Apparently, all of this new friendliness had to do with my articles in the Conservative, for she complimented me as she put the chocolate syrup in one of the tall ribbed glasses, her head twitching as if it were on the strings of a puppeteer. Mrs. Souder had “an affliction”; I had no idea what it was.
She called my piece a “truly interesting overview.” After adding two scoops of ice cream, she blasted it all with fizzy water. I thought she enjoyed that part of it; it must have allowed her to let off steam. A spiral of whipped cream topped off the soda. Then she said what was really on her mind:
“Well, I can tell you we were completely shocked about what happened! And you, you must have been just frightened to death!”
“Oh, I was. But it wasn’t me, really, that found him; it was Mr. Butternut that lives out there on the same road.” I don’t know why I was being so precise about my secondary role here. Maybe it was because I didn’t want to be the one who first saw Ralph Diggs dead. Maybe it would make me feel less responsible, or something.
She talked about the Slades and the Souders and the Devereaus for a while as she smoked a cigarette, leaning back against the big mirror that ran the length of the counter. I was surprised to see her smoking.
“You know Rose was one of us Souders?” she said.
I nodded. “My great-aunt Aurora told me so.”
Her thinly penciled eyebrows went up. “Aurora Paradise? Is she still around?”
“She was this morning.” I licked my long spoon. “They looked a lot alike, Rose Queen and Morris Slade.”
Mrs. Souder stubbed out her cigarette and started in wiping down the soda fixture, already polished to a high gloss. “Looked alike, they certainly did. Of course, he was lots younger.”
“How old would he be now? In his forties, maybe?”
She nodded. “He’s around the same age as our eldest, and she’s forty-three.”
I didn’t even know the Souders had an “eldest.” I’d never seen any of their children. I worked it out. Twenty years ago, when Rose was murdered, he’d have been around twenty-two or three, if Mrs. Souder was right. I wondered. “He must’ve been sixteen or seventeen years younger than Rose.”
“Round that, yes. Rose wasn’t a Devereau, except by her mother marrying the father. She was a Souder. Her mother was Alice Souder and she was married three times: to a Souder, then a Slade. He got custody of Morris, which certainly was a surprise, him being such a drinker and all. Then she married old Mr. Devereau. Rose’s daddy was Albert Souder, a cousin of my husband’s.”
I frowned at all of these complications.
She went on. “I think Rose looked on Morris as sort of a kid brother. He seemed to idolize her.”
It was strange, but as she reminisced, her twitching stopped completely, as if going back to the time when she was young had a calming effect.
“Yes,” she went on, calling up this memory, “Morris kind of doted on her.” She shook her head, but it was a real shake, not a twitch. “Well, that was long ago. A lot has happened since. Most of it bad.”
The thin, filmy voice of Mr. Souder called her back to the other side of the bead curtain, and she left and was soon soaked up by shadows. It was bright light outside and yet in here it might as well have been night.
She had forgotten to collect the money for my soda, so I opened my purse and rooted out a quarter and a dime. As I did the scrap of paper with the poem on it fell out. I unfolded it:This saying good-by on the edge of the dark . . .
Quickly I jammed the bit of paper into my coin purse as if the words left to lie on the marble counter too long would catch their death of cold.
By the time I was climbing the steps to the newspaper office, the anger that had retreated behind the chocolate soda was back.
I told Mr. Gumbrel about Morris Slade being arrested, but he already knew.
He shook his head. “Thing is, you’ve got to admit the circumstances seem pretty cut-and-dried, Emma.”
He had listened and given thought to what I’d told him, his fingers massaging his temples as if it were all too rich a story for his town paper.
“What if the story never gets heard? What if your reading public never finds out that Morris Slade only shot in self-defense or that it was an accident?”
He sighed heavily—“We got enough surprises what with finding out that F-a-y really was F-e-y, and a boy, not a girl. That’s enough right there of a surprise. And there’s still your next installment. You finished that yet? I want to get it in next week’s paper.”
“I’m just polishing it.” To curtail any further talk about my next piece, I got up and left to go and do my polishing.
By the time I’d left the newspaper office it was after four o’clock and I wanted to talk to Dwayne, even though he’d probably get smart about things. He was still what you’d call a good sounding board, even when he was under a car.
Delbert was sitting in his empty taxi, idling by the curb outside of Axel’s Taxis.
“Are you waiting for a fare?” I asked him through the window.
“Huh? No, ma’am. I’m just setting here, thinking.”
I got in and told him to take me to Slaw’s Garage out on 219.
“Well, don’t you think I don’t know where Slaw’s is? Ain’t I dropped you off there before? I don’t see why you want to hang out at that garage, anyway—”
I slid down and watched the world go by.
“You’re so much help,” I said to Dwayne, sarcastically, after I’d told him what had happened and he just kept wham wham whamming away with his wrench.
“As if you needed it.” His voice was distorted by the bottom of the pickup truck he was under. “You and your riotous imagination.”
“My what?” No answer. “Well, what do you think happened?”
Clang clang clingclingclingcling c-l-a-n-g. It sounded like a mess of tambourines. It was as if the truck were answering the question. It probably would have done just as well.
He said, “Two men, two guns. They draw. One dies.”
“Where’s the other gun then?”
“The shooter took it with him.”
“Okay, then you’re saying that person is Morris Slade.”
“Sounds like it.” Clang. Pause. “One thing’s interesting. Why didn’t this guy Ralph Diggs go after his mom? Did he think that crazy kidnapping scheme was all his dad’s idea? That—what’s her name?”
“Imogen.”
“That she had nothing to do with it?”
There was something ghostly about Dwayne’s disembodied voice, as if Dwayne had gone, leaving only enough words behind to keep me thinking he was still there, long enough for him to make his getaway. This talking to him while he was looking at a vehicle’s underneath was tiring. I jumped down from the tire stack and took the board You-Boy had been using and rolled it to the side of the truck and lay down.
Dwayne turned his head. There was a lantern hooked onto some part of the pickup’s works that cast long shadows across his face. “What are you doing?”
“I’m tired of talking to a truck. I’m just going to lie here.”
He muttered and rolled out and stood. So did I. From his hip pocket he took out the old oily rag and started wiping his hands.
“What’s wrong with my theory?” I asked him.
Carefully, he wiped each finger. “What’s wrong is you’re dragging a third person into this showdown. That just makes for complications, nor does it explain anything better.” He stuffed the rag into his pocket and pulled out a pack of Juicy Fruit.
I shook my head when he held out the gum, offering a piece. I was running out of reasons. “Well, what would Morris Slade’s motive be? Why would a father murder his own son?” I said this self-righteously.
“You of Medea-fame are asking that? Although I will admit the motive seems a lot more convincing if it’s the son shooting the father.” He folded a stick of the gum into his mouth and leaned back against the truck.
At least he was allow
ing that. I said, “Remember, Ralph came armed.”
He shrugged. “So did his dad . . . if he is the dad.”
I ignored the “if” part. “What Morris Slade’s doing is he’s protecting the person who must have saved his life. The person who shot Ralph Diggs when he was about to fire.”
Dwayne crossed his arms, chewed his gum, looked at me. “You really think people would go to that length to save someone else?”
“I certainly do. Like Ben Queen taking the blame for Fern. Sure, they go to that length. You would.”
Dwayne laughed. “You mean, like for you, maybe?”
“Of course I don’t mean me.”
Of course I did.
I walked out.
It was a tossed salad I was supposed to be making, so I tossed it, chucking lettuce leaves onto salad plates, plunking cherry tomatoes atop the leaves, boomeranging onion slices.
“What are you doing?” There was Vera, risen like Venus on a clamshell, or whatever that picture was, announcing her displeasure I was still alive.
“Nothing,” I said, in my surly way.
“Be sure you make a cross with the Roquefort cheese dressing.”
So many replies to that rushed into my mind that she was gone before I could choose my favorite. I made crosses with the Roquefort dressing, except on Miss Bertha’s. She despised Roquefort, so I slid a teaspoonful into the middle of her salad, hid it with the lettuce on top, and drenched it with French dressing.
While I was busy, Ree-Jane slipped in; that is, she didn’t seem to come all at once, but like a vapor trail, which I believe was her “model’s walk.” A hilarious smile twitched on her face; apparently the short run to the mental hospital hadn’t done much to wipe it off, nor had the shooting of Ralph Diggs had any sustained effect. You’d think she’d never heard of him.
“Guess where I’m going tonight?”
“Hell-and-gone? That dress looks like you’re on fire.”
She actually drifted around in a circle to give me the full effect of yet another Heather Gay Struther outfit. “It’s new. Red.”
No kidding? Since I hadn’t guessed, she said it again: “Guess where I’m going?”
I was silent. Hell hadn’t worked.
Now she was whispery: “Pat and I are going to the Double Down. Perry’s place.”
“The bar.”
That irritated her. “It’s not a bar. It’s a club!”
I plunked pepper rings on a couple of salads and watched them slide off. “You have to be twenty-one to get in.”
As if she had the perfect answer to that, she said, with a sticky smile, “Not if you’re a special friend of Perry’s.”
“That’s right. Then you have to be forty-one.”
“Don’t be stupid.” Then thinking over that dumb insult, she added, in a manner she regarded as smooth, “I’ve always liked older men.” She simpered.
I turned, full face; I was really angry. “No kidding? Is that why you were so moony over Rafe? And ‘prostrate with grief’ this morning?” Her face was reddening up. “You know—Rafe Diggs, the dead guy. The murdered guy. Rafe.”
Her mouth worked, but she could think of nothing to say. The color was leaving her face as if the color at least had grace enough to flee.
And so did she, finally.
57
The following morning I was back in La Porte, having walked the two miles myself. I thought about the Sheriff and felt maybe
I should go and see him and, if not exactly apologize, as I didn’t think either Maud or I had done anything wrong the day before except be sarcastic . . . well, maybe there was something to apologize for in that.
When he’d told Maud she didn’t know “one goddamned thing about it,” maybe he’d been right. We acted too much a lot of the time as if we knew more about the law than he did.
“Yeah, I guess I know one kid that’s gettin’ her comeuppance,” Donny said, swaggering around, hitching his belt up and looking at me with a sharklike grin as if I were a school of minnows swimming by.
“Meaning?” I had no idea at all what he was talking about. But I figured I wouldn’t like it, not if it made Donny happy.
The Sheriff had gone out somewhere.
“Well, ain’t you got this great story about—?”
Maureen broke in as she yanked a paper from her typewriter. “Donny, you shut up, now. Sam wouldn’t want you talking about this.”
He turned slowly to Maureen. “Begging your pardon, ma’am? Hell, Maureen, I didn’t know you was deputy.” Maureen had only spurred him on rather than settling him down. He turned back to me. “Yes sir, you’re the one that’s been defendin’ the great Ben Queen, ain’t you?”
My stomach went so far down it could have hit the floor. I heard Aurora’s voice: “By the pricking of my thumbs . . .” I felt it, felt my fingers tingle.
Then Donny said, smiling until the corners of his mouth nearly met his earlobes, “The great Ben Queen. Big hero. Saved your life.”
“I know you’re sorry about that.” My thumbs still tingled.
“Maybe he ain’t such a hero after all, him and his sainted wife—”
“Donny!” Maureen was picking up the phone. “I’m calling Sam.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, woman. He’ll be in Cold Flat Junction by now. I’m just doin’ a little kiddin’ around.”
But I heard whom she asked the operator to put her through to: the Queen residence.
What did he mean?
That Donny knew what had happened and even sounded like he knew why—that it was Donny who had this in the palm of his hand—made me feel like all my hard work didn’t amount to much. The Sheriff knew it, but that was different; he deserved to know it.
I walked like I had no feet, just blocks of lead, to the taxi office. I looked over at Souder’s; the pharmacy was right across from Axel’s. Sainted wife. I thought Mrs. Souder might know about Rose Queen, that is, something about her that had or could have spoiled her reputation. . . . I had a sudden sense of dread that it might have to do with Mary-Evelyn Devereau, that maybe Rose had done s omething—
No no no. That mystery was solved. I refused to unsolve it. Rose wasn’t even there at the Devereaus when Mary-Evelyn drowned.
His sainted wife.
Big hero.
So I had been right: there was another person. Ben Queen. But why would he have shot Ralph Diggs?
Dinner was as straightforward as my mother’s menus could get: roast beef au jus, oven-browned potatoes, green beans almondine. No involved combinations or fancy sauces. In other words, there was nothing in it to argue about.
Miss Bertha managed to argue: roast beef too rare, potatoes too hard, beans . . . beans . . .
“Too almondine?”
Curtly, she nodded.
“Too bad.” I turned with my tray and left. I did not have time for this.
Vera’s table was a party of four people I didn’t know, except for the fifth one, Mrs. Davidow, who was loudly making it a party of five. But the only one who minded, really, was Vera, for now she could not pretend to be in charge; Mrs. Davidow was in charge, and sending her out for more rolls, for more au jus, for more wine. I could see the steam coming off Vera like off the steam table in the kitchen.
I for one was delighted Mrs. Davidow was in the dining room because that meant she wasn’t in the office. My mother was not in the kitchen, though, and that was a surprise. Walter said she’d gone upstairs to change. I told Walter to take in Miss Bertha’s bread pudding when they were done.
Then I filled a glass with ice and made for the front of the hotel and the back of the office. I poured an inch of Myers’s, another inch of Jack Daniel’s, and just a little Gordon’s gin over the ice. I added some Orange Crush from Will’s stash. Then I poked a little paper umbrella into a maraschino cherry and put that in. I decided to add some of the juice from the little bottle of cherries, which turned the drink a pleasant pinkish brown color, and called it “South Sea Sunset.” I guess I wa
s just good with names.
“What’s this?” said Aurora, reaching for it no matter what it was.
“A South Sea Sunset.”
“Well, ain’t that pretty!” She drank a good third of it in one go.
“Morris Slade turned out to be Ralph’s father.”
Aurora, for once, was stunned. “Now, girl, that about knocks my socks off!” But not the drink out of her hand. “You’re telling me that young fellow working here was the kidnapped child? Good God! Sounds like one of your crazy brother’s plays.”
“If you mean Medea, Will didn’t write it. The thing is, there were two guns at the scene—one of them yours, if you recall. And one was a shotgun that I don’t think belonged to Morris Slade. And I don’t think he shot Ralph. There’s suspicion someone else was there.”
She stopped jiggling the ice in her glass. “Who?”
I told her what Donny had said. And the way he’d said it. Dripping sarcasm.
“Ben Queen?”
I nodded.
She looked truly puzzled.
“What did Donny mean?” I must have sounded a little too desperate, for it put her on her guard.
She flapped her hand at me. “You’re too young to know all that.”
“If I’m too young to know it, it’s got to be sex.”
“ ‘It’s gotta be sex.’ ” She tossed her palms up and mocked me.
I chewed my lip.
She smiled, showing her uneven teeth: “How about putting on Patience and Prudence before you go.”
I went to the phonograph and rooted “Tonight You Belong to Me” from the stack of records.
She said slyly, holding out her glass, “Get me another and maybe we can talk about s-e-x.”
I took the glass. “I’ll get you a drink and maybe you can s-h-u-t u-p.”
But she was already singing along with Patience and Prudence:I knooow with the daw-aw-aw-aw-awn
That you-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo
Fadeaway Girl Page 26
