Nothing That Meets the Eye (48 page)

“What are you thinking about?” Kyrogin asked through a cloud of cigar smoke, smiling.

“I was daydreaming. It's your good vodka,” Jeff said, and stood up and took his leave. They shook hands warmly. The Russian had a powerful grip.

It was already two minutes to noon. Jeff took a taxi at the door of Kyrogin's hotel and rode to the Lutetia.

When he walked into the lobby, he saw the girl again. And with her was Phyl. Now he really stopped dead, a couple of paces within the lobby. Phyl wore a hat. She was standing at a little distance from the desk, and she was plainly angry, furious even. Her cheeks were a bright pink as she delivered a tirade, apparently, to her daughter. Phyl looked shorter than the girl, than he remembered her, but it was because she had gained weight, Jeff realized. Phyl raised a fist and brandished it. The girl barely turned her head, didn't retreat. What was Phyl scolding her about? Phyl might have heard that the girl had spent the night in a man's suite, either from the girl herself or from the desk, Jeff supposed.

Suddenly his dream fell away. Something fell away, something died. Everything died. Phyl turned toward him, but in her anger didn't see him, and Jeff saw that her face had grown pudgy, that her shorter hair under the hat was some odd reddish color. But it wasn't that that upset him, it was the wrath in her face, the ugliness of spirit—her scolding of the girl. And he was positive Phyl was scolding her because she'd spent the night in a hotel room with a man, even if she “hadn't done anything.” It was the goddamn prudishness, the conventionality, the phoniness, the holier-than-thou or than-the-girl part of it, the hypocrisy—because for Christ's sake, hadn't Phyl done the same thing when she was the girl's age? Had an affair with a man if she damned pleased—the man being Jeff? And then, of course, back to Mister Right, back to the respectably-married-woman act, which she so ponderously embodied now.

Was this what he'd been in love with all this time?

Suppose he was married to Phyl now?

Jeff felt about to die. He wasn't weak, wasn't swaying on his feet. In fact he stood like a statue, where he was. Then Phyl and Eileen moved, toward the elevators, Phyl's figure still stiff with rage, the girl's flexible and rebellious. And Jeff was reminded of what he'd thought upstairs in his hotel room: the girl, like Phyl, would go on from him, find another fellow (maybe before she married) and lead him on, and abandon him, and get married, and maybe have a daughter—very pretty, of course—who'd do the same thing, in endless progression or procession.

And there was a second terrible thought, which Jeff had now and not for the first time, that if Phyl had betrayed Guy, who'd been not yet her husband but almost, then he, Jeff, might have been betrayed also in due time, even if he had married Phyl. If promises to lovers didn't mean much, then neither would marital vows. In fact, which came first and which second? Yet it all hung together, and there was nothing lasting, for girls like Phyl, about any of it. What counted finally was “the way things looked.” And what girls like Phyl had in common was a certain coldness at the heart.

The elevator door mercifully closed the two of them from Jeff's sight.

Jeff went and claimed his suitcase. He pulled his bill from a pocket, and paid in cash. Then he walked out of the hotel with his suitcase and attaché case, and said, “No” to the doorman who offered to hail a taxi for him. Jeff walked on, and for no particular reason turned the first corner to the right. He was lucid enough to know that he was in a daze, that somehow nothing mattered any longer, where he went, what he did, where he was, even who he was. Or what time it was, or what country it was. For several minutes Jeff walked with his suitcase that did not weigh much.

The holier-than-thou, do-the-right-thing attitude, Jeff was thinking. It was disgusting. Not like Phyl at all! And yet it was Phyl, now. He'd been living on a dream, some crazy dream. A dream of what? Not even a dream of marrying her one day, but still a dream. If he only hadn't seen her this morning!

Well, then what?

He'd be able to live, that was what. That was clear. That was the only thing that was clear. It was something, to have something clear. And he'd succeeded with Kyrogin, and he'd be going back today to New York, to his office. And all this suddenly didn't matter a damn. All of it mattered as little as the phony home he had with Betty, the phony outward appearance of a decent marriage, a teenage son going to the right school. Money. It didn't mean anything. His life simply didn't mean anything.

Somebody jolted Jeff in the shoulders. Jeff realized he was standing at the crossing of a big four- or six-lane avenue, and he hadn't moved when the lights permitted the pedestrians to cross. But Jeff knew what he wanted to do, or rather half his mind knew, or realized. The other half didn't matter. He wasn't thinking. He knew he was past the point of thinking. Hadn't he thought enough? All this went through his head in seconds, and when a big truck came thundering toward him, going to pass him at full speed right in front of him, Jeff dropped his suitcase and attaché case and flung himself in front of it, flat down, like a football tackler tackling nothing. He felt only the impact of the cobbly street, really.

IT'S A DEAL

A
fter Joel had done it, he collapsed in a chair in the bedroom, out of breath, depleted. He looked at his dead wife lying aslant on the bed, the toes of her bare left foot touching the white rug, shuddered and closed his eyes—not out of genuine horror or remorse, he thought, but because confronted by a bruised corpse, no matter whose it was, one probably involuntarily shuddered and closed one's eyes.

He had come home and found Lucy beaten up—by Robbie, of course, who had just left the house—and Joel had simply finished the job. In a fury of pent-up hatred, he had lashed out at Lucy with his fists, the backs of his hands, maybe even his feet, and finished what Robbie Vanderholt had started. They'd hardly said a word, he and Lucy, and if they had, he couldn't remember it now. Maybe he'd said, “That's a fine black eye Robbie gave you,” or maybe he hadn't.

A sound of splattering water in the bathroom made him jump up. The tub was running over. Joel plunged a hand into the hot water and turned it off, then pulled the stopper that drained the tub.

He had to get rid of the body. A classical problem. He took off his jacket and stood tensely in the bedroom, looking at Lucy. There was no blood. Two not-quite-finished glasses of scotch and soda, with the little soda bottle, stood on the low chest of drawers against the wall. Robbie's fingerprints would be everywhere. Robbie's cork-tipped cigarettes had been left behind, and one of the butts was in an ashtray. Robbie was the man.

Joel looked at his watch: 5:35
P.M.
Friday afternoon. He went out and stood on the lawn between the house and his car, which was halfway up the driveway. The next house was thirty yards away, Betty Newman's house, where her eleven-year-old son was throwing a balsa wood airplane around on the lawn. A light was on in the kitchen. If Betty looked out and saw him now, fine, Joel thought. He'd look a little puzzled, as if he'd come out to see if Lucy was anywhere around, and found that she wasn't. Joel walked around the garage until he could see the low, smoke-blue skyline of Pennerlake, the town where he worked. Beyond Pennerlake, where the land rose paler blue yet, were some mountains and a forest. Last Sunday, driving about aimlessly after a quarrel with Lucy, he had seen that they had planted hundreds of little pines on the side of one mountain there. The ground was dug up and loose. It would be a fine spot for burying a body.

A few minutes before eight o'clock, Joel telephoned the Richardsons in Pennerlake. Jamie Richardson answered.

“Hi,” Joel said. “This is Joel Lucas. I don't suppose my other half—my better half—is still playing bridge or something?”

“Ha-a!” Jamie shrieked like a squeezed chicken. “Bridge day's Tuesday, dear. She's not here.”

“Oh. Any idea where she is?”

“No, not the slightest.” (And Joel heard a note of satisfaction in that.) “She didn't leave you a note? When were you expecting her?”

Joel smiled a little, detecting satisfaction in Jamie's question, too. Everyone knew about Lucy's afternoon pastimes. “Usually she's home when I come home,” Joel said with husbandly loyalty. “She could have gone to the supermarket, but I've been home since about five-thirty.”

“Well—sorry I can't help you, Joel.”

The telephone did not ring that evening. Joel and Lucy had planned to go to a drive-in movie. They had no engagements until tomorrow evening, when they were supposed to go to Manhattan to join Gert and Stan Merrill for an early dinner and the theater, for which Stan had the tickets.

Around ten
P.M.
, Joel force himself into the bedroom, got the army blanket, which they never used except in emergency, from the closet, and bent Lucy's legs, folded her arms, until she took up as small a space as possible, and threw the blanket over her. He closed the bedroom door and slept on the living room sofa.

He did not sleep well, but he used his waking moments to think about Robbie Vanderholt. Robbie was around thirty, dark-haired, a well-paid accountant with a Philadelphia firm. Lucy had met him at a party given by the Merrills. Or had it been a party in Philadelphia? No matter. Robbie had a way of twitching his mouth and rubbing his forefinger vigorously against the side of his nose, and sometimes he shifted on his feet at the same time. This seemed to give him a boyish appeal to women, but it had as much charm to Joel as an epileptic attack. Under the surface, Robbie was arrogant and belligerent. Robbie dressed carelessly, and affected corduroys and caps on weekends. Joel had no cap, but he did have a pair of old brown corduroys.

His plan was bold and brazen, right in the open air, really, but Joel thought boldness the wisest course.

Joel risked one more telephone call the next morning. He called the Zabriskies. The Zabriskies had three children. Sometimes Lucy baby-sat for them at odd hours of the day. Mrs. Zabriskie always picked Lucy up, as Joel used the one car to get to work. Lucy wasn't at the Zabriskies', either.

“I thought she might have spent the night or something,” Joel said gloomily. “I haven't seen her since yesterday morning.”

“My goodness,” said Hazel Zabriskie. “Maybe she . . .”

Joel imagined her face smiling with amusement but frowning also for the benefit of the telephone, which could not convey her image. Maybe she's with a boyfriend, Hazel wanted to say. “Well—I'll make a couple more phone calls,” Joel said.

Then he put on the corduroys, and suddenly remembered a cap someone had given him years ago for Christmas. He had to look in three suitcases full of clothes in the attic, but at last he found it—a black and white houndstooth pattern, spuriously new, but a little grubbing with it on the garage floor would fix that, and it was safer to wear this one than to buy one somewhere. Joel went down with it to the garage. He drove his car into the garage, and carried Lucy's body in the blanket out the door that opened from one side of the living room. With a fine disdain, he wedged her between the back of the front seat and the backseat, on the floor. Then he put the spade into the car, and threw onto the backseat a roll of twine and three or four old burlap bags from the stack in a corner of the garage. He drove off for the mountain where he had seen the pines being planted.

The road became unpaved, and gravel crackled against the back fenders. It was the ideal country for Boy Scout expeditions, but Joel ­didn't see any. He saw absolutely no one. Here the forest was wild, and among the giant oaks and pines grew an occasional little pine. Joel stopped the car and got out with his spade. He knew that a pine, even a baby one, had formidable roots. It took him nearly ten minutes to dig up a little pine tree. He put the pine in the backseat, got in himself and stuck the tree's roots as far down as he could in an opening of the blanket. Then he put the burlap bags around Lucy and the roots, and tied it up. This was a long operation, as he had to get the twine under Lucy's weight a couple of times. A fitting memorial, he thought, a little pine tree, and better than she deserved. Long may its roots be nourished by her—by her what? Her rich experiences, perhaps.

He drove on to the newly forested section of the mountain, which now resembled the side of a ham stuck with green cloves—other little pine trees. He noted with a faint dismay that a picnicking unit, table, benches, and rubbish basket, had sprung up in a clearing just to the side of the planted area. But it was only a bit after ten
A.M.
, and he doubted if any picnickers would arrive before noon. The worst moment was now, when he had to carry Lucy's hundred-and-ten-pound weight, topped by the tree, from the car up the slope of the mountain. Joel had imagined parking the car out of sight of the place of interment, but he remembered the weight from the bedroom to the garage. He decided to chance it, and stopped the car at the side of the road, took the big bundle out, and tottered up the hill with it. He forced himself onward and upward, and at last dumped his load, gasping. Joel trotted down the hill, got into his car, and drove it about sixty yards farther along the dirt road, where he saw a lane that went steeply up to the right. He went a little way up this, got his spade out, and returned to his baby pine.

The sun was clear and strong, and soon he was perspiring. He struck thin, leathery roots from the big trees nearby. He rested, panting, when the hole was two feet deep, not nearly deep enough.

And here came three people, two young men and a girl, with picnic baskets. They were all laughing. Joel braced himself for the possibility that they were going to plunk themselves down at the picnic table, forty feet away. They seemed to be having a little discussion, a little variance of opinion about this, so Joel looked away and poked with his spade at the hole he had dug. Face up to it, if it happens, he told himself. You're planting a tree.

“Mister!—Sir!” called the girl, and began to laugh so much, she couldn't talk, as the boys behind her guffawed. She came on toward him. “My friends have just made a bet with me that I'd ask you—I mean, ­wouldn't ask you”—more laughter—“if you're burying your wife.”

Joel's face spread in a shy grin, but he kept his head down. He twisted his face around and rubbed his nose. “Yep.” He shifted on his feet and gestured toward the hump of what was supposed to be the pine tree's roots. “You tell them that's just what I'm doing, burying my wife.”

The girl turned around and called, “Yes!” to her two waiting friends.

The boys roared again, and doubled up.

“‘Bye now. Thank you. I've won!” said the girl, and ran down the hill in her tight dungarees and sneakers.

Joel leaned on his spade and watched them. It was over. He rubbed his nose again as the girl looked back and gave him a friendly wave. Then the trio moved out of sight.

Perfect, Joel thought. Lucy's body might never be found, but if it was, the trail would lead straight to Robbie Vanderholt.

In the twenty minutes more that it took him, nobody passed by. He walked away with his spade without a backward look.

Joel went home and changed into the old gray slacks he usually wore on weekends. Then he took the cap and corduroys out with the collection of paper trash that he always burned on Saturdays, and lit a fire in the wire basket behind the house. When all the cloth of the cap and trousers had become ashes, he went into the house and called the Merrills.

“Hi, Stan, this is Joel. Listen, about our date tonight—I don't know where Lucy is.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, she wasn't here when I got home yesterday. I've called a couple of people, but no luck.”

“Hm-m,” said Stan Merrill, knowing full well. “You mean you really don't know where to call her?”

“Well—I could try a couple of other places, I suppose. But I didn't want to hold you people up about tonight. I better call you again after I find her. She might—you know—not feel like going tonight.”

“Yeah,” Stan said in a disappointed tone. “Well, let me know, Joel, and good luck.”

Then Joel looked up Robert Vanderholt's number in the Philadelphia directory and called him.

“I hope I'm not disturbing you,” Joel said, “but do you happen to know where my wife is?”

Robbie gave a laugh. “No, I don't.”

“You don't? Didn't you see her yesterday afternoon? Say around five?”

“Yes, I did see her yesterday,” Robbie said. “Maybe she went out afterwards for a long walk.”

“If so, she hasn't come back. You evidently had a little argument with her. The room was sort of a mess.”

“Oh? Sorry.”

Joel set his feet firmly on the floor. “I'm not kidding, Robbie, where is she? I don't want any more games.”

“I'm not playing games, either. I left her in the house. Why don't you keep a better watch on her?” Robbie put the telephone down.

Joel was furious for an instant, then he smiled.

It was now time for the police. Joel looked up the number in the front of his Pennerlake and vicinity directory, called, and told them his trouble. Yes, he had asked everyone he knew to ask. “Twenty-six years old, five feet two, dark blond hair, blue eyes, a hundred and ten pounds,” Joel said in answer to their questions.

The police said they would send out a missing persons alarm, and would also come to his house.

Two policemen arrived thirty minutes later. Joel was smoking a cigarette and walking the floor. In the course of their inquiry, they looked in the bedroom, which Joel had left just as it was. No, he had not been having a drink with her, he said, her guest had been Robert Vanderholt, whom of course Joel had already telephoned. Lucy wasn't with him.

“Still—it seems he was the last person who saw her,” Joel added. “The last I know of, that is. He said she was here when he left.”

“The bedspread was like this, too?” asked one of the policemen.

“Yes. Sort of twisted. I . . . just left the room the way it was. Didn't even sleep in here last night.”