“They could have made a mistake,” Quinn said. “Or George might be traveling under another name. It’s possible.”
She wanted to believe it, but couldn’t. “No. He’s run away, I’m sure of it. From me and from his mother and the two of us fighting over him. Oh, not fighting physically or even outwardly, but fighting all the same. I guess he couldn’t stand it any more, he couldn’t make a decision either in her favor or mine so he had to escape from both of us.”
“That would be a coward’s decision, and from everything I’ve heard about George, he’s no coward.”
“Maybe I’ve made him into one without realizing what I was doing. Well at least I have one satisfaction—he didn’t tell her the truth either. I wish now I had gone to her house instead of telephoning her. I’d like to have seen the expression on the old biddy’s face when she found out her darling Georgie hadn’t taken the trip to Hawaii after all.”
“You called her?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to,” she said harshly. “I wanted her to suffer the way I was suffering—to wonder, as I’m wondering, whether George will ever come back.”
“Aren’t you being a little dramatic? What makes you think he won’t come back?”
She shook her head helplessly.
“Do you know more than you’re telling me, Willie?”
“Only that he’s had something on his mind lately that he wouldn’t talk about.”
“By ‘lately’ do you mean since I arrived in Chicote?”
“Even before that, though it’s been worse since you started prying around and asking questions.”
“Perhaps he was afraid of my questions,” Quinn said. “And the reason he left town is to get away from me, not you and his mother.”
She was silent for a minute. Then, “Why should he be afraid of you? George has nothing to hide except—well, except that business the first night when I picked you up in the café.”
“That was George’s idea?”
“Yes.”
“What was the reason behind it?”
“He said” — her emphasis on the word seemed involuntary — “He said you might be a cheap crook planning an extortion racket. He wanted me to keep you occupied while he searched your room.”
“How did he know where my room was, or even that I existed?”
“I told him. I overheard you talking to Ronda in the office that first afternoon. I heard you mention Alberta Haywood and I thought I’d better call George right away. I did, and he asked me to follow you and find out who you were and where you were staying.”
“Then it wasn’t the name O’Gorman that caught your attention, it was Alberta’s?”
“Her actual name wasn’t mentioned, but Ronda referred to a local embezzlement and a nice little lady and I knew it had to be Alberta.”
“Do you run to the phone and call George every time someone mentions Alberta?”
“No. But I was suspicious of you. You had a look about you, a what’s-in-it-for-me look that I didn’t trust. Also, I guess I used the occasion to seem important in George’s eyes. I don’t,” she added somberly, “very often get the chance. I’m just an ordinary woman. It’s hard to compete with all that wheat germ and tiger’s milk and the other stuff Mrs. Haywood goes in for to attract attention and make other women seem dull by comparison.”
“You’re developing a real complex about the old lady, Willie.”
“I can’t help it. She bugs me. Sometimes I almost think that the reason I fell in love with George was because she was so dead set against it. Maybe that’s a terrible thing to say, but she’s a monster, Joe, I mean it. More and more every year I can understand why Alberta committed those crimes. She was defying her mother. Alberta knew she’d be caught someday. Perhaps she deliberately arranged to be caught to punish and disgrace the old lady. Mrs. Haywood’s not stupid—this is as close to a compliment as she’ll ever get from me—and I think she understands Alberta’s underlying motive, and that’s why she cast her off completely and insisted George do the same.”
But Quinn couldn’t bring himself to believe it. “There were a hundred other ways Alberta could have punished her mother without going to jail herself and without dragging George into it.”
Willie was plucking blades of grass one by one, like a young girl playing he-loves-me, he-loves-me-not, with daisy petals. “Where do you think he’s gone, Joe?”
“I don’t know. It would help if I could find out why he left.”
“To get away from me and his mother.”
“He could have done that some time ago.”
It was the timing that interested Quinn. Martha O’Gorman had shown George the letter from her husband’s murderer, and, although George professed to consider the letter a hoax, it had excited him, according to Martha. Immediately afterward he had arranged to have it known all over town that he was taking a trip to Hawaii for his health. He had even made a point of having the news published in the local paper.
Quinn said, “Wasn’t it unusual on George’s part to make his plans public?”
“A little. It surprised me.”
“Why do you think he did it?”
“I have no idea.”
“I have. But you’re not going to like it, Willie.”
“I don’t like things the way they are now, either. Could they be worse?”
“A lot worse,” Quinn said. “All the noise George made about the trip might mean that he was trying to establish an alibi in advance for something that has happened, or is going to happen, right here in Chicote.”
She kept plucking away at the grass with a grim determination intended to conceal her fear. “Nothing’s happened so far.”
“That’s right. But I want you to be careful, Willie.”
“Me? Why me?”
“You were George’s confidante. He might have told you things he now regrets telling you.”
“He told me nothing,” she said roughly. “George never had a confidante in his life. He’s a loner, like Alberta. The way those two can clam up, it’s not—not human.”
“Maybe clams have a way of communicating with each other. Or do you still refuse to believe he went to visit Alberta every month?”
“I believe it now.”
“Think back, Willie. Was there ever a time when you were with George that he was off guard?—say he was in a state of extreme anxiety, or he’d had too much to drink, or he was heavily sedated.”
“George didn’t discuss his worries with me, and he very seldom drinks. Once in a while he has to take a lot of stuff for his asthma.”
“Did you ever see him on those occasions?”
“Sometimes. But he never seemed to act any different. Oh, maybe a little dopey, you know, not quite with it.” She hesitated, her hands quiet now, as if she was channeling all her energies into the task of remembering. “Then there was the time he had his appendix out, about three years ago. I went up to the hospital to be with him because Mrs. Haywood refused. She was at home throwing fits about how George’s appendix would have been perfectly all right if he’d eaten his wheat germ and molasses. I was in the room when he was coming out of the anesthetic.
“He was a scream. Afterwards he wouldn’t believe he’d said some of the things he did. The nurses were practically hysterical because he kept telling them to put on their clothes, that it was no proper way to run a hospital, with naked nurses.”
“Was he aware of your presence?”
“Sort of.”
“What do you mean, sort of?”