The Dreadful Lemon Sky Part 8

"Do you want me to go and pick up that package from Mr. Rucker?"

"Oh, no, thanks. I already talked to Betty about it, and she's coming with me now and we'll go over there before two o'clock. It's perfectly all right, really. But thank you."

A st.u.r.dy girl in a yellow dress came hurrying to the car, saying, "Sorry, Sue. I got to talking to somebody."

"Betty, this is Travis McGee. Betty Joller."

She had one of those plump pretty faces which go with wooden shoes and beer festivals. Her eyes were Dutch blue, and her smile was totally friendly and not the least bit provocative. "When I saw you standing with Meyer, I figured it had to be you," she said. "Carrie told me once that the only really happy time she could remember was when you loaned her and Ben your houseboat for their honeymoon. We're all going to miss her so much around here."

They got in, and Susan hitched her white dress up above her knees and then backed smartly around and they left. At my elbow Joanna said, "Now that Susan is some kind of great package."

"And Jason has his eyes on it."

"I noticed that. She's too young for you, chief."

"So are you."

She laughed so hard it bent her over. The laugh was silver bright under the shade trees, unfitting for the occasion. "Me? Me?" she gasped. "I'm the oldest person around anywhere." She wore little salmon shorts and a soft gray top. She had wound her ginger hair into a pile atop her head and pinned it in place casually. Ends were escaping. It made her throat look very slender and vulnerable.

She looked around. "Where did you leave your wheels?"

"We walked over from the marina."

"So I'll walk back with you, okay?"

"Okay Joanna."

"We haven't made our deal yet."

"Deal?"

She carried a small white canvas beach bag. She twirled it by its draw cord. "Keep playing dumb and I'll brain you, honey."

So we went out to the sidewalk and walked through sun and shade, past little frame houses and new little stores, to the marina. Jason was back at work. He was in his khaki shorts standing on the bow deck of a big Chriss, hosing it down, washing off the salt, and the new arrivals, a pair of small round white-haired people in bright boat clothes, stood sourly watching his every move. "Get that cleat too," the man yelled. "The cleat!"

"Yessir," said Jason the musician. "Yessir, sir." Joanna was loudly enthusiastic about the below-decks s.p.a.ces of the Busted Flush. While she was. trotting around, oh-ing and ah-ing, Meyer told me he had some errands. I gave him the car keys. I did not know if he had errands or a sudden attack of discretion.

I caught up with her in the head, standing in front of the big mirror, touching her hair, turning and looking back at herself over her shoulder. She saw me in the mirror and said, "This is really some kind of floating playpen. It's funny. I keep feeling left out. I keep thinking that it isn't right that all this has been going on without me. After all, I'm the best in the world. You didn't know?"

"You hadn't mentioned it before."

"Don't tell me you designed all this?"

"No. It was as is when I won this barge in a poker game."

"Ah. Hence the name:"

"There was a Brazilian lady that went with it, but I wouldn't let him bet her."

"Are Brazilians so great?"

"I wouldn't know. Anyway I kept the decor."

She was smiling. Then suddenly she slumped her shoulders, shook her head, her face somber. "It's so great to kid around, isn't it? I guess the real reason I'm quitting the job is because it wouldn't be the same there without Carrie. Can I have a beer?"

"Of course."

We sat in the galley booth, facing each other across the Formica top. She was pensive, silent, unreadable.

Finally she said, "So it isn't any game. So I don't want in, thanks just the same. Sorry I bothered you."

So I told her the truth about my relationship to Carrie. And why I was here with Meyer. She turned beet red and had to get up and pace around to control her restless embarra.s.sment. It took me about five minutes to get the record straight. I left out the part about the money.

"You must have thought I'd lost my mind!"

"I decided you weren't too tightly wrapped, kid."

"You encouraged me, d.a.m.n you!"

Finally she calmed down and sat down, sipped her beer, and said, "Okay, I can see why you think she was killed. The purse and the gas and so on. But why? She wasn't into anything that rough. Everybody and his brother is hustling gra.s.s into Florida. There's absolute tons of it coming in all the time. It's about as risky as running a stop sign."

"Did she tell you how it worked?"

"Not in so many words. It was no secret they used Jack's cruiser. There is no way this coast can be policed. Too many small boats and little airplanes and all."

"Didn't anybody at the cottage ask Carrie where she got it?"

"Betty always did, and Carrie would say something different every time. Like she'd say they had a special on it at Quik-Chek. It was top quality, cured right. Jason says it's the best he's ever run into. It was fun, the four of us, Betty and me, Carrie and Floss. Betty got a little machine and made cigarettes. And we had the cookbook, too, and made those hash puppies. Like on an evening, there'd be eight or ten of us sitting around, and maybe Jason making music, and we'd get onto a real nice level. And there'd be good relaxed talk that made sense, not like when everybody is drinking and people get ugly or silly. They say now it can mess up having babies, and it can lower your resistance to colds and flu and infection and so on. So? Automobiles can kill you, and people don't stop driving."

"The imperatives aren't the same."

"The what aren't what?"

"Excuse me. Let's not get into a hard sell."

"Are you opposed?"

"Joanna, I don't know. A fellow who was pretty handy with a boat once said that anything you feel good after is moral. But that implies that the deed is unchanging and the doer is unchanging. What you feel good after one time, you feel rotten after the next. And it is difficult to know in advance. And morality shouldn't be experimental, I don't think. I find that the world is full of things which are unavoidable and which cloud my mind. When my mind is clouded, I am experiencing less. I may think it is more, if the mind is warped, but it is less, really. The mind looks inward, not outward. So I just... try to make sure there's always somebody in the control room, somebody standing watch."

"Somehow it sounds dull."

"It isn't."

She wrapped her fingers around my wrist. "Okay, smart-a.s.s. Do you think you'd feel good after me?"

"If the reasons are right, sure."

"Is there more than one reason, friend?"

"The biggest and most important reason in the world is to be together with someone in a way that makes life a little less bleak and solitary and lonesome. To exchange the I for the We. In the biggest sense of the word, it's cold outside. And kindness and affection and gentleness build a nice warm fire inside. That's okay. But if you want to set some new international s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g record, or if you want to show off the busiest fastest hips in town, forget it."

The fingers slackened their hold on my wrist and she pulled her hand back. Tears stood in her eyes. She smiled and shook her head and said, "No way McGee. Whatever it is you're selling, I can't afford it. I went that route once, and it stung. It stung a lot. If that's the kind of dressing you want on the salad, eat elsewhere. I am a very good lay for the Harry Has...o...b.. of the world, and I always feel good afterward, thanks."

"Always?"

"Go to h.e.l.l!" she said and got up. "All I am is your garden-variety man-eater. I like it. Go to h.e.l.l!"

"To each his dagnab blue-eyed own."

She smiled. "And I'll always miss Walt Kelly too." She held her hand out to me. "Friends? I didn't exactly come here to set up a friendship. But it'll have to do. G.o.d! I am starving... What have you got here?" She had opened the refrigerator. "Is that corned beef? Cheese. Where's the bread? I have this terrible food engine inside me. I eat enough for three truckdrivers and I'm always hungry and I never gain one little ounce. I could give you bone bruises, dear."

I sat and watched her make sandwiches. She was very deft, and she made a lot of them. She ate about twice as much as I ate. She ate with such enthusiasm it made her sweaty, even in the air conditioning. She ate with such a l.u.s.ty, bright-eyed joy that I had the wistful wish to have played her game and bundled her into the sack five minutes after Meyer stepped off the boat. She was intensely alive, as vital and immediate as anyone I had met in a long time.

"How often did she bring the samples?"

"What? Oh, when we were about to run out. Her moving to that Fifteen Hundred place had something to do with the deal. She told me she was getting a free ride on the apartment. But she missed us."

The phone rang. It startled both of us. I went into the lounge and answered it. It was Meyer. "About the autopsy on Birdsong, it was heart. Some kind of aneurysm. Thought you'd like to know. I hope I... haven't disturbed you by phoning."

"You can come back aboard any time."

"Oh."

"What's this with the Oh?"

"Just Oh. Nothing complicated. Oh."

She sauntered into the lounge and stretched out on the yellow couch, placing her second mug of milk on the coffee table. "This is truly some great boat."

"What is Chris Omaha like?"

"n.o.body can ever figure out how come Jack stayed with her so long. She's dumb, loud, and greedy. Rotten to him and rotten to the kids. Ever since the kids got old enough to be sent off to school, they've been away. She likes to be alone in the house in case something wearing pants comes by to make a delivery or fix something. Jack caught her a couple of times. But leave her? No. Carrie thought for quite a while maybe he would leave Chris and marry her. I don't know what the hold is. It was a kid marriage for them. Seventeen and eighteen they were. It finally got to be an arrangement, I guess. He could have Carrie, and she could have anybody who happened to come along."

"Like Ready Freddy Van Harn?"

"Ready Freddy? Wow, you read him right. I'll have to tell Floss what you called him. No, Fred is the lawyer for the business, and he's Jack and Harry's personal lawyer, and he'll be handling the estate, what's left, but he wouldn't boff around with old Chris, not when he can tag the best there is."

I recounted my reasons for contradicting her. She looked astonished. "What about that! What do you know? I guess old Chris snuck up on his blind side or something."

"He was Carrie's lawyer?"

"From being the lawyer for the business. When she wanted to make out a will so that Ben couldn't get her savings or her car or anything like that, she asked Fred one day when he was in to see Harry about something, and he made some notes and drew up a will and had her come into the office and sign it. I guess he made himself the executor. That would be okay by Carrie. And Betty told me she'd warned Susan about Fred. Susan seems like such a nice kid. Fred even got to Betty one time. I guess it was sort of a challenge to him. Betty is sort of s.e.xless, you know? She has all the equipment and she's pretty but something's left out. Fred got her a little bit bombed on wine and then he took her. It wasn't exactly rape, but it was as close as it could get and still not be. She hates him. He really hurt her, because she's built small, and that Fred has... well, all I can say is that you'd never know, looking at him, so kind of slender and girlish almost. And pretty. But he's a bull. He's huge. He's so huge he's sort of scary. And... he likes to hurt. I don't like kinky things. I like it, you know, for fun. It doesn't seem to be fun for him. Oh, he knows a lot of tricks and so forth. But it's more like he read up on it in engineering school. Once was enough for me. He's with you but he isn't. He's... I don't know how to say it."

"Remote?"

"Ri-i-ght! I think Fred is trying to score every girl in Bayside and surrounding area. He's real h.e.l.l on wives. Maybe that's why he put Chris on his list. Men have tried to beat up on him for messing around, but he is just as quick and just as mean as a snake. He's a good lawyer, but he's not a very nice person. I don't know how marriage is going to work out for him. He's going to get married. It was in the paper. Jane Schermer. Very social and very very rich. It's grove money from way back. He has some ranchland out near all her groves, lots of it, but nowhere near as big. The Van Harn family used to have money, but about the time Fred was in Stetson Law, his daddy shot himself and it turned out he was almost totally busted. It was something to do with letter stock. I don't even know what that is. But that's what they say. Something about pledging letter stock for bank loans, and him being the lawyer for the bank. Fred works hard. I think. he's maybe made back a lot of money. Everybody says he does a good job. But I think that way down deep he's a creepy person."

"Bayside seems like a busy place."

"It's okay, I guess. I really don't know whether I'll stay around. I left once before and came back. Maybe I'll come to Lauderdale and live on this boat with you for a while. Okay?"

"We'll keep your name on file, Miss Freeler."

"You are so nice to me."

My alarm bell bonged as Meyer stepped aboard, onto the mat on the stern deck. He knocked and came in and smiled at pretty Joanna on the yellow couch. "I like to see healthy young girls drinking milk," he said. She had set aside a couple of sandwiches for him, neatly packaged in Saran. She stirred herself and got up, yawning, and said she was going back to the cottage for a nap. I took her by the shoulders and turned her around and gave her a little push toward the staterooms. She trudged off, scuffing her heels, and when I looked in on her she was snoring, a large snare-drum sound for such a small lady.

I sat with Meyer while he ate at the booth in the galley.

"I tracked it down," he said. "The place Carrie had her car serviced. It's a big Sh.e.l.l station right across from the entrance to Junction Park. It was handy for her because she could leave her car there while she was working. It was in last Tuesday. They looked up the ticket. They changed the oil and the filter and put on new wiper blades, and filled the tank."

"And if it was filled Tuesday, and she didn't go on any trips..."

"She worked all day Tuesday and Wednesday."

"Very nice work, Meyer."

"Thank you."

"About that planet theory of yours, how they find the invisible one by seeing what it does to the orbits of the others, I have a candidate for planet. One attorney by the name of Frederick Van Harn. He impinges on the lives of too many of the people we're interested in."

"Including Mrs. Birdsong."

"Huh?"

"He was coming out of her motel unit when I drove in."

"Oh, that's just great. Anyway, he's top priority. All we can find out. Right?"

"Yessir, sir."

And despite my protestations that it wasn't all that urgent, he headed on out again after reborrowing the car keys.

Eight.

JOANNA WOKE Up at four and said a sleepy farewell and went tottering off. I wrote a note to Meyerand left it where he would see it. I locked the Flush and walked all the way to 1500 Seaway Boulevard, estimating it at a little less than two miles south of the marina. At first it was very hot, but then a quick thunderstorm came slamming in. I stepped over a hedge and took refuge under a tremendous old banyan. A small white dog yapped at me from a screened porch, some of his yapping drowned by thunder. A pale woman came out onto the porch to see why he was making such a fuss. Over the rain sound I yelled, "I'm trespa.s.sing!"

"You can trespa.s.s on the porch here if you want."

"I'm terrified of the savage dog. Thanks anyway."

She smiled and went back into the house.