“Maybe I already do,” she said soberly. “But not because I don’t believe it.”
The intercom signaled for attention, and the voice of Gill’s secretary insinuated itself into the room, as penetrating and genteel as the whisper of a lady librarian. “Mr. Dodd is on the telephone again, Mr. Brandon. Will you take the call?”
“Go ahead... Dodd? Yes. Yes, I understand. When? How much? Good God, didn’t anyone try to stop him? I know it’s legal, but under the circumstances... No, I can’t get away from the office until later this afternoon. Hold on a minute.” Gill put his hand over the telephone and spoke sharply to his wife, “I must ask you to wait outside.”
“Why?”
“This is a personal matter.”
“Meaning it’s about Amy?”
“Meaning it’s none of your business.”
“I couldn’t care less,” she said airily, but her cheeks burned red and when she walked to the door her legs felt weak and rubbery.
She stopped at the secretary’s desk in the outer office. “Tell Mr. Brandon I couldn’t wait. I have another — appointment.”
Appointment wasn’t quite the word, she thought, as she rode the elevator downstairs. Errand was closer. Errand of mercy. Or perhaps errand of mischief. It would depend on your viewpoint.
On the street she hailed a cab and gave the driver the address of Rupert’s office.
“That’s walking distance,” he said.
“I know. I’m in a hurry.”
“O.K. You from the Peninsula?”
“Yes.”
He screwed up his face in soundless laughter. “I can always tell. After twenty-six years in this business you get intuition. I’m from the Peninsula myself. Redwood City. Every morning I take the train up here and I drive my cab all day and then I take the train back. Always been crazy about trains. The wife says I ought to of been an engineer. That way I wouldn’t always be running into a bunch of knucklehead cops always telling me where to park and what to do and making with the one-way streets. You waste a lot of gas on these one-way streets.”
You waste a lot of gas, period, Helene thought irritably. Any other time the cabbie would have amused her, she would have asked questions, drawn him out, and later made a funny story of the incident to tell Gill and the kids. Today he seemed merely a talkative, annoying old man with a grievance.
He parked at a red curb. She paid him and got out of the cab as quickly as possible.
When she reached Rupert’s office, she found Miss Burton in the act of combing her hair.
“Why, Mrs. Brandon,” Miss Burton said, returning the comb to her purse with nervous haste. “We weren’t expecting you.”
Editorial “we” or Rupert-and-I “we,” Helene wondered. She had never paid particular attention to Miss Burton in the past, and she wouldn’t have now if it weren’t for Gill’s suspicions. There was nothing special about her: eyes blue and rather solemn, short turned-up nose, plump, pink cheeks, temporary blond hair, short, sturdy legs intended for long and loyal service. The composite picture she presented was one of directness and simplicity; not even Gill, with his emotional astigmatism, could have denied that.
Helene said casually, “Is Mr. Kellogg around?”
“He just left.”
“I’ll wait, if I may. Or perhaps I’ll do some shopping and come back later.”
“He won’t be in the office any more today,” Miss Burton said. “He’s not feeling well. I think he’s coming down with the flu. He hasn’t been taking good care of himself since Mrs. Kel — since he’s been living alone.”
“Oh.”
“I mean, well, no proper meals for one thing. Good hot meals are very important.”
“Do you cook, Miss Burton?”
“Cook?” She flushed from the base of her throat to the tips of her ears. “Why? Why do you ask that?”
“I’m just interested.”
“I like to cook when there’s someone to cook for. Only there isn’t. I think that answers your question, and the other questions behind it.”
“Other questions?”
“I think you know what I mean.”
“But I don’t. I have no idea.”
“Your husband has.” Miss Burton’s voice trembled, and a pulse began to beat, hard and unrhythmically, in her left temple. “Lots of ideas.”
“Has he been talking to you?”
“To me? No. Not to me. Behind my back. Hiring a greasy little detective to follow me, pump me — well, he was pumping at a dry well. He didn’t find out a thing, the same as you’re not going to because there’s nothing to find out, because I never...”
“Wait a minute. Do you think I came here at my husband’s request?”
“It’s a funny coincidence, last night the detective, now you.”
Helene’s brief laugh was more like a cough of indignation. “Why, if Gill knew I was here, he’d — well, no matter. Let’s put it this way. I don’t agree with my husband on everything. If you’re angry with him for something he’s done, all right, that’s your privilege. But don’t let your anger spill over on me. I came here as a friend of Rupert’s. You’re his friend, too... Aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, hadn’t we better work together, cooperate?”
Miss Burton shook her head, more in sorrow than in denial. “I don’t know. I don’t know who I can trust any more.”
“That puts two of us in the same boat. The question is, where’s the boat going? And who’s at the helm?”
“I don’t know anything about boats.” Miss Burton’s voice was cold and cautious. “Not a thing.”
“Neither do I, really. I went sailing once on the Bay with my husband. Years ago, just the two of us. Gill was the skipper and I was supposed to be the crew. God, it was awful. I was scared to begin with, because I can’t swim very well, and then a strong wind came up and Gill began shouting orders at me. Only I couldn’t understand them, they sounded like a foreign language or a child’s gibberish — ready about, hard alee, jibe ho. Gill explained them all to me afterwards, but at the time I felt such terrible confusion, as if some immediate and urgent action was expected of me but I couldn’t understand what. That’s the way I feel now, right this minute. There’s a strong wind, there’s danger, I should be doing something. But I don’t know what. The orders sound like gibberish, I can’t even tell where they’re coming from. And I can’t get off the boat. Can you?”
“I haven’t tried.”
“And you won’t try?”
“No. It’s too late.”
“Then we’d better get our signals straight,” Helene said bluntly. “Don’t you agree?”
“I guess so.”
“Where’s Rupert?”
“I told you, he wasn’t feeling well, he went home.”
“Straight home?”
“He may have stopped for lunch. He always eats at the same place at noon, Lassiter’s, on Market Street, near Kearny.”
Lassiter’s was a moderately priced bar and grill that catered to the men of the financial district. They were a martini crowd, consisting of third vice-presidents, sales managers, West Coast representatives, all of them known as executives, a word which meant nothing except that it entitled them to a two-hour lunch.
She spotted Rupert immediately, sitting at the counter with a bottle of beer and a hamburger in front of him, both untouched. An open paperback book was propped against the beer bottle, and he was staring at it but not reading it. He looked tense and expectant, as if he was waiting for someone he didn’t like or something he didn’t want to face.
When she touched him lightly on the shoulder he jumped and the book fell on its side and the beer bottle teetered.
She said, “Aren’t you going to eat your lunch?”
“No.”
“I hate to see anything wasted.”