John MacDonald - The Good Old Stuff

In a flat voice she said, “You never did finish that last figure, did you?”

“The pose wasn’t right. That pose wasn’t for you. It wasn’t worth casting.”

“You said you would try another one.”

“You said you would never pose again.”

I gave my stage yawn and muttered good night as I left the room. No one answered me.

After I was in bed, I knew that they were up in the studio, the harsh lights bright above them, his big, thick-fingered hands molding the clay with surprising delicacy, Bets standing on the raised platform, on the turntable that moved around at the rate of one inch a minute.

It had all started again between them. Over chess.

The roar of her station wagon, the sputter of gravel against the fenders, woke me later. Moonlight was white in the room. I heard a sound and went to the window. Shay Pritchard was swimming up and down the length of the pool, low in the water, his arms lifting slowly. I counted six laps and went back to bed and to sleep.

It was a small ranch-type house, sparkling new. Garver met us at the door, incongruous in those House Beautiful surroundings. His eyes were puffed as though he had slept badly. His face lighted up as he recognized us.

“Did you find out something already?”

“No. We want to look around,” Shay said.

He showed us the house. In the living room Shay went immediately to the magazine rack. Mixed in with the farm periodicals and cattle journals was an ample collection of glossy-paper true-crime magazines.

“Yours?” Shay asked.

“No, Allie liked those. She’d curl up like a kitten in that big chair over there, of an evening, and sometimes read that stuff until way past midnight. Her eyes’d shine funny-like over some of ’em. When we stayed up late I’d go out and scramble us a few eggs and put on a pot of coffee.”

“She didn’t like to cook.”

“I wouldn’t say she doesn’t like to. She just can’t do it so good. Me, I’m pretty handy around a kitchen from living alone all these years, so I do most of it.”

“I’d like a look at her clothes.”

Garver led the way back to the two bedrooms. He pointed to a big record player. “Bought her that for a wedding present. She wanted one bad.”

Shay looked over the albums. A lot of Cuban rhythms. The rest was rock with a heavy beat.

“She picked all them out,” Garver said. “She’d — well, she’d dance to ’em when we were alone. She knew I liked it.”

Shay moved over to the dressing table. He stared at the massive array of bottles, jars, jugs, vials. He picked up a small bottle. “Expensive.”

“Fifty bucks an ounce,” Garver said proudly. “Smells good.”

The big closet covered one whole wall. It had sliding mirror-paneled doors. Once they were open I could catch the woman-scent of her. Shay leafed through the racked clothes like a man reading an out-of-date magazine in a dentist’s office.

“Can you tell which of this stuff she had before you met her, Garver?” he asked.

“She threw most of that out. The blue dress there, the long shiny one, she had.”

Shay took it off the hanger. He glanced at the label and said, “I’m taking this along.”

Garver shrugged. There was a section of built-in drawers. Shay yanked them open, one at a time. Nothing but an array of filmy black panties, yellow ones, pink, powder blue — bras to match. The dressing-table drawers were full of small items. Junk jewelry, a lot of it heavy and barbaric.

“Did she have any good jewels?”

“No. I was going to get her something. She wanted an emerald. I hadn’t gotten around to it yet.”

“Where did she keep her private papers?”

“She didn’t have any. I helped her pack when she left her place. Just clothes and shoes.”

“What did she take with her?”

“I don’t know. When I left the house in the morning she wasn’t up yet. I made her breakfast and took it to her. I can’t see as there’s anything missing, but I don’t rightly remember all the clothes she had. Or even the suitcases she bought. Lieutenant Ryan asked me all that too.”

“Toothbrush?”

“That’s still hanging right in the bathroom, and her hairbrush and stuff is still in the cabinet. That’s why I don’t think she took anything except the clothes on her back.”

“What did she do all day while you were working?”

“Read and played the radio and her records, or went shopping.”

“Did you two have friends?”

“Well, my friends are pretty old, and she was a stranger here, and she said it would be nice if we were selfish for the first year or so and stayed by ourselves. That suited me okay.”

We thanked him and left. Shay had the blue dress over his arm. It was a hard, electric blue in heavy satin. I slid behind the wheel and we went down the road.

Shay saw the old woman sitting, rocking, on the farmhouse porch, shelling peas. “Pull up,” he said.

As we walked up to the porch I saw him carefully adjust his clean-cut boyish manner.

“Lovely day, ma’am,” he said shyly.

“Seems to be.” She had the eyes of a chipmunk. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m Shay Pritchard and this is Robert Moran. We don’t want to bother you, Mrs. Carriff.”

“Read the name off the mailbox, eh? What’s on your mind?”

“I know that a good woman like you wouldn’t discuss her neighbors with strangers.”

“Depends on which neighbors, Mr. Pritchard.”

He grinned boyishly. “Let’s say Mrs. James Garver.”

Mrs. Carriff braced her feet and stopped rocking. She looked at Shay and then at me. She started rocking again. “She won’t be back.”

“Why are you so sure of that?”

“Girl like her? Jim Garver was softheaded to marry the likes of that. Her reeking of cheap perfume and wearing no proper undergarments and more coats of paint that Murphy’s barn! Young enough to be his granddaughter. She was after his money, but she found out she’d have to wait too long. Jim’s sturdy. Lucky for him, she wasn’t the kind to help him on his way. It’s happened before. No, she just got right sick of living out here where it’s quiet and went on back to the city.”

“You saw her leaving?”

“No, I didn’t. I didn’t have to. I know her kind.”

“Did she ever have any callers — that is, while Jim was at work.”

“Men callers? They could have parked up Garrison’s lane and come across lots. Easy enough to stay out of sight that way. She probably had ’em, all right. But the only one I ever saw was that silly Garrison boy. Big, gawky thing. His mother told me he went off his feed after Jim brought that woman home. He must be nineteen now. Used to hang around out on the road and just stare at the house, hoping to see her through a window. But don’t let on I talked about him if you go see him. His mother’d be mad as hops I told you anything.”

Ted Garrison was working on a yellow tractor. He had the fuel pump dismantled and spread out on newspaper. There was a wide smudge of grease from his cheekbone to his jaw across his wind-burned face. He was tall and wide, and when he moved I saw nothing gawky about him.

“Want something?”

“How well did you know Allie Garver?” Shay asked. His tone was harsh and blunt.

The fuel pump diaphragm slipped out of the boy’s fingers and rolled across the newspaper into the dooryard dust. His face paled under the ruddiness.

“Is — is she dead?”

“Why would you think she was dead?”

“You said how well did I know her. Like she was dead.”

“She’s gone. She could be dead. We don’t know.”

The color seeped slowly back. The boy’s brown eyes hardened. “How well I know her is none of your damn business.”