She had been uttering a storm of epithets, heaping abuse on Iris’s head, apparently partly convinced that what I’d said was true. She raised the gun again. “Just you back up, now.”
I did.
“Get down into that boat.” She pointed to the one closest, bobbing slightly, though Spirit Lake seemed deathly quiet.
There were no oars and I was a poor swimmer, but any place was better than here.
A short wooden ladder that was used to get to the boats was attached to the dock on both sides. I climbed down into at least six inches of water sloshing around in the bottom; it looked pretty old, and I’m sure it was. I can’t recall ever having seen anyone using this dock in the last several years. I could swim to shore from here, as it wasn’t more than fifty or sixty feet. Certainly, I could, except she could get there quicker than I and I’d just be back to where I was. So I watched her undo the rope from the post it was tied to, toss it into the boat, then pick up one of the oars lying on the dock and shove the boat. I floated on quietly moving water toward the center of the lake. She stood on the dock, watching, and I had no idea, none, what she meant by all of this. What I felt was the most incredible relief I’d ever known, getting away from her. Even though there was water in the bottom of the boat, I think it had come perhaps from rain, or disturbance of the lake which had sloshed over the side. For it didn’t get any deeper, and although I had nothing to scoop it up with, I could do a little with my hands, and nothing came to fill it up again. I didn’t see any sign of leaks. I kept bailing water with my hands, feeling if I had to bail all the rest of the night, I’d still be lucky. Shore got farther away; I wouldn’t want to have to swim from where I was now.
I was looking down and bailing when I heard a shot and beside the boat the water caved as if someone were skipping big stones. I looked toward the dock. She was firing at me. I dropped down, terrified, my face in the water. So this was what she had in mind. I put my hands over my ears, which did no good for I heard the second shot as clearly as the first. More clearly, because it was closer. The frightening thing was, she didn’t even have to hit me. All she had to do was hit the boat and then it would sink. Able or not, I might have to swim toward shore, and I could imagine the shots in the water. How many bullets did that gun hold?
I was a sitting duck. I couldn’t stand it, just to have thought I was safe from her, and now I find that this was what she had in mind all along. I hate death up close. It was Elizabeth who’d had to hold Mary-Evelyn down. I could just picture vicious Isabel walking away from the scene, hands over her eyes.
Another shot that didn’t split the water, but came with a cry. I raised my head just enough to see over the bow. What I saw astonished me more than anything else that night: Isabel fell, flailing, into the water. A figure emerged from the brush along the road and walked the boardwalk to the dock.
It was Ben Queen. Even from this distance, and in the dark, I could tell it was him. He had a certain way, a certain walk. He shouted something, but I couldn’t understand it. I had come to save Ben Queen, and here he was, saving me.
I tried to use my hands as oars, but made precious little progress.
I could see her, floating there near the dock, her ugly purple dress turned black by the water. Holding one of the old white lifesavers stacked on the dock, Ben Queen jumped into the water and started toward me. He swam like a sewing needle running up a seam, scarcely parting the water, dragging the lifesaver with him. When he got close enough he shoved it tome.
He was treading water and raking his wet hair out of his face. “Glad I happened along.”
“Me too.”
“You can swim some?”
“Some.”
“Paddle with one hand and give me the other and let’s get the hell outta here.”
When I’d spotted the police car fast arriving along the road, my main concern was not for Ben Queen’s welfare, but whether I looked like a drowned rat. You’d think being held at gunpoint would overcome a person’s self-consciousness and vanity, but not mine.
“Emma, long as you’re all right. I think it might be best for me to vamoose.”
I insisted I was all right. I thanked him and thanked him.
“I owed you, Emma. Looks like I might again.” He was looking at the car a short distance down the road, its red bulb flashing, aimed here. Ben Queen picked up his shotgun and vamoosed.
The two of them were out of the car, and the Sheriff was running along the boardwalk, calling out my name. I’d forgotten: Walter knew where I was and the Sheriff would have come looking for me once he got back from Hebrides.
He sounded really worried—good! And just wait until you hear about what you failed to save me from! I wish the body of Isabel Devereau hadn’t chosen that moment to float up and bang against the dock. I nearly screamed, but caught myself.
“Hi,” I said, casually. “She’s down there.”
The Sheriff kept an arm around me, saying things like My God, Jesus Christ, holy hell, and a few other blasphemies which I might have to report to Father Freeman. Donny swaggered around with his thumbs hooked in his Sam Brown, chewing gum and generally giving the impression that he knew right away nobody was in danger. The Sheriff told him to get the hell back to the car and call in for an ambulance and the coroner. Get things going. Donny reluctantly left.
The Sheriff kept his arm around me and asked me if I was okay. I said, grandly, of course, hating that I looked soggy and caked with water and lily-pad muck. But I was flattered that he asked me about me before he asked about the body floating in the water, whom he didn’t recognize.
I said, “You’ve got a really bad memory, considering all those pictures I showed you.” But he hadn’t spent as much time as I had looking at them. “Isabel Devereau,” I said, shivering, while trying to look blasé and modest but only managing to look dripping wet. The Sheriff saw me shiver and immediately removed his uniform jacket and whirled it around my shoulders.
Well! I thought. This was worth getting wet for! Was it worth almost dying for?
I guess not.
60
Ree-Jane goes spastic
I was a celebrity. Glasses were being raised to me so much and so often, you’d think I was Tangerine. There were all these reporters come from newspapers for miles around, from our nearest big city a hundred miles away, and someone even suggested the New York papers would pick it up.
I was a celebrity not just in Spirit Lake and La Porte, but in Cloverly, Hebrides, and you-name-it. My fame was spreading.
The three returned to find me rocking on the front porch, in the company of reporters from three newspapers also rocking on the front porch, and all drinking Cold Comforts and having an hilarious time interviewing me. I thought perhaps their laughter and clear enjoyment of the assignment might have been suppressed in view of the danger I had been placed in, but then I put that down to my mixing too much Jack Daniel’s and Wild Turkey in their drinks. (I had ransacked Mrs. Davidow’s storeroom.)
Now: imagine Ree-Jane.
Imagine Ree-Jane getting out of the car (hideously sunburned) and walking up the front steps into this scene. For here I was at the very center of her own daydream. Her daydream become waking reality, not for her, but for me: Famous Adventurer, Famous Heroine, Famous Actress (for Hollywood must be on its way). Famous.
Famous, Famous, Famous, Famous, Famous.
Me. It was all happening to me, Emma Graham, not to her, Ree-Jane Davidow.
Even Walter was there, leaning against the porch railing, smiling to beat the band, for he had been interviewed and photographed, too. It was Walter, after all, who had sent the police car to Spirit Lake.
Walter! Walter, who was so low on the totem pole. Walter, who was mere background music. Walter had stepped out of the shadows into the story of a lifetime.
“Now, be sure you tell them, Walter,” I’d said when I was whipping up the Cold Comforts for the reporters, “you be sure to tell them that you were the only one who knew where I
was and that you would have come looking for me if the Sheriff hadn’t turned up.”
“Well, it’s true, ain’t it? I woulda.”
Ree-Jane stayed spastic for two days. Lola, who took her fame where she found it, even if it was being lit by reflected glory (and extra martinis), had me in the back office going over the story again and again. Laughing in the wrong places, of course, but who cares? One of the funniest things was watching Lola and Ree-Jane compete for the most “print” (as the reporters called it). Elbowing Ree-Jane aside, Lola told the reporters she had always said I had more gumption than anyone and that she had raised me always to assert myself. To another reporter, with whom she was sharing martinis, she came very close to adopting me—I was as good as her daughter.
The only ones not jumping on the bandwagon were Will and Mill, who could have got a lot of free publicity for their production out of it, but who didn’t seem to care. When I mentioned this, Will put his hand on my shoulder and said he wouldn’t want to intrude upon my success. That was the biggest lie. They’d intrude all over the place if they thought it would get them something they wanted, and publicity wasn’t it. But why would it be, if everything they did was a secret?
I was there when a reporter approached the two—searching them out in the Big Garage, which was nervy—and to her questions, they both said, “No comment.”
No comment! Oh, for heaven’s sake!
“But aren’t you thrilled that your little sister has done this?”
Will favored her with a tilted smile. “Like a deus ex machina, you mean?” He even pronounced it right.
The reporter stumbled over that. “A what?”
Mill answered: “You really ought to bone up on your Greek tragedies.”
They turned, unconcerned, and walked away. Back to Paul and the bucket of flour.
But Ree-Jane went wandering around in her new blue dress like a wilting delphinium. I knew she would make a nasty recovery, though, and she did.
She started laughing when she saw me, pointing and laughing, fit to kill as if she knew a version of my exciting story that others didn’t. It was that silent fake laughter she’d got down so well.
But it didn’t last long.
One morning shortly after their return, Mr. Gumbrel called me up and asked me if I’d mind coming into the Conservative office; I said I’d be glad to, and did not ask him what this was all about. But I had an inkling something else was about to be added to the list of Me.
Famous Reporter.
Poor Ree-Jane.
61
Star reporter
“What I’d like you to do, Emma, is write this up for me.” Mr. Gumbrel held up his palm as if I’d been going to object. “Don’t say it’s already been written up until we’re blue in the face, because it hasn’t. Don’t tell me that you don’t have a lot more to add, and don’t tell me these reporters didn’t include a pile of misquotes and mistakes—including Suzie Whitelaw!” She was passing by his little glassed-in cubicle, and he wanted to make sure she heard this.
She did. Her face went cherry red. She’d been walking by just to find out what he had me in there for.
“Oh, yes, there were mistakes all right.” I did not give as an example the city paper that had spelled Regina Jane ReeJane (as suggested by me), this spelling having been picked up and flaunted by a dozen other papers. “But I’ll correct them.” Except for that particular mistake, I didn’t add.
“Good! Wonderful! What I have in mind is your in-depth history of this whole affair. Maybe begin with telling how you came in here over a month ago, wanting to read our report on the death of the Devereau girl. It’s stuff like that, it’s the details I want. And I want it spread”—his hands measured off a width of air—“through at least three and maybe even four or five issues.”
I was really excited, but kept it in check. “Yes, I can see a story like this could take a lot of print.”
“You betcha! I’m going to sell more papers with this than I have in the last two years!”
“I wonder,” I said suavely, “if it’ll go on the wire?”
Mr. Gumbrel said undoubtedly, as he lit his cold cigar. “You know, ReeJane—”
(Would everyone now be calling her this? Would it turn up on her headstone? How wonderful!)
“—she’ll take offense I turned her down,” Mr. Gumbrel went on. “But obviously she can’t write it.”
“You mean—she asked to write this story?”
“Oh, my goodness, yes. Came in here like the Queen of the Nile, telling me she was a lot nearer the source than Suzie Whitelaw and so could do a better job.” He plugged the cigar into his mouth, took it out again. “I had to remind her the one little thing she wrote a couple years ago didn’t constitute ‘experience.’ Which is what she says she has. There’s a girl could turn a silk purse right back into a sow’s ear.”
“Can I quote you?”
He guffawed.
My progress from the Conservative up Valley Road was marked by bursts of jumping and laughing. I guess anyone who might see me would conclude that fame had driven me mad.
No one did see me, though, for both Valley Road and Red Bird Road were so empty of houses. On Red Bird Road, the mobile home with its half-moon garden had set a plastic goose family among the zinnias and petunias. A pink flamingo had been added to this plastic family, and I had to admire the owners’ attempt to draw what color out of life they could.
Dr. McComb’s house seemed, as always, to be drowsing in its acres of tall grass, weeds, gladioli, and Queen Anne’s lace. The lack of a front porch or a cellar gave it this submerged and sleeping look. The front door stood open, so I didn’t have to knock, which might have summoned the strange, tall, voiceless woman, who I personally thought was as crazy as a loon, but then I’d been too long among stories of the Devereau sisters to have a good slant on madness.
I walked through the kitchen to see if any baking was going on. It was; from the oven wafted the smell of lemons. I went out to the back.
“Hi, Dr. McComb,” I called.
His head came up and he waved, “Over here!”
I plowed through buffalo grass and strange tall winged flowers until I got to him. He was wearing his floppy broad-brimmed straw hat the color of burnt grass, which he swept off as he made me a courtly bow amid the butterfly bushes. “Brilliant! Brilliant! How’d you do it?”
“Thank you. That’s what I came for—to thank you for the autopsy information you gave me.”
“Autopsy information?” He looked swiftly around as if he had overlooked a dead body. “Did I dig someone up?”
I gave an exaggerated sigh. “You know. About drowning.”
Slapping his straw hat back on his head, he said, “Emma, as I recall, all I did was confirm what you’d already figured out. That the child could have been drowned beforehand and someplace else.” Then he put his arm around my shoulders. “This is at least a two-brownie topic. Let’s go.” He picked up the net and we walked back to the house.
“I didn’t smell any brownies,” I said. “I smelled lemon. Is it cookies?”
“Good grief! Does your investigative prowess never take a holiday? Right now what’s baking is a citron pound cake. I already made the brownies, especially for your visit.”
As we pushed through the weeds and Queen Anne’s lace I said, “There’s something else I wanted to thank you for, though.”
“Um? What’s that?”
“For not laughing.”
62
Hearsayist
As I walked up the street to the Rainbow Café, I saw, of all people, Ree-Jane coming down the steps of the courthouse. Upon seeing me, she stopped. She did not cross the street to say anything; she merely stood there, pointing at me and laughing. Even as far away as she was, I could tell it was one of her fake, soundless laughs, but she really acted as if she would split in two with it. She had done this before, of course, but she hadn’t done it coming out of the courthouse. What was going on? Who had she been
talking to?
Shirl gave me a blistered look when I walked into the Rainbow (she being another one unaffected by my fame). I made my way to the back booth, slower than usual, as the counter sitters kept stopping me to comment. Mayor Sims enjoyed telling me that maybe I should be sheriff instead of Sam (ha ha ha), whereupon Ulub, sitting next to him, gave him a verbal thrashing, or as near as Ulub could get to it. We were so pleased with ourselves we nearly knocked Ubub off his stool with all of our friendly pats and punches. Patsy Cline was singing “Crazy.”
Maud brought me a Coke. It was nice, always being fed by people. It almost made me want to be a wandering orphan or a matchstick girl, for then I would really have appreciated it.
I hadn’t seen much of Maud in the last several days because the reporters (and the police) had kept me so busy answering questions, and because there’d been this big increase in business at the hotel. Today, I had been let off serving lunch when I’d told my mother I had really important business to attend to. Such are the benefits of being a celebrity that my mother had neither questioned the business nor why it was important.
Will certainly questioned it, since I would be missing another rehearsal. “You’ll never get anywhere in the theater if you can’t be serious about it.”
“Why do I have to rehearse, for heaven’s sake? All I do is come down on that swing thing.”
“It’s the timing, for fuck’s sake.”
I refused to lower myself to tell him he’d just said the f-word. That was really more because I wanted to say it myself and waited for him to pave the way. Yet, he said it so calmly, and without emphasis, that you’d think it was just another old word. Maybe it was.
“What timing? Mill just lowers the contraption with me on it. That’s all.”
Will put his hand to his head and groaned a little as if weary of dealing with amateurs.
Cold Flat Junction Page 40
