Chapter Fifteen
The desk clerk at the Coral Gardens Hotel told me Owen Barr had left the hotel an hour ago. I walked through the sedate lobby to the basement steps and went downstairs, opened the door of Owen’s little retreat. I couldn’t find a light switch anywhere. Grayish light from the windows was pinned to the tarpaulin on one wall and a long bar of it slanted across the dirty floor and crept up one of the old sofas, affectionately grasped a girl’s small bare foot.
I shut my eyes tightly and waited for a few seconds. When I opened my eyes again I could see more clearly. Gerry was lying on the sofa on her back, sound asleep. She was mother-naked, but not like mother ever was. Her nudity irritated me somehow. I had nearly got my head knocked off while she slept comfortably down here.
I walked over to the sofa and smacked her with the flat of my hand on her bare thigh. She jerked awake and moved her legs. She put one hand on the assaulted leg.
“Hey! Wha — ” She struggled to focus her sleepy eyes on me. “Who are you?”
“Mallory.”
“Oh.” She winced. “What did you do that for?”
“Get up and get dressed,” I said. “People are looking for you.”
She slid her knees beneath her, kneeled on the sofa, facing me, raised her head. “That really stings,” she complained. She yawned huskily, touching her hair with her fingers, then raised her arms full-length. Her breasts swelled high.
I noticed her clothing on the table with Owen’s tubes of color. I turned around and picked up the red pants, underclothes, brief blouse. I tossed the clothing at her. “Put these on.”
“What for?”
“You’re going back to Stan.”
She slid her legs over the edge of the sofa, sat up. “I don’t think I want to go back,” she said stubbornly.
“You’re going back,” I promised her, “if I have to carry you out of here dressed the way you aren’t.”
She laughed incredulously. “You wouldn’t—”
I stepped toward her quickly, caught one of her wrists, brought her stiffly to her feet. She hesitated, then leaned against me, teasing me with a motion of her hips. Her eyelids drooped. “We don’t have to go back right now. We could—”
I wasn’t enchanted. She was a brat. But even feeling that way I had to get the weight of the lusty body away from me. I shoved her roughly, letting go the wrist.
“What’s the matter?” she said. “Don’t you like women?”
“You’re not a woman. You’re a shallow-brained little girl rattling around in a woman’s body. Get dressed, damn you.”
The scornful edge of my voice stung worse than the slap I had given her. She shifted her weight uncertainly from one bare foot to the other, then sniffed, then sat down on the sofa, still looking at me. She picked up her brassiere, fitted it to her breasts, fastened it. She stood up, holding her panties. Without turning away she stepped into them, pulled them up slowly over her legs, her full thighs. She spread her legs slightly, patted the tight sheer panties into place. She never took her eyes off me. I walked away from her in irritation and waited until she was finished dressing.
When she had everything in place, we went through the dimly lighted basement and out the back way. I held firmly to her wrist until she was safe in the front seat of the Buick.
“Was Stan worried about me?” she said in a tiny voice.
“Oh, boy,” I said. It was all the talking we did until we reached Stan’s house. Once there she got out of the car reluctantly, then straightened her shoulders resolutely and walked firmly up to the front door and inside. I followed her.
Maxine was pouring a drink and when he saw Gerry the neck of the bottle chattered against the glass, whisky spilling.
“Gerry!”
“Hello, Stan,” she said calmly.
A couple of the boys watching TV in one corner looked up briefly, then returned their attentions to the set. I hadn’t seen them before.
Maxine put both hands around the glass. He looked past Gerry at me. “Well, where you been?” he said, still shaken. He wasn’t quite able to work himself into a rage. “Well, where’s she been?” he demanded of me. I didn’t say anything. I just looked at him.
He rubbed his forehead. His eyes were on Gerry. “I looked for you,” he said. “You weren’t anywhere around.” His fists clenched. He glanced at me again. “We’ll talk about it later,” he said grimly to Gerry.
“Okay,” Gerry said. She swallowed once, then turned precisely and walked toward the kitchen. “I’m going to get something to eat,” she said.
Stan looked at her, his lips tight. “All right. There’s ham sandwiches in the icebox. I’ll be along in a second.”
When she had pushed through the door Maxine looked at me. He put the overflowing glass down and walked toward me. He took a long breath, held it, released it little by little.
“Well, where did you find her?”
“She can tell you if she wants to. I won’t.”
He glanced toward his boys. “You — ” the word whistled through the crack between his lips. “You knew where she was all the time.”
“Maybe.”
“What happened to Kostrakis and O’Toole?”
“They had an accident.”
There was disgust on his face. “Maybe one of these days I’ll get somebody I can depend on.” He whipped another look at the Home Guard. They dropped their eyes guiltily to the television screen.
Stan lowered his voice. “I want to know where Gerry was. Did she go to see somebody? I got to know if she’s been playing around.”
The dining-room door was pushed open. “I went to the library,” Gerry said. She had a sandwich and a glass of milk.
“All afternoon?”
Gerry nodded.
“What were you doing?” Maxine said with a crazy smile.
“Reading a book.”
Maxine turned to me. He pointed to Gerry, speechless.
“You heard what she said,” I told him.
Stan chuckled, then went into a spasm of violent laughter that left him clutching his stomach, his face the color of greasy cream. He had to sit down. Gerry looked concerned.
“Stan? Are you—”
“Nah, I’m all right,” he said, the words riding on an indrawn breath. “What are you hanging around for?” he snapped at me.
“I did you a favor. Now you do me one.”
His lower lip crawled away from his teeth. “Like what?”
“Diane was with you today, wasn’t she?”
“For a little while this afternoon.”
“You know her pretty well.”
“Some. She used to work for me.”
“Which doesn’t tell me anything.”
He showed me his palms. “So what do you want? We’re kind of good friends. She comes in once in a while.”
“You know anything about her?”
“Like?”
“Where she came from.”
“Nah, I don’t — I never asked. Why would I?”
“She ever do anything crazy around you?”
“Crazy?” He had to think about it. “Nah, nothing crazy. She was — different. But she never did anything crazy.”
“One thing more. You know Winkie Gilmer?”
He was bored. He shook his head. “I never heard the name.” I was watching the boys at the TV set, too. Nobody twitched.
Gerry sat down beside Stan on the sofa, nuzzled him. He stiffened, then let himself be petted. He took one of her hands, held it with beautiful tenderness. I tried to keep from sneering as I walked out of the house and shut the door behind me with a light click.
The Neptune Court occupied two blocks of beach land on a narrow peninsula known as Fontaine Beach. It was a mushrooming resort center. Ornate motels and hotels done in bold long lines sprawled along the strip of highway in a growing chain. Every day bulldozers scraped at the raw land while sun-reddened men with fat stacks of blueprints watched and planned. The street crumbled slowly under the impact of the ready-mix trucks.