Hotel Paradise (39 page)

And what I was going to say to the Sheriff was uppermost on my mind.

•   •   •

After my own waffle-and-sausage-patty breakfast (which did a lot to revive me) I was hanging around the front desk, debating walking into town. I was too tired for walking and decided to call Axel’s Taxis again. Right after I hung up, I discovered Ree-Jane had been sitting in one of the easy chairs hidden by the huge rhododendron pot, for she rose and came over to the desk, still flouncing through her fashion magazine, as if raising her eyes to look at me would be too boring. She said she wanted to go into La Porte, too, but her convertible was in the garage. She looked at me accusingly and added that something had been wrong with it ever since Brownmiller had driven it to Hebrides. As long as I’d called a taxi she’d go with me. Not asking, telling.

“What’re you doing up so early?” I was furious with myself for getting caught by her. Ree-Jane usually never got downstairs before ten.

It was only a quarter to nine, and she answered me by saying, “Sam wants to see me.” Then she sighed as if this were ever so tiresome, the police calling her in.

“The Sheriff does?” I was flabbergasted. Of course, she could have been lying. “Why? How come?”

That was her opportunity to give me a smirky, secret-keeping little smile, one corner of her bright-red-lipsticked mouth hooking up. “It’s confidential police business.”

Knowing how nobody’s confidence could ever rest easy with Ree-Jane, I prodded her by saying, “It’s about the dead woman.” I made an absolute statement of this, as if I were sure.

She dropped the magazine, clearly irritated. “How do
you
know?”

“How do I know?” I thought quickly. “Because the Sheriff wants to see me, too.”

Her red mouth tightened in anger. “He’s supposed to see me at nine o’clock.”

Casually, I looked up at the regulator clock, ticking uncaringly above us. “Well, you’re going to be late.”

Ree-Jane opened her mouth to say something she probably thought would be scathing, but just then we heard gravel spit and a horn honk, so the taxi had arrived.

We plucked up sweaters, jackets, money (I would of course be stuck with the fare: “But you were going in anyway . . .”) and we went out onto the porch. Delbert yelled a friendly greeting and we clambered in and I asked him where Axel was. I always asked that.

“Oh, Axel got a call from some of them lake people wanted to go to Meridian.”

“They must really be rich to hire a taxi for that long distance,” I said.

“I guess. Axel, he likes the long runs. Axel just loves to drive. It’s why he started his own taxis. He’s a real good driver.”

I would never know.

•   •   •

Ree-Jane stared straight ahead and didn’t speak to me, for she was still smarting with the knowledge that I too had been called in by the Sheriff. I wondered why she believed me. But I still had the problem of needing to think while Ree-Jane’s mere presence was sucking all of the brain oxygen out of the air. I decided to test out on Ree-Jane what I might say to the Sheriff. “Helene Baum and those people last night said the police didn’t know a bit more about the dead body. I mean, who she was.”

“Don’t ask me,” Ree-Jane said, bitterly.

I at least could tell from that she didn’t know any more than before, because it was a sure thing she’d have milked anything she
did
know to death. Delbert heard this and of course he had his own opinions, which he was pleased to share with anyone who’d listen.

I didn’t.

•   •   •

At the edge of town, I guess Ree-Jane’s curiosity got the better of her, and she asked me what Sam said he wanted to talk to
me
about. (I just hated the way she called him “Sam.”) “I don’t know. I’m supposed
to meet him at the Rainbow Café.” I said this in case she mentioned to the Sheriff that I’d claimed I was supposed to see him at ten o’clock. That way, the Sheriff would just assume I probably meant we would run into each other at the Rainbow and maybe check the parking meters, as we often did.

Life needed too much quick thinking.

•   •   •

Delbert dropped Ree-Jane at the side of the courthouse, and I could just as easily have got out there too, but that would have suggested I didn’t have my own equally important destination. Which I didn’t. I just had Delbert drive down the hill and around the corner and drop me across the street from the courthouse.

I got out on the other side of the street in front of the Oak Tree Gift Shoppe, thinking that it would be nice to join Miss Flyte and Miss Flagler for their morning snack. Miss Flagler’s white kitchen was a cozy, restful place for thinking, as I often did while the two of them were talking. The cat helped my thinking, too.

One reason I loved the Oak Tree was because it was so small and shabby—“shabbily genteel” was what my mother called it—and because it always smelled of lavender and “eau de rose.” I looked into the pretty bay window, whose display always appeared much the same, though I know Miss Flagler changed it, for I’d seen her leaning in and arranging jewelry from time to time. But there were always the same sorts of things: silver hearts on narrow chains, gold lockets, silver rattles tied with ribbons, a tray of birthstone rings, little silver bears (which served no purpose I could see). The necklaces and pins sat in white boxes on cotton squares; bracelets and silver chains were draped on display tiers covered with a waterfall of dark blue velvet.

The sound of the tinkling bell died away completely before I heard shufflings in the room at the rear. It occurred to me that as I had several dollars in my change purse, it would be nice to buy a present for Anna Paugh, whose birthday was a few days away. My mother was going to make her a cake (something my mother did for all of the help), and there would probably be a little party in the kitchen. Anna Paugh always wore pins, I’d noticed, so that’s what I was looking for when Miss Flagler came through the curtain. She seemed glad to see me. I told her what I wanted and we both searched through all of the pins. There was a silver one of three cats in a row with tiny jewellike
eyes, chips of some blue-green stone. Anna Paugh loved cats, including the hotel cat, and I knew she had several at home. So that’s the one I bought, and I watched Miss Flagler wrap it in silver gift-wrap paper with a lot of narrow silver ribbon. Miss Flagler really loved silver.

“Miss Flyte is coming for coffee,” she said. “Wouldn’t you like some cocoa?”

Since that’s what I’d come for, I quickly said yes, and we went back to the kitchen, where Albertine, the cat, was lying fat and furry before the cast-iron stove. She shivered herself awake and, seeing me sitting down in the buttercup-yellow chair, jumped up on the shelf behind and directly over my head and started sniffing my hair. A plate of fresh buns was sitting on the white table and Miss Flagler told me to help myself, but I said I would wait for Miss Flyte. I probably wouldn’t have been so polite if I hadn’t been full of waffles and sausage.

By the time Miss Flyte came in through the side door, with the scent of candle wax clinging to her cardigan, Miss Flagler was pouring the steaming cocoa into a mug. I stirred it quickly (to avoid the skin) and added two marshmallows. The three of us sat there peacefully drinking and eating buns while Albertine chewed the crown of my hair. Miss Flagler told Albertine to stop, but of course she didn’t.

I brought up the subject of the woman found in Mirror Pond, thinking that they might have heard some interesting rumor. “But the Sheriff doesn’t know any more about her, about her identity. Well, I think that’s really strange. It’s been nearly four days. Wouldn’t you think the police would at least know who she
is?”

Miss Flyte agreed that yes, it was indeed strange.

But Miss Flagler, after a short silence, started talking in an odd, roundabout way. “You know, I think sometimes we become . . . well,
stuck
inside a problem.” She said this and looked at me and looked away. “For some reason, we keep moving around it or inside of it. Or not really moving at all, but fluttering.” She frowned at her cup as if it were difficult to explain what she meant.

“Like moths, you mean,” said Miss Flyte. She was never far from thoughts of candle fire. And then she added, “Obsession.” Miss Flyte liked words like that. She was romantic. “The way moths circle around flames, or beat their wings against a lamp,” she went on.

Miss Flagler seemed to be thinking this over as she ran her fingers over the rim of her teacup in a way I had seen a tea-leaf fortune reader
once do. “Obsession . . . no, not precisely.
Attraction
is more what I mean. Yes, attraction.”

I frowned. What was she talking about? I didn’t see how she could be talking about the Sheriff’s problem with the dead woman.

She said, “Certain problems just
attract
us. They’re
attractors
, they’re like magnets. And once drawn to them, you can’t quite . . . stay away.” She held her hand out as if she were trying to reach for words.

Ordinarily, the two of them just chirruped away about everyday affairs. But Miss Flagler seemed to be off on something deeper. Miss Flyte must have thought so, too, for she nodded and said, “That’s deep. That’s very deep.”

“I’m not saying it well. It’s what I mean by getting stuck. Or trapped.”

It was making me uncomfortable, this “attractor” business, and I said, “Well, but it’s not the
moth’s
fault if it gets trapped.” I felt I should make this clear, in case there was any blame to be handed out. I studied the bottom of my mug and felt anxious. “Anyway, how does a person get
un
stuck, then?”

Miss Flagler shook her head slightly. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

That wasn’t much of an answer. Impatiently, I asked, “But what
kinds
of problems are you talking about?”

She thought for a moment. “I guess inner problems. Yes, inner.” She tapped at her chest with a fisted hand.

Inner problems.
I relaxed a little bit.

Except for how to get rid of Ree-Jane, I didn’t have any of those.

•   •   •

“ ‘I’m not at lib-er-ty to tell you,’ ” Maud said, mimicking the Sheriff.

After the difficult ideas Miss Flagler had been trying to express (and making me nervous in the bargain), it was a relief to hear Maud not searching for words at all.

She went on. “Do policemen really say that? ‘I’m not at liberty’? I think he’s just putting on he’s a TV cop, just to annoy me.” She lit a cigarette and waved out the match.

She had been talking about the Sheriff’s response to her question. He’d come in a little before ten, about fifteen minutes before me (worse luck), downed a cup of coffee, and taken off “like a bat out of hell,” or so Maud described it, as she struck one palm against another and
slid the hand straight out to indicate, I guessed, bats screeching out of hell.

“You want some chili?” she asked. “They just made some fresh.”

I told her I’d just had sticky buns and cocoa over at Miss Flagler’s, with her and Miss Flyte.

“You have more of a social life than I do.”

I was studying my fingers, splayed on the table as if it were piano keys, pondering over what Miss Flagler had said. I asked Maud: “Do you think people can get stuck in their problems?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Oh, it was just something Miss Flagler was saying. Something about a person can get so attracted to a problem that they can get stuck in it and can’t get out.”

“Miss Flagler said that? I’m surprised. She’s so quiet.” Maud was thinking about this and peeling a bit of pink nail polish from her thumb.

“Miss Flyte said she must mean ‘obsessed,’ but Miss Flagler said no, she meant the problem was an ‘attractor.’ That’s what she called it. An ‘at-trac-tor.’ ”

Maud debated, frowning. “I guess we all know people can get totally immersed in their problems. But that doesn’t sound exactly like what she means . . .” and she raised her eyes and her hand much as Miss Flagler had done, palm upward, as if maybe God would help out. But we both knew he wouldn’t, of course. “Maybe it’s that you could get ‘stuck’ in a problem if it had especially serious consequences for you, personally.”

What I liked about Maud was that she didn’t just dismiss a question and didn’t ask
why
you were asking. For all of her sarcasm (mostly around the Sheriff) she took things seriously.

“What were you talking about when she said this?”

“The dead woman.” I cleared my throat. I didn’t want to talk about Miss Flagler’s comment anymore, as it was getting my nerves up again. “Where did the Sheriff go, if he was so excited?”

“Excited? I didn’t say he was excited. Just as stony-faced as ever.” She blew a smoke ring.

Surely Ree-Jane couldn’t have told him anything important, could she? Maud answered that tormenting question without my asking it. “All he said was it was regarding a missing person.”

My head snapped up; I sat rigid.
“What?”

“A missing person.”

“Well, but
who
?”

“ ‘I am not at
lib
-er-ty,’ et cetera, et cetera.” She shrugged. “I don’t know who or where.” She inclined her head toward the jukebox. “That sounds like something Jo Stafford would sing. ‘But I can’t remem-
ber
where or when,’ ” she sang. Maud had a really pretty voice. Then she started in again on her thumbnail, peeling off another scrap of polish. “Donny came running in to get coffee and doughnuts from Shirl and then ran out again and jumped in the squad car.”

That was interesting. Donny was a blabbermouth. So was Shirl. I raised myself up to look down towards the cash register. Shirl was there as usual, sitting on her high stool. It was a little after eleven o’clock now, and I said in a rush that I’d have to get back to the hotel and wait tables for lunch and I asked Maud for a check. She didn’t want to give me one, but I insisted. I said I was afraid someday she’d get in trouble giving me free Cokes. No, I insisted. Maud just shrugged a little, smiled, and wrote up a check. I took it up to the front, said hello to Shirl, and placed the check with my money on the rubber mat. After gazing in the glass case at the rows of doughnuts, I said, “My mother says you make the best doughnuts in a hundred miles.” Actually, my mother made the best doughnuts and she knew it.