“I got some pictures of her someplace. I’ll see if I can find them.”
Before I could remonstrate, she had left the room, moving eagerly, as if it might still be not too late to put salt on the tail of the ruby-breasted dream.
A man in a sports shirt came in from the hallway without knocking. At first glance he was handsome and young. Then I saw the muddy blur in his eyes, the gray dusting his wavy blond hair, the smile like a fishhook caught in one corner of his mouth.
“I didn’t know we had visitors.”
“Just the one. And I’m not exactly a visitor. I’m here on business.”
Business was a bad word. He said with hushed fury: “Get something straight-I do the business for this family. I handle the money. What you been trying to sell the wife behind my back?”
I stood up, into the zone of his breath. It was as foul as his temper.
“Gold bricks,” I said. “She decided to take a dozen.”
“Wise guy, eh?” Teetering on his heels, he reconnoitered me from a safe distance. “I want to know what you’re doing in this flat.”
“Your wife knows what I’m doing here. Ask her.”
“Where is she?” He looked wildly around the room, then heard the rustling noise she was making on the other side of the wall. He rushed through the door like a rescuer or invader.
There was a muffled interchange, and then his voice rose uncontrolled in a queer, high, continuous yammering. “Once a dumbhead always a dumbhead what you think you’re doing giving away the family secrets make him pay for them if the husband’s wellheeled let him put up some money you goddam fool.”
“I didn’t think of it.”
“I’ll do the thinking you let me do the thinking you take my orders that way we’ll get somewhere what you think you’re doing giving him pictures these people pay money for pictures you sell ’em information so much a word I’ve had experience in these matters the girl’s worth money alive or dead you don’t just give it away.”
“Hush now, Jim, he’ll hear you.”
“Let him hear let him realize he isn’t dealing with country bumpkins I’m no booby even if you are you lousy deadhead dragging me down all my life I could of gone to college made something of myself but you had to make me get married I carried you twenty-five years like a body on my back and now when one of the house apes looks like paying off for all the money we spent on her education you want to give it away for free what’d he do butter you up a little tell you you still had a figure you bloated hag?”
“You mustn’t talk like that,” she said behind the wall. “You ought to have more pride.”
“Pride for what I live in a hole with a hag and every time I turn my back you throw away another opportunity I should feel thankful no doubt but I say you’re the one you hag you should get down on your knees and thank me for putting up with you you hag.”
The sound of a slap came through the wallboard, followed by the woman’s grunt of pain. I went through the door into the kitchen, where they were facing each other. An old carton spilling papers and pictures stood on the drainboard beside them.
The woman had her hand to her cheek, but it was Dotery who began to sob.
“Forgive me Kate I didn’t mean it.”
“It’s all right, I’m not hurt. I know things never worked out for you. I’m sorry.”
She put her arms around him. His face went like a child’s to her breasts. She stroked his dusty gray hair and looked at me serenely from a standpoint beyond grief.
“You shouldn’t lap up so much liquor,” she said. “It isn’t good for you, Jim. Now go to bed like a good boy, you’ll feel better in the morning.”
He stumbled in my direction. His eyes came up to my face, with a flash of the unquenchable anger that kept him almost young. But he went out without speaking.
The woman smoothed her dress down over her bosom. Except that her eyes were a little darker, the scene had not affected her.
“Dotery is a hard man to live with,” she said. “Lucky for me I’m easygoing myself. Live and let live is my motto. You start pushing too hard, and what happens? Everything goes to pieces in a nutshell.”
I didn’t quite follow the sentence, but it seemed appropriate. “You were going to show me some pictures, Mrs. Dotery.”
“So I was.”
She took a handful of pictures from the carton and shuffled them like a fortune teller’s deck. With a sudden gleeful smile she handed me one of them. “Guess who that is.”
It was an old snapshot of a girl just entering adolescence. Her budding figure showed through her white tulle dress. She was holding a broad white hat by its ribbon, and smiling into the sun.
“It’s your daughter Hilda, isn’t it?”
“Nope,” she said. “It’s me, taken back in Boston thirty years ago, the Sunday I was confirmed. I was a good- looker for a kid, if I do say it myself. Hilda and June took after me.”
The rest of the pictures illustrated this, and removed any possible doubt that Holly May was Mrs. Dotery’s daughter. She said nostalgically: “We used to pretend we was sisters, me and the two oldest girls, until the trouble started in the family.”
The trouble in the family had not yet ended. Dotery called through the wall in a voice that trembled with self- pitying rage: “You gonna stay up all night? I got to get up in the morning and work, even if you don’t. Come to bed now, hear me?”
“I guess I got to go,” she said. “He’ll be out of there in a minute, and God knows what will happen. Anyway, Hilda’s a lovely kid to look at, isn’t she?”
“So were you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Dotery raised his voice. “Do you hear me? Come to bed!”
“I hear you. I’m coming, Jim.”
chapter 24
DOWNSTAIRS IN THE STREET, I found a public telephone booth outside a drugstore that was closed for the night. I stepped inside the glass cubicle and placed a collect call to my home in Buenavista. After repeated ringing, the operator said: “Your party does not answer, sir. Do you wish me to try again later?”
Fear stabbed me, twisting and turning into guilt. In the last few weeks Sally had given up going out at night. It was unlikely that she was visiting the neighbors at this hour. The Perrys and our other neighbors were all early risers.
“Do you wish me to try again
“Yes. I’m in a public booth. I’ll call again in a few minutes.”
I hung up and looked at my watch. It was just a few minutes short of midnight. Of course, Sally was asleep. She’d been sleeping heavily lately. The bedroom door was shut, and she hadn’t heard the phone.
Then I remembered that Mrs. Weinstein was supposed to be there with her. Death in his distorting mask slipped into the booth, to my right and a little behind me, just outside the angle of my vision. When I turned to look at him, he moved further behind me.
I tried my home number again. No answer. I called the Buenavista police, but the line was busy. I opened the door of the booth to breathe. Laughter and music came in gusts from the bar across the street. Bide-a-Wee, its flashing red neon said.
To hell with biding, I said to myself. To hell with Mountain Grove and its broken pasts, to hell with the Ferguson case. I wanted no part of it. The only thing I wanted was Sally safe in my arms. I could be home in an hour if I drove fast.
I ran back to my car and started the engine. But the case wouldn’t let me go. A man said behind me, under the engine’s roar: “Keep your hands where I can see them, Gunnarson. On the wheel. I have a gun pointed at the back of your head.”
