The Murder of Miranda

Part V

Iris’s sitting room was officially sealed off and both the damaged wall and the door were boarded up to prevent further collapse.

Police poked around in the rubble, carrying away boxes of ashes and shattered glass, burned sections of tables and window frames and splinters of lamps, the disemboweled chair where Iris normally sat, her record albums melted now into masses of black glue, the charred remnant of the cane she always used, her mutilated chess pieces blown around the room like men in war.

The people living in the house were questioned and requestioned, separately and together, and bit by bit the circumstances of Iris’s final hours emerged. During the afternoon she listened to a new album of Tosca while paying some bills and balancing her checkbook. She did some typing. She finished a mystery story she’d been reading. She executed her next moves in the chess game she was playing by mail with the professor in Tokyo and the medical missionary in Jakarta and gave both letters to Miranda to mail.

In the evening she was alone in the house. At her urging the Admiral took the girls to the fireworks display at the club. The housekeeper, Mrs. Norgate, went to babysit her infant grandson. And Miranda was out walking the dog, who had suffered a digestive upset after eating a chocolate éclair.

It was a warm night, but Iris’s poor circulation made her susceptible to cold and even in summer she frequently used the gas log in her sitting room downstairs. Miranda offered to light it for her before she left the house. Iris refused. She was in a bad mood as well as in pain. She had appeared at dinner only long enough to complain that the vegetables were overcooked, the beef roast tough and the candles gave her a migraine.

Miranda took the dog to Featherstone Park, half a mile down the hill toward the sea. He seemed to feel better out in the open air, so they stayed for quite a while, the dog lying beside her while she sat on a bench listening to the night explode around her. When she returned to the house the driveway was blocked by police cars and fire engines and a small crowd of curiosity seekers being held back by men in uniform.

“What’s happened? Let me past. I live here. Mrs. Young... I’ve got to see if Mrs. Young is all right.”

As in all cases of violent death under unusual circumstances, an autopsy was performed. Though the body was severely burned, enough blood and tissue samples were recovered to confirm that the actual cause of death was smoke inhalation. The evidence indicated that while Iris was attempting to light the gas log she’d lost her balance and fallen. A frontal head injury rendered her unconscious and unable to escape the subsequent explosion and fire.

When the body was finally released for burial a memorial service was held in the chapel of the mortuary. The Admiral kept his head bowed throughout the proceedings. Charles Van Eyck, lulled by the minister’s voice and three double martinis, drifted into sleep. Now and then Miranda dabbed at her eyes with a lace handkerchief very carefully to avoid smudging her mascara. The girls kept staring at the closed coffin as though they half expected it might open and out would pop Iris, having decided she didn’t like being dead.

Cordelia was openly critical of the nature and length of the service. “It’s so silly, the minister yapping away about God and heaven when Mrs. Young didn’t believe a word of that stuff.”

“It’s better to be on the safe side,” Juliet said. “Just in case.”

“In case what?”

“In case it’s all true. Besides, it’s not hurting anyone.”

“It’s hurting me. I’m hungry.”

“Shut up. I want to hear about heaven.”

Even after Iris’s burial the damaged door of her sitting room remained boarded up and no workmen were allowed in to start cleaning up and rebuilding. A guard was kept in the hall to enforce the rule.

The girls, perturbed not so much by the death of their mother as by the disruption of their normal routine, hung around the hall trying to get answers and assurances, especially from the day guard, a red-haired young man named Grella.

“We thought the investigation was over and done with,” Cordelia said. “Why are you still here?”

“Orders.”

“That’s not a real answer.”

“Best I can do,” Grella said. “The fact is, the reports haven’t come back from Sacramento yet, and until then—”

“Why Sacramento?”

“That’s where the crime lab is.”

“What do they do there?”

“Analyze evidence to try and find out exactly what happened.”

“It’s perfectly clear what happened. Mrs. Young fell while she was lighting the gas log and hit her head. I’m not a bit surprised. She was always bumping into things and getting mad about it and cussing to beat hell.”

“We’re Navy, you know,” Juliet explained, “we learned all the cuss words years ago. But we’re not allowed to use them except in the privacy of our own rooms, like chewing gum. You’re chewing gum right now, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, I guess I am.”

“Are you allowed?”

“I think so. I never asked.”

“You’d better ask.”

“Let’s stick to the subject,” Cordelia said sharply. “Why is the lab in Sacramento taking such a long time?”

“They’re busy. They test evidence sent to them from every place in California.”

“That’s just physical evidence. Somebody should test the other more important kind of evidence, like what such and such a person said to so-and-so. We know plenty of that stuff.”

“No kidding.”

“Only nobody will listen.”

“I’ll listen,” Grella said. He didn’t have much else to do anyway except, as Juliet had observed, chew gum.

The girls conferred in whispers behind cupped hands, Juliet frowning and looking worried. She would rather have limited the conversation to nice friendly things like gum and the weather and the Navy, which wouldn’t offend anyone, with the possible exception of Uncle Charles, who didn’t care very much for the Navy. But Cordelia wasn’t passing up her chance at an audience.

“Well, first of all,” she said, “Mrs. Young had a terrible temper. And every year it got worse. When she went on a rampage she yelled and screamed and threw things. One day she even hit Miranda on the arm with her cane and Pops had to raise Miranda’s salary two hundred dollars a month so she wouldn’t quit.”

“No kidding,” Grella said. “Who’s Miranda?”

“Oh, you’ve seen her floating and fluttering around the house. Mrs. Shaw. She’s supposed to be teaching us etiquette, which is really dumb because we never go any place we can use it.”

“What happened after she got the two-hundred-a-month raise?”

“She stayed. And she used the extra money to buy him presents.”

“Mrs. Shaw bought your father presents?”

“Yes.”

“Like what?”

“We don’t know.”

“You didn’t see them?”

“No. But we heard him thank her for them. It was one night after Uncle Charles had been here for dinner. Miranda and Pops were standing right in this very hall.”

“And where were you?”

Cordelia indicated the railing at the top of the stairs. “Up there. It’s our favorite place for finding out what’s going on when nobody will tell us.”

“So what went on?”

“It was a kind of a mushy scene, with her playing the little woman and him apologizing for the way Mrs. Young treated her and saying don’t cry, please don’t cry. Sickening. Nobody ever asks me not to cry, let alone tacking a please onto it.”

“Then what?”

“He thanked her for the presents, said he was very happy with them.”

“Your father and Mrs. Shaw, were they chummy? That is, did they...?”

“We think so,” Juliet said a little sadly. “Probably in the back seat of the Rolls-Royce.”

Blushing, Grella looked down at his feet, which were still there, and then at the door of Iris’s sitting room, which wasn’t. “Did you witness this... ah, this—”

“Hanky-panky,” Cordelia said. “That’s what we call it. Everyone knows what we’re talking about but it’s not vulgar. No, we didn’t actually witness it. There were signs though, plenty of them, smiles and stares, touchings that might have looked accidental but weren’t.”

“Did your mother suspect what was going on?”

“Maybe. She couldn’t hear very well but she had eyes like a hawk. Of course, we didn’t say a word to her about it. She’d have gotten mad at us.”

“Why?”

“Everyone does.”

“This is a very interesting development,” Grella said. “I’m not sure what I ought to do about it.”

“You ought to tell that lab up in Sacramento there are lots of things they won’t find out in test tubes.”

Grella didn’t tell the lab but he told his sergeant and the sergeant told his lieutenant. There was general agreement that the hanky-panky in the Rolls-Royce put a different light on the case.

On a morning in mid-July, Aragon was summoned to Smedler’s office.

Charity was waiting for him when he stepped out of Smedler’s private elevator. She had just finished misting her plants and the room was as hot and wet as an equatorial jungle. Beads of moisture clung to her red wig, which was draped over a life-sized bust of President Kennedy.

Charity saw him staring at it. “A work of art, isn’t it? I got it at a swap meet over the weekend in exchange for my old muskrat jacket. I was passionately in love with Jack Kennedy, still am after all these years.”

“It might cool your ardor if you turned on the air conditioning.”

“My plants wouldn’t like it.”

“Don’t tell them.”

She wiped some of the moisture off the wig with a piece of Kleenex. “Better not come on funny today, junior. Boss man had another bash with his wife and now he’s feeling guilty because he won. Guilt always gives him a migraine.”

“What’s he want from me?”

“How should I know? Maybe he wants to give you something.”

“Like what?”

“His migraine.”

Smedler was sitting behind his desk reading the morning mail. The bash with his wife had resulted in no visible scars, but even now his face was flushed and his hands had a very slight tremor.

He wasted only two words — “Sit down” — before coming to the point. “I saw in the newspaper a couple of weeks ago that Admiral Young’s wife was killed in a fire. Know anything about it?”

“Only what I read in the newspaper account.”

“Sketchy. Very sketchy. Makes me wonder... You aren’t privy to any off-the-record stuff, are you?”

“No.”

Smedler rubbed the left side of his neck and the area behind his left ear, which was a deeper color than the other ear. “I’ve played golf with the Admiral a couple of times. Nice quiet chap, hardly the type you’d suspect of fooling around.”

“Who suspects him of fooling around?”

“My wife heard it on the grapevine at the country club. The rumor is that Miranda Shaw has been working at the Admiral’s house in some capacity, and one capacity led to another capacity. I’ve instructed my wife not to repeat a story like that unless she’s sure of the facts. It would be damned embarrassing for a man in my position to be sued for slander. Women don’t realize the possible consequences of this gossip. Of course, it may not be gossip. Give me your personal opinion, Aragon. Does a relationship between the two of them seem feasible, considering his age, et cetera, et cetera?”

“The feasibility of a relationship depends on the number of et ceteras.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, don’t talk like a lawyer. Are they sleeping together?”

“I don’t know.”

“Find out.”

“How?”

“Miranda’s a friend of yours.”

“I spent a day and a half with her,” Aragon said. “Most of the time I was driving and she was unconscious. That hardly adds up to a friendship.”

“It’s possible.”

“It didn’t happen. What’s more, I don’t consider it part of my job to pry into the love affairs of admirals.”

“It’s one admiral, not the whole U.S. Navy, and one love affair, not a history of Hollywood. All I’m asking is that you and Miranda should have a nice cozy talk over a couple of drinks. If she indicates no personal interest in the Admiral, I’ll muzzle my wife and that’ll be the end of that... It’s funny she was left alone in the house that night.”

“Who?”

“Iris Young. As I understand it she was crippled. A wealthy woman like that would surely have someone around to look after her or at least to keep her company.”

“She had Miranda.”

“Yes,” Smedler said dryly. “She had Miranda.”

The death of Iris had dealt a fatal blow to Charles Van Eyck’s social life. Her house was the last place in town where he was more or less welcome for dinner, and in spite of the mediocrity of the food, drink and conversation, he missed the invitations. To his surprise he also missed Iris. She’d been his last surviving relative — if he didn’t count the girls, and he didn’t — and he felt quite depressed at the idea of being the final Van Eyck, with nothing to leave behind as a memorial except his correspondence. Since most of this was unsigned, it didn’t constitute much of a memorial.

Iris had found out about the anonymous letters when he made the mistake of writing one to her about Miranda, and the even worse mistake of not checking the spelling of the word Jezebel. She wasn’t taken in by his denials. “People who live in glass houses,” Iris had said, “should learn to spell. I can only guess you’ve been scattering these around the landscape like confetti. Do try not to get caught, Charles. It would embarrass the family.”

He had not been caught. Concerned Citizen, One Who Knows, a Word to the Wise, Irate Taxpayer, Member of Loyal Opposition, Awake and Aware, Cassandra and Pentagon Pauper continued their correspondence.

It was a warm sunny afternoon. At the club Van Eyck sat in a deck chair under the twisted old cypress tree. He wore his writing costume: flowered Hawaiian shirt, walking shorts, a tennis visor and bifocals. He had a new refill in his pen and plenty of paper, which he’d snatched from the office while Ellen was on a coffee break. The tide was high but the waves gentle, so there was minimal noise to distract him. Still he was distracted. The pain in his left hip worried him. He thought of a mare he’d ridden as a child which had to be shot when she broke her leg. He wondered where he was going to spend Christmas Day now that Iris was dead. Finally he dozed off for an hour or so, and when he woke up he felt refreshed and the mare and the hip pain and Christmas were going out with the tide. Charles Van Eyck went with them and Seeker of Truth got down to business.

As a precaution Seeker inked out the club name and address at the top of the page and the left-hand corner of the envelope. Truth didn’t necessarily mean the Whole Truth.

Switching identities, Fair Play wrote a short note to the Admiral advising him to reject further pension payments now that he was a wealthy man, and to consider reimbursing the taxpayers for previous payments.

He lay back in the chair and closed his eyes. Righteousness flowed through his system like a spring tonic. The pain in his hip had disappeared, the broken-legged mare had been old anyway, and he would go to Waikiki for Christmas and eat poi and drink mai tais.

When Aragon phoned the Admiral’s house a woman with an English accent told him Mrs. Shaw had taken the girls to the Penguin Club for lunch and a swim and would probably be gone all day. He called the club and talked to Ellen.

“She’s here,” Ellen said. “She’s been showing up with the girls every day lately. The Ingersolls are letting her use their cabana while they’re in South America and she just sits in it by herself.”

“Why?”

“She wants to avoid people. Most people.”

“Who’s the exception?”

“Grady. He came back to work about a month ago.”

“You don’t sound very happy about it. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“Not like this.” There was a short silence. “She’s still crazy about him, sick-crazy. She sits up in that cabana posing and preening and staring down at him. He can’t stand to look at her and she never takes her eyes off him.”

“I heard it different. The rumors going the rounds of the country club are about her and the Admiral. What do you think of that?”

“Nothing. He’s an old man.”

“A rich old man.”

“Forget it. I see her every day and I’m telling you the way she watches Grady is— How rich?”

“A whole bunch rich, you should know that.”

“I knew his wife was rich, which isn’t necessarily the same thing.”

“There’s no reason to believe he won’t inherit a large part of her estate.”

“But suppose— Oh, never mind. It was just a thought. I have to hang up now anyway. Henderson has an errand for me in town.”

“I’d like to come down and talk to Miranda. Is that okay?”

“With me it is. With her maybe not.”

“I can try.”

“Try ahead,” Ellen said. “If I’m not here, go right on up to cabana number twenty-one.”

He left his car in the club parking lot. As he was walking across the street to the front door he saw Grady about fifty yards away heading for the employees’ entrance at the back. Aragon waved at him but got no response. Either Grady didn’t recognize him or didn’t want to.

A wide thickly carpeted staircase led to the row of cabanas on the second floor. The impression of opulence ended abruptly at the top. The corridor was a kind of long dark tunnel dimly lit at each end by a sixty-watt bulb suspended from the ceiling. The brown wooden floor was strewn with swimmers’ towels like mounds of dirty snow on a mud road.

He knocked on the door of 21 and Miranda’s voice responded immediately.

“Who’s there?”

“Tom Aragon.”

“Aragon?” She opened the door. “My goodness, this is a surprise.”

She sounded as though it was a pleasant one. Too pleasant. It made him vaguely uncomfortable.

She wore a pink and yellow silk caftan and her long hair hung loose over her shoulders. It was a couple of shades lighter than when he’d last seen her on the street with the two girls in April. Her hair wasn’t the only change. In April she’d been a little depressed, resigned to her fate and not expecting any change for the better. Now she seemed in high spirits. Her eyes sparkled and she had an almost feverish color in her cheeks.

“Come in, Mr. Aragon, come in.”

“Thank you.”

“How did you find me? Oh — Ellen, of course. Dear little Ellen, she knows everybody’s secrets, doesn’t she?”

He considered the reference to Ellen inaccurate on all counts but he didn’t challenge it.

The cabana was a small three-sided room furnished with webbed plastic chairs and chaise and a glass-topped table. The fourth side had a half-railing which showed the pool below, and beyond it the sea, and twenty miles to the southwest the hazy blue offshore island, a piece of mountain caught and held. Between the island and the shore were the oil platforms like isolated steel prisons built for incorrigibles.

After a few amenities — she was fine, he was fine, the weather was fine — she changed the subject abruptly.

“Grady’s back,” she said. “Did you know that?”

“I had a glimpse of him outside.”

“Doesn’t he look beautiful?”

“I... well, he was pretty far away. I’ll take your word for it.”

“You’re probably laughing at me because men aren’t supposed to be described as beautiful. Only what if they are! You might as well admit the truth.”

“All right, I admit the truth,” Aragon said. “Grady is a beautiful man.”

She smiled. “That’s better. He really is, believe me. You didn’t see him at his best when you came down to Pasoloma with those papers for me to sign. He was in shock.”

“I can understand why. Has he gotten over it?”

“Of course. He needed a little time to think, that’s all. The instant we met again when he came back here to work I knew nothing had changed between us, that we were as much in love as ever. Naturally, he can’t be obvious about it, but I catch him watching me out of the corner of his eye. It’s so cute... Glance over the railing and see if he’s down there now on the lifeguard tower.”

“Yes.”

“Is he staring up here?”

“No.”

“He’s very good at pretending to ignore me.”

“Is that how you want it?”

“Of course it is. We can’t afford to be seen together just yet. The police are everywhere. Fortunately Grady understands, he’s being extremely tactful about the situation. He disappears the minute I enter the club and stays out of sight until I’m settled up here in the cabana. But it will be nice when we can act natural again.”

“You claim the police are everywhere,” Aragon said. “What are they doing?”

“Asking questions about Iris Young, every conceivable sort of question. And I’m sure they’re getting every conceivable sort of answer, especially from the girls. Juliet and Cordelia are like children, they’ll say anything to draw attention to themselves. I expect some of their statements will be critical of me. They’ve never liked me, they’re not used to anyone giving them orders or even advice, but that’s what I’m paid to do and I do it.”

“According to the newspaper report, Iris Young was alone in the house the night she died.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“She wanted to be.”

“I understand she was crippled.”

“She wasn’t helpless. She could walk with the aid of a cane, and God knows she could talk, or rather scream. When she got mad you could hear her for miles. Believe me, whatever happened in the house happened because she wanted it to, whether it was being left alone or being waited on hand and foot.”

“What was her state of mind that night?”

“The same as it always was — selfish, mean, arrogant.”

He hoped, for her sake, that this wasn’t an example of her conversations with the police. “Did she seem depressed?”

“Why should she be depressed, with all that money and power? I’m the one who should be depressed.”

“And are you?”

She gazed at him somberly for a minute, then one corner of her mouth twitched in a demure smile. “What do you think? How do I look?”

“You look very pretty.” And a little wacky.

“I’m deliriously happy, if you want the truth. Everything’s working out the way I planned. May I tell you something in confidence?”

“Yes, but I’d prefer—”

“Absolute confidence, like between lawyer and client, I forget the legal term for it.”

“Privileged information.”

“Let’s call this privileged information.”

She was smiling fully now, as if something was turning out to be a great joke. He hoped he wasn’t it.

“I’d ask you to cross your heart,” she said, “except I’ve always been told lawyers don’t have one.”

“I hear beating inside my chest. Maybe I’m an exception.”

“Then cross your heart.”

He did. Miranda liked games and he didn’t mind as long as they were as innocent as this one.

It didn’t remain innocent very long. She said, “I’m going to be married within two or three months. Surprised?”

“Yes. I didn’t peg Grady as the marrying type.”

“I’m not marrying Grady, I’m marrying Cooper.”

“Cooper?”

“The Admiral. I expect him to set the date when this business about his wife is all settled. Oh, it will be nice having money again, being able to afford things. “Things like what?”

“Like Grady.”

He knew then why she looked a little wacky. She was.

He said, “You can’t buy people, Mrs. Shaw.”

“Most people you can’t, some you can. Grady’s one of the some. Of course, it will take a lot of money and I could never manage it on my own. Cooper is going to help me.”

“Is he aware of this?”

“No.”

“Is Grady?”

“No. Just you and I. And you can’t tell because it’s privileged information and you crossed your heart.”

Behind the boiler room, which contained the heating and filtering tanks for the pool, there was a small tool shed with a padlock on the door. The lock had been broken so often that no one bothered replacing it anymore and employees had access to the shed for whatever purpose they had in mind. Grady’s purpose was lunch. He’d purchased it at a taco stand a couple of blocks up the street, and he sat now on a wooden chest among the rakes and shovels and hedge clippers, the ants and pill bugs, the lengths of piping and coils of rope.

The shed smelled of paint thinner and fertilizer and the cooking fumes from the snack-bar grill, but it was peaceful and quiet except for the sound of the waves. Grady liked to listen to them, trying to estimate their size and shape and whether the tide was coming in or going out. Usually he checked his tide book as soon as he reported to work and then chalked the numbers up on the blackboard beside the pool. High 10:25 p.m. 5.7 Low 5:41 p.m. - 0.5. He hadn’t done this yet today because he’d seen Miranda arriving with the girls and he wanted to stay out of sight until she went up to the cabana. Avoiding Miranda was easy. Avoiding certain other people wasn’t.

“So there you are,” little Frederic said. He carried a skateboard and was wearing protective equipment — knee and elbow pads and a red plastic helmet. In spite of these precautions he was plastered with an assortment of grimy bandages on his hands, nose and legs. “I’ve been looking all over the place for you.”

“Now you found me,” Grady said. “Bug off.”

“What are you hiding in here for?”

“Who says I’m hiding?”

Frederic fitted his skinny little rump snugly into the center of a coil of rope. Then he removed his lunch, a package of bologna, from underneath his helmet. “What’s it worth to you if I don’t tell?”

“Nothing.”

“Take your time. Think it over.”

“There’s no one to tell.”

“Sure there is. You don’t happen to have a dill pickle on you, do you? There’s this kid at school who wraps a piece of bologna around a dill pickle and he calls it—”

“I don’t give a goddamn if he calls it mother. Who is there to tell?”

“The chick you went to Mexico with.” Since no dill pickle was available, Frederic didn’t bother separating the slices of bologna. He took a bite out of all eight at once. “She’s always asking people where you are — the porters, Henderson, Ellen, even me. How come you don’t want her to find you?”

“Listen, Frederic. Let’s talk this over man to man.”

“Hell no. That palsy-walsy stuff just means you’re not going to pay me.”

“I can’t, I don’t have the money. Anyway, you’re my friend. Aren’t you?”

“What gives you a dumb idea like that? I don’t have friends. I get shut up in some crazy school that teaches Greek — and who rescues me? Nobody. And where am I going to spend the rest of the summer? A prison camp in the boonies, only they call it an outdoor learning experience in the Sierra wilderness.”

“Stop it, kid. I cry easy.”

“You might.”

“What does that mean?”

Frederic ate the last chunk of bologna, then he tucked the empty container under one of his knee pads beside a gum wrapper and a soggy piece of Kleenex. He disapproved of littering. “You want to know what she’s doing up in the cabana right this minute? Wow, you’ll throw a fit when I tell you.”

“Try me.”

“She’s talking to her lawyer. His name’s Aragon. The reason I’m sure is he’s my lawyer, too. Him and me, we’re going to sue people together when I grow up, maybe sooner. I’m keeping a list.”

Grady didn’t throw a fit but he drew in a quick breath and held it as though he’d been knocked over by a wave he didn’t see coming. “What are they talking about?”

“Search me.”

“I’m searching you.”

“I don’t know what they’re talking about, man. I stood in the hall and listened but I couldn’t hear a thing.”

“Suppose you got in the cabana next door,” Grady said. “You might be able to hear something from there.”

“Might. How do I get in?”

“Ellen has a set of master keys.”

“She wouldn’t give them to me for a million dollars.”

“She might give them to me.”

Frederic’s eyes widened. “Oh, now you’re going to turn on the old macho, right? Can I come along and watch?”

“No.”

“I haven’t seen you in action since—”

“No. Stay here and I’ll be back soon.”

“If you change your mind, send me some kind of signal, like whistling three times.”

“Sure, kid. Sure.”

After Grady’s departure Frederic amused himself by catching a spider that had spun a web between two of the crooked rust-stained teeth of a rake. For a while he had hopes that it was a black widow and he could train it to bite people to death, a reasonable alternative to suing them, but the creature didn’t have the black widow’s distinguishing red hourglass on its abdomen. Nor did it seem to want to bite anything, not the ant Frederic offered it, or the scab from his thumb, or a shred of the bandage dangling from his left wrist. He replaced the spider in the teeth of the rake.

During these maneuvers he kept listening hard, but nobody whistled three times or even once and Grady was still missing. Frederic waited another five minutes, then he picked up his skateboard and went back into the boiler room. He kicked a couple of pipes and tried to turn a wheel marked Do Not Touch and to remove a High Voltage sign from the fuse box. But everything was sealed, padlocked, clamped, welded.

Through the kitchen (Private, Keep Out) he left the club by the rear door (Employees Only), where he had a view of the parking lot. Grady and Aragon were standing beside Aragon’s old Chevy, right in the very center of the lot without any trees or shrubbery around to provide coverage. There was no possible way of approaching them without being seen. They were out of reach, twenty years and a thousand miles away, and he could never catch up with them.

He had made a secret pact with his best friend, Henry, not to cry under any circumstances. But Henry was in Philadelphia visiting his parents and Frederic was here and now, hurting inside and outside.

Tears rolled down his cheeks like leaden bubbles.

“You got it all wrong,” Grady said. He had pulled a pair of jeans on over his trunks because it was against the rules for any employee to enter or leave the club wearing only swimming attire. Aragon noticed that the jeans were too tight around the waist — Grady was eating regularly again.

“I swear to God, Aragon, I haven’t even spoken to her since I came back.”

“Why not?”

“I tried to, I wanted to be friendly, but she avoided me. I thought she was sore at me and I didn’t blame her. I just felt grateful she hadn’t put the cops on me about the Porsche. So while she was avoiding me I was avoiding her and it was working out fine. Then suddenly zap, I get this letter.”

He handed Aragon a piece of pale blue paper that had obviously been unfolded and refolded a number of times. It was soiled at the crease lines and damp from moisture seeping from his swim trunks into the pockets of his jeans but the ink hadn’t smudged. The writing, neat boarding- school backhand, was embellished with a few touches of Miranda’s own, extra-large capitals and circles over the i’s instead of dots.

“I couldn’t believe it at first,” Grady said. “I thought she was putting me on. But she’s not the type, she’s deadly serious about everything.” He read the note again before he replaced it in his pocket. “That’s a lot of crap how all we can think about is lying in each other’s arms. Jeez, I never even thought about it when I was doing it, and that was a year ago.”

“Eight months.”

“Close enough. I don’t sit around staring at calendars.”

“In the note she refers to plans,” Aragon said. “What plans?”

“You’re the one who talked to her, not me. I told you before, I haven’t even spoken to her since I got back. Now suddenly she’s writing stuff about lying in each other’s arms. For all I know, she’s got a church and preacher lined up. I feel trapped, man. Trapped.” He thumped the hood of the car with his fist. It left an imprint in the dust like an animal track.

“Why did you come back here, Grady?”

“I needed the job and the surfing’s good. I never dreamed Miranda would be waiting for me with a bunch of crazy ideas. Maybe I should run away. What do you think?”

“You’re pretty good at it,” Aragon said. “Maybe you should.”

“I mean it. She might be really far out. She might try something wild, like taking a shot at me or sticking a knife in my back, especially if she finds out I’m interested in someone else.”

“Are you?”

“Sort of.”

“Explain ‘sort of.’”

“Well, Ellen and me, we got something going. She’s a nice girl with class and a steady job. It might work out okay. I could do worse.”

“Could she?”

Grady thumped the hood of the car again but there was no force behind it. It was like a gesture he’d seen done in a movie by someone he identified with. “Stop coming down hard on me because of that business in Mexico. It wasn’t my fault. None of it was my idea in the first place, not her and me, not the trip, not even the Porsche, which never did me any good anyway. You know what happened to it?”

“You sold it and lost the money in a crap game.”

“I parked it in a garage in Phoenix and it got ripped off,” Grady said. “How’s that for a laugh?”

“Fair.”

“You still think I’m a louse, huh?”

“Close enough. I don’t sit around staring at dictionaries.”

“Well, I’m not so crazy about you either, you self-righteous bastard. You probably never had to do a day’s work in your life, everything handed to you on a platter, college, law school, the whole bit. Me, I ran away from home when I was thirteen, they were going to kick me out anyway. Want to know why? I stole a car. How’s that for laugh #2?”

“About as funny as laugh number one.”

“It was my uncle’s car and I didn’t mean to steal it, I only wanted to go for a ride. But once I started driving I couldn’t stop. I kept right on going until the gas tank was empty. I ended up near a ball park in Visalia. I watched the game for a while, then I hitchhiked home and got the hell beat out of me. I left again the next day, this time with the money my aunt kept hidden under her mattress... So there you have it, the story of my life, chapter one.”

“The lady, the mattress, the money,” Aragon said. “You started early and learned fast.”

“I found out where it’s at and how to get there. Sure. Why not?”

“Is the word out about you and Ellen?”

“We haven’t done any advertising, but I guess Mr. Henderson has caught on and some of Ellen’s neighbors in the apartment building, people like that. Ellen’s got a lot of friends, and friends talk.”

“Are you living in her apartment?”

“Not technically, no. I rent a room on Quinientos Street.”

“Does Miranda know about it?”

“I don’t see how, unless she followed me home from work one night, and she wouldn’t do that. She’s always got those two crazies with her. They tag along after her like she’s their mother.”

“Or stepmother.”

From Grady’s lack of reaction to the word, Aragon was certain that he wasn’t aware of Miranda’s plans for his future and her own, via the Admiral.

“What do you think I should do?” Grady said.

“What do you want to do?”

“Sit tight, keep things alive with Ellen, pretend I never got the letter.”

“When did you get it?”

“Three days ago. It was slipped under the door of the guard shack with my name on the envelope.”

“So you can’t very well pretend you didn’t get it.”

“I guess not.”

“Have you showed it to Ellen?”

“No.”

“Do you intend to?”

“No. It’s strictly between Miranda and me, or rather between Miranda and Miranda. I can’t be held responsible for what’s cooking inside her head.”

Frederic slalomed across the parking lot on his skateboard between parked cars and lampposts and concrete markers. When he reached Aragon’s Chevy he came to a stop by jumping off the skateboard. The board kept right on going, under a BMW and a Lincoln and ending up against the front tire of a Ford van. Frederic retrieved it, spun the wheels to make sure they weren’t damaged and approached the two men. His recent tears had cleared little paths through the dirt on his cheeks.

“Bug off,” Grady said.

Frederic shook his head. “Can’t.”

“Try.”

“Can’t. Your girlfriend sent me here on an errand.”

“What girlfriend?”

“Don’t rush me, man.” Frederic took off his plastic helmet, releasing a squashed yogurt carton and two sticks of gum now soft as putty and molded to the shape of his head. He looked up at Grady, red-eyed and reproachful. “I waited a long time in that stinky shed for you to come back with the keys.”

“The situation changed,” Grady said.

“You never meant to come back.”

“Sure I did.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Have it your way. What’s the errand and who sent you?”

“Maybe I won’t tell you.”

Grady put his hands on the boy’s shoulders and squeezed. “Then again, maybe you will, right?”

“Sure. Right. Lay off the rough stuff. I was only kidding. Can’t you take a joke? Ellen sent me to tell Mr. Aragon to come back to the club and call his office. A lady wants to talk to him.”

“Thanks, Frederic,” Aragon said.

“You don’t have to thank me,” Frederic said. “A small tip will be enough.”

“I’ve only got two dimes. You can have one.”

“One skinny little dime. There ought to be a minimum-tip law like the minimum-wage law. Say, how’s that for a new political idea?”

“Great. In another twelve years you can run for Congress.” It was a sobering thought.

Aragon used the other dime on the public telephone in the corridor. Only one lady was likely to know where he was, and the switchboard transferred the call to her office.

“Miss Nelson? It’s me.”

“Who’s me?”

“Tom.”

“Tom who?”

“Aragon.”

Charity tapped the phone sharply with a pencil by way of reprimand. “I’m beginning to wonder if you’ll ever make the big time in this business, junior. An attorney headed for the larger life doesn’t say it’s me. He says this is Tomás Aragon of Smedler, Downs, Castleberg, McFee and Powell.”

“You already know that.”

“It won’t kill you to practice a little.”

“All right. This is Tomás Aragon of Smedler, Downs, Castleberg, McFee and Powell. So what’s new?”

“Plenty. Smedler just came from the courthouse and the whole place was buzzing with rumors. The report on Iris Young’s death arrived from the crime lab last night by special messenger and the word is she was murdered.”

“Whose word?”

“There’s an old babe in the D.A.’s office who has a crush on Smedler — he’s fairly attractive if you squint a little and the light’s not too good — and she’s always getting him in a corner and feeding him goodies to arouse his interest. Verbal goodies, I mean. He’s on a diet. Anyway, she told him that the D.A.’s in seventh heaven.”

“What does it take to put a D.A. in seventh heaven, or even fifth or sixth?”

“Evidence for a case that will make him look good to the voters in the next election,” Charity said. “You saw Iris Young once, didn’t you?”

“Briefly.”

“Was she using a cane?”

“Yes. It was burned in the fire.”

“Wrong. There was a lot of intricate metalwork on the head of it which didn’t burn. Where the metal joined the wood some blood seeped into the cracks. It matched the blood taken from Mrs. Young’s body, but there was a difference in the two samples that’s supposed to be very significant.”

“In what way?”

“Smedler’s snitch didn’t know.”

“Why are you telling me all this, Miss Nelson?”

“Smedler asked me to clue you in. He thought maybe you could find out more by sort of hanging around the sheriff’s department.”

“If I sort of hang around the sheriff’s department, somebody’s going to sort of wonder why.”

“Tell them you work for Smedler, Downs, Castleberg, McFee and Powell. After all, Miranda Shaw is one of our clients, or used to be, and she was living in the Youngs’ house when the murder occurred and we have a right to — Oh my God, you don’t suppose she’s actually involved. Yes, you do. I can tell by your silence.”

“I—”

“And so does Smedler. And that’s why he’s so curious about the report from the crime lab. Well, if he really wants to find things out, I wish he’d pick somebody more competent than you.”

“So do I,” Aragon said and hung up.

Ellen Brewster was standing outside the door of her office waiting for him. She wore a short sleeveless white dress which showed off her newly acquired tan but made her look as if she was trying too hard to be like one of the teenagers herded in flocks on the beach and in the snack bar and around the lifeguard towers.

Her voice was strained. “Do you have time to come in for a minute, Mr. Aragon?”

“I think so.”

He went in and she closed the door behind him. The room was still noisy. There was shouting and laughing from the pool area, and outside by the roadway some men were pruning a eucalyptus tree with a power saw.

She said, “Did you talk to Miranda?”

“Yes.”

“It wouldn’t be fair for me to ask what she told you, would it?”

“No.”

“I can’t help it, I have to ask one question anyway. Does she know that Grady and I — that we—”

“No.”

“I was pretty sure she didn’t but I had to be positive.”

“Why?”

“I guess I’m afraid of her.”

“She’s not exactly formidable — twice your age, about half your size and a little nuts.”

“She isn’t a little nuts,” Ellen said. “Where Grady’s concerned she’s totally irrational. She hasn’t changed since the night you dumped her on me when you drove her here from that clinic in Mexico. She told me then that she’d do anything to make it possible for her and Grady to be together again. She said if he needed money to be happy, no matter how much money, she’d get it somehow and buy him back. Can you believe it?”

“Yes.” They were the same words Miranda had used in the cabana half an hour ago. “So what are you afraid of, that he can be bought?”

“I don’t know whether he can or not. I just don’t want her to try. It’s not fair.”

“Don’t worry. She hasn’t a nickel.”

He sounded more confident than he felt.

“Nothing,” he told Charity when he returned to the office later in the day.

“Nothing?” she repeated. “You’ve been gone all afternoon, and nothing?”

“Nothing definite. I did what you told me to — hung around here and there, kept my ears open, asked subtle questions like how are you, got subtle answers like fine. There are the usual rumors which a case of this kind inspires. But one of them may possibly be worth something.”

“What is it?”

“That the D.A. has enough evidence to ask the grand jury for an indictment.”

“An indictment against whom?”

“I don’t know.”

“Probably the husband,” Charity said. “It usually is in this day and age. Nobody keeps a butler any more.”