“So,” I said. “What about Mathilda Prim?”
“Well, Joe, I haven’t seen Mattie in a few years. But that doesn’t mean she’s not here.”
“She still have people in Peanut?”
“Most of them moved away some time after she did.”
“Sounds like a migration,” I said.
“They were a tough bunch,” Peter informed. “Fightin’, drugs, and there was what you might call a looseness in their women.”
Mr. Southbrook did not approve of the Prim Bunch, that much was sure. His dislike of them might have tinted my presence in his eyes.
“That hotel at the north end of the street,” I said.
“Minerva’s Inn? What about it?”
“That the only inn in town?”
“You’re planning to stay?”
“I would like to find Mathilda. From what you tell me it might take a bit.”
Peter Southbrook took a few moments to digest my plans.
Finally he said, “Minerva’s is the only inn in twenty-two miles. But there’s no businessmen in town around now. You should get a room pretty easy.”
“Thank you, Mr. Southbrook. You’ve been very helpful.”
“That’s my job.”
“You’re the welcome wagon?”
“I’m the mayor of Peanut,” he said proudly.
“Down here all by yourself. Is this some kind of holiday?”
He laughed. “No, sir, most of the municipal offices are upstairs. I sit down here alone so people can see what they voted for.”
Minerva’s Inn was walking distance from the town hall. It stood four stories and looked refurbished. The bricks were all neat, cleaned, and repointed. There was a flower box outside each window, all of them blooming with multicolored mums and daisies.
I wasn’t so much aware of the stifling heat until I walked into the overlarge guesthouse.
It must’ve been thirty degrees cooler in there.
I counted fourteen paces from the front door to the reception desk. There sat a bronze-skinned round woman wearing a floral dress. She seemed to be bubbling with goodwill.
“Hello,” she erupted. “I’m Wilma. Please, have a seat.”
The chair was fashioned from dark wood and was upholstered with turquoise felt that matched the color of the thick carpeting.
I sat and said, “Nice to meet you, Wilma. My name is Joe.”
It was then I saw it. The smiling hotelier was completely without empathy. I was nothing more than the cause for a brief, unpleasant performance. I think that she saw the revelation in my eyes.
“How can I help you, Joe?” she said, her brilliant smile having dimmed by half.
“I need a room for a night or two.”
“Oh. I’m so sorry. We’re booked for the next week.”
“Doesn’t look that busy.”
“A group of technicians are coming in this evening.”
“Technicians?”
“They come down here sometimes, to work at the Big Nickel.”
“That metal building down the street?”
“Yes,” she said, a little impatiently.
“What do they do there?”
“I wouldn’t know. They built it two years ago and hired about eight hundred Peanutians.” She pronounced the last word the way one would refer to the inhabitants of Venus.
“Some kind of science lab?”
“Is there anything else I can do for you, Joe?”
“Mayor Southbrook told me that there were lots of rooms available at Minerva’s.”
“Mayor Southbrook doesn’t keep the reservations log.”
The smile was gone.
Outside again I felt the heat. For the first time in a long while I wished I had a bigger car. The cramped seating of a Volkswagen Bug is not conducive to sleep. But that was the only place I had to rest. I was sure this was the place that would lead me to Mathilda Prim.
I’d spent a good deal of my adult life around the rich and powerful. As a cop I stood outside protecting their properties and their secrets. As a PI I went into those lives. In all those years I never felt much empathy for my betters. But Mathilda was different. I wanted her secure and adored the way millions felt about Jackie O and Princess Di. It was a powerful feeling. I don’t believe I’d ever want anyone to feel that way about me.
“Mr. Oliver.”
Walking on the hot pavement, I was transported as my grandmother sometimes was in church. I felt that if I found Quiller’s widow I’d be saved or, at least, successful.
“Mr. Oliver! Yoo-hoo!”
The words were like a nagging thought you want to forget.
“Mr. Oliver!”
Wilma was running up the block in my direction. She wasn’t built for that kind of locomotion. I stopped and then began to walk toward her. Relieved, she stopped completely, bending over almost far enough to touch her knees.
“What’s the problem, Wilma?”
She had to take in six or seven sorely needed breaths before answering.
“I just realized that we have one vacant room. It’s a room without a number and so it doesn’t have a place on the computerized spreadsheet.”
Taking in a deep breath, she stood up straight.
“I’m sorry if I was rude to you,” she added. “It’s been a long day.”
32
The numberless room was a slender aisle, seven or eight feet wide but long, twenty, twenty-two feet. Above my head was a ceiling that I could reach up and touch. The bed was not quite queen-size and the floor, lacquered pine. There was a desk fashioned from pressboard and finished with a dark linoleum sheet. The chair was plastic and red and the window, not large enough to jump out of, looked out on Main Street.
It was warm on the fourth floor but not hot like out on the street. I sat on the red chair, didn’t like the way it felt, and so went to sit on the bed. After a minute or so I went into the bathroom. It was equipped with toilet, sink on a stalk, a slender horizontal mirror that was like a slash across the wall, and a shower stall with no door or curtain.
I remember thinking that this was the future of working-class vacationing. Everything you could ask for but less.
I called Roger Ferris, only getting his voice on an answering service. I left him the hotel phone number, then called Aja.
“Hi, Daddy. Where are you?”
“In Black Appalachia.”
“I thought Appalachia was all white.”
“Wherever you got poor people, there’s gonna be black skins somewhere.”
“Okay.”
“How you doin’?”
“I’m okay. Mama called. She said that she and Coleman are going back home to fix up the house. You think that’s safe?”
“Yeah. I do.”
“So he’s not going to jail?”
“Naw. He’ll turn state’s evidence and they’ll just file it away.”
“Oliya’s here. You wanna talk to her?”
“No. Not now.”
“She’s pretty wonderful. Taught me how to flip somebody if he grabs me and showed me the twelve exercises I need to be strong.”
“You always needed a big sister, honey.”
“I miss you. Come home soon.”
“I will.”
Somewhere around 10:00 the room phone rang. I didn’t know I was asleep and so the old-fashioned ring startled me up to my feet. The bell sounded once more before I was sure enough to answer.
“Hello?”
“Joseph.”
“Oh, Roger. Hey. Yeah. I left you the number. Right.”
“You need to throw some water on your face?”
That sounded like a fine idea.
In the condensed bathroom I used the lime-colored bowl-shaped sink to splash my face and neck. In the slit of a mirror I could see that I needed a shave. I had a razor somewhere. Where?
I dumped a double handful of water on my head.
“I’m back, Roger.”