“I’ll take the five now.”
“I haven’t got—”
“You got.”
“Nobody trusts me anymore.”
“Nobody ever did, George.”
“It’s not fair. I thought you were trying to bluff me the way you always do. You came back to the kitchen and said Madam had a caller and you thought he was a minister. And I said, five bucks he’s not. I thought I had a sure thing.”
“You do have a sure thing, George. It’s called terminal gullibility. Pay up.”
George paid up and departed in the direction of Miss Firenze’s room. His lack of haste indicated that the situation was not uncommon.
“Soooo,” Ms. Leigh said, pursing her lips, “your rapport with Firenze didn’t last very long. That’s the trouble with flaky ladies. They never flake and unflake on schedule. What happened?”
“I asked her a question she didn’t like.”
“About her past?”
“Evidently she thought so but it wasn’t. It concerned Annamay Hyatt.”
“Oh.” Ms. Leigh took off her glasses and rubbed them on the sleeve of her green sweater as though to clean up some invisible spots that were blurring her vision. “No, she wouldn’t like that. The case affected her very badly right from the beginning. Whenever anything about it was shown on television she’d throw a fit. And if she overheard any of us talking about it around the house she’d fire us. I must have been fired twenty times at least but since she hasn’t the power to hire or fire I’m still here.”
“Why did she react so violently?”
“It’s her nature to react violently to anything which displeases her. She had no relationship with the little girl, at least to my knowledge. I doubt she’d ever even seen her. The attendants are careful to keep children away because Firenze doesn’t like them. They make her nervous. She often refers to them in her fits of fear. Children are part of the ‘they’ who are out to get her. There are many such references in my notes, especially on days when she’s escaped and something has frightened her like a sudden storm or the fog rolling in.”
“Could you look up some of these references for me?”
“I could. It would take time.” Ms. Leigh replaced her glasses. “My husband Larry’s drama lessons are very expensive.”
“You’ll be paid for your time, of course.”
“Like how much?”
“Maybe not enough to turn Larry into another Dustin Hoffman but a reasonable amount.”
“Larry’s taller than Hoffman and better looking.”
“Then it won’t require quite so much money, will it?” Michael said. “How about twenty-five an hour, plus a bonus for quick work?”
“Sounds fair. I’ll give it my best shot. But don’t expect miracles. Most of the stuff, or a lot of it anyway, is the ranting of a nutty old lady who’s afraid of her past catching up with her.”
“But mixed up with the ranting may be some kernels of truth. To the child’s father,” Michael added, “one kernel is better than nothing. It’s possible that Miss Firenze witnessed something on the day Annamay disappeared. She was never questioned by the police, you know, because her lawyers wouldn’t permit it.”
“Naturally not. She would have told one cock-and-bull story after another in order to remain the center of attention. They could have believed one of them. And indeed, some might even have been true. But it’s not likely. She doesn’t usually tell the truth when she’s basking in the limelight, only when she’s scared. That’s when she lets out things she normally hides, like her real age, which is seventy-eight not seventy-three, and the name of her first and last husband, Joe Willie Smith, a black army private who was killed in Korea. Official documents don’t list either of those facts.”
“How can you be sure they’re facts?”
Ms. Leigh said, with a faint smile. “All us flat-chested Orientals have ESP, didn’t you know that?”
“I’m learning.”
“Around here you need ESP. Firenze is a very convincing liar because she actually believes herself.”
“Does she ever go across the creek and into the Hyatts’ avocado grove?”
“I guess she’s covered the whole area at one time or another. We get a complaint now and then from someone in the neighborhood, but mostly she just walks along the creek and picks flowers and grass and things.”
Miss Firenze’s screaming had stopped abruptly and George appeared at the head of the stairs.
“Hey, Leigh, tote your tush up here. She wants to see you.”
“Tell her I’ll be right there.” Ms. Leigh offered her hand to Michael. “Do you mind letting yourself out? She’s often calm after one of these storms and I get some usable material. How do I get in touch with you?”
Michael gave her both his own number and that of the Hyatts’ guest cottage. “Call any time.”
“Very well, I’ll see what I can do, Mr. Dunlop.”
“Thank you.”
They shook hands again and Michael went out the door. The Oasis Pool Service truck was still parked outside the house, joined now by All-American Tree Service and Channel Hospital and Uniform Supplies. The same two gardeners were clipping the same privet hedge. The hedge appeared to go on and on, with no end in sight in either direction, and the gardeners were apparently content to go on and on with it. Perhaps they would continue right into spring when the privet bloomed and they were forced away by swarms of bees and the oversweet odor of the flowers.
Halfway down the driveway he turned and looked back at the villa. Madam Firenze had stepped out on her balcony on the second floor and was waving at him in a friendly but formal way like royalty acknowledging her subjects.
He didn’t wave back.
When he returned through the Hyatts’ avocado grove the dogs came running to greet him, the shepherd barking hysterically, the Newfoundland silent and placid as usual. They both looked neglected. Newf’s feathered legs and plumed tail had collected dozens of burr clovers and Shep’s underbelly was shafted with foxtails. Burr clover was a relatively harmless nuisance to animals but foxtails could do serious damage, digging farther and farther into the skin as if they were alive. Michael picked them all out carefully, keeping them in his hand until he could find a trash can to prevent them from reseeding.
The palace too looked neglected, its windows smudged, its patch of lawn dried out, the barbecue pit choked with eucalyptus pods and pine needles and sycamore leaves. There were no fish in the fishpond and only an inch or two of dirty water.
The front door was partly open as though someone had forgotten to lock it and it had been pushed inward by the wind or one of the dogs or a reconnoitering possum. When Michael went to close it he saw that sycamore leaves were scattered around the room, on the small davenport and dining set and stove, even on the bunk beds where Marietta and Luella Lu lay awaiting their mistress. Marietta’s half-bald head was partly covered by a leaf that looked quite like a perky new hat. Luella Lu had been turned on her side and her glued eye was staring straight at Michael and beyond.
The two dogs, Shep strangely silent, sat outside the door, as though they had forgotten they were ever allowed inside as the royal attendants. Michael, who’d never owned a dog, had felt no real kinship with one until this moment when he wondered how much of Annamay was still alive inside their heads, a voice, a touch, a smell, a laugh.
He closed the door and began walking along the path toward the main house with the dogs following. If they hadn’t suddenly bounded off in the direction of the koi pond he would have missed the old man sitting beside it.
“Good morning, Michael,” Mr. Hyatt said.
“Good morning, Mr. Hyatt.”
“Then it was you thrashing around in the avocado grove.” “I didn’t realize I was thrashing.”