The Drowner (3 page)

Harv sighed and wrote a note to Mrs. Carey asking her to let Sam into the apartment to get some personal items. He handed the note to Sam, saying, “I told her to keep it locked up until the law tells me who the stuff in there belongs to. She’ll have folks coming down. I guess they’ll work it out with Hanson.”

After he had firmly, politely, smilingly closed the door in Mrs. Carey’s face and he was alone in the small apartment, Sam Kimber suddenly felt sick and weak. He sat on the couch, and he could imagine that at any moment he would hear the clink of dishes in the small kitchen and then that tuneless little happy humming sound of hers, the tock of her heels on linoleum The apartment held no sensual memories. She had firmly labeled it out of bounds. But her presence was almost tangible. And it was worse when he began his search with the bedroom closet. There was a scent of her there, and her clothes on the hangers were all familiar to him. When he was certain the blue bag was not in the closet he trudged over and sat on her bed, trying to think of where it might be, but trapped in converging memories of the woman, the teasing, the quickly amorous smile, the saucy flaunt of skirt and hip. And how sometimes she was grave and sad, unmoved by his clowning. She had been a fragile-looking woman, because of her delicacy of feature, narrowness of waist, small-breasted figure. But she had been lithe and strong and fit. She disapproved of her own figure, deploring the breadth of hip, the heaviness of her thighs. Objectively he could see they were out of proportion on any perfectionist basis, but not as much as she believed, a sweet and hearty weight now lost forever, and he groaned aloud and startled himself with the sound of it in the silence of her room.

It did not take him long to satisfy himself that the bag was not in the apartment. There was no place left to search which could contain an object of that size. He was puzzled. Perhaps she had not felt right about it being hidden in the apartment and had taken it somewhere else. But had she done that, he was certain she would have asked him first. She had enjoyed letting him make decisions. She had told him many times he was the first man in her life of any force and authority, the first man to make her feel like a girl.

When he went out, Mrs. Carey was waiting, key in hand, her shrunken face pinched into a mask of churchly disapproval. “Took you long enough. Get what you were after?”

“Yes, thank you.”

She gave the lock a decisive twist and said, “Old enough to be her paw, Sam Kimber.”

“True enough, Martha.”

“Can’t count the times she never come home at all. Maybe she was with you every time. Maybe not. No fool like an old fool when it comes to prancing after a blonde head.”

“Has anyone else been in the apartment since it happened?”

“Not unless they come with a key. I live in the front and this is in the back, and if I was to keep track of all comings and goings I wouldn’t get my work done.”

“Is that her key you have?”

“There’s two to each apartment, good locks, and this is the spare. You tell Harv I want her key back, or I want the money to get a spare made.”

“Did you see her at all yesterday?”

“From afar. We weren’t never close. Seen her go by the corner walking back from Doc Nile’s maybe some after noon, then scooting out in that car of hers at maybe half past. Wasn’t to home night before last at all, come back in the early morning in a different outfit she wore leaving, so I guess she had some other place she was living too, but I guess you’d know more about that than me.”

“I guess I would,” Sam said and winked in a way that drew a shocked gasp from Martha Carey.

“Shameless!” she hissed.

He walked out and got into his big pale Chrysler. He drove slowly down Lemon Street, turning the air-conditioning to high, opening all the automatic windows for a moment to let the baked air escape. When he closed them again the car seemed to drift in an unreal silence through the dazzle of heat of early afternoon. He drove down through the center of the small city past the empty cars and the empty sidewalks and the bright glare of the store fronts. He hesitated as he neared the driveway to the parking lot behind his office, but then continued on. He went to the end of Citrus Avenue, drove around the small park past the Moorish arches of the public buildings and, several minutes later, realized he was out on the Brower Highway, passing the shopping centers and drive-ins, heading toward the place where she had died. Ten minutes from town he made his right turn. A half mile further he turned left into an overgrown sand road. Foliage brushed the side of the car and he drove three hundred yards through land he owned, down to the lake shore. It had always been known as Dayker’s Lake until the promoter who developed the far shore engineered a name change to Flamingo Lake. He owned this half mile of lake front, untended, unimproved. He was glad to see no other cars parked there.

So, if she left the apartment at half past twelve, she would have arrived here at quarter to one, if she came directly here. Parked where I am right now. Probably put her swim suit on before she left the apartment. Wore that wraparound skirt thing over it. Got out. Tossed the skirt into the car. Carried her stuff down to the little patch of sand. Towel, beach bag, little radio. Settled herself. Then walked into the water, tucking her hair into a swim cap. Three steps and up to her waist, then deep.

He walked down to the sand. He wondered if he was trying to punish himself. Did she yell for help? What good did this do? He heard a motor sound and looked up the shore line and saw a blue rowboat approaching, propelled by a small outboard motor. There were two young boys in it, wiry and brown, their hair bleached almost white by the sun. He heard one of them clearly over the chug of the motor. “Right up there is where she drownded, right out from where that guy is standing. And Jug didn’t have his tanks or nothing, just a mask and flippers and he found her the second time down. He found her before those cops ever even got the boat launched to drag for her. Right about here, I think.” The larger boy cut the motor off and the boat slowed quickly. They stared at the water.

“How deep is it?” the smaller one asked.

“Jug says twenty feet.”

“Was she down there a long time?”

“Long enough.”

“How come that damn Jug got in on it anyways?”

“He saw all the people and come over and he had his mask and flippers in the boat like he always has. It was about two o’clock, I guess. I didn’t even get to see her. But I saw the ambulance leaving anyways.”

“Jimmy, if she was alone, how come anybody knew she drownded?”

“You’re pretty stupid.”

“Who says I’m stupid?”

“Some other people come to swim, see? And there’s a car parked and a towel and a little radio playing and everything, and nobody around. They look around everywhere and get nervous and start calling and nobody answers, and they think maybe somebody has gone off in a boat, but there’s no sign of a boat and it had rained in the night and all they see is bare foot prints going into the water. So somebody drove back to the gas station and called the sheriff. And more people came flocking around. And Jug came over and found her. They say she probably had a cramp.”

Sam Kimber went slowly back to his car, backed around and drove away. It matched the report in the paper. Everything fitted fine. Except the small problem of a missing hundred and six thousand dollars. And no way to tell anybody it’s missing. And somehow that makes the whole thing look wrong.

He drove back to town, parked behind his office building, unlocked the rear door and rode to the top floor in his small private elevator. It was a four story building he’d put up five years ago when he decided to leave the lonely house he’d built for Kitty. He’d had the Sam-Kim Construction Company put it up on Central Federal money, then lease the whole thing to Kimberland Enterprises on a long term lease, so Kimberland could turn around and sublease the two bottom floors. He’d worked a zoning exception so he could put his bachelor quarters and his private office on the top floor. The working staff of Kimberland Enterprises, Sam-Kim Construction and Kitty-Kim Groves and some of the other odds and ends worked on the third floor.

He went into his kitchen and opened a cold can of beer and stood at the window looking west toward Lake Larra. She’d lived out there in the Hanson place for a few short years with Kelsey Hanson. Along that shore of the lake it was a different kind of money. Solid old money, brought down out of solid old companies up north. Not my kind, he thought. Not the scrambling kind of money a lucky cracker boy can make if he comes out of the sloughs at the right time with a claw hammer, an old truck, a pocket full of nails and brass enough to believe his personal trend is up.

He realized he had forgotten lunch, so he ate a wedge of cheese and opened a second can of beer. A few more memories of her up here, because this wasn’t out of bounds. She never rested quite easy in her mind about it, scrunching way down in the front seat driving in or out. The shack was best, way out at the end of noplace. She was most loving out there, most likely to be able to bring it about for herself out where there wasn’t some part of her mind listening to sounds in the building.

With the beer in his hand he stalked through the living room, the big room that Lucille had said the pansy decorator from Orlando had made look like the lobby of an art movie house. As he pushed open the soundproofed door into the ante-office, he heard the busy clatter of the typewriter. It stopped abruptly as Angie Powell gave a great leap of surprise and put her hand to her throat. Mrs. Nimmits was at the corner table running a tabulator, and she said, “I swear, Mr. Sam, if you come through that door forty times a minute, Angie here would try to hop outen her skin every time.”

“I didn’t even know you were in there,” Angie said accusingly.

Sam Kimber walked into his large office with Angie close at his heels, her hand full of notes. She closed the door behind her. He sat down, finished his beer and dropped the can in the wastebasket and said, “What new disasters we got today?”

As was her sometimes irritating habit, she gave him the least important messages first, pausing for instructions after each one, making memos to herself in her book. Angie Powell was six feet tall in flats, a big, glowing, earnest, pink and white girl in her early twenties with lavender eyes, large shiny teeth and dark golden curly hair. She was a superb swimmer, diver, bowler, water skier, tumbler, skater, dancer and secretary. And she was overpowering; there seemed to be so very much of her. She lived with a harridan mother and a father so tiny, so wispy, so self-effacing as to be almost invisible. She was an only child. She had worked for Sam for three years, the last two as his secretary, and she was entirely devoted, entirely loyal, full of good spirits but essentially humorless.

Long before he had become involved with Lucille, he had, in awe and out of curiosity, and perhaps like the climbers of mountains—because she was there—made a first and last valiant attempt to seduce her, making a reasonable excuse to get her into the adjoining quarters after overtime work. When he put his arms around her, she seemed to huddle and dwindle. And she began to shiver. He kissed her and it was like kissing a scared child. She looked at him, tears hanging on the lashes of the huge lavender eyes and said, “I can’t smack you.”

“What?”

“I don’t know what to do. When boys try anything, I smack them a good one. Please let go, Mr. Sam.”

He let go of her. “You always smack them?”

“I promised God and my mother I’d never do anything dirty in my whole life.”

“Dirty!”

“I respectfully tender my resignation, Mr. Sam.”

“What if we forget this happened and it never happens again?”

She thought it over. “Then I wouldn’t want to resign, I guess.”

Since that unwieldy episode he had learned, through observation and the most subtle of questions from time to time, that this big glowing girl had apparently never felt the slightest tremor of desire or curiosity in her life, and probably never would. She was the most implausible neuter in central Florida.

She came to the final note for his attention. “Gus Gable has been trying and trying to get hold of you, Mr. Sam.”

“Tell him to come on over.”

“From Jacksonville?”

“Oh, I didn’t know he’d gone up there again. Get him on the phone if you can.”

“First thing. He left three numbers to try the last time he called.” She started to turn to leave and then said, “Mr. Sam?”

“Yes, Angie.”

“I… I’m sorry about your friend.”

“Thanks, Angie.”

After she went out he wished, with a bitter amusement, he had given the blue bag to Angie. She would have hidden it, never opened it, never mentioned it. But, he wondered, why should I begin thinking of Lucille as less trustworthy? The choice was between the two of them, and Lucille was the brighter one, less likely to be tricked or trapped.

The phone rang and Gus was on the line. As usual he was so guarded as to be almost incomprehensible. “Sam, I got a call from one of our friends and it looked just good enough to make it worth while running up here, and I’ve had a pretty interesting day. I think I can safely say it’s going to go our way, and the figure they’re trying to clear right now is just ten thousand over my compromise guess. The field men are making a strong presentation, yes I can safely say a strong presentation to come up with that one as a final, and it goes across the right desk tomorrow, so I think I should be here in a position to give them a yes on that basis. It should be the first order of business, and all set by ten a.m.”

“Nice going, Gus.”

“But the flaw in the ointment could be the ninety days. It could get slashed down to sixty, which might make a squeeze.”

“Accept sixty if that’s the way they have to have it.”

“That’s the only weak part of the presentation the way I see it, and some new friends here agree with me. There’s no hope of getting off a perpetual audit basis, and frankly I’d like to have it that way so we know where we stand from year to year, with every year filed away and closed so to speak.”