The Fiend

(10)

Miss Albert first noticed the child because she was so neat and quiet. Most of the children who came to the library during summer vacation wore jeans or shorts with cotton T-shirts, as if they were using the place as a rest stop between beach and ball game, movie and music lesson. In groups or alone, they were always noisy and always chewing something — chocolate bars, bubble gum, peanut brittle, apples, ice cream cones, bananas, occasionally even cotton candy. Miss Albert had a recurrent nightmare in which she opened up one of the valuable art books and found all the pages glued together with cotton candy.

The little girl with the blond ponytail was not chewing anything. She wore a pink dress with large blue daisies embroidered on the patch pockets. Her shoes had the sick-white color that indicated too many applications of polish to cover too many cracks in the leather. The child’s expression was blank, as if her hair was drawn back and fastened so tightly that her facial muscles couldn’t function. It must be just like having your hair pulled all the time, Miss Albert thought. I wouldn’t like it one bit. She probably doesn’t either, poor child.

The girl picked a magazine from the rack and sat down. She opened it, turned a few pages, then closed it again and sat with it on her lap, her eyes moving from the main door to the clock on the mezzanine and back again. The obvious conclusion was that the girl was waiting for someone. But Miss Albert didn’t care for the obvious; she preferred the elaborate, even the bizarre. The child’s family had just arrived in town, possibly to get away from a scandal of some kind — what kind Miss Albert would decide on her lunch hour — and the girl, alone and friendless, had come to the library for the children’s story hour at half past one. But Miss Albert was not satisfied with this explanation. The girl had no look of anticipation on her face, no look of anything, thanks to that silly hair-do. She’d be cute as a bug with her hair cut just below her ears and a fluffy bang. Or maybe with an Alice-in-Wonderland style like Louise, except on Louise it looks ridiculous at her age. Imagine Louise getting married, I think it’s just wonderful. It shows practically anything can happen if you wait long enough.

Half an hour passed. Miss Albert’s stomach was rumbling and her arms were tired from taking books from her metal cart and putting them back on their proper shelves. From the children’s section adjoining the main reading room, she could hear a rising babble of voices and the scrape of chairs being rearranged. In ten minutes the story hour would begin and Mrs. Gambetti, with nothing to do at children’s checkout, would come and relieve Miss Albert for lunch. And Miss Albert would take her sandwich and thermos of coffee over to Encinas Park to watch the people with their sandwiches and their Thermoses of coffee.

But I really can’t leave the child just sitting there, she thought. Very likely she doesn’t know where to go and she’s probably too timid to ask, having been through all that scandal whatever it was but I’m sure it was quite nasty.

Miss Albert pushed her empty cart vigorously down the aisle like a determined week-end shopper. At the sound of its squeaking wheels, Mary Martha turned her head and met Miss Albert’s kindly and curious gaze.

Miss Albert said, “Hello.”

Mary Martha had been instructed not to speak to strangers but she didn’t think this would apply to strangers in a library, so she said, “Hello,” back.

“What’s your name?”

“Mary Martha Oakley.”

“That’s very pretty. You’re new around here, aren’t you, Mary?”

The child didn’t answer, she just looked down at her shoes. Her toes had begun to wiggle nervously like captive fish. She didn’t want the lady to notice so she attempted to hide her feet under the chair. During the maneuver, the magazine slid off her lap onto the floor.

Miss Albert picked it up, trying not to look surprised that a child so young would choose Fortune as reading material. “Did you move to town recently, Mary?”

“I’m not supposed to answer when people call me Mary because my name is Mary Martha. But I guess it’s all right in a library. We didn’t move to town, we’ve always lived here.”

“Oh. I thought — well, it doesn’t matter. The story hour is beginning in a minute or two. You just go through that door over there” — Miss Albert pointed — “and turn to the right and take a seat. Any seat you like.”

“I already have a seat.”

“But you can’t hear the story from this distance.”

“No, ma’am.”

“You don’t want to hear the story?”

“No, ma’am, I’m waiting for my mother.”

Miss Albert concealed her disappointment behind a smile. “Well, perhaps you’d like something to read that would be a little more suitable for your age bracket.”

Mary Martha hesitated, frowning. “Do you have books about everything?”

“Pretty nearly everything, from aardvarks to Zulus. What kind of book are you interested in?”

“One about divorce.”

“Divorce?” Miss Albert said with a nervous little laugh. “Goodness, I’m not sure I— Wouldn’t you like a nice picture book to look at instead?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Well, I’m afraid I don’t — that is, perhaps we’d better ask Miss Lang in the reference department. She knows more about such situations than I do. Come on, I’ll take you over and introduce you.”

Behind the reference desk Louise was acting very busy but Miss Albert wasn’t fooled. Checking the number of sheep in Australia or the name of the capital of Ghana hadn’t put the color in her cheeks and the dreamy, slightly out-of-focus look in her eyes.

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” Miss Albert said, knowing very well she was, but feeling that it was the kind of thing that should be interrupted, especially during working hours. “This is Mary Martha Oakley, Louise. Mary Martha, this is Miss Lang.”

Louise stared at the girl and said, “Oh,” in a cold way that puzzled Miss Albert because Louise was usually very good with children.

“Mary Martha,” Miss Albert added, “wants a book on divorce.”

“Does she, indeed,” Louise said. “Am I to gather, Miss Albert, that you’ve encouraged the child in her request by bringing her over here?”

“Not exactly. My gosh, Louise, I thought you’d get a kick out of it, a laugh.”

“You know the rules of the library as well as I do, or you should. You’re excused now, Miss Albert.”

“Good,” Miss Albert said crisply. “It happens to be my lunch hour.”

Over Mary Martha’s head she gave Louise a dirty look, but Louise wasn’t even watching. Her eyes were still fixed on Mary Martha, as if they were seeing much more than a little girl in a pink dress with daisies.

“Oakley,” she said in a thin, dry voice. “You live at 319 Jacaranda Road?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“With your mother.”

“Yes.”

“And your little dog.”

“I don’t have a little dog,” Mary Martha said uneasily. “Just a cat named Pudding.”

“But there’s a dog in your neighborhood, isn’t there? A little brown mongrel that chases cars?”

“I never saw any.”

“Never? Perhaps you don’t particularly notice dogs.”

“Oh yes, I do. I always notice dogs because they’re my favorites even more than cats and birds.”

“So if you had one, you’d certainly protect it, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Louise leaned across the desk and spoke in a smiling, confidential whisper. “If I had a dog that chased cars, I wouldn’t be anxious to admit it, either. So of course I can’t really blame you for fibbing. Just between the two of us, though—”

But there was nothing between the two of them. The child, wary-eyed and flushed, began backing away, her hands jammed deep in her pockets as if they were seeking the roots of the embroidered daisies. Ten seconds later she had disappeared out the front door.

Louise watched the door, in the wild hope that the girl would decide to come back and change her story — yes, she had a little dog that chased cars; yes, one of the cars was an old green Ford coupé.

There was a dog, there had to be, because Charlie said so. It had chased his car and Charlie, afraid for the animal’s safety, felt that he should warn the owner. That’s why he wanted to find out who lived at 319 Jacaranda Road. What other reason could he possibly have had?

He’s not a liar, she thought. He’s so devastatingly honest sometimes it breaks my heart.

She rubbed her eyes. They were dry and gritty and in need of tears. It was as if dirt, blowing in from the busy street, had altered her vision and blurred the distinctions between fact and fantasy.

“Don’t talk so fast, lamb,” Kate Oakley said. “Now let me get this straight. She asked you if you had a little brown dog that chased cars?”

Mary Martha nodded.

“And she wouldn’t believe you when you denied it?”

“No, ma’am.”

“It’s crazy, that’s what it is. I declare, I think the whole world has gone stark staring mad except you and me.” She spoke with a certain satisfaction, as if the world was getting no more than it deserved and she was glad she’d stepped out of it in time and taken Mary Martha with her. “You’d expect a librarian, of all people, to be sensible, with all those books around.”

Immediately after Kate’s departure, Ralph MacPherson made two telephone calls. The first was to the apartment where Sheridan Oakley claimed to be living. He let the phone ring a dozen times, but, as on the previous afternoon and evening, there was no answer.

The second call was to Lieutenant Gallantyne of the city police department. After an exchange of greetings, Mac came to the point:

“I’m in the market for a favor, Gallantyne.”

“That’s no switch,” Gallantyne said. “What is it?”

“A client of mine claims that her husband, from whom she’s separated, is harassing her and her child. She says he’s driving around town in a green Ford coupé, six or seven years old, license GVK 640.”

“And?”

“I want to know if he is.”

“All I can do is check with Sacramento and find out who owns the car. That may take some time, unless you can come up with a more urgent reason than the one you’ve given me, say like murder, armed robbery—”

“Sorry, no armed robbery or murder. Just a divorce, with complications.”

“I think your cases are often messier than mine are,” Gallantyne said with a trace of envy.

“Could be. We’ll have to get together on one sometime.”

“Let’s do that. Now, you want us to contact Sacramento about the green Ford?”

“Yes, but meanwhile pass the license number around to the traffic boys. If they spot the car anywhere I’d like to hear about it, any time of the day or night. I have an answering service.”

“What’s that license again?”

“GVK, God’s Very Kind, 640.”