Jack and the Beanstalk (Matthew Hope) (22 page)

“Just in the nick,” she said, and the telephone upstairs began ringing again. “Never rings when she’s here,” she said, rolling
her eyes. “Only when she’s out. The most maddening thing in the world. Pour us some martinis, okay? How do you like your steaks? Did I tell you how handsome you look? Satan, get thee behind me.”

The martinis were cold and crisp and very, very dry. As Veronica put the steaks on, she mentioned idly that beef sometimes made a big circle out of Florida to the feeding pens out West and then back again to Florida, where it ended up on the dinner table. “For all I know,” she said, “these steaks may once have been calves on the M.K.”

I thought about her eating her own cows. “Do you ever get attached to any of them?” I asked. “The cows?”

“Never. It’s a business, Matthew.”

I thought of Sunny telling me those weren’t pets out there.

I sighed.

“What is it?” she asked at once.

“Sunny came to see me this afternoon,” I said.

“Oh? what about?”

I told her she’d been there to tell me about something that was obviously troubling her. I told her I’d blown it by bearing down too hard on her, asking a lot of questions, generally behaving like a benevolent bully. I told her I felt guilty as hell about scaring off a girl who was
already
scared.

“But of
what
?” Veronica asked, and I realized all at once that I’d never told her about Sunny’s speculation that her brother had been rustling cows right here on the M.K.

I hesitated.

“Matthew,” she said, “never keep anything from me, okay? I was married to a man who was as secretive as a rock. What happened with Ham might never have happened if Drew had ever dared to
reveal
himself to me. Whatever it is, you can tell me.”

I told her.

She listened intently. The steaks sizzled and popped on the grill. Occasionally she nodded. Once she said, “I didn’t think Sunny knew that much about cows.” I kept talking. When I got to the end of it, she was silent for several moments. Then she said, “I feel like running out there right this minute to count all my damn cows.” She shook her head. “It’s hard to believe...but it’s equally hard to disbelieve. He could have done it, Matthew. I wouldn’t put it past him.” She was silent again. “That’s why you were asking me about people with Spanish accents, right?” she said, and nodded. “Is that who Sunny’s afraid of? The man she heard on the phone?”

“Well, that’s what seemed so far-fetched to me. That’s when I began asking all my questions. She seemed genuinely convinced that the man might have known she was on the line, but...I just don’t know. I had the feeling there was something else she wanted to tell me. She seemed so damn
scared
, Veronica...”

“Well,
I’d
be scared too. If I thought a murderer—”

“Yes, but why all of a
sudden
? Last Friday night, she didn’t seem at
all
—”

I cut myself off.

“Oops,” Veronica said.

I looked at her.

“What
about
last Friday night?” she asked. “You saw her? My daughter? Last Friday night?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“She came to my house.”

“Oh?”

“That’s when she told me about Jack.”

“At your house?”

“Yes.”

“How long was she there?”

“An hour or so.”

“Did you go to bed with
her
, too, Matthew?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’d remember,” I said, and smiled.

Veronica smiled back.

“I’d better check those steaks,” she said.

I wasn’t sure I trusted that smile. She stood at the grill silently, her back to me, cutting into the steaks to test them, forking them onto separate plates, clasping the corn with tongs, and finally carrying the plates over to a picnic table and bench already set with utensils, glasses, and napkins. She took two bottles of beer from a cooler, and plunked them down beside each plate.

“Eat,” she said. “Before it gets cold.”

We began eating in silence.

The steak was very good, but the silence was foreboding.

“If I thought for a
minute
,” she said at last, “that you went to bed with Sunny...”

“I didn’t.”

“I’m glad,” she said. “Because I’d stick this steak knife right in your heart.”

I believed her.

She smiled radiantly. Lowering her voice confidentially, she said, “Of course, Sunny
can
be very flirtatious, I know that, outrageously so.” She looked across the table at me. The smile was still on her face. “Provocative, too,” she said, “a maddening child, really.” Her eyes met mine. “Did she flirt with you, Matthew?”

“Yes.”

“Was she...provocative?”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t touch her.”

She was watching me expectantly. The smile on her mouth encouraged complete honesty. The smile was telling me she was
my friend as well as my lover. The smile was assuring me that if indeed I
had
been intimate with her daughter, she would be understanding and sympathetic because she knew full well how outrageously flirtatious and maddeningly provocative Sunny could be. But the smile never quite reached her pale eyes, and a moment ago she had told me she would stick a steak knife in my heart. I was very glad I was able to tell her the truth.

“I didn’t touch her,” I said.

She nodded.

“Why not?” she asked.

I told her why not. I told her about my attempted seven-dollar rape in Chicago. I told her about breaking up with Dale. I told her about Charlie and Jeff using me for a beanbag. I told her there were some things a person just didn’t do if he expected to live with himself ever again. She listened the way she’d been listening when I’d told her about her son stealing cows. When I finished, she said, “I think I love you, do you know that?”

We both turned at the sudden sound of an automobile out front.

“There’s Sunny,” she said. “If you so much as
look
at her, Matthew...”

“Do you realize what you just said?”

“Can’t remember a word of it,” she said airily, and got up and called, “We’re out back!” She came around to my side of the table. She cupped my chin in her hand. She kissed me so fiercely that I almost fell off the bench. She squeezed my chin hard, said, “Mm,
you
!” and then released it and went to sit on the other side of the table again, the prim and proper mother awaiting the arrival of her prodigal daughter.

Jackie Crowell came into view around the corner of the house. He was wearing blue jeans, boots, and a striped T-shirt. He stood awkwardly at the far end of the patio, looking very much like
a shit-kicking bumpkin. “Hello, Mrs. McKinney,” he said. “Mr. Hope.” His dark eyes looked very somber and concerned. He was not smiling.

“Where’s Sunny?” Veronica said, glancing into the shadows beyond the house.

“She’s not here, huh?” Crowell said.

“No, she isn’t.”

“I was hoping she might be. I been calling, but I got no answer. I figured she might be downstairs, didn’t want to run up to answer the phone. When I drove her here this morning...”

He hesitated. He looked at me. He looked at Veronica.

“She...uh...was at my place last night,” he said apologetically, and shrugged his massive shoulders. “Anyway...uh...before I went to work this morning, I drove her back here. She said she wanted to pick up the Porsche, go do some shopping. She said she’d be back at the apartment sometime this afternoon. But when I got back from work—”

“What time was that?” I asked. Sunny McKinney had come to my office at about one-thirty. She’d left about twenty minutes later. Assuming she’d already done her shopping...

“When I got back from work, you mean? Around five-thirty,” he said. “She wasn’t home yet.”

I could see that Veronica took mild offense at his use of the word
home
to define Sunny’s residence, much the same as I did whenever Susan referred to
her
house as Joanna’s home. But she said nothing.

“I’m a little worried about her,” Crowell said. “She’s usually either home or here, so...I mean, where can she be?”

Veronica looked at her watch. I looked at mine. It was close to nine-thirty. In Calusa, the department stores in the malls were open till nine. There was no conceivable way that Sunny could still be out there shopping. The knowledge was on Veronica’s face. It was on Crowell’s as well.

“Her clothes are gone, too,” he said. He looked at Veronica, apologetically again. “The clothes she kept at my place. Only thing she left was a bathing suit.”

“What was she wearing the last time you saw her?” I asked.

“Purple shorts. A purple T-shirt.”

“What time was that?”

“When I dropped her off here? Must’ve been about eight-thirty this morning.”

“And she said she planned to do some shopping?”

“Yeah. Downtown.”

“Did she say anything about wanting to see me?”

“What do you mean?”

“Coming to my office?”

“No.
Did
she come there?”

“At about one-thirty.”

“No, she didn’t mention that,” Crowell said. “Just that she was going shopping.”

The silence was almost palpable. The intrusive chatter of the insects in the grass sounded like a sudden musical sting in a horror movie, presaging dire events to come.

“Well,” I said, “it’s only nine-thirty...”

My voice trailed off. The insects kept up their ominous chatter, intensifying the silence on the patio.

“Maybe I ought to check around town,” Crowell said. “Places we hang out in.”

“That might be a good idea,” I said. “But really, I don’t think there’s any cause for alarm.”

I looked at him. His eyes told me he thought there
was
cause for alarm.

“Well, sorry to’ve bothered you,” he said. “I’ll look around, let you know if I find her.”

“Matthew, give him your number,” Veronica said. Apparently her own concern was not great enough to keep her glued here to the ranch all night. I fished in my wallet for a card, and wrote my home phone number on the back of it. “You can call us there when you find her,” Veronica said. “Meanwhile, I’ll keep trying here. I’ll let you know when she gets home.” She stressed the word
home
. Whatever else Crowell may have thought, home to Veronica was not a dinky little apartment in New Town. She had also used the word
when
. Veronica was obviously less concerned about her daughter’s meandering than I’d thought; “
when
she gets home” was a far cry from “
if
she gets home.”

“Do you have
my
number?” Crowell asked.

“You’d better give it to me,” I said.

I wrote it down on the back of another card, and stuck the card in my wallet.

“Well,” he said, and stood shuffling his feet for another moment. “Sorry to’ve interrupted your supper.” He turned awkwardly and walked off the patio into the darkness. Moments later, we heard his car starting. We listened to the sound of its engine fading on the road to the main gate. The insects took over again.

“Good,” Veronica said.

“Good?”

“She’s packed up and left the little jerk. Maybe there’s hope for her yet.” She smiled and came around the table to where I was sitting. “The hell with the dishes,” she said. “Let the raccoons have a field day.” She kissed me fiercely. “You ready to go?” she asked.

Pillow talk.

Privileged communication.

She told me she was seriously concerned about the difference in our ages. I told her she had the body of a goddess, the intelligence of a computer, the wisdom of a guru, and the passion of a fanatic. She told me that if all that was meant to be flattering, I had a lot to learn about sweet-talking. I told her that in the past two nights she’d taught me more about women than I’d learned in all my thirty-eight years. She said, “That’s exactly what I
mean
, Matthew. There’s a nineteen-year difference. When will you be thirty-nine?”

“In February.”

“God,” she said, “that makes it even
worse
! I’ll be fifty-eight next
month
!”

“The better to eat you,” I said.

“What on earth does
that
mean?” she asked, grinning.

“Pretending to be Grandma,” I said. “Shame on you.”

“It was the
wolf
who pretended to be Grandma.”

“It’s the wolf right here in bed with you,” I said, and bared my teeth.

“I hate fairy tales; I think they’re designed to frighten children,” she said. “I’d better try Little Red Riding Hood again. It’s almost eleven.” She had tried the number at ten-thirty, and there’d been no answer. She reached over me for the bedside phone. I ran my hand along the smooth curve of her back. “Not while I’m talking,” she said, and dialed the number again. My hand wandered, seeking her out. “
Matth
-yew!” she warned. She held the receiver to her ear, listening. She let the number ring for a long time. She put the receiver back on the cradle then, and rolled over to her side of the bed again. People had their favorite sides in bed, I’d noticed. Veronica’s side was the right.