Edward Gorman - The Autumn Dead

The gun fell from his hand.

I wondered if I'd underestimated the severity of the head wound.

I wondered if Dr. Glendon Evans hadn't just fallen down dead right in front of my eyes.

In one of the kitchen cupboards I found a bottle of Wild Turkey. I poured a lot of it into the coffee I'd made us. Then I carried the cups over to the nook, on the wooden windowsill on which a jay sat, overcome with the soft breeze. Beyond were the hills of pine and the sky of watercolor blue.

"You feeling any better?" I asked him. I sat there and blew on my coffee, having overdone the heat in the microwave, and then I sat about staring at him again.

Twenty-five minutes had passed since I'd helped him downstairs and sat him up on one side of the breakfast-nook table. Twenty-five minutes and he had not uttered a single word. At first I wondered if he wasn't in some kind of shock, but his brown eyes registered all the appropriate emotions to my words, so shock was unlikely. I'd said a few things to irritate him just to see how he would respond, and he'd responded fine. Then I'd considered that maybe he thought I was the man who'd knocked him out, but now he'd know differently. Most burglars didn't put iodine and Band-Aids on the wounds they'd inflicted.

Glendon Evans sat there, a slender, handsome, successful-looking man who even in these circumstances gave off a scent of arrogance. He wasn't talking to me no matter what I said and I didn't know why.

I had some more coffee and then I said, "This is pretty ridiculous. Your not talking, I mean."

He sipped his coffee, set the delicate white china cup back down. Looked out the window.

I said, "Did they want the suitcase?"

This time when he faced me there was more than a hint of anxiety in his eyes.

"So it was the suitcase. You know what was in it?"

He went back to looking out the window. From some distant hill, a red kite had been sent up the air currents where it struggled with comic grace against the soft and invisible tides of spring.

"She told me it had sentimental stuff in it.” I paused. "She made it sound very innocent."

I went over and got the bottle and gave us each some more bourbon.

"How's your head?"

He turned and looked and, almost against his will, raised his shoulders in a tiny shrug.

I sat back down and said, "I wonder who's going to get pissed off first. You because you're sick of me talking or me because I'm sick of you not talking."

I congratulated myself on the cleverness of that line, feeling for sure this would open his mouth and get him going magpie-style, but all it produced was a wince and a touch of long fingers to the back of his head.

So I watched the kite for a while, how it angled left, then angled right, red against the light blue sky. It made me recall how warm even March winds were when you were ten and had your hand filled with kite string.

I said, "She did it to you, didn't she?" I knew he wasn't going to talk, so I just kept right on going. "She did it to me when I was twenty. I really thought I was going to marry her and all that stuff. At the time I was working in a supermarket for a dollar thirty-five an hour and spending a dollar twenty-seven on her. I bought myself a forty-nine Ford fastback and one night she gave me a crock about needing it to help her mother and you know what she did? She took a guy to the drive-in in it." My laugh, bitter even after all these years, cracked like a shot in the aerie.

I poured us some more Wild Turkey. His body language-he was leaning forward now and his eyes started studying me-indicated he was getting interested.

He said, "Was that a true story?"

"The drive-in?"

He nodded. He had a great and grave dignity. He certainly had the right demeanor for a shrink.

"True," I said.

Then I went back to staring out the window at the kite and the birds. The silence was back.

I went and found a bathroom and came back. When I slid into my place in the nook I found a new hot cup of coffee in my place. He was pouring Wild Turkey into it.

He said, "Three months ago she told me she desperately needed money for her mother. Some illness. She was very vague. I gave it to her, of course."

"There's something I should tell you."

"You don't need to. I looked through an old scrapbook of hers. Her mother died in nineteen-sixty-four."

"Right."

The pain in his eyes was not simply from the head wound. "I really thought we were going to be married." His lips thinned. "God, what a stupid bastard I was."

"Was she a patient of yours?"

For the first time, he smiled. "A patient? You think she'd ever seek help? Ever think she'd need help? Her version of things is that the world is here to serve her, and if she occasionally has to inconvenience or hurt somebody to be served, then she just hopes there will be no hard feelings; Holly Golightly."

'That's Karen."

"I met her at a party." Miserably, he said, "Her pattern is to have a new one ready to go before she notifies the old one that he's finished."

"You know who the new one is?"

"No. But I'm sure there is one and has been for some time now." His-face tightened. "You can tell." He shook his head. "She got calls a few times from a man named Ted Forester. Somehow, I didn't get the impression it was romantic."

So I sat there and thought about Ted Forester and his money and his arrogance. Then I remembered something I hadn't thought about in a quarter century. All the time I'd been going out with Karen, Forester had been skulking in the background, calling her, buying her gifts, waiting me out. She'd admitted this to me one night, saying, "Ted doesn't know what to do with himself now that he's fallen in love with a girl from the Highlands." Which was true enough. It was hard to imagine his parents approving of such a match. Then I spent a moment or two thinking of how Malley and I had smashed out his car window.

Glendon Evans said, "I suppose she told you I hit her."

''No."

"I did. I actually hit her. Not hard. Just sort of a slap. It was something I never thought I could do. Ever."

"She seems to have survived."

"Would you like some more bourbon?"

"No, thanks. Just some more coffee." I was making instant Folgers with tap water and setting it in the microwave. "You want some more?"

"Please."

So I made us some and sat back down and said, "What's in the suitcase?"

"I don't know."'

"Really?"

"Really. She kept it in her closet. It had a clasp lock on it. Several times, after things started going badly for us, I was tempted to open it and look inside, but I couldn't see any way to do that without her finding out."

"You never got a glimpse inside?"

"Not a glimpse."

I sipped my coffee. "You have any idea who hit you?"

"None."

"Tell me about it."

He shrugged lean shoulders beneath the expensive blue silk robe. "I came home early today. The flu. I got undressed and into my pajamas and robe and went into the den to lie on the couch and watch the news on cable and that's when somebody came up behind me."

"You remember anything about him?"

"Not really."

"He didn't say anything?"

"No.''

"You remember any particular odors or sounds?"

''No.

"How long've you been out?"

"Maybe an hour."

"So he was in here, waiting?"

"Apparently."

"It doesn't sound as if he got the suitcase."

"I know he didn't."

"How do you know?"

"I looked for it yesterday. It was gone."

"You sure she left it behind when she left?"

He touched manicured fingers to his lips. Thought a moment. "That's it. Now I remember. She said she'd pick up the suitcase when Gary Roberts got her things."

"Did she get it then?"