The Dirty Duck (5 page)

“You're with a tour group, Mr. Farraday?”

“Correct. Honeysuckle Tours.”

What names they thought of. “And the rest of your group's here at the Hilton?”

Farraday shook his head. “No, no. That's not the way Honeycutt—he's in charge of the whole thing—runs it. He fixes it so's different people can stay wherever they've a mind. Listen, I wouldn't take one of them two-bit tours where thirty folks get herded on some piss-poor, broken-down bus and run all over creation. And let me tell you this ain't cheap. I'm paying—”

“The inspector ain't int'rested in all that, sweetie,” said Amelia Blue, giving Farraday's arm a little shake, but smiling at Jury as if she knew what he might be interested in.

“How many others are with your group, then?”

Farraday counted on his fingers. “Besides us, there's six. Eleven altogether, including Honeycutt. He's over at the Hathaway or one of them other English hotels. Me, I like my conveniences. Can't imagine sharing a bath with someone else. We're Americans, you know—”

I'd never have guessed, thought Jury. “What part, Mr. Farraday?”

“Me and Penny and Jimmy—that's my boy—we're from Maryland.” He pronounced it as two syllables. “Garrett County. Amelia Blue and Honey Belle—Amelia's my second wife and Honey Belle's her daughter—they're from Georgia. That's where Honeysuckle Tours has its offices, in Atlanta. Fella over there gets the tour together and this Honeycutt, he's a Brit, he runs things from this end.”

“Are you sure your son mightn't be with one of the others on the tour? Apparently, you've been together for some time—”

Amelia Blue got all girlish and giggly:
“Too
long, you ask me.”

“Was your son especially friendly with someone?”

Honey Belle, who had done nothing all the while but fix Jury with her empty blue gaze and chew on a strand of yellow hair, finally decided to talk: “Jus' that crazy Harvey Schoenberg's all.”

The voice utterly destroyed the illusion of wanton womanhood. The tone was flat, nasal.

“What was it about this Schoenberg he liked?”

“Harv's into computers,” said Farraday. “And Jimmy's a right smart little fella, got a mind like a computer, I think.”

“Stupid stuff.” Honey Belle yawned, stretching her arms up elaborately and then clasping her hands behind her head, in case Jury'd missed anything.

“Anyway,” Farraday went on, “he wasn't with Harvey. We've checked. We've gone and checked with everyone on the tour. No one's seen him.”

Farraday coughed and got out his handkerchief. Jury realized, and with sympathy, that the cough merely disguised a threatening bout of unmanly tears. Farraday's eyes were glazed over as he stuffed his handkerchief back in his pocket, leaned across the table, and pointed his finger at Jury.

“Now look, here. I can get the American embassy, you know. So, what're you fellas going to do?” The man was used to doing business by means of hard-nosed threats, Jury imagined, but in this case, it was all facade: Farraday was really worried. Which was more than could be said for the others, except Penny. She hadn't said much, but she was very tense.

“Everything we can, Mr. Farraday. The Stratford police—Sergeant Lasko—are very capable—”

Farraday banged his fist on the table. “I don't want no piss-poor local
po
-lice on this job. I want the best, hear?”

Jury smiled. “I only wish I were. But we'll certainly do what we can. We'll need your cooperation, all of you.”

A handwritten invitation couldn't have got a glossier smile out of Amelia Blue. “Well, now, you most certainly do have that, Inspector.”

“He's a superintendent, didn't you hear him say?” said Penny, looking around the table as if they'd all got rocks in their heads.

That didn't put Amelia Blue off. “Well, whatever. I'm sure he's just
wonderful.”

There was a sort of gagging sound from Penny Farraday.

“Did your son have any money with him?”

“Yes.” Farraday looked uncomfortable, as if he'd supplied the boy with the means of escape. “Oh, not all
that
much; just in case he's out and needs a meal . . . ,” he ended, weakly. “He's nine. Boys are very spirited at nine.”

“And at three,” said Penny, counting her fingers, “and at four, five, six, sev——”

“Now that'll be enough from you, miss,” said Amelia.

Penny melted back into silence and shadows.

“What does your son look like, Mrs. Farraday?”

“James Cahlton's my
step
son.” She seemed to have to sort through some file of faces to bring James Carlton's to mind. “Well, he's so high”—her hand went out to measure off a few feet of air—“dark brown eyes and brown hair. He wears glasses. Like Penny, here. They both got 'stigmatism.”

Jury turned back to the father. “Any distinguishing marks at all?”

Farraday shook his head.

“What was he wearing?”

“Blue shorts and his Pac-Man T-shirt and Adidas.”

“Do you have a picture of him?”

“Well, there's the one on the passport. Snapshots we took, we don't have developed yet.” Farraday drew the dark blue passport out of his pocket.

Jury put it in his notebook and stood up. “Okay, Mr. Farraday. I don't have any more questions at the moment. I think I'll send someone along to have a look at his room. In the meantime, I wouldn't worry too much. Kids have a way of going off. And after all, this is Stratford-upon-Avon, not Detroit.” Jury smiled. “Nothing ever happens in Stratford.”

That, of course, was a lie.

P
enny Farraday had, somehow, managed to cut through the lobby and make it to the front of the Hilton before Jury. She was waiting for him on the walk.

“I come out here because there's some stuff I want to tell you and I don't want them listening, especially that Amelia Blue. Come on,” she was tugging at Jury's sleeve, “across to the park.”

She made a death-defying sprint across Bridge Street, where the traffic shot over the bridge in an endless wave, before separating at the crosswalk.

“Let's set,” she said, dragging Jury down on a bench positioned near the bronze figure of Shakespeare.

The river was choked with swans and ducks, streaming up to the banks for their lunch. A knot of children, probably on one of the last school outings of the year, were feeding them from bags of breadcrumbs hawked precisely for that purpose, like peanuts at the zoo. In the middle distance was the Memorial Theatre. Whoever had designed the Stratford Hilton, which was placed across the street and in view of the theatre, had cleverly designed it to match the theatre's modern lines, thereby binding them together in the tourist's mind. The day was golden, the sky an enameled blue. Jury didn't mind sitting here at all. He took out his packet of cigarettes.

“Gimme me one of those.” Her words were a command, but her tone was uncertain. She expected to be refused. He gave her one.

She looked at the cylinder with such surprise he wondered if she'd ever in her life smoked before; he couldn't believe she hadn't. He held the match for her and it took her several puffs to get the cigarette going. She
held it between thumb and forefinger, puffing in that hectic way of the amateur.

“He ain't our daddy, you know. Jimmy's and my, I mean. He kind of adopted us,” she added, grudgingly.

Jury smiled at that “kind of.” Still, he was surprised. Certainly the woman hadn't shown a mother's concern, but he thought Farraday had shown a father's. “No, I didn't know. Only that his wife wasn't your mother.”

“Her?
She sure ain't. Mama's dead, too.” From a rear pocket of cutoff jeans she pulled a worn leather wallet from which she took a snapshot, black-and-white and creased, as if it had been handled a lot. She passed it to Jury. “This is Mama.” The sorrow in her voice was weighted like lead. “Her name was Nell.”

The young woman—she seemed very young—stood in the shadow of a tall tree, but even in the bad light of the setting, he could see the straight hair and the bones of the face were Penny's. She stood there stiff and straight and not so much as the ghost of a smile on her face, a subject refusing to please the camera.

“I'm sorry, Penny.” Jury handed the picture back. “What happened to her?”

Carefully returning the snap to its plastic sleeve, Penny said, “She died six years ago. I remember the day she packed her bag and left. She said to me and Jimmy, ‘Honey, I got to go away for a while. Mr. Farraday, he'll look after you.' See, she worked for him; he liked her a lot and she him, I think. And she said, ‘Now don't fret yourself; it may be a long while, but I'll be back.' Only that wasn't true. She never did come back.” Penny lifted her head and looked out across the river, Jury thought past everything—the willows, the swans surfeited with crumbs and scudding against the bank, the brilliantly colored little pleasure boats moored at the edge. “She died of a wasting disease. That's what they told us. But Jimmy and me never did find out what that wasting disease was. I guess it don't make no difference. I guess you could say anything you die of's a wasting disease.”

Jury said nothing, only waited for her to go on. “Boy, was she pretty! You can't tell it from that picture—”

“Yes, you can. She looks exactly like you.”

Astonishment was stamped on her face. Her light eyes seemed to refract some of the gold of the day. “Ah,
go
on. . . . No one ever looks at me with them two around.”

“Some people have no taste, then. What about your real father?”

She dropped the butt of her cigarette on the ground. “I guess he died
too. I don't think him and our mama was married, if the truth be known. Maybe I knew him. I don't remember. But Jimmy, he never . . .” This was brought out on a deep sigh, and in the words there was not a trace of reproach. People make mistakes, her tone seemed to imply.

“So He ups and marries this Amelia Blue, and sure as God made little green apples, her and Honey Belle think we're just bastards. Oh, they don't say it out loud; they wouldn't dare; their eyes say it. You just can see it in their eyes every time they look at us. That Honey Belle, there's words for what she is where I come from. I was born in West-by-God-Virginia—you can tell, I don't talk good—and what we call girls like that is just plain c-u-n-t—if you'll excuse my language—I trust I ain't shocking you. In West Virginia we got all kinds, so maybe we got c-u-n-t too, but I swear to almighty God with my hand on my heart”—and not to be thought a liar she placed it there—“that we ain't got it with a capital
C. That
had to come slithering up from Georgia. Now we live in Maryland,” she added indifferently. “You can just see the boys around Honey Belle. They drop like flies everytime she twitches that ass of hers down the street. I used to have me a boy friend once.” She sighed. It was not hard to imagine what happened to the boy friend. “I know you think I'm jealous and I don't deny it. My God, you seen them shorts she wears? Practically up to her armpits. Well, you got to allow as how you know what I mean about Honey Belle.”

Jury had to allow as how he did.

“And that Amelia Blue, she ain't no better. Two peas in a pod. It makes me sick the way she messes with men. There's this Englishman on our tour that I bet my life she's been fooling with—”

“Who's that, Penny?”

“Chum or Chomly. But it ain't spelt that way. First name's George. He's good-looking all right. Nearly has Amelia and Honey Belle wetting their pants. What I wanted to tell you was—you'll have to excuse me bending your ear this way—I think Jimmy might've run off.”

“Run away, you mean? But surely not in a foreign country.”

“You don't know Jimmy. ‘James Cahlton,' she calls him. I swear, all those people down South have these stupid double names, so Amelia Blue has to make them up for us too. She calls Him James
Cecil
as if one name's not enough for anybody. I ain't got a middle name, thank you, Lord.” She looked up at the sky. “We lived with James Farraday for four years before he married Amelia. He's okay, I guess. . . . He's in coal. Owns most of West Virginia and western Maryland. And hotels. Got a big summer hotel
in Maryland. That's where our mama worked. Waitressing and stuff. Jimmy was hardly a baby when we came there.”

“I think Mr. Farraday's really worried about your brother.”

“Yeah, well, maybe. If only He hadn't gone and married
her.
Or I should say
them.
First time we seen her bouncing up the drive we wondered Miss Dolly Parton wasn't honoring us with a visit, all that blond sheep's hair and boobs out to here. She tries to make me not cuss and tries to make Him think she's all la-di-da when you can just
tell
she's trash. She's always got someone over—some
man
—sitting on the front porch—
veranda,
she calls it—drinking beer and fanning herself like she was born on a plantation. You'd think she was Scarlett O'Hara. I wouldn't be surprised to see her rip the curtains off the windows and yell, ‘Tomorrow is another
day!'
That woman's as phony as a three-dollar bill.” Here she looked at Jury from beneath the smooth curtain of her long hair, obviously hoping he'd agree.

“Go on with what you think happened to Jimmy.” He offered her another cigarette. That seemed to please her immensely.

As she puffed away again, she said. “You got to know Jimmy. He's different.”

Jury could well believe it.

“Jimmy started working on this project of ways to get rid of Amelia Blue and Honey Belle. It wasn't nothing simple, like putting frogs in their beds and short-sheeting them. Jimmy, he's real smart. He talks good, too. He decided you don't get nowhere in this world if you don't talk good—you know—like politicals, that sort. What he did was, he got all of these books out of the public library on poltergeists—you know. Spirits that make noise and throw stuff around. Steven Spielberg made a movie of it. You seen it?”