“Oh, he is,” Elizabeth told him, enjoying this immensely. “I can guarantee it. But there’s one more thing, so listen carefully. I’m so excited about it. Do you want to hear?”
“Go on,” he said, clearly getting tired.
“Okay. I have a big hammer with me. Do you know what a hammer is?” She listened for a moment to the silence, giving him time to think. “It’s a heavy piece of iron with a handle,” she said. “Can you picture it? A device used for striking a blow. You’re all ears now, aren’t you? You terrible old geezer, you! Here’s what I want. I want the money you offered. And I don’t give a flying damn if the ad was just a come-on or if you really meant to pay. I … want … the … money.”
“Elizabeth,” he said, “I haven’t got that kind of money with me.”
“I know you don’t,” she said. “You have it at your house, in a suitcase in the closet. There’s a couple of shirts on top of the little divider thingy. The money’s underneath the flap. I want you to know that I could have taken it a couple of nights ago, but I didn’t. Aren’t you proud of me? I wanted to hold up my end of the bargain.”
“My pride in you is boundless, Elizabeth. And let me say that none of this surprises me in the least.”
“Good,” she said. “I hate surprises. The little girl trapped inside of this crystal hates surprises. So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to find a big flat rock out here by the road, and I’m going to put your daughter on the rock, just like Abraham did, you know? And if you don’t bring me that suitcase full of money, I’m going to pound the living shit out of her until she’s nothing but dust, just like you taught me to do, nothing but dust, just like she’d be if she’d been a real dead girl all these years and not a lump of glass.”
“Please,” he said. He wasn’t bullshitting her anymore.
“You don’t want that, do you?”
“Elizabeth, I want you to—”
“You don’t want that, do you?”
“No, no, I don’t. Please, Elizabeth, be calm. …”
She hung up abruptly, stabbing the off button so hard that she broke a nail. Calm! The old bastard! If she’d had the time, she would have hung on to listen to him beg. “Please, Elizabeth!” she said out loud. Now she started laughing, her eyes watering, unable to stop herself when she got going. She threw her head back, laughing until she got the hiccups. She’d make him crawl in the mud when he got out into the canyon! If only she had some kind of glass bottle that she could smash up on a rock! Just to give him something to think about when he pulled in! Hah! She burst out again, laughing until the tears ran down her face.
Then she caught sight of herself in the rearview mirror and stopped, her chest heaving, hiccuping softly. She found a tissue and wiped her eyes, cleaning away runny makeup, and then brushed her hair aside with her fingers.
“Hell”, she said, giggling. She opened her purse then and looked at the pistol inside. It was Appleton’s pistol, from the desk drawer. By now he would know it was gone, that someone had taken it. That would give him something more to chew on. …
She started the car, turned around at the cul-de-sac at the end of the street, and drove up the canyon road, past the last cross street, the last houses and markets and street lamps, up into the empty hills.
55
MRS. DARWIN CIRCLED the plaza twice, looking for Betsy, watching for the two insane people from the antiques store. What on earth had set them off? What was it that the woman had thought Betsy was hiding in the book bag? It was something valuable enough that the woman had thrown the inkwell at her as if it were worthless, something she was willing to fight over. And Betsy’s reaction, her running, made the woman’s behavior seem valid. The inkwell, Mrs. Darwin realized, might simply be the tip of the iceberg.
She slowed down, driving up Glassell Street through town, looking into alleys and parking lots. There were a hundred places to hide, and night was falling. The search was probably futile, and yet she couldn’t simply leave Betsy alone. And the inkwell—Betsy had the inkwell with her. She drove back and circled the plaza, past the antiques store, but there was clearly no one inside. The most disheartening thing was that Betsy had run. If only the girl had stood her ground, they might have solved their little troubles! But with Betsy missing, everything had gone to hell. The police weren’t even an option.
She reluctantly headed east, up Chapman Avenue toward the foothills and Santiago Canyon. It wasn’t too late yet, not quite six, and it could be that Phil hadn’t yet called the Costa Mesa telephone number and found out that there was no Bob Hansen there. Although even if Phil had called it, it wasn’t a disaster, just a simple error: she’d written the number down wrong, transposed a couple of digits. She was a good enough actress to cover it. Then she remembered having stopped earlier to load up Phil’s mailbox with some of the odds and ends shed hauled out from Austin. That had been unwise. Still, even this could be explained away as mere generosity.
She climbed Orange Hill now, the city spread out beneath her, lit up far and wide. It was 6:10 and the traffic crawled along, people turning off into neighborhoods of nearly identically designed homes. She stopped at the light at the top of the hill, and when it turned green, the car in front of her stalled. She slammed her hand against the steering wheel in frustration, and then honked the horn, backed up until she nearly touched the bumper of the car behind her, and then jumped into the adjacent lane in order to pass.
Readying what she would say, she turned into the driveway. The house was lit up, and Phil’s car was there. The man himself was visible through the window, talking to someone on the phone. She made a three-point turn so that she was headed out again, left her car door open and the motor running, and hurried up to the front porch, still thinking things through. The news that Betsy indeed had the inkwell would take him down a peg. The fact that Phil’s woman had stolen it would take him down even further. He was in no position to play high and mighty with her. Almost as soon as she rang the bell, Phil answered the door, standing there staring at her as if in shock. He looked past her, checked her car, the driveway …
“She’s not with me,” Mrs. Darwin said. “I’m afraid there’s been trouble. I came straight back here to you.”
“A friend of mine was just here,” Phil said. “Betsy’s safe. I’m leaving right now to pick her up downtown.”
“Thank God!” Mrs. Darwin said. “Phil, I must tell you something in order to clear the air. Betsy had the inkwell all along. I don’t mean to drag this business out into the open again, but that’s the truth, so help me God. A woman whom you know, Elizabeth something, apparently took it from her, stole it from her hiding place. Betsy and I ran into this woman down on the plaza, and there was quite a scene. I’m sorry to say that Betsy ran away, but I have to admit that I might have done the same thing in her case. This woman is …” She shook her head, as if unable to find the words. “Pardon me,” she said then. “I didn’t know you had company.” She looked past Phil into the living room, where Jen sat on the couch.
The expression on Phil’s face hadn’t changed. “I know all about the inkwell,” he said. “I know why Betsy kept it. I know where it came from and what it is. It was Elizabeth who drove up here to tell me that Betsy was safe. I spoke to George Benner just a few minutes ago. He seems to think that Marianne’s death wasn’t natural. Somebody gave her medications that interacted with each other. The interaction was toxic, apparently, and prompted the stroke.”
“Oh my God, I was right!” Mrs. Darwin said. “Her doctor was an idiot. I told her that, Phil. But even so, I can’t imagine him having made an error of this magnitude. That’s clearly medical malpractice. There’s a lawsuit in this, Phil, and if there’s any evidence I can supply to help you litigate, I’ll do what I can.”
“George seems to think that she was murdered, Mrs. Darwin. The problem wasn’t an incompetent doctor. Her doctor didn’t give her the medication. I think you gave it to her.”
“What in the hell are you ta
lking about, you impudent … If you’re implying that I had anything to do with your sister’s death! That little remark is actionable.”
“I believe you killed my sister, Hannah. You killed your husband. Lord knows what’s in that pie you brought over this morning.”
“I’ll just take that little gift back right now! Call me an Indian giver if you want to, but if you think for one moment that you can talk this way to me, after the friend I’ve been to Betsy!” She opened her purse, looking inside for her hanky, saw it, and reached in after it.
“Give me just a moment, Hannah, and I’ll call the police. You can talk to them about lawsuits and about the pie both.”
He started to turn away, and she shook the hanky off the top of her little Derringer pistol. “Phil!” she said sharply, watching the woman rise from her seat on the couch, her hand going to her mouth. Phil turned, saw the pistol, and gestured at her, suddenly obedient and respectful. “You sit down, honey,” she said to the woman, who did as she was told. “And you stand right there, Phil. This gun is loaded. Now, for your information I am not a murderer. If you knew the first thing about what your sister suffered, you wouldn’t make that allegation. She was an invalid, Phil, a complete emotional invalid. She had her days when she could function. She even managed to go back to work, but it was only temporary. Her medication was simply a Band-Aid. What she chose to swallow was her business. She asked my advice and I gave it to her. But I’m not a doctor and I don’t claim to be, and the trouble she got herself into is something that I won’t be blamed for. But I’ll tell you that for Betsy’s sake, that woman either had to be cured or killed, because she was wrecking her daughter. A child can’t live with an … an invalid for a mother—not that kind of invalid, a psychological basket case. Up and down, up and down until the poor girl didn’t know what to think. Well, we’d all had enough, and more than once I thought to myself that Betsy would be better off with her mother dead and gone. And anyway, I’d been her mother, part and parcel, for years. Things turned out for the best. That’s all I’ll say. And then, after the risk I took on Betsy’s behalf, after the sacrifice I made trying to solve that problem, you came along and took Betsy away! You moved in like a vulture, didn’t you? Just like a damned vulture. We both know there was money in trust, don’t we? And that’ll come to you now, all that money. I can’t guess your true motives, Phil, because you’re as neurotic as your sister, living alone in this old firetrap, bringing in your women. And you go accusing me? God knows what-all you’re up to.”
Phil slapped her hand hard right then, and the force of the blow spun her halfway around. Mrs. Darwin simply kept moving, holding onto the gun, straight out through the open front door, slamming it hard behind her without breaking stride. In a second she was across the porch and into the driveway, heading toward the car. Thank God she’d left the engine running! She climbed in, not bothering to look behind her, tossed the Derringer onto the passenger seat and her purse onto the floor, and then shifted the car into drive, accelerating up the driveway and out onto the road before she had even shut the car door.
There was the sound of a horn blaring, a screech of tires, and the heavy sound of another car hitting something stationary behind her. In the rearview mirror she saw it spinning away from one of the big roadside trees, slipping down into the culvert beside the road. Rain began to fall, and she turned on the wipers as she rounded a big curve, switched lanes to pass the car in front of her, and swung a hard left up the first street she came to, winding up into the hills, up one street after another, breezing through stop signs until she came out on something called Skyline Drive, which seemed to wrap gradually downward toward the flatlands again.
She picked the Derringer up off the seat and dropped it into her open purse. Back at the house, she hadn’t taken the time to cock it, and cocking it was an awkward thing to do, because the gun was so small. Phil would simply have taken it away from her, and that would have been the end of things. His slapping at the gun like that had distracted him enough to give her a chance to run. She would have to remember that next time—carry the gun cocked in her purse.
There was nothing to be seen in the rearview mirror, so she slowed down now. Apparently nobody was chasing her, although they would be soon if Phil called the police. He would probably go after Betsy, though. And what could he tell the police? Nothing. It was all nonsense. She’d had her day in court and had been vindicated. As for Marianne’s death, there wasn’t any evidence, not even circumstantial. And of course he had given her permission to take Betsy out shopping today, hadn’t he? Even he wouldn’t deny that. The police! He sorely misunderstood her if he thought she cared two cents for the police.
Betsy was a more immediate problem to her, in the clutches of those two … those two monsters. And if Phil did recover Betsy, he would fill her head with talk that she couldn’t begin to understand. Phil himself didn’t understand it. Explaining herself to Phil just now had been like shouting into a hole in the ground.
She turned out onto Newport Boulevard and headed in a direction she thought was south, pulling off into a school parking lot to study her map, trying to orient herself, to recall what she knew of the area from driving around the other day. In minutes she was off again, feeling cool and determined and a little bit exhilarated, back in the direction she’d come, but by the straightest route now, straight into the rainy heart of danger.
56
“WHERE ARE WE going now?” Betsy asked. Her voice was louder than she wanted, and she put her hand to her mouth.
“Just a little ways up ahead,” he told her.
They had stopped at his house a few minutes ago, and he had taken her inside with him, moving quickly, bringing out a suitcase, holding onto her wrist all the time but apologizing for it. He was still being nice to her, and it seemed to her like he meant it. Elizabeth hadn’t meant it, ever. Now she and Mr. Appleton were traveling back toward the hills. She wondered if he was taking her to Phil’s house, but somehow she didn’t think he was. She recognized a shopping center with an enormous tree, going past on their right, and she moved her hand slowly to the door handle and pulled on it, just to see again if it would open. It wouldn’t.
“I’ll tell you where we’re going if you tell me something,” he said to her.
“What?”
“Your inkwell. That was a special inkwell. I want to apologize that Elizabeth took it. When you said she stole it, I knew you were telling the truth. You know about it, the inkwell? About what it is?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know about the other ones? The bigger ones? Is that what Elizabeth was asking about? One of the others? The crystals?”
“I don’t know,” Betsy said.
The old man switched off the windshield wipers. Water hissed under the wheels, but it had stopped raining. “Tell me your name,” he said. “We haven’t been formally introduced. I’m afraid I’ve been too busy to attend to common courtesy.”
“Betsy.” She knew that he already knew her name. The question was weird.
“My name is Hale Appleton. I’m happy to meet you.” He extended his hand over the backseat, and after a moment of indecision, she shook it. “Elizabeth thought that you had one of the other objects, one of the crystals, in your bag.” Betsy clutched the book bag on her lap. The inkwell was safe in the bottom of it.
“I don’t,” she said.
“No, I know you don’t. That’s what she thought when you came in with the woman. Mrs. … what was her name?”
“Mrs. Darwin.”
“That’s right, Mrs. Darwin. I don’t quite like Mrs. Darwin. She wanted the inkwell, too, didn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not at all surprised. What did it do? What was the memory?”
“My grandma,” she said.
“It was a memory of your grandma’s? What sort—if I might ask. I don’t mean to pry; I’m just curious.”
“When she had a baby.”
“Ah. That explains a lot
, especially about why your Mrs. Darwin wanted it. I’ll tell you what the crystal looks like, all right? The one Elizabeth thought you had.”
“All right.”
“It’s about as big as your hand, and it’s made out of something that looks like light-blue glass, like the color of a robin’s egg. Except it’s not particularly clear. You can’t see through it very well, like you can see through glass. And the shape of it looks a little bit like an animal, maybe a dog, lying down, but facing the front, with its head down on its paws. It’s uncertain, though, if you see what I mean—like a shape in the clouds. You have to use your imagination to see it. Do you know how I know what it looks like?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Because it’s mine. It belongs to me. Someone took it from me a long, long time ago, just like Elizabeth took your inkwell. Is that what she thought you had? The blue dog?”
Betsy sat in silence for a few moments, watching the houses and stores slip past. “I don’t have it,” she said.
“You don’t have it in your bag, but you know about it, don’t you? You know where it’s gone?”
She said nothing, and he glanced back at her again.
“It has a memory in it, you know, just like your inkwell does, only it’s a longer memory. It’s a whole memory, a person’s whole life. Like a thousand inkwells all together. Do you know what I mean when I say that?”
“I guess,” she whispered.
“Do you know whose memory is trapped inside the crystal?”
“A girl.”
He turned and stared at her now. “It’s my daughter. My own little girl.”
“I saw her, when I was in the tower. There were candles burning, and I think a horse was running.”
There was a silence now, and Betsy wondered suddenly if he was crying. She glanced up at him, but he was looking straight ahead, looking stone-faced. She realized that they were ascending into the foothills, and she looked out of the car window at the hillsides. Ahead of them loomed the dark line of the mountains, with the moon rising behind them, looking enormous, its top half swallowed by clouds.
The Rainy Season Page 28
