The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper

by John D. MacDonald

  “Nice to meet you, Travis. Just … sorry that it had to be … to be …” His voice thickened and his mouth twisted, and he suddenly buried his face in his hands. Biddy hurried to him and shyly, hesitantly, put her hand on his shoulder.

  “Tom. Please, Tom. It will work out.”

  He sighed and straightened up and dug in his pocket for a handkerchief. His eyes still streaming, he said in a husky voice, “Sure, honey. It will all be peachy dandy by and by.” He mopped his eyes and blew his nose. “I apologize for myself too. See you around.” She followed him out and I heard him saying something about getting home late. The car door slammed. He drove out. She came back into the two-level living room. Her eyes looked moist.

  “He’s … quite a guy, Travis.”

  “Little tough to go back to the office and sell stocks and bonds, I guess.”

  “What? Oh, he hasn’t done that in a long time now. Over two years. He started his own company.”

  “Doing what?”

  “It’s called Development Unlimited. It’s sort of a promotion company. They do a lot of land-syndication things. I don’t really know how it works, but it’s supposed to be a wonderful idea for people in high tax brackets, like doctors and so on. They pay a lot of interest in advance when they buy the land, and then they sell it later for capital gains. Tom is very clever at things like that. And they set up shares in apartment houses and do something very clever about depreciation and losses and cash flow and all that. He tried to explain it to me, but I have no head for that kind of thing. I guess he’s doing well because he has to go out of town a lot and arrange deals in other places too. To have Maurie the way she is makes … his success so kind of hollow. He is really a marvelous human being.”

  “He seems to be.”

  She wanted to show me her studio and her paintings. But she was making too obvious an effort to entertain me. The shine had gone out of her day. I said I should be getting along. I wrote out my address for her and told her to send me the name of the man who had bought the Likely Lady when she went through her mother’s papers.

  We stood out by my car and told each other we hoped we’d see each other again someday. Maybe we did hope so. Hard to say.

  • • •

  I got back to the Wahini Lodge at three. I stretched out on the bed and told myself that it had to be the end of the obligation, if there was any. I had taken a good look. It was a sorry little situation. Prognosis bad. When you can’t identify the disease, the prognosis is always bad. And two nice people, Tom Pike and Bridget Pearson, were stuck with it. Maybe if Maurie could knock herself off in such a way that Tom wouldn’t blame Biddy and she wouldn’t blame him or herself, they might be able to make a life. A lot of widowers have married kid sisters and enjoyed it.

  The restlessness was back in full force. I didn’t want to go home to Lauderdale. I didn’t want to stay where I was. And I couldn’t think of anywhere to go. I felt like a bored kid on a rainy day. Maurie kept sliding into my mind and I kept pushing her out. Go away, woman. Have a nice sleep.

  I went into the bathroom. I glanced at my toilet-article kit atop the pale yellow formica of the countertop, and my random restless thoughts were gone in an instant, and I was totally focused, the back of my neck feeling prickly and cool.

  Caution is like the seat belt habit. If you are going to use seat belts, then you’d better make it automatic by latching your belt every single time you get into the car. Then you stop thinking about the seat belt and you do not have to make any decisions about seat belts because you are always strapped in.

  I have a lot of little rituals that are completely automatic. They are the habits of caution. A lot of these habits are seemingly casual and accidental arrangements of things. When I leave the toilet kit open, the last thing I usually replace in it is the toothbrush. I am a brush-last type. I lay it, bristles-up, across the other items in such a way that it is fairly stable and is on a perfect diagonal, aimed from corner to corner out of the case. When I reach into the case in the morning to take the stuff out, I am not consciously aware of the precise placement of the toothbrush. I am suddenly very aware, however, if it is not in its proper place and alignment.

  I reconstructed the morning. By the time I came back from breakfast, the maid had done the room. I had been in the bathroom, and had the brush been in the wrong place, I would have noticed it. I studied the new position of it. No passing truck, no sonic boom, could have moved it so far from its proper position.

  All right. So somebody had been messing with my stuff, poking around. Petty thief with a passkey. Very easy to prove. All I had to do to prove it was lift the soap dish. (Only masochists use those sorry little slivers of lilac that motels call soap.) Two twenties, folded twice. I unfolded them. There were still two. A dumb thief would take them both. A slightly less stupid thief would take one.

  If you are in a line of work where people can get very emotional about the fact you are still walking around and breathing, a forty-dollar decoy is a cheap method of identifying the visitor. Had the money been gone, it would not have been absolute assurance that it had been a visit by a sneak thief. A professional of enough experience and astuteness would take it anyway, knowing that if I had left any little trap around the place, the missing money would be a false trail.

  I went back to the bed, sat on the edge of it and glowered at the carpeting. I had brought nothing with me that could possibly clue anybody about anything. My temporary address was known to Biddy, Tom Pike, the car rental girl, and whoever they might have told or who might have questioned them.

  Biddy and Tom knew that I would be away from the motel at lunchtime. Tom would have had time to come to the motel before going home. Looking for what? Helena’s letter? Work on that assumption and stay with it until it breaks down. But why? What could be in the letter? Unless Biddy was one hell of an actress, she hadn’t known there was a letter until I told her. Seemed doubtful that Helena would mention having written me a letter. It was too highly personal a letter, for one thing. D. Wintin Hardahee had known for sure. And maybe a nurse had known. Forget the why of it, at least for now. Start at a known point or with a known angle, which is the basis of all navigation.

  I knew that it could be some foul-up in identification. Maybe I looked like somebody somebody was looking for. Maybe it had been a little once-over by the law. Maybe there was a nut on the loose with a toothbrush fetish.

  I phoned Mr. D. Wintin Hardahee, of Folmer, Hardahee, and Krantz, located in the Courtney Bank and Trust Company building on Central Avenue. I got through to his secretary, who said that Mr. Hardahee was in a meeting. She did not know when it would be over. Yes, if I wanted to take a chance on coming in and waiting to see him, that was all right, but if the meeting lasted past five, he would not be able to see me until Monday.

  I was going to walk very lightly and keep looking and listening for anything off-key in my immediate area.

  And I was no longer restless. Not at all.

  Seven

  At four thirty Hardahee’s matronly secretary came into the paneled waiting room to lead me back to his office. As middle partner in the firm, he had a corner office with big windows. He was round, brown, bald, and looked very fit. He had some tennis trophies atop a bookcase. He spoke in the hushed little voice I remembered from our phone conversation, a voice that did not suit him at all. He leaned across his desk to shake hands and waved me into a deep chair nearby.

  “She was a fine woman. Shame to go that way,” he said. He seemed to be slightly wary and curious. “Is there any way I can help you, Mr. McGee?”

  “I just wanted to ask a couple of questions. If any of them are out of line, just say so.”

  “I’ll tell you what I can. But perhaps you should understand that I was not Mrs. Trescott’s personal attorney. Her affairs are handled in New York, legal, tax and estate, and so on. Apparently she telephoned or wrote her people in New York and asked them to recommend someone here to handle a confidential matter for her. A c
lassmate of mine is one of the partners in the firm she had been dealing with up there, so when they gave her my name, she phoned me and I went to see her in the hospital. Perhaps they’ll call on me to handle some of the estate details at this end, but I have no way of knowing.”

  “Then, you didn’t tell anyone about the letter and the check?”

  “I told you that she wanted it handled as a confidential matter. She wrote a check on her New York account and I deposited it in our escrow account. When it cleared, I had a certified check made out to you, as she requested. She gave me a sealed letter to go with it. If you were not the recipient, I would disclaim knowledge of any such transaction.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Hardahee. I didn’t mean to—”

  “Perfectly all right. You couldn’t have known how it was handled until I told you.”

  “I told her younger daughter about getting a letter from her. I had lunch there today, with the Pikes and Miss Pearson. I assumed from Helena’s letter that she was staying there before she went into the hospital this last time.”

  “That is correct.”

  “Can I establish a confidential relationship too? I guess I could as a client, but I don’t know what kind of law you work with, Mr. Hardahee.”

  “Both the other senior partners are specialists. I’m the utility man. Play almost any position.”

  “Do you represent Tom Pike directly or indirectly in any way? Or either of the daughters?”

  “No one in the firm represents them in any way.”

  “Very quick and very definite.”

  He shrugged. “I try to be a good and careful attorney, Mr. McGee. When I got a note from Walter Albany in New York saying Mrs. Trescott might contact me, once I established who she was, and her condition, it struck me that because Tom Pike has many contracts in the legal profession here it might develop into some sort of an inheritance problem. So I checked our shop to make certain we wouldn’t be in any conflict of interests if the transaction led eventually into a dogfight.”

  “And you based that guess on her having gone through New York to find a local attorney instead of asking her son-in-law?”

  He ignored the question. “A client has to have a legal problem. What’s yours?”

  “I’m in One-O-nine at the Wahini Lodge. When I returned this afternoon, after being at the Pike home, I discovered by accident that somebody had gone through the stuff in my room. Forty dollars in cash was untouched. No sign of forcible entry. Nothing missing.”

  “And thus nothing you can report?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What is the legal problem?”

  “In her letter Helena Trescott asked me to see what I could do to keep Maureen—Mrs. Tom Pike—from killing herself. It was a confidential request. We’re old friends. She has confidence in me. So did her first husband, Mick Pearson. A dying woman can ask for a damfool favor, I guess. So I came up and checked. I had a logical reason for getting in touch. Imaginary but logical. So I looked the scene over and Mrs. Pike is in a pretty spooky condition, but there isn’t anything I could do that isn’t being done. I had to make sure, because Helena did ask me. So I was at the point of deciding I should check out and leave town when I found out somebody had gone through the room.”

  “Looking for the letter? Because they knew there had been a letter, and it made somebody uneasy not to know what was in it?”

  “That was one of the things that occurred to me.”

  “As if somebody might be concerned about an inheritance situation?”

  “I didn’t think about that.”

  “Walter Albany said her resources were ‘substantial.’ ”

  “Meaning how much?”

  “Hmmm. To interpret the trust attorney lingo, taking into account the area where Walter practices, I would say that adequate would mean up to a quarter million, comfortable from there up to a million, and substantial could mean anything from there on up to … let’s say five or six million. Beyond that I think Walter would say ‘impressive.’ So you thought it over and you came to see me because you want to know how many people knew there was such a letter. Me and my secretary and the deceased. And you, and whoever you may have told.”

  “And a nurse?”

  “Possibly. I wouldn’t know.”

  “I told Miss Pearson, the sister, yesterday when she came over to the motel to have a drink with me. She had no idea her mother and I had stayed in touch the past five years. I had to account for being fairly up to date. But I said nothing about what Helena asked me to do.”

  “You brought the letter with you? It was in the room?”

  “No.”

  “If somebody were looking for it, would they look elsewhere? At your home in Fort Lauderdale?”

  “They might, but they wouldn’t find it.”

  “Would you know someone had looked for it?”

  “Definitely.”

  He looked at his watch. It was after five. He frowned. “What kind of work do you do, Mr. McGee?”

  “Salvage consultant.”

  “So what you want to find out from me is whether you should trust your initial judgment of Mr. and Mrs. Pike and Miss Pearson or whether the incident at your hotel room is sufficient cause for you to look more closely?”

  “Mr. Hardahee, it is a pleasure to deal with someone who does not have to have detailed drawings and specifications.”

  He stood up. “If you can manage it conveniently, you might join me for a drink at the Haze Lake Club at seven fifteen. If I’m not in the men’s bar, tell Simon, the bartender, that you are my guest. I have a date to play doubles in … just twenty minutes.”

  When I walked in, I saw that D. Wintin Hardahee had finished. He was at the bar with a group of other players, standing with a tall drink in hand in such a way that he could keep an eye on the door. When I appeared, he excused himself and came over to meet me and took me over to a far corner by a window that looked out at the eighteenth green. In the fading light the last foursomes were finishing.

  Hardahee was in white shorts and a white knit shirt, with a sweat-damp towel hung around his neck. I was correct about his fit look. His legs were brown, solid, muscular, and fuzzed with sun-bleached hair. The waiter came over and Hardahee said the planter’s punch was exceptional, so I ordered one without sugar and he asked for a refill.

  “Win your match?”

  “The secret of winning in doubles is to carefully select and train your partner. That blond boy over there is mine. He is constructed of rawhide, steel wire, and apparently has concealed oxygen tanks. He’s keeping my name fresh and new on the old trophies and making all the other players hate me.”

  “Everybody hates a winner.”

  “Mr. McGee, since talking to you, I have been synthesizing all the bits and pieces of information I have concerning Tom Pike. Here is my subjective summary. He is energetic, with considerable fiscal imagination, a great drive. He has personal charm with magnetism. A lot of people are rabidly and warmly loyal to him, people who from time to time have been on his team, or connected with his team in one way or another, and who have made out very well and had some fun doing it. They think he can do no wrong. He has the traits and talents of the born entrepreneur, meaning he is elusive, fast-moving, and very hard-nosed, as well as being something of a born salesman. So there are people who have necessarily been in the way of the deals he has assembled from time to time and they have been bruised and are eager to claim they were tricked, and quite obviously they hate him. I know of no successful legal action brought against him. As you said, everybody hates a winner. It is a mistake to confuse shrewdness, misdirection, and opportunism with illegality. I can think of no one who knows Tom who is indifferent to him. He polarizes emotions. My guess would be this. If he knew you had a letter his mother-in-law wrote before her death and if he thought there was any information in it of any use to him, he would have come to you and sooner or later you would have found yourself telling or showing him the part or parts he wanted to know abo
ut.”

  “How would he manage that?”

  “By studying you to find out what you want and then offering it to you in such a way you would feel grateful toward him. Money or excitement or advance knowledge or whatever happens to be your choice of private vices. If he had to have something, I think he would go after it his own way first.”

  “And if that didn’t work?”

  “He’d probably turn the problem over to one of the many people aching to do him a favor, no matter what it might be.”

  “And you don’t like him.”

  He pursed his lips. “… No. I think I like Tom. But I would be uneasy about getting into any kind of business association with him. I’m quite sure I’d make out very well, as have many others, but the inner circle seems to become … a group of faceless men. In any kind of speculation tight security is imperative. They seem to become very … submissive? No. That isn’t accurate. Retiring, discreet, and slightly patronizing toward the rest of the working world. I guess I am not a herd animal, Mr. McGee. Even if it would fatten my purse.”

  “So if it wasn’t Pike or one of his admirers, how come I had a visitor, then?”

  “My considered opinion is that it beats the hell out of me.”

  “Well, if somebody was looking for something they think I have, and wants it badly enough to take a chance of getting caught going in or out of a motel room, the next place to look is in my pockets.”

  “If it’s smaller than a bread box.”

  “I think I’ll hang around and do a little trolling.”

  “Keep in touch.”

  “I will indeed.”

  • • •

  I drove back to the Lodge and ate one of the fake-Hawaiian special dinners, then went from the dining room into the cocktail lounge and stood at the bar. Business was very light. Some young couples were sploshing around outside in the big lighted pool. The bar was a half rectangle and I became aware of a girl alone at an end stool, by the wall, under a display of ancient fake Hawaiian weapons. She wore a weight of red-gold wig that dwindled her quite pretty and rather sharp-featured face. She wore a white dress, which seemed in better taste than the wig and the heavy eye makeup. She had a cluster of gold chain bracelets on one arm, smoked a cigarette in a long gold and white holder, and was drinking something wine-red out of a rocks glass, a measured sip at a time, as self-consciously slow and controlled as her drags at the cigarette.