Mystery

“Will you turn off the record player? Please?”

He had not noticed the record spinning on the turntable of the portable record player atop a dresser. He turned around and pushed the reject button, and the tone arm lifted from the end grooves and returned to its post. Tom watched the label stop spinning until he could read the words on the label. Blue Rose, by Glenroy Breakstone and the Targets. He took the record from the turntable and searched for the sleeve in the row of records propped on the floor against the dresser, then saw it half-hidden under the bed. The split seams on its top and bottom had been repaired with yellowing transparent tape. Tom slid the record into the sleeve.

“What’s he doing now? Watching television?”

Tom nodded.

“How does that make him so superior to me? I stay up here and listen to music, and he watches the stupid television downstairs and drinks.”

“You’re feeling better,” Tom said.

“If I really felt better, I’d hardly know how to act.” She moved sideways, and levered herself up so that she could pull down her covers and slide her legs beneath them. Some of the magazines slithered onto the floor. Gloria drew the covers up over her body and leaned against the pillows.

It was like being in the bedroom of a teenage girl, Tom suddenly thought: the little record player on the dresser, the men’s pajamas, the mess of magazines, the darkness, the single bed. There should have been posters and pennants on the walls, but the walls were bare.

“Do you want me to go?” he asked.

“You can stay a little while.” She closed her eyes. “He looked ashamed of himself, didn’t he?”

“I guess.”

Tom wandered from the side of the bed and sat down backwards on the chair before the dressing table. He was still holding the record in its sleeve. “Grand-Dad just called.” Gloria opened her eyes and pushed herself up against the head of the bed. She reached for the bottle of pills and shook two out into her hand. “Did he?” She broke the pills in half and swallowed two of the small halves without water.

“He wants me to go to Eagle Lake the day after tomorrow. I can get a ride on the Redwing plane with the Spences.”

“The Spences are flying up north on the Redwing plane?” After a second, she added, “And you’re going with them?” She put the two small sections of the other pill in her mouth, made a face, and swallowed.

“Would you like me to stay here?” he asked. “I don’t have to go.”

“Maybe you should get out of the house for a while. Maybe it’s nicer up north.”

“You used to go there in the summers,” he said.

“I used to go a lot of places. I used to have another kind of life, for a little while.”

“Can you remember your place at the lake?”

“It was this big, big house. All made of wood. Everything was made of wood. All the lodges were. I knew where everybody lived. Even Lamont von Heilitz. Daddy didn’t want me to talk about him at lunch—the day we went to the Founders Club, remember?”

Tom nodded.

“He was famous,” his mother said. “He was a lot more famous than Daddy, and he did wonderful things. I always thought he was rather grand, Lamont von Heilitz.”

Where does this come from? Tom wondered.

“And I knew a lady named Jeanine. She was a friend of mine too. That’s another terrible story. One terrible story after another, that’s what it adds up to.”

“You knew Jeanine Thielman?”

“There’s a lot I’m not supposed to talk about. So I don’t.”

“Why aren’t you supposed to talk about Jeanine Thielman?” Tom asked.

“Oh, it doesn’t matter anymore,” Gloria said, and sounded more adult and awake. “But I could tell her things.”

Tom asked, “How old were you when your mother died?”

“Four. I didn’t really understand what happened for a long time—I thought she went away to make me feel bad. I thought she wanted to punish me.”

“Mom, why would she want to do that?”

She cracked her eyes open, and her puffy face looked childish and sly. “Because I was bad. Because of my secrets.” For a moment, Tom thought that the slyness was like a pat of butter in her mouth. “Sometimes Jeanine would come and talk to me. And hold me. And I talked to her. I hoped she would be my new Mommy. I really did!”

“I always wondered how my grandmother died,” Tom said. “Nobody ever talked about it.”

“To me either!” Gloria said. “You can’t tell a little kid something like that.”

“Something like what?”

“She killed herself.” Gloria said this flatly, without any emotion at all. “I wasn’t supposed to know. I don’t think Daddy even wanted me to know she was dead, you know. You know Daddy. Pretty soon he was acting like there never was any Mommy. There was just the two of us. Her and her’s Da.” She pulled the covers around herself more tightly, and the magazines still on the bed moved up with them. “There was just her and her’s Da, and that was all there ever was. Because he loved her, really, and she loved him. And she knew everything that happened.”

She slid deeper into the bed. “But it was all a long time ago. Jeanine was angry, and then a man killed her and put her in the lake too. I heard him shooting—I heard the shots in my bedroom. Pop! Pop! Pop! And I went through the house and out on the veranda and saw a man running through the woods. I started to cry, and I couldn’t find Daddy, and I guess I went to sleep, because when I woke up he was there. And I told him what I saw, and he took me to Barbara Deane’s house. So I’d be safe.”

“You mean he took you to Miami.”

“No—first he took me to Barbara Deane’s house, in the village, and I was there a little while. A few days. And he went back to the lake, to look for Jeanine, and then he came back, and then we went to Miami.”

“I don’t understand—”

She closed her eyes. “I didn’t like Barbara Deane. She never talked to me. She wasn’t nice.”

She was silent for a long time, breathing deeply. “I’ll be better tomorrow.”

He stood up and went to the side of her bed. Her eyelids fluttered. He bent down to kiss her. When his lips touched her forehead, she shuddered and mumbled, “Don’t.”

In the study, Victor Pasmore lay tilted back in his recliner, asleep before the blaring television. A cigarette that was only a column of ash burned in the ashtray, sending up a thin line of smoke.

Tom went to the front door and let himself out into the cool night. Chinks of light showed through Lamont von Heilitz’s curtains.

“You’re upset,” said Mr. von Heilitz as soon as he saw Tom on his doorstep. “Hurry on inside, and let me get a better look at you.”

Tom moved through the door with what felt like the last of his energy and leaned against a file cabinet. The Shadow inserted a cigarette in his mouth, lit it, and squinted at Tom as he inhaled. “You look absolutely ragged, Tom. I’ll pour you a cup of coffee, and then I want you to tell me all about it.”

Tom straightened up and rubbed his face. “Being here makes me feel better,” he said. “I heard so much today—listened to so much—and it’s all sort of spinning around in my head. I can’t figure it out—I can’t get it straight.”

“I’d better take care of you,” von Heilitz said. “You sound a little overloaded.” He led Tom back through the enormous room to his kitchen, took out two cups and saucers, and poured coffee from an old black pot that had