Bright Orange for the Shroud (22 page)

“Hmm. And Waxwell would think it fishy if she made a play. But he does have … a certain interest in her?”

“Avid.”

“What if he found out somehow that she had left her husband and gone off someplace alone to think things out, all alone in some hideaway place, away from people. A place hard to get to. She wouldn’t be there, of course, but it would take him a long time to get there and find out and get back.”

“And when he got back and found out he’d been cleaned out, who would he go after first, Chook? That isn’t a happy thought.”

“See what you mean. But what if she and her husband got all set to take off, so then you could give them some of the money and they’d be gone before he got back?”

“And if I can’t find the money?”

“Then he wouldn’t have much to be sore about, would he?”

“And she could say that she started off and changed her mind and came back to her husband. If he asks. You have a talent for this, Miss Chookie.”

“Thanks a lot. Trav, I don’t see how you
can
expect to find it, even if you had a whole day.”

“I have an idea about that. Remember the story of Bluebeard?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’ll tell you if it works.”

“And you have to think of a place she might be likely to go.
And some way of getting the word to Boone Waxwell. And you have to talk her into it in the first place.”

“I think she’s desperate. I think she’s ready to try anything. And she would be the logical one to ask about a place she might go. Meanwhile, playing it by ear, we’ve got ourselves located on the wrong square on this board maybe. Maybe not. Hell, I guess not. With the car, and with the little boat at Naples, maybe right on the edge of the board is the best square to occupy.”

“And you’ll use Arthur somehow, dear? Some safe way?”

“I promise.”

She patted my arm. “Thank you very much. Do men’s work. Leave the lady home to give tearful thanks at the safe return.”

“I can’t take him with me tomorrow. Or you. Not for the morning mission.”

“What is it?”

“I want to see if the Bluebeard idea is any good before I take the Viv idea any further.”

Tuesday morning at nine thirty, from a gas station a quarter mile from the junior high school, I phoned the administration office and asked to speak to Cindy Ingerfeldt. A woman with a tart, skeptical voice said, “This is the next to the last day of exams. I can check to see if she is taking an examination or if she is in a study period, but I shall have to know who you are and the purpose of the call.”

“The name is Hooper, ma’m. Field investigator for State Beverage Control. I’ll have to ask you to keep that confidential. The girl could have some useful information. Could you give me a rundown on her, what kind of a kid she is?”

“I … I don’t imagine you’ll find her cooperative. Cindy is quite mature for her age. A very indifferent student. She’s just marking time here, as so many of them are. I take it her home life is not too pleasant. She’s not a popular child. She keeps to herself. She’s tidy about her person, and would be really quite pretty if she lost some weight. Mr. Hooper, if you want to interrogate the child, you could come here and I could turn over a private office to you.”

“I’d rather not do it that way, ma’m. Word could get back to some pretty rough people. I wouldn’t want to cause her that kind of trouble. That’s why I ask you kindly to keep this to yourself.”

“Oh dear. Is the child … involved in anything?”

“Nothing like that, ma’m. You know, if you really want to cooperate, rather than me trying to get anything out of her over the phone, I’d appreciate it if you could just make some reason to send her down the road to the Texaco Station. I won’t take much of her time, and send her right back.”

“Well … let me check her schedule.” About a full minute later, as I stared through the booth glass at the distant building and the ranks of yellow buses behind it, she came back on the line and said in a conspiratorial way, “She’ll finish her History test at ten. I think the most inconspicuous way would be for me to go and see her in person as she comes out, and I will send her along then. Will that be all right?”

“Just fine, and I certainly do appreciate your cooperation.”

At a few minutes before ten, I moved the car, parked it fifty yards closer to the school, aimed in the direction of the gas station. At a few minutes after ten I saw her in the rear-vision
mirror, trudging along toward me, both arms hugging a stack of books to her bosom. She wore a green striped cotton blouse, salmon-colored pants that ended halfway between knee and ankle, white sneakers. When she was near enough, I reached over and swung the door open, saying, “Good morning, Cindy.”

She stared at me, came slowly toward the car, stopped a few feet away. “Oh. You, huh.” She appraised me with those wise old eyes. “What’s on your mind?”

“Get in.”

“Lissen, if Sunday give you any ideas, forget it. I don’t know you, I’m not in the mood, and I got enough problems, mister.”

“I want to fix ol’ Boo’s wagon, Cindy. And he’ll never know you were involved in any way. I just want to ask some questions. Get in and we’ll drive around and I’ll drop you off right here in fifteen minutes.”

“What makes you think I should want to mess Boo up someways?”

“Let’s just say you could be doing your father a favor.”

She pursed her small mouth, gave a half shrug and climbed in. She plunked her books on the seat between us and said, “No driving around. Go like I tell you.”

Her directions were terse and lucid. They took us three blocks over, two blocks to the left, and into a sheltered grove with picnic tables and fireplaces, willows thick around a pond. When I turned the engine off she sighed, undid a button of her blouse, poked two fingers into her bra, squirmed slightly, and pulled out a wilted cigarette and a kitchen match. She popped the match a-flame with a deft thumbnail, drew deeply,
exhaled a long gray plume that bounced off the inside of the windshield.

“How’d you get old Mossbutt to leave me loose?”

“I said it was official. Beverage Control investigation. When you go back she’ll want to know. Tell her Mr. Hooper said not to talk about it to anybody.”

“That your name?”

“No.”

“Is it official?”

“What do you think, Cindy?”

“Prolly not.”

“You’re right. Sunday you gave me the impression you wish Waxwell was out of your life. Was that an act?”

“I don’t know. Guess not. If he wasn’t so damn mean. And not so old. Don’t take me no place. Miami he keeps saying. Sure. I should live so long. The way it goes, shit, I’ve gotta make some kind of move myself, because I hang around, it’s going to be the same, no matter what. A bunch of the kids, they got a chance to bus up and work tobacco in Connecticut this summer. Working hard and being far away, I could get over being so hooked, maybe. Goddam mean old man, he is.”

The last drag drew the fire line down close to her thumb. She snapped the butt out the window, holding her breath, then exhaled, openmouthed. She turned toward me and rested her plump cheek on the seat back. “What d’ya wanna know?”

“Do you know Boo murdered a woman out there at his place last year?”

She hooded her eyes, examined a thumbnail, nibbled the corner of it. “Friend a yours?”

“No. Just the opposite. It didn’t seem to surprise you.”

“I guess I had the feeling something happened. She a midget or something?”

“That’s a funny question.”

“There was some black lace panties I tried to get on. I’m fat but not that fat. I busted them trying. When I asked too many times he popped me on top of the head with his fist so hard I got sick an heaved up.”

“She was a very small woman. I understand he makes you work around the place.”

“Oh Christ, I don’t mind that. He lives like a hog. It’s just he won’t let me keep ahead of it. He lets it go, then it’s twice as much work.”

“Is he always there when you’re cleaning up?”

“When I’m there, he’s there. What he says, I ever come around when he’s gone, or come without him calling me, he’s got something special he’s saving for a big surprise. I’m not fixing to get any surprise from him for sure.”

“All right, when you are cleaning the place, is there any particular part of the house he won’t let you touch?”

“Huh? I don’t get it.”

“As if something could be hidden in the house?”

“Huh? No. Nothing like that. But I sure God stay clear of the grove there back of the shed. One time, back in March I think, it got hot unexpected like. He’d come by and give me a blast on the horn pretty late. At like three in the morning, him asleep and snoring by then, I was there smelling some stinking fish he’d forgot about and left on the porch maybe since that noon. Redfish. They turn fast when it’s hot. It got my stomach rolling over finally, so I up and pull my dress on and go out and pick them up by the stringer, get a shovel from the shed and go off back into the grove to bury them holding my breath
mostly. I hardly dug half a hole and he come at me, running flat out, grunting, that belt knife of his winking in the moonlight, charging bareass crazy right at me. Me, I take off through the grove and hear him hit a root or something and go down hard. Then he’s coming on again, yelling he’s going to kill me, and I’m yelling I was burying his stinking fish before the stink made me snap my lunch.

“Then he was quiet, so I snuck in a circle and see him back in the open part of the grove, finishing digging the hole. He dabbed the fish in and covered them over, then he hollers for me to come on in, saying it was okay, he was just having a funny dream and he woke up. Hell he did. A long time after he went back in the house I get the nerve fin’ly to sneak back in, and the way I got grabbed sudden in the dark from behind, it like to kill me. But what he wanted to do was just horse around. You know. Laughing and tickling. And he got me all turned on prakly before I got over being scared. And I tell you one thing. I never seen any shovel anywhere around his place since. But he isn’t so dumb he’d bury that dwarf woman onto his own place. Not with a couple million acres of ’glades close by, where he could put a little dead woman back in there so far and so deep, the whole army and navy couldn’t find her in a hundred years. Why, he could just float her into a gator pool and them gators would wedge her down into the mud bottom for ripenin’ and have her et’n to nothing in a couple weeks. Maybe they can catch him
killin
’ somebody, but they’ll never get him for it afterwards. I’ll tell you one more thing for sure. If’n you mess him up good, and he knows who done it, you’re best off leaving him dead your own self. That’s the thing about that tobacco work. I get maybe up past Georgia someplace and the bus stops and there he is, leanin on that white Lincoln
grinnin, and I pick up my suitcase off’n the rack and get off that bus, because that’s all there’d be to do. And he knows it.”

On one of her notebook sheets I drew a crude sketch of the cottage and shed and road, and she made an X where she had started digging, and drew in some lopsided circles to indicate where the trees were standing.

As I let her off, she looked at me for a moment, eyes squinty and her lips sucked in. “I’d hate for you to say I told you this stuff.”

“Cindy, you’re fifteen years old, and you’re going to get out of this mess and in another couple of years you won’t remember much about it.”

There was a bleak amusement in her woman’s eyes. “I’m three weeks from sixteen, and it’ll keep right on going on until Boo gets tired of it, and there won’t be a day in my life I don’t remember some part of it or other.”

I drove into Naples, on the alert for Land Rovers and white Lincoln convertibles. I found a hardware store several blocks along Fifth Avenue, parked in their side lot, bought two spades and a pick and put them in the trunk. Then I thought of another device that might be useful, a variation of the way plumbers search for buried pipes. I bought a four-foot length of quarter-inch steel reinforcing rod, and one of those rubber-headed mallets they use for body and fender work. Naples was drowsy in the heat of the off-season, prenoon sun. I phoned Crane Watts’ office number, and hung up when he said hello. Next I phoned his home number. It did not answer. I tried the club and asked if Mrs. Watts was on the courts. In a few moments
they said she was and should they call her to the phone. I said never mind.

When I arrived at the club the parking lot was nearly empty. There were a few people down on the beach, one couple in the pool. As I walked toward the courts I saw only two were in use, one where two scrawny elderly gentlemen were playing vicious pat-ball, and, several courts away, the brown, lithe, sturdy Mrs. Watts in a practice session. The man was apparently the club pro, very brown, balding, thickening. He moved well, but she had him pretty well lathered up. There were a couple dozen balls near the court. He was feeding her backhand, ignoring the returns, bouncing each ball, then stroking it to her left with good speed and overspin. She moved, gauged, planted herself, pivoted, the ball ponging solidly off the gut, moved to await the next one. The waistband of her tennis skirt was visibly damp with sweat.

It seemed, for her, a strange and intense ritual, a curious sublimation of tension and combat. Her face was stern and expressionless. She glanced at me twice and then ignored me. Gave no greeting.

Finally as he turned to pick up three more balls she said, “That’ll do it for now, Timmy.”

He took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his face. “Righto, Miz Watts. I make it three hours. Okay?”

“Anything you say.”

As Timmy was collecting the balls in a mesh sack, she walked to the sidecourt bench, mopped her face and throat with a towel, stared at me with cold speculation as I approached.

“Pretty warm for it, Vivian.”

“Mr. McGee, you made an excellent first impression on me the other night. But the second one was more lasting.”

“And things might not have been what they seemed.”

She took her time unsnapping the golf glove on her right hand, peeling it off. She prodded and examined the pads at the base of her fingers. “I do not think I am interested in any nuances of legality, Mr. McGee, any justification of any cute tricky little things you want to involve my husband in.” As she spoke, she was slipping her rackets into their braces, tightening down the thumb screws. “He is not … the kind of man for that kind of thing. I don’t know why he’s trying to be something he isn’t. It’s tearing him apart. Why don’t you just leave us alone?”