Goodlow's Ghosts (17 page)

"Could you describe the woman, please?"

"Sure. She's tall, she's got long brown hair, she's thin."

"And what is the woman wearing?"

"A wedding dress."

"This woman is wearing a wedding dress?"

"Yes. And it looks very old and very dirty. That's one of the reasons I called you. I mean, it's bad enough that she's calling out this guy's name and doesn't respond to anyone, but she's wearing this god-awful wedding dress, too—"

"Give me your location, sir, and we'll dispatch a car at once."

"She's gone."

"Gone?"

"Just like that. My God. She simply vanished,
pfft
! Into nothing."

~ * ~

Rebecca
Meechum
thought that she was the soul of restraint. For three days now, she'd had that envelope and she hadn't opened it. She had held it up to the light, had even begun to steam it open, but had quickly decided that she would be found out, and so had abandoned the effort.

She wished the woman would come and pick up the envelope, as she had said she would. Didn't the woman know what a temptation it was, didn't she realize that by telling her—Rebecca—not to open the envelope that that was precisely what she would be driven to do?

It was as if the woman was . . . perverse, or something. As if she
knew
that Rebecca would have to do the thing she had been told not to and then she—the woman—would relish making her—Rebecca—suffer the consequences.

But what could the consequences be, after all? The woman had made no threat, she had simply said, "Do not open the envelope. Wait for me to pick it up." There was no threat in that. Not even an implied threat.

Rebecca held the large manila envelope up to the bright daylight coming in through her bedroom window. She saw only a rectangular dark shadow in the envelope that was a little smaller than the envelope itself.

Photograph
, she decided. It wasn't the first time she'd thought that it was what the envelope contained. It was obvious. The thing in the envelope was opaque. Regular paper would have let some light through, at any rate. Thick photographic paper probably wouldn't. It didn't take a modern-day Sherlock Holmes to figure that out.

Her doorbell rang.

~ * ~

Sam remembered this:

"Hello again, Mr.
Goodlow
. Come in, please."

"Hello, Mrs.
McCartle
."

"Please. Violet."

"Sure." He went into the big, ostentatious house and followed the woman down a long hallway, into a cavernous room filled with antiques.

She sat.

He sat nearby.

"So, tell me what you've done with the envelope, Mr.
Goodlow
."

He hesitated, uncertain. Something about the woman puzzled him. He studied her a moment. Canny, gray-blue eyes; short, white hair; strong, rectangular face.

"Mr.
Goodlow
?" the woman coaxed.

Perhaps, he thought, the key to what puzzled him lay in her voice. It was not precisely the voice he remembered, though he wondered how good his memory could be after a week, and after such a brief conversation.

"Mr.
Goodlow
? The envelope?"

"Sure," he said. "It's at my office. It's hidden in the overhead lighting fixture."

"You'll have to do better than that, Mr.
Goodlow
." The voice came from behind him, in the doorway, and it was nearly identical to the voice of the woman seated in front of him.

He turned, looked.

~ * ~

Ever since her father's disappearance, Hanna Beckford had not left his house. More than once, she had lifted the telephone receiver after deciding that she needed to call
someone
. But she had called no one because it came to her that what she had to say—
My father walked into the cellar wall and disappeared!—
was impossible, and she would be looked upon as a crazy person.

So she had waited for him.

She was certain that if he could indeed disappear into a cellar wall, then he could very well reappear from the same wall, and when he did, he would need her to be there, because who knew where he might have gone, who knew the trauma he might have suffered?

He would need her. And she would have to be there for him.

She spent most of her time in her father's kitchen. The cellar way was off the kitchen, and she kept the door open. She had brought a cot into the kitchen, and a TV, which she watched with the sound turned off so she wouldn't miss hearing the reappearance of her father.

It frightened her to stay in her father's house. She remembered the presence she had sensed in the far corner of the cellar just moments before her father's disappearance, and though she had tried to convince herself that she had sensed nothing but what her own nervousness had manufactured, she did not believe it. She had been within spitting distance of something powerful enough to whisk her father away as if he had never existed, and she was very fearful of it, so fearful that she had lain awake now for three nights.

But her fear was not as great as the love she had for her father, so she had waited at his kitchen table, had played endless rounds of losing solitaire, and had watched her father's old TV show her faint gray and white images of the colorful and tacky and predictable world that existed beyond his big, empty house.

And she had waited for him to reappear.

When, at last, he did, she was not prepared for it.

She had thrown down a king of hearts as unusable, had glanced toward the cellar way, to her right, thinking she had heard a noise from below. But it was not the first noise she had heard. The house was home to several families of mice, and they were not quiet.

And when she looked at her hand of solitaire again, and thought dimly that she was again going to lose, but that it didn't much matter, she felt a strong hand on her shoulder, and she heard, "What a strange and wonderful universe we live in, Hanna. Who could have known?"

~ * ~

And Sam remembered saying, as he stared at the woman in the doorway, "What the hell is
this
all about? What are you, twins?"

The woman in the doorway smiled a little, as if at a private joke. She was sitting very erect in a wheelchair, as if she were unaccustomed to sitting in it. "No, Mr.
Goodlow
," she said. "But we might as well be twins, as you can see."

Sam looked at the other woman for a moment, then looked again at the woman in the doorway. "Is this some kind of scam you're running?"

The woman shook her head. "No scam, Mr.
Goodlow
. Just good business sense. Violet
McCartle
has need of a twin at this point in her life. Actually, what she has need of is not a twin, but a double. Someone that the world—especially the shark-infested world of business—will believe is her. The strong prey on the weak, we all know that, don't we, Mr.
Goodlow
? So sometimes a little sleight of hand is required."

"And you're the double?" he asked the woman.

She smiled, again as if at a private joke. And the other woman said, "Your understanding of this whole affair must remain, necessarily, quite limited."

He looked from one face to the other. "So what you're saying is that you're not going to tell me which one of you is the real Violet
McCartle
, right?" He grinned. "It's an interesting game, but it's not going to work." He looked at the woman on the settee. "You visited me at my office last week, Mrs.
McCartle
. I remember your voice."

She nodded. "Yes, Mr.
Goodlow
.
Someone
did indeed visit you."

He thought about this a moment, then whispered a curse.

The other woman said, "And I would have to reiterate, Mr.
Goodlow
, that your overhead lighting fixture is not really the best or the most secure of places for the envelope that was entrusted to you."

"Perhaps a safe-deposit box," said the woman on the settee.

Sam shook his head. "This isn't going any further until I know precisely who I'm talking to."

A moment's silence followed, then the woman on the settee said, "Violet
McCartle
will call you tomorrow at precisely 5:30 P.M. Please be available." She leaned forward and handed a small business envelope to Sam. He opened it. It contained a check for twenty thousand dollars.

Sam looked at the check for a couple of seconds, then nodded and said, "Sure. I'll be there."

The homicide detective hadn't doubted that the boys had found what they claimed to have found, but, after following them through the thick woods for two hours, he had strongly doubted that they'd be able to lead him to their discovery.

But then they were there, at the mound. The detective could see the gray arm, the gray face, the full, puckered lips, and matted hair, and, nearly in a panic—as if the boys would be forever scarred by viewing this obscenity longer than they already had—he pushed them away, turned them around, and approached the mound very cautiously.

~ * ~

Matthew Peters came to Ryerson's office door and announced another visitor.

"Did you get a name?" Ryerson asked.

Matthew shook his head. Ryerson sighed. Matthew said, "It's a kid. A little boy. He says it's urgent."

Ryerson's brow furrowed in confusion. "Really?" he said, more to himself than to Matthew, who said, "Shall I show him into the living room, Mr.
Biergarten
?"

"Yes. I'll be right down," Ryerson answered.

~ * ~

The boy was in his early teens, Ryerson guessed, thin, red haired, with a splash of freckles across his nose. He was wearing blue jeans and a red flannel shirt. His feet were bare, which surprised Ryerson. The boy looked very Huck Finn—
ish
. He was standing at one of two tall, narrow windows that looked out on Market Street. His hands were in his jeans pockets and though he was clearly trying to look casual, he looked very nervous.

He said, as Ryerson came up to him and offered his hand, "You are Mr.
Biergarten
?"

"I am."

The boy shook Ryerson's hand. Ryerson noted that the boy's skin was unusually cool and dry, although his grip was very firm.

"I have a job for you, Mr.
Biergarten
," the boy said.

"Do you really?" Ryerson noted the patronizing tone in his voice and regretted it. He saw that the boy apparently noticed it too, because he frowned and looked away, then looked back quickly. "Yes," he said firmly, "I do. And I can pay you, too."

Ryerson gestured at a pair of club chairs nearby. "Why don't we sit down and discuss it."

The boy shook his head. "No. I don't need to sit down. I like it here."

"At the window?"

The boy nodded. "Lots of daylight," he said, and smiled coyly.

Ryerson grew uncomfortable. He was beginning to sense something odd about this boy, something false. He looked at the boy's bare feet and asked, "What happened to your shoes?"

"Don't need 'em." Another coy smile.

"I see."

"Who needs shoes except people who are
goin
' somewhere?"

Ryerson shrugged. "Good question," he said.

"Damn straight."

Several seconds of tense silence followed. The boy's unblinking green eyes would not leave Ryerson, and Ryerson's uneasiness grew.

"Could you tell me your name?" Ryerson asked. The boy nodded but did not answer.

Ryerson grinned weakly. "And your name is . . .?"

"Sam."

Ryerson nodded and said, "Sam
Goodlow
?"

"The same."

Ryerson sighed.

The boy said, "And I have a job for you. There's a man following me. A great big man. Bigger than you. Wider, anyway. And he makes me very scared, and I need you to help me."

"Why don't we sit down?"

"I don't need to sit down. I don't need to sit down or wear shoes or do anything. And you
have
to help me."

~ * ~

The thin, gray-haired woman in Rebecca
Meechum's
apartment smiled playfully. "You're not really going to try and make me believe that you did not look in this envelope, are you, Miss
Meechum
?"

The woman had a large, black leather purse slung over her right arm. The purse was bulky, and as the woman talked, her hand went into it.

Rebecca
Meechum
had already handed the manila envelope over and the woman was clutching it in her free hand. She had not opened it; apparently, she knew what was inside and did not need to open it.