How Like an Angel

by Margaret Millar

  “That’s no concern of yours.”

  “I’m making it my concern, as of now.”

  She looked a little frightened. “What are you going to do?”

  “Do? What can I do?” he said wearily. “Except wait around for you to get tired running from one extreme to an­other. Maybe eventually you’ll settle for something worse than paradise but better than hell. Do you think it’s possible?”

  “I don’t know. And I can’t talk about it here, now.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s getting dark. I must call the children.” She stood up. The movement seemed uncertain and so did her voice. “I—will you stay for supper?”

  “I’d like to, very much. But I’m afraid the timing’s wrong. I don’t want to be presented to your children as a surprise intruder on their camp-out. This place belongs to you and them and O’Gorman. I’ll wait until I can offer a place the three of you can share with me.”

  “Please don’t talk like that. We barely know each other.”

  “When we last met, you told me something I believed at the time. You said I was too old to learn about love. I no longer believe that, Martha. What I think is that, until now, I’ve been too young and scared to learn about it.”

  She had turned away, bowing her head, so that he could see the white nape of her neck that contrasted with the deep tan on her face. “We have nothing in common. Nothing.”

  “How do you know?”

  “John Ronda told me something about you, how you lived, where you worked. I could never adjust to such a life, and I’m not foolish enough to think I could change you.”

  “The change has already started.”

  “Has it?” Her mouth smiled but her voice remained sad. “I said before that you were starry-eyed. You are. People don’t change just because they want to.”

  “You’ve had too much trouble, Martha. You’re disillu­sioned.”

  “And how does one go about getting re-illusioned?”

  “I can’t answer that for anyone else. I only know it hap­pened to me.”

  “When?”

  “Not long ago.”

  “How?”

  “I’m not sure how.” He could remember the exact moment, though, the pungent smell of pine, the moon growing in the trees like a golden melon, the stars bursting out all over the sky like popping seeds. And Sister Blessing’s voice, tinged with impatience: “Haven’t you ever seen a sky before?” “Not this one.” “It’s the same as always.” “It looks different to me.” “Do you suppose you’re having a religious experience?” “I am ad­miring the universe.”

  Martha was watching him with a mixture of interest and anxiety. “What happened to you, Joe?”

  “I guess I fell back in love with life, I became a part of the world again after a long exile. The funny thing is that it hap­pened in the most unworldly place in the world.”

  “The Tower?”

  “Yes.” He stared at the last faint glow in the sky. “After I left you last week, I went back to the Tower.”

  “Did you see Sister Blessing? Did you ask her why she hired you to find Patrick?”

  “I asked her. She didn’t answer, though. I doubt if she even heard me.”

  “Why? Was she sick?”

  “In a sense, yes. She was sick with fear.”

  “Of what?”

  “Not getting into heaven. By hiring me, by having anything to do with me in fact, she’d committed a grave sin. Also she’d withheld money from the communal fund and the word ‘money’ to the Master is both sacred and dirty. He’s a queer man; compelling, forceful, and quite insane. He has a strangle hold on his flock, and the smaller the flock becomes, the more desperate the strangle hold gets and the more extreme his proclamations and edicts and punishments. Even his old followers, like his own wife and Sister Blessing, show signs of restlessness. As for the younger ones, it’s only a matter of time until they escape from the Tower.”

  He thought of the tortured face of Sister Contrition as she led her three docile, rebellious-eyed children into the living room, and of the querulous voice of Mother Pureza who had already escaped from the Tower and was living in the brighter rooms of her childhood with her beloved servant, Capirote.

  Martha said, “Are you going back there?”

  “Yes, I made a promise to go back. I must also tell Sister Blessing that the man she hired me to find is dead.”

  “You won’t mention the letter?”

  “No.”

  “To anyone?”

  “To anyone.” Quinn stood up. “Well, I’d better be going.”

  “Yes.”

  “When will I see you again, Martha?”

  “I don’t know. I’m very confused right now because of the letter and—and the things you’ve said.”

  “Did you come here today to run away from me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sorry I found you?”

  “I can’t answer that. Please don’t ask me.”

  “All right.”

  He walked over to his car and got in. When he glanced back Martha was lighting the campfire and the mounting flames made her quiet face seem vivacious and warm, the way it had looked in the hospital cafeteria when she had first talked about her marriage to O’Gorman.

  “We came back as soon as we heard the car leave,” Richard said. He had smelled some mystery in the air as distinctly as he had smelled the first puffs of smoke from the campfire. “Who was the man?”

  “A friend of mine,” Martha said.

  “You don’t have many boyfriends.”

  “No, I don’t. Would you like me to?”

  “I guess it’d be O.K.”

  “No, it wouldn’t,” Sally said earnestly. “Mothers don’t have boyfriends.”

  Martha put her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Sometimes they do, when they no longer have a husband of their own.”

  “Why?”

  “Men and women are meant to become interested in each other and get married.”

  “And have children?”

  “Sometimes, yes.”

  “How many children do you think you’ll have?”

  “Of all the stupid questions I ever heard in my life,” Richard said with contempt. “You don’t have children when you’re old and gray.”

  Martha’s tone was sharper than she intended. “That’s not very complimentary, is it, Richard?”

  “Gosh, no. But you’re my mother. Mothers don’t expect compliments.”

  “It would be nice to be surprised for a change. My hair, by the way, is brown, not gray.”

  “Gee whiz, old and gray is just an expression.”

  “Well, it’s an expression I don’t care to hear until it’s literally true. Perhaps not even then, is that clear?”

  “Boy, are you touchy tonight! A guy can’t say anything around here without getting ranked. When do we eat?”

  “You may serve yourselves,” Martha said coldly. “I’m feel­ing far too decrepit to lift anything.”

  Richard stared at her, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. “Well, boy oh boy, you’re not even acting like a mother anymore.”

  After the children were settled for the night in their sleep­ing bags, Martha took the mirror out of her handbag and sat down to study her face by the light of the fire. It seemed a very long time since she had looked at herself with any real interest, and she was depressed by what she saw. It was an ordinary, healthy, competent face, the kind that might appeal to a widower with children, seeking someone to run his house, but would have no attraction for an unattached young man like Quinn.

  I acted like an idiot, she thought. I almost believed him for a while. I should have believed Richard instead.

  FIFTEEN

 
On his way back to the motel Quinn passed the stucco build­ing occupied by the staff of the Beacon. The lights were still on.

  He wasn’t anxious to meet Ronda again since there were too many things he couldn’t afford to tell him. But he was pretty sure Ronda would find out he was in town and be suspicious if no contact was made. He parked the car and went into the building.

  Ronda was alone in his office, reading a San Francisco Chronicle and drinking a can of beer. “Hello, Quinn. Sit down, make yourself at home. Want a beer?”

  “No thanks.”

  “I heard you were back in our fair city. What have you been doing all week, sleuthing?”

  “No,” Quinn said. “Mostly acting as nursemaid to an ersatz admiral in San Felice.”

  “Any news?”

  “News like what?”

  “You know damned well like what. Did you come across anything more about the O’Gorman case?”

  “Nothing you could print. A lot of rumors and opinions, but no concrete evidence. I’m beginning to go along with your theory about the hitchhiking stranger.”

  Ronda looked half-skeptical, half-pleased. “Oh, you are, eh? Why?”

  “It seems to fit the facts better than any other.”

  “Is that your only reason?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Just checking. I thought you might have latched onto something you prefer to keep secret.” Ronda tossed the empty can into a wastebasket. “Since you got most of your informa­tion from me in the first place, it wouldn’t be sporting of you to withhold anything now, would it?”

  “Definitely not,” Quinn said virtuously. “I’d take a dim view of such unsportsmanlike conduct.”

  “I’m quite serious, Quinn.”

  “So am I.”

  “Then sound it.”

  “All right.”

  “Now we’ll start over again. What have you been doing all week?”

  “I answered that before. I had a job in San Felice.” Quinn knew he’d have to tell Ronda something of his activities in order to allay suspicion. “While I was there I talked to Alberta Haywood’s sister, Ruth. I didn’t learn anything about O’Gor­man, but I found out a few things about Alberta Haywood. I found out more when I went to see her in Tecolote prison.”

  “You saw her? Personally?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned. How did you manage that? I’ve been trying to get an interview for years.”

  “I have a private detective’s license issued in Nevada. Law enforcement officials are usually glad to cooperate.”

  “Well, how is she?” Ronda said, leaning excitedly across the desk. “Did she tell you anything? What did she talk about?”

  “O’Gorman.”

  “O’Gorman. Well, I’ll be damned. This is just what—”

  “Before you go off the deep end I might as well tell you that her references to O’Gorman weren’t very rational.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s under the delusion that the uproar over O’Gorman’s disappearance caused her to lose her powers of concentration and make the mistake that sent her to jail. She even tried to convince me that O’Gorman planned it deliberately to get back at her for snubbing him or for being fired by her brother, George.”

  “She blames O’Gorman for everything?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s nutty,” Ronda said. “It would mean, among other things, that O’Gorman knew about her embezzlements a month before the bank examiners, and that he calculated both the uproar over his disappearance and its effect on her. Doesn’t she realize how impossible that is?”

  “She’s dealing with her own guilt, not the laws of possi­bility. She completely rejects the idea that O’Gorman’s dead, because, in her words, if he was murdered, she has no one to blame for her predicament. She’s got to cling to the delusion that O’Gorman planned his disappearance in order to avenge himself on her. Without O’Gorman to blame, she’d have to blame herself, and she can’t face that yet. Perhaps she never will.”

  “How far gone is she?”

  “I don’t know. Too far to follow, anyway.”

  “What made her crack up like that?”

  “Five years in a cell would do it for me,” Quinn said. “Maybe they did it for Alberta.”

  The memory of the scene in the penitentiary filled him with contempt and disgust, not at Alberta’s sickness but at the sick­ness of a society which cut off parts of itself to appease the whole and then wondered why it was not feeling well.

  Ronda was pacing up and down the office as if he himself were confined in a cell. “I can’t print what you’ve just told me. A lot of people would disapprove.”

  “Naturally.”

  “Does George Haywood know all this?”

  “He should. He visits her once a month.”

  “How did you find that out?” “Several people told me, including Alberta. George’s visits are painful to her, and presumably to George, too, yet he keeps on making them.”

  “Then his split with her was just a phony to fool the old lady?”

  “The old lady, and perhaps other people.”

  “George is an oddball,” Ronda said, frowning up at the ceiling. “I can’t understand him. One minute he’s so secretive he wouldn’t give you the time of day, and the next he’s in here pumping my hand like a long-lost brother and telling me about his trip to Hawaii. Why?”

  “So you’d print it in the Beacon. That’s my guess,”

  “But he’s never given us any society-page material before. He even squawks like hell if his name is included in a guest list at a party. Why the sudden change of policy?”

  “Obviously he wants everyone to know he’s gone to Hawaii.”

  “Social butterfly stuff, and the like? Nonsense. That doesn’t fit George.”

  “A lot of things don’t fit George,” Quinn said. “But he’s wearing them anyway, and probably for the same reason I wore my brother’s cast-off clothes when I was a kid—because he has to. Well, I’d better shove off. I’ve taken enough of your time.”

  Ronda was opening another can of beer. “There’s no hurry. I had a little argument with my wife and I’m staying away from the house for a while until she cools off. Sure you won’t join me in a beer?”

  “Reasonably sure.”

  “By the way, have you seen Martha O’Gorman since you got back?”

  “Why?”

  “Just wondering. My wife called her at the hospital this afternoon to invite her over for Sunday dinner. They said she’d taken the day off because of illness, but when my wife went over to the house to offer to help her, Martha wasn’t there and the car was gone. I thought you might know some­thing about it.”

  “You give me too much credit. See you later, Ronda.”

  “Wait just a minute.” Ronda was hunched over the can of beer, staring into it. “I have a funny feeling about you, Quinn.”

  “A lot of people have. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Oh, but I am worried. This funny feeling tells me you’re holding something back, maybe something very important. Now that wouldn’t be nice, would it? I’m your friend, your pal, your buddy. I gave you the low-down on the O’Gorman case, I lent you my personal file.”

  “You’ve been true-blue,” Quinn said. “Good night, friend, pal, buddy. Sorry about that funny feeling of yours. Take a couple of aspirin, maybe it’ll go away.”

  “You think so, eh?’“

  “I could be wrong, of course.”

  “You could be and you are, dammit. You can’t fool an old newspaperman like me. I’m intuitive.”

  When Ronda got up to open the door he stumbled against the corner of the desk. Quinn wondered how long he’d been drinking and how much th
e beer had to do with his powers of intuition.

  He was glad to get back out to the street. A fresh breeze was blowing, bringing with it half the population of Chicote. The town, deserted at noon, had come to life as soon as the sun went down. All the stores on Main Street were open and there were line-ups in front of the movie theaters and at the malt and hamburger stands. Cars full of teen-agers cruised up and down the street, horns blasting, radios blaring, tires squeaking. The noise eased their restlessness and covered up their lack of any real activity.

  At the motel Quinn parked his car in the garage for the night and was closing the door when a voice spoke from the shrubbery: “Mr. Quinn. Joe.”

  He turned and saw Willie King leaning against the side of the garage as if she had been, or was going to be, sick. Her face was as white as the jasmine blossoms behind her and her eyes looked glassy and not quite in focus.

  “I’ve been waiting,” she said. “Hours. It seems hours. I didn’t—I don’t know what to do.”

  “Is this another of your dramatic performances, Willie?”

  “No. No! This is me.”

  “The real you, eh?”

  “Oh, stop it. Can’t you tell when someone’s acting and when she isn’t?”

  “In your case, no.”

  “Very well,” she said with an attempt at dignity. “I won’t— I shan’t bother you any further.”

  “Shan’t you.”

  She started to walk away and Quinn noticed for the first time that she was wearing a pair of old canvas sneakers. It seemed unlikely that she would put on sneakers before giving a performance. He called her name, and after a second’s hesitation she turned back to face him.

  “What’s the matter, Willie?”

  “Everything. My whole life, everything’s ruined.”

  “Do you want to come in my room and talk about it?”

  “No.”