cautious claw, then another, then a skittering run for the sea. My crab was smaller but less cautious than Scott’s and soon it began its rush for safety. Scott’s emerged, oriented itself, and scuttled after mine, and I could hear Scotty’s adolescent sports announcer voice in my ear like the ocean in a conch shell:
I stood up and brushed sand from my knees as Scott’s boyish voice faded.
And now he was a father himself and by next summer, he would be racing hermit crabs with baby Arlie and the cycle would begin all over again.
It was a lovely peaceful hour and not until I turned back toward the car was I reclaimed by the muddle of Lev and Catherine Llewellyn, Barbara Jean and her menhaden factory, Mahlon Davis and his seething resentments, young Guthrie, Jay Hadley, Linville Pope and her machinations, and over all, Andy Bynum’s murder and the push/pull feuding over water usage. The only unadulterated bright spot in the whole mess was Kidd Chapin and he was the only one I couldn’t count on seeing again.
When I reached the car, I slipped my beige-and-turquoise skirt back on and slid off my shorts. At the bathhouse, I rinsed the sand off my feet and put on my new sandals. A splash of cool water on my face, a light cover of makeup, and I was ready to drop by for that “quiet drink” at Linville Pope’s.
• • •
My watch said it was a suitably five-ish 5:10 when I rang the doorbell at Linville Pope’s house.
The man who opened the door was a physical wreck: barefooted, stained khakis, lank-haired and gaunt-faced. He reeked of bourbon and he held out a cordless phone that was smeared with blood.
“Can’t make thish damn thing work,” he sobbed drunkenly. “Call them.”
“Call who?” I asked, shrinking back from the gory object.
“P’leesh. Somebody’s killed my wife!”
11
Clasping the bloody phone to his chest, Midge Pope slowly slumped to the floor, moaning over and over, “Linvie, Linvie.”
I stepped over his outstretched legs and moved cautiously through the house.
No one in the public rooms, no one in the kitchen.
At the end of a curiously austere hall, I heard a low radio and when I pushed the door open, I saw a muscular young man, fully dressed, stretched out on a double bed, sound asleep. The radio beside him was tuned to easy rock.
“Hello?”
His eyes blinked open when I spoke and he stared at me blankly for a moment, then jumped up guiltily.
“Oh Jeez!” he said, “I must have dropped off. You won’t tell her, will you? I—”
An open door connected to the next room and he glanced inside and groaned, “He’s gone! She’s gonna kill me!”
He turned and almost slammed into me. “Sorry, but I’ve got to find him and—”
“Try the front door,” I suggested.
It was clear to me that he’d been hired to baby-sit Linville Pope’s alcoholic husband and that he was so shook at losing his charge, I’d get nothing out of him till he’d found Midge Pope again.
“Where’s Mrs. Pope?” I asked as he rushed across the entry hall to help Pope to his feet.
“Down at the landing, probably. She said she was—”
At that moment, he saw both the telephone and Pope’s bloody hands. “Oh Jeez!”
I didn’t wait to hear more. Already I was running through the wide sunroom. The locked French doors hindered me a moment, but once I was through them, I raced across the wide terrace, over the grass, and out to the landing.
Linville Pope’s crumpled figure lay near the end of the long planked dock. She was still wearing the black-and- white checked shirt and full black skirt she’d had on when I saw her earlier. She’d fallen backward and strands of ash-blonde hair half-hid her face. I knelt to touch the pulse points in her neck and wrists.
Nothing. Already the living warmth had drained from her skin.
It was too much like finding Andy Bynum—the swirling hair, the bright red stain that blossomed through her shirt, the lifeless pallor. At least her eyes were closed. Numbed though I was, somehow I found myself thinking how much bigger she looked lying there dead than she had when erect and full of life.
