I whispered to Dana in the hallway. “Honey, just keep anybody from going into that bedroom. Make any excuse you can think of.”
“You look so strange, darling.”
“I feel strange.”
“Can you tell me?”
“When I’m sure. Then I can tell you.”
I went into Joanne’s bedroom and closed the door behind me. It was a long room. The draperies were drawn. It was early afternoon. Ulka reclined on a quilted yellow chaise with a fuzzy yellow blanket over her lap. Her slanted eyes were reddened. She was still in her stretch denim, and drifting on the airconditioned chill was the faint effluvium of saddle horse. She watched me with apparent unconcern as, without greeting, I pulled a hassock over close to the chaise and sat facing her. She had so much presence I had to remind myself she was, after all, just an eighteen-year-old girl, with the very last diminishing hint of a childish roundness in her cheeks.
Silence is a useful gambit, but I could not tell if it was having any effect at all upon her. “Well, Ullie,” I said.
“I will never let anyone else ever call me Ullie, all my life.”
“That’s very sentimental, Ullie. Very tender-hearted. I guess you are a very tender-hearted girl. You didn’t want your father upset, did you? Those pictures Ives took of your husband-to-be would have upset the professor. He would have forbidden the marriage. And you are a dutiful daughter. Ives was a very greedy fellow. He knew how badly Vance wanted you. He must have asked for a great deal of money. You know, it wasn’t smart of Ives to blackmail his previous client with the pictures he took, because Vance knew him. Ives must have decided Vance was incapable of violence.”
She frowned and shook her pretty head. “Ives? Pictures? Blackmail? Why do you come In here with this crazy talk?”
“Ives had to get it in one big chunk because as soon as you were married to Vance, there was no more leverage Ives could use. I guess Vance must have confessed the problem to you and showed you the pictures, perhaps to see if you would marry without Daddy’s permission, so he could save a bundle. It’s pretty sad and funny, Ullie. Your great respect for your father, and no respect for life.”
“You should not call me Ullie. I will not permit it.”
“Vance must have thought it was just a marvelous accident when Ives got killed. All he cared was that it got him off the hook, and when no confederate appeared to pick up where Ives had left off, he knew he was home free. He was going to have the girl, the gold ring and everything. His tragedy was in slowly finding out what a psychotic bitch you really are.”
“Who are you? You must be mad, entirely.”
“Let’s check it out together, Ullie. No one suspected Vance. Patty his ex-wife, was the only one in the world in a position to brood about it and begin to add two and two. And finally she got an answer and checked it out as closely as she could, and knew she had Vance right where she wanted him. She had every reason to want to get back at him. Believing Vance had killed Ives, and knowing that he could be a good big source of income to her for the rest of her life, she got in touch with him. I think we can figure out how that went wrong, Ullie. Vance could prove where he was on the night of December fifth. But where was his darling girl? Quite a husky girl. And someone who could get close to Ives and close to Patty at night, in lonely places, whereas Vance couldn’t have managed it. After you’d bashed Ives, Patty was a necessity. Clumsy murder is like housework, dear. Once you begin, you’re never really finished.”
“All this is so absurd, and so boring.”
“Patty would have persisted, and sooner or later Vance would have had to face the idea that you killed Ives. Maybe he couldn’t stomach that. Maybe he would have turned you in. He was finding out that his marriage wasn’t what he had counted on.”
“We couldn’t have been happier!”
“Ullie! Ullie! What about the Mexican boyfriends? Just little flirtations, I imagine. Just enough to keep him off balance, make him sweat.”
“How could you…” She stopped. I could guess she remembered how he had tried to shush her. Her breathing had gone slightly shallow and there were spots of color in flawless cheeks. I saw her recover herself with an effort, slowing and deepening her breathing.
“I don’t imagine Vance really wanted to play poker. You left unobserved, you got back unob served. Home free. But all it would take would be legwork, Ullie. One of those plodding methodical checks of every gas station along the way. You didn’t have the range. Some little joker is probably still dreaming about you, the most beautiful girl he ever saw, coming in out of the night in that Sting Ray.”
“So? I got very restless. I took a drive. I drive very fast. Can I help it if Vance got very suspicious of me, if he got very foolish ideas? You don’t know how it is… how it was. He wanted to be… so very young and lively and fun, to be like boys I know. But really he wanted things quieter. I could see strangers laughing at him. He should have had dignity? Certainly I wanted all that money and travel and clothes and fun. A professor has a shabby little life. All my life I knew the husband I would have, older and very rich and strong, to buy me everything and adore me, to sit and smile at me and admire me when I danced with all the young men, and trust me. When I’d found him I could not lose him. But every day was a contest to see… which one of us was younger. He did not understand how love should be a perfection. All he cared was how many times he could take me. He thought that was another way to be young. Why did he have to prove so much? I can tell about you. You would understand. You are older too, but not as old as he was. You are stronger, Travis McGee. There is the money now. I listened when you told Joanne about your funny little boat with the funny name.” She closed her eyes for a moment, opened them wide and looked at me. “You see, I have always… felt like a special person. As if my life would be… beautiful and Important. Things happen in strange ways. Vance was not the one. But suddenly you are here. It is strange. It is so strange the way we both have that little feeling it would be… what was planned for us all along.”
It was such a fabulous con job, I could feel the dirty dreams seeping into my mind. Help her cover up the mistakes she’d made. That was the unspoken offer. And you get the girl on a platter. Mmmm… trade the Busted Flush for a really good motor sailer, crew of three-captain, steward, deck hand-and see how many sheltered coves in the world’s oceans had really top-grade moonlight. And, of course, remember never to turn your back to her…
“Ullie, dear, we can’t get onto a new subject Until we finish the first one. I repeat your interesting statement. ‘When I found him I could not lose him.’ But he finally worked himself into a position where you had to lose him. I knew he was prying at you to find out where you’d gone, and I wondered why he thought you’d gone anywhere. Then Glenn told me about Vance thinking he might buy the car. Men who think of buying cars kick the tires and slam the doors and check the mileage. So he checked the mileage, and then he checked it again and found a great big inexplicable addition, taking it up to past two thousand. He hadn’t put it on, so you had, and Patty was dead in the same way Ives was dead, and he found himself in a pretty eerie marriage. I’ll make a little guess, Ullie. From the way he acted this morning, I don’t think he got much sleep. I think he kept digging at you until you opened up and told him the whole thing. Then after you told him, you realized he couldn’t exactly forgive and forget. He couldn’t handle it. It was too much. Maybe he felt so wretched he didn’t want to take any morning ride, but you knew that sooner or later you could maneuver it so that all the rest of us would be ahead of you two.”