Uncivil Seasons (20 page)

This time, instead of talking in an icy parking lot, she and I drank horrible coffee in an institutional lounge walled with vending machines. This time, instead of a sweatshirt, she wore an apple-green turtleneck, and instead of opening with “What’s going on?” Red MacLeod whisked in and said, “Have you found Charlene? Hi.”

“Hello. No. We have a car cruising the house where she’s supposed to be staying. She didn’t call in sick?”

“Nobody’s seen her since last night. And look, last night after you left, she shut me out
fast
. She wouldn’t talk and she sure wouldn’t listen. All she would say was how people had to leave her alone.”

Unspiraling a glutinous pastry, Red shook her head; the curls bounced like the ribbons my mother liked to coil with the edge of her scissors into bows on packages. “Look, I’m sorry I couldn’t help out. If I get a chance, I’ll try again. Okay? How long have you smoked so much?”

I threw onto the tray the empty matchbook inscribed
PINE HILLS INN
. I said, “Not long enough.”

“It’s hard to quit.” Her eyes were earnest blue.

“But you managed, no doubt. Please don’t brag about it.”

“No brag. I can’t smoke in class, so I had to quit. I miss it.”

“Class?”

“Frances Bush. I go in the mornings. This is my last term. That’s why I work the two-to-ten. A little old, but better late…” Having unwound her sugary concoction, she broke it into six even strands, pushed three toward me, and began eating the others.

“Somehow you don’t look like your typical Busher,” I said. “There’s no brand name sewn to the rear of your jeans.”

She took a count of four, staring at me, and then she smiled. “I get tuition,” she explained. “The woman that founded the school, Miss Bush, worked this scholarship deal out with Cadmean Company, sometime back in the nineteenth century, for a woman working in the mills. They give one a year. Next fall I’m hoping to go to the university. To law school.”

I cracked the edges of my styrofoam cup, bending them down like petals. “And then what? Do you know?”

“Sure!” Freckles of confectioners’ sugar stuck on her High-lander chin. “I’ve always known. I want to be governor of North Carolina.”

“Oh, my God.”

“What’s so funny!” Her freckled fists crossed under her arms.

“Nothing. That’s what
I
was supposed to be. But you go on ahead.”

“I will.”

“Brush off your chin first.”

Her hand flew up to her face and then back under her arm. I saw she bit her fingernails. I said, “Mind if I ask you where you live? Not on campus, do you?”

“Why?”

I ate one of the sticky strands. “Because I live across the street from Frances Bush. In the narrow brick house with the blue shutters?”

She didn’t appear to know it. After thinking it over, she decided to say, “I just moved to Tuscarora, an apartment.”

I smiled. “That’s only two blocks away from me. You know, your old academic ancestors used to live in my house; it was sort of a Frances Bush dormitory annex. Sometimes I think I can hear them in the house giggling, and climbing the stairs in their high-button shoes.” And sometimes I thought I could hear their ghosts in tears alone in iron narrow beds. I said, “Two blocks away. I’m glad to think I’m bound to have met you anyhow, even without Charlene.”

She didn’t speak, and we studied each other’s eyes. Hers were serious and azure and very tired. Then I told her, “You’re twenty-nine, you come from near Boone up in the mountains, you never call in sick, you work too hard, and you’ve never been married.”

She snapped, “Not a crime, is it? Who told you?”

“An old gentleman admirer of yours. Your division manager. I’m thirty-four, I come from Hillston, I’ve got a law degree, and I’ll trade it to you right now for the name of that man with the black moustache over there to your left—don’t turn your head—by the wall phone, and I’ve never been married either.”

“Do you call in sick a lot?” She bent down and retied her bootlace. “It’s Ron Willis, why? Just a loader here at the plant. And a company stool. He’s a creep. He’s also a junkie.”

“Any connection to Charlene? Relative? Friend of any of the Popes? Old boyfriend?”

“I don’t know. Do you want me to find out?”

“Would you do that, Governor? And would you tell me, too, if you could join me for dinner tomorrow night?”

Her leather laces twice-tied, she straightened slowly back up in her chair. “I work nights, you notice?”

“Lunch?”

“I eat between classes. It’s ten minutes.”

“Are you planning on wending your way to the governor’s mansion all alone? Or are you living with someone, or engaged or anything discouraging like that?”

“I’m just busy. Why do I have to be engaged?”

“Why do you always answer a question with a question?”

“Why do you ask so many?”

“I’m a detective.”

“Why aren’t you a lawyer if you’ve got a law degree?”

“How about breakfast, and I’ll answer your first five questions. I’ll even throw in a few pointers about how to get to be governor.”

“I’d appreciate it if you’d stop kidding me. Obviously, the idea is to work up in local politics.”

“Who’s kidding? I can be of assistance. I know an old family recipe for working up in local politics. My great-great-grandfather was a governor of this state. Eustache Dollard. And my great-grandfather.”

She sat back. “For real?”

“As far as anyone could tell.”

“Dollard. Like Senator Kip Dollard?”

With a paper napkin I rubbed the pastry crumbs from my fingers. “Don’t forget the attorney general.”

Her fist went to her mouth. “Oh! And Rowell Dollard. His wife; you must have known her. Look, I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.” I stacked our cups on the tray, and she pulled it from my hands and dumped the contents in the wastebin. She said, “Thanks for the coffee. I ought to get back on the floor. Let me know about Charlene, will you?” With the sudden celerity that was gradually startling me less, she turned back toward me. “Are you still holding her husband?”

I explained that in all probability Preston Pope would be indicted by the grand jury tomorrow.

“But Charlene says she doesn’t care about that. What’s
she
so scared of? Being charged as an accessory? Is she afraid of her husband, or his family, or what? Because she sure is scared.”

I already knew what Charlene was afraid of. I knew because at the Rib House, Paula Burgwin had told me. Charlene was afraid of Luster Hudson.

Her fingers were waving in front of my face. “Hey!”

“Pardon?”

“I said, I eat breakfast at the Bush Street Diner. At seven thirty. That’s probably too early for you. Bye.” She waved the small freckled hand and spun away.

I caught up and walked her back down the twisting turns of concrete steps, each landing painted a different pastel color, and hurried with her along the hall toward the rattling whir of the indefatigable looms. Then, quite suddenly, she turned, startled, her lips parted. She asked, “Why are you whistling that?”

“Pardon?” In fact, I hadn’t noticed that I was whistling anything although apparently I often did. “I don’t know. Just popped into my head. I don’t even know the name of it.” It had been some slow, lamenting tune of which I could do only the first phrases, reiterative and dolorous.

“It’s an old mountain ballad; it’s ‘Lass from the Low Country.’ I can’t tell you how weird this is. That was my grandfather’s favorite song. He used to always whistle it like that.” She looked at me solemnly. “I mean, I was thinking so much about him today. Today’s the day he died, January nineteenth.” Her Scottish face, pink and white and stubborn-chinned, went on staring up at me luminous in the neon light. “Do you do that a lot?” she asked.

“Apparently.”

Slowly, she nodded at me, and vanished behind the steel doors.

I didn’t move. I felt as if I were being nudged off a cliff, falling into a new self, impatiently telling the old, “Why do you keep saying you love Susan, when you don’t?” I said aloud, “I don’t love Susan.” A man coming out the double doors beside me said, “If you say so, buddy.” I grinned at him. “She doesn’t love me, either.” He called over his shoulder. “Join the club.”

It was 10:20 when Fulcher’s call came. I’d gone home and decided against trying to warm the house, and had washed out the lipstick-smeared glass Susan had left on the kitchen table, and then had filled it with bourbon, and then had poured half back into the bottle.

Today I’d driven nine hours on little sleep; my skin was dry, flushed hot, and my bad leg with its chipped bone was hurting. I’d already called old Cadmean’s house twice, even though Walter Stanhope’s last words, delivered with his bluff hoarseness, had been a warning: “I were you, I’d be leery of the man with the strings. But up to you.” Now I was told that Mr. Cadmean was in bed. I had a feeling it wasn’t true. I also had a strong urge to call Joanna Cadmean, but decided that I was foolish to worry about her. Cuddy and Briggs were probably back there at the lodge now. My earlier jealousy of them seemed now a kind of gluttonous evasion; evidence that having invested so much time in wanting Susan, I had to feed any dissatisfaction with amorphous claims to other women. What a loss of my past to admit I didn’t want to marry her at all, didn’t even like her.

Back in the living room, and without turning on the lights, I sat at the piano and tried by touch in the dark to pick out the melody of “Lass from the Low Country,” pick out the sad sweet Celtic grief that had come across the ocean with defeated dreamers.

Above the piano was framed my favorite of my father’s landscapes, a pencil-and-watercolors sketch of the Rappahannock River, banked with the tight-leaved, lime-green trees of early Virginia spring. I looked up at the picture and saw, reflected in its moon-silvered glass, Joanna Cadmean’s face. Slowly she smiled. Then her face contracted, as if she were stepping backward, away from me. My heart loud, I spun around on the piano stool, but there was, of course, no one standing in the dark soundless room.

Outside, a car motor started. So vivid had been Joanna’s image on the glass, that I leapt up, jarring my throbbing leg, and ran to the front door to see if she had somehow gotten in the house and was now leaving. The car had reached the corner, and was just turning into the intersection. It was the tan Camaro from C&W, Ron Willis’s car; obviously he had been watching my house again. Spying for whom? Himself, the Popes, Cadmean, Rowell? And why? To find out what I was finding out? Blackmail? It was even possible Fulcher had someone undercover trailing me, gathering violations of the rules manual to back him up when he told my family I was fired.

Dizzy, I closed the front door and leaned against it in the unlit foyer. Something white fluttered at the top of the stairs. Probably what I saw was a sliver of a neighbor’s light, shining in through the white window curtain. What I thought I saw was Joanna Cadmean. This time she was standing at the edge of the second-story landing, one hand on the banister. Her hurt foot, unwrapped and bare, was held out in front of her as if she were about to step off into air. A veil of white gauze fell, like netting around a bed, from her head to her feet, enclosing her.

With her free hand she raised the gauze. And beneath it she was utterly naked. Pulling the cloth over her head, she flung it away, and it floated timelessly down the stairs toward me.

I shut my eyes quickly, but when I reopened them she was still there, still naked, moon-pale and gleaming. Then suddenly she raised both arms to me, as she had in my dream the night before, drawing me up to her embrace. But when her hand let go of the rail, she lost her balance and pitched forward and fell, soundlessly. I cried out loud, “Christ!” and plunged for the light switch. Illuminated, the hall shrank, the steps shortened to a finite number, and there was no one on them. I walked back to the piano and my drink.

And then at 10:20, I felt my way to the insistent phone by moonlight.

“This is Van Fulcher.”

Too worn down to be much interested in the tirade I expected, I said only, “Yes.”

“I just this second got the call from the station. I want you to get out to Pine Hills Lake right away. Mrs. Charles Cadmean just committed suicide.”

The glass fell from my hand. “Joanna Cadmean?”

“I guess so. Yes, right. Mr. Cadmean’s daughter-in-law. We’ve got to handle this right, Savile. I’m going to call Cadmean up right now. I’m at home. It’s going to take me a while to get over there. Ambulance and squad car are on the way. I want you to—”

“She’s dead?”

“Yes. I—”

“How?”

“Jumped from some kind of tower at the Cadmean lodge out there. You know where this place is?” Fulcher’s voice was quick and high with excitement. He always found death exhilarating.

I asked, “Jumped? Who said jumped? Who called it in?”

“Well, it’s tragic. Rowell Dollard. He’s out there. After what he’s already been through! Sergeant Davies took the call. The Senator’s badly shaken, I guess. This is ticklish, Savile, it being the Senator who found her. You follow me? So, considering, we’ll postpone getting into these stunts I know you’ve been pulling. And you get out there. Do you know where it is? Savile? Savile, are you listening to me?”

“Yes, I’m going. Good-bye.” I picked up the pieces of broken glass as I waited for Etham Foster to answer the phone at the lab.

•   •   •

The moon kept ahead of me, a hard ball of light rising through the black smoke of the clouds, climbing over the black trees, heading for the back glassy lake. I could see up the hill, through all Cadmean’s thicket of pines, the harsh blue and red patrol lights spinning. Their colors flickered on the silver Mercedes that was parked in the driveway, right in front of the porch steps. On the gravel beside the car, covered in white cloth, lay the shape that had brought all the lights, and brought the men who now knelt around it, like Magi at a moonlit creche.

“She’s dead?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah.” Dr. Richard Cohen, our medical examiner, looked up, bald, unshaven, exhausted. He was my age, with the pouched, weary eyes of a man much older. “Oh, yeah. Dead on impact. Her neck’s broken.” He pushed himself to his feet, and tapped the edge of the Mercedes’ hood. There was a dent in it. And blood on it. Cohen’s hand, pale and black-haired, vaulted in an arc from the car roof to the ground. “Like this. She hit here, see. Bounced off.”