“No kidding,” Grella said. “Who’s Miranda?”
“Oh, you’ve seen her floating and fluttering around the house. Mrs. Shaw. She’s supposed to be teaching us etiquette, which is really dumb because we never go any place we can use it.”
“What happened after she got the two-hundred-a-month raise?”
“She stayed. And she used the extra money to buy him presents.”
“Mrs. Shaw bought your father presents?”
“Yes.”
“Like what?”
“We don’t know.”
“You didn’t see them?”
“No. But we heard him thank her for them. It was one night after Uncle Charles had been here for dinner. Miranda and Pops were standing right in this very hall.”
“And where were you?”
Cordelia indicated the railing at the top of the stairs. “Up there. It’s our favorite place for finding out what’s going on when nobody will tell us.”
“So what went on?”
“It was a kind of a mushy scene, with her playing the little woman and him apologizing for the way Mrs. Young treated her and saying don’t cry, please don’t cry. Sickening. Nobody ever asks me not to cry, let alone tacking a please onto it.”
“Then what?”
“He thanked her for the presents, said he was very happy with them.”
“Your father and Mrs. Shaw, were they chummy? That is, did they...?”
“We think so,” Juliet said a little sadly. “Probably in the back seat of the Rolls-Royce.”
Blushing, Grella looked down at his feet, which were still there, and then at the door of Iris’s sitting room, which wasn’t. “Did you witness this... ah, this—”
“Hanky-panky,” Cordelia said. “That’s what we call it. Everyone knows what we’re talking about but it’s not vulgar. No, we didn’t actually witness it. There were signs though, plenty of them, smiles and stares, touchings that might have looked accidental but weren’t.”
“Did your mother suspect what was going on?”
“Maybe. She couldn’t hear very well but she had eyes like a hawk. Of course, we didn’t say a word to her about it. She’d have gotten mad at us.”
“Why?”
“Everyone does.”
“This is a very interesting development,” Grella said. “I’m not sure what I ought to do about it.”
“You ought to tell that lab up in Sacramento there are lots of things they won’t find out in test tubes.”
Grella didn’t tell the lab but he told his sergeant and the sergeant told his lieutenant. There was general agreement that the hanky-panky in the Rolls-Royce put a different light on the case.
On a morning in mid-July, Aragon was summoned to Smedler’s office.
Charity was waiting for him when he stepped out of Smedler’s private elevator. She had just finished misting her plants and the room was as hot and wet as an equatorial jungle. Beads of moisture clung to her red wig, which was draped over a life-sized bust of President Kennedy.
Charity saw him staring at it. “A work of art, isn’t it? I got it at a swap meet over the weekend in exchange for my old muskrat jacket. I was passionately in love with Jack Kennedy, still am after all these years.”
“It might cool your ardor if you turned on the air conditioning.”
“My plants wouldn’t like it.”
“Don’t tell them.”
She wiped some of the moisture off the wig with a piece of Kleenex. “Better not come on funny today, junior. Boss man had another bash with his wife and now he’s feeling guilty because he won. Guilt always gives him a migraine.”
“What’s he want from me?”
“How should I know? Maybe he wants to give you something.”
“Like what?”
“His migraine.”
Smedler was sitting behind his desk reading the morning mail. The bash with his wife had resulted in no visible scars, but even now his face was flushed and his hands had a very slight tremor.
He wasted only two words — “Sit down” — before coming to the point. “I saw in the newspaper a couple of weeks ago that Admiral Young’s wife was killed in a fire. Know anything about it?”
“Only what I read in the newspaper account.”
“Sketchy. Very sketchy. Makes me wonder... You aren’t privy to any off-the-record stuff, are you?”
“No.”
Smedler rubbed the left side of his neck and the area behind his left ear, which was a deeper color than the other ear. “I’ve played golf with the Admiral a couple of times. Nice quiet chap, hardly the type you’d suspect of fooling around.”
“Who suspects him of fooling around?”
“My wife heard it on the grapevine at the country club. The rumor is that Miranda Shaw has been working at the Admiral’s house in some capacity, and one capacity led to another capacity. I’ve instructed my wife not to repeat a story like that unless she’s sure of the facts. It would be damned embarrassing for a man in my position to be sued for slander. Women don’t realize the possible consequences of this gossip. Of course, it may not be gossip. Give me your personal opinion, Aragon. Does a relationship between the two of them seem feasible, considering his age, et cetera, et cetera?”
“The feasibility of a relationship depends on the number of et ceteras.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, don’t talk like a lawyer. Are they sleeping together?”
“I don’t know.”
“Find out.”
“How?”
“Miranda’s a friend of yours.”
“I spent a day and a half with her,” Aragon said. “Most of the time I was driving and she was unconscious. That hardly adds up to a friendship.”
“It’s possible.”
“It didn’t happen. What’s more, I don’t consider it part of my job to pry into the love affairs of admirals.”
“It’s one admiral, not the whole U.S. Navy, and one love affair, not a history of Hollywood. All I’m asking is that you and Miranda should have a nice cozy talk over a couple of drinks. If she indicates no personal interest in the Admiral, I’ll muzzle my wife and that’ll be the end of that... It’s funny she was left alone in the house that night.”
“Who?”
“Iris Young. As I understand it she was crippled. A wealthy woman like that would surely have someone around to look after her or at least to keep her company.”
“She had Miranda.”
“Yes,” Smedler said dryly. “She had Miranda.”
The death of Iris had dealt a fatal blow to Charles Van Eyck’s social life. Her house was the last place in town where he was more or less welcome for dinner, and in spite of the mediocrity of the food, drink and conversation, he missed the invitations. To his surprise he also missed Iris. She’d been his last surviving relative — if he didn’t count the girls, and he didn’t — and he felt quite depressed at the idea of being the final Van Eyck, with nothing to leave behind as a memorial except his correspondence. Since most of this was unsigned, it didn’t constitute much of a memorial.
Iris had found out about the anonymous letters when he made the mistake of writing one to her about Miranda, and the even worse mistake of not checking the spelling of the word Jezebel. She wasn’t taken in by his denials. “People who live in glass houses,” Iris had said, “should learn to spell. I can only guess you’ve been scattering these around the landscape like confetti. Do try not to get caught, Charles. It would embarrass the family.”
He had not been caught. Concerned Citizen, One Who Knows, a Word to the Wise, Irate Taxpayer, Member of Loyal Opposition, Awake and Aware, Cassandra and Pentagon Pauper continued their correspondence.
It was a warm sunny afternoon. At the club Van Eyck sat in a deck chair under the twisted old cypress tree. He wore his writing costume: flowered Hawaiian shirt, walking shorts, a tennis visor and bifocals. He had a new refill in his pen and plenty of paper, which he’d snatched from the office while Ellen was on a coffee break. The tide was high but the waves gentle, so there was minimal noise to distract him. Still he was distracted. The pain in his left hip worried him. He thought of a mare he’d ridden as a child which had to be shot when she broke her leg. He wondered where he was going to spend Christmas Day now that Iris was dead. Finally he dozed off for an hour or so, and when he woke up he felt refreshed and the mare and the hip pain and Christmas were going out with the tide. Charles Van Eyck went with them and Seeker of Truth got down to business.