The Good Old Stuff (3 page)

In 1946 I tried to keep at least thirty stories in the mail at all times. When I finished a story, I would make a list of the magazines which might be interested and then send it out again and again until either it was sold or the list was exhausted. There were lots of magazines then. There was an open market for short fiction. There were lots of readers. Bless them!

Assembling this collection was like walking into a room and finding there a lot of old and good friends you had thought dead. The stories are better than I expected them to be, and so in taking the occupational risk of having them published, I hope you will enjoy them as much as they were enjoyed the first time around.

John D. MacDonald

Piseco, New York

June 20, 1982

L
ong ago
he had given up trying to estimate what he would find in any house merely by looking at the outside of it. The interior of each house had a special flavor. It was not so much the result of the degree of tidiness, or lack of it, but rather the result of the emotional climate that had permeated the house. Anger, bitterness, despair—all left their subtle stains on even the most immaculate fabrics.

Darrigan parked the rented car by the curb and, for a long moment, looked at the house, at the iron fence, at the cypress shade. He sensed dignity, restraint, quietness. Yet he knew that the interior could destroy these impressions. He was in the habit of telling himself that his record of successful investigations was the result of the application of unemotional logic—yet his logic was often the result of sensing, somehow, the final answer and then retracing the careful steps to arrive once more at that same answer.

After a time, as the September sun of west-coast Florida began to turn the rented sedan into an oven, Darrigan pushed open the door, patted his pocket to be sure his notebook was in place, and walked toward the front door of the white house. There were two cars in the driveway, both of them with local licenses, both of them Cadillacs. It was perceptibly cooler under the trees that lined the walk.

Beyond the screen door the hallway was dim. A heavy woman came in answer to his second ring, staring at him with frank curiosity.

“I’d like to speak to Mrs. Davisson, please. Here’s my card.”

The woman opened the screen just enough for the card to be passed through, saying, with Midwest nasality, “Well, she’s resting right now.… Oh, you’re from the insurance?”

“Yes, I flew down from Hartford.”

“Please come in and wait and I’ll see if she’s awake, Mr. Darrigan. I’m just a neighbor. I’m Mrs. Hoke. The poor dear has been so terribly upset.”

“Yes, of course,” Darrigan murmured, stepping into the hall. Mrs. Hoke walked heavily away. Darrigan could hear the mumble of other voices, a faint, slightly incongruous laugh. From the hall he could see into a living room, two steps lower than the hall itself. It was furnished in cool colors, with Florida furniture of cane and pale fabrics.

Mrs. Hoke came back and said reassuringly, “She was awake, Mr. Darrigan. She said you should wait in the study and she’ll be out in a few minutes. The door is right back here. This is such a dreadful thing, not knowing what has happened to him. It’s hard on her, the poor dear thing.”

The study was not done in Florida fashion. Darrigan guessed that the furniture had been shipped down from the North. A walnut desk, a bit ornate, leather couch and chairs, two walls of books.

Mrs. Hoke stood in the doorway. “Now don’t you upset her, you hear?” she said with elephantine coyness.

“I’ll try not to.”

Mrs. Hoke went away. This was Davisson’s room, obviously. His books. A great number of technical works on the textile industry. Popularized texts for the layman in other fields. Astronomy, philosophy, physics. Quite a few biographies. Very little fiction. A man, then, with a serious turn of mind, dedicated to self-improvement, perhaps a bit humorless. And certainly very tidy.

Darrigan turned quickly as he heard the step in the hallway. She was a tall young woman, light on her feet. Her sunback dress was emerald green. Late twenties, he judged, or possibly very early thirties. Brown hair, sun-bleached on top. Quite a bit of tan. A fresh face, wide across the cheekbones, heavy-lipped,
slightly Bergman in impact. The mouth faintly touched with strain.

“Mr. Darrigan?” He liked the voice. Low, controlled, poised.

“How do you do, Mrs. Davisson. Sorry to bother you like this.”

“That’s all right. I wasn’t able to sleep. Won’t you sit down, please?”

“If you don’t mind, I’ll sit at the desk, Mrs. Davisson. I’ll have to make some notes.”

She sat on the leather couch. He offered her a cigarette. “No, thank you, I’ve been smoking so much I have a sore throat. Mr. Darrigan, isn’t this a bit … previous for the insurance company to send someone down here? I mean, as far as we know, he isn’t—”

“We wouldn’t do this in the case of a normal policyholder, Mrs. Davisson, but your husband carries policies with us totaling over nine hundred thousand dollars.”

“Really! I knew Temple had quite a bit, but I didn’t know it was that much!”

He showed her his best smile and said, “It makes it awkward for me, Mrs. Davisson, for them to send me out like some sort of bird of prey. You have presented no claim to the company, and you are perfectly within your rights to tell me to be on my merry way.”

She answered his smile. “I wouldn’t want to do that, Mr. Darrigan. But I don’t quite understand why you’re here.”

“You could call me a sort of investigator. My actual title is Chief Adjuster for Guardsman Life and Casualty. I sincerely hope that we’ll find a reasonable explanation for your husband’s disappearance. He disappeared Thursday, didn’t he?”

“He didn’t come home Thursday night. I reported it to the police early Friday morning. And this is—”

“Tuesday.”

He opened his notebook, took his time looking over the pages. It was a device, to give him a chance to gauge the degree of tension. She sat quite still, her hands resting in her lap, unmoving.

He leaned back. “It may sound presumptuous, Mrs. Davisson, but I intend to see if I can find out what happened to
your husband. I’ve had reasonable success in such cases in the past. I’ll cooperate with the local police officials, of course. I hope you won’t mind answering questions that may duplicate what the police have already asked you.”

“I won’t mind. The important thing is … to find out. This not knowing is …” Her voice caught a bit. She looked down at her hands.

“According to our records, Mrs. Davisson, his first wife, Anna Thorn Davisson, was principal beneficiary under his policies until her death in 1978. The death of the beneficiary was reported, but it was not necessary to change the policies at that time as the two children of his first marriage were secondary beneficiaries, sharing equally in the proceeds in case of death. In 1979, probably at the time of his marriage to you, we received instructions to make you the primary beneficiary under all policies, with the secondary beneficiaries, Temple C. Davisson, Junior, and Alicia Jean Davisson, unchanged. I have your name here as Dinah Pell Davisson. That is correct?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Could you tell me about your husband? What sort of man is he?”

She gave him a small smile. “What should I say? He is a very kind man. Perhaps slightly autocratic, but kind. He owned a small knitting mill in Utica, New York. He sold it, I believe, in 1972. It was incorporated and he owned the controlling stock interest, and there was some sort of merger with a larger firm, where he received payment in the stock in the larger firm in return for his interest. He sold out because his wife had to live in a warmer climate. She had a serious kidney condition. They came down here to Clearwater and bought this house. Temple was too active to retire. He studied real estate conditions here for a full year and then began to invest money in all sorts of property. He has done very well.”

“How did you meet him, Mrs. Davisson?”

“My husband was a sergeant in the Air Force. He was stationed at Drew Field. I followed him here. When he was sent overseas I had no special place to go, and we agreed I should wait for him here. The Davissons advertised for a companion
for Mrs. Davisson. I applied and held the job from early 1974 until she died in 1978.”

“And your husband?”

“He was killed in a crash landing. When I received the wire, the Davissons were very kind and understanding. At that time my position in the household was more like a daughter receiving an allowance. My own parents died long ago. I have a married sister in Melbourne, Australia. We’ve never been close.”

“What did you do between the time Mrs. Davisson died and you married Temple Davisson?”

“I left here, of course. Mrs. Davisson had money of her own. She left me five thousand dollars and left the rest to Temple, Junior, and Alicia. Mr. Davisson found me a job in a real estate office in Clearwater. I rented a small apartment. One night Mr. Davisson came to see me at the apartment. He was quite shy. It took him a long time to get to the reason he had come. He told me that he tried to keep the house going, but the people he had hired were undependable. He also said that he was lonely. He asked me to marry him. I told him that I had affection for him, as for a father. He told me that he did not love me that way either, that Anna had been the only woman in his life. Well, Jack had been the only man in my life, and life was pretty empty. The Davissons had filled a place in my life. I missed this house. But he is sixty-one, and that makes almost exactly thirty years difference in ages. It seemed a bit grotesque. He told me to think it over and give him my answer when I ws ready. It occurred to me that his children would resent me, and it also occurred to me that I cared very little what people thought. Four days later I told him I would marry him.”

Darrigan realized that he was treading on most dangerous ground. “Has it been a good marriage?”

“Is that a question you’re supposed to ask?”

“It sounds impertinent. I know that. But in a disappearance of this sort I must consider suicide. Unhappiness can come from ill health, money difficulties, or emotional difficulties. I should try to rule them out.”

“I’ll take one of those cigarettes now, Mr. Darrigan,” she said. “I can use it.”

He lit it for her, went back to the desk chair. She frowned, exhaled a cloud of smoke.

“It has not been a completely happy marriage, Mr. Darrigan.”

“Can you explain that?”

“I’d rather not.” He pursed his lips, let the silence grow. At last she said, “I suppose I can consider an insurance man to be as ethical as a doctor or a lawyer?”

“Of course.”

“For several months it was a marriage in name only. I was content to have it go on being that way. But he is a vigorous man, and after a while I became aware that his attitude had changed and he had begun to … want me.” She flushed.

“But you had no feeling for him in that way,” he said, helping her.

“None. And we’d made no actual agreement, in so many words. But living here with him, I had no ethical basis for refusing him. After that, our marriage became different. He sensed, of course, that I was merely submitting. He began to … court me, I suppose you’d call it. Flowers and little things like that. He took off weight and began to dress much more youthfully. He tried to make himself younger, in his speech and in his habits. It was sort of pathetic, the way he tried.”

“Would you relate that to … his disappearance?”

For a moment her face was twisted in the agony of self-reproach. “I don’t know.”

“I appreciate your frankness. I’ll respect it, Mrs. Davisson. How did he act Thursday?”

“The same as always. We had a late breakfast. He had just sold some lots in the Lido section at Sarasota, and he was thinking of putting the money into a Gulf-front tract at Redington Beach. He asked me to go down there with him, but I had an eleven o’clock appointment with the hairdresser. His car was in the garage, so he took my convertible. He said he’d have lunch down that way and be back in the late afternoon. We were going to have some people in for cocktails. Well, the cocktail guests came and Temple didn’t show up. I didn’t worry. I thought he was delayed. We all went out to dinner and I left a note telling him that he could catch up with us at the Belmonte, on Clearwater Beach.

“After dinner the Deens brought me home. They live down
on the next street. I began to get really worried at ten o’clock. I thought of heart attacks and all sorts of things like that. Of accidents and so on. I phoned Morton Plant Hospital and asked if they knew anything. I phoned the police here and at Redington and at St. Petersburg. I fell asleep in a chair at about four o’clock and woke up at seven. That was when I officially reported him missing.

“They found my car parked outside a hotel apartment on Redington Beach, called Aqua Azul. They checked and found out he’d gone into the Aqua Azul cocktail lounge at eight-thirty, alone. He had one dry martini and phoned here, but of course I had left by that time and the house was empty. He had another drink and then left. But apparently he didn’t get in the car and drive away. That’s what I don’t understand. And I keep thinking that the Aqua Azul is right on the Gulf.”

“Have his children come down?”

“Temple, Junior, wired that he is coming. He’s a lieutenant colonel of ordnance stationed at the Pentagon.”

“How old is he?”

“Thirty-six, and Alicia is thirty-three. Temple, Junior, is married, but Alicia isn’t. She’s with a Boston advertising agency, and when I tried to phone her I found out she’s on vacation, taking a motor trip in Canada. She may not even know about it.”

“When is the son arriving?”

“Late today, the wire said.”

“Were they at the wedding?”

“No. But I know them, of course. I met them before Mrs. Davisson died, many times. And only once since my marriage. There was quite a scene then. They think I’m some sort of dirty little opportunist. When they were down while Mrs. Davisson was alive, they had me firmly established in the servant category. I suppose they were right, but one never thinks of oneself as a servant. I’m afraid Colonel Davisson is going to be difficult.”