“She came back last night, eh?”
“Yes. It was very late. Otherwise I’d have let you know before. But anyway, well, everything’s just fine now, and I certainly must apologize for all the trouble Murphy’s caused you.”
“No trouble at all,” Greer said with ironic politeness. “I’m just glad to hear she’s back. I’d like to talk to her sometime.”
“Where?”
“Does it matter where?”
“I only meant it seems silly for you to come all the way out here and go to all this trouble for an idiotic girl. Doesn’t it?”
“Perhaps it does.”
“Well, I’ll let you go now. I know what a busy man you are. I’ll...I’ll give Murphy a good scolding for you. How would that be?”
“Oh, that would be fine.”
“Goodbye now.”
“Goodbye, Mrs. Goodfield.” Greer replaced the phone and turned to Frank. “You heard?”
Frank nodded. “Yes.”
“Murphy’s back, everything’s fine, and this is the best of all possible worlds. Quite a new twist. What do you make of it?”
“I thought Mrs. Goodfield sounded very nervous. Maybe you ought to go out and see her.”
“Sure. Sure, maybe I ought to go and see all the nervous women in town. Maybe I ought to hold their—”
“It was merely a suggestion.”
“Thanks.”
“I have another,” Frank said. “I’ll go out and see Mrs. Goodfield.”
“Why?”
“Oh, let’s just say that nervous women are my specialty.”
“Let’s just say that you’re the nosiest guy in town.”
“All right, put it that way. I have your permission then?”
“Even in this town,” Greer said, “you don’t need a permit to go calling on a lady.”
17
Night had left the garden wet, and now, in the early morning sun, every leaf and flower glistened and looked alive. But the house itself seemed dead; all the windows were closed and the blinds drawn tight. At the back door five full bottles of milk stood like pins waiting for a bowler. Beside the bottles a black rubber doormat spelled out Welcome in large red letters.
There was no response of any kind to Frank’s knocking. He wiped the dirt off his shoes on the welcome mat and went around the side of the house to the white stucco garage. Looking through the window he could see that there was space for three cars. Only one space was occupied, by a maroon-colored Buick convertible with gaudy maroon and yellow-striped seat covers. Not the kind of car Willett would drive, though he might like to.
“You looking for someone?”
Frank turned around, slowly, to conceal his surprise. He had heard no one, expected no one. The man seemed to have grown out of the shrubbery as silently as a leaf.
“I was looking for Mrs. Goodfield.”
“She’s not here,” Ortega said.
“I remember you from the inquest. You’re Ortega.”
“Yes.”
“I’m Frank Clyde.”
“I know. I saw you.” Ortega sounded too weary to be interested. His eyes were bloodshot and swollen. A streak of mud zigzagged across one cheek and there was mud, too, on his levis and his heavy work boots.
“She’s not here,” he repeated. “When I came to work I saw the two of them drive off in the Lincoln, her and her husband.”
“When?”
“Ten, maybe fifteen, minutes ago. They were in a hurry, didn’t notice me.” He cupped one hand over his eyes as a shield from the sun. “There’s something bad going on, very bad. I don’t know what.”
“I don’t know either.”
“Last night there was a big quarrel, a hell of a quarrel. If it’d happened down on Mason Street where I live, the cops would of come busting in in five minutes. But out here, no. Rich people like the Goodfields can get away with murder. Maybe they did, too.”
“What time were you around here last night?”
“After midnight.”
“Why?”
“I thought Ada might’ve come home.”
“And she didn’t?”
“No, she didn’t. I waited around the lathhouse for three, four hours. Ada didn’t come home.”
“She might be there now.”
“She isn’t. That’s her room over next to the kitchen. I tapped on her window — we got a special signal. She didn’t answer it.”
Frank felt a queer uneasiness pricking at his nerves. You needn’t bother looking for Murphy any more, Ethel had said.
Ortega stuck a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and lit it. The cigarette teetered nervously back and forth as he talked. “We got a special signal, she always answers. See that car in there, the Buick?”
“I saw it.”
“This Buick drives up in the middle of the night, and a guy gets out carrying a suitcase and goes into the house. That’s when the argument started.”
“What was the argument about?”
“Money.” Ortega smiled, very slightly. “What do rich people argue about? Money, same as poor people. This man in the Buick wanted money, and him and her, they didn’t want to give it to him. The windows were open. I could hear every word.”
“Who was the man?”
“They called him Jack. Mrs. Goodfield kept saying, ‘My God, we got trouble enough.’ And Jack kept telling her she didn’t know what trouble was but she was going to find out real quick. I think the two men must have started to take a poke at each other because Mrs. Goodfield screamed.”
“Which Mrs. Goodfield?”
“The young one. The old one, she never comes out of her room that I know of.”
Ethel screaming, Willett and Jack taking a poke at each other — the picture didn’t make sense to Frank. Ethel and Jack were, according to Greer, terrified of the old lady, and Willett was a model of the devoted son. That they should engage in a brawl while she was upstairs sleeping was incredible.
Ortega went on talking and the ash from his cigarette dribbled down on his shirt. He brushed it away with the back of his hand. “Someone must’ve caught on then that the windows were open and everybody wasn’t deaf. Mr. Goodfield closed them and pulled the blinds just the way they are now.”
“Was Jack in the Lincoln with them when they left this morning?”
“Not unless he was hiding in the back seat. All I could see was him and her. She was driving. She looked funny. Had her head forward and her eyes glued to the road like she was driving a racing car.” He paused, scratching the back of his neck. “They don’t use the car much. Most of the time they stay home, never go out at all that I know of. Ada said that some time they went out she’d show me the house, but they never did except to the inquest and the funeral. When they want something they have it delivered or they send Ada. I guess they’re scared to leave the old lady for fear she’ll have a bad spell.”
“I guess.”
“Well, I better get to work now; I get paid by the hour.” But he still hesitated, pressing the grass down with the toe of his boot and watching it spring up again as if it was made of elastic. “I got to move a bougainvillea. Moving shocks them, shocks them right to death sometimes. You have to give them vitamin B. But I guess you already knew that.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“It’s not important anyway. Ada says I got to better myself, read a lot and learn important things. The trouble is finding out what’s important so you can go ahead and learn it.”
“That’s everybody’s trouble.”
“Not Ada’s. She’s smart.”
Frank wondered how smart. Watching Ortega shuffle wearily across the lawn, he had an idea that as far as the boy’s welfare was concerned it would be better if Murphy’s absence turned out to be permanent.
He went around the side of the house again toward the road where he’d left his car. The back door was still closed and the slats of the Venetian blind squeezed tight, but there were only four bottles of milk lined up on the porch. Where the fifth had been, a small circle of water sparkled in the sun.