Carriage Trade (64 page)

“‘Five hundred dollars a month,' she said. ‘In cash. Hand delivered. By Mr. Tarkington.'

“‘I am not a lawyer,' I told her. ‘But my father was a well-known attorney in Philadelphia. What you are talking about is deliberately withholding evidence in a case of suspicious homicide. That in itself is a felony. You could go to prison.'

“‘I could say I forgot!' she said. ‘I could say I didn't remember about the clothes in the room until later.'

“‘You are also talking about extortion, blackmail,' I said. ‘That is also a federally punishable crime.'

“She looked at me narrowly. ‘I might get a coupla years for that,' she said. ‘But he could go up the river for life for what he done. I could say I seen him push her. In fact, I've just changed my mind. I think what I know is worth five
thousand
a month!'

“At that point, Tommy took over. He said, ‘I think Miss Kolowrat and I should talk in private for a moment.' The two of them left the room, and Si and I were alone.

“I couldn't bear to look at him, and he couldn't bear to look at me. Your father and I just sat there like two dummies, saying nothing, staring at our hands in our laps. Suddenly I felt terribly sorry for him. He was like a little boy who'd been caught doing something naughty on the playground and was terribly ashamed of what he'd done. I thought, Well, he's been in trouble before, but this is the worst trouble he's ever been in, and I thought—remember, this was more than twenty years ago, and I was younger and much more naïve—I thought, Well, maybe this will teach our bad boy a valuable lesson. Of course I was wrong. It didn't.

“Pretty soon, Tommy and the woman came back into the room. Tommy said, ‘I've got her to agree to fifteen hundred a month.' The woman interrupted to say, ‘Cash! Hand delivered! In person!' And Tommy said, ‘That's as low as I can get her to go. I think we'd better accept that, Si. I don't see what else we can do.' He looked at us. I nodded, and Si nodded, and that was that.

“And so that was our friend Ernestine,” Consuelo Tarkington says. “She moved to New York, where she could keep closer tabs on him, and he paid her off for the rest of her life.”

“And the girl who died?”

“She was a little model named Christine something.”

“Wandrous.”

“Something like that. Si had been seeing her, and she began claiming that she was pregnant with Si's child. That couldn't have been true, because by then Si and I both knew that he was sterile. After you were born, your father and I tried desperately to have another child. He wanted a son, to help him run the store, and he was sure that Blazer's mother was poisoning Blazer's mind against him. But I couldn't seem to conceive. Tests were made. Something, perhaps those years of night sweats and chills, had made him sterile—not impotent, but his sperm count was zero. That was another terrible blow to him, of course. But if the girl was pregnant—”

“The autopsy reported that she was.”

“Then it couldn't have been by your father, Miranda, and he knew it. He knew she was trying to trap him into marrying her. Anyway, Moe Minskoff could be useful for damage control, as your father used to say. The girl had a sister—”

“Mrs. Helen McCullogh of South Braintree, Massachusetts.”

“Moe got to her and paid her off, got her to change her story and to say that the girl had been depressed and probably suicidal, and after that the newspapers left the story alone.”

“But what do you suppose actually did happen, Mother—to the girl, I mean?”

“She wanted to marry him. Si refused to believe her story. They quarreled in the hotel room. She told him she'd kill herself if he wouldn't marry her. She threw open the window and threatened to jump. Si struggled with her, but she was too much for him. In the struggle, she fell.”

“The newspaper stories said jumped—or was pushed.”

“Oh, no. Don't think that, Miranda. I knew your father too well. He could never have taken another human life. It just wasn't in him. He was too—abject. He was always the victim, never the victimizer. That was the story of your father's life.”

With a little hissing noise, one of the lighted candles on the dining room table sputters out, and Connie Tarkington looks at her watch. “Goodness, it's after midnight,” she says. “We'd better be getting to bed, you and I.”

“But there's just one thing I don't understand,” Miranda says. “Why did Tommy want to get you involved in what had happened in Boston? Did you really need to be? Surely you didn't want to be. Why did he drag you into it?”

Her mother's smile now is distant and knowing. “That,” she says, “is a very good question. Think about it. And think about whether, if you really do want to run the store, one of the first things you ought to do isn't to get rid of Mr. Tommy Bonham.”

“But can I really do it without him? I know some of his methods have been—well, a little unorthodox, to say the least. And I don't trust him anymore. But he does have all that experience I don't have. He knows the vendors, knows the market, and all those special lady clients whom he waits on personally and who won't purchase anything without his advice. Won't I need his help, at least for a while?”

Her mother is still smiling. “No,” she says. In the remaining candlelight, she lifts a pale, thin hand in an inquiring gesture, and, as Consuelo Tarkington fixes her eyes on her daughter, Miranda's eyes withdraw.

In Miranda's dream, she was in a vast open space, standing small in front of a tall Christmas tree, its branches spreading outward in gestures of embrace, covered with thousands of fairy lights, tinsel, shiny balls, and candy canes. Hundreds of brightly wrapped packages lay strewn, unopened, beneath the tree. The tree swayed, as if in a wind, and the branches lifted, and suddenly the branches of the tree became arms, and the tree became her father, standing tall before her. His arms seemed to beckon her to come closer, and she could see that what had been ornaments on the tree had become clusters of fruit that he was holding in his hands; and as she stepped even closer she could see that the fruit was overripe, dripping nectar, begging to be picked, and that in less than a day's time the fruit would be rotten and unfit to eat. “This is the tree of my life,” the tree father told her. “This is the closest glimpse you will have of my heart. Pluck this fruit now, before it's too late.” Then a finger of the arm branch of the tree father reached out and touched her eyelids. Its touch was dry and brittle and tickling, yet light and feathery, like beautifully arranged hemlock needles, and she woke, brushed at her face, and realized that the hemlock needles were only the whiskers of Bicha, the cat, curled on the pillow beside her. Still, the dream disturbed her, and it was a long time before she was able to sleep again.

It is Saturday morning and, with the exception of brief trips back to the city to consult with Peter Turner, Miranda has been at the farm for a week. Connie has risen at her usual hour, and now, in her bedroom, she is on the telephone. “Tommy, it's Connie Tarkington,” she says. “I'm glad I found you home. I'm wondering if I could pop over to your place and talk to you for a minute.… Good, I'll be there in ten minutes.”

She picks up her keys and purse, hurries down the stairs, and goes out the front door to where the station wagon, which she drives herself when in the country, is parked in the drive. The gate to Flying Horse Farm draws open at her battery-operated signal, and she turns out into Heather Lane, heading toward Tommy's place.

She parks the wagon in front of Tommy's cottage and moves quickly up the front walk. Nino, his houseboy, greets her at the door. “Mr. Bonham, he expect you, Missus,” Nino says.

She steps into the living room, which is in its usual state of disarray, and Tommy springs to his feet with a smile. “Connie! How wonderful to see you,” he says. He steps toward her to kiss her on the cheek, but she moves away and seats herself on the Victorian sofa. “Hello, Tommy,” she says, and his face darkens. “What I have to say will only take a minute.” She picks a speck of lint off her white slacks, and he seats himself slowly, facing her.

“I had a long talk with Miranda last night,” she says. “In fact, we've had a number of long talks since she's been out here visiting me. I told her about Ernestine. I saw no reason not to, since all the principals involved in it are now dead. Except you and me, of course.”

“Yes.”

“She asked me an interesting question. She asked me, ‘Why did Tommy drag you into it?' It's a question I've often asked myself. I certainly didn't enjoy being dragged into it. I'd have much preferred not to have been. Ignorance would have been bliss.”

“I felt we all had to show a united front, Connie.”

“Is that it? Well, showing a united front didn't help us much, did it? No, I've always thought that somehow you assumed that if I were exposed—at first hand, in the flesh, as it were—to one of the more disastrous results of Si's womanizing, I'd divorce him.”

“That's ridiculous!”

“Is it? Well, if that was your assumption, it was wrong. If anything, sharing that awful secret brought us closer together. In retrospect, it strengthened Si's and my marriage immeasurably.”

“That was exactly what I'd hoped! That it would strengthen the bond between the two of you.”

“In an ordinary marriage, it wouldn't have done that, I suppose. But ours was not an ordinary marriage.”

“As I knew all along, Connie!”

“But dragging me in on it also made the last twenty years of Si's life miserable. It was bad enough that Moe Minskoff knew what had happened. It was even worse for him, knowing that you also knew. But it was far, far worse for him knowing that I knew too. But for you, what happened that night in Boston presented a door of golden opportunity, didn't it? When you went up to Boston, you were an assistant buyer in the shoe department. That was what the trip to Boston was supposed to be about, if I recall—meetings with some footwear manufacturers. When you came back from Boston, you became street floor merchandise manager. Then it was vice president. Then it was executive vice president and general manager. Your ‘meteoric rise at Tarkington's,' as I've seen it described in the press.”

“Connie, if you're suggesting that I ever threatened—”

“Your very presence was a threat! He knew you had the ability to expose him at any time. That was the secret of your power, of your ability to manipulate him. He lived in terror of what you might decide to reveal, and you made sure that he was continually frightened. You told him to have his face lifted, in case another hotel employee recognized him and placed him in that room that night with that girl. You told him to beware of photographers, for the same reason. And all the time, you were moving higher and higher up the corporate ladder, closer and closer to the king's throne. But you never quite made it to the throne itself, did you? And you're not going to.”

His face is angry now. “So this is the thanks I get for keeping your husband's dirty little secret all these years!”

“I'm going to use my share votes to elect Miranda the store's new president.”

“And I'm to be second in command—under
her
? Is that what you're saying, Connie?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“I don't want my daughter to live the way my husband did. I don't want her to have a second in command who can impose a reign of terror. I want you out. In fact, I'm going to make that a condition. If she gets my share votes, it will only be on the condition that she gets rid of you.”

“Did she—did she tell you something, Connie? Something about me that's made you turn on me like this? Because—”

“She said nothing about you, except that she still thinks she needs you. I don't agree. But I'll tell you something about you that I've finally figured out. I used to think, If Tommy insisted that I come to Boston to get involved in all that, it had to be because he hoped what I'd find there would be enough to make me want to end my marriage. But then I'd ask myself, Why would he want to do that? Just to make mischief? Just for power? What would be the advantage to Tommy if I were to divorce Si? What would be in it for him? Now I think I know. I think it was because you were in love with Si and wanted to marry him yourself. That was it, wasn't it, Tommy? You were in love with him.”

She stands up.

“Why is your lower lip trembling like that, Tommy?” she asks him.

33

The next day, Sunday, it is one of those autumn days when summer suddenly seems to return to the East. The sun is warm, though low and slanted, casting long shadows on the lawns, and Connie and her daughter are walking in the garden. Later this afternoon, Miranda will go back to New York, but to do what she has not yet completely decided. Bicha the cat, in his
dégagé
way, follows at a discreet distance behind them, wanting their company but not wanting to appear to want it too badly, seeming to find many more important items of interest along the path than two women strolling in a garden.

“There's one big thing I haven't told you, darling,” Connie says. “And that's that I'm planning to marry again.”

Miranda stops in her tracks. “Really, Mother? Who?”

“Jake Kohlberg. He's been a great help to me over the years, and I've always been very fond of him. And now he's asked me to marry him. What do you think of that? Pretty good for your old gray-haired mother, don't you think? Maybe there's life in the old girl yet. I'd like a husband for my old age.”

“How funny,” Miranda says. “Someone's asked me to marry him too.”

Her mother laughs her bell-like laugh. “I'm not surprised,” she says. “And I know who it is.”

“How do you know?”