Mother Finds a Body (21 page)

“Anyway, a week before you're born, she gets news that Grange really is dead. He was reported to have been killed in a saloon brawl in Sitka, Alaska. Your mother married the other man, and, when you were born he gave you his name. Through all these years she kept this from you because she wanted you to remember the second man as your father. He loved you very much and it was his dying wish.”

The sheriff stopped for a moment. He cleared his throat experimentally. Then he reached for the bottle and poured himself a drink. As an afterthought he poured one for Biff. Noticing that I hadn't touched mine, he told me to drink up.

I didn't want the liquor, but something in the sheriff's expression made me believe that it would be better to drink it. I couldn't taste it as it burned my throat.

“When did Mother find out that Gus—my father, I mean—was still alive?” I asked.

“Not until you started making money,” the sheriff said. “Seems he recognized a picture in a newspaper, a picture of you and your mother. All of a sudden he decided that he still loves your mother very much. So much so, in fact, that he wanted her to come back to him, with you and your salary, of course. He can't understand why your mother doesn't want you to know that your real father is an ex-convict, that he's a cheap pickpocket, a fence, a dope peddler, and a panderer. He tells your mother that it's your duty to contribute to the support of your loving father.

“Your mother says that she'd see him in hell first, and he reminds her of how the story would look in print. So she pays him money each week. That goes on for a while, and then Gus decides he ought to have more money. His daughter is in the movies now. She's getting a bigger salary, and he naturally wants a bigger slice of it. He wants to live as he thinks the father of a movie actress should live. Your mother makes the mistake of ignoring his letters, so he follows you to San Diego.”

Suddenly, as though he couldn't hold it in another minute, Biff said, “Then she did kill him in self-defense.”

The sheriff ignored him. He picked up the second sheaf of
papers and flicked through the closely typewritten words. When he spoke his voice was husky.

“This is a signed confession to the murder of Captain Robinson, able-bodied seaman. The name captain is a complimentary title.”

“That's the name of the captain who married Biff and me at . . .”

Biff grabbed my arm before I could finish. He walked over to the desk and looked at the paper the sheriff held.

The sheriff turned the pages back until he came to the last page. Then he showed Biff the signature. He held the paper up to me.

“Is that your mother's signature?” he asked.

It was written with a shaky hand. There was a blot of ink at the corner of the paper, but it was my mother's signature. I nodded.

Biff came over to my chair again and put his arm around my shoulder. His hand felt heavy, as though it were a detached thing.

“If he wasn't a captain, that means that Punkin and I aren't married.”

The sheriff went on, “Well, yes, I guess that would be right. But let me finish. The captain was a friend of your father's. They'd been in a couple of scraps together and were in jail together for a while. The captain knows about Gus, your father, that is, blackmailing your mother. It was the captain who showed him the clipping about you getting married. Gus doesn't like the idea of your getting married a little bit. He figured that once you had a husband he'd take care of the business details, like collecting the salary and banking it and so on. It was easier, Gus thought, to keep on getting money from your mother than having to do business with a man.

“When he reads that you and Biff intend marrying at sea, it's a cinch for him to step in with his friend, the captain. He just followed you two around that night in San Pedro and when you happened to meet a man who knew ‘just the captain,' it was him. He even called the Port of Authority too, as if a marriage
beyond the three-mile limit was legal. At least, that's what he told you two.”

“He called the number,” Biff said quietly. “I spoke to the man in charge myself.”

“You spoke to
a
man, your mother says. You didn't speak to
the
man.”

“And Mother knew all the time that our marriage was illegal?” I asked.

The sheriff nodded.

“She tried to have you leave Biff, didn't she? She never left you alone with him for a minute, did she? Yes, according to her confession, she knew everything. Gus was the kind of man who bragged about his methods. It was during one of his more—aggressive moments that your mother . . .”

“That she shot him,” Biff said tonelessly.

“After Gus was dead,” the sheriff went on, “your mother thought that the blackmailing was over. She didn't reckon with Captain Williams. He took it up where Gus left off.”

The sheriff's voice had become softer and softer. Finally I couldn't hear it at all. I felt myself slipping from the hot leather chair, lights were before my eyes. Then Biff's arms were holding me. The sheriff held a cup of liquor to my mouth. I must have swallowed some because I could feel the burning in my throat.

“. . . shouldn't have told it like that,” I heard the sheriff say. “When you said you wanted the story from the beginning, I gave it to you like you wanted.”

The sheriff walked back and forth in the small room and spoke slowly. His boot spurs made a clanking sound as he walked. The bluebirds embroidered on the boot toes were covered with dust.

“That's just the way your mother told the story. I had two people taking it down word for word. She read the confession through and then she signed it. She seemed calm enough and she asked for a cup of water. I gave it to her myself. Then a funny thing happened.

“She took the cup from me and stirred up the water with her
finger. She kept turning the cup one way and then the other. Suddenly she turned it upside down on my desk and twisted it around again. The water spilled all over her and she didn't seem to feel it. There was something strange about the way she was holding her head, too, like she was listening for something. She looked up at me. Her eyes were almost closed. ‘I think I see a gun in my cup,' she said. She handed me the empty paper cup and said, ‘I can't read it well. You read it.'”

The sheriff turned his face from Biff to me.

“She must have thought it was tea,” I said.

The sheriff nodded. He scratched the back of his neck with his huge hand. Then, with the same baffled expression, he said: “I've seen cases like this before, but I have to admit I didn't recognize the symptoms in your mother. They all have hallucinations, but they don't make their stories as plausible. They contradict themselves and get mixed up with the details. Usually their eyes are bloodshot, their hands are shaky. Their eyes are yellow rimmed, too. I should have known it. I should have known your mother was no coward. Only cowards allow themselves to be blackmailed. She would have told you about it from the beginning and asked you what to do. I don't think she'd stab a man in the back, either. Like I say, though, if I'd seen the pupils of her eyes, I might have guessed. She must have just taken it up.”

“Taken what up?” I asked.

“Why heroin, of course,” the sheriff replied. “Only I don't think it was all heroin. There was too much fantasy in the story for that. At a guess, I'd say hashish. They can really weave 'em on hashish. Why, I had a guy here once that convinced me he was . . .”

“What are you talking about?” I said. “My mother never took dope in her life. She's even afraid of asprin. Weave what story?”

The sheriff snapped his fingers with irritation.

“I'm getting so I can't tell a story straight to save my life. I should have started right out with telling you where your mother is. She's at the doctor's. He's got her under observation.
He just called me a while ago and said she was better, but she was plumb out of her mind this morning. All that rigamarole she signed was made up, made out of whole cloth.

“Far as I figure out, your mother never even knew those two men she said she murdered. It was easy for me to check on a few things, like when she married your father. They were married three years before you were born. She was never married before or after. Captain Robinson is a real captain, too. There's nothing illegal about your marriage. I even checked with your bank. They have no record of money being paid out regularly. If she had been paying blackmail she would have to have done it with cash, and each salary check has been sent intact. The checks have been made out for hotel bills, costumers, and things like that. They never once got a check made out to cash. But even before I checked her story, I knew something was wrong. That teacup thing was the tip-off. So I sent for the doc and he gave her an injection. It was something they use as a depressive, and in a minute she looks around the office here and says, ‘Where am I?'”

“Then she didn't kill them?” Biff said.

“No more than your wife here did,” the sheriff replied. “Where she got that story I'll never know. Neither will she. Always react like that. They never know when they snap out of it.”

The sheriff placed the papers back in the drawer and slammed it shut. Then he turned a key in the lock. He closed the roll-top desk and locked that.

“Come-on,” he said, helping me to my feet. “I guess you'd like to see her.”

18
THE BOYS WHO WERE HOLDING DOWN THE
courthouse steps eyed Biff and me furtively as we waited for the sheriff to lock the door to his office. I think they expected to see us wearing handcuffs, with a ball and chain on our ankles for good measure.

To put them at ease I pulled out my compact and took a quick
look in the mirror. A quick one was all I could stand. My nose was shiny and the Texas dust had settled in little lumps on my sunburned face. My lips were dry with only an outline of rouge. I don't pride myself on being a beauty girl, but you can carry anything too far. I ran a comb through my bangs and pretended that I was interested in something that was happening down the street as I rubbed the melted lipstick across my mouth.

Biff spoke to the sheriff in a loud, too-hearty voice. “What'll it be, Hank, old boy? Do we walk or ride?”

“Now that's up to the little lady,” the sheriff said, nodding in my direction.

“It was the “little-lady” dialogue that brought the men to their feet. If they had had any doubts about our standing with the sheriff, his genial smile dispelled them. With the precision of the Rockettes they rose and turned on the personality. They were prettier when they frowned, but I had an idea that if Biff and I wanted to stay healthy we should give them our entrance smiles. That is a fast, brilliant smile. The exit is a long, slow one.

Two of the men detached themselves from the group and ran toward the sheriff's parked car at the curb. They almost collided as they opened the doors for us. Then they stood back to make way for our parade. I could feel the eyes of the others following us as we walked down the steps toward the car.

Of all the days for me to wear my seat-warped tweed of slacks, I thought bitterly. A perfectly good pongee pair in the trailer at Restful Grove, and me doing an exit in these.

One of the men closed the car door behind me. He gave me a chewing-tobacco smile as we drove off.

“Cute kids,” Biff said.

The sheriff chuckled. “It don't take 'em long to catch on. You'll have to admit that. It'll be all over town in an hour.”

“In less than an hour,” I said to myself.

The nudging of ribs as we passed the corner drugstore could be heard over the knock of the motor. The open mouths turned into broad grins. I wondered if Hank knew the power he had.

Biff was overplaying the big-friendship scene. He let one
arm rest on the sheriff's shoulder. The other hung limply over the open window; one of the sheriff's cigars was clutched between his fingers. If he had been a politician in a parade he couldn't have laughed more often or more loudly.

“If you heard this one, don't stop me,” he said. “I like to listen to it myself.”

I was glad I sat alone in the back seat. Biff's jokes can be pretty tiresome at times, and this was one of the times. The sheriff either thought Biff was the funniest man in show business or he was just being polite. He didn't laugh, he roared. That was all Biff needed. He went right through his act, even to the blackout.

It wasn't that good, I know, but they both laughed until we pulled up in front of the frame house with Dr. Gonzales's shingle waving in the hot breeze. Then, as he helped me out of the car, the sheriff sobered.

“Now be careful that you don't upset your mother,” he said.

Biff had said the same thing earlier. It was plain that they still didn't realize what Mother could go through without becoming upset.

“She's a mighty fine little woman,” the sheriff said.

He was beginning to convince anyone. I was beginning to see something else, too. If mother had any use for the Ysleta police department, she could have it for the asking.