“Tampa?” I said it so loudly I startled her.
“Well, of course, it being where he lives.”
“How are you sure of that?”
“Because I’m a real good cook. Mr. Mooney, God rest him, said I was the best he ever knew of. And that man loved to eat. I don’t measure things. I just put things together the way they seem right. I did restaurant work once, but I hated it. There you have to measure everything because you have to make so much. I’m not lying when I say there’ve been visitors down here offered me more money than I’d care to mention to go back north with them. Mr. Stebber is one of those who lives for eating. You can tell it. Mostly it’s fat happy men like him. They shut their eyes when they take the first taste, and they make a little moan and smile all over themselves. He came out there to the kitchen at that beach house and said it was just between the two of us, and when the Wilkinsons didn’t need me any more, I should come to Tampa to cook for him. He said I’d have no heavy housework, and my own room and bath with color television. He said he was away a lot and when he was away it would be like a vacation for me. He said that I’d never have to cook for more than seven or eight at the most, and that wouldn’t be often. He said he had a great big apartment in one of those cooperative places, looking out over Tampa Bay, with a colored woman that came in by the day to do the heavy housework.
“Well, I told him that I just couldn’t bring myself to move that far away from Mr. Mooney’s grave. The three babies lived a little while, every one, long enough to have their names given to them, Mary Alice and Mary Catherine and Michael Francis, marked on the stones. There isn’t a Sunday no matter how I might feel or how the weather is, I don’t go out and neaten up the plot and set there and feel close to the only family I ever had.
“He said again that it was just between us, and if I changed my mind later on, then I could call him up, but the number wasn’t in the book, and he gave it to me and told me not to lose it. But on that very next Sunday out there it seemed to me that Mr. Mooney somehow knew I was carrying that number in my pocketbook, so I took it out then and there and tore it up and let the wind blow it away. Are you sure it wasn’t just maybe the missus and that Boo fellow cheated the mister?”
“They were all in on it, Mrs. Mooney.”
“I do declare. You never can tell, can you? And they cheated that Mr. Watts too?”
“I think that’s a very accurate statement.”
“I can’t think of anything else that would help.”
“Do you know a redheaded girl named Dilly Starr?”
“I can’t say as I do. I guess a person would remember a name like that.”
“Or a Miss Brown, possibly Mr. Stebber’s secretary?”
“Her neither,” she said. “Is Mr. Wilkinson all right?”
“He’s fine.”
“Kindly give him my regards when you see him. He’s a nice person. I suppose she ran off. Well, that’s good riddance. I guess he couldn’t help himself with her. When she was mad at him, she’d treat him like she treated me all the time, like a piece of furniture, wouldn’t let him anywheres near her, and when he did exactly like she wanted, then she was… after him all the time. A woman shouldn’t use that to break a man’s spirit. That part of it is a wife’s duty.” She shook her head and clucked. “That little woman had him so he didn’t know what end was up or what time of day it was. It makes a man a living fool.”
When I thanked her for giving me the time, she said, “I’m glad you came by Mr. McGee. It took my mind off the way I feel, and maybe I can drop off to sleep now. I hope the mister gets his money back.”
At ten thirty I stopped at a gas station and picked up a road map to refresh my memory about distances in that sparsely settled area. I was wondering about taking the thirty or forty minute drive to Marco Island and seeing if I could locate Waxwell, but I didn’t have any sound ideas about the approach. The radio news, announcing thunderstorms moving in from the Gulf, estimated to hit the area about midnight, made up my mind for me. I went to the marina, parked and locked the green Chev, and took a cautious fifty minutes driving the Ratfink home through unfamiliar waters.
The lovers had the lights out and the Flush buttoned up. I unlocked the after door to the lounge and went in and put some lights on. In a few minutes Chook came aft, into the lounge, black hair a-tangle, pulling and settling a flowered shift down on her hearty hips, squinting through the light at me.
“The thunder woke me up,” she said. “Then I heard you.”
“And didn’t know it was me, and came blundering out. Without the pistol.”
She sprawled into a chair, yawned, combed her hair back with her fingers. “So those things spook me, Trav. And it isn’t going to get that rough anyway.”
“I’m so glad to hear the reassurances of a qualified expert.”
“Are you serious?”
“If somebody put neat little holes in our three heads, took the Flush out into that pass, headed her west, set the pilot, opened the sea cocks, dived overboard and swam back, then they could stop being nervous about a quarter of a million dollars. Some people just as alive as you, dear girl, implausible though that may seem, were probably killed today somewhere in the world for the price of a bowl of rice. If I come aboard at night again, and there’s no gun in your pretty paw, I’m going to welt you pretty good, enough to keep you on your feet for a few days.”
“Man enough?”
“Try me.
She made a face. “Okay. I’m sorry.” She jumped at the next white flash of lightning, and the rain came with the thunder, roaring against the deck overhead, hissing into the bay waters around us.
“Have a happy day?” I asked.
“Nice, Trav. Nice.”
“How is he?”
She gave me a wicked grin. “I think if you hung him by his heels in a barrel of ice water, he might start to wake up a little.”
“Don’t overdo a good thing, girl.”
“And does that happen to be any of your damned business?”
“Don’t flare up at me. It’s a reasonable suggestion. You’ve got ten times his vitality. If I have to use him, I don’t want some damned zombie.”
“You won’t have. You’ll have a man. Something you wouldn’t have had before. Who set you up to know everything about everything, you silly bastard? It’s up to him every time. He deals every hand. So who’s pushing him into more than he can handle? I want him to strut a little. To take charge. With her, you know what he got? When the cupboard was locked, nothing. Other times, she took charge. Until there just wasn’t any response possible, and then she’d tell him he was a damned poor excuse for a man. That was poisonous, Trav. Poisonous. Merciless. Any woman can accept more than any one man can give. It’s a question of mechanics. She can make him feel inadequate, and once she gets him really worrying about whether he can or he can’t, then more often he can’t.