Corpus Delectable

Five

She was trying, not very successfully, to hide her agitation as she showed me into the small, tasteful apartment on Calmwaters Boulevard. She was a thin girl with an angular figure like a Vogue model. I don’t make a habit of reading Vogue, but she wasn’t unattractive, if you like them without meat.

She turned and faced me squarely for the first time. Her features were fine-boned, almost delicate. Her skin had a gently transluscent quality on the surface. She had a wide, sensitive mouth and very arresting eyes. Eyes of the deepest blue, set in misty hollows. I sensed that she was the kind of girl who could weep softly over the images evoked by a tender, tragic little poem.

Her slender hands reminded me of the subtle twitching of a butterfly’s wings when the insect is at rest.

“When may I expect Jean, Mr. Rivers?”

I took her hands and pressured her gently into a chair. Those large, haunting eyes lifted to make a study of me. The silence began to fill the apartment like a creeping fog. Lura Thackery wasn’t repelled by my face; she seemed suddenly to need the strength she saw there.

“Is she badly hurt, Mr. Rivers?” she said at last.

“Yes.”

“She won’t be coming back at all, will she?”

“No,” I said.

The translucence of her face turned to wax. I decided she needed a sip of water, or something stronger, if I could find it.

When I started to pull away, she gripped my hand tightly in refusal. Her nails dug into my skin as if I were her link with reality right now.

“I told Jean it was none of her business!”

“Do you know why she was coming to see me?” I asked.

“No,” she said with a shake of her head that spilled the baby-fine, short-cut brown hair about her forehead and temples.

She recoiled slightly when her eyes met mine. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I don’t think you’re leveling with me, Miss Thackery.”

“But I am! Jean said she was going to see a private detective named Rivers. She wanted to explain, but I wouldn’t let her. I didn’t want to know her reasons!”

Sobs began shaking her body like a sheaf of straw exposed to a cold, hard wind. “What will I do without Jean?” she moaned.

I vaguely pitied and was repelled by her words. Lura was interpolating Jean Putnam’s death in terms of her own needs.

“You might think of doing something about her,” I said.

She shook her head, writhing in the chair as if the full horror were just now sinking in.

“You don’t understand,” she said. “Jean was a friend I can never replace. My parents... they hated each other. Neither wanted me. Divorced and chasing their own empty, foolish desires, they pretended I didn’t exist by placing me in school. I wanted to kill myself — until I met dear, kind Jean.”

She mashed her knuckles against her mouth, shutting off the flow of words for a minute.

Her shoulders gradually straightened. Her voice lowered its pitch. “You don’t understand, do you? You’ve a revealing face. You’re cruel enough to live in a cruel world. You’ve never needed people, been lonely, known bitterness or fear.”

“No, honey,” I said. “Some of us have it perfect.”

“Please don’t mock me. I can’t stand to be mocked or turned away from!”

“I’m sorry,” I said. And I really meant it. She couldn’t help the way she was put together, any more than the rest of us. How was I to know how much she’d struggled to change herself?

It was no trick to get her to talk, on subjects of her choosing. Her heart broke with nostalgia as she told me how Jean had introduced her to a world in which there was fun, boys, dates for Saturday afternoon football games, occasional dances.

In many close friendships, I reflected, there is a leader, a follower. Lura Thackery had been Jean Putnam’s devoted follower, aping her in manner and dress, content to let Jean run interference and carry the ball at the same time.

Her reminiscence included the tale of an afternoon class-cutting so that she and Jean could secretly meet a couple of college boys. The date had included a late evening at a roadhouse strictly off-limits for students at the girls’ school.

I assumed it was the wildest and most daring escapade of Lura Thackery’s young life. She’d treasure it as some men secretly delight in a wartime experience.

“Jean was happy as an employee of Señora Isabella, wasn’t she?” I suggested, trying to steer the talk.

“Oh, yes.”

“The señora was a fine old lady, from all I’ve heard. She really can’t be blamed for feeling as she did about Keith Sigmon, her son-in-law.”

I’d touched vitriol. It showed in Lura Thackery’s expressive eyes. “That rotter!” I was certain that Lura and Jean had gossiped about the rotter.

“Women?” I suggested.

“A parade of them, to repeat gossip. Once he latched onto the old señora’s daughter and got himself in a plush spot, Keith Sigmon let his true nature show.”

“Then the old lady’s daughter and Sigmon weren’t happy?”

“Not at all,” Lura said. “But his wife’s religion was against divorce. After Elena was born, Sigmon felt he was securely tied to the Sorolla y Batione fortune. He took almost openly to the role of a Caracas playboy. Why, at the time the old señora died...”

“Yes, Lura?”

“From talk that Jean overheard... she got the impression that Elena was alone in Caracas when she received news of her grandmother’s death. Keith and a girl named Ginny Jameson were — shacked up, I believe is the word — in a mountain cottage. Not very nice for a girl Elena’s age, was it? To have to seek out her father in such circumstances at a moment of bereavement...”

“This have to do with Jean’s appointment with me?”

“I don’t know,” Lura said.

“When Jean died, she murmured one word. ‘Incense.’ Mean anything to you?”

“No.”

“Jean discovered the disappearance of an old brief case belonging to Señora Isabella. She mention that?”

Lura started to speak; then a stricken look came to her eyes. “You’re being dishonest,” she accused. “You don’t have any real regard for Jean or me. You’re trying to pick me, use me!”

“And help you if I can.”

She stood up. “You’d better go. And you can help me most by keeping your visit here confidential.”

“You know,” I said, “the sand starts to smother, if you bury your head too deep. Somebody besides me might decide you know more than you’re telling.”

“No, no! I’ve done nothing to get hurt, and I don’t intend doing anything. I don’t know the answers you’re after, I tell you!”

“Very well. Have it your way, Lura.”

I started to turn toward the door. She caught my hand. “Why do you want to frighten me?”

“I don’t,” I said. “I’m merely telling you that you can trust me.”

“I haven’t found it a very trustworthy world, Mr. Rivers. When one’s own parents...”

“But you’re a grown-up woman now,” I said. “No matter how callous your parents were, you’re old enough to realize they were, after all, individuals with weaknesses like the rest of us. They probably never realized what they were doing to you.”

Her lips curled. “I’ve heard that kind of talk before.”

“You should listen.”

“So spake a psychiatrist once,” she said bitterly. “It cut no ice, made no difference.”

“I’ll leave my card,” I said. “You can get in touch with me if you change your mind.”

“I won’t,” she said.

“You never know. Anyway, you’re going to have to talk to the police.”

“I’ll tell them the same thing I’ve told you, Mr. Rivers. I’m not in it. It’s not my fight. I won’t become involved.”

“So much for friendship,” I said. “So much for Jean Putnam.”

I went to the door and let myself out. Behind the closed door, a desolate, lonely child began weeping in guilt, terror, and despair.

The old building where I live was, as always, a bit musty, bone-dry from years of baking in the endless sun, the lingering smell of spicy Cuban cooking in the dim hallways. I went up to my apartment on the second floor and keyed the door open. Inside, I reached for the light switch beside the door. When I clicked the switch, nothing happened. The room remained gloomy, lighted only by the faint street glow that filtered in.

The breath gusted out of me. Before I could move, a cool circle of metal touched the back of my neck.

“It’s hair-triggered, friend,” he said softly.