“Who told you to say that?”
“I made it up. It seemed like a good idea. I mean it makes him think more about me and not so much about it being a pretty funny way for a man like Santo to do business. Was I wrong?”
“No. I like it. And the final little hook? Did you remember to get that in?”
“Yes, but very casual, and not until he came in here to have a drink with me. I just said that I know the way Mr. Santo’s mind works, and he would certainly wonder if there was any connection between a Mr. Preston LaFrance and Mr. McGee, any business connection, and if he could find out in advance of my phoning him about it, it might make a good impression on Mr. Gary Santo.”
“Reaction?”
“Nothing in particular. He said he’d try to find out.” She shrugged. “He’s just a trivial little man, honey, really. And this is the first little whiff he’s had of something big and important and kind of glamorous, and he can’t hardly stand it. Feed me, please. I’m sitting here aching and gnawing, and I keep looking at that door where the waiters go by with those steaks.”
She ate with a savage and elegant precision, and an occasional little sound of contentment. I told her that as a reward for special sly services and for being a persuasive liar, I would take us to the most elaborate accommodations the Dune-Away could provide.
“And go back in the boat in the morning?” she asked. “Would it be vulgar, dear, if I asked a special favor? So much has happened and I am so pooped, really, that all I can think about is that gigantic, fantastic, marvelous bed aboard the Flush, and it would be a nice place to wake up on the morning before Christmas, and I want to get to that bed faster than your pretty little boat can get me there. Possible?”
“Race you to the car, Red.”
She was asleep by the time I hit the first stoplight, and slept all the way back, and groused about being shaken awake to walk from the car to the houseboat. I made her stand on the dock while I went aboard and, before unlocking the door, checked the little bulbs behind the sliding panel in the outside port bulkhead of the lounge. The bulbs were out, so I turned the knife switch below the bulb, turning off the little Radar Sentry that monitored the belowdecks areas of the Flush while I was away from her. Had anyone broken in, their mass and movement would have closed the circuit that lighted the two hidden bulbs, or lighted one of them if by any chance the other had burned out. The gadget can be rigged if anyone wants, to turn on floodlights or sound a siren or even phone the cops. But I didn’t want an alarm system that would spook the intruder. I just wanted to know if I’d had visitors, and then I could take the necessary steps to make them welcome if they happened to be still there.
I beckoned her aboard, and she came inside, stumbling and yawning. We shared a shower, and then we shared a lazy, easeful, gentled quarter hour of love, wherein she murmured she didn’t think she could but don’t go to any special trouble, darling, it doesn’t matter that much, and then she murmured that if it wasn’t too late for a lady to change her mind, sir, and it was just barely not too late to be able to wait just long enough, and so she rose, and caught, sighed long, and fell away purring. She called me back from my edge of sleep by gently thumbing my left eye open and saying, “Are you there? Listen, for making all these days and nights so full, the lady thanks you. Thanks for letting me come along for more than just the ride, McGee. Thanks for helping me cram three bushels of living into a one peck basket. Are you there?”
“You are O so welcome, lady.”
Seven
MEYEx CAME over on Christmas morning with a cumbersome vat of eggnog and three battered pewter mugs. We had a nice driving rain out of the northwest and a wind that made the Flush shift and groan and thump. I put on Christmas tapes because it was no day to trust FM programming. Sooner or later daddy would see mommy kissing Rudolph. Meyer and I played chess. Puss Killian, in yellow terry coveralls, sat and wrote letters. She never said who they were to, and I had never asked.
He won with one of those pawn-pressure games, the massive and ponderous advance that irritates me into doing the usual stupid thing, like a sacrifice that favors him, just to get elbow room on the board.
As we finished, Puss came over, shoving her letter into her pocket and said, “Should we call Jan and say merry merry? Which is worse, I guess, to call her or not call her?”
“There’s one of Meyer’s laws that covers it. Tell her, Meyer.”
He beamed up at her. “Of course. In all emotional conflicts, dear girl, the thing you find the hardest to do is the thing you should do. So I guess you call.”
“Thanks a lot. Trav? Will you do it? Please? Then you can turn it over to me. Okay?”
So I placed the call. Connie sounded too hearty. I guess it wasn’t such a great day at the groves. Janine imitated the requirements of friendship and holiday. But there was deadness under her tone of voice. I knew she would not break up, not with that weight of the deadness holding her down. After all the things to say I could think of, most of them so trite I felt like both Bob and Ray I gave the phone over to Puss. She sat at the desk and talked for a long time with Janine, in low tones. Then she said Connie wanted to talk to me again. She said Janine had gone to her room, so she could talk freely. She asked me when the body would be picked up. I said I’d made arrangements and they would come and get it tomorrow. The holidays had caused a delay.
“Any communication from sunny Sunnydale, Connie?”
“Nothing at all. Nothing yet.”
As I hung up I turned and saw Puss leaving the lounge, almost at a gallop, and heard her give a big harsh sob.
I looked at Meyer and he shrugged and said, “The tears started to drip, and then she started to snuffle and then she took off.”
I filled our mugs and brought him up to date on my financial affairs in Shawana County.
He pondered the situation and said, “It’s pretty flexible. There’s a lot of ways it could go.”
“That’s the general idea. To keep my skirts clean I have to have a legitimate sale of my legitimate ownership in that marina and motel. I think that’s where I pick LaFrance clean. If he could offer thirty-two five, I’ll settle for forty thousand, and he assumes the mortgage. He’ll have to go for it because that’s the only way he’ll have a package he can provide Santo-his own fifty acres, my ten, and the option on old Carbee’s two hundred. Now this LaFrance is a greedy and larcenous bastard. He was trying to make the deal as sweet as possible for himself by driving Tush into the ground and getting those ten acres cheap. I think he will continue to be a greedy and larcenous bastard, and I think that if I can offer him a little extra edge, for cash under the table, he’ll get the cash somehow, and I hope it will be from that brother-in-law of his on the County Commission.” I went and checked the name in my notebook. “P K. Hazzard. Known as Monk. He-meaning Preston LaFrance-is going to be very jumpy, so you and I are going to work a little variation on the old pigeon drop.”