The Zebra-Striped Hearse

32

I FOUND HER late Monday afternoon in a village in Michoacan. The village had an Aztec name which I forget, and a church with Aztec figures carved in some of its ancient stones. A roughly cobbled road like the bed of a dry creek ran past the church. A beggar woman in widow’s black met me at the door and followed me into the nave reciting griefs I couldn’t understand, though I could see the scars they had left on her. Her face broke up in wrinkled smiles and blessings when I gave her money. She went out and left me alone in the church with Harriet.

She was kneeling on the stone floor close to the chancel. She had a black rebozo over her head, and she was as still as the images of the saints along the walls.

She scrambled to her feet when I said her name. Her mouth worked stiffly, but no words came out. The shawl covering her hair accentuated the stubborn boniness of her face.

“Do you remember me?”

“Yes.” Her small voice was made smaller by the cavernous space around us. “How did you know–?”

“The posadero told me you’ve been here all day.”

She moved her arm in an abrupt downward gesture. “I don’t mean that. How did you know I was in Mexico?”

“You were seen – by other Americans.”

“I don’t believe you. Father sent you to bring me back, didn’t he? He promised that he wouldn’t. But he never kept his promises to me, not once in my life.”

“He kept this one.”

“Then why have you followed me here?”

“I didn’t make any promises, to you or anyone.”

“But you’re supposed to be working for Father. He said when he put me on the plane that he would call off the dogs once and for all.”

“He tried to. There isn’t anything more he can do for you now. Your father is dead, Harriet. He shot himself Friday morning.”

“You’re lying! He can’t be dead!”

The force of the words shook her body. She raised her hands to cover her face. I could see in her sleeves the flesh-colored tape securing the bandages at her wrists. I had seen such bandages before on would-be suicides.

“I was there when he shot himself. Before he did, he confessed the murders of Ralph Simpson and Dolly. He also said that he had murdered you. Why would your father do that?”

Her eyes glittered like wet stone between her fingers. “I have no idea.”

“I have. He knew that you had committed those two murders. He tried to take the blame for them and arrange it so we wouldn’t press the search for you. Then he silenced himself. I don’t think he wanted to live in any case; he had too much guilt of his own. Ronald Jaimet’s death may have been something less than a murder, but it was something more than an accident. And he must have known that his affair with Dolly led indirectly to your murdering her and Ralph Simpson. He had nothing to look forward to but your trial and the end of the Blackwell name – the same prospect you’re facing now.”

She removed her hands from her face. It had a queer glazed look, as if it had been fired like pottery. “I hate the Blackwell name. I wish my name was Smith or Jones or Gomez.”

“It wouldn’t change you or the facts. You can’t lose what you’ve done.”

“No.” She shook her head despondently. “There’s no hope for me. No deposit, no return, no nothing. I’ve been in here since early morning, trying to make contact. There is no contact.”

“Are you a member of this Church?”

“I’m not a member of anything. But I thought I could find peace here. The people seemed so happy yesterday coming out of Mass – so happy and peaceful.”

“They’re not running away from another life.”

“You call it life, what I had?” She screwed up her face as though she was trying to cry, but no tears came. “I did my best to end my so-called life. The first time the water was too cold. The second time Father wouldn’t let me. He broke in the bathroom door and stopped me. He bandaged my wrists and sent me here; he said that Mother would look after me. But when I went to her house in Ajijic she wouldn’t even come out and talk to me. She sent Keith out to the gate to fob me off with a lie. He tried to tell me that she had gone away and taken the money with her.”

“Keith Hatchen told you the truth. I’ve talked to him, and your mother as well. She went to California to try and help you. She’s waiting in Los Angeles.”

“You’re a liar.” Her sense of grievance rose like a storm in her throat. “You’re all liars, liars and betrayers. Keith betrayed me to you, didn’t he?”

“He said that you had been to his house.”

“See!” She pointed a finger at my eyes. “Everybody betrayed me, including Father.”

“I told you he didn’t. He did his best to cover up for you. Your father loved you, Harriet.”

“Then why did he betray me with Dolly Stone?” She stabbed the air with her finger like a prosecutor.

“Men get carried away sometimes. It wasn’t done against you.”

“Wasn’t it? I know better. She turned him against me when we were just little kids. I wasn’t so little, but she was. She was so pretty, like a little doll. Once he bought her a doll that was almost as big as she was. He bought me a doll just like it to make it up to me. I didn’t want it. I was too old for dolls. I wanted my daddy.”

Her voice had thinned to a childish treble. It sounded through the spaces of the old building like an archaic voice piping out of the crypts of the past.

“Tell me about the murders, Harriet.”

“I don’t have to.”

“You want to, though. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.”

“I tried to tell the priest. My Spanish wasn’t good enough. But you’re no priest.”

“No, I’m just a man. You can tell me, anyway. Why did you have to kill Dolly?”

“At least you understand that I did have to. First she stole my father and then she stole my husband.”

“I thought Bruce was her husband.”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t a marriage. I could sense that it wasn’t a marriage as soon as I saw them with each other. They were just two people living together, facing in opposite directions. Bruce wanted out of it. He told me so himself, the very first day.”

“Why did you go there that first day?”

“Father asked me to. He was afraid to go near her himself, but he said that no one could criticize me if I paid her a visit and gave her a gift of money. I had to see the baby, anyway. My little brother. I believed that seeing him would make me feel – differently. I was so terribly torn asunder when Father told me about him.” She raised both fists beside her head and shook them, not at me. She said between her fists: “And there Bruce was. I fell in love with him as soon as I saw him. He loved me, too. He didn’t change till afterward.”

“What changed him?”

“She did, with her wiles and stratagems. He turned against me suddenly one night. We were in a motel on the other side of the Bay, and he sat there drinking my father’s whisky and said he wouldn’t leave her. He said he’d made a bargain he couldn’t break. So I broke it for him. I took it into my hands and broke it.”

She brought her fists together and broke an invisible thing. Then her arms fell limp at her sides. Her eyes went sleepy. I thought for a minute she was going to fall, but she caught herself and faced me in a kind of shaky somnambulistic defiance.

“After I killed her, I took the money back. I’d seen where she hid it, in the baby’s mattress. I had to move him to get at it, and he started crying. I took him in my arms to quiet him. Then I had an overmastering urge to take him out of that place and ran away with him. I started down the road with him, but suddenly I was overcome by fear. The darkness was so dense I could hardly move. Yet I could see myself, a dreadful woman walking in darkness with a little baby. I was afraid he’d be hurt.”

“That you would hurt him?”

Her chin pressed down onto her chest. “Yes. I put him in somebody else’s car for safekeeping. I gave him up, and I’m glad I did. At least my little brother is all right.” It was a question.

“He’s all right. His grandmother is looking after him. I saw him in Citrus Junction the other day.”

“I almost did,” she said, “the night I killed Ralph Simpson. It’s funny how these things keep following you. I thought I was past the sound barrier but I heard him crying that night, in Elizabeth Stone’s house. I wanted to knock on the door and visit him. I had my hand lifted to knock when I saw myself again, a dreadful woman in outer darkness, in outer space, driving a man’s dead body around in my car.”

“You mean Ralph Simpson.”

“Yes. He came to the house that night to talk to Father. I recognized the coat he was carrying and intercepted him. He agreed to go for a drive and discuss the situation. I told him Bruce was hiding in the beach house – he said any friend of Bruce was a friend of his, poor little man – and I drove him out to the place above the beach. I stabbed him with the icepick that Mrs. Stone gave my father.” Her clenched fist struck weakly at her breast. “I intended to throw his body in the sea, but I changed my mind. I was afraid that Bruce would find it before I got him out of there. I threw the coat in the sea instead and drove to Citrus Junction.”

“Why did you pick Isobel’s yard to bury him in?”

“It was a safe place. I knew there was nobody there.” Her eyes, her entire face, seemed to be groping blindly for a meaning. “It kept it in the family.”

“Were you trying to throw the blame on Isobel?”

“Maybe I was. I don’t always know why I do things, especially at night. I get the urge to do them and I do them.”

“Is that why you wore your father’s coat the night you killed Dolly?”

“It happened to be in the car. I was cold.” She shivered with the memory. “It isn’t true that I wanted him to be blamed. I loved my father. But he didn’t love me.”

“He loved you to the point of death, Harriet.”

She shook her head, and began to shiver more violently. I put my arm around her shoulders and walked her toward the door. It opened, filling with the red sunset. The beggar woman appeared in it, black as a cinder in the blaze.

“What will happen now?” Harriet said with her head down.

“It depends on whether you’re willing to waive extradition. We can go back together, if you are.”

“I might as well.”

The beggar held out her hands to us as we passed. I gave her money again. I had nothing to give Harriet. We went out into the changing light and started to walk up the dry riverbed of the road.

The End