I looked around for the knife that had dropped from his hand. It wasn’t there any longer. Perhaps the sheriff had picked it up. From what I had seen of it at a distance, it was a medium-sized kitchen knife, the kind that women use for paring or chopping. It could also have been used for stabbing Zinnie, though I still didn’t see how.
32
I FOUND Mrs. Gley in the dim, old mildew-smelling kitchen. She was barricaded behind an enamel-topped table under a hanging bulb, making a last stand against sobriety. I smelled vanilla extract when I approached her. She clutched a small brown bottle to her breast, like an only child which I was threatening to kidnap.
“Vanilla will make you sick.”
“It never has yet. Do you expect a woman to face these tragedies without a drink?”
“As a matter of fact, I could use a drink myself.”
“There isn’t enough for me!” She remembered her manners then: “I’m sorry, I ran out of liquor way back when. You look as if you could use a drink.”
“Forget it.” I noticed a bowl of apples on the worn woodstone sink behind her. “Mind if I peel myself an apple?”
“Please do,” she said very politely. “I’ll get you my paring knife.”
She got up and rummaged in a drawer beside the sink. “Dunno what happened to my paring knife,” she muttered, and turned around with a butcher knife in her hand. “Will this do?”
“I’ll just eat it in the skin.”
“They say you get more vitamins.”
She resumed her seat at the table. I sat across from her on a straight-backed chair, and bit into my apple. “Has Carl been in the kitchen tonight?”
“I guess he must have been. He always used to come through here and up the back stairs.” She pointed toward a half-open door in the corner of the room. Behind it, bare wooden risers mounted steeply.
“Has he come in this way before?”
“I hope to tell you he has. That boy has been preying on my little girl for more years than I care to count. He cast a spell on her with his looks and his talk. I’m glad he’s finally got what’s coming to him. Why, when she was a little slip of a thing in high school, he used to sneak in through my kitchen and up to her room.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve got eyes in my head, haven’t I? I was keeping boarders then, and I was ashamed they’d find out about the carryings-on in her room. I tried to reason with her time and again, but she was under his spell. What could I do with my girl going wrong and no man to back me up in it? When I locked her up, she ran away, and I had to get the sheriff to bring her back. Finally she ran away for good, went off to Berkeley and left me all alone. Her own mother.”
Her own mother set the brown bottle to her mouth and swallowed a slug of vanilla extract. She thrust her haggard face toward me across the table: “But she learned her lesson, let me tell you. When a girl gets into trouble, she finds out that she can’t do without her mother. I’d like to know where she would have been after she lost her baby, without me to look after her. I nursed her like a saint.”
“Was this since her marriage?”
“It was not. He got her into trouble, and he wasn’t man enough to stay around and help her out of it. He couldn’t stand up to his family and face his responsibility. My girl wasn’t good enough for him and his mucky-muck folks. So look what he turned out to be.”
I took another bite of my apple. It tasted like ashes. I got up and dropped the apple into the garbage container in the sink. Mrs. Gley depressed me. Her mind veered fuzzily, like a moth distracted by shifting lights, across the fibrous surface of the past, never quite making contact with its meaning.
Voices floated back from the front of the house, too far away for me to make out the words. I went into the corridor, which darkened as I shut the door behind me. I stayed in the shadow.
Mildred was talking to Ostervelt and two middle-aged men in business suits. They had the indescribable, unmistakable look of harness bulls who had made it into plain clothes but would always feel a little uncomfortable in them. One of them was saying: “I can’t figure out what this doctor had against him. Do you have any ideas on the subject, ma’am?”
“I’m afraid not.” I couldn’t see Mildred’s face, but she had changed to the clothes in which she’d met Rose Parish.
“Did Carl kill his sister-in-law tonight?” Ostervelt said.
“He couldn’t have. Carl came directly here from the beach. He was here with me all evening. I know I did wrong in hiding him. I’m willing to take the consequences.”
“It ain’t legal,” the second detective said, “but I hope my wife would do the same for me. Did he mention the shooting of his brother Jerry?”
“No. We’ve been over that. I didn’t even bring the subject up. He was dog-tired when he dragged himself in. He must have run all the way from Pelican Beach. I gave him something to eat and drink, and he went right off to sleep. Frankly, gentlemen, I’m tired, too. Can’t the rest of this wait till morning?”
The detectives and the sheriff looked at each other and came to a silent agreement. “Yeah, we’ll let it ride for now,” the first detective said. “Under the circumstances. Thanks for your co-operation, Mrs. Hallman. You have our sympathy.”
Ostervelt lingered behind after they left to offer Mildred his own brand of sympathy. It took the form of a heavy pass. One of his hands held her waist. The other stroked her body from breast to thigh. She stood and endured it.
Anger stung my eyes and made me clench my fists. I hadn’t been so mad since the day I took the strap away from my father. But something held me still and quiet. I’d been wearing my anger like blinders, letting it be exploited, and exploiting it for my own unacknowledged purposes. I acknowledged now that my anger against the sheriff was the expression of a deeper anger against myself. In plain terms, he was doing what I had wanted to be doing.
“Don’t be so standoffish,” he was saying. “You were nice to Dr. Grantland; why can’t you be nice to me?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do. You’re not as hard to get as you pretend to be. So why play dumb with Uncle Ostie? My yen for you goes back a long ways, kid. Ever since you were a filly in high school giving your old lady a hard time. Remember?”
Her body stiffened in his hands. “How could I forget?”
Her voice was thin and sharp, but his aging lust converted it into music. He took what she said for romantic encouragement.
“I haven’t forgotten, either, baby,” he said, huskily. “And things are different now, now that I’m not married any more. I can make you an offer on the up-and-up.”
“I’m still married.”
“Maybe, if he lives. Even if he does live, you can get it annulled. Carl’s going to be locked up for the rest of his life. I got him off easy the first time. This time he goes to the Hospital for the Criminally Insane.”
“No!”
“Yes. You been doing your best to cover for him, but you know as well as I do he knocked off his brother and sister-in-law. It’s time for you to cut your losses, kid, think of your own future.”
“I have no future.”
“I’m here to tell you you have. I can be a lot of help to you. One hand washes the other. There’s no legal proof he killed his father, without me there never will be. It’s a closed case. That means you can get your share of the inheritance. Your life is just beginning, baby, and I’m a part of it, built right into it.”
His hands busied themselves with her. She stood quiescent, keeping her face away from his. “You always wanted me, didn’t you?”