Music For Chameleons Page 12

  So, early in August, I flew Swissair to Switzerland, and lolled away several weeks in an Alpine village, sunbathing among the eternal snows. I slept, I ate, I reread the whole of Proust, which is rather like plunging into a tidal wave, destination unknown. But my thoughts too often revolved around Mr. Quinn; occasionally, while I slept, he knocked at the door and entered my dreams, sometimes as himself, his grey eyes glittering behind the wire-framed spectacles, but now and then he appeared guised as the white-robed Reverend Snow.

  A brief whiff of Alpine air is exhilarating, but extended holidays in the mountains can become claustrophobic, arouse inexplicable depressions. Anyway, one day when one of these black moods descended, I hired a car and drove via the Grand St. Bernard pass into Italy and on to Venice. In Venice one is always in costume and wearing a mask; that is, you are not yourself, and not responsible for your behavior. It wasn’t the real me who arrived in Venice at five in the afternoon and before midnight boarded a train bound for Istanbul. It all began in Harry’s Bar, as so many Venetian escapades do. I had just ordered a martini when who should slam through the swinging doors but Gianni Paoli, an energetic journalist whom I had known in Moscow when he had been a correspondent for an Italian newspaper: together, aided by vodka, we had enlivened many a morose Russian restaurant. Gianni was in Venice en route to Istanbul; he was catching the Orient Express at midnight. Six martinis later he had talked me into going with him. It was a journey of two days and two nights; the train meandered through Jugoslavia and Bulgaria, but our impressions of those countries were confined to what we glimpsed out the window of our wagon-lit compartment, which we never left except to renew our supply of wine and vodka.

  The room spun. Stopped. Spun. I stepped out of bed. My brain, a hunk of shattered glass, painfully clinked inside my head. But I could stand; I could walk; I even remembered where I was: the Hilton Hotel in Istanbul. Gingerly, I made my way toward a balcony overlooking the Bosphorus. Gianni Paoli was basking there in the sunshine, eating breakfast and reading the Paris Herald Tribune. Blinking, I glanced at the newspaper’s date. It was the first of September. Now, why should that cause such severe sensations? Nausea; guilt; remorse. Holy smoke, I’d missed the wedding! Gianni couldn’t fathom why I was so upset (Italians are always upset; but they never understand why anybody else should be); he poured vodka into his orange juice, offered it to me, and said drink, get drunk: “But first, send them a telegram.” I took his advice, all of it. The telegram said: Unavoidably detained but wish you every happiness on this wonderful day. Later, when rest and abstinence had steadied my hand, I wrote them a short letter; I didn’t lie, I simply didn’t explain why I had been “unavoidably detained”; I said I was flying to New York in a few days, and would telephone them as soon as they returned from their honeymoon. I addressed the letter to Mr. and Mrs. Jake Pepper, and when I left it at the desk to be mailed I felt relieved, exonerated; I thought of Addie with a flower in her hair, of Addie and Jake walking at dusk along Waikiki beach, the sea beside them, stars above them; I wondered if Addie was too old to have children.

  But I didn’t go home; things happened. I encountered an old friend in Istanbul, an archeologist who was working on a “dig” on the Anatolia coast in southern Turkey; he invited me to join him, he said I would enjoy it, and he was right, I did. I swam every day, learned to dance Turkish folk dances, drank ouzo and danced outdoors all night every night at the local bistro; I stayed two weeks. Afterward I traveled by boat to Athens, and from there took a plane to London, where I had a suit fitted. It was October, almost autumn, before I turned the key that opened the door of my New York apartment.

  A friend, who had been visiting the apartment to water the plants, had arranged my mail in orderly stacks on the library table. There were a number of telegrams, and I leafed through those before taking off my coat. I opened one; it was an invitation to a Halloween party. I opened another; it was signed Jake: Call me urgent. It was dated August 29, six weeks ago. Hurriedly, not allowing myself to believe what I was thinking, I found Addie’s telephone number and dialed it; no answer. Then I placed a person-to-person call to the Prairie Motel: No, Mr. Pepper was not at present registered there; yes, the operator thought he could be contacted through the State Bureau of Investigation. I called it; a man—an ornery bastard—informed me that Detective Pepper was on a leave of absence, and no, he couldn’t tell me his whereabouts (“That’s against the rules”); and when I gave him my name and told him I was calling from New York he said oh yeah and when I said listen, please, this is very important the sonofabitch hung up.

  I needed to take a leak; but the desire, which had been insistent all during the ride from Kennedy airport, subsided, disappeared as I stared at the letters piled on the library table. Intuition attracted me to them. I flipped through the stacks with the professional speed of a mail sorter, seeking a sample of Jake’s handwriting. I found it. The envelope was postmarked September 10; it was on the official stationery of the Investigation Bureau, and had been sent from the state capital. It was a brief letter, but the firm masculine style of the penmanship disguised the author’s anguish:

  Your letter from Istanbul arrived today. When I read it I was sober. I’m not so sober now. Last August, the day Addie died, I sent a telegram asking you to call me. But I guess you were overseas. But that is what I had to tell you—Addie is gone. I still don’t believe it, and I never will, not until I know what really happened. Two days before our wedding she and Marylee were swimming in Blue River. Addie drowned; but Marylee didn’t see her drown. I can’t write about it. I’ve got to get away. I don’t trust myself. Wherever I go, Marylee Connor will know how to locate me. Sincerely …

  MARYLEE CONNOR: Why, hello! Why, sure, I recognized your voice right off.

  TC: I’ve been calling you every half-hour all afternoon.

  MARYLEE: Where are you?

  TC: New York.

  MARYLEE: How’s the weather?

  TC: It’s raining.

  MARYLEE: Raining here, too. But we can use it. We’ve had such a dry summer. Can’t get the dust out of your hair. You say you’ve been calling me?

  TC: All afternoon.

  MARYLEE: Well, I was home. But I’m afraid my hearing’s not too good. And I’ve been down in the cellar and up in the attic. Packing. Now that I’m alone, this house is too much for me. We have a cousin—she’s a widow, too—she bought a place in Florida, a condominium, and I’m going to live with her. Well, how are you? Have you spoken to Jake lately?

  (I explained that I’d just returned from Europe, and had not been able to contact Jake; she said he was staying with one of his sons in Oregon, and gave me the telephone number.)

  Poor Jake. He’s taken it all so hard. Somehow he seems to blame himself. Oh? Oh, you didn’t know?

  TC: Jake wrote me, but I didn’t get the letter until today. I can’t tell you how sorry …

  MARYLEE (a catch in her voice): You didn’t know about Addie?

  TC: Not until today …

  MARYLEE (suspiciously): What did Jake say?

  TC: He said she drowned.

  MARYLEE (defensively, as though we were arguing): Well, she did. And I don’t care what Jake thinks. Bob Quinn was nowhere in sight. He couldn’t have had anything to do with it.

  (I heard her take a deep breath, followed by a long pause—as if, attempting to control her temper, she was counting to ten.)

  If anybody’s to blame, it’s me. It was my idea to drive out to Sandy Cove for a swim. Sandy Cove doesn’t even belong to Quinn. It’s on the Miller ranch. Addie and I always used to go there; it’s shady and you can hide from the sun. It’s the safest part of Blue River; it has a natural pool, and it’s where we learned to swim when we were little girls. That day we had Sandy Cove all to ourselves; we went into the water together, and Addie remarked how this time next week she’d be swimming in the Pacific Ocean. Addie was a strong swimmer, but I tire easily. So after I’d cooled off, I spread a towel under a tree and started reading t
hrough some of the magazines we’d brought along. Addie stayed in the water; I heard her say: “I’m going to swim around the bend and sit on the waterfall.” The river flows out of Sandy Cove and sweeps around a bend; beyond the bend a rocky ridge runs across the river, creating a small waterfall—a short drop, not more than two feet. When we were children it was fun to sit on the ridge and feel the water rushing between our legs.

  I was reading, not noticing the time until I felt a shiver and saw the sun was slanting toward the mountains; I wasn’t worried—I imagined Addie was still enjoying the waterfall. But after a while I walked down to the river and shouted Addie! Addie! I thought: Maybe she’s trying to tease me. So I climbed the embankment to the top of Sandy Cove; from there I could see the waterfall and the whole river moving north. There was no one there; no Addie. Then, just below the fall, I saw a white lily pad floating on the water, bobbing. But then I realized it wasn’t a lily; it was a hand—with a diamond twinkling: Addie’s engagement ring, the little diamond Jake gave her. I slid down the embankment and waded into the river and crawled along the waterfall ridge. The water was very clear and not too deep; I could see Addie’s face under the surface and her hair tangled in the twigs of a tree branch, a sunken tree. It was hopeless—I grabbed her hand and pulled and pulled with all my strength but I couldn’t budge her. Somehow, we’ll never know how, she’d fallen off the ridge and the tree had caught her hair, held her down. Accidental death by drowning. That was the coroner’s verdict. Hello?

  TC: Yes, I’m here.

  MARYLEE: My grandmother Mason never used the word “death.” When someone died, especially someone she cared about, she always said that they had been “called back.” She meant that they had not been buried, lost forever; but, rather, that the person had been “called back” to a happy childhood place, a world of living things. And that’s how I feel about my sister. Addie was called back to live among the things she loves. Children. Children and flowers. Birds. The wild plants she found in the mountains.

  TC: I’m so very sorry, Mrs. Connor. I …

  MARYLEE: That’s all right, dear.

  TC: I wish there was something …

  MARYLEE: Well, it was good to hear from you. And when you speak to Jake, remember to give him my love.

  I SHOWERED, SET A BOTTLE of brandy beside my bed, climbed under the covers, took the telephone off the night table, nestled it on my stomach, and dialed the Oregon number that I had been given. Jake’s son answered; he said his father was out, he wasn’t sure where and didn’t know when to expect him. I left a message for Jake to call as soon as he came home, no matter the hour. I filled my mouth with all the brandy it could hold, and rinsed it around like a mouthwash, a medicine to stop my teeth from chattering. I let the brandy trickle down my throat. Sleep, in the curving shape of a murmuring river, flowed through my head; in the end, it was always the river; everything returned to it. Quinn may have provided the rattlesnakes, the fire, the nicotine, the steel wire; but the river had inspired those deeds, and now it had claimed Addie, too. Addie: her hair, tangled in watery undergrowths, drifted, in my dream, across her wavering drowned face like a bridal veil.

  An earthquake erupted; the earthquake was the telephone, rumbling on my stomach where it had still been resting when I dozed off. I knew it was Jake. I let it ring while I poured myself a guaranteed eye-opener.

  TC: Jake?

  JAKE: So you finally made it back stateside?

  TC: This morning.

  JAKE: Well, you didn’t miss the wedding, after all.

  TC: I got your letter. Jake—

  JAKE: No. You don’t have to make a speech.

  TC: I called Mrs. Connor. Marylee. We had a long talk—

  JAKE (alertly): Yeah?

  TC: She told me everything that happened—

  JAKE: Oh, no she didn’t! Damned if she did!

  TC (jolted by the harshness of his response): But, Jake, she said—

  JAKE: Yeah. What did she say?

  TC: She said it was an accident.

  JAKE: You believed that?

  (The tone of his voice, grimly mocking, suggested Jake’s expression: his eyes hard, his thin quirky lips twitching.)

  TC: From what she told me, it seems the only explanation.

  JAKE: She doesn’t know what happened. She wasn’t there. She was sitting on her butt reading magazines.

  TC: Well, if it was Quinn—

  JAKE: I’m listening.

  TC: Then he must be a magician.

  JAKE: Not necessarily. But I can’t discuss it just now. Soon, maybe. A little something happened that might hasten matters. Santa Claus came early this year.

  TC: Are we talking about Jaeger?

  JAKE: Yessir, the postmaster got his package.

  TC: When?

  JAKE: Yesterday. (He laughed, not with pleasure but excitement, released energy) Bad news for Jaeger but good news for me. My plan was to stay up here till after Thanksgiving. But boy, I was going nuts. All I could hear was slamming doors. All I could think was: Suppose he doesn’t go after Jaeger? Suppose he doesn’t give me that one last chance? Well, you can call me at the Prairie Motel tomorrow night. Because that’s where I’ll be.

  TC: Jake, wait a minute. It has to have been an accident. Addie, I mean.

  JAKE (unctuously patient, as though instructing a retarded aborigine): Now I’ll leave you with something to sleep on.

  Sandy Cove, where this “accident” occurred, is the property of a man named A. J. Miller. There are two ways to reach it. The shortest way is to take a back road that cuts across Quinn’s place and leads straight to Miller’s ranch. Which is what the ladies did.

  Adios, amigo.

  NATURALLY, THE SOMETHING HE HAD left me to sleep on kept me sleepless until daybreak. Images formed, faded; it was as though I were mentally editing a motion picture.

  Addie and her sister are in their car driving along the highway. They turn off the highway and onto a dirt road that is part of the B.Q. Ranch. Quinn is standing on the veranda of his house; or perhaps watching from a window: whenever, however, at some point he spies the trespassing car, recognizes its occupants, and guesses that they are headed for a swim at Sandy Cove. He decides to follow them. By car? or horseback? afoot? Anyway, he approaches the area where the women are bathing by a roundabout route. Once there, he conceals himself among the shady trees above Sandy Cove. Marylee is resting on a towel reading magazines. Addie is in the water. He hears Addie tell her sister: “I’m going to swim around the bend and sit on the waterfall.” Ideal; now Addie will be unprotected, alone, out of her sister’s view. Quinn waits until he is certain she is playfully absorbed at the waterfall. Presently, he slides down the embankment (the same embankment the searching Marylee later used). Addie doesn’t hear him; the splashing waterfall covers the sound of his movements. But how can he avoid her eyes? For surely, the instant she sees him, she will acknowledge her danger, protest, scream. No, he obtains her silence with a gun. Addie hears something, looks up, sees Quinn swiftly striding across the ridge, revolver aimed—he shoves her off the waterfall, plunges after her, pulls her under, holds her there: a final baptism.

  It was possible.

  But daybreak, and the beginning noise of New York traffic, lessened my enthusiasm for fevered fantasizing, briskly dropped me deep into that discouraging abyss—reality. Jake was without choice: like Quinn, he had set himself a passionate task, and his task, his human duty, was to prove that Quinn was responsible for ten indecent deaths, particularly the death of a warm, companionable woman he had wanted to marry. But unless Jake had evolved a theory more convincing than my own imagination had managed, then I preferred to forget it; I was satisfied to fall asleep remembering the coroner’s common-sense verdict: Accidental death by drowning.

  An hour later I was wide awake, a victim of jet lag. Awake but weary, fretful; and hungry, starved. Of course, due to my prolonged absence, the refrigerator contained nothing edible. Soured milk, stale bread, black bananas, rotte
n eggs, shriveled oranges, withered apples, putrid tomatoes, a chocolate cake iced with fungus. I made a cup of coffee, added brandy to it, and with that to fortify me, examined my accumulated mail. My birthday had fallen on September 30, and a few well-wishers had sent cards. One of them was from Fred Wilson, the retired detective and mutual friend who had first introduced me to Jake Pepper. I knew he was familiar with Jake’s case, that Jake often consulted him, but for some reason we had never discussed it, an omission I now rectified by calling him.

  TC: Hello? May I speak to Mr. Wilson, please?

  FRED WILSON: Speaking.

  TC: Fred? You sound like you have a helluva cold.

  FRED: You bet. It’s a real granddaddy.

  TC: Thanks for the birthday card.

  FRED: Aw, hell. You didn’t have to spend your money just for that.

  TC: Well, I wanted to talk to you about Jake Pepper.

  FRED: Say, there must be something to this telepathy stuff. I was thinking about Jake when the phone rang. You know, his Bureau has him on leave. They’re trying to force him off that case.

  TC: He’s back on it now.

  (After I recounted the conversation I’d had with Jake the previous evening, Fred asked several questions, mostly about Addie Mason’s death and Jake’s opinions pertaining to it.)

  FRED: I’m damned surprised the Bureau would let him go back there. Jake’s the fairest-minded man I’ve ever met. There’s nobody in our business I respect more than Pepper. But he’s lost all judgment. He’s been banging his head against a wall so long he’s knocked all the sense out of it. Sure, it was terrible what happened to his girl friend. But it was an accident. She drowned. But Jake can’t accept that. He’s standing on rooftops shouting murder. Accusing this man Quinn.