‘No, dear, and I didn’t say he’d disappeared,’ said Mavis with mock sympathy. ‘I just said nobody knew where he was.’
‘But that’s the same as saying he’s disappeared,’ said Eva, who had learnt some elements of logic from Wilt during their frequent arguments. ‘You said nobody knows where he is. Someone has to know. I mean, he may have gone on holiday with the Braintrees. Have you tried them?’
At the other end of the line Mavis took a deep breath. She had always found Eva difficult to deal with and she wasn’t prepared to be grilled by her now.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I haven’t. For the simple reason that I don’t know their address or if they have gone on holiday and I’m hardly likely to know where they’ve gone.’
‘They always take a cottage in Norfolk for a month in the summer.’
This time Mavis didn’t breathe deeply. She snorted. ‘Then why don’t you phone them?’ she snapped.
‘Because I don’t know where the cottage is. All I do know is that it’s in Norfolk somewhere on the coast.’
‘Norfolk?’ squawked Mavis. ‘If you seriously think I’m going to start searching cottages along the entire coast of Norfolk…well, it’s out of the question. Why don’t you phone the hospitals and the police? They’ve usually kept an eye on your Henry. Ask for Missing Persons.’
All in all it was a most disagreeable and acrimonious exchange, and it ended with Mavis putting the phone down without saying goodbye. Eva tried the house again but all she got was her own voice on the answerphone. Apart from the quads, and she wasn’t going to worry them, Eva had no one to consult. Upstairs Auntie Joan could be heard snoring. She’d taken another sleeping pill and washed it down with Jack Daniels. Eva went out to the kitchen. At least there she could talk to Maybelle, the black maid, and tell her her problems. Even that didn’t help. Maybelle’s experience with men was even worse than Eva’s.
‘Men’s all the same. The second you turn your back they’s off like alley cats chasing other girls.’
‘But my Henry’s not like that. He’s…well, he’s different from other men. And he’s definitely not gay, if that’s what you’re thinking.’ Maybelle had raised her eyebrows significantly. ‘It’s just that he’s not really interested in sex,’ Eva confided.
‘Then he’s gotta be different. Never met a man like that in all my life. That Mr Immelmann sure isn’t. I reckon that’s how come his heart’s so bad.’ She looked out the window. ‘There’s those men again. I don’t know what they think they’re doing snooping round the house all the time. And Mrs Joanie’s lost her voice or something. Comes down and gets herself some ice cream and brownies and goes on back up to her room and never a word out of her. Guess she’s all upset over Mr Immelmann being took bad.’
Up at the lake a blessed silence reigned. A special squad of totally deaf Gulf War veterans had been recruited to destroy the generator with explosives. Even then they had found the task difficult and had had to use clothing that looked like spacesuits to get near the thing. But in the end they had succeeded. The loudspeakers went dead and the Drug Squad moved in and ransacked the place. They found nothing more incriminating than a stack of porno videos hidden in Wally’s safe. But by the time they left, the house looked as though it had been vandalised.
Chapter 22
But it was in the Starfighter Mansion in Wilma that the real battle was about to begin.
