Rose's Last Summer [= The Lively Corpse]

23

Barrett was waiting in Greer’s office smoking a long black cigar that smelled like burning wool.

Greer opened the window. “Hear much?”

“Nearly every word. Fine acoustics.”

“What do you think?”

“About the kidnapping? She’s right. There wasn’t any.”

“Sure?”

“I was sure before. Now I’m certain sure. I’ve sent Woody and Carbonaro back home. I thought I’d stick around here for a couple of days, see if the climate clears up my sinusitis.”

“If I smoked weeds like that all the time, I’d have sinusitis, too.”

“I don’t smoke them all the time. A friend of mine happened to have a baby, his eighth. You don’t buy the same quality cigar for the eighth.”

The two men sat down, Greer behind the desk, Barrett in a straight chair tilted against the wall, holding the cigar carefully as if he was afraid it might explode.

“I’m aware,” Barrett said, “that you would have found out everything we did. I’m glad you didn’t. Having your boys messing around would have made things a lot tougher for us. As it is, the evidence is clear. First, the ether. Woody used a reagent on the sheets and pillow slip and the ether was undoubtedly sprinkled around haphazardly as the woman claims. Next, the piece of blue silk caught in the glass door. It was cut with a scissors, not torn, and the door was broken from the inside not the outside. Then there’s the matter of the sundeck. It hasn’t been used for months, not a single print or mark on it, just a few bird droppings. Then the ladder. It was propped against the railing of the sundeck as she says, but it never held any weight, the grass underneath is barely dented. In fact the whole thing is nothing more than a badly planned hoax.”

“Olive Goodfield’s disappearance is no hoax.”

“I realize that, but I think she disappeared voluntarily. I examined the farewell note she left, the one Miss Dalloway gave you at the airport. The handwriting is undoubtedly the same as the handwriting in the margins of the two maps, but in the case of the note there are indications that she was under emotional stress: discrepancies in spacing and pressure and certain distortions of letters. I’m convinced she left the house of her own free will and with what she considered good reason.”

“It must have been a compelling reason to make a woman who was an invalid pick up and leave like that in the middle of the night without luggage and, as far as I know, without money.”

“She was afraid. Fear is a compelling enough reason. Whether it’s rational or irrational. Perhaps something happened to precipitate her decision, perhaps nothing happened.”

“Something happened,” Greer said. “Her son Jack, arrived from San Francisco, but I can’t see any connection between that and her disappearance.”

“You can’t, but maybe she could.” Barrett rose and butted the cigar in an ashtray. “I’ve done quite a bit of work with the Missing Persons Bureau in L.A. People disappear for some very strange reasons. I remember one young man who was gone for two years because he didn’t want to wear a tie his mother had given him for his birthday and he didn’t have enough nerve to say so. When we finally caught up with him in Spokane, his mother had died. It turned out fine. He’s married now, has a good job and two kids.”

“What’s the moral, that we should all be born orphans?”

“The moral is, don’t buy birthday ties.” Barrett went to the door, grinning. “See you later. You know where I’m staying.”

“Yes.”

“I’d like to see you break this case, Jim. Good luck.”

“Thanks.”

The door closed.

Greer looked at his watch. Nearly six. He was going to be late to dinner again. Pot roast, May had promised, flavored with plenty of garlic and braised onions. He tried to imagine the pot roast waiting for him at the table, but the vile odor of the cigar still clung to the walls and his tongue, and the roof of his mouth tasted only the acid bitterness of too much coffee.

“Pot roast,” he said aloud, but the image, the smell, wouldn’t come. He knew perfectly well he’d be lucky if he got a couple of fried eggs by ten o’clock.

“Sorry, we’re all out of pot roast,” Frank said from the doorway. “How about a top sirloin with a double order of french fries?”

“It’s no joke.” Greer sighed. “Other men can get home for meals. Postmen, plumbers, cement finishers, auto mechanics, they’re all sitting down right now feeding their fat faces. Did you bring Goodfield along?”

“Yes. There was no trouble, he wanted to come.”

“What did he say?”

“As far as I can tell, he believes the kidnapping is real, all right. He’s almost hysterically anxious to find his mother. I’m not sure that it’s filial devotion, though. Looks more like anger to me.”

“Who’s he mad at?”

“See for yourself.”

“All right, bring him in.”

Frank opened the door. “You can come in now, Mr. Goodfield.”

Red-cheeked, red-eyed, Willett swept into the office as if there was a strong wind pushing at his back. “Where is she? Where is that lying, deceitful, two-faced little monster?”

“You’ll see her in a minute. Sit down.”

“The impudence. The treachery. After all we put up with from her. She never did an hour’s honest work. I’m incensed, that’s what I am, incensed, and I’m not a man to get incensed without reason.”

“Sure, sure. But—”

“When I think of the way Ethel cooked and scrubbed and washed dishes while that lazy little viper sat around and sneered. Sneered. At my wife. And the paper — the way she mutilated the evening paper before I had a chance to see it. Cut whole sections right out of it. And all the time I was putting up with that kind of thing she was plotting behind my back.”

“When I talked to you this morning, you didn’t seem quite so angry with her.”

“That was before I found out she was Dalloway’s daughter. Imagine the two of them plotting, scheming together—”

“What was the object of their scheming, do you think?”

“Money,” Willett said tersely. “My money. They abducted my mother and—”

“They didn’t.”

“Pardon? What — did you say?”

“They didn’t abduct your mother. She left of her own accord.”

Willett sagged heavily against the desk, hanging onto the edge of it with plump fingers that looked pale and boneless as worms. “My God. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know until a short time ago. She left a note addressed to you. Murphy — Miss Dalloway removed it when she arranged the kidnapping setting.”

“Let me see the note.”

“It’s in the lab right now. I can tell you what she said, approximately. She stated that she was leaving because she couldn’t tolerate her life and that you were to trust her, not to worry, and above all, not to look for her.”

There was a prolonged silence. Frank lit a cigarette, Greer looked carefully at a picture on the wall that he’d seen a thousand times before, Willett pressed a white silk handkerchief tightly to his mouth as if to hold back a stream of words that might have spurted out like blood or bile.

He spoke through the handkerchief, his voice muffled and hoarse. “She had no right. No right. The injustice of it. Never cared about anyone but herself. I always treated her well, too well. I should never have, never, never have listened to—”

“Sit down, Mr. Goodfield.” Greer pushed a chair towards him.

But Willett was too distracted to sit down. “It’s incredible that she’d do a thing like this to me after all I’ve done. You’re sure she wrote that note?”

“Yes.”

“You’re positive?”

“Yes.”

“I... then, there’s nothing for me to do but to accede to her wishes. I know my duty. If she doesn’t want me to look for her, I won’t.”

“I know my duty, too. I’m going to find her.”

“No. Please. You don’t understand, Captain. She’ll be upset if you go against her wishes, she’ll be furious.”

“If the day comes when an old woman’s anger can set me off course, I’ll turn in my badge.”

“I am not afraid for myself,” Willett said quietly, “but for her. She’s ill. The least shock might be fatal.”

“So far she’s proved pretty durable. That case of Scotch didn’t go up in smoke. Nor, for that matter, do ordinary invalids take off in the middle of the night and disappear. No, Mr. Goodfield,” he added with a sardonic smile, “I don’t think a shock is going to kill her.”

“It’s useless to argue with you.”

“Quite useless. Every policeman in town is looking for your mother, has been since this morning.”

“I see. Well, in that case, there’s nothing more to say.”

“Not on that score.” Greer leaned across the desk and spoke into the com box. “Daley? Come in here, will you?”

A minute later Daley appeared, a pink-cheeked, blue-eyed young man with an air of gentleness that made him irresistible to women and infuriated his wife. “Yes sir?”

“Take Mr. Goodfield in to see Miss Dalloway. See that they’re left alone.”

“Alone? You mean—”

“I mean, alone.”

“I heard you, sir. Only it seems to me that it would be contrary to official reg—”

“Daley, when you get to be a Captain, you may run this place the way you want to. Meanwhile.”

“Meanwhile, yes sir.”

Willett followed Daley through the side door, glancing back over his shoulder as if he wanted to change his mind and go home again.

Frank crossed to the window and threw his cigarette out onto the patch of lawn below. “I agree with Daley. You’re being extraordinarily lenient.”

“I’m generous. I want them to have a nice heart-to-heart chat.”

“Have you got the cell wired?”

“No. If they speak up clearly I can hear them through the wall, but something tells me they’re not going to. Be quiet and listen.”

Frank listened. He heard the sharp clank of the cell door as it opened and closed again, and then Daley’s voice: “I’m afraid I’ll have to lock it, sir”... “There’s no danger of fire, everything’s fireproofed”... “Yes sir, I know you’re a taxpayer. So am I.” A silence, followed by Lora Dalloway’s voice, brisk and incisive: “When are you going to get over pulling that taxpayer routine? Every boy with a paper route is a taxpayer in this day and age.”

“Goddam you,” Willett said. “Where is she?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Tell me or I swear I’ll—”

“Don’t swear anything. My patience is thin. So are the walls. That cop isn’t as fatheaded as he looks. I was put in this cell because his office is right next to it. I heard you when you came in, so he can hear us now. Understand?”

Willett apparently understood. Although he began talking again, his words were indistinct, mere nonsense syllables like a speech played backward on a tape recording.

“Let them talk,” Greer said, sounding relaxed and contented. “They should have lots to say to each other. Then it’ll be my turn.”

“Greer—”

“How’s Miriam?”

“Fine,” Frank said. “Listen—”

“And the boys?”

“Fine.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“Greer, I don’t think you should leave those two alone together in there without even trying to find out what they’re talking about.”

“I know what they’re talking about. And I want them to be alone together. The cosier they get, the better.”

“What’s the gimmick?”

“Nature,” Greer said. “Human nature. That’s the gimmick.”

“See that it doesn’t explode.”

“Take two people who hate each other and mistrust each other and yet want something from each other and you get an explosion. Or a deal. I kind of think,” he added after a moment, “that it’ll be a deal.”