Part 11 (2/2)
She made up her mind and pulled the door almost closed as she came in. She dropped to her knees and laid her ear against Cathy's chest. Then she shook her and slapped her. Cathy's sleeping head lolled and Cathy made a little whine of irritation and complaint.
”Can you cover for her?” I asked.
She sat back on her heels and nibbled a thumb knuckle. ”Best thing is get Jase to bring a laundry cart and he'p load her in and put a couple sheets over her and put her in an empty.” She stared suspiciously up at me. ”That's no kind of poison, is it? She'll come out of it okay?”
”In two to three hours, probably.”
She stood up and stared at me, head tilted. ”How come you don't just call the desk?”
”Would they fire her?”
”They sure to h.e.l.l would.”
”Lorette, if I'd had that bottle locked up in my suitcase and she'd gone digging around in there and tapped it, then I might have called the desk. Maybe I would have called anyway if she'd been giving me sloppy service since I've been here. But she's kept this place bright as a but-ton, and I plain forgot that bottle and left it on the closet floor over there where any maid would find it. So I share the blame.”
”And maybe you don't want to have to tell a lot of folks how come you keep your sleeping medicine in with the gin?”
”I think you're a nice bright girl and you can cover for her without any trouble at all.”
”Because it's slack right now I can do hers and mine both, what rooms we got left. But one more thing. If you turned her in, could she rightly say that you've been messing with her some?”
”No. She couldn't say that.”
”Then, I'll be back in just a little while.”
It was five minutes before she came back. She held the door open for a tall young boy with enormous shoulders, who pushed a laundry hamper on wheels into the room. He parked it beside Cathy and picked her up easily and lowered her into it. Lorette covered her with a couple of rumpled sheets and said, ”Now Annabelle will be waiting right there in Two eighty-eight, Jase. You just put Cathy on the bed there and let Annabelle tend to her, hear?”
”Yump,” said Jase, and wheeled her out.
”Finish up fixing your bed for you, mister.”
”Thanks.”
As she was finis.h.i.+ng she giggled. She had a lot of lovely white teeth. She shook her head. ”That ol' girl is sure going to wonder what in the world happened to her.”
”Explain the situation, will you?”
”Surely. If you're not checking out, she'll be coming by to say thank you tomorrow, I expect.” She paused at the door, fists in the pockets of her uniform skirt. ”It's important Cathy shouldn't get fired, mister. She needs the job. She lives with her old mother, and that old woman is mean as a snake. All crippled up with arthritis. She about drove Cathy's man away, I guess. There's three little kids, and Cathy could manage all right on the job money, but she'll see a dress and keep thinking about it until she just has to have it, no matter what, and she'll put it on lay-away, and then she'll have to use the money for other things at home, and she'll be afraid she'll lose the dress and what she paid on it, and then, well, she'll take chances she wouldn't otherwise and do things she wouldn't otherwise. She's older than me but lots of ways she's like a kid. This place does a lot of commercial trade, and what she does, when you unlock a number and it's a single in there, he's maybe just waking up or he's getting dressed, she gives a big smile and says something like good morning, sir, sure sorry if I disturbed you. And he looks her over and says, Honey, you come on right in here, and, well, she does. Then it's ten dollars or twenty to keep from losing the dress, but she's going to get caught someday and lose this good job. The reason I'm telling you all this is on account of from what I said about her messing around, I didn't want you thinking she was nothing but a hustler. It's only sometimes with her, and even if I wouldn't go down that road, it doesn't mean she isn't no friend of mine. She's my friend. She used to let me hold her first baby. I was ten years old and she was fifteen. And... thanks for coming and telling one of us.”
She left and I screwed the bottle cap tight and put the doctored-and watered-gin in my carry-on suitcase, wondering all the while if it wouldn't be a sounder idea to pour it out.
D. Wintin Hardahee was with a client. I left the motel number and room number. He called back ten minutes later, at eleven o'clock.
”I was wondering if maybe I could scrounge a little more information from you, Mr. Hardahee.”
”I am very sorry, Mr. McGee, but my work load is very heavy.” The soft voice had a flat and dead sound.
”Maybe we could have a chat after you get through work.”
”I am not taking on any new clients at this time.”
”Is something the matter? Is something wrong?”
”Sorry I can't be more cooperative. Good-bye, Mr. McGee.” Click.
I paced around, cursing. This nice orderly prosperous community was getting on my nerves. A big ball of tangled string. But when you found a loose end and pulled, all you got was a batch of loose ends. It seemed like at least a month ago that I had thought to check out Helena's estate arrangements. I thought maybe Hardahee could work it through his New York cla.s.smate. But Hardahee wasn't going to work out anything for me. So what could turn him off so quickly and so completely? Lies? Fear?
I stretched out on the bed and let the confusing cauldron bubble away, giving me glimpses of Penny, Janice, Biddy, Maureen, Tom Pike, Rick, Stanger, Tom Pike, Helena, Hardahee, Nudenbarger, Tom Pike.
Pike was getting pretty d.a.m.ned ubiquitous. And little bits of conversation kept coming back. I heard parts of the night talk with Janice Holton and something bothered me and I went back over it and found what bothered me, then slowly sat up.
She had asked about my imaginary wife. ”Do you ever run into her? Is she still in Lauderdale?”
Review. I had not said one d.a.m.ned word about Lauderdale. Holton had checked the registration. So he knew. But was there any reason for him to have said word one about it to his wife? ”Look, darling, my girl friend wanted to stay in the motel room with some jerk from Lauderdale named McGee.”
Not likely.
Backtrack. A little look of surprise at hearing my name. Surprise to find me with her husband.
Possibility: Friend of Biddy's. Had met her in supermarket or somewhere. Biddy spoke of an old friend named McGee from Lauderdale.
Or: In the process of checking me out Sat.u.r.day evening, and checking Holton out, Stanger made some mention of me to Janice Holton. ”Do you know, or do you know if your husband knows, anybody named Travis McGee from Fort Lauderdale?”
Possible, but I didn't like the fit. They were like limericks that do not quite scan, that have one syllable too much or one missing. My brain was a pudding. I walked across to a shopping plaza, bought some swim pants in a chain store, came back and put them on and padded out to the big motel pool. There was a separate wading pool full of three- and four-year-olds, shrieking, choking, throwing rubber animals, and belting each other under the casually benign stare of four well-greased young mothers. So I dived and did some slow lengths of the main pool and then gradually let it out, reaching farther, changing the kick beat, stretching and punis.h.i.+ng the long muscles of arms, shoulders, back, thighs, and belly, sucking air and blowing out the little layers of sedentary stale-ness in the bottoms of my lungs. I held it just below that pace at which I begin to get too much side roll and begin to thrash and slap, and then brutalized myself by saying, Just one more. And one more. And one more. Finally I lumbered out, totally whipped, heart way up there close to a hundred and a half, lungs straining, arms and legs weak as canvas tubes full of old wet feathers. I dried my face on the bath towel I'd brought from the room and then stretched out on it to let the suns.h.i.+ne do the rest.
Meyer calls it my ”instant I.Q.” In a sense it is. You oxygenate the blood to the maximum and you stimulate the heart into pumping it around at a breakneck pace. That enriched blood goes churning through the brain at the same tune that it is nouris.h.i.+ng the overworked muscle tissues. Sometimes it even works.
But I put my fat, newly enriched, humming head to work on the Janice-Lauderdale problem, and its final report was, ”d.a.m.ned if I know, fella.”
So I went back to 109 and before I dressed, I tried the office of the fat little John Wayne, M.D., got hold of a cheery, cooperative lady who told me that Dr. Stewart Sherman's receptionist and bookkeeper was Miss Helen Boughmer, and she did not know if she was working or not, but I could reach her through the phone listed for Mrs. Robert M. Boughmer. She asked me to wait a moment and gave me the number to write down.
Mrs. Robert M. Boughmer was very firm about things. ”I'm sorry, but I couldn't possibly call my daughter to the phone. She is not well today. She is in bed. Does she know you? What is this all about?”
”I'd like a chance to ask her some questions about an insurance matter, Mrs. Boughmer.”
”I can definitely say that she is not interested in buying any insurance and neither am I. Good-day.”
”Wait!” I missed her and had to call again. ”Mrs. Boughmer, I am an insurance investigator. I am investigating a policy claim.”
”But we haven't had any accidents with the car. Not for years.”
”It's some information on a death claim.”
”Oh?”
”On Doctor Sherman. Just a few routine questions, ma'am.”
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