A Purple Place for Dying (6 page)

"Perhaps she told him that I was going to help her."

"Possibly. Oh, they were terribly optimistic about everything. They seemed to think that because they were infatuated with each other, the whole world should find them terribly attractive. But everyone knew it as… a distasteful and unpleasant situation."

She got up and got the coffee pot, unplugged it and brought it over and filled our cups. When she bent over mine I noticed she smelled like vanilla. I wondered if she had been drinking it. It did not seem likely. This was one of the intense ones. She was perhaps four years younger than her brother.

I could imagine her plodding around NYU in black stockings and short tweed skirts, arguing with a coffee-house passion about abstract concepts, trying the painter-loft sex and finding it overrated, trying the knock on the mescaline and finding it made her sick instead of exalted, signing up to picket this and that, sitting for hours of observation in the UN, wearing barbaric jewelry designed by no-talent friends, painting stage sets for amateur production; all in all an intense, humorless, intellectual child, full of heavy dedications and looking for some shelf to put them on.

"Yesterday, Tuesday," I said, "Mrs. Yeoman picked me up at the Carson Airport at noon. I understand that your brother took off Monday afternoon. That seems a little previous."

"I imagine they had it all planned. I've been taking some courses here. I have a Monday afternoon seminar. Mass Communication and Opinion Leadership. John had two classes Monday morning. Contemporary Philosophy. And Philosophy in Literature. He had Monday afternoon off. I expected he would be with her. When he didn't get back by nine o'clock, I felt uneasy. But I imagined he had somehow arranged to spend a whole night with her. That seemed to be about the summit of his ambitions lately. I thought he would come in and clean up in the morning. He has a ten o'clock on Tuesday.

"By nine Tuesday morning, I began to be suspicious. I started looking around. His suitcase and some clothing were gone, and his toilet articles. No note for me. Not a word of explanation. He didn't even have the courtesy to notify the head of the department. He just… left, like a thief. As you probably know, he left the car at the Carson Airport, and they flew from there to El Paso. I'll have to arrange to get the car, I guess. That's seventy miles from here, northeast. All of this is very embarrassing to me. It puts me in a very strange position. I had a long talk with Mr. Knowdler, the Dean of Faculty. He was quite sympathetic toward me. This is the beginning of our third year here. I'll have to give this place up, of course. But I can keep it until November fifteenth, he said. John will come slinking back before then, I imagine. It is just sort of a vacuum. I can't make any plans. He'll need help. I don't know what will become of us."

"Do you work here too?"

"Oh, yes. Five mornings a week, in the communications lab. Clerical work. But not today, because they are enlarging it this week, tearing out partitions and doing a lot of new wiring. I'm doing research here for one of the enrichment programs. History of the Dramatic Arts."

She looked wistful. "It was a pretty good life here, Mr. McGee, until that woman came into it, and upset everything. I didn't mind keeping house for John. If he was alone, he would eat cold things out of cans and his clothes would look like a vagrant's. And he doesn't take good care of himself. He's never been very strong. That woman won't take good care of him. Why did she have to be attracted to him? Why couldn't she have found herself some… truck driver or policeman, some muscular cretin who could do a better job of giving her what she so obviously wants?"

"Did you check to see what your brother took with him?"

"He packed and left. Evidently he took what he thought he needed."

"If I ask you to do something which seems pointless, will you do it?"

"Such as?"

"Would you check and see if he left anything behind that he would logically have taken with him?"

"I don't think I know what you mean, Mr. McGee."

"Something which might be overlooked if somebody else did his packing for him. If it was supposed to look as if he packed and left."

"Isn't that a… a little melodramatic?" Her soft pale little mouth seemed to identify a bad taste. "A kidnapping?"

"If you don't mind looking."

"Not at all."

The sunlight was strong on the back of my hand. There were bright squares of fabric on the walls, primitive designs. I could hear the woman opening and closing drawers. Then there was a silence.

She appeared suddenly in the doorway, braced as if to dodge an imaginary blow. She held a small black case in her hand, about the size of a small book. She held it out toward me, and her mouth made little fish motions, and then she said, "He… He didn't…"

I took it from her and opened it. Two hypodermics. Spare needles. Test strips. Vials. Alcohol. I snapped it shut. "Diabetic?"

"Yes. Yes, he would have to have this with him! He has to inject insulin every morning. He is a very absentminded man, but he had to learn the hard way not to be careless about this. He learned by forgetting and going into diabetic coma. Or by giving himself too much and having insulin reaction. I can't imagine his forgetting…"

She sank into a chair. "But he could forget, of course. But he would have remembered this morning. It is so much a part of his routine. He has prescriptions. He could buy what he needs. Yes, that's what must have happened."

"Did anyone see him leave here?"

"What? I don't know. I don't imagine so. There aren't very many people here on Monday afternoons."

"Where was this kit kept?"

"In the bathroom medicine cabinet."

"He took his other toilet articles from there?"

"Yes. I… I see what you mean. It is… very strange. It makes me feel… scared." She frowned up at me. "You said it was supposed to look as if they'd gone away together. Why?"

"I don't know why." I saw her sudden change of expression. "What's wrong?"

"I don't know. I suddenly remembered something. Something he said last Sunday. We were having… one of those quarrels that didn't accomplish anything. I said some kind of snotty things about his having a big week coming up, with Monday Tuesday and Thursday free for her. He said he would not see her Tuesday, yesterday. He said she would be busy. If he was planning to leave Monday…"

"He knew she would be busy with me."

"Then where did he go?"

"Where was he taken?"

"Please. Are you trying to make me more frightened?"

"What is your name?"

"Isobel. Isobel Webb."

I hooked a stool over with my foot and sat on it, close and facing her. "My name is Travis McGee, Isobel."

I took her hand. After two yanks she stopped trying to pull it away, and sat uncomfortably rigid, looking past me rather than at me.

"Why are you acting so strangely?" she asked, wetting her mouth with a quick and pointed tongue-tip.

"I don't want to scare you. I'm going to take a chance on telling you something. Maybe I shouldn't. Maybe you'll fly apart. I don't want you to. I want you to hold on tight and ride with it. Will you try? Good. Now listen carefully. Mona Yeoman took me to an isolated cabin in the hills. At two twenty-five yesterday afternoon, standing just as close to me as you are right now, she was shot in the back and killed instantly with a high-powered rifle fired at long range. I walked out. When I came back with the Sheriff, her body was gone. All trace of her was gone. They will not believe me. They think I was trying to put up a smoke screen so she could make an easier getaway with your brother."

She searched my face. Her eyelashes were uncommonly long. "But… they got on an airplane yesterday. At one fifteen. They went to…"

"A big blonde woman and a very tall thin man, both in dark glasses, got on an airplane yesterday at one fifteen. I know damned well that Mona Yeoman was not on that airplane. At one fifteen she and I were in her little car heading for that cabin. We were practically there. The manifest gave the names as Mr. and Mrs. Webber Johnson. John Webb. It was like wearing a sandwich sign. If he was trying to escape notice, would he have picked a name like that? Was he that stupid?"

"No. You… you use the past tense."

"Was he planning to meet her Monday afternoon?"

"N-No. He had too much work piled up. He was going to come back here and work. He had papers to grade. They were on that table when I got back here. I've turned all the class materials over to the department. Other men are taking over his courses, until they can find someone."

I was watching her closely. She seemed very jumpy, but she seemed to be holding, on pretty well.

"I know Mona is dead, Isobel. And there seems to be a lot of organization behind this. Substitutes took that flight. I know Mona is dead, and the only way the plan could be made to work, to look as if they ran off together, would be to kill your brother too."

She closed her eyes and her hand clamped hard on mine. A small smooth pale hand, but quite strong. When she opened her eyes, they looked blank and dazed.

"But it is so… so strange! What would be gained?"

"We don't know. Not yet. But the search would continue, looking for a pair of lovers in hiding, and after a while it would die down. I guess the traditional guess would be that they had made a new life for themselves somewhere else."

"Would her husband do that?"

"I don't think so."

She looked at the black case. I had put it on the table beside the chair. "Then that is sort of evidence, isn't it?" She stirred as though to stand. "I should tell the police."

"Now wait a minute, Isobel."

"Why should I wait a minute? If he was…"

"Somebody went to a lot of trouble to make it look as if they'd run away."

"Then why was she killed where you could see it happen?"

"I don't know. Maybe they didn't have any choice. Maybe they had it planned another way, and it didn't work out and they had to improvise."

"But if my brother was abducted…"

"Prove it."

"He left his kit here."

"An oversight. He picked up another drugstore in El Paso."

"But…"

"Livingston is in Esmerelda County. Sheriff Fred Buckelberry is conducting the investigation."

"He and a deputy were here last evening. At about eight o'clock. They told me about the car and the flight they took. Mostly it was to tell me to get in touch with him right away if I got any word from John. They were… lazy and ironic and sarcastic about the whole situation." She tilted her head to the side, frowning. "It does seem more logical."

"What do you mean?"

"I didn't really think he would… ever actually run off with her. I thought he had too much balance for that. I was just trying to make him see that he had to stop seeing that woman. There was too much gossip about it. I couldn't imagine his arbitrarily destroying himself. But if people came here and… took him away… He hated violence. He… wasn't a strong man. He never wanted to… to hurt anyone…"

Past tense. I think she suddenly realized she was using the past tense. Her eyes filled and she made a small yowl of heartsick pain and hitched forward in the chair, and slumped against me in the helpless awkward abandon of pain and sorrow. I held her. She rolled her head back and forth against my chest, gulping and whimpering, automatically seeking that small comfort to be had from a physical closeness, even with a stranger.

But suddenly when I patted her shoulder, she tensed and jumped back away from me as if I had been a basket of snakes.

"Excuse me," she said in a narrow little voice. She seemed to make herself small in the chair. I saw then that her eyes were a very very dark blue, the darkest blue I have ever seen in eyes of man or woman. Lifeless hair, pliant white body, smell of vanilla, and sexual fear. Noble refuge for the unrealized woman-caring for the adored brother.

I realized that she had been uncommonly bitter about the Mona-brother relationship, alluding to the sexual basis of it the way she might discuss a suppurating wound. No wonder she had thought these were two fine years. Her twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth? A good place to wait away the nubile years, hasten the drying of juices, all in the honorable name of dedication. A Mona Yeoman would be repulsive to her, inevitably. Mona walked with too much awareness of her body and its uses.

"You met Mona?" I asked.

"He thought we should get along. That was one of his worst ideas. She patronized me, as if I were some backward child. I just… I just can't imagine her dead. She was so… blatantly alive, Mr. McGee."

"Travis. Or Trav."

"I am not very good at first names. It takes me a long time."

"It's a gimmick I don't particularly care for. I thought it might make you feel more at ease with me, Isobel."

"I'm almost never at ease with people. I… I guess it was the way we were brought up."

"How was that?"

"Both my parents were artists. My father was successful and my mother had an inherited income. We lived miles from anyone. The school lessons came by mail. They took turns teaching us. Canada in the summer. A little island in the Bahamas in the winter. John was the one who was always ill. We all fretted about him. I was always so healthy. You learn to… invent games you can play by yourself. They died three years ago. Just two months apart. They were very close. We always felt like outsiders, John and I. And that made us close. And now… What am I going to do! What in God's name am I going to do!"