The Love Talker Part 15

"Miss Carlson? Thank goodness I found you, what took you so long? I'm in a terrible hurry. It's your mother, there was an accident and she's in the hospital. The doctor says you'd better hurry."

Laurie felt as if her tongue had swollen into a huge unmanageable ma.s.s that filled her mouth and made speech impossible. She and Anna had never been close, not as mothers and daughters were supposed to be, but she had a certain affection . . . Greater than she had known, until this moment.

"How-how serious is it?" she managed to say.

"Not good, I'm afraid. They say you better come right away. They don't know how long . . . Well, I'm sure glad I reached you. Good-bye."

"Wait. Wait, who is this?"

It was too late. The click at the other end of the wire was distinct.

Laurie stood holding the telephone. Stupid woman, she thought. Why do people get so excited they can't make sense? But she knew she was being unreasonable; the caller must be a neighbor or friend of Anna's; naturally she was upset, and breaking the bad news had not been a pleasant task. She returned the phone to its cradle and turned to face Doug.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"How did you know?"

"Heard you ask if it was serious. Someone you know well?"

"You know her too. . . . Doug, I'm sorry. It's Anna. She's still . . . alive, but they think-"

Doug's face went white, but his voice was calm.

"They? Who? Who called?"

"Some woman. A friend of Anna's, I guess. She was so upset she forgot to give me her name."

"See if we can get plane reservations," Doug muttered, reaching for the phone. "How soon can you leave?"

"Right now. I'll just-"

"Wait a minute."

Laurie, halfway up the stairs, turned. Doug stood holding the phone, a foolish expression on his face. "Where is Anna?" he asked. "I mean, I can't make a reservation unless I know where we're going."

"Oh, Lord." Laurie sat down on the step and clutched her head. "Let me think. Her last letter was from Los Angeles. But the TV deal didn't work out, so she was going to spend a couple of weeks with those friends of hers at Palm Beach, unless her agent came through with something in New York. . . . This is ridiculous."

"She wrote me two weeks ago from Nice," Doug said.

"Nice! What the h.e.l.l was she doing there?"

"She didn't say."

"Put the phone down," Laurie said irritably. "You look silly holding it like that."

"I'm going to try the New York apartment," Doug said. He began to dial.

"What for? If she's in the hospital-"

"I don't know where else to call," Doug snapped.

"Are you two quarreling?" Ida's gaunt frame appeared in the doorway. "What is it, Laura?"

"Oh, Aunt, I don't know how to tell you-"

Doug suddenly made a wide, sweeping gesture. His eyes opened wide.

"h.e.l.lo?" he said. "h.e.l.lo? Who is this? Anna?"

Laurie jumped to her feet.

"What? Who? Let me-"

Doug fended her off as she s.n.a.t.c.hed at the phone.

"Yes, Anna, it's me. What's going on there? I hear voices yelling. . . . Oh." His voice dropped a full octave. "A what? You're having a party?"

Laurie staggered back to the stairs and sat down. Her aunt bent over her.

"What is going on, Laura? What is it you were going to tell me?"

"Forget it," Laurie mumbled. "I'll explain in a minute."

"Yes, I'm fine," Doug said. "I'm glad you're fine. No, I didn't call just to ask if you were . . . Yes, everybody here is fine too. Anna, for G.o.d's sake, will you shut up about everybody's health for a minute? We just got a phone call telling us you were in an accident. . . ."

He listened while the telephone gabbled and squeaked at him. His eyebrows rose.

"No, darling, I don't think the woman was referring to your cutting your finger on a piece of gla.s.s. Are you sure nothing happened tonight that might have led someone to ... Oh, you've been home all afternoon. Yes, dear, I know what your c.o.c.ktail parties are like. It must have been a wrong number.

Wait a minute. I think Laurie wants to talk to you. Yes, she's here too-and she is fine."

He handed the phone to Laurie. She was too bewildered to be very coherent; after a few comments she handed the phone back to Doug. There was certainly nothing wrong with Anna, except that she was in her normal state of cheerful inebriation. Not the result of alcohol; Anna didn't need booze to get drunk, she had been born in that condition.

Finally Doug hung up.

"Well," he said.

"Well," Laurie repeated.

"Anna didn't know you were here. I dropped her a note before I came, but apparently you-"

"No, I didn't." Laurie's head was aching. She rubbed her forehead. "That never occurred to me, Doug."

"It wouldn't." Doug's voice was hard, but Laurie knew his anger wasn't directed at her. "If someone dumps a shock like that on you, you don't stop to think."

"It couldn't have been a case of mistaken ident.i.ty then." Laurie's wits began to function again. "Because if Anna didn't know I was here, her friends wouldn't know either."

Ida's eyes moved from one of them to the other.

"What happened?"

"Poor Aunt." Laurie giggled, a little wildly. "You keep asking that, and n.o.body answers you. Some woman just called me and told me Anna was mortally injured. She didn't give a name. If Anna had been a normal mother, with a fixed habitation, we might have gone rushing out into the night hoping to be with her at the end."

"But that is absolutely vile," Ida said indignantly. "Of all the cruel tricks-"

"I don't think it was a trick," Doug said slowly. "Or if it was, it was not motivated by idle malice. Laurie, I owe you an apology. Photos or no photos, I'm ready to believe in your theory."

Laurie leaned against the wall and enjoyed nostalgia. Six years . . . had it been that long? High schools had not changed. Except for a few minor differences in decor she might have been standing in the hall of Nathan Hale High, or Father Serra High, or ... she had forgotten the names of the others. Thanks to Anna's peripatetic habits, Laurie had attended five different high schools, three of them in one year. It would have been easier for Anna to put her in a boarding school, but Anna had her fads; one of them was a baseless sentimentality about the good old democratic public high school, which had been good enough for her in her day.

The wall against which Laurie leaned was built of cinder blocks painted a pale nauseating green. Posters attempted to brighten this long stretch of mediocrity, whose original color was both faded and dirty. Apparently a school election was due. The posters blasted out directives to the reader: "A vote for Debbie is a vote for progress"; "Sam is the Man"; "Andy for Cla.s.s President, he's Awww-right!"

The halls were deserted. From behind the closed cla.s.sroom doors came the murmurs of muted voices. The school day was almost over.

Laurie yawned. The night watches were beginning to get to her. At least Doug was now on her side. The telephone call had convinced him that her far-out suspicions weren't so wild after all. There was a villain, and there was a plot. (Doug had used those very words, rolling them on his tongue with a certain relish.) The only reasonable explanation for the phone call was that someone wanted them-both of them- to leave Idlewood. They had discussed it at length, trying to find other reasons. Admittedly, some people liked to play sick jokes, via the anonymity of a telephone. But the unknown woman had asked for Laurie by name. None of Anna's friends or enemies- the two categories were by no means distinct-knew Laurie was at Idlewood. She had told no one in Chicago of her plans to come east, so that eliminated her friends and enemies, even if she could believe that any of them would stoop to such a thing.

Laurie's voice had faltered, momentarily, on that denial. Doug eyed her curiously, but she had not qualified it. Not even Bob would be that weird, she told herself. Besides, he didn't know where she was.

In these days of direct dialing there was no way of finding out whether the call had been local or long distance. Laurie had been too upset to notice anything distinctive about the woman's voice. Yet the fact that the call had been made was a clue in itself, and, as Doug pointed out, if someone wanted them to leave, then there was good reason for them to stay.

Laurie glanced at her watch. Only a few more minutes.

Another plus for an evening which had seemed to start so badly was that Jeff was now definitely involved. After accusing all and sundry of stealing her pictures, Lizzie had stormed out, so the others had been able to discuss the situation in peace. Uncle Ned refused to have anything to do with it. In his own way he was as obsessed as Lizzie.

Ida said little. Her grim silence bothered Laurie more than tears would have done. At one point she patted her aunt's bony hand and said, "Cheer up, Aunt Ida. Don't you see, if someone is playing tricks it means that Aunt Lizzie isn't losing her mind-at least, no faster than she was already."

The feeble attempt at a joke produced no answering smile on her aunt's dour face.

"I cannot believe it," she muttered.

"It is hard to believe," Jeff agreed. He ran his fingers through his hair. The tangled black locks clung to his high forehead. There was genuine anger in his voice when he added, "How could anyone be that stupid!"

"What hangs me up is the question of motive," Doug said. "There is no sane reason why anyone would want to harm Aunt Lizzie; so we've got to face the fact that this creature may be moved by sheer malice and mischief. G.o.d knows it happens often enough these days. Are you sure, Aunt, that there's no local idiot who harbors a grudge, reasonless or not, against any of you? How about Mr. Wilson?"

"Jack Wilson?" Jeff let out a gasp of laughter. "A scheme like this would be totally beyond him, Doug. He has a mind like a crudely drawn child's map- flat and two-dimensional."

"He is an unattractive person," Ida said. "But he is sober and hardworking. He has always been an excellent tenant and we have had no quarrels with him. No, Douglas, there is no one."

That was all they could get out of her, although they continued to speculate fruitlessly for another hour. Yet when Ida excused herself and went up to bed, Laurie was left with the uneasy feeling that there was something she had not told them. Was it only her imagination, or had her aunt seemed to flinch every time the word "motive" was mentioned?

Now she dismissed such speculations with an angry shrug and glanced again at her watch. A bell shrieked. The children poured out of opening doorways like water under pressure bursting through a hole. They came in all sizes and colors and shapes: tall and short, black and white, male and female-but they shared a terrifying exuberance and a capacity to make incredible amounts of noise. Laurie's head echoed with the screams of dear friends greeting one another after an absence of two hours, with the sounds of locker doors banging and footsteps thudding in rapid retreat from the hated halls of academe.

As the stream rushed past her she wondered how she had ever expected to locate the Wilson girls in this chaos. Fortunately there was a bottleneck at the main door, where the children jostled and shoved to reach the long yellow buses drawn up outside. Rachel's height and her spectacular golden hair enabled Laurie to spot her. The girl would stand out in any crowd.

Rachel's clothing also differentiated her from her peers. Most of them, boys and girls alike, were wearing jeans or corduroy pants. Some of the girls flaunted the boots and calf-length skirts fashionable that year. Rachel's skirt was long, but it certainly wasn't stylish. The color, the cut, the fabric-everything about it was wrong. The skirt and the long-sleeved, high-necked blouse were designed to cover the girl as completely as possible. They did a good job of that, but it would have required a long black veil, like the ones worn by old-fashioned Moslem women, to render Rachel unnoticeable. Her exquisite face and silken flood of hair drew glances from the boys as she pa.s.sed them, but none spoke or approached her.

Behind her, like a squat dark shadow, was Mary Ella, her arms piled with books. They were like the sisters in the old ballads, one fair and beautiful, the other dark and cruel. (And why, Laurie wondered, were the blondes always the good girls?) In the ballads the prince or the young squire usually fell in love with the yellow-haired, blue-eyed sister, and the brunette, driven by jealousy, shoved her sibling into the river or ma.s.sacred her in some other fashion.

Laurie breasted the crowd with outthrust arms and shouted apologies. The kids made way for her good-naturedly when they happened to notice her, but she was almost trampled by an overgrown youth surrounded by an entourage of admirers-a star athlete, no doubt. Laurie followed the Wilson girls out the door and tapped Rachel on her shoulder.

The look of unguarded terror on the girl's face as she turned made Laurie forget the speech she had prepared.

"Hey, it's all right," she exclaimed. "I just wondered if you would like a ride home, Rachel. And you too, of course, Mary Ella."

Mary Ella said nothing. She looked like a little female gnome with her dark, lank hair covering her forehead clear down to her thick eyebrows.

"Oh, no," Rachel said. "We couldn't. If we don't get home on time-"

"But you will be. We can get you there before the bus could. Look, there's Doug with the car." Rachel's blue eyes widened as she followed the direction of Laurie's pointing finger. Laurie smiled to herself. She had suspected Rachel wouldn't be able to resist that car. It had already drawn considerable attention from pa.s.sing students, though Laurie fancied that some of the girls were not so much interested in the car as they were in its owner. Doug, leaning negligently against the front fender, appeared to be unaware of the admiring feminine eyes, but his pose was slightly self-conscious.

"Well," Rachel said hesitantly.

"Come on," Laurie said.

The two girls squeezed into the back seat. Laurie and Doug had agreed in advance on this arrangement, in case someone carried tales home to Mr. Wilson. Doug tried to be casual and avuncular, but he could hardly keep his eyes off Rachel. He sat staring into the rear-view mirror until Laurie kicked him, none too gently.

"Drive," she said. "The girls don't want to be late."

"Plenty of time," Doug said. "How about stopping for a c.o.ke or an ice-cream cone or something?"

A look pa.s.sed between the two girls. Rachel shook her head.

"Thank you, sir, but we better not. I have to get to my baby-sitting job, and there's ch.o.r.es to do first."

"Baby-sitting?" Laurie repeated. "But this is a school night."

"Oh, I do it every night," Rachel said. "It's Mrs. Wade's baby; she works the night shift at the plant. He's little, he sleeps a lot, so I can get my studying done there."

Doug was driving as slowly as he dared, but Laurie knew there was no time to waste, so she plunged into the heart of the matter.

"Girls, we didn't finish our talk yesterday. Now please believe you aren't going to get in trouble from this. I can see the subject irritates your father, so we won't come to the house again. We just wanted to find out how this business started."

"I told you yesterday," Rachel muttered.

"I'm still not clear about some of the details, Rachel. You met Miss Lizzie in the woods last summer?"

"Well, you see, we go out picking berries and things.. .. They don't mind; Mr. Ned said we could."

It took considerable prodding and rea.s.surance before Rachel produced a coherent story. Boiled down, the narrative was simple enough. The girls did not have regular summer jobs because their father refused to let them work in evil places such as dime stores and restaurants. However, since the devil made work for idle hands, they were expected to keep busy. So, when they weren't helping with the farm they were out scouring the hillsides for unconsidered treasures. Berries in season, sour cherries from the trees of people who were too lazy to put up their own fruit, crab apples, persimmons-anything and everything that could be canned or made into jelly by the frugal Wilsons.

"You must get scratched pretty badly," Doug said. Laurie knew he was admiring Rachel's delicate skin, and resenting the thought of its being marred.

His warm, flexible voice reflected his feelings, and Rachel sensed them. Her responses to his occasional comments were much more relaxed than her replies to Laurie.

"Oh, I'm used to that," Rachel said, smiling. "But I sure do hate that poison ivy. I get it worse than Mary Ella. I just break out all over."

"Go on," Laurie said.

There was not much more to tell. Miss Lizzie liked to walk in the woods when the weather was nice.