face, was okay with me. I felt almost refreshed, nearly awake, by the time I’d walked the short distance to Wilma’s Welcome Inn, and you’d never guess I had been up so long.
There was a “Closed” sign in the window, but the door was unlocked, so I went on in. Charley was alone in the tavern area, sitting in a booth, with his hands folded.
“Where’s Wilma?” I said “What’s going on?”
“She’s at Johnson’s,” he said. His voice was strange, strained.
“Johnson’s? What’s that?”
“A funeral home.”
“Who died?”
“She did.”
9
Charley said it was okay if I had a look around. I saw the stairs, where she had fallen, a steep but tightly enclosed flight of stairs, with a rail, and between the rail and the close walls, you’d think a big woman like Wilma would’ve been able to catch herself, to brace her fall at least a little bit. But she hadn’t. She’d fallen the entire flight and by the time she landed, her neck was broken and her life over.
No one had seen it happen. No one had even heard it. There was only one person staying in the hotel section of Wilma’s Welcome Inn, a man registered as Paul Thomas, and he had apparently packed up and left early that morning, before the accident, Charley said. During the slow season, Wilma didn’t open up till midmorning, ten o’clock, and that was only the grocery store section: the restaurant didn’t open until eleven-thirty, for lunch. The stairs were in the grocery section, in the rear, near a check-in desk that was usually unmanned this time of year. It was somewhat unusual for even Wilma herself to be in the place before nine-thirty; she didn’t live on the premises, but across the street in a two-story white clapboard. That’s where Charley lived, too, though this was the first I’d heard him actually admit it, even if it was common knowledge around here. He said he woke up and Wilma was gone; he supposed she’d decided to come over early and do some cleaning. Sometimes she’d go over about an hour early and do that. This time, while in the process of doing her cleaning, she had apparently stumbled and fallen down the steps. Apparently.
At any rate, it had obviously happened before ten-thirty, which was when Charley came across the street to work, and found her.
I climbed the stairs and walked down the narrow hall to the room Paul Thomas, that is, Turner, had so recently vacated. He hadn’t even shut the door, he’d gone out so fast. The drawers he’d emptied to fill his suitcase hung open like tongues sticking out at me. I went over the room carefully, to see if he’d left anything behind in his haste, and he had. Under the bed, was his stack of girlie magazines. I took them with me.
I stood and looked down the stairwell. Looked at the railing, at those narrow walls. There was only one way Wilma could’ve fallen here and died, and that was if she were unconscious before she started her fall.
I rejoined Charley, who was still sitting in the booth, with his hands folded.
“Who came around?” I asked him.
“I don’t know exactly. I called Sam Keenan and he took care of all of it.”
Keenan was a semi-retired doctor in his early sixties, from Chicago, who now lived in a cottage near mine, year-round.
“The ambulance was from Johnson’s Funeral Home, over in Geneva, and I let them have her. There were some people from the Sheriff’s department, too. I guess Sam called them. I didn’t.”
“What did the Sheriff’s people have to say?”
“Not much. They asked some questions, quite a few, actually. Looked over where it happened pretty close. They just left, not five minutes before you came in the door.”
“Do they suspect foul play?”
“Foul play?” He was genuinely surprised, looking up from his folded hands like he was noticing for the first time I was here. “What are you talking about?”
“I just wondered.”
“Why?”
“Oh, seemed a little unlikely she’d fall and not catch herself, is all.”
“She was a big woman… a big, fat woman. She was clumsy sometimes, like a fat woman will be. That’s really all she was, a big fat woman.” He was talking through his teeth. His fists were clenched. His eyes weren’t wet, but they weren’t right, either.
“I’m sorry about this, Charley.”
“I did time.”
“What?”
“I did time. They might suspect foul play, at that. You might be right. She knew I did time. She knew I stole, she knew when she hired me. She didn’t give a shit. She trusted me, put me in charge of all her money. She didn’t care, but they will. Can you picture it? They’ll see she left the place to me. She told me that, she told me she had a will made and that I was to get this place if something happened to her. So now they’ll see that and see about me doing time in Joliet.. liquor store I robbed, about fifteen years ago… and they’ll think maybe I killed her. And that kills me. The thought that anybody could think I’d kill her, harm her in any way, it fucking kills me.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that, Charley.”
“Who’s worried? I’m not worried. I don’t give a shit. What can they do to me? She’s dead.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“I wish somebody had killed her.”
“What?”
“I wish somebody had killed her. I wish it hadn’t been an accident. Then I could put the fucker that did it between my hands and squeeze the life out of him like pus out of a boil, and maybe some of the pus that’s building up in me would get squeezed out, too. But I can’t do that. Instead, she’s just dead and there’s not a goddamn thing I can do about it.”
“Charley, is that niece of Wilma’s around? I’d like to talk to her.”
“She’s over at the house. Across the street. She was with me when I found the body. Took it pretty hard. Why do you want to talk to her?”
“Just want to express my sympathy.”
10
The house sat on a big open yard, a few pathetic bushes clustered around the front steps, but that was all; no trees were anywhere in sight, except way off in the back, in some other yard. It was a vacant lot with a house on it, plopped down there by an Oz-like wind, maybe, a two-story white clapboard with a front porch with a swing and if you looked close enough you might find Norman Rockwell’s signature in the comer. The girl was sitting on the swing. She was not swinging. Not today, anyway.
The porch was not enclosed so I could walk up the steps and sit across from her on the ledge of the porch without seeming a total intruder.
“I don’t think I know your name,” the girl said. Her voice was young-sounding. It had sounded young last night, too. But even younger now.
“I don’t know yours, either,” I admitted.
“But you-know who I am.”
“Yes. Do you know who I am?”
“A customer at my aunt’s.”
“Yes.”
“More than that, really. She liked you. She always smiled real big when she saw you coming.”
