The Scarlet Ruse (10 page)

She tried another town and another name, and McDermit had phoned her at work to say hello. He found her more quickly the second time. So she had come to Miami and gone back to her own name. "His people check on me. Somebody comes around every couple of months. You get used to it. Five years, practically. It isn't all that rough, getting along without. It isn't that big a part of life."

"Why now and why me, Mary Alice?"

She sighed. "I hope you can find your way in off this ocean in the dark."

"No problem."

"Look at all the stars! You can see them better out here."

"Evading the question?"

"No man in his right mind is going to take a chance on getting killed, just to get one specific piece of ass out of all the ass there is floating around. And besides, I'm not all that great in bed. I'm a big healthy girl, but I'm just sort of average sexy, like you'd find anywhere."

"Question still pending, lady."

"I'm saying it isn't now and it isn't you, because it could have been if I decided, but instead I've told you why it shouldn't happen. It would be stupid of you. And it would be stupid of me to let myself get into it. I've had it all pushed down out of sight, and I'm okay. I get along fine."

"Then let me ask it a different way. Why did you almost decide on now and on me?"

"Not because you are so absolutely irresistible, believe me. If I was inventing a guy to… break my fast with, he would sort of be like Michael Landon, only a foot taller."

"Like who?"

"If you don't know, never mind. I think that the way it started, I had the idea that if I ever got the nerve to take the risk, it should be with somebody who'd be awfully damned hard to kill, and then maybe he could keep me alive too. It was just… what is the word when you think of things you aren't going to do?"

"Conjecture?"

"Right! I conjectured about us. Then I woke up on the beach, and you were asleep, and I looked at you and kind of wanted you. Still conjecture. Then you kissed me, and I was having a dream it fitted into. Then I went down the beach and thought about it, and then I began playing some kind of fool game about it, but you have to come to the end of games, right? Something to get killed over? Who needs it? Come on, dear. You better start aiming me toward home. I'm sorry. I really am."

"And you don't play quicky games, do you?"

She snapped her head around. "You better not be asking me to."

"I'm not."

"If I wanted to sneak it, I could have had all a girl could need."

"I know."

"It would have to be something that starts and keeps going until somebody finally says whoa. Out in the open. People would know just by seeing me look at the guy."

And now, in the shadows of the curtained master stateroom, I wanted to see that look. I slowly ran the ball of my thumb down the crease of her back, from shoulder-blades to the little knobs in the small of her back. She sighed and moved slowly and made a small murmur of complaint. Then suddenly she stiffened, sprang up and back and away from me, eyes wide and blank in terror, as she grasped the sheet and pulled it up across her breasts.

She expelled the frightened in-suck of breath in a long grateful sigh, hooked her hair back out of the way with curled fingers, gave me a small and uncertain smile and said, "Talk about having a heart attack, darling."

"Bad dreams?"

"Mmmm. Hold me, huh?"

I stretched out beside her, atop the sheet, and put my arms around her. She put her face in my throat. She chuckled.

"What's funny?"

"A dirty joke a girl told me where I have lunch. It sort of fits. You know. I'll mess it up if I try to tell it."

"Try."

It was the one about the doctor with the gorgeous girl patient who comes in with a hangnail and has to strip for the complete physical, and it ends with the tag line, "Don't be silly, Miss Jones. I shouldn't even be doing this!"

And she didn't tell it very well.

"Darling?" she said.

"Wha'?"

"Tell me exactly what you promised and exactly what you are going to do."

"Hmm. Let's see. I am going to put extra drums of fuel aboard this here vessel. I am going to equip her and provision her for a voyage of uncertain duration. And at the first hint that your freak husband is after us, whenever you say go, we go, taking the Muсequita in tow. If the weather is good enough, we see if we have enough good luck and good management to get over to the islands. If not, we lay at anchor somewhere down Biscayne Bay or in Florida Bay until we get the right weather."

"When I say we're leaving, what do you do?"

"I do not argue. I do not discuss. I do not negotiate. I hang up the phone, start the engines, and wait for you."

She gave me a very strong hug. "That's our deal."

"That's our deal, M.A."

"Time is it?"

"Moving up onto noon."

"What! Good Lord!"

"Something must have relaxed you, honey."

"Sure didn't look like anything was going to at first. I was absolutely hopeless. I was just too tense and nervous and scared to be worth a damn. You are a very patient guy."

"In a self-serving kind of way."

There was a long silence and small motions finally, body language involved in question and answer, query and response, trick or treat. And off in the side of my mind was a fleeting recap of Meyer's insight, that we all tend to save good news as long as we can. But sometimes, with a little tickle of guilt, we find a compelling reason to save the bad for a little while too.

She was still taking her long sloshing steaming soapy noisy shower when I took her Bloody Mary into the head and yelled to her that she would find it on the counter beside the sink. She yelled her thanks.

Aboard the Flush, under a bunk, there is a big storage drawer full of lady items which have been left behind or bought for emergencies or donated to the cause. No point in even looking, because had there been a previous lady of these dimensions, I would remember. But her yellow top and shorts were still fresh enough.

The very best eggs and country ham and toasted English muffins with strawberry jam. We sat in the booth next to the stainless steel galley, and she was right about that blue-eyed look of hers. She looked at me often, during and between the forks of egg, the bites of muffin. Anybody intercepting that look would have wondered if it was melting the fillings in my teeth. Bloodhounds look at the moon that way, and kids look into candy stores that way, and barracuda look at bait fish that way.

We shared the cleaning up and took final cups of coffee into the lounge. So I took a deep breath and looked over her shoulder, out the port, at the sunny gleam of the row of boats and told her about Jane Lawson. Glassy shock. Exclamations of disbelief. Yawls and yawps of grief, pain, and anger. Reddened, streaming eyes, considerable nose-blowing, and then she wanted to be held, patted, comforted as the residual snuffles and snorts became less frequent.

She went and fixed her face and came back and phoned Hirsh Fedderman. He had to tell her all he knew about it. She made wordless sounds of shock and sympathy. The tears began running again, and she made frantic motions at me. I put the box of tissue within reach. She asked questions in a torn and tearful voice and honked into the wads of kleenex. After that was over, she had to have another session of holding, patting, comforting and then go fix her face again.

She came back and plumped herself down. "I'm exhausted," she said. "I felt so marvelous, and now I'm pooped. It makes my problems seem like nothing at all. Hirsh is really down. The poor old guy. The last straw, sort of. I don't know what he's going to do now. I know what I better do. I better go and be with him. He hasn't really got anybody else. Not nearby."

She got her things. At the doorway from the lounge onto the aft deck, we kissed. For a casual kiss, she felt big and hearty, solid and tall, practically eye to eye with me on her tiptoes. For what she considered any important kissing, she had a strange knack of dwindling herself. She curved her shoulders forward, let herself cling, but without much tangible weight, delicately in fact.

She looked up at me. "We're some kind of special."

"That's what people keep saying about us, all over town."

"Can I be kind of a coward?"

"How?"

"Don't come to my place. That's asking for trouble. Don't phone me, there or at the store. Just to play safe. Okay?"

"Don't call us, we'll call you?"

"Constantly. You won't believe how often. I'm going to walk all tilted over from the weight of the dimes."

So I locked my floating house and went on ahead. I went and got Miss Agnes and came back around and picked up Mary Alice. She nipped in and slunched down, saying, "All of a sudden this is a pretty conspicuous car."

"And no matter what you ride in, you are a conspicuous lady."

"Isn't that the damned truth."

"Would you feel better if I wore a dress and a blond wig?"

She turned and stared at me. "You would make the most incredibly ugly woman in all Florida."

"Just stop being so edgy."

"I'll try. But he's a sick, murderous, tricky bastard."

There was a slot where I could park near her Toyota. She got in her car, and I put her beach bag in. She gave me a shy, nervous, quick little smile and said she'd phone or maybe just drive up there, if that would be all right. I told her anything would be fine. She hit her brakes a foot shy of a lot of sedate gray Continental as she backed out and then thumped over some curbing as she made her turn. Goodbye, dear girl. And take care of yourself. And Hirsh.

I retraced the route I had used when driving Jane Lawson home. We had been talking. I had followed her instructions without paying too much attention to the turns. So I got partially lost at about the halfway point and nearly lost when I was almost there. When I came upon it, there were two cars in the drive with that vaguely official look. There was a rental Oldsmobile at the curb, and a burly brown man with a shaved head was leaning against the front fender with his arms folded, managing to look patient and impatient at the same time. He wore a white short-sleeved shirt and blue sailcloth Bermudas. His calves and forearms were thick, sinewy, and very hairy.

I parked twenty feet in front of the green Olds and came walking back. He said, "There is absolutely nothing to see here. Get back into that… vehicle and drag ass."

I took the final six slow strides that put me in front of him. He was fifty at a distance and early sixties close up. But he was fit. Very fit. He even seemed to have muscles on his forehead. I couldn't fit him into any part of the picture until I noticed the ring on his finger.

"Are you Jane's father-in-law, sir?"

"I'm General Lawson. Why? Who are you? If you are another goddamn newspaper-"

"My name is McGee. Travis McGee. I'm a salvage consultant. I drove Jane home Friday after work. She asked me in. While we were talking, Judy came in and left with some friends. I found out about this terrible thing this morning. I live in Fort Lauderdale. It is reasonable to assume that in the course of questioning Mr. Fedderman, her employer, and Mrs. McDermit, her co-worker, they would ask them when was the last time they saw Mrs. Lawson, and they would say when she left with me. So, in a spirit of cooperation, I thought it would be well to report to whoever is investigating the case. General, I am very sorry about this. I also wish to point out that all of this is none of your goddam business, and I am humoring you because I hear the habit of command is hard to shake."

He unfolded his arms, and his chin moved six inches toward me. "What's that? What did you say?"

"I said I gave you more answer than I had to."

"What were you to Jane?"

"I'll even answer that, sir. An acquaintance."

He closed his eyes for a moment. "They've been coming by. Creeps. Sickies." He tilted his head, frowning, staring at me. "They go by nine times at three miles an hour, or they stop and get out and stand and gawp at the door with no more expression on their face than a ball of suet. Families with little children, standing and staring, with God only knows what kind of dim thoughts moving around in their empty skulls. I've sent a lot of them on their way. The sun is hot, and I've got a cheap lunch sitting like a stone in my stomach, and the law is hunting down my granddaughter. In other words, I apologize."

He put his hand out. I took it without hesitation.

He opened the car door and sat sideways on the seat and looked up at me. "Pride is so goddamned wickedly expensive. I have been waiting here, thinking about pride."

"Sir?"

"Three sons. Jerry was the only one who went into the service and the only one who died. The other two are doing fine. I retired early. Heart murmur. The second star was a going-away present. Bought a little grove in California. Take care of the trees. Gardening. Golf. Bridge. Am I boring you?"

"No, sir."

"I'm boring myself. Somebody has to get stuck with listening. They paved a road near my place. I went and watched them every day. Isn't that fascinating? Old fart watching the big yellow machines. Made myself agreeable. Asked questions. Never saw such a crowd of fuckups, pouring money down the sewer. Found a couple of my retired NCOs and officers, as bored as I was. All put some money in the pot. Rented equipment after we bid low on a culvert. Made out. Ploughed it back in. Every one of those other six old farts have taken at least two million out of it. And I kept fifty percent of everything. Seven corporations. Factory structures in Taiwan. Flood control in Brazil. Bridges in Tanzania. Pipe lines in Louisiana. Shrewd old bastard, right? Wrong. Just bored doing nothing. Horse sense and energy and being fair. Nothing more. There's a Christ-awful shortage of horse sense in the world. Always has been. Ask me where the pride comes in. Go ahead. Ask me."

"Where does the pride come in, General?"

"Me beginning to make money hand over fist, and Jerry's widow with two little girls. I had to travel a lot, leaving Bess alone. Lots of room in that house, and if there wasn't, I could build more onto it. No, she was too proud. She wanted to make her own way. Raise Jerry's kids without help from anybody. Bess wanted to come down here and visit her and talk her into it and bring her back. She was sure she could. So my pride got in the way. If the damned girl wants to act like that, let her. Jane's pride and my pride. Send too big a check along with the Christmas stuff, and she'd send it right back. Oh shit, isn't pride wonderful? She stayed right here in this half-ass place leading a half-ass life, when if she'd wanted to spend a thousand dollars a day of my money, it would have tickled but not pinched. So she's gone down the drain after a lot of scruffy little years, and the youngest girl has gone sour. For what? There's no meaning to it at all. None." He put his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands.

I gave him ten seconds and then said, "Are you waiting for them in there?"

He looked at me as if he had forgotten who I was. "Oh, they're supposed to be finishing up. I can go in when they're through, they told me." He patted his shirt pocket. "Linda is over at the hotel with Bess. I've got a list of things. I don't want that little girl to have to come back here even one more time. She had one look. This was her home. She shouldn't remember it like the way it is now."

I excused myself and went up the steps and pushed the buzzer. I told my story to a fat young man with a guardsman moustache. He took me back through litter and ruin to a bedroom where two technicians were working in a perfume stink, patiently dusting the larger fragments of glass. A large man sat on the bed, murmuring into the bedside extension. He had a big head and golden locks and a great big face and jaw, with fleshy, regular features. He hung up and stared at me with a look of total, vapid stupidity. It did not change as I went through my little account for the third time.

He said, "My name is Goodbread, and so far I'm making the file on this one. What I hope, McGee, is that you are one of the kinks we get now and then, they kill somebody and come back and say they just happened to know that somebody and how are you boys making out catching the killer, heh?"

"Sorry I can't help you that way."

He favored me with a long, stupid stare. "I might anyway have Arn run you down and check you through everybody's computer file."

"There's somebody you could ask."

"The mayor?"

"Captain Matty Lamarr."

"Your first name again? Travis? Stand easy." He phoned again. He had a very soft telephone voice. He held the phone in such a way that half his big hand formed a cup around the mouthpiece. I guess he was getting the home number. The captain was a few years past pulling Sunday duty. He held the bar down, then dialed again. Big swift nimble fingers. He spoke, waited a time, then spoke again. Listened a long time. And another question. More listening. Expression of gratitude. Hung up.

"The captain didn't say you are his favorite people."

"He's not one of mine, but we got along all right one time."

"He says there's no use asking you what kind of an angle you are working."

"If any."

"He says he thinks you stay inside the law, just inside, most of the time."

"I try, Lieutenant."

"Sergeant. And he said you answer questions right, or you clam up, and you can be a help if you want to be."

"I liked the woman. I didn't know her well, but I liked her."

"The captain says that the only handle he could find to use on you was that you don't want your name in the paper."

"There's a point where that handle breaks right off, Sergeant."

His long stare was lethargic, his eyes sleepy. "So let me know if you feel anything starting to give, McGee."

"Can I suggest something to you?"

"You go ahead, and then I'll tell you if you should have."

"The woman's father-in-law is waiting out at the curb in a rented car. He wants to pick up some things for the older daughter."

"And?"

"If you know who you are keeping waiting, okay. But I read an article about him in a magazine a couple of months ago. That is Major General Samuel Horace Lawson, and Lawson International is listed on the big board, and in his line of work I would guess that he gives a bundle to both political parties, and if he gets annoyed enough, he is going to-"

"Arn!" Sergeant Goodbread roared. The fat young one with the guardsman moustache came in almost at a run, his eyes round.

"Arn, fill me on that guy you talked to out front."

"Uh… he's related. Lawson. Old folks. He just wants to get some stuff out of here when we're through. For the daughter. Why? He'll keep."

"Did he call himself General Lawson?"

"Sure. But you know how many old generals we've got around this state…"

Sergeant Goodbread went out and brought the general into the house, apologizing for the delay. He helped Lawson with the list of items and had Arn carry them out to the Olds. Goodbread talked for about ten minutes to Lawson in the living room. I could hear the voices but not the words. The air conditioner was too loud. I sat on the bed. The technicians kept going listlessly through the broken glass looking for clean fresh prints. Or even fresh smudges. Many many police officers have worked in criminal investigation until retirement without ever working on a case where a fingerprint made one damned bit of difference one way or the other. A skilled man knows a fresh print or smudge the instant he brings it out by the way the natural oil from the skin responds.

Lawson left. Goodbread came to the doorway and beckoned me into the living room. A chair and the end of the couch had been cleared off. A plastic tape box crunched under his heel and some brown stereo tape caught around his ankle. He motioned me toward the couch, and he bent and plucked the tape off his ankle before he sat in the chair. He took a stenopad out and opened it and put it on his heavy thigh and said, "Description of Judith Lawson, please."

I shut my eyes for a moment and rebuilt her, head to toe. I started to give it to him slowly, but I saw he was using some form of speedwriting or shorthand, so I delivered it more quickly. I gave him the conversation as I remembered it, not word for word, but reasonably close.

He closed the pad and said, "Thanks for your cooperation."

"Can I ask some questions?"

"What for?"

"I want to waste your time with my idle curiosity, Sergeant. Like I wasted your time telling you about General Lawson."

"He mentioned… Captain Lamarr mentioned you get kind of smartass."

"Is the reconstruction that she came home and found persons unknown busting up this place?"

"No way to check it, but she was wearing street clothes, and her purse was found beside the body. Without a dime in it."

"And where was the body?"

He hesitated. "In that doorway there to that hall, legs in this room, head in the hall."

"Was the air conditioner on when the body was found?"

He looked at the ceiling, and for a moment that massive face firmed up, losing the practiced and deceptive look of the dullard. "On when I got here. Which seems several days ago and was yesterday. Linda Lawson said the only things she touched were the front door, which wasn't locked, and her mother and that telephone. Why?"

"When we got here Friday, the heat would knock you down. She apologized. The house rule was last one out turns it off, first one in turns it on. It made a hell of a noise on high, but cooled off the place fast."

He went over to the door and walked back into the room. He came back and sat down. "So the kids were busting up the back of the place when she came in, and this room was okay, and so she went over…"

He paused. I said, "If you hear a noise, you don't turn on something that makes it harder to hear."

He nodded. "And if you are going to sneak in and bust a place up, you don't turn on a lot of noise that would keep you from hearing if anybody is coming. And the daughter would have had to walk further to turn it on than to get to her mother."

We sat in silent contemplation. He tapped the stenopad and said, "Unless this little chickie was part of the group."