tumbled the hot-bodied she-thing, with her approvals registered by the reactive flutterings and choke-throated gasps. Satisfaction in the sense of emptied ease and relaxation, with texture memories of the responsive body imprinted for a time on the touching-parts of the hands and mouth. The other half was the drifting elusive postcoital sadness. Perhaps it comes from the constant buried need for a closeness that will eliminate that loneliness of the spirit we all know. And for just a few moments the need is almost eased, the deeply coupled bodies serving as a sort of symbol of that far greater need to stop being totally alone. But then it is over, the illusion gone, and once again there are two strangers in a rumpled bed who, despite any affectionate embrace, are as essentially unknown to each other as two passengers in the same bus seat who have happened to purchase tickets to the same destination. Maybe that is why there is always sadness mingled with the aftertastes of pleasure, because once again, as so many times before, you have proven that the fleeting closeness only underlines the essential apartness of people, makes it uncomfortably evident for a little while. We had fitted each other's needs and could have no way of knowing how much of our willingness was honest and how much was the flood of excuses the loins project so brilliantly on the front screen of the mind.
The loins tell you it is always bigger than both of anybody.
Suddenly, I remembered the hundred dollars that Hoi-ton had made Penny stuff into her purse, and smiled. I would hear from her sooner than expected, because when she came across it and remembered, she would be in a horrid haste to get it back to me, as it would make a very sordid footnote to the swarmy night.
And so when I went back to my room at ten thirty something and saw the red light on the phone winking, I was certain it would be Penny Woertz. But it was a very agitated Biddy, expressing surprise that I was still in Fort Courtney and asking me if I had seen or heard from Maureen. She had somehow sneaked down the stairs and out through the back of the house while Tom was in the living room working at the desk, and while Bridget had been out picking up odds and ends at one of the Stop `n' Shop outlets. She had been gone since a little before seven. 'Tom has been out hunting her ever since. I phoned everyplace I could think of and then I left too, about quarter to eight. Right now I'm at a place out near the airport and I happened to think she might come there to the motel, because she knew you were staying there.'
'Police looking too?'
'Well, not specifically. But they know she is around and if they see her, they'll take her in. Travis, she's wearing a pink chambray jumper with big black pockets and she's probably barefoot.'
'Driving a car?'
'No, thank God. Or maybe it would be better if she did. I don't know. She probably did the same as last time, walked over to Route Thirty and hitched a ride. She doesn't have any trouble getting a lift, as you can imagine. But I am so afraid that some... sick person might pick her up.'
'Can I help?'
'I can't think of anything you could do. If she does show up there, you could call nine-three-four, two-six-six-one. That's Tom's answering service. We keep calling in every fifteen minutes or so to see if there's word of her.'
'Are you with him?'
'No. We can cover more places this way. I usually run across him sooner or later.'
'Will you let me know when you find her?'
'If you wish. Yes. I'll phone you.'
I hung up wondering why they didn't think about the bottom of the lake. She's had a try at about everything else except jumping out a high window. What was the word? Self-defenestration. Out the window I must go, I must go, I must go...
Then some fragment of old knowledge began to nudge at the back of my mind. After I had the eleven o'clock news on the television, I couldn't pay attention because I was too busy roaming around the room trying to unearth what was trying to attract my attention.
Then a name surfaced, along with a man's sallow face, bitter mouth, knowing eyes. Harry Simmons. A long talk, long ago, after a friend of a friend had died. He'd added a large chunk onto an existing insurance policy about five months before they found him afloat, face-down, in Biscayne Bay.
I sat on the bed and slowly reconstructed the pattern of part of his conversation. My thought about the lake and the high window had opened a small door to an old memory.
'With the jumpers and the drowners, McGee, you don't pick up a pattern. That's because a jumper damned near always makes it the first time, and a drowner is usually almost as successful, about the same rate as hangers. They get cut down maybe as rarely as the drowners get pulled out. So the patterns mostly come from the bleeders and the pill-takers and the shooters. Funny how many people survive a self-shooting. But if they don't destroy a chunk of their brain, they get a chance at a second try. Like the bleeders cut themselves again, and the pill-takers keep trying. It's always patterns. Never change. They pick the way that they want to go and keep after it until they make it. A pill-taker doesn't turn into a jumper, and a drowner won't shoot himself. Like they've got one picture of dying and that's it and there's no other way of going.'
All right, then say that Harry Simmons might probably admit a very rare exception. But Maurie Pearson Pike had opted for the pills, the razor, and the rope. Three methods.
I felt a prickling of the flesh on the backs of my hands. But it was a clumsy fit, no matter how you looked at it. The suffering husband making a narrow save each time. Or the kid sister? Was there a third party who could get close enough to Maurie?
What about motive? The big ones are love and money. The estate was 'substantial.' What are the terms? Check it out through soft-voiced D. Wintin Hardahee. And noble suffering Tommy had made the discreet pass at Freckle-Girl. So on top of that we have a dead family physician labeled suicide, and he had treated Maureen, and does that make any sense or any fit? Penny believed with all her sturdy heart that Dr. Stewart Sherman could not have killed himself.
The tap at my door had to be Penny bringing back the two fifty-dollar bills, and as I went toward the door I was uncomfortably aware of a hollow feeling in the belly that was a lustful anticipation that maybe she could be induced to stay awhile.
But there were two men there, and they both stared at me with that mild, bland, skeptical curiosity of the experienced lawman. It must be very like the first inspection of new specimens brought back to the base camp by museum expeditions. The specimen might be rare or damaged or poisonous. But you check it over and soon you are able to catalog it based on the experience of cataloging thousands of others over the years, and then it is a very ordinary job from then on, the one you are paid for. The big, hard-boned, young one wore khakis, a white fishing cap with a peak, blue and white sneakers, and a white sport shirt with a pattern of red pelicans on it. It was worn outside the belt, doubtless to hide the miniature revolver that seems to be more and more of a fad with Florida local law. The smaller older one wore a pale tan suit, a white shirt with no tie. He had a balding head, liver spots, little dusty brown eyes, and a virulent halitosis that almost concealed the news that his young partner had been wearing the same shirt too long. 'Name McGee?'
'That's right. What can I do for you?' I was stripped to my underwear shorts and barefoot.
'Well, for a starter, just turn around real slow with your arms out, then you can go stand by the window.' He flipped his wallet open and gave me the glimpse of the little gold badge. 'I'm Stanger,' he said, and, indicating the younger one, 'he's Nudenbarger. City.'
'And for a starter,' I said, 'search warrant?'
'Not unless I have to have one, McGee. But you make us go through the motions, everybody gets pissed off, and it's a hot night, and it all adds up the same way anyway. So you-if you want to-you can like invite us to just poke around.'
'Poke around, Mr. Stanger. You too, Mr. Nudenbarger.'
He checked my wallet on the countertop while Nudenbarger checked the closet, the suitcase, the bathroom. Stanger wrote down some bits of information copied off credit cards into a blue pocket notebook, dime-sized. He couldn't write without sticking his tongue out of the corner of his mouth. Credit cards hearten them. The confetti of the power structure.
'Plenty cash, Mr. McGee.'
Cash and credit had earned me the 'mister.' I moved over and sat on the bed without permission. 'Seven hundred and something. Let me see... and thirty-eight. It's sort of a bad habit I'm trying to break, Mr. Stanger. It's stupid to carry cash. Probably the result of some kind of insecurity in my childhood. It's my blue blanket.'
He looked at me impassively. 'I guess that's pretty funny.'
'Funny peculiar?'
'No. Being funny like jokes. Being witty with stupid cops.'
'No. The thing about the blue blanket--'
'I keep track of Beethoven's birthday, and the dog flies a DeHavilland Moth.'
'What's that?' Nudenbarger asked. 'What's that?'
'Forget it, Lew,' Stanger said in a weary voice.
'You always say that,' Nudenbarger said, accusingly indignant.
It is like a marriage, of course. They are teamed up and they work on each other's nerves, and some of the gutsy ones who have gone into the dark warehouse have been shot in the back by the partner/wife who just
