“How far gone is she?”
“I don’t know. Too far to follow, anyway.”
“What made her crack up like that?”
“Five years in a cell would do it for me,” Quinn said. “Maybe they did it for Alberta.”
The memory of the scene in the penitentiary filled him with contempt and disgust, not at Alberta’s sickness but at the sickness of a society which cut off parts of itself to appease the whole and then wondered why it was not feeling well.
Ronda was pacing up and down the office as if he himself were confined in a cell. “I can’t print what you’ve just told me. A lot of people would disapprove.”
“Naturally.”
“Does George Haywood know all this?”
“He should. He visits her once a month.”
“How did you find that out?” “Several people told me, including Alberta. George’s visits are painful to her, and presumably to George, too, yet he keeps on making them.”
“Then his split with her was just a phony to fool the old lady?”
“The old lady, and perhaps other people.”
“George is an oddball,” Ronda said, frowning up at the ceiling. “I can’t understand him. One minute he’s so secretive he wouldn’t give you the time of day, and the next he’s in here pumping my hand like a long-lost brother and telling me about his trip to Hawaii. Why?”
“So you’d print it in the Beacon. That’s my guess,”
“But he’s never given us any society-page material before. He even squawks like hell if his name is included in a guest list at a party. Why the sudden change of policy?”
“Obviously he wants everyone to know he’s gone to Hawaii.”
“Social butterfly stuff, and the like? Nonsense. That doesn’t fit George.”
“A lot of things don’t fit George,” Quinn said. “But he’s wearing them anyway, and probably for the same reason I wore my brother’s cast-off clothes when I was a kid—because he has to. Well, I’d better shove off. I’ve taken enough of your time.”
Ronda was opening another can of beer. “There’s no hurry. I had a little argument with my wife and I’m staying away from the house for a while until she cools off. Sure you won’t join me in a beer?”
“Reasonably sure.”
“By the way, have you seen Martha O’Gorman since you got back?”
“Why?”
“Just wondering. My wife called her at the hospital this afternoon to invite her over for Sunday dinner. They said she’d taken the day off because of illness, but when my wife went over to the house to offer to help her, Martha wasn’t there and the car was gone. I thought you might know something about it.”
“You give me too much credit. See you later, Ronda.”
“Wait just a minute.” Ronda was hunched over the can of beer, staring into it. “I have a funny feeling about you, Quinn.”
“A lot of people have. Don’t worry about it.”
“Oh, but I am worried. This funny feeling tells me you’re holding something back, maybe something very important. Now that wouldn’t be nice, would it? I’m your friend, your pal, your buddy. I gave you the low-down on the O’Gorman case, I lent you my personal file.”
“You’ve been true-blue,” Quinn said. “Good night, friend, pal, buddy. Sorry about that funny feeling of yours. Take a couple of aspirin, maybe it’ll go away.”
“You think so, eh?”
“I could be wrong, of course.”
“You could be and you are, dammit. You can’t fool an old newspaperman like me. I’m intuitive.”
When Ronda got up to open the door he stumbled against the corner of the desk. Quinn wondered how long he’d been drinking and how much the beer had to do with his powers of intuition.
He was glad to get back out to the street. A fresh breeze was blowing, bringing with it half the population of Chicote. The town, deserted at noon, had come to life as soon as the sun went down. All the stores on Main Street were open and there were line-ups in front of the movie theaters and at the malt and hamburger stands. Cars full of teen-agers cruised up and down the street, horns blasting, radios blaring, tires squeaking. The noise eased their restlessness and covered up their lack of any real activity.
At the motel Quinn parked his car in the garage for the night and was closing the door when a voice spoke from the shrubbery: “Mr. Quinn. Joe.”
He turned and saw Willie King leaning against the side of the garage as if she had been, or was going to be, sick. Her face was as white as the jasmine blossoms behind her and her eyes looked glassy and not quite in focus.
“I’ve been waiting,” she said. “Hours. It seems hours. I didn’t—I don’t know what to do.”
“Is this another of your dramatic performances, Willie?”
“No. No! This is me.”
“The real you, eh?”
“Oh, stop it. Can’t you tell when someone’s acting and when she isn’t?”
“In your case, no.”
“Very well,” she said with an attempt at dignity. “I won’t— I shan’t bother you any further.”
“Shan’t you.”
She started to walk away and Quinn noticed for the first time that she was wearing a pair of old canvas sneakers. It seemed unlikely that she would put on sneakers before giving a performance. He called her name, and after a second’s hesitation she turned back to face him.
“What’s the matter, Willie?”
“Everything. My whole life, everything’s ruined.”
“Do you want to come in my room and talk about it?”
“No.”
“You don’t want to talk about it?”
“I don’t want to come in your room. I mean, it wouldn’t be proper.”
“Perhaps not,” Quinn said, smiling. “There’s a little courtyard where we can sit, if you prefer.”
The courtyard consisted of a few square yards of grass around a brightly lit bathtub-sized swimming pool. No one was in the pool, but the wet footprints of a child were visible on the concrete and one tiny blue swim fin floated on the surface of the water. Hiding the courtyard from the street and from the motel units was a hedge of pink and white oleanders, heavy with blossoms.
The furniture had all been put under cover for the night, so they sat on the grass which was still warm from the sun. Willie looked embarrassed, and sorry that she had come. She said lamely, “The grass is very nice. It’s very hard to keep it that way in this climate. You have to keep the hose running practically all the time and even then the soil gets too alkaline—”
“So that’s what’s on your mind, grass?”
“No.”
“What is it then?”
“George,” she said. “George is gone.”
“You’ve known that for some time.”
“No. I mean, he’s really gone. And nobody knows where. Nobody.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure of one thing, he didn’t take any trip to Hawaii.” Her voice broke and she pressed one hand against her throat as if she were trying to mend the break. “He lied to me. He could have told me anything about himself, anything in this world, and I would still love him. But he deliberately lied, he made a fool of me.”
“How do you figure that, Willie?”
“This afternoon after you left the office, I began to get suspicious—I don’t know why, it just sort of came over me that maybe I’d been a patsy. I phoned all the airlines in Los Angeles long distance. I told them a story about an emergency in the family and how I had to contact George Haywood and wasn’t sure whether he’d gone to Hawaii or not. Well, they checked their passenger lists for Tuesday and Wednesday and there was no George Haywood on any of them.”