There were bookcases made of boards and bricks, and others made out of crates, the crates under the windows and the board-and-brick jobs up against the walls that didn’t have any. Lots of criminology, lots of true crime, and a few mysteries. Great Literature with capital letters. Maugham, Mark Twain, and some other stuff I didn’t know at all and couldn’t place. I found myself a book about the Cincinnati Strangler, a guy I’d never heard of who pulled some cute capers like stealing a cab and answering the calls he heard from the cab company’s dispatcher.
Blue and Muddy got back almost at the same time. Muddy had three rabbits and looked happy, and Blue looked just the way he always did. He didn’t really have an expressionless face like Sandoz’s, and with those blue eyes and the thin, straw-colored hair there wasn’t anything Indian about him. Just the same, you could have lost a lot of money playing poker with him. I said, “How’d it go?” and he said, “All right,” and I said, “Want to tell me about it?” and he said, “Not yet.” And that was that.
Muddy went back to the kitchen and cut the rabbits up, and Tick came in and built a fire and then went out and cut green sticks for us to roast with. We had roast rabbit and bread and apple butter and coffee, and except for the coffee it was about the greatest meal I ever ate in my life; I can still remember it. Tick didn’t eat much (surprising me quite a bit) and Blue hardly ate anything; but Muddy and I put away almost a rabbit apiece. Finally I asked Blue if he was trying to get my father off.
“I’m trying to find out who killed your uncle and Larry Lief,” he said. “It’s much the same thing.”
“You don’t think he did?”
He shook his head; but he wouldn’t say anything else, and when we were through eating he took me out to his car and drove me home. Bill wasn’t around and neither was Mrs. Maas, but Blue helped me on the stairs as much as he could, and I didn’t really have much trouble, although it was slow. While I was undressing I could hear him going downstairs. When he got to the bottom he didn’t go out, though. He went into my father’s study, if I was guessing right from the sounds, and stayed there for maybe half an hour. Okay, I’d searched his desk, so I couldn’t complain.
How We Mulled
It felt funny for our house to be so empty and quiet. I hadn’t really expected Elaine to come running to see if her little girl was okay, but I’d expected, at least, to hear her and Mrs. Maas stirring around. After a while it got spooky. I played records, and that should have helped; but it didn’t because I could hear the silence behind them, if you know what I mean; and when each record was over there would be nothing except the click, click of the changer and the flop of the next one dropping into place. When my hi-fi had gone through the stack, I let it switch itself off; I read for a little and took the medicine that was supposed to stop my leg from hurting, and went to sleep.
A door shutting woke me up. Not the front door—the back. Then I heard Mrs. Maas walking around in the kitchen; I listened for two or three minutes, I guess, before I was sure it was her, and then, boy, did it ever sound good. I could have yelled or rung my bell for her to come up, but I didn’t even think about it.
I switched on my light instead, grabbed my crutches and got up. My little clock said it was after midnight, but I started downstairs, scared to death I’d fall because I couldn’t use both crutches and hang on to the banister at the same time, but bound and determined to find some human company. I decided right then that if I ever get rich and build a house of my own it’s going to have an elevator.
Mrs. Maas must have heard me, because she came and dithered and more or less helped me down the bottom half of the stairs. I don’t think I’ve said a lot about Mrs. Maas so far, but maybe I ought to here. She was blond, a little bigger than average but not really big, solid-looking and muscular. I never asked how old she was, but her hair was starting to get gray and I’d say about fifty. One time she told me she had grown up on a farm, and both her parents had been born in the Old Country. She was a widow.
Here I’m going to psychoanalyze. If you don’t like it (and in a lot of books I’ve read I don’t) you can skip this bit. I think that while Mrs. Maas had been with us I had been trying, without really knowing what I was doing, to make her my mother. Or my grandmother or aunt—whatever. You know what I mean. And I think Mrs. Maas had been through it before someplace and had lost her job because somebody’s real parents saw she was getting closer to their kid than they were.
Naturally I can’t prove any of that; but that night we were both tired and scared, and we practically fell into each other’s arms. She didn’t say anything special to me, just, “Oh, Holly, my poor Holly!” and I didn’t say anything special to her; but by the time she had helped me into one of the kitchen chairs and put on water to make cocoa, we both felt quite a bit better.
“Where have you been?” I said.
And she said, “Didn’t they tell you? They took me away, down to the police.”
“In Barton?”
“Yes, to Barton. Afterward they said if I would take the lie test they would let me come home. I said yes, and we went to Constance.” She showed me where they’d stuck the sensors on her. “They asked a million questions. Some two or three times, saying it different ways.”
“What kind of questions?”
“About your father. Bill is still there, they were going to do him after.”
“What’d you tell them?”
“That he is such a good man, only away too much. They asked if he had fights with your mother, and I said no.”
“Mrs. Maas, that was a lie. The machine must have jumped the track.”
“No, it was not a lie. Not real fights. In fights someone hits or throws. What your father and mother have are arguments. I don’t think you ever in your life saw your mother with a black eye, Holly.”
“Of course not.”
“Not of course. I have seen my own mother with many black eyes.”
“Were you afraid?” I meant when her father hit her mother, but she didn’t understand.
“I was. Yes. Not for myself, because I knew they would let me go. For your father. And for me, too, because if they don’t let him go there will be no place for me and I will have to pack, pack all my things and find a room to live in until the agency gets me a new position. All the time I will be thinking of you and your family and this house.”
The kettle sang, and she went over to pour water for my cocoa, and then the kitchen door opened and there was Elaine in a negligee. “It’s you two,” she said. “How’s your leg, Holly?” I don’t think she knew I’d been gone.
I said, “Okay. The cops had Mrs. Maas.”
“I know. They took Mrs. Maas and Bill. I think they would have taken me, too, if I hadn’t been much too upset to tell them anything. After a while I swallowed four of my pills and went to sleep. I just woke up.”
Mrs. Maas asked, “Would you like cocoa, Mrs. Hollander?”
“Yes,” Elaine said. “I would. I’d like some cocoa.” She got another chair and pulled it up to the table and sat, and I remember thinking it was probably the first time in her entire life that she’d ever sat down in that kitchen. Usually she only went in there if she had to give last-minute orders to Mrs. Maas or the caterers, and got out as fast as she could.
“When do you think we’ll see Dad again?”
“Tomorrow, I suppose. Don’t they let them out on bail?”
“I think so.”
“Then they’ll have to let him go on bail. I’ll call Harvey Webber,” (that was my father’s lawyer) “and Harvey will get him out. But …”
“But what?” I asked.