John MacDonald - The Good Old Stuff

“Hell,” said Stacey, “Lisa may be wandering around right now. Amnesia. You can’t tell about things like that.”

“Sure,” Hewett said. “Sure. It could be that.” He didn’t speak as though he believed it.

On the way to dinner Georgie Wane took Park aside. “The money,” she said, “is nice. I like it. You’ve got a nice place here. But how about this, uncle? One of these boys maybe clobbered a girl. It leads one to think. Maybe it’s a habit yet.”

“Not a habit. Not quite that. Call it a tendency.”

“I thought maybe you could tell by looking at hands. I’ve been looking. No dice, uncle. I would say Hewett didn’t. Beyond that I cannot go. Shouldn’t a murderer look like a murderer?”

“I knew one once who could have been your twin, Georgie.”

“I can see how she got in the killing mood,” Georgie said.

At three in the morning Falkner awoke at the sound of the first tap on his door. He came completely awake in a fraction of a second. He pulled his robe on as he went to the door. It was Taffy.

She looked small, young, wan in the lamplight. “You can’t sleep either, eh?” she said.

“What’s got you down, Taff?” he asked. “Come on in.”

They walked out onto the terrace. The wind was directly out of the west. It had sea fragrance.

She said, “You hear about something like this. I mean it’s a problem like filling in a nine-letter blank beginning with G meaning a South African herb. Then you meet the people and it’s something else again. Gee, they’re nice kids. I don’t want it to be one of them.”

He put his arm around her. “Old Taff, the world mother. She loves everybody. Maybe I’m wrong this time. The agency checked it out pretty carefully, though. Lisa Mann was one of those rare people who make no enemies. No one profited by her death. She was exceptionally striking. Emotions can get wound up pretty tightly.”

“If one of them did it,” she said softly, “I wonder if he is sleeping right now. I don’t see how he could be, knowing that all this is supposed to make him give himself away. I’ve been watching them so carefully. It’s not Hewett, of course. Darana seems like a big sleepy animal. But he did come alive when he did that part out of his last play for us. Stacey Brian is an awful nice little guy. Prine Smith is a little quarrelsome, but you sense a certain amount of integrity in him. I can’t see him murdering anybody. Park, you must be wrong. You must!”

“The tension is building, Taff. You can feel it.”

She moved out of his arm. “And you love it, don’t you? It’s bread and wine to you. Park, there’s a faint streak of evil in you.”

“Man is a predatory animal,” he said happily.

She sighed. “Too late to change you now. I should have adopted you when you were a baby.”

“Foster mother at the age of seven?”

“I matured early.”

He lay rigid in the darkness, remembering, remembering. It was Lisa’s fault. No one could get around that. He had told her he loved her. He had told her this affair with Hewett had to stop at once. But she laughed, even when he told her she would be very sorry if she continued to torture him this way. He cried, and she laughed again and again. Sin must be punished, whenever it is found. There is no wrong in that, and this great clown, Falkner, can do nothing because there will never be any clue. He knew from the way Hewett acted that Lisa had never told him about the scene .

When Falkner came down, Taffy, Georgie, Guy, and Stacey Brian were breakfasting on the patio, shielded from the brisk morning wind. He heard them laughing before he saw them. They made room for him. He had touched his bell a few minutes before coming down. Mrs. Mick brought him his breakfast tray.

Georgie said, “I was telling them about home in Scranton when I had a crush on a guy who drove a hearse. We didn’t have any place to be alone, so we used to go and neck in the room where they stored the coffins. Well this one time Joey heard the boss coming back unexpected, so what does he do but pop me in a box and shut the lid and then make like he’s taking an inventory. My God, I was petrified. It’s dusty. I sneeze. The boss says, ‘Whassat?’ He opens the lid and says, ‘Girl, you ain’t dead!’ Joey, the dope, says, ‘Her aunt died. She was looking for a box.’ Next time I see Joey, he’s driving a bread truck. Terrible kind of breakfast talk, isn’t it? But on this house party maybe it isn’t so far out of line after all.”

“You say you and this Joey had a place where you could be alone,” Guy Darana said. “That isn’t a question. I’m just thinking out loud.”

“Stop making like a detective,” Stacey Brian said.

“He’s working on our little problem,” Taffy said. “Can’t you see the look of the hunter?”

“What kind of a detective you want?” Stacey Brian said. “A Jimmy Stewart type? Like this? Wal, I guess all you... uh... nice people need a... uh... little detectin’ done around here. Or how about an Edward G. Robinson? Like so. Listen to me, sugar. You got to lay it right on the line, see? You’re not talking to no small-town copper, see? This is the big time, sugar. See?”

They laughed and applauded. The imitations had been uncannily accurate. Hewett came onto the patio, and the look of of him quenched the high spirits. His eyes appeared to have receded back into his head. His mouth was a thin, bitter line.

“Good morning, all,” he said. “Fun and games?”

“You look rocky, honey,” Georgie said.

He smiled coldly. “Bad dreams. Copywriter’s dreams. I could see Lisa with her eyes bulging and hands around her throat, but I couldn’t tell whose hands.”

“Ugh!” Georgie said.

“By the way, Bill,” Park said, “I’m assuming that you would like to find out whether or not one of your friends killed her. I’m assuming you’ll help by answering questions. Did you and Lisa have a place where you used to go to be alone?”

“It’s not any of your business,” Hewett snapped.

“Blunt and to the point.”

“We did have. A farmhouse so broken down you couldn’t go into it. Just the foundation where the barn had been. But you could drive in there and not be seen from the road. She used to pack lunches, and we’d picnic there.”

“Did you ever go separately?”

“Sure. We’d meet there. She had a car. You know that already. It was in the newspapers. They found the car five days later in a big parking lot on West Forty-first Street. Nobody could say who’d driven it in there. Maybe she did. I used to take a bus out to Alden Village and walk to the farm.”

“Did you tell the police that?” Park asked.

“Why should I? She never went there except when we went together, or when we were going to meet there.”

“Her body might be there, Hewett. She could have been decoyed there.”

“How do you mean?”

“A faked message from you. It wouldn’t be hard. Any of your apartment mates could get their hands on your handwriting.”

Bill Hewett looked down at his plate. Suddenly he looked no longer young, as though he had donned the mask he would wear in middle age. “I went back once. Alone. It was like visiting some damnable cemetery. The wind whined. She could be there, all right.”

“I’ll wire the New York police. Tell me the name of the farm or how to direct them to it.”

“About a mile and a half north of the village on the left of a curve. Route Eight. They call it the Harmon place.”

He sent the wire after breakfast. At eleven thirty they were all out by the pool. Park was nursing a purpling bruise high on his cheek where Mick Rogers had tagged him heavily during the usual morning workout. Mick hummed as he made drinks. He seemed well pleased with himself.