Mystery

At seven-thirty in the morning, two days later, an unshaven Victor Pasmore set down one of Tom’s suitcases just outside the main entrance of David Redwing Field. Victor’s rumpled clothes smelled of perspiration, tobacco, and bourbon. Even his eyebrows were rumpled.

“Thanks for getting up to drive me here.” Tom wished that he could hug his father, or say something affectionate to him, but Victor was irritated and hung over.

His father took a step away, and glanced anxiously at his car, parked across the sidewalk in a no-parking zone. Beyond the airport’s access road, the nearly empty lot already radiated heat in the morning sun.

“You got everything you need? Everything okay?”

“Sure,” Tom said.

“I, ah, I better get my car outa here. They move you along, at airports.” Victor squinted at him. His eyes looked rumpled too. “Better not say anything to anybody about, you know, what I told you. It’s still top secret. Details and that.”

“Okay.”

Victor nodded. A sour odor washed toward Tom. “So. Take it easy.”

“Okay.”

Victor got into his car and closed the door. He waved at Tom through the passenger window. Tom waved back, and his father jerked the car forward into the access road. Tom saw him peering from side to side, looking for other drivers to get angry with. When the car was out of sight, he picked up his bags and went into the terminal.

This was a long concrete block building with two airline counters, a car rental desk, a souvenir stand, and a magazine rack stocked with The Lady, Harpers Queen, Vogue, Life, and the American news magazines. At one end was the baggage area—a moving belt and twenty square yards of stained linoleum with a permanent pool of watery yellow liquid against the far wall—and at the other end, a bar called Hurricane Harry’s with wicker stools, a thatched roof, and a vending machine that dispensed sandwiches.

Tom had tried to call Lamont von Heilitz three times on Saturday, but the Shadow had not answered his telephone. Curious about Barbara Deane, he had taken the grey metal box where his parents kept their important papers from its shelf in the study, and looked through the title to the house and the car, their marriage license, many legal documents and stock certificates, until he found his birth certificate. Dr. Bonaventure Milton had signed his birth certificate, Barbara Deane and Glendenning Upshaw had witnessed it, and a man named Winston Shaw, Registrar of the Island of Mill Walk, had testified to the correctness of the proceedings.

Tom flipped back to the marriage license and removed it from the box. This, too, had been witnessed by Glendenning Upshaw and Barbara Deane. Winston Shaw had again performed his office. Gloria Ross Upshaw of Mill Walk had married Victor Laurence Pasmore of Miami, Florida, United States of America, on February fifteenth, 1946.

First Tom noticed the oddity of his midwife having witnessed his parents’ marriage; then something about the date made him wrinkle his forehead. His parents had been married in February: he had been born on October twentieth. He counted on his fingers, and saw that February and October were exactly nine months apart.

And that, Tom thought, was how an employee of Mill Walk Construction married the boss’s daughter. There had been a romance: and when Glendenning Upshaw learned his daughter was pregnant, he flew her and her boyfriend back home to Mill Walk and ordered up a civil ceremony in the way he would order up room service in a hotel.

He had placed the metal box back on the shelf and gone into the kitchen, where his mother sat at the table in front of the lunch dishes, holding the brown plastic pill bottle in one hand and looking dully at the refrigerator. When she saw him she smiled like someone remembering how to do it, and slowly put his plate on top of hers. “I’ll do it,” he said, and took the plates from her and put them in the dishwasher. She handed him the glasses. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“I guess I’m a little weak,” she said.

“Can I help you upstairs? Or do you want to go into another room?”

She shook her head. “Don’t worry about me.”

He sat down beside her. He knew that if he put his arm around her, she would push it off. “I was wondering about this Barbara Deane,” he said.

Her eyes flicked toward him, then away, and a vertical line appeared between her eyebrows.

“She’s taking care of your old lodge, or something like that. Do you know her?”

“She’s a friend of Daddy’s.”

“Was she his girlfriend, or anything like that?”

The vertical line disappeared, and she smiled. “She was never anybody’s girlfriend. Especially not Daddy’s!” And added, “Barbara Deane worked at the hospital,” as if that were all that had to be said. Then she looked straight at him. “Stay out of her way. She’s funny.”

“What makes her funny?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Gloria sighed. “I don’t want to talk about Barbara Deane.”

But when he went up to pack, she came into his room and made sure he was bringing a bathing suit, boat shoes, sweaters, ties, a jacket. He was taking his place in the world, and he had to be dressed for the cold nights.

At eight o’clock a big potbellied man in sunglasses and a cowboy hat carried an enormous suitcase through the revolving doors, followed by a blond woman with a Jackie Kennedy hairdo who wore huge sunglasses and a black miniskirt. She pulled a middle-sized suitcase behind her on rollers. The potbellied man squinted at the darkened bar, frowned at Tom, and shook his head at the women at the airline desks, who wilted back on their stools. Then Sarah Spence came through the electronic door, carrying a small suitcase like Baby Bear. She was dressed in a blue button-down shirt with rolled-up sleeves and khaki shorts. “Tom!” she cried. “Bingo was so unhappy! I think his heart broke! I wish we could give him Percy’s—” Here she sketched a large apron before her with her free hand.

“Percy’s what?” her mother said, lowering her sunglasses on her nose and giving Tom a clinical look.

Mr. Spence dropped his suitcase and examined Tom through his sunglasses. “So you’re hitching a ride up north with us, are you?”

“Yes, sir,” Tom said.

“Who’s this Percy?” her mother said. “Give Bingo what?”

“Special dog food,” Sarah said. “A friend of a friend of Tom’s.”

Mrs. Spence shoved her sunglasses back up her nose. She was a good-looking woman who obviously knew the names of every member of the Founders Club, and her legs were almost young enough for her miniskirt. “Are both those suitcases yours?”

Tom nodded, and Mrs. Spence looked at his suitcases through her dark glasses.

“Pilot ought to be here waiting,” said Mr. Spence. “That was the deal. I guess I better go look for the guy.” He cast another look at the bar, and set off toward the baggage area and the yellow puddle.

“Well, I don’t see the reason for last-minute changes,” said Mrs. Spence, speaking to the air. Then she fixed Tom with a smile that went all the way to the corners of her sunglasses. “And your mother is Gloria Upshaw, isn’t she?”

“She was Gloria Upshaw,” Tom said. “Before she got married.”

“Such a dear,” said Mrs. Spence.

“Okay, we got it straightened out,” said Mr. Spence. “The pilot’s waiting for us in the Redwing lounge.”

“Of course he is,” said Mrs. Spence.

Mr. Spence lifted his enormous suitcase and began moving toward a door next to the thatch of the bar, and Mrs. Spence muttered something and followed after with her medium-sized suitcase rolling after her handsome legs, and Sarah hugged him while their backs were turned and hit him in the back with her tiny suitcase and whispered, “Don’t mind them too much, please, and don’t pay any attention to anything they say.”

On the other side of the door, black leather couches and chairs had been arranged around marble coffee tables on a thick grey carpet. A waiter in a white coat stood behind a bar on which stood a pitcher of orange juice, a silver coffeepot, and trays of breakfast rolls covered in Saran Wrap.

“Oh, my!” said Mrs. Spence. “Well, I knew it!”

A tall, well-tanned man in a dark blue uniform set down his coffee cup and stood up before one of the couches. “Spence family?”

“And a person named Tom Pasmore,” said Mrs. Spence. “Did you know he was coming too?”

The pilot smiled. “There won’t be any problem, Mrs. Spence.” He opened a door beside the bar, and they stepped out into the heat. A sleek grey jet with a heraldic letter R sat on the tarmac a short distance away. “I am Captain Mornay, by the way, but Mr. Redwing’s guests usually call me Ted,” said the pilot.

“Oh, Ted, thank you so much,” said Mrs. Spence, and swept across the tarmac toward the staircase leading up to the open door of the jet.

The interior of the plane matched the Redwing lounge. Grey carpeting covered the floor and bulkheads, and black leather chairs stood around black marble tables. A bar with a steward in a white jacket stood next to a curtained-off galley. On the other side of the bar and galley Tom saw two compartments separated by smoked glass. A door in the rear of the plane opened, and a porter began handing in their suitcases to the Steward, who placed them on shelves at the rear end of the plane and secured them behind a carpeted door.

The steward asked them to choose their seats and fasten their seat belts, and slipped into the galley.

“Well, Tom, I think we’ll sit in this nice little area right here,” said Mrs. Spence, and smiled brightly. She took a seat in the second complement of chairs, looked at Sarah, and patted the chair beside hers. There were three chairs around the black table.

“Tom and I can sit here,” Sarah said. “That way, we’ll practically be at the same table.” She sat in the chair of the first group nearest her mother’s table, and swiveled it around to show how close they were.

Mr. Spence sat down, grunting, and put his cowboy hat on the table. Tom took the chair beside Sarah’s. They all fastened their seat belts. Mrs. Spence pushed her sunglasses up into her hair, and smiled ferociously.

“Only twenty men in America have jets like this,” said Mrs. Spence. “Frank Sinatra has one. And Liberace, I think. Some of the others are showier, but Ralph’s is the most tasteful. I’m sure I’m happier in this jet than I would ever be in Frank Sinatra’s. Or Liberace’s.”

“Oh, I’d like to be Liberace’s private jet,” said Sarah. “I’m sure I’d be happy in a jet where everything was piano-shaped and covered in ermine. Don’t you think that private jets shouldn’t be tasteful?”

“I suggest that you learn to like this one.” Her mother’s voice could have shaved a peach. “You’ll be seeing a lot of it.” She swiveled her chair, hitching her skirt even farther up her thighs, and looked back at the rest of the cabin. “Aren’t those little booths cute? I adore those little booths. I can just see Buddy sitting in one of those little booths. Or in the cockpit. Buddy is sort of the pilot type, isn’t he?”

“I can see Buddy piloting the bar,” Sarah said.

“I don’t understand you,” her mother said. “You just say these things.”

“Tom is very high-spirited, mother. He goes on wonderful excursions. He has interesting friends everywhere.”

“Imagine that,” said Mrs. Spence. “Do you think there is any champagne on this flight? I think champagne would be just right, don’t you?”

Mr. Spence pulled in his belly, stood up, and went to the curtained galley.

When a bottle of beer, two glasses of orange juice, and an ice bucket with a bottle of champagne sat on the table, Mrs. Spence raised her glass and said, “Here’s to summer!” They all drank.

“Have you known Ralph Redwing long?” Tom asked.

“Of course,” said Mrs. Spence, and “Not really,” said Mr. Spence, more or less simultaneously. They looked at each other with differing degrees of irritation.

“Well, of course, we’ve moved in the same circles ever since Mr. Spence took over Corporate Accounting for Ralph,” said Mrs. Spence. “But we’ve only really become close in the past two or three years. You’d have to say that Buddy and Sarah brought us together, and we’re very happy about that. Very happy.”

“You do all the accounting work for the Redwing Holding Company?” Tom asked.

“Not by a long shot,” Mr. Spence said. “I handle the work for the can company, the real estate holdings, the brewery, a few other odds and ends. Keeps me hopping. Above me, there’s the General Accountant, the man I report to, and then the Vice-President for Accounting, above him.”

“So you do the accounting work relating to Elysian Courts and the old slave quarter?”

Mr. Spence nodded. “It’s all revenue.”

“I never saw any champagne that came in a clear bottle before,” said Mrs. Spence, refilling her glass. “Doesn’t it spoil that way, or something?”

“You might not know this,” Mr. Spence said, “but your grandfather did me a big favor once. Your grandfather is the reason I work for Ralph now.”

“Oh, yes?”

“I come from Iowa, orginally, and Mrs. Spence and I met in college there. When we got married, she wanted to live back on Mill Walk, where she was from. So I came down here and got a job with your grandfather. We had a nice little place out in Elm Cove. In ten years, I was doing about half his total accounting work—your grandfather does everything by the seat of his pants, you know—and we could get our house on The Sevens.”

“One of the oldest houses in the far east end,” said Mrs. Spence.

“Hadn’t been lived in for better than twenty years. Like a museum in there when we moved in. Couple years later, he sold us our lodge—same deal. Sealed up since hell froze over. Anyhow, once we had the lodge, we came in contact a lot more with Ralph and his bunch. And when Ralph dropped into my office one day and said he’d like to give me a job, your grandfather gave me his blessings.” He finished off his first beer while he spoke. “So everything worked out just right, you could say.”

“Didn’t a man named Anton Goetz own that house?”

“Nope. He worked for your grandfather—made a lot of money too! For an accountant, I mean. The actual ownership of the place was held by a shadow corporation that was part of Mill Walk Construction, if you looked hard enough. Same was true of our lodge. Saved a few pennies in taxes that way, I guess.”

“I thought I heard once that Goetz owned the St. Alwyn Hotel,” Tom said.

“He might have said he did, and he might have been listed here and there as the owner, but your grandfather still owns the St. Alwyn. In conjunction with Ralph, of course.”

“Oh, of course,” Tom said. “And I guess my grandfather owns part of Elysian Courts.”

“And the old slave quarter. Sure. Way back when, Glendenning Upshaw and Maxwell Redwing pretty much divided up the island. All on the up and up, of course. So Glen and Ralph are pretty much partners in a lot of things these days. There’s a lot of overlap in my work.”

“That’s enough talk about business,” said Mrs. Spence. “I didn’t come on this plane to hear about the slums of Mill Walk and who owns what. Sarah is going away to college in the fall … Tom”—it seemed difficult for her to utter his name—“we all thought that a year or two of college at a good school would help prepare her for the life we want her to have. I had two years of college myself, and that was all I needed. Of course”—she looked coyly at her daughter—“if she transfers out to Arizona, which is a wonderful school too, things might look different.”

“Tom and I are going on an excursion together, Mother,” Sarah said. “We are going to explore the back of this plane, and see if hidden recording devices have been placed in the ashtrays.” She took Tom’s hand and stood up.

“It’s an interesting fact,” said Mr. Spence, “that no Redwing I ever heard of ever married a woman who didn’t come from his own crowd. They all marry people they’ve known most of their lives. That’s how they keep that dynasty going. And I’ll tell you another interesting fact”—he winked at Tom—“they all marry pretty women.”

“And they find them at the pretty women discount outlet,” Sarah said. She tugged Tom away from the table.

She stopped at the bar, and the steward leaned forward. “What do pretty women drink? What’s a pretty drink?”

“Watch yourself, Sarah,” her mother said.

The steward said that he knew a pretty drink, and poured a small amount of cassis into a flute glass, then filled the glass with champagne from a fresh bottle.

“This is certainly what pretty women drink,” Sarah said. “Thank you. Tom, I’m sure there are some lascars hidden in the rear of this plane. Let’s go consort with them.”

She strode down the length of the jet and looked into each of the compartments until she came to the last, opposite the baggage compartment. “Here they are.” She went inside and sat down on one of the long seats, sipped at her drink, and placed it on the table. Tom sat down opposite her. “The lascars are us,” she said. “Drink half of this.”

He sipped a little of the drink and put it back before her. Sarah’s eyes burned toward him. She picked up the glass and gulped. “I’m going to chop off my hair. I’m going to wear turtlenecks and jeans and have a silent brother named Bill. I’ll get my furniture from the dump. All the really tasteful stuff is there anyway.”

Captain Ted Mornay’s soothing voice came over a hidden speaker, advising them that they were flying at thirty thousand feet over South Carolina, that they were expected to land at Eagle Lake as scheduled, and that they should have a smooth flight.

Sarah took another swallow of the drink. “I could begin to see certain advantages in prettiness. Do you think it might be possible for you to go up to the bar and get another drink from that lovely man? I want to split these the way Nancy Vetiver splits beers.”

Tom went back to the bar and got a second Kir Royale. Neither of the Spences looked at him.

When he got back to the compartment, Sarah said, “Good. Now you’re a pretty woman too. Probably you’ll marry very well.”

He sat down beside her. The sweet, light drink fizzed on his tongue.

“Is it tacky to apologize for your parents even if they’re really horrible?”

“You don’t have to apologize. I liked talking to your father.”

“Did you especially like the interesting facts?”

They both sipped from their drinks.

“At least now I understand what you were saying about other people making you do things.”

“Well, that’s something,” Sarah said. “It’s not just my parents, who are so thrilled they can’t contain themselves, it’s his parents too. Ralph Redwing sends his carriage to pick me up after dancing class! I’m escorted home! Katinka Redwing wants to give me golfing lessons! Why do you think we’re in this plane?”

“They can’t make you marry Buddy,” Tom said.

“Ah, but it’s like being the Dalai Lama. They pick you out in childhood, and plan the whole rest of your life. They surround you with thoughtfulness and gifts and their wonderful conviction that you’re really special because you can be one of them, and then you are one of them. And your father gets a great new job, and your mother just assumes that—well, she just assumes, that’s all. All of a sudden she’s the Queen Mother.”

“You still don’t have to marry him,” Tom said.

“Drink some more of that,” she ordered.

He drank.

“More.”

He took two swallows, and Sarah pointed at his glass. He drank again. Sarah’s glass was empty.

Then her arms were around him, her face was a blur against his, and her mouth brushed his. Her tongue slid into his mouth. They kissed for a long time, and then she moved onto his lap, and they kissed even longer. Tom heard the Spences’ voices come to him from a great distance away. “What do you think these compartments are for?” Sarah whispered. “We can barely hear them, and they can’t hear us at all.”

“Won’t they come back here?”

“They wouldn’t dare.” Their faces were so close that Tom felt engulfed by Sarah Spence. “Do this,” she said, and licked his upper lip. “And do this.” She closed his right hand on her left breast.

It was as if a warm cloud had settled around him, infusing him with its warmth and softness. The Spences’ voices receded. Sarah’s face swam before him, ideally beautiful. Her shoulders, her small round breasts, her straight slim back and her round slender arms, all of these surrounded him. Sarah hitched herself up on her knees, straddling him, and quickly, smiling, undid his belt. “Get rid of those clothes,” she whispered. “I want to see you.”

“Here?”

“Why not? I can feel you.”

Her hand slipped under the waistband of his underwear, and she ran her fingers along the length of his erection. Her fingers wrapped around him. “You feel beautiful,” she breathed into his cheek.

“You are beautiful,” he said, uttering the truest thing he knew.

She rubbed the tips of her breasts against his chest, and he levered himself up and pushed down his trousers. “Well, what shall we do with this thing?” Sarah said. “Here we are, aren’t we? In this traveling Redwing love nest.” In a flash she was naked, and all of her beautiful body had wrapped around him. She guided him between her legs, and they held to each other and moved as much as they could. Tom felt his entire body gather and gather itself, and she twisted back and forth upon him; and it felt as if he were exploding. Sarah bit his shoulder, and he stiffened again instantly. She tightened around him; her body quivered; and he felt all her warmth embracing him, and after some endless minutes it was as if he turned inside out, as if he were a tree turning into a river within her. Trembling and shaking with passion and what felt like a final, ultimate blessedness, he felt her trembling too. Finally she collapsed against him. Her face was wet against his cheek, and he saw that she had been crying.

“I love you,” he whispered.

“I’m glad,” she said, and he remembered her saying it at Miss Ellinghausen’s.

She pulled away from him, and kissed him; and stepped into her shorts and hooked on her bra and pulled her shirt over her tender shoulders. He rearranged his clothing, feeling as though an aura clung to him. And then they were seventeen years old again, seated side by side and holding hands, but everything had changed forever.

“I can still feel you inside me,” she said, “How can I marry Buddy Redwing, when Tom Pasmore is still inside me? I’m branded. There’s this big TP on me somewhere.”

They sat in silence, and the jet pushed its way through the air.

“How are you kids getting on?” Mr. Spence yelled from the bar.

“Fine, Daddy,” Sarah called out in a clear, high-pitched voice that sounded like bells and made Tom’s heart dissolve. “We have a lot to talk about.”

“Enjoy yourselves,” he yelled back. “Within reason, of course!”

“Reason had nothing to do with it,” she whispered, and they leaned against one another and laughed.

Mrs. Spence shouted down the length of the plane: “Why don’t you kids come up here and be sociable?”

“In a minute, mother,” Sarah called back.

Again they sat in silence, looking at one another.

“I think it’s going to be an interesting summer,” Sarah said.