“They do not entertain local people and are not entertained by them. They never eat out. Aside from the very rare trips into town—such as the time the car was purchased—they leave the house only to go out on that boat. Such secrecy is a challenge to me, Samuel.”
“Of course.”
“And so I took the obvious course—cultivation of the servants. Their boat captain was hired in Miami. He never laid eyes on the Webers until he arrived here. He is a competent, silent, self-sufficient man. He hates women and worships boats and shrubs. It took weeks of care and guile to learn next to nothing. He is well paid. The Webers are good people to work for. When they are on the boat, they are quiet. They have very little to say to each other. He gets his room and board and a salary monthly in cash. Mr. Weber computes the withholding tax and the social security, and when it has to be paid, the other manservant buys postal money orders in the right amount and sends it in.
“The couple is named Mahler. Herman and Anna. They are a middle-aged German couple. They saw enough of violence in World War Two to want only a placid, quiet, comfortable life. They are hopelessly content in this job. And they, too, never met the Webers until they were here on the Key. They were employed through a New York agency and interviewed by a man they have not seen since. They were delighted to hear my very bad German. Here is their report. The Webers are very nice people. They never quarrel. Mrs. Weber does not cook or plan meals. She reads magazines, watches television and swims in the pool. Mr. Weber reads magazines, watches television, swims in the pool and plays solitaire. They go to bed early. The attempted robbery was a terrible thing. The Webers were very upset about it.”
“Ack, does anybody ever come to see them from out of town?”
“Good question. Yes. Men. Sometimes one. Sometimes two. But it’s always the same two men. They come down about every three months, and stay two or three days. They fly down from the north and drive down from Tampa or Sarasota in a rented car, and leave the same way. Oh, and there are two private unlisted phones. One is used for local calls, to stores and so forth. Anna Mahler, who is in the main part of the house most of the day, has never heard the other one ring.”
“It sounds,” I said, “like one hell of a quiet life.”
“I admitted defeat at least a year ago, Samuel. Things may have changed at the Weber house, but I doubt it. Do you know what they look like?”
“I’ve seen them, Ack. When I’ve been out on the boat, I’ve seen that Matthews of theirs come along the channel, and out of curiosity I’ve put the glasses on them. What’s the name of that cruiser?”
“The Sea Queen. It’s one of those damnable names, so ordinary it slips right out of the mind.”
“In good weather she likes to sit up at the bow. In a swim suit she’s worth the long look with the glasses.”
“She’s a gloriously lovely woman. You’ve looked at Maurice Weber too?”
I shrugged. “I wouldn’t know him if I saw him on the street. Heavy, slightly swarthy, thick dark gray hair.”
“I’ve seen him just enough times to notice something very odd about him, my boy.” Ack sat in his chair again and gave me that look which warned me I should soon applaud his cleverness. “Money, Samuel, works a curious transformation on any man. When you have had money long enough, it works its gentle magic for all the world to see. It affects dress, posture, carriage, the modulations of the voice, even the way you light a cigarette or lift a drink. It enables the happy possessor thereof to radiate a quiet confidence, a not unpleasant self-esteem.
“I could not pin down what it was that bothered me about Maurice Weber until one day I happened to see him walking from his Gulf beach toward his driveway gate, and he had the same manner that those people have who trespass around this neighborhood during the summer. There is a manner of arrogant apology about the man. A great interpretive dancer might walk that way to express insecurity, suspicion, and a sort of peasant surliness. Money has made no mark upon him.”
“Aren’t you getting pretty far out?” I asked him.
“We must consider our instincts in all things. And you must remember, Samuel, that this couple have not been so conspicuous in their insistence on privacy that they have defeated their own purpose. It’s been cleverly done. They’ve not excited the curiosity of the community.”
“Yours.”
“But I am uniquely nosey, my boy. On the whole nobody knows them, or gives a damn about knowing them. If the Haywood incident hadn’t come up, the anonymity would be almost complete and perfect. I am suspicious and a cynic.”
“And so?”
“And so it has all been too cleverly planned to be accidental. It is neither a normal use of money, nor a way of living that could be a matter of free will.”
“But how about the people we are always reading about who die alone in houses full of fifty years of junk, and millions in the bank.”
“A type. The eccentric recluse. Withered, suspicious, less than sane. Spinsters of both sexes, Samuel.” He finished the final quarter-inch of martini. “These Webers are not of that breed. Neither of them have the look of the introvert. But, bless me, I can think of no plausible reason for their … masquerade.”
“They robbed a bank.”
“In the curious illogic of a television script, that might be acceptable. But this is the era of IBM, of records, card files, the implacable assignment of identification numbers to this and that. Certainly the size of the land transaction and the construction project would come to the attention of earnest little men in Jacksonville. And they would want some assurance that our Mr. Weber was entirely clean with Internal Revenue. If you have successfully looted a bank, it is a very poor time to indulge yourself in conspicuous consumption. We must assume a certain degree of legitimacy, wouldn’t you say?”
“I … guess so, Ack.”
“If we can continue to believe that the sudden disappearance of Miss Gantry is linked in some way to the unknown status of the Webers, then it becomes imperative to learn more about the Webers.”
“So I take a try at the safe?”
“Sometimes you are discouragingly dull, Samuel.”
“It was like a joke.”
“Where did young Charlie start?”
“What? Oh, with the wife.”
“And if that is the area of vulnerability, it could work again.”
“Sure, Ack. I’ll ring the doorbell and ask for her. When I get a chance I give her the big wink, like this. And the leer. And I say, ‘How about it, chick?’ ”
He gave me a look of frosty impatience. “Is all this just a trivial thing to you?”
“I’m scared, Ack. I’m scared to death about Sis. Millhaus and his boys tramped through the Weber house. There doesn’t seem to be anywhere to go from here. I keep thinking she’ll turn up with a plausible excuse. But that’s just a Pollyanna, and I know it. So I make funnies because I’m a little clutched. The guy with the spear through the gut saying it hurts only when he laughs. What I really want to do is go the hell home and forget it.” I could feel the martinis, trying to talk.
“So go home, Samuel,” he said.
“I can’t.”
“You don’t owe anything to anybody. Isn’t that your design for living, dear boy? Non-involvement? They wouldn’t let you climb the apple tree any more, so you went home to sulk. Coming back to life can be too painful.”
“Get off me, Ack. For Chrissake.”
“I want you to see that you cannot toy with a partial involvement. Get in all the way or get out all the way.”
I did not answer him. All the light was gone. I could no longer see his face. Kishi came in and turned on two lamps with dark red shades. “Ritter time before chow,” he announced.
After he left the room I said, “I won’t drag my feet, Ack.”
“All the Gulf beaches below the high tide mark belong to all the people, Samuel. Mrs. Weber swims alone at dawn. At other times she uses their private pool. The only other times I have ever seen her on th
e beach is after a storm stooping and pouncing with that particular avidity characteristic of the shell collector. My abortive attempts to strike up a conversation went over like a clay glider.”
He went over to a glass-front case to the left of the fireplace, selected a shell and brought it back and handed it to me. It was about three inches across, conical, black with gaudy blotches of white.
“This one should do,” he said. “We must assume that extreme rarity would make her suspicious, if she knows anything about shells. And you will see that this one is not perfect. It’s a magpie, or Livona pica. It is very abundant as a Pleistocene fossil, but more rare now. Of course it is much too clean. You’ll have to soak it in salt water and pack it with beach sand. You can give it to her, if it seems to work.”
“The shell game,” I said.
“Plus your primitive charm, of course. Is beefcake in the proper argot? Women are supposed to have a special primordial response to any male who looks capable of slaying a saber-toothed tiger with a Stone Age ax.”
“Leroy Luxey would weigh about one hundred and twenty-nine, club and all.”
“Chow,” Kishi said firmly.
5
I spent the first two hours of Wednesday morning on D. Ackley Bush’s hundred feet of Gulf beach, fuddling around in a faded old pair of swim trunks, feeling conspiratorial and foolish. Along the gentle crescent of the beach I could see the emptiness of the beach in front of the Weber place. The only soul I saw was a leathery old man two hundred yards north of me, spincasting with timeless patience.
At eight o’clock I went back into Ack’s yard, rinsed off the salt under his outside shower, toweled and changed in the angle between my car and a pepper hedge, stowed my Livona pica in the glove compartment. Ack came out and I gave him the negative report and thanked him again for a good evening. I assured him I wasn’t going to give up after only one blank morning.
My morning mail confirmed the lull in my one-man operation. When accidents are bad enough, I do not enter the picture. There had been a dandy in the night, over on State Road 565 near Ravenna; a classic head-on on a curve, killing seven including one guy I had met casually, Troy Jamison, a builder from Ravenna who had come down and married local money and started some kind of big development down there. From the front page photo in my morning paper, I could see that if one of my client companies had insured either of those vehicles, all I’d have to do would be approve the scrap price.
On this morning I became aware of a change in attitude toward Sis’s disappearance. It wasn’t a big enough case for nationwide or even statewide coverage, but it was a hot item on our coast, from Everglades City to Tarpon Springs. Somehow the attention seemed to blur the remembered image of Sis Gantry. She was becoming oddly fictional, an actress in a play. Normal office routine had become impossible. Even with the inevitable reduction of work, Alice Jessup could not handle the entire secretarial routine. Vince Avery had wired Tom Earle in Canada, and Vince was hanging around the office waiting for Tom to put a call through to him.
I heard that Scotty Gantry, the eldest son, had canceled his vacation plans and driven down with his family from Atlanta to be with his parents. Scotty located me at four-thirty that afternoon in the gloom of Gus Herka’s Best Beach Bar. He had stopped at the office and they had told him where he could find me.
With no hypocrisy of greeting or handshake he said, “Wanna talk to you, Brice,” and led the way over to a far table by the bowling machine.
He is nearing forty. He is wide, tough, deliberate and aggressive—a vice president and sales manager of a growing company that makes plastic and fiberglass boats.
“What do you know about this, Brice?”
“Absolutely nothing.”
“She talked to you Monday night.”
“Not Monday night, Scotty. Monday evening. In the office. Where did you get your information?”
“At dinner she said something to Mom about talking to you, something so casual Mom can’t remember what she said. So what were the two of you talking about?”
“Nothing that could have anything to do with what’s happened.”
“I’ll decide what’s pertinent and what isn’t. What did you talk about?”
“You’re the big brother, taking care. Don’t lean on me, Scotty.”
“You want to step out the back door a minute?”
“Grow up. Neither of us has been eighteen for a long long time.”
“I want to know what you talked about.”
I couldn’t help the audible sigh. “It was a private conversation. She hasn’t made up her mind about marrying Cal McAllen. We were talking about that. She’s about decided to say yes. Every family can use a lawyer, I guess.”
“Better she should marry any son of a bitch in the state than you.”
“She married so damn good the first time?”
“Nobody could stop her.”
“Were you going to try to stop her this time?”
“Why the hell should we?”
“Nobody in the world is good enough for your kid sister, Scotty.”
“I sure as hell know you’re not. A lawyer, okay. Not a crooked ballplayer.”
“For something that never got into the papers, that got a lot of circulation, Scotty.”
“It’s hard to hide dirt.”
“If I gave a damn for your opinion one way or the other, I’d take the time to tell your story.”
“Your version. No thanks. I’d dearly love to jolt you around some, Brice.”
“You’ve got a lot of hostility there, boy.”
“Sis was just getting back on her feet when you moved in on her with a lot of big talk. She always thinks everybody is just fine. You set her way back, Brice. You moved in on her when her guard was down.”
“Do you think I hurt her? Honestly?”
“You used her. And when you got tired of her, you broke it off. You think you did her any good?”
I can think of forty ways I could have answered that question more diplomatically. But my patience was worn thin. His manner was irritating.
“I guess I must have done her some good, pal. She used to scream with joy.”
He trotted heavily to the rear door and held it open, yelling vast incoherencies at me. I had obligated myself, and so I went blinking out into a sunny ash can area. I caught three wild and violent swings on my arms, timed the fourth one, trapped his wrist, twisted it up between his shoulder blades and ran him headlong into the side of the frame building. The vice president and sales manager dropped loosely onto his face. I rolled him onto his back. He was in the shade. He was snoring. His pulse was strong and regular. He stopped snoring, swallowed, opened his eyes and looked up at me.
“Take a little rest before you try to get up.”
“Baasard,” he mumbled.
I went back inside, picked my beer off the table and went back to the bar. “Awful goddamn quick, you know it?” Gus said. “One big thump on the building, and here you are. I don’t go out ever on account of blood turns my stomach.”
“No blood,” I said. I rubbed my left arm. He had numbed it a little.
“He still out there, Sam?”
“Maybe.”
“Some tourist could take his shoes and money, you know it?”
I finished my beer and walked back and looked. Scotty was gone. I went back and told Gus and he seemed relieved.
* * *
That evening I received my punishment for working off my frustration at Scotty Gantry’s expense. I had gone to bed, after setting the alarm early enough to give me time to get over to the damn beach. I was leafing through a magazine. There was an article on Hawaii, with colored photographs. I turned a page and Judy smiled out at me. It was like forgetting you have pleurisy and trying to take a deep breath. But all the pain was in the heart.
She wore a blue swim suit, spangled with stars. She sat on a hatch cover in the sunshine, smiling happily into the lense. Water droplets stood on the honeyed perfection of he
r shoulders. A towhead about a year and a half old was leaning against her thigh beaming up at her. Behind her I could see a section of ship’s railing, blue water, and a tropical shoreline.
“Mrs. Timothy Barriss Falter, the former Judy Caldwell, and one of the most charming young hostesses in the Islands, is shown here with her daughter, Gretchen, aboard the family schooner, Halekulani Girl. Tim Falter, one of the best known architects in Hawaii, often entertains friends and clients aboard the schooner, with the help of his lovely wife, by taking cruises to the outlying islands. The schooner, which sleeps ten in addition to crew quarters for captain, mate and steward, was built in California two years ago to Mr. Falter’s specifications.”
I knew she was out there. I had heard her married name, but I had managed to forget it, an exercise in amnesia I would be unable to perform twice.
“—the former Judy Caldwell—”
Not the former Mrs. Sam Brice. No mention of three years and three months of marriage to Sam. I had been expunged from the record. It put me in the category of a childhood disease. She had had measles, whooping cough and Brice’s disease.
I knew how gratified her imperious little father felt about the way things had worked out. He had faced the fact of our elopement with the same joy and understanding he would have displayed if he had found out she had been carted off to a tree house by an ape. After he had wheeled a battalion of lawyers into battle formation, she was able to forestall annulment only by convincing him she would kill herself if he pressed it through. He did not give up until after he had sent a man to see me, a dim, spindly, hesitant man bearing a check with so many zeros it gave me vertigo to look at it. But she was worth that amount per minute.
But after the inconceivable lapse of marrying me, she had steadied back onto course, regaining the lost image.
She stared at me out of the sunshine, with a Kodak smile. I threw the magazine against the wall and turned out the light, but she was still there, smiling.
“You see, Sam,” she said. “It’s all right with me now. I’m sorry about us. But I have what I must have. I guess I loved you, but you couldn’t keep up the payments. You wouldn’t have wanted what I would have become.”
Where Is Janice Gantry? Page 8
