“I’m not going to answer questions, Mr. McGee.”
“Why don’t you just think the questions over, and answer the ones you feel like answering? I won’t try to trick you. Take your time.”
“Who are you?”
“A friend of yours. I might have some answers to some of your questions. If you have any.”
“Why should I want to ask you anything?”
“You might want to know why Dr. Fortner Geis was anxious to help you. I guess he had the feeling you might get in a real jam. A ten-thousand-dollar jam, Susan. That’s the amount of cash he sent Mrs. Stanyard.”
“Ten… thousand… dollars!”
“If you didn’t contact her in a year, then she was to give it to Mrs. Geis.”
“But… wouldn’t it be mine anyway?”
“How come?”
“I mean it would have been money he got from my…” She stopped abruptly. I could guess at what was going on in her mind. Storybook stuff. Afternoon soap opera. There could be a dozen versions. Famous surgeon has a friend who has a daughter dying of a brain tumor. She is pregnant. Unmarried. Influential family. They don’t want a scandal. The Doctor keeps the girl alive long enough so that she can have her baby, and then he arranges with his housekeeper for the housekeeper’s daughter and her young husband, Karl Kemmer, to raise the baby as their own. So the money that had always come every month came from the annuity her real mother’s people had bought for her, and the ten thousand is some kind of emergency fund entrusted to the Doctor long ago. I did not want to reach into her head and wrench any of her dreams loose. They had sustained her. One day she would be able to jettison them herself, after they had served their long purpose. There was strength in this girl. But very strong people can break when there is too much all at once.
“How did Dr. Geis get word to you about contacting Mrs. Stanyard in case of trouble?”
“I don’t want to answer questions.”
“Take your time. See if there is any harm in answering that one, Susan.”
“But if I don’t want any help, why should I answer anything?”
“You have an orderly mind. But I gave you some help last night. You needed it and took it.”
She thought that over. “He wrote me a letter last August. The writing was shaky. We knew from Grandma he was going to die. The Sunday before I got the letter she told us he was failing. It just said if I needed help I should go to Mrs. Stanyard. I was to write down her phone and address and destroy the letter, and not tell anybody. I thought it sounded sort of… crazy. He said Mrs. Stanyard was a nurse and a nice person and I could trust her. I did like he said in the letter even if I didn’t expect anything to happen, and sort of forgot it until… ”
“Until the day before yesterday.
“But you wouldn’t go to her apartment with her because you said they’d look for you there. What did that mean?”
“Nothing.”
“Okay. Now then. You’re in some kind of a jam. You can call on me, and I can be just as rough as I have to be to get you out of it. And you’ve got ten thousand to finance the operation. I am yours to command, kid.”
She turned her face toward the window. The tears started again. “But I can’t do anything,” she said hopelessly. “Nobody can do anything. She went away once in California and they put us in a place. There was just three of us then and we were little, and we almost didn’t get Freddy back. The judge said he was disturbed.”
“Gretchen has gone off someplace?”
Defiant eyes stared at me through the slits. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I stood up. “I’m going to leave you alone for a little while to think something over. Let me see if I have the names right Freddy, Julian, Freda, and ‘Ibmmy. Christmas vacation is coming up, Susan. I don’t think it would be too difficult for an obviously respectable type like me to go gather up the kids. I know a crazy wonderful couple in Palm Beach. House as big as a hotel. Pots of money. Cook, maids, housekeeper, yard men. And scads of kids. They adopt them. Five more over Christmas would hardly be noticed. I could set it up with one phone call, and you’ve got the airplane money. Think it over.”
I walked out without giving her a chance to respond. Heidi did not hear me. I leaned against the studio doorway. She was reworking the bottom corner of a, big painting, standing bent over with her back to me. Her air-sea rescue costume was clinched tight around the slender waist, and stretched tightly across the pleasantly globular rear. I have always thought it fallacious to make an erotic specialty out of any particular portion of the form divine. When it is good it is all good, and some days some parts are a little better than others, but you need the entire creature to make any segment of it worthwhile. In three silent steps I could grab a double handful of all that and see if she could manage a standing high jump over the top of the painting.
“AhHem!” I said.
She straightened and whirled around. “Oh! Did you find out anything?”
First I broke it to her that her patient was Gretchen’s kid, and was the eldest granddaughter of Anna, the housekeeper, and briefed her on Gretchen’s home life, hubby and sudden departure.
She looked thoughtful and troubled instead of startled, and said that she guessed that subconsciously she must have had some hint. She had dreamed about Gretchen last night for the first time in years. So I went back to her specific question. Had I found out anything?
“Just enough to make some guesses, and they are probably wrong. She thinks any kind of help is going to make things worse. I have a hunch the Gorba family moved well out of town. Fifty miles, a hundred miles. Mama Gretchen missed the lights and the action, so she took off. So Saul Gorba took a little hack at the ripening daughter, maybe to get even with Gretch for taking off. I would think she’d put up a pretty good scramble, so maybe she got her nails into his chops, or a solid little knee into his underparts, and he lost his temper and hammered her. I think he would know she wouldn’t blow the whistle on him. With his record they would tote him off gladly, and the social workers would, in the absence of the old lady, stuff the kids into the handiest institution. I think she is hooked on being the little mother hen to these other four. I think she is worried to death about them right now. If she goes back, the stepdaddy tries again. And if she stays away and Gretchen is away, who looks after the little ones? Not so terribly little, actually. Fifteen, twelve, ten and six.”
She nibbled the wood end of a paint brush, frowning. “That sounds so ugly, the whole situation. It’s so strange, really. Roger has such clear memories of Gretehen when she lived with us. Of course he’s four years older. But I must have been almost eight years old when Gretchen got married. I can remember a lot of things from a lot earlier than that. But Gretchen is sort of dim. I can’t see her face at all, or remember her voice. Roger says she was good to us. He says she was good-natured and sort of dumb and sloppy. But would she just walk out on her kids?”
“Apparently she’s done it before.”
“Poor Anna. She deserves a more reliable daughter. Couldn’t Anna take her own grandchildren for a while? Maybe not. Probably Lady Gloria wouldn’t want brats from her own so_ cial level cluttering up her illusions of grandeur.”
I started to speak and then let it stand. We could not head in that direction and get anywhere. She was blocked. So I made some unimportant small talk and then went back in to catch Susan’s reaction. It was a firm shake of the head-from side to side: No more questions and no more answers. She didn’t want to be any trouble to anyone. She would leave as soon as she felt well enough. Thanks a lot.
I talked with Heidi again before leaving. She promised she wouldn’t try to pump Susan Kemmer, but if the girl said anything useful, Heidi would get in touch with me right away.