One day Pelletier joked that the Dies Committee in Congress would shut down Flora’s if they knew that the Federal Theater Project was still
active there. “We’ll call ourselves a committee, too, just like Dies does, one that keeps American values alive. But we’re not here to investigate people’s toilets and peer in their bedrooms; we’ll have a committee for working people who believe in the real values of America.” Someone came up with the cumbersome title, Committee for Social Thought and justice, which the members themselves shortened to “ComThought.”
ComThought never had an active organization or board, but they did raise money to help fund some of the experimental arts programs Congress had cut out of the New Deal. And since many of the people at Flora’s were Communists, and were arrested, ComThought began providing legal defense money for them in the late forties and early fifties. Pelletier himself served six months in prison, both for giving to the fund himself and for refusing to name any other donors.
I thought again of Geraldine and the pet charity of Calvin’s she’d given money to. Her mother definitely would have hated any organization that she thought was a Communist front.
I looked at the clock. When I’d talked to Lotty yesterday, she had invited me to dinner with her tonight. It was five-thirty now-if the traffic gods were kind, I could make it out to Anodyne Park and back in two hours. I called to say I might be a bit late; she adjured me not to make it too late, since she had an early date in the OR, but if I could get to her by eight she’d still like to see me.
CHAPTER 41
You’re a determined young woman, aren’t you, Ms. Warshawski?” Geraldine Graham was sitting in the chair under her mother’s portrait, the remains of her supper on a tray on the piecrust table.
“It gets me places brains and brawn won’t take me,” I agreed.
When I’d reached Anodyne Park at six-thirty, Lisa had told the guard not to admit me. I didn’t waste time on argument, but drove back around to Coverdale Lane. It was dark now, but I quickly found the entrance to the culvert under the road. I shone my flashlight around-it didn’t look to me as though Bobby had organized an exploration of the area yet.
I was still in jeans and running shoes; hunched over, my back aching from the need to stoop, I stomped through Benji’s and my footprints, trying not to obliterate the wheel tracks from the golf cart. When I got to the juniper bush on the Anodyne Park side, I stretched myself thankfully. I tried to clean the muck from my shoes, but when I got inside Geraldine’s building, I took them off: no point adding mud to my other iniquities in Lisa’s eyes.
Getting inside Geraldine’s building didn’t require any special skill, just the time-honored method of pressing apartment bells until someone buzzed me in. An old person in Chicago would have been more cautious,
but they were a trusting bunch in Anodyne Park, at least trusting in their guard at the gate.
At Geraldine Graham’s own front door, Lisa answered my insistent ring. She was so startled she didn’t react at all for a second. By the time she decided to slam the door in my face, I had given her a genial “good evening,” dropped my shoes outside the door, and moved past her into the hallway. I could hear Ms. Graham calling from the living room, demanding to know who was at the door.
I went in to greet her, and had the satisfaction of hearing her admonish Lisa for trying to keep me out: I was there at Geraldine’s request, to tell her what had happened at Larchmont on Friday night. When I’d run through enough of the highlights-including my interrogation by the FBI-to satisfy her, I finally turned to my own agenda.
“I know we had an appointment for tomorrow afternoon,” I said, “but I had Edwards Bayard with me this afternoon and he told me an odd tale.” “Edwards? I suppose he came out here because of the girl.”
“Among other things. Do you know, I actually found him in Olin Taverner’s apartment Thursday night? He had broken in, trying to find some secret papers that Taverner had promised him.”
“How extraordinary. And did he find the papers?” She did a good job, keeping a tone of light interest in her flutey voice, but her hands had clenched at her sides.
“No.” I waited for her hands to relax before adding, “but he did tell me about a letter he found from your mother to Calvin Bayard.”
“And I suppose you drove out here to tell me about it?” Her hands tightened again, but she still managed to keep her voice steady.
“Your mother wrote Calvin about depredations he was committing against her household, and a demand for restitution-or she would take action.”
The light bouncing from her heavy glasses made it impossible for me to see Geraldine’s eyes. “Mother thought she was a law unto herself. She defined theft according to her own canons.”
“And?” I prompted, when she fell silent again.
“I wrote a check for Calvin to one of his pet charities. It was a group Mother disapproved of, because it provided assistance to indigent Negroes
who needed legal assistance.” She gave one of her involuntary glances at the full-length portrait behind her. “I was fortyfive years old, but she still thought it within her rights to examine my bank statement when it arrived each month. I didn’t realize she was doing it until she confronted me over this check; for once I held my ground with her. I should have realized she would next turn to Calvin.”
“She had such strong anti-black prejudices?” I was bewildered. Geraldine Graham gave a tight little smile. “She had such strong feelings against her will being thwarted that I imagine she lost sight of the original issue.
“She threatened Mr. Bayard with reprisals. What would those have been?” “Mother owned shares in Bayard Publishing. She was always threatening to sell them to Olin, who was her nephew, or to will them to him, whenever Calvin published something she thought was risqu &. It was a hollow threat-she disapproved of Olin’s sexual proclivities far more than she did of Calvin’s daring authors. How odd it seems that Calvin’s authors were once considered daring, now that every sexual act is described in such detail that they all become merely boring. Not to mention how they appear in films. Men like Armand Pelletier, who were glamorized for their bold language, have become passe.”
“Why was Lisa so determined I shouldn’t talk to you about this?” I refused to be diverted. “She accused me of working for the newspapers, trying to dig up old dirt.”
“That’s right, madam.” Lisa popped into the room from her self-appointed listening post. “I remember well what Mrs. Drummond went through when Mr. MacKenzie passed, the work to keep-“
“That will do, Lisa. Miss Victoria is trying to find out who killed the Negro writer in our pond. She has no prurient interest in my affairs and we have nothing to hide from her.”
The last phrase was uttered like a warning, like a way of saying, our hand is so much quicker than her eye, that you can speak of everything, except the elephant in the drawing room which she can’t see. Lisa muttered something that might have been an apology. She retreated to the edge of the carpet, but she didn’t leave the room.
“No one seemed to think I might mourn MacKenzie when he died, but
his death marked the end of many things for me,” Geraldine added for me. “To my mother, his death was one more inconvenience he had caused her: odd, when you consider that my marriage to him was her idea. Hers and MacKenzie’s father’s. Mr. Blair Graham was one of my father’s business associates, and everyone thought that marriage would settle both MacKenzie and me down, turning him from the temptations of New York City and me from those of Chicago when we started our own nursery. Children are supposed to be a woman’s greatest joy, after all. How strange that Mother would tell me that so often when I brought her no joy at all. Except perhaps the joy of exercising her will over mine.”