Every few minutes she heard Vin ride past the house yelling, “Honk, honk!” and “Yippee, bang bang!” She would have liked to open the door and order him to be quiet, but she didn’t want to move for fear the lady of the house might think she’d been snooping while she was gone.
When Hazel returned Connie had barely moved a muscle.
“I can’t find it,” Hazel said. “My sister-in-law and I both hunted for it.”
Though Connie continued to look bored, there was an undertone of anxiety in her voice: “Pop said not to bother you too much, but he’s pretty sure he couldn’t have dropped it on the road. It’s heavy, it would have made a noise and he’d have heard it. Pop’s awful careful about his tools.”
“Yes, I saw that.”
“And this was the last place he went to.”
“Well, I certainly can’t find it,” Hazel repeated. She was beginning to feel quite uncomfortable under the girl’s oblique gaze. The girl had not accused her of deliberately withholding the hedge clipper; the accusation lay in the facts themselves. Mr. Escobar had brought his hedge clipper to Hazel’s yard, and when he arrived home the clipper was missing. It was practically impossible, Hazel thought, for it to have fallen from the bicycle basket without Escobar noticing it.
“Maybe someone stole it,” Connie said.
“I don’t see how. Your father was working out in the yard all the time, and there wasn’t anyone else around, not while I was here anyway. Wait a minute and I’ll go and ask my cousin about it.”
“Pop said not to bother you too much, maybe I better just go.”
“It’s no bother,” Hazel said quite sharply. “I want to get this thing cleared up.”
She went into the bedroom and shut the door behind her. The blinds were drawn, and Ruth was lying on the bed with a cloth over her eyes. She was absolutely motionless, yet Hazel had the same impression that she’d had when she and Connie had come into the house, an impression of activity that stopped a split second before she opened the door. She wondered if Ruth had been listening at the door and if she’d been able to hear anything with the wind blowing so loud outside.
“What’s the matter?” Hazel said.
“I have a headache.”
“I’m sorry to bother you, but Mr. Escobar’s girl is here.”
Ruth sat up and the cloth fell off her eyes into her lap.
“What?” she said stupidly. “Who?”
“The Mexican’s daughter.”
“Daughter?” She let out a sudden sharp laugh. “This is a surprise. He’s got a daughter, has he? Who’d have guessed it, from the look of him? What’s she like?”
“Quite pretty.”
“Pretty, is she? That is funny.” She laughed again. “She can’t take after him!”
“Don’t laugh like that.”
“Like what?”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
“I don’t! I was laughing because it’s so funny, him having a daughter, and pretty at that. What’s she doing here?”
“She came to get her father’s hedge clipper. He says he left it here yesterday.”
“He’s lying!”
Hazel looked annoyed. “Why should he lie about it?”
“So he can get a new one out of you. His was old, I saw it, it was all rusty.”
“The girl told me it was brand new.”
“They’re all lying,” Ruth cried. “They’re all the same, sly and scheming behind those innocent eyes of theirs! Yes, those innocent velvet eyes, they can hide a lot.”
“Keep your voice down. She’s right in the front room.”
“I don’t care.”
“I do.”
Ruth picked up the cloth that she’d had over her eyes and began to twist it in her hands. Hazel watched her uneasily. She was afraid that Ruth was going to have another of her nervous spells. They always followed the same pattern — there was the hard mirthless laughter, the talk about self-discipline, and then the moment when the discipline broke open at the seams, exposing a quivering and uncoordinated mass of tissue.
“I certainly didn’t take his hedge clipper,” Ruth said. “What are you looking at me for? Why even ask me about it?”
“I thought you might have seen it.”
“I didn’t.”
“You said you did.”
“Only for a minute, long enough to see that it was old and rusty.” She fell back on the pillow, and when she spoke again her voice was high and suffering: “Anyway, it’s all a lie. The whole thing is a lie from beginning to end. Perhaps there never was a hedge clipper, perhaps I only imagined I saw it or I mistook it for something else. That’s it, I’m sure — I don’t believe there ever was such a thing, so I couldn’t have taken something that wasn’t there. You mustn’t accuse me.”
“I wasn’t accusing you.”
“You were, with your eyes.”
“I’m only trying to get to the bottom of the matter,” Hazel said. “I feel responsible for a loss that took place on my property.”
“That’s how he wants you to feel, so you’ll buy him another.”
“I have no intention of buying him another. I intend to find the one he left here and I’ll find it, by Jesus, if I have to take the whole damn house apart.”
“You’ll never find it,” Ruth said softly. “There never was such a thing. It’s all a lie, it was all meant to take you in because you’re innocent. You talk so rough, Hazel, and you know so many different kinds of people, but you’re very innocent.”
She put the cloth over her eyes again, as a gesture of dismissal.
“Listen, Ruth,” Hazel said quietly, “if you know anything about where that hedge clipper is, you better tell me now. I’ll find out anyway.”
Ruth lay on the bed, mute and rigid.
“Let’s put it this way, suppose you had one of your screwy ideas and decided to take the hedge clipper and put it away some place. Maybe you were going to teach him a lesson, or maybe you even did it for my sake, to save money or something — I don’t care what reason you had. Just tell me where you put it and then we’ll forget the whole thing.”
“I’ve already forgotten.”
“Listen, you’ve got to tell me where it is.”
“I don’t know. I never saw it.”
“You don’t realize, this is one of those small things that can turn out to be very serious. He’s a poor man, he might go to the police. We’ll all get in trouble.”
“See? You are accusing me. I felt it when you came in the room.”
“I wasn’t accusing you when I came in. I only got suspicious when you began to talk about seeing it and not seeing it.”
“I’m not a liar. Sometimes I appear to lie, but it’s only that my imagination is so vivid, pictures form so clear and real in my head. But I’m not a liar.”
“I know that,” Hazel said patiently.
“So that’s where I must have seen it, in my head. It was lying on a shelf, or on the grass, I’m not sure which.”
“Ruth, did you take it or didn’t you?”
“It wasn’t there to take, and besides, I’d have no reason to do such a thing. I can’t think of any reason at all.” Though there had been no change in her voice and no overt sign of weeping, the cloth over her eyes was wet with tears. “If I could think of a reason, any reason — for your sake, perhaps, for your sake—”
“The reason doesn’t matter. Did you take it?”
“No, no, I didn’t!”
“All right,” Hazel said. “We’ll forget it for now.”
“What are you going to do?”