Goldilocks

8

Jamie and I got back to my office at a little before one-thirty. I was ravenously hungry, but I didn’t want to have lunch with him, and so I said nothing about it. His personal tragedy had lurched into the realm of genuine horror. I was numb and wanted no more of him or his son for a little while at least. I got out of the Ghia, and walked to where he was parking his car. Immediately, he began talking about Michael. Listening, I had the same feeling I’d had in that two A.M. bar last night — that he was talking to himself, soliciting my nods or my grunts only as punctuation to what was essentially a monologue.

“I thought he was over it by now,” he said. “He was at the house only last Tuesday, he and Maureen sat at the kitchen table half the night, just talking. A real heart-to-heart talk. About my having stopped the alimony payments, about his going back to school — they’d have gone on forever if I hadn’t told them I was going to bed, I had a busy day tomorrow.”

Tomorrow would have been Wednesday. And Jamie would most certainly have had a busy day in the cottage at the beach. On Tuesday night, nonetheless, his son Michael sat at the kitchen table and had a long heart-to-heart talk with Maureen. This did not sound like someone who five days later would sit at that same table and abruptly reach for a knife.

“He was the one it hit hardest, you know,” Jamie said. “He was only ten when I left his mother, it took me a full year and a half to reach an agreement with her, she made things miserable for all of us.” He opened the door, climbed in behind the wheel. “But you know,” he said, “I really thought he was over it. Came down here to live in September, started at U.S.F.... well, all right, he dropped out again in January, but I honestly think he was planning to start again in the fall. I honestly think he was beginning to... respect me again. Love me again.”

Jamie shook his head. He was not looking at me. His hands were on the steering wheel, he was staring through the windshield at the bright white wall that surrounded the office complex.

“Then this afternoon, alone in the office with him, I said, ‘Michael, why’d you do this? Michael, for the love of God, why’d you do this?’ And he looked at me, and he said, ‘It’s your fault, Pop, you caused it,’ and that was when I called him a son of a bitch, a little son of a bitch, and grabbed him by the throat. Because he was... he was right back where we’d been, don’t you see? He was ten years old again, and blaming me again, only this time he was blaming me for the terrible thing he himself had done — it was my fault, he told me, I was the one who’d caused it. Matt, I... wanted to kill him. I was ready to kill him. If Ehrenberg hadn’t come in... I’d have done it. God forgive me, I’d have done it.”

The moment I stepped into the office, Cynthia said, “Galatier was here.”

“I thought I asked you to cancel.”

“I did. He came anyway.”

“All right, get him for me. No, just a second, order me a sandwich and a bottle of beer first. Then call Galatier.”

“What kind of sandwich?”

“Ham on rye, I don’t care, anything.”

“There’s a list of calls on your desk.”

“Fine, where’s Frank?”

“At First Federal. The Kellerman closing.”

“Hurry with the sandwich, I’m dying.”

I went into my office, took off my jacket, and loosened my tie. There had been a dozen calls while I was gone, only one of them urgent. I assumed Frank had dealt with that one, since it had to do with the closing at First Federal. The bank had called to say that the interest rate had just been reduced by a quarter of a percent, and they were willing to permit the lower rate if we could change the papers before closing. The call had been clocked in at twelve-thirty, and the closing had been set for one-thirty. I picked up the phone and buzzed Cynthia.

“I ordered it already,” she said. “They were all out of rye, I settled for white.”

“Good. Cynthia, on this call from First Federal about the interest rate...”

“Frank dictated the changes, and I typed them for him before he left. Promissory note, mortgage, and closing statement. That was nice of the bank, don’t you think?”

“Yes. When the sandwich arrives—”

“I’ll bring it right in.”

“Who saw Galatier when he was here?”

“Karl offered to talk to him, but he refused. Said he wouldn’t deal with an office boy.”

“All right, get him for me, please.”

Cynthia came in ten minutes later with my ham sandwich and beer. Eating the sandwich, sipping beer from the bottle, I gave her a list of calls I wanted her to make, starting with Mrs. Joan Raal to tell her we’d be free of the lunatic Galatier come morning, and ending with Luis Camargo who was buying an apartment building we’d had examined for him by an engineer. The engineer had called while I was out, to say he’d found both the boiler and the electrical system deficient. I wanted Cynthia to ask Luis whether he still wanted to buy, or would he insist that the seller repair at his own expense.

“Is that it?” Cynthia asked.

“Yes. I’ll be leaving here in a few minutes. I may be back later, but I’m not sure.”

“Where can we reach you?”

“You won’t be able to,” I said. “I’ll be on a boat.”

Afternoon sunlight slanted on the water, reflected glaringly from white-painted pilings and slips. A pelican preened itself on one of the pilings, and then squinched down into the shape of a saucer. I came around the back of the restaurant, and walked past the row of docked boats jutting out into the lagoon. The Broadhorn was the fourth in line, her stern in against the dock, her name lettered on the transom in gold. I estimated her to be a forty-five-footer, maybe fifteen years old, a solid offshore cruiser with a blue wooden hull and white superstructure. I walked halfway up the slip, stopped just short of the wheelhouse and tentatively called, “Miss Schellmann?”

“Who is it?” a girl’s voice answered.

“Matthew Hope,” I said. Silence. Water slapped against the boat’s sides. “I’d like to talk to you about Michael Purchase.” More silence. Out across the lagoon, in the mangroves, a tern shrieked and another answered, and then both were still. I could see down the dock to where a man in bright red pants was fishing, a bait knife hanging from his belt. I thought of the knife that had killed Maureen and the two children, the knife Michael later threw into the Gulf of Mexico. I waited.

“Who’s Matthew Hope?” the girl said.

“Dr. Purchase’s attorney.”

Another silence.

“Come aboard,” she said at last. “I’m on the foredeck.”

I climbed onto the boat and eased down the narrow passage past the wheelhouse. Lisa Schellmann was lying prone on an inflated blue mat, her face turned to the left, her eyes closed. I saw her only in profile, slender nose faintly tip-tilted, wide upper lip beaded with perspiration, pronounced cheekbone slanting away cleanly into her blonde hairline. She was wearing a white bra top, the straps untied to show a wide expanse of brown back glistening with suntan oil. The swift line of her jaw curved into a flowing neck and shoulder, expanded into the smooth shining back, tapered to a narrow waist. Blue denim cutoffs began just in time to rescue the cleft of her behind.

“Miss Schellmann?” I said.

“Don’t tell me,” she said. Her eyes were still closed, her face still in profile on the blue mat. “Dr. Purchase wants the boat back, right?”

“No. Michael’s in trouble.”

The single eye opened. Pale blue against the deeper blue of the mat. “What do you mean, trouble?” she said.

“He’s in jail.”

“Why?”

“He’s been charged with murder.”

She sat up abruptly, swiveling cross-legged on the mat to face me, crossing one arm over the bikini top to keep it from falling away from her breasts. Her face was what Frank would most certainly have labeled a fox face, lean and narrow, a trifle too hard-looking for someone who couldn’t have been older than eighteen. Pale blue eyes and long blonde lashes. Frizzy blonde hair sitting on her skull like a knitted wool cap. She looked at me and said nothing.

“Yes,” I said.

“Who? What do you... who’d he kill?”

“His stepmother and his two—”

“Jesus!” Lisa said, and stood abruptly, pushing herself off the mat from her cross-legged position. She turned her back to me, quickly tied the straps of the bikini top, and then reached for a brown leather bag resting on the deck near the starboard ventilator. She threw back the scrollwork flap, and dug in the bag for a pack of cigarettes. Her hand was shaking when she plucked one loose, put it between her lips, and lighted it. She tossed the burnt match over the side. Beyond, to the east, a sailboat was coming into the lagoon under power, her sails furled. She motored in past the bow of The Broadhorn, water sliding smoothly past her own bow.

“Tell me what happened,” Lisa said.

“I’ve told you. Michael confessed to killing—”

“That’s total bullshit.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Michael? He couldn’t,” she said. “He’s the gentlest person in the world.”

“How long have you known him?”

“Two months. I’ve been living with him since January. I came for the Christmas break, and decided to stay.”

“How old are you, Lisa?”

“Seventeen.”

“Where were you living before you met Michael?”

“With my mother. My parents are divorced,” she said.

“Where does your mother live?”

“Connecticut.”

“And your father?”

“New York.”

“Do they know where you are?” I asked.

“They know where I am, yes,” she said, and flipped the cigarette over the side. It hissed into the water. Some three slips down, the sailboat had maneuvered in, and a woman in an orange bikini was making the dock lines fast.

“Michael told the police he needed money,” I said. “To make a repair on the boat. Would you know anything about that?”

“He was probably talking about the oil leak.”

“Yes, what about it?”

“We’re losing drive oil. Michael first noticed it on the gauge, the needle kept dropping down to fifty or sixty. Then he checked the dipstick, and put in more oil, but it just leaked out again. It’s a big job to fix it. They’ve got to jack the engine up on an A-frame and put in a new gasket, and I think replace the plate. The marina gave him an estimate of six hundred dollars. That’s more than both of us make together in a month.”

“Where do you work, Lisa?”

“At the Cross River Market. I’m a checker.”

“And Michael?”

“He’s a busboy at Leonardo’s.”

“Was he working yesterday?”

“No, Sunday’s his day off.”

“Was he here on the boat then?”

“Yes.”

“All day?”

“Well, he left late at night.”

“Where was he going?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you ask him?”

“Yes. He just said he’d be back in a little while.”

“What time was this?”

“Right after he got the phone call. It must’ve been—”

“What phone call?”

“Somebody called him.”

“Here on the boat? There’s a phone on the boat?”

“No, up at the dockmaster’s office. He’ll come get us if it isn’t too late.”

“What time was it?”

“About eleven-thirty.”

“Who was calling?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you ask Michael?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“He said it was nothing important. Then he went below, and got his wallet from the dresser and came topside again. That’s when I asked him where he was going, and he said he’d be back in a little while.”

“When the dockmaster came to get him... did he say who was on the phone?”

“He just said, ‘There’s a call for you, Mike.’ He likes Michael a lot, he won’t believe this. He just won’t believe it.”

“Were you worried when Michael didn’t come back?”

“No, I wasn’t worried. I mean, I didn’t think anything had happened to him. I thought maybe he’d met some girl, you know, and decided to stay with her for the night. I guess that’s what I thought. Because, you see, we have an understanding like if I meet some boy I want to know better, I can do that, you see, and it’s the same with him, with a girl, I mean. I can leave this boat any time I want to, I can just pack up and go. That’s our understanding.”

“Who ordinarily pays for the boat’s maintenance?”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“If something goes wrong with the boat, does Michael pay to have it repaired, or does his father?”

“Well, normally Michael, I guess. I really don’t know, I never asked him about who paid for what. But Michael puts in the gas, and he pays for keeping the boat here, it costs two-fifty a foot, plus sixty-five for the power cord. It comes to a hundred eighty-five a month, something like that. Michael does all the minor repairs himself, but this is a big job, this oil leak, so I guess he would’ve asked his father to pay for it, if that’s what you mean.”

“But Michael said he went there to borrow the money.”

“Well, maybe so. He’s got a lot of pride. His father thinks of him as nothing but a plastic hippie, that’s because Michael’s having trouble finding himself, you know. But he’s got a lot of pride and I can see him only asking for a loan and not for the money as a gift. I know it bothered Michael that he was living on the boat freebies, that his father was letting him use the boat, you know? He kept telling me he wanted to buy a boat of his own. But in the meantime, you know, his father never went out on it, Maureen would get seasick even if it was just the bay, never mind the Gulf. So he offered the boat to Michael to live on, and Michael said sure why not?” Lisa shrugged elaborately. “But I know it bothered him. Because they’ve had hassles, you know. Michael’s not a bum, you know, he’s just having trouble getting his head together; in fact, he’s been talking about going back to school, I think he’s really seriously considering it. That’s something you ought to know because... I mean, how could he have killed her? I mean, why would he have killed her?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand you.”

“Well, it was Maureen who was encouraging him to go back. I mean, I don’t care if he goes back or not, whatever makes him happy. But Maureen was the one talking about his future, and about did he want to be a busboy all his life? They really got along fine, he respected her a lot, he really did. There was a conflict there for him, you know, he felt guilty about relating to Maureen when he had a mother of his own. But Michael found it difficult to talk to either of his parents because of all the trouble—”

“What do you mean? What trouble?”

“Well, you know, all the hard feelings about the divorce. It isn’t easy, you know, take it from me. Michael was only ten when his father split, twelve when he finally married Maureen. Those are tough years for a kid anyway, never mind divorce. And his mother didn’t make it any easier, told both kids their father had been playing around with half the women in town, made Maureen out to be just another tramp, you know, like that. What I’m saying is Michael gave his father a pretty rough time, and I’m not sure his father’s forgotten it yet.”

“What kind of a rough time?”

“Well, like I just told you.”

“You only said there were hard feelings about the divorce.”

“Well, yeah, but... like the time in Virginia. You probably know about it.”

“No. Tell me.”

“Well, she sent Michael away to a military academy—”

“Yes, I know that.”

“And he got caught smoking pot there, the general caught him smoking pot. He was about sixteen at the time, the general refused to let him go home for the spring break — the spring furlough, he called it. So Michael’s father went all the way to Virginia to see him, and Michael just wouldn’t give him the right time, told him to go to hell.”

“He actually said that?”

“No, but he told his father he was doing fine without him.”

“What else?”

“Well, you know about the trip to India...”

“No.”

“Well, Michael started school at UCLA — this was after he got out of that place in Virginia — and then he dropped out of there and went first to Amsterdam and then India, and Afghanistan, I think it was, or Pakistan, one of those countries. He was following the drug route, you know, he got into drugs pretty heavy in Amsterdam—”

“He’s not involved in drugs now, is he?”

“No, no,” Lisa said. “He was never into the hard stuff, anyway. He’s never put a needle in his arm. He never would. He may have sniffed coke while he was in Europe, I don’t know about that, he was traveling with a junkie in Denmark. But what I meant was acid, he got into acid in Holland. And, of course, pot. But everybody smokes pot,” she said, and shrugged. “The point is, he never wrote to his father all that time. He had the man going crazy, he admits that now. Sending letters to the American Embassy, writing to Washington, while Michael’s climbing the Himalayas and sniffing flowers and having his hair and his beard dyed red by mountain priests. He used to write his father about the spiders in the hut he lived in. Big spiders. Told him about the spiders to make him worry even more, that was all. Never a return address on the letters. I’m in the mountains, period. With priests and spiders. Lots of mountains there, man.” Lisa shook her head. “What I’m saying is the relationship with his father was strained, you know what I mean? It was getting better, but it was still strained.”

“How about his mother?”

“How about her? Have you ever met her?”

“I’ve met her.”

“Then you know. A fat pain in the ass. Always using Michael as a messenger boy — tell your father this, tell him that. Phoning him three, four times a week, sending him letters. He was fed up to here with her.”

“So he talked to Maureen instead.”

“Well, he talked to me, too,” Lisa said, “but that’s different. I mean, we’re lovers.”

I looked at her.

She was seventeen years old, another child of divorce, mother in Connecticut, father in New York — or was it the other way around? Her parents knew where she was, she’d said, and thrown her cigarette over the side as abruptly as her parents had thrown her over the side — or so she must have thought or felt. “They know where I am, yes,” the cigarette hissing into the water with the sibilance of the final “yes,” the silence echoing with the unspoken corollary, “And don’t give a damn.”

I wanted to ask her... I wanted to say... I wanted to talk about the divorce of her parents. I wanted to know how she’d reacted — when had it been, how old were you, Lisa, which of your parents asked for the divorce, was there another woman involved? Do you ever see your parents, Lisa, do you ever see your father? What kind of person is he, do you love him and respect him, do you love him? Have you forgiven him for leaving? Will you ever? I looked into her eyes and into a future I could scarcely imagine, no less hope to comprehend. My future. My daughter’s.

“Is Michael allowed visitors?” she asked.

“Not yet,” I said.

“Where is he now?”

“They’re holding him at the police station. He probably won’t be moved across the street till tomorrow morning.”

“But he’s in jail, you said.”

“Yes. At the police station. They have cells there.”

“I wonder...”

“Yes, Lisa?”

“What I should do now? I mean... where should I go?”

The dockmaster’s office at Pirate’s Cove was just adjacent to the motel office, the pair of white entrance doors set side by side in an otherwise red-shingled structure. I knocked on the door, got no answer, tried the knob, and found the door locked. I went into the motel office, and asked the woman behind the desk there where I could find the dockmaster. She said he was outside someplace. I went outside again, circled the building, and saw a grizzled old man bent over a bed of geraniums, turning the sandy earth around them with a trowel. He was wearing a battered, soiled yachting cap tilted low over one eye, a striped T-shirt, blue jeans, and scuffed topsiders.

“Excuse me, sir?” I said.

“Yes, sir,” he said, but did not look up from the flowerbed.

“I’m looking for the dockmaster,” I said.

“You’ve found him,” he said.

“I’m Matthew Hope.”

“Donald Wicherly,” he said, and rose abruptly. “What can I do for you?”

“I’d like to ask you some questions about a phone call you took last night.”

“Why?” he said. His eyes were the color of the sky behind him, squinched now and studying me suspiciously. The hand holding the trowel was on his hip, he stood in angular expectation, a tall, lean, weathered man wanting to know why I had questions, and probably wondering besides why he should answer them.

“I’m an attorney,” I told him. “I’m here about Michael Purchase.”

“You’re Michael’s attorney?”

“Yes. Well, actually, I’m his father’s attorney.”

“Which is it then? Michael’s attorney or his father’s?”

“His father’s. But I’m here on Michael’s behalf.”

“With Michael’s knowledge or without it?”

“He knows I’m here,” I said. I was lying, but I wanted information, and I was beginning to resent this examination before trial. “Michael got a phone call last night,” I said. “About eleven-thirty. You took the call.”

“Are you asking me or telling me?”

“Did you take the call?”

“I took it.”

“Where would that have been?”

“In the office.”

“Who called him?”

“I don’t know. The party didn’t identify herself.”

“It was a woman?”

“A woman, yes.”

“Could you make a guess at her age?”

“Well, no, sir, I don’t think I could.”

“Can you tell me what she said?”

“She asked if this was Pirate’s Cove, and I said it was. She said could she please speak to Michael Purchase? I told her he was down on the boat, and I’d have to go fetch him. She said would I do that please, and I went down to get him.”

“Then what?”

“He came up to the office with me, and talked to her on the phone.”

“Did you hear the conversation?”

“Only the tail end of it. I’d gone back to my apartment for something I wanted to staple on the bulletin board. He was still talking when I came into the office again.”

“What did you hear?”

“He said ‘I’ll be right there,’ then he said ‘Good-bye,’ and hung up.”

“You didn’t hear him mention anyone’s name?”

“No, sir, I did not.”

“Did he say anything to you after he hung up?”

“He said, ‘Thank you, Mr. Wicherly.’”

“That’s all?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He didn’t say where he was going, did he?”

“No, but I’d guess he was going to where he told that woman he’d be going.” He paused. He looked into my eyes. “According to what I heard on the radio about what he’s supposed to have done, why then he’d have gone straight to the house on Jacaranda to kill the three of them. That’s where he’d have gone, and that’s what he’d have done.” He shook his head. “But I’ll tell you, Mr. Hope, I find that mighty hard to believe. I just don’t know any boy nicer than Michael Purchase, that’s the truth. His parents got divorced when he was just twelve, you know... well, I guess you know that, you’re his father’s attorney.”

“Yes, I know that.”

“That ain’t an easy thing for a young boy. We had a long talk about it one night. Told me he was finally coming through it, after all these years. So you see, when I hear on the radio he killed his father’s wife and his two sisters... those girls were his sisters, Mr. Hope, there was his father’s blood in them and in Michael both, the same blood. Whenever he talked about them, they were his sisters, never mind half sisters. His sisters this, his sisters that, he could have been talking about his full sister, that’s all a lot of crap, anyway, isn’t it? It’s how you feel about somebody that counts. He loved those little girls. And you don’t do what the radio says he done if you love somebody. You just don’t.”

But he said he did, I reminded myself.