night at the Belle Ruin? That’s mostly the subject of my story.”

  She shook her head. “I guess like most people, I think the baby was being held to ransom, seeing as how Morris Slade’s father-in-law was so rich. That’s what he married for: money.”

  George Queen chuckled. “Well, yesterday you seemed to think he was pretty nice.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, George. I was just being polite.” A flush crept up her neck into her face.

  Casually tapping my pencil against the chair arm, I said, “He might have just wanted to see you for old times’ sake.” I smiled unconvincingly.

  “Him?” Sheba motioned with her hand, waving old times away. “Morris Slade never had a sentimental bone in his body.”

  I doubted if that was true. I was trying to work Ralph Diggs into the conversation. “Maybe he believes the baby is still alive somewhere, and he’s trying to track it down.”

  “Hmm,” muttered George.

  Sheba just waved her hand again. “That’s ridiculous. Why ever would he do that?”

  George said, “He wanted to talk to Ben.” He leaned forward in his chair, hands clasped loosely before him, as if this were deserving of thought.

  His voice fell away and before he could get it back his wife had risen briskly and was now offering milk and cookies. She became, in little bursts, hospitable.

  I thanked her but said no thanks, not to put herself to the trouble.

  “Oh, it ain’t no trouble.” And she whisked herself away like a stiff broom.

  “What did you wonder, Mr. Queen?”

  He shook his head and looked at me as if he were surprised I was still there. “Now, is all of this talk necessary for the what-d’ya-call-it?”

  “Backstory?”

  “Yeah, that.”

  No, but it probably was for the understory.

  It was time for me to go. Before the cookies.

  Maybe Morris Slade had been drawn back by the murder of Rose and wanted to see Ben Queen because of that.