The Girl in the Yellow Suit

We would be sitting around, and there would be a special silence. You could see on every face that look which meant we were all thinking of Miranda, and missing her so badly it was like a big simultaneous toothache. Or heartache.

Dan Cheney was the one who hurt the worst. He’d get up and plod in aimless circles, looking like some overgrown kid who wants to cry and is trying desperately to be a man. Everybody had known it was inevitable Miranda would marry Dan. I don’t know what they quarreled about. Her money, maybe. Dan is a proud guy. He let her go away mad, a year ago, and she went to St. Thomas and came back married to that Fletcher Hopper.

Miranda was intensely alive, in that special and rare way you seldom see. By all the rules of life she should have been a neurotic shambles. An only child, parents divorced and remarried to other people of their same stamp — idle, wealthy, selfish, borderline alcoholics. When they’d feel a little twinge of conscience about a 12-year-old kid off in one of those schools in Switzerland, they’d mail her a nice check. But she grew up to be something.

Feature by feature she added up homely. But all the warmth and life and her outgoing ways made her leave you with the impression of beauty. She carried the money well. She ran around with our group, all of us just getting started, like Dan in architecture, Midge in fashion design, Vic in commercial art. You’d forget about that pile of green stuff behind Miranda. She never waved it around.

Bringing a husband like Fletch Hopper back to Palm City was not only a gesture of defiance, it was almost a parody of how little rich girls tend to make bad emotional decisions. Ten or 12 years older than Miranda. Yachting tan. Arrogant little mannerisms. An acquired British accent. Ascots, scar from a polo mallet, whiskey eyes, a shrewd money-player at bridge, tennis, backgammon. From his conversation it was evident he had spent most of his adult life as a guest. House guest, boat guest, lodge guest. It was a safe guess that while Miranda was saying “I do,” the realization of the terrible extent of her mistake was beginning.

Dan Cheney was totally shattered. But by the time he was able to pull himself back up out of the black pit of despair, the little signs were evident that the marriage would not endure for very long.

We knew she’d try to make it endure. She had the pride and the stubborn kind of endurance which keep people from being trivial. Married to Hopper, she moved in a different circle. Older people. Old money. I saw them at the club sometimes. Miranda was beginning to look wilted. That is the only word which fits.

Maybe she would have wilted faster if she hadn’t had her beloved little sailing catamaran. She and Fletch bought the Groley place on Palm Bay Pass, and she kept it moored there. It had a racing rig on it. It wouldn’t point well, but at about 60 degrees off the wind it would truly fly.

Being in the boat sales business, I’d be out in Long Bay often, and when I’d take a potential customer out through the pass into the Gulf of Mexico, I’d look to see if her cat, the Tabby, was at its mooring, and if it wasn’t, I’d look for her. The cruiser was almost always there. They didn’t use it much, though Fletcher Hopper would take it out sometimes, take some of the men of their group out for kingfish or tarpon.

I remember clearly that last time I ever saw Miranda. I was demonstrating a new 22-foot runabout, a fiberglass deep-V with twin 150-horse outdrives, and the customer wanted to see how she’d ride in a bad chop. There was better than a 20-knot wind out of the northeast. The Pass was a mess. The boat rode it well, if you like having your teeth clacked and your spine compacted. On the way back in, Miranda was streaking out in the Tabby.

There was heat in that wind, and a murky sunshine. We passed starboard to starboard. She was 20 feet away, crouched on the back corner of that cat, looking very tanned in a little yellow swim suit. It was a wet ride for her. The hulls were smacking spray back at her. Her gingery hair was pasted almost flat to the delicate shape of her skull. She waved and gave me a taut, excited, urchin grin, looking so much like the pre-Hopper Miranda that I remember wishing she would stop being so stubborn and shuck that sorry marriage. Miranda and Dan belonged together.

It’s a good guess that some time that week she gave Fletcher Hopper the word that she was at last prepared to admit their marriage had been a mistake. Too bad she didn’t mention it to anyone else.

You can be very well certain that the Palm City cops tried everything short of torture to break Fletcher Hopper down. Miranda was popular with everybody in this town. But when a man sticks to a story like that, a very simple story, and if there is a possibility that it could have happened, there isn’t much the authorities can do.

And he gave a pretty good imitation of a very desolated widower. He said they had decided on that Sunday in June to take the Quest — that was their 36-foot cruiser, a Hatteras — out about eight miles off shore to see if they could tie into any kingfish. He said they left early, fished without much luck until mid-afternoon. Then the wind shifted into the west and began to freshen. They started in. With a following sea they couldn’t use the auto pilot; it slewed and yawed when the pilot couldn’t anticipate the motion. He went below.

Miranda, he said, was at the wheel, so he took a nap. The violent rolling and slewing of the boat awakened him. He hurried up on deck and found the cruiser on automatic pilot. Miranda was gone. He could not understand how such a thing could have happened until, much later, he noticed from the flying bridge that the larger anchor, chocked in place on the foredeck, had come partially loose and was shifting with the motion of the boat.

Apparently, not wanting to disturb him, Miranda had put the boat on automatic pilot and gone forward along the side deck to make the anchor fast. Perhaps she had not realized how violent the motion could get with it on automatic pilot. Before she had a chance to make the anchor fast, she had maybe slipped on the wet deck and the motion had tumbled her overboard.

He had done everything he could, he said — turned back to look for her, placed an emergency radio call to the Coast Guard, made every possible contact with other boats in the area. And many of their new circle of friends told how very devoted to each other Miranda and Fletcher were. A lovely couple.

No basis for indictment. He stuck to the story. So there he was, sole owner of the house and all their other worldly goods, plus a large prime portfolio of good securities selected by experts, plus the income from her trust funds. He went around with black armband, a mournful look, an aroma of the very best Scotch. Tragic figure. He put the house and the cruiser and the catamaran on the market, setting the price shrewdly. He could move them at that price, but not in a hurry. Yet he would eventually get the price. And it was clear to us that when he got it, he would be off, probably in her sports car, his matched luggage strapped to the rack.

The Tabby went first. Dan Cheney bought it, through me. A strange, sentimental gesture. He doesn’t sail. He trailered it to his place, put it in his side yard, worked on it until it looked new, then stowed the running gear and staked a tarp over the twin hulls.

We would be sitting around, and there would be a special silence. We thought of Miranda, and missed her, and Dan would plod back and forth in his private agony. On a warm Saturday afternoon in October, out by the pool at our scruffy and unfashionable little boat club, Dan stopped pacing and looked at us and said, “He knocked her on the head and deepsixed her. Right?”

“Please,” Midge said. “Please, Dan.”

Everybody but Dan, I guess, was aware of that other irony — of how Midge, in her loveliness, had fought the way her heart was focusing upon Dan since Miranda’s death, fought it, then gave in. and now waited for Dan to look around and see her.

“So maybe we can see if his heart is real good.” He turned to Timmy Dee, our electronics bug.

“That song of Miranda’s,” Dan said. “Did you erase that tape?”

After thinking a moment, Timmy said, “Still got it.”

“Is it any good?”

Timmy puffed up with indignation. “Twenty cycles to twenty thousand, chum.”

“I don’t like this,” Midge said.

“You’re about her size,” Dan said to her. “Can you dig up a wig the color her hair was?”

“Yes, but...”

Once we understood what he had in mind, once skepticism was over and we saw how it might hit Fletcher Hopper, we all went to work on it. Timmy’s job was the most difficult. We added refinements, added more after that dress rehearsal which chilled my blood.

Then we had to wait for exactly the right moment, begging the fates to give us the chance before Hopper could unload the property and take off. It had to be late, it had to be moonlight, and it had to be a night without a breath of wind.

Dan Cheney found a friend who could impersonate a rich, busy boat buyer. We got the weather we wanted, finally. I located Hopper at the country club at midnight. He was playing bridge. He was unpleasant about being interrupted until I explained I had a hot prospect for the Quest, and my man had to fly out before dawn and would be gone for a month. Then with a slightly oily cordiality, Fletcher said, “Be right with you, Frank, old boy. Meet you at the house in fifteen minutes. Righto.”

We arrived a few minutes after he did. He pumped the hand of the fake buyer, Mr. Thomason, and told him what a great boat the Quest was. We went down to the dock to look her over. It was a cool night. No wind. The water was like black glass, the moon was fat and high.

First, of course, we heard Miranda’s voice. Her song. A nutty little song she had learned in school. She sang it in French. It was a simple, cheerful little melody, except that at the end of each verse it dipped into a minor key, just a little bit sad and mocking. Timmy had taped it. Her husky voice, her little song, and the stillness of the moonlight as the song came closer. Timmy had rigged a high-fidelity tape deck, a transistorized amplifier, a small speaker of superb quality, and a converter to change the current from the 12-volt batteries to alternating current.

Hopper had been saying, “No maintenance problem on this boat, Mr. Thomason, she...”

He was on the dock. He froze, completely still, head cocked, listening. And then the Tabby came ghosting along. Vic had come up with the idea about rigging the little electric outboard motor to the same batteries. In an eerie silence she came spooking along, her song innocent and sad.

“About the maintenance, Mr. Hopper. You were saying?”

She passed the dock about 25 feet out, heading out the Pass. I could see the girl at the tiller, sitting just as Miranda always sat, her silhouette under the tall sail quite recognizable.

“Mr. Thomason wants to know about maintenance,” I prompted. He didn’t seem to hear.

The catamaran went by, following the curve of the channel. Hopper groaned and went scrambling aboard the cruiser, fumbled around in a stowage box, came back with a strong flashlight. He put the beam on the girl, now a hundred feet away, receding, the voice becoming less audible. She did not turn around. Midge had worked hard to attain the tan Miranda had. She wore the same style yellow suit Miranda had worn. The wig was coiffed to Miranda’s careless style.

The song ended. On the actual tape Miranda had laughed once. Timmy had retaped the laugh a half dozen times, spliced the segments together. So she went off out of the path of moonlight into darkness, laughing.

We asked Fletch what was wrong.

“Wrong?” His voice was pulled so taut it sounded as if it hurt his throat. “Wrong! That song! That sailboat that just went by!”

“Song?” I asked. “What song?”

“Sailboat?” Thomason said. “Don't be an idiot. Any sailboat would lie dead tonight, or have to use the auxiliary.”

He dropped the flashlight. It was a good light. I could see it down there on the bottom, still burning. He ran for the house, grunting as he ran, as if he was expending more than the physical effort of running. The door banged. No lights in the house went on. So we drove away.

We still miss Miranda, but it isn’t as sharp as it used to be. And the only time Dan gets up to walk when the silence happens is when he is too far from Midge to reach her hand, to hold it tightly, to assure himself that she is nearby.

The people who bought the Groley place seem pleasant. I’m going to sell them a boat one of these days. They paid a stiff price for the house. I guess it isn’t like the old days, in small towns, when you could get a real bargain if you were willing to live in a house where someone had hung himself.