Mother Finds a Body (14 page)

I heard a stealthy footstep, the sound of a drawer being opened. I tried to keep my breathing even, as though I were
still sleeping. Someone touched the door to the bedroom. When I went to sleep it had been open, but it was closed! My eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness, and I saw the brass handle to the door move.

I called out softly, “Who is it?”

The brass handle fell into place.

I jumped up from the bed and threw open the door. I snapped the button for the light. Nothing happened. Someone had pulled the plug that connected with the electric outlet.

“Who is it?” My voice sounded hollow.

There was no answer. A warm breeze from the front of the room told me the door was open. I felt my way along in the darkness until my hands touched the kerosene lamp. With trembling fingers I lifted the glass hurricane globe and placed it to one side. I found a match and lit the lamp.

The room was empty. The door was open, as I suspected, but there was no one there. The screen door was also open. I looked outside. Flickering lights came from the surrounding trailer windows. Someone's radio was playing quietly. That was all.

I closed the screen door and looked around the room. Everything was in order. No, not everything. The door to the pantry was open. Before I closed it, I looked inside to see if things were disturbed. The half loaf of bread was untouched, the coffee can in its place. The sugar bowl, the tea, the soda crackers, Mother's supply of asthma powder; nothing was misplaced.

I sat on the daybed. My legs were still weak. I felt I had to sit and quickly. Had I dreamed it, I wondered.

“I didn't dream the screen door open,” I said aloud. “I didn't dream the doorknob turning either.”

A voice from outside spoke suddenly. “Well, you're up.”

I couldn't place the voice or face at the screen door. I must have screamed. It all seems so silly now, but at that moment I was as frightened as I've been in my whole life. Frightened by my own mother!

“Why, Louise!” she said. “You're pale as a ghost.” She opened the door and called the dogs into the trailer. She had a bundle under her arms and she tossed it on the stove.

While the dogs jumped around whining for their dinner, I told Mother about someone opening the drawer, leaving the screen door open, rummaging through the pantry. Mother cut up the dogs' meat with a pair of scissors and listened to me.

“It must be your imagination,” she said when I had finished.

“But the lights,” I said. “They wouldn't go on. When I pushed the light switch nothing happened.”

“It isn't the first time someone has kicked the extension loose,” Mother replied. She put the dogs' meat in separate little piles on a newspaper and watched them eat. Then she opened the bundle that was on the stove.

“The neighbors gave me these beautiful bones for the babies.” Mother held up four rib bones. I didn't think they were beautiful, but the dogs did. The monkey was fed his seeds, the guinea pig his carrot. Mother sat back and relaxed.

“Do you know, Louise, I've been thinking,” Mother said. Her pause didn't frighten me; she looked too serene. “I'm not sure that saloon is a good place for Dimples to work. That man who runs it, I don't trust him, dear.”

I went over and put my arms around her. Her hair smelled so clean and fresh, like new-mown hay.

“Neither do I,” I said. “But Dimples can handle herself and, well, there's a reason.”

Mother looked up at me sharply.

“You and Biff aren't getting yourselves inveigled into anything, are you?” she asked.

“It's a little late for inveiglement,” I replied. “And, anyway, Biff has a plan. He's going to . . .”

“He's going to what?” Mother asked. Her shoulders had become taut under my hands. I could hear her catch her breath in a tight gasp.

“He's going to charge them ten percent agent fees,” I said. I tried to laugh. It was no go. I reached in the pantry for the bottle of rye instead.

“Have a hot toddy while I have an old-fash?” I asked.

Mother nodded, and I put on the water to boil. I was glad to have something to occupy my mind, something to make my
head stop pounding so. Pounding with unanswerable questions. Why had Mother been so anxious to bury the body? Why hadn't she told me about buying the gun? Why hadn't she given it to the sheriff the day we were in the woods? Why had she waited until Joyce forced her into telling him about it? Why had she changed so in the last few weeks?

A familiar noise disturbed the silence. It was the loud knocking of a car that had burned out its bearings. The headlights cast a beam on the door of the trailer.

“Hey, come out and see what we got,” Biff shouted.

“We're in the wood, coal, and ice business as of today,” Dimples yelled happily.

I went to the door and opened it. Biff was driving a truck. Dimples sat in the front seat with him. In the back sat Corny and Mandy. It was an open-stake-bodied truck, the same truck they had carted the corpse away in.

“No!” I shouted. I ran down the steps and reached Biff's side as he jumped down from the seat. “Not
this
car, Biff!”

“It's the only thing in town we could rent,” he explained, squeezing my arm gently. “Ain't it a beauty? Ten bucks a week.”

“Well,” I mumbled. “The price is right. Does it go?” Mandy and Corny climbed down from the back. Mandy was limping painfully.

“Damn right it goes,” he said. “Right back to the guy that rented it to us.” He limped over to a chair under the lean-to tent and fell into it.

“We'll put a hammock back there for ya,” Dimples said laughingly.

Corny was silent. He stepped into the trailer and closed the door loudly.

“What's eating him?” I asked.

Dimples and Mandy laughed.

“Biff told him to get out. Said as long as he had a job he could move the hell away,” Dimples said. “So help me. Gyp, I think that's the reason Biff tried to get us all a job, so he'd get rid of us.”

“Not you, Dimples,” Biff said. “You're as welcome as the flowers in—say, where's everybody?” Biff asked suddenly.

He walked over to the trailer and peered in the window. “Hey, Evangie, we're home. Where's Mamie?”

Dimples chipped some ice and dumped it into a bowl. Then she got the glasses from the outside cabinet. “Soup's on!” she yelled as she placed them on the table.

“Mamie is visiting, I guess,” I said. I spoke casually. Not casually enough, though.

“What's happened?” Biff said.

I told him. It didn't sound like much. Even less than when I told Mother.

“And that's all,” I finished lamely. “All besides the pantry door being open. The catch on it isn't good, anyway, so maybe it . . .”

Biff hadn't waited for me to finish. In two strides he was up the steps and in the trailer. He pushed Corny aside roughly and made a beeline for the pantry. First he looked at the catch. It
was
loose. Then he began taking the groceries from the shelves and placing them on the stove top.

“What
is
all this?” Mother asked. “First Louise acts like an idiot, now you. I can't stand all this excitement. It's not only bad for my asthma, but I don't like it anyway. Corpses under your bed . . .”

“Corpses under . . .” Corny stopped in the middle of his packing and let out a long, low whistle. “So that's what it was you were carting off to the woods. Well now, isn't that just dandy. A corpse, eh? Anyone I know?”

“I wouldn't be a damned bit surprised,” I said.

Biff sauntered over to Corny. He put his hands on his hips and looked down at the grinning comic.

“Now that you know, I can ask you a few questions,” he said.

“You ain't goin' to ask me a thing, see? From now on I'm head man around here. That is, unless you'd like your friend, the sheriff, to know what's buried out in the woods. Any questions to be asked, I'm just the little boy to do the asking.” Corny
laughed up in Biff's face. “That'll look swell in the papers, too,” Corny said. “It'll be the end of you and your Goddamned high-brow burlesque-queen wife.”

Biff got him first. A very neat one-two right on the eye. When his head hit the day bed, Mother gave him a quick one for luck. I handled the other eye. But nicely.

We didn't bother explaining that the sheriff knew all about the body.

“I'll drive him into town,” Mandy said. “One body under the bed is enough.”

He picked up Corny's bag and booted the comic through the door. In a second I heard the loud knock of the truck and the swoosh of the tires in the dust.

Mother never looked happier. She downed her hot toddy in one gulp and threw her arms around Biff.

“You were wonderful!” she said.

Biff and I looked at each other. Biff shrugged his shoulders. I shrugged mine. Mandy's remark about the body under the bed had evidently escaped Mother's attention, but it hadn't escaped ours.

Dimples burst into the room.

“Hey, what's all this about bodies under my bed?” she demanded.

“Not your bed,” Mother corrected her. “It was under the bed in the back room. In the bathtub.”

Dimples's chin sagged. Her mouth fell open.

“Gawdamighty!” she gasped. “When I heard Corny talking I thought it was a gag!”

12
WHY DON'T PEOPLE TELL ME THESE THINGS?”
Dimples said. “Here I am, my opening night in a saloon, with all my worries about breaking in a new orchestra, worrying about how I'm going to go over, worrying about a million things, and out of a clear blue sky I hear we got corpses under the bed.”

“Corpse,” Biff said patiently, “not corpses. And it isn't there
now, so quit beefin'. If it had been up to me you would have known about it the minute I did. The sheriff wanted it kept quiet until he got a line on who the guy was. He didn't want anyone to know until . . .”

“Does he know now?” Dimples asked.

“Sort of,” Biff replied. “The way they got it figured out, he's two guys. He's George, our best man, and he's Gus, a guy who sold perfume backstage at the Burbank.”

“If he's the Gus I know,” Dimples said, “I'm damned glad someone got him. Of all the cheap, lowdown, miserable sons of . . .”

“Easy on the dialogue,” Gee Gee said. “They still don't know who killed him. People hear you talking they'll think maybe you did. It's not only Gus. They got another one, too.”

“Another what?” Dimples asked.

“Another corpse. What did you think,” Mother spoke sharply. She was getting annoyed with the conversation. “And please get off that bed, I just fixed it.”

Dimples jumped up from the bed and smoothed the coverlet. She punched up the three pillows until they were fresh looking. Then she whirled around and faced Biff.

“Two of 'em?” she shrieked. “Under my bed, yet.”

I thought she was going to faint. So did Biff. He reached out to catch her, but Dimples changed her mind. Fainting wouldn't solve the problem at the moment, and she seemed to realize it.

“What are we going to do about it?” she asked calmly.

Biff shrugged his shoulders. “It has nothing to do with us. From now on it's up to the police.”

“I hope you'll remember that,” Mother said to Biff. She was busily putting back the groceries. “Dragging everything out; then leaving it for someone else to put back. Butting in where you don't belong. You'll see . . .” Mother slammed the pantry door shut. “The first thing you know they'll be three-degreeing all of us all because of your big mouth. If you had only let well enough alone, let me handle it the way I wanted to. But no, you have to go and tell everything you know. Ruin all my good work, and for what?”

Biff put his arms around Mother and hugged her. “Come on, Evangie, smile. There won't be any third-degreeing while I'm around. Questions, sure. After all, the body
was
in our trailer. We
did
know who it was. We
did
sort of put ourselves out on a limb when we buried him.”

“We?” Mother exclaimed. “I love the way you give yourself all the credit.”

Dimples had been listening with her mouth wide open. She shook her head once or twice.

“That's all, brother,” she said after Mother finished speaking. “I'm taking myself a hotel room. Egg crate, flea bag, any kind of hotel is better than this. Burying a corpse!” She kept shaking her head as though she couldn't believe it. She looked at Gee Gee. “Did you know about this?”

“Yep,” Gee Gee said. “I was in on the ground floor.”

Mamie banged on the screen door. “Will someone help me, please?”

Biff opened the door, and Mamie struggled in with an ironing board.

“I've been all over this camp trying to borrow an ironing board,” she said as she propped it against the side of the trailer. “You'd think people would travel with one. I know I'm completely lost without an . . .”