We All Killed Grandma (7 page)

I glanced at the slip in my hand. “Is this Spring four eight three seven?”

“Yah. Sbring four eight three seven. But no woman iss here. No woman uses phone here. Just me, my brother.”

I told him I was sorry and hung up, then picked up the phone again and got Rosabelle’s voice. “Did you hear that, Rosabelle?”

“Hear what, Mr. Britten?” Her voice sounded too innocent to believe. “I don’t listen in on calls, if that’s what you mean.”

“Of course not, Rosabelle,” I said. “But that number is a Chinese laundry and the proprietor spoke only Lithuanian. You must have got the number wrong. Did you by any chance put it on a scratch pad before you copied it onto the slip you gave me?”

“No, Mr. Britten. I put numbers right on the call slips. Gee, I’m sorry if I got it wrong.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “What time did the call come?”

“About an hour ago.”

“Okay, don’t worry about it.” I put the phone back and looked up my own name in the telephone book to see if it had been Robin who phoned. But the number wasn’t remotely similar; it wasn’t even a Spring exchange. So if Robin had called, she hadn’t made the call from home. And there wasn’t anything I could do about it except keep the appointment.

I took a leisurely bath and shaved and dressed for dinner. Then, because I still had time to kill and was still curious about that telephone call I phoned Arch and asked him if he knew of any number similar enough to that one to have been mistaken for it. He didn’t.

“You say it was a girl, Rod?”

“So the operator here says,” I told him. “Have I been chasing around with any during the last month?”

“Not that I know of, but I wouldn’t necessarily know. I don’t know why you shouldn’t have been, though. No reason for your having been monastic, but you didn’t happen to mention any dates to me. Sure you haven’t got a little black book of telephone numbers that would give you the answer?”

“Not that I’ve discovered. Well, thanks anyway, Arch.”

“Hey, don’t hang up. Listen, I’ve got an appointment with Hennig in the morning—the executor of the estate. About probating the will, selling the house, all that kind of thing. You ought to be with me—you know, in case signatures are required on anything.”

“All right,” I said. “Where and when?”

“Meet me at nine-thirty at the Rexall drugstore at Fourth and Main. That’s in the same building as Hennig’s office. The appointment’s for ten; that’ll give us time to have a cup of coffee and talk a while first.”

I told him that sounded like a good idea.

I reached Robin’s at exactly seven and, miraculously, she was dressed and ready. She even had drinks made. Tinkling Tom Collinses. It was nice to sit there staring at her over the rim of a cool glass. Definitely, in a blue evening gown, she was worth staring at. She was beautiful.

“Any place special you’d like to go, Robin?”

“Anywhere you say.”

“Niagara Falls?” I shouldn’t have said it; I could tell by her face. I didn’t wait for her to answer. “Or maybe Ricci’s?”

“No, Rod. Anywhere but Ricci’s.”

Memories, maybe? Something in the way she said it made me think it could be that. Dangerous ground; I changed it quickly. I shrugged and said, “You name it, then. By the way, you didn’t happen to phone me this afternoon and leave a Spring exchange number, did you?”

She shook her head. “What made you think it was I?”

“Just that it could have been, if something had come up in connection with our date tonight. And I couldn’t think of anyone else it might have been. You couldn’t make a guess, could you?”

“I couldn’t make a guess. Why didn’t you simply call the number?”

I explained that, and then turned down a second drink unless she wanted one, and she didn’t. In the car, I remembered reading in the paper, a few days before, of the opening of a new dinner-and-night-club called The Big Wheel and suggested that we try it. We couldn’t ever have gone there. We went.

It wasn’t a bad place. The orchestra was strictly from Lombardo, but it was danceable-to and talkable-against. And ten dollars brought a good three-dollar dinner. The floor show was tolerable, but fortunately our table was far enough away that we didn’t have to tolerate it.

I found Robin still unwilling to discuss our marriage—at least in any more detail than she had told me about it Friday afternoon, so I took the safer tack of having her tell me about the friends we’d had, people we’d spent evenings with and what we’d liked and disliked about each. It wasn’t what I’d wanted to talk about, but it was information that would come in handy so I tried to remember as much of it as I could. Some of it duplicated, but added to, things Arch had already told me, but most of it was new. When and as I remet the people she was telling me about, it would be helpful to know how well I’d known and liked them, and a few facts about who they were and what they did.

So I tried to concentrate, but mostly I watched Robin. And wondered what, really, had gone wrong between us.

Something
had. And I had a strong hunch that it was something she hadn’t even hinted at, as yet. Something much stronger.

Coffee. I suggested a brandy to go with it, and Robin agreed. But she said, “After that, though, I’m going to ask you to take me home, Rod.”

“So soon?” I glanced at my watch. “Why, it’s only ten. The evening hasn’t started.”

“I know it’s early. But I want to be in bed and asleep by eleven. Tomorrow’s Monday and I want to get a bright and early start at job hunting, and with a good night’s sleep behind me.”

“Why the hurry? You don’t have to find a job right away.”

“No, I’ve got a few hundred in the bank. But I’d rather keep it as a backlog. And besides, if I’m going to start a new life for myself—and I am—the sooner I get started, the better.”

“You’re better off than that, Robin. A few hundred in the bank, but over nine thousand coming.”

“What? What on earth are you talking about?”

“Your share of the inheritance from Grandma Tuttle. Half of my share.”

“Rod, are you crazy? We’re divorced. I haven’t any share in that.”

“Why not? Our agreement, you told me, was to split even on what money we had. Grandma Tuttle died, and I became her heir,
before
our divorce, so the inheritance—my share of it—would come under that agreement, wouldn’t it?”

“It would not, definitely. I typed that agreement from Dad’s dictation and I know what it says. It divides our property specifically as of the date thereon and does not apply to anything acquired by either of us thereafter, before or after the divorce. Besides, you haven’t got the money yet. Until the will is probated, you haven’t got it. No, definitely, I haven’t any share in that money. And I don’t want it.”

Her chin was up, her eyes were flashing. Then they softened suddenly and she put her hand on top of mine on the table. She said, “I suppose I should have guessed you’d make a Quixotic offer like that, Rod. You always were a sucker when it came to money.”

“But you’re sure—”

“I’m positive. And I don’t even want to talk about it.”

Her hand left mine, and my hand felt suddenly cold and naked.

“Was that what we quarreled about, Robin? My attitude toward money?”

She frowned a little. “It was a contributory factor. Rod, please quit trying to pin me down on that. It was a lot of little things, not any one big one. We—we just found we
weren’t compatible. That’s all there is to it and I don’t want to try to analyze it any further than that. Please.”

I didn’t believe it. But I said, “All right, I’ll quit heckling you about it.” And I caught our waiter on the fly and ordered brandies.

The orchestra was starting an old one, but a good one,
To Each His Own.

I said, “We haven’t danced. Will you dance with me, Robin?”

We weaved our way through the tables to the dance floor. I put my arm about her and we danced. We fitted, her body against mine, and we moved as one. No incompatibility here, in dancing.

Then, suddenly, it was different, and she was away from me. Inches only, but it might as well have been miles. I tried to pull her back, but her rigid body resisted. Our feet moved together in perfect rhythm; we were two people dancing in time to the same music, and that was all.

The number ended; it had been the first of a set but Robin said, “I don’t want to dance any more, Rod. And the waiter just brought our brandies. Shall we go back to the table?”

We went back to the table, and I wished that I dared ask the question that I wanted to ask.

But Robin was already saying, “Rod, we shouldn’t do this again. See one another, I mean. It can’t do any good, and—it can hurt one of us.”

I wondered whether she meant herself or me. But it wasn’t the time to ask questions or to argue. Nor yet to accept her statement so flatly. I said, “Let’s not decide that now. And—all right, I won’t bother you, Robin, but little things are going to come up that I’m going to have to ask you about. I may at least phone you, mayn’t I?”

“What little things?”

“For instance, you said I sent my books to a storage company. Do you know which one?” I knew which one; I’d found a receipt among papers in my apartment, but it seemed a good question to ask, a legitimate one.

She answered it, and it bridged a gap, somehow, that I could ask and she could answer so simple a question. And
I didn’t push any further about seeing her again or even calling her. I’d give her a few days of thinking I wasn’t going to call, and then I’d think of other little questions and the first time I called to ask one, if she sounded friendly enough and in the mood, that would be time enough to suggest another dinner. Right now the ice was thin, very thin. I walked carefully.

I didn’t even try to talk her into another drink, just then. I called for the check and paid it and we went out into the warm night, bright with stars and a moon that looked low enough to toss pebbles at.

An attendant brought the Linc. He glanced back at it as he got out. “Mister, are you sure you got an engine in that? I couldn’t hear it.” I gave him a dollar bill. We got in the car and Robin sat away from me, over on her side of the wide seat.

I ran down the window on my side of the car as I drove and the rush of air felt cool and good. I drove straight to Robin’s. I got out my side of the car and went around to open the door for Robin, but she was already out of the car and walking toward the door of the building, her heels clicking sharply on the sidewalk in the quiet evening.

I followed and at the door she turned, her hand on the knob. I was a few steps away, still walking toward her. I stopped as though I’d run into a wall for the street light shone on her face and there was fear there, almost terror.

And she was looking at me, not at anything behind or beyond me.

I found my voice and said, “Robin, what on earth—”

Then her face was composed again. Could I possibly have imagined what I’d seen there a second ago? Could it have been a momentary hallucination, a trick my vision had played on me?

“Good night, Rod.” Her voice was cool and firm, her face impassive. “Thank you for the dinner.”

She opened the door and went inside. I stood there.

After a while I got into the car again.

I didn’t head for home; I didn’t want to go there. I just drove, trying to think, trying to tell myself that what I’d seen had been my imagination, only my imagination.

Or had a mask slipped? Was Robin
afraid?
of
me?

In God’s name, what had I been during our marriage?

I drove for a long time through the moonlight, so bright I could have driven with parking lights. I don’t know what time I got home. I set the alarm for eight so I could make my nine-thirty appointment with Arch to see Hennig, but I must have set the hand of the alarm dial without noticing the time hands.

Nor do I know how long I lay awake, but it must have been a long time for the windows were faintly visible gray rectangles the last time I saw them in my twistings and turnings.

A
RCH
was waiting in a booth in the drugstore when I got there, a cup of coffee already in front of him. He was wearing sport clothes and looked more like a high school sophomore than ever. It was hard to believe that he was older than I, five years older.

He waved at me and grinned as I came across the aisle and slid into a seat across from him. Then his grin faded. He said, “You don’t look so good.”

“I am not so good,” I told him. “I feel like hell.”

“What’s wrong, Rod?”

“Nothing, I guess. I couldn’t sleep, that’s all. So I’m tired.”

“Sorry I asked you to come down here then. It’s not really necessary for you to be here; I just thought it would be better if you were, in case.”

A waitress came over and I ordered coffee and doughnuts and then turned back to Arch. “What’s it about? Your appointment, I mean.”

“Just want to get an advance against the estate. Some money to live on until we get the bulk of it. And—I don’t know—Hennig might want your agreement on that.”

“It’s okay by me, Arch,” I said. “How much are you asking for?”

“A couple of thousand. I can get by on that for six
months or so and if the estate isn’t settled by then, it’ll be nearly enough stabilized that I can get another advance. Listen, why don’t you get one? The amount involved is big enough so that old Hennig oughtn’t to quibble on giving each of us a couple of grand.”

“What the hell would I do with a couple of grand?”

“Take a trip, a vacation, a sea change. See South America or Africa or—Paris. What’s wrong with Paris?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “What
is
wrong with Paris?”

The waitress brought my doughnuts and coffee and refilled Arch’s cup. When she’d gone he said, “I mean it, Rod. Seriously, it’s just exactly what you ought to do. You can’t kid me—I know this thing, the burglary and murder and your amnesia, has got you rocking on your heels. You’re all mixed up—and God knows why you don’t want a psychiatrist to straighten you out. But the next best thing is to take yourself a nice long vacation. So all right, you want to go back and write advertising, but what’s the hurry about it? Travel awhile.”