The Zebra-Striped Hearse

21

MUNGAN WAS GONE when I came out. I used his telephone to call Vicky Simpson’s house. No answer. The young deputy in the back room told me that so far as he knew Vicky was still in Citrus Junction waiting for the authorities to release her husband’s body. I turned in the U-drive car at the San Francisco airport, caught a jet to Los Angeles, picked up my own car at the airport there, and drove out through the wedding-smelling orange groves to Citrus Junction.

I went first to see the baby. His grandmother lived on the west side of town in the waste that the highway builders had created. It was mid-afternoon when I got there. Earth movers were working in the dust like tanks in a no man’s land.

An overgrown pittasporum hedge shielded the house from the road. The universal dust had made its leaves as grey as aspen. The house was a two-story frame building which needed paint. Holes in the screen door had been repaired with string. I rattled it with my fist.

The woman who appeared behind the screen looked young to be a grandmother. The flouncy dress she wore, and her spike heels, were meant to emphasize her slender figure. She had a blue-eyed baby face to which the marks of time clung like an intricate spider web. She was blonder than the picture I’d seen of her daughter.

“Mrs. Stone?”

“I’m Mrs. Stone.”

I told her my name and occupation. “May I come in and talk to you for a bit?”

“What about?”

“Your daughter Dolly and what happened to her. I know it must be a painful subject–”

“Painful subject is right. I don’t see any sense in going over and over the same old ground. You people know who killed her as well as me. Instead of coming around torturing me, why don’t you go and catch that man? He has to be some place.”

“I took Campion last night, Mrs. Stone. He’s being held in Redwood City.”

A hungry eagerness deepened the lines in her face and aged her suddenly. “Has he confessed?”

“Not yet. We need more information. I’m comparatively new on the case, and I’d appreciate any help you can give me.”

“Sure. Come in.”

She unhooked the screen door and led me across a hallway into her living room. It was closely blinded, almost dark. Instead of raising a blind, she turned on a standing lamp.

“Excuse the dust on everything. It’s hard to keep a decent house with that road work going on. Stone thought we should sell, but we found out we couldn’t get our money out of it. The lucky ones were the people across the way that got condemned by the State. But they’re not widening on this side.”

An undersong of protest ran through everything she said, and she had reason. Grey dust rimed the furniture; even without it the furniture would have been shabby. I sat on a prolapsed chair and watched her arrange herself on the chesterfield. She had the faintly anachronistic airs of a woman who had been good-looking but had found no place to use her looks except the mirror.

At the moment I was the mirror, and she smiled into me intensively. “What do you want me to tell you?”

“We’ll start with your son-in-law. Did you ever meet him?”

“Once. Once was enough. Jack and me invited the two of them down for Christmas. We had a hen turkey and all the trimmings. But that Bruce Campion acted like he was on a slumming expedition. He hauled poor Dolly out of here so fast you’d think there was a quarantine sign on the house. Little did he know that some of the best people in town are our good friends.”

“Did you quarrel with him?”

“You bet I did. What did he have to act so snooty about? Dolly told me they were living in a garage, and we’ve owned our own house here for twenty-odd years. So I asked him what he planned to do for her. When was he going to get a job and so on? He said he married her, didn’t he, and that was all he planned to do for her, said he already had a job doing his own work. So I asked him how much money he made and he said not very much, but they were getting along with the help of friends. I told him my daughter wasn’t a charity case, and he said that’s what I thought. Imagine him talking like that to her own mother, and her six months pregnant at the time. I tried to talk her into cutting her losses and staying here with us, but Dolly wouldn’t. She was too loyal.”

Mrs. Stone had the total recall of a woman with a grievance. I interrupted her flow of words: “Were they getting along with each other?”

“She was getting along with him. It took a saint to do it and that’s what she was, a saint.” She rummaged in a sewing basket beside her. “I want to show you a letter she wrote me after Christmas. If you ever saw a devoted young wife it was her.”

She produced a crumpled letter addressed to her and postmarked “Luna Bay, Dec. 27.” It was written in pencil on a sheet of sketching paper by an immature hand:

Dear Elizabeth, I’m sorry you and Bruce had to fight. He is moody but he is really A-okay if you only know him. We appresiate the twenty – it will come in handy to buy a coat – I only hope Bruce does not get to it first – he spends so much on his painting – I realy need a coat. Its colder up here than it was in Citrus J. I realy appresiate you asking me to stay (I’m a poet and don’t know it!) but a girl has to stick with her “hubby” thru thick and thin – after all Bruce stuck with me. Maybe he is hard to get along with but he is a lot better than “no hubby at all.” Dont you honestly think hes cute? Besides some of the people we know think his pictures are real great and he will make a “killing–” then you will be glad I stuck with Bruce.

Love to Jack

Dolly (Mrs. Bruce Campion)

“Doesn’t it tear your heart out?” Mrs. Stone said, plucking at the neighborhood of hers. “I mean the way she idolized him and all?”

I assumed a suitably grim expression. It came naturally enough. I was thinking of the cultural gap between Dolly and Harriet, and the flexibility of the man who had straddled it.

“How did she happen to marry him, Mrs. Stone?”

“It’s the old old story. You probably know what happened. She was an innocent girl. She’d never even been away from home before. He corrupted her, and he had to take the consequences.” She was a little alarmed by what she had said. She dropped her eyes, and added: “It was partly my own fault, I admit it. I never should have let her go off to Nevada by herself, a young girl like her.”

“How old?”

“Dolly was just twenty when she left home. That was a year ago last May. She was working in the laundry and she wasn’t happy there, under her father’s thumb. She wanted to have more of a life of her own. I couldn’t blame her for that. A girl with her looks could go far.”

She paused, and her eyes went into long focus. Perhaps she was remembering that a girl with her own looks hadn’t. Perhaps she was remembering how far Dolly had gone, all the way out of life.

“Anyway,” she said, “I let her go up to Tahoe and get herself a job. It was just to be for the summer. She was supposed to save her money, so she could prepare herself for something permanent. I wanted her to go to beauty school. She was very good at grooming herself – it was the one real talent she had. She took after me in that. But then she ran into him, and that was the end of beauty school and everything else.”

“Did she make any other friends up at the lake?”

“Yeah, there was one little girl who helped her out, name of Fawn. She was a beauty operator, and Dolly thought very highly of her. She even wrote me about her. I was glad she had a girl friend like that. I thought it would give her some ambition. Beauty operators command good money, and you can get a job practically anywhere. I always regretted I didn’t take it up myself. Jack makes a fair salary at the laundry, but it’s been hard these last years, with inflation and all. Now we have the baby to contend with.”

She raised her eyes to the ceiling.

“I’d like to see the baby.”

“He’s upstairs sleeping. What do you want to see him for?”

“I like babies.”

“You don’t look the type. I’m not the type myself, not any more. You get out of the habit of attending to their needs. Still,” she added in a softer voice, “the little man’s a comfort to me. He’s all I have left of Dolores. You can come and take a look – long as you don’t wake him.”

I followed her up the rubber-treaded staircase. The baby’s room was dim and hot. She turned on a shaded wall light. He was lying uncovered in the battered crib which I had seen in Mungan’s glaring photographs. As Mungan had predicted, he didn’t resemble anyone in particular. Small and vulnerable and profoundly sleeping, he was simply a baby. His breath was sweet.

His grandmother pulled a sheet up over the round Buddha eye of his umbilicus. I stood above him, trying to guess what he would look like when he grew up. It was hard to imagine him as a man, with a man’s passions.

“This was Dolly’s own crib,” Mrs. Stone was saying. “We sent it up with them at Christmas. Now we have it back here.” I heard her breath being drawn in. “Thank God his crazy father spared him, anyway.”

“What’s his name?”

“Dolly called him Jack, after her father. Dolly and her father were always close. What do you think of him?”

“He’s a fine healthy baby.”

“Oh, I do for him the best I can. It isn’t easy to go back to it, though, after twenty years. My only hope is that I can bring him up properly. I guess I didn’t do such a good job of bringing Dolly up.”

I murmured something encouraging as we started downstairs. Like other women I had known, she had the strength to accept the worst that could happen and go on from there. Moving like a dreamer into the living room, she went to the mantel and took down a framed photograph.

“Did you ever see a picture of my daughter?”

“Not a good one.”

The picture she showed me was an improvement on Mungan’s, but it wasn’t a good one, either. It looked like what it was, a small-town high-school graduation picture, crudely retouched in color. Dolly smiled and smiled like a painted angel.

“She’s – she was pretty, wasn’t she?”

“Very,” I said.

“You wouldn’t think she’d have to settle for a Bruce Campion. As a matter of fact, she didn’t have to. There were any number of boys around town interested. There used to be a regular caravan out here. Only Dolly wasn’t interested in the boys. She wanted to get out of Citrus for life. Besides, she always went for the older ones. I think sometimes,” she said quite innocently, “that came from being so fond of her father and all. She never felt at home with boys her own age. The truth is, in a town this size, the decent older ones are already married off.”

“Was Dolly friends with some of the other kind?”

“She most certainly was not. Dolly was always a good girl, and leery of bad company. Until that Campion got ahold of her.”

“What about her friends at Tahoe? Were there other men besides Campion in her life?”

“I don’t know what you mean by in her life.” Almost roughly, she took the picture of Dolly out of my hands and replaced it on the mantel. With her back still turned, she said across the width of the room: “What are you getting at, mister?”

“I’m trying to find out how Dolly lived before she married Campion. I understand she lost her job and got some help from friends, including Fawn King. You said she wrote you about Fawn. Do you have the letter?”

“No. I didn’t keep it.”

“Did she mention any other friends besides Fawn?”

She came back toward me shaking her head. Her heels made dents in the carpet. “I think I know what you’re getting at. It’s just another one of his dirty lies.”

“Whose lies?”

“Bruce Campion’s lies. He’s full of them. When they were here Christmas, he tried to let on to Jack that he wasn’t the father, that he married her out of the goodness of his heart.”

“Did he say who the father was?”

“Of course he didn’t, because there wasn’t anybody else. I asked Dolly myself, and she said he was the father. Then he turned around and admitted it then and there.”

“What did he say?”

“He said he wouldn’t argue, said he made his bargain and he would stick to it. He had his gall, talking about her like she was a piece of merchandise. I told him so, and that was when he marched her out of the house. He didn’t want her talking any more. He had too much to hide.”

“What are you referring to?”

“His lies, and all his other shenanigans. He was a drinker, and heaven knows what else. Dolly didn’t say much – she never complained – but I could read between the lines. He went through money like it was water–”

I interrupted her. “Did Dolly ever mention a man named Quincy Ralph Simpson?”

“Simpson? No, she never did. What was that name again?”

“Quincy Ralph Simpson.”

“Isn’t that the man they found across the street – the one that was buried in Jim Rowland’s yard?”

“Yes. He was a friend of your daughter’s.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“He was, though. Simpson was the one who introduced her to Campion. After they got married, Simpson gave them a good deal of help, including financial help.”

“That doesn’t prove anything.”

“I’m not trying to make it prove anything. But I’m surprised that Dolly never mentioned Simpson to you.”

“We didn’t keep in close touch. She wasn’t much of a letter writer.”

“When did you see Dolly and Campion last?”

“Christmas. I told you about that.”

“You didn’t see Campion in May?”

“I did not. Jack drove me up there the day they found her, but I shunned him like a rattlesnake.”

“And he wasn’t here in Citrus Junction, after the police released him?”

“How would I know? He wouldn’t come to us.”

“He may have, in a sense. He may have been across the road burying Ralph Simpson. Whoever buried Simpson must have had a reason for picking the house across from yours.”

She squinted at me, as if the light had brightened painfully. “I see what you mean.”

“Are you sure Ralph Simpson never came here to your house?”

“There’s no reason he should. We didn’t even know him.” Mrs. Stone was getting restless, twining her hands in her lap.

“But he knew Dolly,” I reminded her. “After she was killed, and you brought the baby here, he may have been watching your house.”

“Why would he do that?”

“It’s been suggested that he was the baby’s father.”

“I don’t believe it.” But after a pause, she said: “What kind of a man was Ralph Simpson? All I know about him is what I read in the papers, that he was stabbed and buried in the Rowlands’ yard.”

“I never knew him in life, but I gather he wasn’t a bad man. He was loyal, and generous, and I think he had some courage. He spent his own last days trying to track down Dolly’s murderer.”

“Bruce Campion, you mean?”

“He wasn’t convinced that it was Campion.”

“And you aren’t, either,” she said with her mouth tight.

“No. I’m not.”

Her posture became angular and hostile. I was trying to rob her of her dearest enemy.

“All I can say is, you’re mistaken. I know he did it. I can feel it, here.” She laid her hand over her heart.

“We all make mistakes,” I said.

“Yes, and you made more than one. I know that Bruce Campion was the baby’s father. Dolly wouldn’t lie to me.”

“Daughters have been known to lie to their mothers.”

“Maybe so. But if this Simpson was the father, why didn’t he marry her? Answer me that.”

“He was already married.”

“Now I know you’re wrong. Dolly would never mess with a married man. The one time she did–” Her eyes widened as though she had frightened herself again. She clamped her mouth shut.

“Tell me about the one time Dolly messed with a married man.”

“There was no such time.”

“You said there was.”

“I’m saying there wasn’t. I was thinking about something entirely different. I wouldn’t sully her memory with it, so there.”

I tried to persuade her to tell me more, with no success. Finally I changed the subject.

“This house across the way where Simpson was found buried – I understand it wasn’t occupied at the time.”

“You understand right. The Rowlands moved out the first of the year, and the house was standing empty there for months. It was a crying shame what happened to it and the other condemned houses. Some of the wild kids around were using them to carry on in. Jack used to find the bottles and the beer cans all around. They smashed the windows and everything. I hated to see it, even if it didn’t matter in the long run. The State just tore the houses down anyway.” She seemed to be mourning obscurely over the changes and losses in her own life. “I hated to see them do it to the Jaimet house.”

“The Jaimet house?”

She made a gesture in the direction of the road. “I’m talking about that same house. Jim Rowland bought it from Mrs. Jaimet after her husband died. It was the original Jaimet ranch house. This whole west side of town used to be the Jaimet ranch. But that’s all past history.”

“Tell me about Jim Rowland.”

“There’s nothing much to tell. He’s a good steady man, runs the Union station up the road, and he’s opening another station in town. Jack always swears by Rowland. He says he’s an honest mechanic, and that’s high praise from Jack.”

“Did Dolly know him?”

“Naturally she knew him. The Rowlands lived across the street for the last three-four years. If you think it went further than that, you’re really off. Jim’s a good family man. Anyway, he sold to the State and moved out the first of the year. He wouldn’t come back and bury a body in his own yard, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

I was thinking that you never could tell what murderers would do. Most of them were acting out a fantasy which they couldn’t explain themselves: destroying an unlamented past which seemed to bar them from the brave new world, erasing the fear of death by inflicting death, or burying an old malignant grief where it would sprout and multiply and end by destroying the destroyer.

I thanked Mrs. Stone for her trouble and walked across the road. The earth movers had stopped for the day, but their dust still hung in the air. Through it I could see uprooted trees, houses smashed to rubble and piled in disorderly heaps. I couldn’t tell where Rowland’s house had stood.