Where Is Janice Gantry? (20 page)

She rocked her round forehead against the angle of my jaw. “I don’t like it, Sam.”

“One big section of rail is detachable, wide enough to roll the car aboard. But out in the Gulf, with some roll and pitch, it wouldn’t be as easy to deep-six it.”

She straightened up. “But why not just run the little car into the water!”

“Where? These are shallow waters. No cliffs, no natural holes close to shore.”

She shivered and tilted her mouth up and I gave her a kiss of comfort. But it turned into a lot more than was intended until finally she wrenched away and jumped up. “That makes me feel ashamed, Sam. We’re talking about a horrible murder, and all of a sudden we’re … necking. And I feel so … responsive. What kind of monsters are we? Are we that callous?”

“We’re that human, Peggy. Fire, flood, war, disaster. One emotion seems to take the lid off the others. It’s a sort of affirmation. We have to prove we’re alive. Maybe it isn’t in the best taste in the world, but it isn’t shameful. Come on back.”

“No thanks. Not right now. Don’t be annoyed with me, Sam.”

“How could I be? Look, maybe I’m getting too intricate and gaudy about all this. It’s been building, bit by bit, in the back of my mind and now I can’t think of anything else, so maybe it’s time to check it all out.”

“But how?”

“Go to Jimson’s and look over the scrap J. B. discarded. And you could do something if you’ve got the stomach for it. This is the rainy season. The ground is soft. They couldn’t carry the Renault to the dock. They could have rolled the tire marks out, but not all of them. Look for tire marks, probably, because of the Mahlers, on the south side of the house.”

She came back to my lap with a great sigh. “I can’t believe it, really.” She nestled against my throat. “I don’t
want
to believe a horrible thing like that about Charity!”

“There were some handy helpers, remember. And you said she’s so nervous and restless you think she’s cracking up. I don’t want to believe it either. But when two people and a car drop off the edge of the world, you can assume a damn efficient disposal system.”

“Who would believe us?”

“Nobody yet. We have to find something specific to back it up, or we may come across something that proves we’re wrong.”

“Isn’t it time for us to get some … professional help?”

“Like from my old Sheriff-buddy-pal?”

“Well … I guess that wouldn’t be so hot.”

“There is one thing I can and will do right now, Peggy. And don’t you try to put up any battle, girl.”

“Sir!”

“That isn’t what I’ve got on my mind … yet. Whether this boat guess is right or wrong, Peggy, you are living in a creepy and deteriorating situation. It’s no place for you to be. So just do this final bit of checking tomorrow, and get yourself inconspicuously packed, and I’ll come around in the late afternoon and take you away from there.”

“But what will I tell Charity!”

“I don’t care what you tell her.”

“She’s my sister.”

“There’s no blood relationship at all.”

“I’m perfectly safe there, Sam, really I am.”

“I’m taking no chances with you. None.”

“Mmmm. It’s that important, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Then I guess you’d better locate me a nice cheap, clean little motel deal, my darling. Because I’ve got a lot of vacation left. And it is my humble desire to cater to your foolish little whim. If you don’t want me there, I leave.”

“Suddenly I feel one hell of a lot better.”

“And you make me feel sort of valuable. And sort of protected.”

“I wish you didn’t have to go back at all.”

“Oh, I have to look for tire tracks.”

“Of course. Tire tracks.”

“Dearest, you have the most gigantic hands. The most
gigantic and
sneaky
hands. So let’s ride in your boat and cool you off. Let’s go very fast in your boat.”

There was a special gaiety for a time, as though we were both running from a blackness in the backs of our minds. On that night she wore yellow-green slacks and a Guatemalan blouse of coarse cotton, and she laughed often. We went again to Tad’s Sea-Bar. The jukebox volume was down, the draught beer chill, and her enormous admirer was absent. With very little warning all the sparkle and vitality went out of her. I had seen it happen so many times with Judy that I made the wrong assumption that it would be just the same with Peggy, that she had gone beyond my reach, back into some moody cave, and any attempt to reach her would only increase the remoteness.

But this Peggy looked directly into my eyes and placed her hand on mine and said, “I’m sorry, darling. I’m down a deep well. Help me climb out.”

“How?”

“Lets go, right now.”

I drove the
Lesser Evil
back down the bay through moonlight, and she stood in the half circle of my right arm, leaning against me, slightly huddled and very subdued. “It got to me,” she said. “It didn’t seem fair to be laughing and to be in …”

“Be in what?”

“Darn it! Darn it! Am I not a woman of total mystery, darn it?”

“Be in what?”

“Stop teasing me like that. I was
not
fishing. And I didn’t know what I was going to say until I almost said it, and you know very well what I almost said. I’m blushing and you’re making it worse. It’s up to the
man
to be the first one to say a darn thing like that.”

“You couldn’t possibly have been going to say be in
love
!”

“Sam Brice. I’m going to belt you one, right in the chops.”

“This love routine, they give it a pretty big play. The songs and so forth.”

She backed away to get a little room, and kicked me squarely in the shin. I throttled down immediately, knocked the lever into neutral, gathered her in and kissed her with a glad and total emphasis. I put my hands on her narrow waist and lifted her up and sat her on the small shelf effect above the instrument panel, her back to the slant of the windshield. I held her hands and looked up at her face in moonlight. Her small chin was level with my eyes.

“Okay, Peggy,” I said. “Love. I’m sure. I’m very sure.”

“I’m sure too. And I’m scared.”

“Of what?”

“It was love before. Can you accept that and not be jealous?”

“Of course.”

“And it was such a horrible, hurtful, shattering loss, I didn’t ever want to be … committed in the same way again, darling. I didn’t want any man to be at the center of my life. I … thought I wanted another marriage, but to a man who would love me and not ask for too much involvement on my part. So he could be at the edge of my life, so nothing could ever hurt me so badly again.”

“But you couldn’t find him.”

“I looked.”

“But you’re one of the unfortunates, Peggy? All or nothing.”

“Yes. I can’t seem to … maneuver my life.”

“I wasn’t looking for this either.”

“I know.”

“I made the total offering. But the princess decided the dish wasn’t so special after all, so she quit nibbling and walked away. So I said the hell with it. If they don’t want me—invaluable, unique me—I’ll pull the welcome mat in and close the door. And if you train yourself not to think of
any of the things that hurt your pride, you can be pretty comfortable counting off the years, honey.”

“And a horrid waste of Sam Brice.”

“So I re-enter the lists, eh? I go looking for dragons again.”

She kissed my lips quickly, lightly. “Sam, Sam, not for me. All I want is love. Kindly leave off the tail fins and the country club. Do no more and no less than you want to do, Sam. Keep a roof over me. Keep me warm. Keep me fed. Keep me barefoot and pregnant. Rat races are for rats, not people. I’m terribly glad and I’m still scared.”

“I don’t deserve this much luck. I am going to risk making you sore, Peggy. But right now I know something and I have to say it.”

“You know you can say anything in the world to me.”

“There have been two women in my life who have meant anything to me. Judy and Sis. In some crazy way you’re the best of both of them. I needed them only because I didn’t know I was looking for you.”

She grabbed at me in an almost spasmodic way and pulled my head against her breast, against a precious roundness and warmth and a scented sweetness under the coarse cotton. “Sore at you?” she whispered. “If I’d missed hearing that I’d have never forgiven you. Mmmm. This is what it’s like, isn’t it?”

“This is the product they keep plugging.”

“Darling?”

“Yes?”

“Mmmm. What is that sort of expensive kind of grinding noise?”

“Oh. We’ve drifted out of the channel. We’re just rubbing on an oyster bar.”

“Is that good?”

“Most people don’t like it at all.”

“I’ll fix it. I come with dowry, you know. Three grand,
practically. All saved, but I didn’t know for what. I didn’t know it would be for boat repairs.”

“How quick can you get up there and get back with the money?”

“Crass greedy pig!”

I untangled myself and lifted her down and checked the depth off the stern with the boat hook. I sent her to the stern to change the weight distribution and backed off with care and moved back into the channel.

I moored the boat at my dock and we walked hand in hand to the cottage. “I could go up with you,” I said.

“I don’t want to go anywhere in the world that’s more than fifty feet from you, Sam. But I better go up first and kind of wind up the chapter entitled Richmond.”

“How long would that take?”

“Two or three weeks, because I do want to be considerate. Peter’s uncle has been so wonderful.”

“I guess you’d want to be married in Dayton?”

We were at the porch door. “I’d like that very much, Sam.”

“This is the slack season in my business, so when you leave here, why don’t we go direct to Dayton. I’ll meet your folks and do what has to be done about licenses in Ohio. Then you go to Richmond and I’ll come back here. Then when you’re ready to whistle, I’ll buzz back to Dayton.”

“Right!” she said briskly. She stuck her hand out. “Seeing as how we’re engaged, mister, let’s shake hands.”

We shook hands solemnly. “That hair is meant for moonlight,” I said.

“Let’s not stand out here, son. I feel like Apple Mary. Take me in.”

We went in and I dug into the back of a cupboard and found a bottle of Chablis. It seemed to be a time for wine. And no time to cool it, so we had it on the rocks. Peggy called it a very low way to drink wine.

We pulled the two porch chairs close together and held hands and drank wine and looked at the moonlight.

“It was the raccoon,” she said dreamily. “That white lady raccoon. That’s when I started to fall in love.”

“I’m a more basic type. I began to get the general idea while kneading a fine leg.”

“It hurt so much I didn’t have any room to think about how … darn undignified it was.”

“Just don’t be scared,” I told her. “That’s all. We’ve been off to stormy, thorny places, and now we’re back, and this is where life is.”

We sat in the silence of one
A.M.
, and it was not a silence at all, not with the slap of mullet in the bay, a hot shrill frenzy of the night bugs, a compulsive self-adulation of mockingbirds.

My girl sighed and said, “I’m a lousy bad manager.”

“Indeed?”

“I have been toying with the idea of something cute. Like maybe going inside and then calling you to come find me in your bed, and me saying peekaboo or something equally girlish. Like an affirmation. Like saying to you, see how I trust you and I’m not scared. But things shouldn’t be shoved along too fast. Lordy, they go fast enough as is!”

“Peggy, you are a strain on my nerves.”

“Then, you see, I’d need to have you tell me that the whole routine wasn’t the least bit coarse, hasty, or sordid, that I was enchanting, and love justifies everything, and we’ve both been married, and so on. You know?”

“Go get ready and I’ll practice my lines.”

“I am not going to be elfin and nervous, which I couldn’t help being here and now.”

“And I’d probably bumble and stammer.”

“But—Sam, find a dandy motel, Sam.”

“Summer rates.”

“When I go north to change lives, I don’t want to be
wondering about us in any way at all. Call it a seal of approval or something. And forgive me right now for being a conniving bitch instead of a spontaneous one. Okay?”

I set my glass down, caught her by the wrist and brought her over into my lap, kissed her until, when I released her, her breathing was long, deep, humid, audible. “Sam,” she whispered, “you’re making the pants too long.”

There is only one way to handle a remark like that. I stood her up, laid the heft of my hand smartly on the seat of the pretty slacks and took her, giggling, to the car and back to the Weber house.

9

I
slept late on Sunday, and woke to a blazing day. I made myself an ornate breakfast, and I kept catching myself humming, whistling and smiling in a broad and fatuous way. It was noon before I got around to prying J. B. loose from his bachelor shack in the piney woods and taking him to Jimson’s. He didn’t know what I had in mind, but he was willing to go along with it, after expressing what he felt was sufficient irritation.