As I trudged back to the hotel for a late lunch, I decided there was no point in trying to sort out the fragments of inference and information until I had more.
In many ways life is less random than we think. In your past and mine, there have been times when we have, on some lonely trail, constructed a device aimed into our future. Perhaps nothing ever comes along to trigger it. We live through the safe years. But, for some people, something moves on the half forgotten path, and something arches out of the past and explodes in the here and now. These are emotional intersections, when lives cross, diverge, then meet again.
Rational examination of the specifics, like Janice Stanyard, Gretchen’s disappearance, Heidi’s coldness, Anna’s denial of her daughter, would do me no good, not yet.
I had to get more of the feel of Former Geis’ life before I could understand how he could accept so blandly a condition which caused him to steal the inheritance his heirs expected and then die without leaving any explanation, though he knew that it would create a curious kind of emotional and legal chaos.
It is almost impossible to bully a dying man, particularly one with the inner strength of Fortner Geis.
FIVE
AFTER LUNCH I rode up to my floor in an elevatorload of very noisy jolly fellows wearing nickname badges and smelling of sour mash.
I sat on my bed and checked the big phone directory and found several Stanyards. One was Mrs. Charles Stanyard. The others were male. It was a number on Greenwood. I had picked up a city map. Apparently the address would be reasonably handy to Methodist Hospital. Glory had given me Roger Geis’ address in the Evanston area off Glenview. I wasn’t interested in Roger. If there was anything he could add, Heidi would have known it. I was more curious about his wife, Jeanie, who’d gotten along well with Fort. Most of all I wanted to talk to Gretchen, to Susan, and again to Anna Ottlo.
I arranged for a rental Ford and drove out to the Roger Geis home, red brick with stubby white pillars, some fine old trees. I got there a little after three. The maid was there alone with the youngest child. She wouldn’t take the chain off the door, and told me through the opening that the mister was playing golf, and that Mrs. Geis was at the Countryside Tennis Club with the two older children. When I asked her how to find it, she closed the door.
I got my directions at a gas station. The day was turning colder, but most of the dozen courts were in use. In a large play area noisy platoons of small children were keeping two young girls very busy. I asked a big winded lady carrying three rackets if Jeanie Geis was on the courts, and between pantings, she pointed to a game of mixed doubles and told me she was the girl on the far court. I moved over and watched them. Jeanie was a sturdy woman nearing thirty, not tall, a bit heavy in the leg. Brown legs, arms, face, hair. The heavy legs were the hard, muscular, springy legs of the athlete. She covered more than her share of the court. Her partner was a spry old man with white hair. They were playing a boy and girl in their early twenties. It was very respectable tennis, craftiness against power. Jeanie’s little white pleated skirt whipped around as she twisted, cut back, dashed to the net. They weren’t jolly about saves and misses. It was a blood game. On set point, Jeanie banged a cross-court shot to the young girl’s backhand, and the girl took a nasty fall trying to get to it, but missed it. They gathered around her. She had taken some hide off her arm. She said she was all right.
As they all started back toward the small clubhouse, I asked Mrs. Geis if I could have a word with her. The others went ahead.
“Yes? What about?” She had that husky semi drawl of the better finishing schools, an effective delivery styled to give equal and additional impact to witticism, cattiness, or love words.
“Excuse the expression-money,” I said. And there, for a few moments, was the jackpot, and I couldn’t bet my hand because I didn’t know what cards I was holding. Jackpot in the sudden draining of all blood and color from under the tan, in a sudden sickness of pleasant green eyes and in the shape of the mouth, and in a rigid kind of stillness. These are the parts of a terror almost animal in its intensity, when the body aches to spin and run blindly. But before I could find any way to make any use of it, I saw the swift return of control. It seemed almost as if control had returned through an exercise of logic. She had looked more carefully at me and had decided I did not fit into the pattern of fear, and so it had to be a misunderstanding on her part.
“Pretty broad topic to discuss, Mr…”
“McGee. Travis McGee.”
“I’ve heard that name before. Where? I have a fantastic memory for names. Faces mean nothing. Could we move along? I don’t want to get chilled.” As I began walking beside her she said, “Got it! Daddy Fort and Gloria were talking about you… oh, at least three years ago. I’d taken the kids by. He was kidding her, in a nice way. Something about her Florida boyfriend. You? The tan would fit.”
“Old friend, yes.”
“Wait just a moment, please.” She went quickly over to the playground. As she was speaking to one of the girls in charge, two kids, a boy and girl perhaps seven and five, came running to her. She squatted and gave them a simultaneous hug. They went racing back to their group and she spoke to the girl again and then came back to where I waited. “I had to make sure we had the signals right. The sitter is going to pick them up here and take them home. And I go from here to join Roger at a cocktail thing. We’ll have time to talk after I shower and change. You go through that door and turn left for the lounge. You could wait for me there. Order yourself a drink, please.”
The lounge was comfortable. The healthy tennis set was noisily taking on a small Saturday night load before heading off to do the serious drinking elsewhere. The lounge had seen a lot of hard use, and the drinks were substantial. I picked a corner table where there seemed the most chance of privacy. After a half-hour Jeanie Geis joined me, looking more elegant in dark green cocktail dress, high heels, mink over her arm, than I’d expected. As I was seating her, the bar man brought her a Gibson, straight up. “Thank you, Jimmy, and another whatever he’s having for my guest, Mr. McGee. How’s Skippy making it?”
“You know. Drifting and dreaming. Twenty times maybe she’s tried on the wedding dress, her mother telling her she’s going to wear it out.”
“She’s a dear doll and she’s getting a nice guy.” When he was out of earshot she looked speculatively at me and said, “As a friend of Glory’s, it has to be Daddy Fort’s money you wanted to talk about. But why me?”
“I talked to Heidi. I don’t think your husband could add anything. Incidentally, Heidi doesn’t know I’m Glory’s friend.”
“How could I add anything Roger couldn’t? I mean it is all terribly mysterious, and Heidi and Roger are furious, and it puts Gloria in a very odd position. But if she asked you for help, if she asked you to come and see if you can find out what did happen, I can understand but I don’t have to approve.”
She hesitated as Jimmy put the new drink in front of me, continuing as he moved away. “It’s over, isn’t it? If Fort thought anything should be explained to the family, he would have. And maybe you should explain why you came to me? Are you implying I’d keep anything from my husband?”