Ask the Right Question (6 page)

No. That is not exactly correct. Twenty-five minutes after I sat down, as if knowing I was stuck on “soak” in three letters, a speaker in the ceiling came alive. A chime was stuck. A deep resonant voice, marred only by the heavy nasal hangover of rural Hoosier speech, greeted us boys and girls and instructed us to rise for the Pledge to the flag. The teachers in the lounge did not move a muscle. They were either conscious of not having been addressed, or just insensate to everything that was going on around them. But whatever it was, it was OK by me. I didn't feel much like getting up.

A recording of the “Star-Spangled Banner” followed the Pledge, and the singing was led by a live, bass, hick voice.

The music stopped, but the voice did not. “That recording of our national anthem and many other fine tunes can be bought on the Central High School Band recording which is now available in each and every home room from your band-recording representative. Support your band and help get them new instruments. Only five bucks apiece. Buy two and give them as gifts. “The day's announcements concluded with the ringing of a chime. Home room over. There was a flurry of exits and entrances in the Faculty Lounge.

I recognized John Shubert by the biology book stuffed with papers which he carried. And because he looked married.

“Shit,” he announced to the lounge in general and no one in particular. “There has got to be a better way to make a living.”

“Dedication, John, dedication,” scolded a healthy-looking man who was crammed into a student-size desk. He shuffled a pack of cards. I approached them.

“Mr. Shubert? I would very much like to speak with you about one of your students.”

“Do you mind talking over cards? This is my gin period. The closest I can get in this place.” He sat down in one of the desks and, driving it like a bump-em car, turned it around to face the shuffler, who now dealt. I squeezed into the desk across the aisle from Shubert. He nodded to his friend. “This is Clark Mace. Who do you want to know about?”

“An Eloise Crystal.” The cardsharp dealt slowly and with great concentration, as if wanting to make no mistakes.

“Aah, Eloise Crystal.” Shubert rocked back in his seat, as all the things I wanted to know came into his mind. “May I ask who you are?”

“My name is Albert Samson. I am a personnel investigator for Eli Lilly. We have a Saturday science program which Eloise Crystal has applied for a place in. There are a number of high school applicants and I am checking with their science teachers to get some idea of what they are like.

“Isn't it usual to send a form?”

“Would you really rather we sent a form?”

“Amen, brother,” interjected the patient dealer.

“A job requiring some science,” said Shubert, savoring the idea. I thought it was a pretty good one. “That's a surprise.”

“Why?”

“She has never given me much indication that she is, well, career-oriented. To be perfectly frank, I'm more surprised that she is applying for a job than that it involves science. What sort of stuff is she supposed to do?”

“We will be training in laboratory skills. It's a matter of aptitude mostly, but a little biology would help. She mentioned that she has done some extra laboratory work with you. Blood typing, I believe.”

“Ah, the blood typing. She's very good at it too. She has quite a taste for genetics. Hasn't missed a day since we started it. Genetics has a lot bigger part in the course these days, you know. DNA and all that. We start on it early in the course and use it to develop ecology and natural selection. It's a little unusual to do it that way. We're quite proud.”

“Do you consider her a bright girl?”

“Definitely bright, but a little distracted sometimes. What strikes her fancy she is extremely good at. Things stick in her mind; she does extra work. What doesn't strike her goes through like a sieve, or more often she just doesn't come to school.”

“Doesn't come to school?”

“Oh, I guess she just hangs around. What do any of them do?” He cocked his head. “Say are you sure
she
applied for the job?” Are you sure that her father didn't apply for her? He set it up, am I right?”

“Her father is involved in it.”

“I thought so. He came in to see me recently. He seemed genuinely concerned about her. An only child, I believe. Apparently she has become difficult at home. Seemed a nice enough type.”

“I'm afraid I haven't met him yet.” I was laying it on just a little bit thick. “Well, thank you very much, Mr. Shubert. I won't take any more of your time.”

He waved his neglected cards magnanimously.

“I would appreciate it if you would not mention my speaking to you to Eloise. I suspect it would just make her nervous on the final qualification tests.”

He nodded. “For her sake I hope she gets it.”

“We'll give her every consideration.”

Pleased with the apparent success of my little deception, I left the Faculty Lounge. Certain priority things had been accomplished. A degree of support for Eloise's rationality; a degree of confirmation for the blood types. It was about a quarter after ten and I had plenty of time. No one was visible in the school lobby now. The main door was closed, the table abandoned.

A tight-run little ship. No need for guards. Suppressing an impulse to go to the general office and purchase a nickel's worth of band tunes for five bucks I strode quietly and reasonably happily to my car.

How can a self-respecting cop put a parking ticket on a '58 Plymouth? Is there no respect for age in this country? I whipped it off the windshield and then really got burned. It wasn't even a real ticket.

It is against school regulations to park in a faculty space without an identifying sticker. Please do not do so again. Your license number has been recorded. If this is not your first offense you will be reported to the Police Department which will issue a parking violation.

Schools, I love em! So I headed off for another one.

I came into Butler on Forty-ninth Street. Past the two Butler University landmarks I was familiar with. Butler Fieldhouse, which is called Hinkle Fieldhouse now. They play basketball there. Very nice.

Then past a body of water known unto me as Stagnation Pond. In my day it was lush little pool; water came in, water went out. Clear fresh water that grew pretty flowers in the summer and made good ice skating in the winter. I used to go there with my friends when I was in high school. Lots of people used to go there. But no longer. Poor pool. Stinks all summer and even the winter ice is lumpy from the stuff that grows in it.

When I got to center campus, I just followed the signs to the Nursing College. I had never been there before, proof positive that I had gone to college outside Indiana.

By a few minutes after eleven I had located the registrar's office and entered it.

I don't know if she was the registrar, but the only person I saw behind a long counter was a one-armed lady in civilian clothes. I did something of a double take; one does not see many one-armed ladies in this world. It's a reflection on our role divisions.

I approached her end of the counter as she approached mine.

“Yeah? Whan can I do for ya?”

“I hate to be troublesome,” I lied, “but a woman who used to go to this college has applied to my company for a job and we still haven't gotten her transcripts from you.”

“Oh, yeah?” She peered; she pursed her mouth; she shrugged. “What's the name and the class?”

“She never graduated, but she started in 1949. The name is Fleur Graham.”

From the counter she went to some filing cabinets and surprisingly quickly she returned with the academic record of Fleur Graham.

I glanced over it. It gave little information. Name; home address; campus address (same); the name of her high school; her birth date; and the list of the courses she had taken in her one and only year. The grades were all recorded as “inc” for incomplete. A fine record. I had one like that once, the first semester of my sophomore year of the first time I went to college.

“Is there any way I can find out if any of her teachers are still teaching here?”

“Gee. We ain't got records of the teachers of the courses she took, mister. Teachers come and teachers go.”

“Well. Can I have a copy of this transcript, then?”

“Yeah, sure.” She took it and made a Xerox copy. “That'll be a dime.”

Which I paid her, and left.

The transcript was not entirely helpful, but it had served to cut out any possibility of the one thing I had been hoping for from Butler. Friends of Fleur's from her nursing days. The lady had lived at home, not in the residential halls. The best I could do now would be to try to contact all the other girls who started Butler Nursing College in 1949 and ask them if they happened to remember anything about a quiet girl called Fleur who might have been in some of their classes. Not a very efficient process. Not to waste time on now.

From the Nursing College I went back to center campus and parked. I had about an hour and a half before I was due at Mrs. Forebush's so I decided to take it over a leisurely lunch. I looked around for a university cafeteria. It's easy enough to eat in ostensibly private dining halls if they are large. You just walk in frowning. That makes it seem as if you belong there because you know what the food is going to be like.

The food was not good, but at least there was not a lot of it. I dawdled over coffee and eavesdropped on nearby conversations as best I could.

Then a couple of tootsies came over and tried to make friends. We talked for fully twenty minutes about how hard our courses were. Mine won. Nursing can be very hard on “an older fella.” They were very sympathetic and were a bit surprised when, at a quarter of two, I took my leave.

7

At 2:05 I pulled up in front of 413 East Fiftieth Street. It was a barn-red house, frame with barn-red trim. A small, heavily planted garden filled the small front yard. A driveway led behind the house from Fiftieth Street on the left, and an alley ran beside it on the right.

My fist was raised to knock when the door opened.

“Come in, come in,” said the trim white-haired lady with a yellow carnation in her hair. Florence Forebush.

I came in and was led into what they used to call a drawing room. It was frilly, Victorian and full of violet-brown upholstery with white lace trim. Two chairs and a couch were horseshoed in front of a large marble fireplace which bore a mantel loaded with pictures. Some of them I recognized. Three, the different ages of Estes Graham. A woman next to him. The print and frame looked old. It was Irene Olian Graham, I was sure. Next to her the uniformed figure of Leander Crystal. On the end the most familiar face. My client's.

I apologized for being late.

“It's a little early yet for tea, Mr. Samson,” said Mrs. Forebush after we had seated ourselves in the matching chairs and faced each other across a slate coffee table. Her decorum contrasted with a social omission on her mantel. No Fleur.

“You'll have to remind me what it was you wanted again. About Estes?”

“That's right. Mrs. Forebush. I'm trying to get together some information about Estes Graham and his family.”

“For the paper, I believe you said? About Estes' last years?”

What was I supposed to have reminded her of again? She had repeated everything I had told her. I was getting the distinct impression that I was being conned, not conning. But maybe I was just touchy. “I hope so, yes.”

She studied me quizzically. “I trust you won't mind me saying this so directly, but you look a little old not to be sure when you are doing something.”

Challenged again. “I hope not to make that your problem. I just understood you knew Estes Graham in his later years.”

She shrugged. “Oh, I'm happy enough to talk about Estes. Nothing I can say will matter to him now.”

Was she really telling me that she didn't believe the whole story?

“I worked for Estes Graham from my twenty-first birthday until the day he died. I saw that man go through more than a dozen lesser men together could take.” Light seemed to come from her eyes; rather than from the window. She
was
happy enough to talk about Estes Graham.

“I understand he married Irene Olian.”

“In 1916. The quietest, most angelic little girl you ever saw. He worshiped her. He mostly died himself when she was taken in 1937.”

“There were four children?”

“Three boys dead in the war, and a girl, Fleur. Young man, as far as I'm concerned, there is more story in Estes Graham than there will ever be in one man again. Things aren't the same for a real man nowadays. But his last years, they were such a change. Now why do you want to hear about that?” She looked me straight in the eye. But she out-eyed me, three to two. The yellow carnation watching dispassionately down from above.

I said, “That's the part of the story I'm supposed to cover for the article.”

Her snort covered what would have been my choking on my own feeble words.

“Goodness gracious. A man your age ‘hoping' to do a story and now it's not even all your story.” She snorted again, with no apologies. I had the distinct impression I was not smart enough to dabble in private eying. Maybe I should stick to writing crossword puzzles.

She brought me up short again. “Young man, you aren't doing anything that might hurt the child, are you?”

I knew she meant Eloise.

“No, Mrs. Forebush. I am trying to help her. It was she who gave me your name.”

“Eloise,” she mused. She sat back in her chair, the body equivalent of clearing her throat. “All right. You must think I can tell you things you need to know. I'll do my best.”

“Thank you,” I said, infinitely grateful.

She looked at her watch. “Still, you must get on with it. I don't want to miss my movie.”