“How did she happen to marry him, Mrs. Stone?”
“It’s the old old story. You probably know what happened. She was an innocent girl. She’d never even been away from home before. He corrupted her, and he had to take the consequences.” She was a little alarmed by what she had said. She dropped her eyes, and added: “It was partly my own fault, I admit it. I never should have let her go off to Nevada by herself, a young girl like her.”
“How old?”
“Dolly was just twenty when she left home. That was a year ago last May. She was working in the laundry and she wasn’t happy there, under her father’s thumb. She wanted to have more of a life of her own. I couldn’t blame her for that. A girl with her looks could go far.”
She paused, and her eyes went into long focus. Perhaps she was remembering that a girl with her own looks hadn’t. Perhaps she was remembering how far Dolly had gone, all the way out of life.
“Anyway,” she said, “I let her go up to Tahoe and get herself a job. It was just to be for the summer. She was supposed to save her money, so she could prepare herself for something permanent. I wanted her to go to beauty school. She was very good at grooming herself – it was the one real talent she had. She took after me in that. But then she ran into him, and that was the end of beauty school and everything else.”
“Did she make any other friends up at the lake?”
“Yeah, there was one little girl who helped her out, name of Fawn. She was a beauty operator, and Dolly thought very highly of her. She even wrote me about her. I was glad she had a girl friend like that. I thought it would give her some ambition. Beauty operators command good money, and you can get a job practically anywhere. I always regretted I didn’t take it up myself. Jack makes a fair salary at the laundry, but it’s been hard these last years, with inflation and all. Now we have the baby to contend with.”
She raised her eyes to the ceiling.
“I’d like to see the baby.”
“He’s upstairs sleeping. What do you want to see him for?”
“I like babies.”
“You don’t look the type. I’m not the type myself, not any more. You get out of the habit of attending to their needs. Still,” she added in a softer voice, “the little man’s a comfort to me. He’s all I have left of Dolores. You can come and take a look – long as you don’t wake him.”
I followed her up the rubber-treaded staircase. The baby’s room was dim and hot. She turned on a shaded wall light. He was lying uncovered in the battered crib which I had seen in Mungan’s glaring photographs. As Mungan had predicted, he didn’t resemble anyone in particular. Small and vulnerable and profoundly sleeping, he was simply a baby. His breath was sweet.
His grandmother pulled a sheet up over the round Buddha eye of his umbilicus. I stood above him, trying to guess what he would look like when he grew up. It was hard to imagine him as a man, with a man’s passions.
“This was Dolly’s own crib,” Mrs. Stone was saying. “We sent it up with them at Christmas. Now we have it back here.” I heard her breath being drawn in. “Thank God his crazy father spared him, anyway.”
“What’s his name?”
“Dolly called him Jack, after her father. Dolly and her father were always close. What do you think of him?”
“He’s a fine healthy baby.”
“Oh, I do for him the best I can. It isn’t easy to go back to it, though, after twenty years. My only hope is that I can bring him up properly. I guess I didn’t do such a good job of bringing Dolly up.”
I murmured something encouraging as we started downstairs. Like other women I had known, she had the strength to accept the worst that could happen and go on from there. Moving like a dreamer into the living room, she went to the mantel and took down a framed photograph.
“Did you ever see a picture of my daughter?”
“Not a good one.”
The picture she showed me was an improvement on Mungan’s, but it wasn’t a good one, either. It looked like what it was, a small-town high-school graduation picture, crudely retouched in color. Dolly smiled and smiled like a painted angel.
“She’s – she was pretty, wasn’t she?”
“Very,” I said.
“You wouldn’t think she’d have to settle for a Bruce Campion. As a matter of fact, she didn’t have to. There were any number of boys around town interested. There used to be a regular caravan out here. Only Dolly wasn’t interested in the boys. She wanted to get out of Citrus for life. Besides, she always went for the older ones. I think sometimes,” she said quite innocently, “that came from being so fond of her father and all. She never felt at home with boys her own age. The truth is, in a town this size, the decent older ones are already married off.”
“Was Dolly friends with some of the other kind?”
“She most certainly was not. Dolly was always a good girl, and leery of bad company. Until that Campion got ahold of her.”
“What about her friends at Tahoe? Were there other men besides Campion in her life?”
“I don’t know what you mean by in her life.” Almost roughly, she took the picture of Dolly out of my hands and replaced it on the mantel. With her back still turned, she said across the width of the room: “What are you getting at, mister?”
“I’m trying to find out how Dolly lived before she married Campion. I understand she lost her job and got some help from friends, including Fawn King. You said she wrote you about Fawn. Do you have the letter?”
“No. I didn’t keep it.”
“Did she mention any other friends besides Fawn?”
She came back toward me shaking her head. Her heels made dents in the carpet. “I think I know what you’re getting at. It’s just another one of his dirty lies.”
“Whose lies?”
“Bruce Campion’s lies. He’s full of them. When they were here Christmas, he tried to let on to Jack that he wasn’t the father, that he married her out of the goodness of his heart.”
“Did he say who the father was?”
“Of course he didn’t, because there wasn’t anybody else. I asked Dolly myself, and she said he was the father. Then he turned around and admitted it then and there.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he wouldn’t argue, said he made his bargain and he would stick to it. He had his gall, talking about her like she was a piece of merchandise. I told him so, and that was when he marched her out of the house. He didn’t want her talking any more. He had too much to hide.”
“What are you referring to?”
“His lies, and all his other shenanigans. He was a drinker, and heaven knows what else. Dolly didn’t say much – she never complained – but I could read between the lines. He went through money like it was water–”
I interrupted her. “Did Dolly ever mention a man named Quincy Ralph Simpson?”
“Simpson? No, she never did. What was that name again?”
“Quincy Ralph Simpson.”
“Isn’t that the man they found across the street – the one that was buried in Jim Rowland’s yard?”
“Yes. He was a friend of your daughter’s.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“He was, though. Simpson was the one who introduced her to Campion. After they got married, Simpson gave them a good deal of help, including financial help.”
“That doesn’t prove anything.”
“I’m not trying to make it prove anything. But I’m surprised that Dolly never mentioned Simpson to you.”
“We didn’t keep in close touch. She wasn’t much of a letter writer.”
“When did you see Dolly and Campion last?”
“Christmas. I told you about that.”
“You didn’t see Campion in May?”
“I did not. Jack drove me up there the day they found her, but I shunned him like a rattlesnake.”