“I’ll do my eating at home, later. Thank you.”
“Sit down and have some coffee, anyway.”
“Doctor says I shouldn’t drink coffee. It gives me palpitations of the heart. My sister bought me a jar of that kind where they grind the caffeine out. It don’t taste the same, but I’d rather put up with the taste than the palpitations. You’ve heard me speak of my younger sister?”
“No. I didn’t know you had a sister.”
“Ruby,” she said. “She’s staying with me for a few weeks till she and her fiancé settle their affairs. Mr. Wilson’s a fine young fellow, works for a bottling company in Compton. A churchgoer, too – goes to my church, which is how my sister met him. Ruby sings contralto in the choir. It pleasures my heart, after all her tribulations, to see Ruby getting herself settled. That first man of hers was no bargain. He made her a lot of big promises and then he left her flat, with the payments on the car and everything. I had to make the payments on the car myself.”
I’d begun to wonder where the talk was leading. Mrs. Jackson was one of those garrulous talkers who never said anything without a reason. Possibly she needed money. In all the years she’d been my cleaning woman, she’d never asked me for an extra cent. Being loaded at the moment, I said:
“If an advance on your pay would help–?”
She pushed the thought away with an awkward sweep of her arm. “I thank you very kindly, Mr. Archer, but I don’t need your money – long as I have the strength in my back to make an honest living, which I have been vouchsafed. Ruby and me have our problems, Lord knows, but money ain’t the problem. And once she can get herself married, there won’t be any problem.”
“Is your sister in trouble?”
“I didn’t say that. Ruby’s a good girl. She’ll make Mr. Wilson a fine wife, once they’re legally married.”
“Are they illegally married?”
“Not yet. She wanted to go ahead and risk it. I wouldn’t let her. I told her it would be doing injustice to Mr. Wilson. He don’t know about the other one. But it would be a terrible thing if he turned up on Ruby’s wedding day: preacher says, does any man know a reason why this couple can’t be united in holy matrimony? And Horace Dickson marches up the aisle and says for all to hear: Ruby Dickson is my lawful wife. I come to claim my bride, after all these years.”
“She’s still married to her first husband,” I said.
Mrs. Jackson looked at me with affectionate pride, the way a fisherman looks at a fish who has accomplished the feat of taking his bait:
“Yes, she’s still married to him. And the worst of it is she don’t know where he is.”
“How long is it since she’s seen him?”
“Two years, close to three. She hasn’t heard from him in all that time.”
“She could divorce him on grounds of desertion.”
“Divorces take time. And Mr. Wilson, he don’t want to wait. Mr. Wilson is concupiscent, like it says in the Good Book. He’s anxious to get a family started.”
“Your sister will have to tell him the truth. They can arrange a divorce.”
“But Ruby’s afraid to do that. She’s afraid that Mr. Wilson wouldn’t marry a divorced woman. Mr. Wilson is very strict in his conscience. He goes to Bible college, nights.”
“I don’t see how I can help.”
“Ruby thinks you can. Did you enjoy your lunch, Mr. Archer? Here, let me hot up your coffee for you.”
She filled my cup from the percolator. I said: “I fear the Greeks even while bearing gifts.”
“They never bothered me. I knew some very nice Greek people in Pacific Palisades, used to clean for them, but it got too far to drive. I never did like driving in all that traffic. I know just how you feel about that highway accident you went through last night. Now that Ruby’s quit her job to get married, she’s been doing my driving for me. She drove me over here this morning.”
The themes of her monologue were coming together like the themes of a complex piece of music. I was alarmed. This unlikely siren was luring me onto the rocks of her family affairs. I said grimly:
“Is Ruby in this house now?”
“Heavens, no.” But her titter was embarrassed.
“I want an honest answer, Mrs. Jackson. Have you got your sister secreted in my house? Waiting to pounce? Is that why you hauled me out of bed and fed me up like a lamb for the slaughter?”
“I wouldn’t do a thing like that, Mr. Archer. Besides, it isn’t good for a man to sleep his youth away–”
“Youth is the wrong word. I’m forty years old.”
“You certainly don’t look it,” she said with a straight face. “I’m the oldest in my family, but I don’t tell my age. Ruby, now, is the youngest of the flock. She’s only thirty-four, with many happy years to look forward to. If she can just get this trouble straightened out.”
“She’s going to have to straighten it out for herself. I’m not a lawyer.”
“No, but you’re a detective. You know how to find people.”
“Say I found this Horace Dickson. What good would that do? He’d probably want to move right in–”
“He wouldn’t if he’s dead,” Mrs. Jackson said calmly. “Ruby thinks that Horace Dickson probably is dead.”
“Does she have any reason for thinking so? Or is it wish fulfillment?”
She dimmed the bright intelligence of her eyes. “I don’t understand all you say, Mr. Archer. You should talk to Ruby, now. She’s got the education, I put her all the way through high school. You’d enjoy talking to Ruby.”
“Is she waiting outside?”
“No. I’m expecting her, though. She said she’d pick me up at twelve o’clock.”
She glanced up at the brass clock on the wall. My eyes followed her glance. It was two minutes to twelve. Like the closing chord of Mrs. Jackson’s music, the sound of a car engine slowing down reached my ears from the front of the house.
“Ruby’s always on time,” she said serenely. “Now while you’re talking to Ruby I’ll clean your room for you. It surely needs it.”
I opened the front door and watched Ruby come up the walk. She belonged to a different generation from her sister, not only in age. She was smartly and conservatively dressed, in a sharkskin suit and a hat. Conscious respectability controlled the natural movements of her body and stiffened her back.
When she stepped up on the porch in her high heels, her eyes were on a level with mine.
“Mrs. Dickson?”
She hesitated. Her soft dark glance slid over my face and past me into the house, where the vacuum cleaner was whining.
“Your sister’s spoken to me about you. Won’t you come in?”
In the living room, she sat tensely on the edge of the chair I indicated, clutching her blue leather purse in her lap:
“It’s kind of you to talk to me. I have to thank you–”
I sat down facing her. “Don’t thank me, I haven’t done anything. I understand your husband is missing, Mrs. Dickson?”
“Yes. If you don’t mind, I don’t use my married name. I’m known as Ruby Smith, professionally. After Horace took off from me, I just let the name carry over into my private life.”
“What’s your profession?”
“Beauty operator. I’m not working right now, but I have some money saved up.” She opened and closed her hands on her purse, as if it contained her savings. “I can afford to pay–”
“We can go into that later. Tell me something about your husband: what sort of a person he is, the circumstances of his leaving, and so on.”
“A fly-by-night.” She took a long breath, like an inaudible sigh, and her voice deepened. “Horace was a natural born fly-by-night. He was a good mechanic, but he wouldn’t settle for that. He wanted to be an entertainer, a star. He was always looking for something he didn’t have. Far fields were always greener. That was the basic trouble between him and me – him and I.”