Miranda looked at him solemnly. “You see? The house will not accept me any more than I will accept it.”
“Nonsense. The electricity was turned off because nobody paid the bill.”
“That is only the obvious external reason.”
“What’s the subtle internal one?”
“I already told you. Not that it matters,” she added. “I could never stay here again under any circumstances.”
“Where will you stay?”
“There must be places for homeless deserted women like me.”
“The situation is bad enough without your dramatizing it,” he said. “Now let’s talk straight. Do you have anyone who can put you up temporarily, relatives, friends, neighbors—”
“No.”
“What about members of your club?”
“No. The only person at the club I consider my friend is Ellen. She’s been very kind.”
“Has she.” If that’s the best you can do, you’re in trouble, Miranda. Ellen’s no friend of yours.
A gust of wind blew through the canyon, pelting the roof of the car with eucalyptus pods. Miranda winced as if each one of them had been aimed directly at her. “Please take me away from here. There’s a santana coming up, I can sense it all over my body. My skin feels tight.”
“I thought that’s what you went down to the clinic for, tighter skin. You could have stayed here and gotten the same results cheaper.”
“That was a boorish remark. What makes you so cranky?”
“I’m tired.”
“Why should you be tired? I’m the one who’s suffered.”
“You slept most of the afternoon.”
“Surely you don’t begrudge me a little sleep after what I’ve been through.”
“No.” He didn’t begrudge her anything except his time, two days of it so far. Two days of Miranda seemed a lot longer. Three would be more than he could bear. He said, “Suppose we drive to the club and see if Ellen’s still there. She might have some advice to offer.”
It was a dirty trick to play on Ellen but he couldn’t think of anything else to do. At least Ellen was used to her and would know what to expect and maybe even how to deal with it.
Walter Henderson, the manager, was in the office but he looked ready to leave. He wore an after-hours outfit, jogging shoes, a striped warm-up suit and a navy-blue yachting cap. A copy of the Racing Form was tucked under one arm in case he stopped to rest while jogging or was becalmed while sailing or got caught in a traffic jam on the way to his bookie’s.
“Sorry, we’re about to close,” he told Aragon. “Seven o’clock, you know. That’s our winter schedule except on weekends and special occasions. It was clearly stated in our last newsletter. Didn’t you read our last newsletter?”
“No.”
“Too bad. I had something rather clever in it.”
“Drat, I’m always missing clever things,” Aragon said. “Is Miss Brewster still here?”
“She’s around some place making a last-minute check with the security guard. Two dead stingrays were tossed in the pool last night. We suspect some Mexican boys. These minority groups have become very bold.”
“So I’ve heard. Shocking.”
“Today stingrays, tomorrow great white sharks. Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it . . . I’m locking the office now. You can wait for Miss Brewster in the corridor. There’s a bench to sit on.”
He sat on it. Except for a janitor mopping the tiled terrace, no one was in sight. But he could hear voices in the distance, and they sounded angry. After about five minutes he got up and walked around the pool a couple of times to stretch his legs.
There was no trace of the santana that had been blowing in the foothills or the sea winds which almost always began in the afternoon and stopped abruptly at sundown. The water was so smooth that at the far end where it was eighteen feet deep it looked shallow as a reflection pool, mirroring the lifeguard towers, the flagpole, the diving platform and Aragon himself, foreshortened to child size. Along the walls and floor of the pool every mark was clearly defined, the water-depth signs and the racing lanes. He wondered if anyone ever raced here or whether all the winning and losing was done on deck.
The voices were getting louder. It sounded like an argument between two women and a man, but when the trio appeared at the bottom of the steps coming down from the south row of cabanas one of the women turned out to be little Frederic Quinn. He was staggering under the weight of a sleeping bag, a portable television set and a six-pack of 7-Up. Ellen carried the rest of his supplies—a partly eaten pizza, a box of cheese crackers, a package of bologna and another of frankfurters.
Frederic had been planning a big evening, but the security guard caught him in the middle of the pizza and a rerun of Star Trek. The security guard, a pear-shaped divinity student working his way toward a pulpit, might have joined the party if Ellen hadn’t shown up. For her benefit he put on a show of doing his duty.
“I’m telling you for the last time, young man, you can’t spend the night in a cabana.”
“Why not?”
“It’s against the rules.”
“How am I supposed to know the rules? I’m only a kid.”
“You are also,” Ellen said, “a pain in the neck.”
“I can’t help it. I didn’t ask to be born. Nobody else asked for me to be born either. My father had a vasectomy but it was bungled. He would have sued except he didn’t need the money.”
“I do not want to talk about your father’s vasectomy, Frederic.”
“Yeah? What do you want to talk about?”
“Stingrays,” the security guard said. “Dead ones. Two of them. In the pool.”
“I don’t know a thing about stingrays, dead or alive. I can’t be expected to know everything, I’m not a genius.”
“Any kid that knows about vasectomies must know about stingrays.”
“Not necessarily. I specialize, see?”
“No, I don’t see.”
“Don’t argue with the child, Sullivan, it’s a waste of time. Just be clear and be firm.” Ellen looked down at Frederic, who had put the sleeping bag on the floor and was sitting on it drinking a can of 7-Up. “Now, Frederic, let’s get this straight. Nobody, absolutely nobody’s ever allowed to stay in the cabanas after the club is closed.”
“That’s what you think. Last week I saw Mr. Redfern making macho with Amy Lou Worthington in the Worthingtons’ cabana. He’s a real pro.”
“You watched them, Frederic?”
“Well, sure. There they were and there was I.”
“There you shouldn’t have been.”
“There they shouldn’t have been either.”
“In a minute I’m going to lose my temper with you, Frederic.”
“Everybody does. No big deal.” It was at this point that Frederic spotted Aragon and let out a whoop of recognition. “There’s my lawyer. Hey! Hey, Aragon, come here a minute. Remember me? We made a pact in the parking lot, remember?”
As Aragon approached, the guard watched him suspiciously. “A pact in the parking lot, that sounds like the devil’s work to me. And since when do nine-year-old boys have lawyers?”
“Since you cops started pushing us around, that’s when,” Frederic said. “Tell him, Aragon.”
“You do that, Aragon,” the guard said. “Tell me.”
“What do you want to know?”
“You can start with the pact in the parking lot.”
“All right. As I was about to leave the lot a few days ago I ran into Frederic. He gave me some information about a person I was looking for and in return I agreed to act as his attorney when the time came.”
“The time has come.”
“In that case I’ll have to talk to my client alone for a few minutes. If you’ll excuse us, Mr
. Sullivan—”
“You mean this boy is really your client?”
“Yes.”
“It sounds like the devil’s work, for a certainty.”
“Go and finish your rounds, Sullivan,” Ellen said. “And leave the theology to us.”
As soon as the guard left, Frederic opened another can of 7-Up, switched on the television set and tuned in on a science-fiction movie. Several prehistoric or posthistoric monsters were emerging from a swamp to the sound of some very loud contemporary music.
Ellen spoke above it. “What are you doing here, Mr. Aragon?”
“I found Mrs. Shaw.”
“That’s fine. It’s what you wanted to do, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Was she alone?”
“Not at first. She is now. In fact, she’s out in my car and she’d like to see you.”
“Why?”
“You’re her friend.”
“I’m not. I never was, never will be. I don’t see how she can consider me a friend.”
“Obviously it’s a case of mistaken identity,” Aragon said. “So forget it.”
“You make it sound as if I’m cruel and unfeeling.”
“Are you?”
“I never thought so. I’m kind to animals and I help old ladies across the street. But I don’t owe Miranda Shaw anything. She’s had the whole bit from the time she was born, money and beauty and being taken care of and cherished.”
“All of that’s gone now, including Grady. He walked out on her last night. Or rather, he drove out in the Porsche she bought him.”
“She bought him a Porsche? My God, what an idiot that woman must be, what a complete—All right, all right, I’ll go out and talk to her. Or listen to her, or whatever. I won’t be her friend,” she added distinctly, “but I’ll come as close to it as I can without upchucking.”
“You’re all heart, Miss Brewster.”
On the television screen one of the monsters reared up on its hind legs, bellowing in
triumph. Aragon watched for a minute. The limited human imagination which had created a God and a devil in its own image hadn’t done much better with monsters. No matter how obviously grotesque they were with their warty skins, pinheads and three eyes, all had four limbs, voices like French horns and 20/20/20 vision.
Aragon went over and turned the set off.
Frederic let out a squawk of protest. “Hey, what’d you do that for? The monsters were just going to take over the world.”
“They already have,” Aragon said. “It must be a rerun.”
“It is. I’ve seen it before. I’ve seen everything before.”
“You’re pretty young for that. How old are you?”
“Nine and seven-twelfths. But when the country switches to the metric system I’m going to add on a couple of years.”
“What’s the metric system got to do with your age?”
“Nothing. But everybody will be so confused by grams and kilometers and liters they won’t notice the difference. In a flash I’ll be eleven and seven-twelfths and Bingo Firenze’s only eleven, ha ha.”
“What if Bingo Firenze has the same idea?”
“He won’t. He’s too stupid.”
“Or too smart.”
“No, he’s not. His family has to pay extra so the school will keep him. Whose side are you on, anyway? I thought you were my lawyer.”
“I am,” Aragon said. “And indications are that you’ll need one.”
“The stingray bit, huh? Okay. I found them on the beach where some guy had been practicing spearfishing and I thought I could resuscitate them by throwing them in the pool. It was my good deed for the week—”
“Bad choice of good deed, Frederic. They didn’t resuscitate.”
“It wasn’t my fault. My intentions were pure as snow.”
“Have you ever seen snow?”
“No.”
“Sometimes it’s pretty dirty.”
“Well, it starts out clean.” Frederic gazed wistfully at the blank television screen as though hoping the monsters would reappear and come charging out to be on his side. “A good lawyer is supposed to trust his client.”
“A good client is supposed to tell his lawyer the truth.”
“Wheezing Jesus, it was only a joke. I wanted to see the expression on Henderson’s face when he walked in the front door and saw creepy crawly things on the bottom of the pool. How was I to know he was going to overreact? Nobody has a sense of humor around this place. When I get old enough I plan to split like Grady, maybe with a chick the way he did, maybe not. Probably not. The only chicks I know are my sister Caroline’s friends and they’re all fat and hate me.”
“I talked to Grady yesterday.”
Frederic’s face, under the sun scars and freckles and flea-bite scabs, turned a mottled pink. “Grady? Honest, no kidding?”
“No kidding.”
“Where is he?”
“He was in Mexico when I saw him.”
“Isn’t he coming home?”
“I don’t think so. Not for a while anyway.”
“He’s on the lam, I bet. I bet the Federales are after him, or the Mexican Mafia. I bet—”
“You’d lose,” Aragon said. “Nobody’s after him. He’s running because that’s the way he is. He gets into things and then wants out.”
“What kind of things?”
“Relationships.”
The boy took a deep breath and held it, preparing himself for a blow. “Relationships like him and me?”
“No, not like him and you. More complicated ones. You—well, he’s still your friend.”
“How do you know?”
“He asked after you.”
“What were his exact words?”
Aragon made some tactful changes in Grady’s exact words. “He said, ‘How’s my weird little pal Frederic?’”
Frederic let out his breath and the color of his face gradually returned to normal. “Yeah, that sounds like Grady, all right. Did he send me any message?”
“Just to stay out of trouble.”
“Man, has he got a lot of nerve. Man oh man, look who’s talking about trouble. Hey, you know what I’m going to tell Bingo Firenze? I’m going to tell him my best friend is tooling around Mexico with the Federales after him. Bingo will curl up and blow away.”
“May I add good riddance.”
“Oh, Bingo’s not so bad,” said the premature convert to the metric system, “for a kid.”
It was arranged, via the pay phone in the corridor, that one of Frederic’s brothers would come and take him home. Then Frederic settled down to wait under a palm tree, lying on top of his sleeping bag with the television set balanced on his stomach. The monsters returned and took over the world and everybody lived happily ever after.
Aragon went back to his car. Ellen was in the driver’s seat talking to Miranda Shaw. When Ellen saw him approaching she got out and came to meet him. She looked cool but the ring of club keys in her hand was clanking a little too vigorously.
“Mrs. Shaw is going to stay with me temporarily until other arrangements can be made.” There was a distinct accent on the words temporarily and other. “Wait till I lock up, and you can follow me to my apartment.”
“Thanks, Miss Brewster.”
“This is not going to be a long visit. I hope I’ve made that clear.”
“Absolutely. As soon as the office opens in the morning I’ll try to get her some emergency funds from my boss. Then you can whisk her to a motel or something.”
“You can whisk her to a motel or something. I’m going to be working and I don’t get whisking breaks . . . I presume she has luggage.”
“A couple of suitcases.” He didn’t mention that together they were heavy enough to contain Gr
ady’s dismembered torso.
While Miranda showered, Ellen prepared a light meal of omelet and green salad. Afterward the two women sat at the kitchen table drinking tea. The room which Ellen had always thought of as neat and compact now seemed cluttered and much too small and intimate to be shared with a stranger.
If Miranda felt any similar tension, she didn’t show it. She did most of the talking, mixing past and present in her soft high-pitched voice. She spoke of her gratitude to Ellen for her kindness, and to Aragon for his—“Such a nice young man but rather odd because one can’t tell for sure what he’s thinking”—and of the clinic in Pasoloma, with its tethered goats, pregnant and reproachful. She told of the happy times in her childhood when she was allowed to have supper in the kitchen with the cook—“Cook and I drinking tea just like this and Cook would read our fortunes in the tea leaves, the larger leaves indicating a trip, the specks that meant money and the little twigs that were tall dark strangers who always turned out to be the postman or the plumber or Cook’s boyfriend, who was short and fat.”
She talked of her first meeting with Grady. “You introduced us, Ellen. Do you remember? It was in the office. I told him there was a child screaming and asked him if he could do anything about it. And he said probably not. That day is so vivid in my mind I could repeat every word, describe every gesture and expression. Grady looked at me very seriously but in a sort of questioning way. You know?”
“Yes.” Ellen knew. Grady looked at every woman the same way and it was always the same question and he didn’t wait around very long for an answer.
“I keep thinking of him coming back to the clinic—perhaps now, this very minute—and finding me gone and being terribly sorry. Perhaps I should have stayed and waited for him. After all, he was just as upset as I was by the news Mr. Aragon brought us. Once the first shock of it is over he’ll see that nothing has changed between us, we can still get married and be happy together.”
“I didn’t realize you were intending to be married.”
“Of course. Of course we were, Ellen. Otherwise I would never have—I mean, I’m not a slut. Grady’s the only man I’ve ever been intimate with except Neville, and that was different. Neville mostly liked to look at me and watch me brush my hair and things like that. He almost never touched me. Grady was different.”
The Murder of Miranda Page 14
