Hotel Paradise (3 page)

I like to sit in the Pink Elephant (a cellar room below our dining room) and look up from my notebook at the shadowy wall where I can see on the pink stucco that darkness in imagined moonlight where the boat slowly circles and drifts, and I see Mary-Evelyn float and bob in the rushes, among the water lilies. Her body moves slightly with the current, like the boat out in the middle of the lake.

I see this in my mind and I feel like weeping; I think it is one of the unhappiest things I have ever heard. And I think perhaps Mary-Evelyn was one of the unhappiest girls who ever lived in Spirit Lake. Just a short while ago I merely suspected it. Now, I know this to be true.

But I would take the picture out and study it and think about Mary-Evelyn Devereau. Her death puzzled me, and I don’t understand why it didn’t puzzle everybody at the time. I’ve written down a short list of questions which I keep in the candy box, and every once in a while I add another question to the list:

Why was Mary-Evelyn out at night?

Why was she in a
boat
, at night?

Why was she wearing one of her best dresses?

Why didn’t they report her missing until the next morning?

Why was her body so far from the boat?

The police back then must have been dumb, for they never tried to piece all of this together. Oh, they asked the obvious questions: Why was she out at night in a boat? But of course everyone would naturally ask that question. It’s just too bad that our sheriff now, Sam DeGheyn, wasn’t around back then, for he could have solved the mystery of the death of Mary-Evelyn Devereau.

On Fridays, sometimes I accompany Mrs. Davidow when she goes into La Porte to do the weekend shopping for the hotel. She goes to town usually twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays, and it’s understood between us that I can go with her on Fridays. It’s a funny thing about Mrs. Davidow: although a lot of the time she’s like a tree across my path and makes my life a misery, there are these little pockets of pleasantness when we get on very well together—much better than she and Ree-Jane get on, and I think this is painful to her. So Mrs. Davidow and I ride into town, sometimes laughing about some crazy La Porte person or other, or maybe something one of the guests has done; then she goes about her grocery business with her long list, and I go about mine.

My favorite business is always with Sheriff DeGheyn. Sometimes we sit in his office in the courthouse talking about one thing or another. Other times we might go into the Rainbow Café for a soda and coffee. But usually we walk around town, me doing most of the talking, the
Sheriff doing most of the listening. And a lot of the talking for a long time has been about Mary-Evelyn Devereau.

I had put the questions to him about the dress, and the distance between the boat and the body, and a couple of other questions. Not all of the details of the body’s discovery and the subsequent “investigation” (if you can call it that) were told me by my mother; most of them I got from going back into the archives in the
Conservative
offices. Mr. Gumbel, the editor-in-chief, thought it quite unusual that someone my age would be interested in an almost half-century-old death, and made a lot of tired jokes about me becoming an investigative reporter. No, I told him, I didn’t want to be a reporter and work for the
Conservative.
That’s Regina Jane Davidow (I told him) who wants to be a reporter, but she says she’s going to write for the
New York Times
or some other fabulous paper, and she’s going to be a foreign correspondent. I said all of this about Ree-Jane, of course, just to see what Mr. Gumbel would say, because Ree-Jane had written some tiny little thing once and Mr. Gumbel had accepted it for publication. He had accepted it when Lola Davidow got him drunk (and herself also) one night and foisted it on him. Well, it didn’t take up much space buried there in the back with a lot of advertisements for the feed store and so forth. But if there was one person who knew the limits of Regina Davidow’s writing ability, it was Mr. Gumbel. And he snorted down his nose when I told him Ree-Jane was going to be a foreign correspondent. She’ll get as far as Hebrides, was all he said.

But he was very helpful in showing me where to look for reports on Mary-Evelyn. He remembered the drowning, but vaguely, as he was young himself, about my mother’s age. The longest report I could find was a triple-column with a picture of Mary-Evelyn at the top. The reporter’s account didn’t tell me much that I hadn’t already heard. There was a detailed description of Spirit Lake and the dock, but I figured that was just to take up space. (The
Conservative
has never been known for the originality of its reporters.) The picture was of a pretty but very sad-looking girl with silky hair in a beautifully sewn dress. I was tempted to take this account to put among my other valuables. I looked around to see if anyone was watching, and no one was, for no one else was around. I guess they had better things to do than hang around watching me. But as Mr. Gumbel had been so helpful, I left the account where it belonged. I know Mr. Gumbel wondered why I was so all-fired interested in it.

The Sheriff, I know, wonders why, too. But he gives me credit for having a good reason. And he always gives a lot of thought to my questions. On Fridays, as we work the meters on Second Street, I talk to him about Mary-Evelyn. And he takes off his visored cap, wipes his forearm back over his forehead, and fits the cap on again, all the while slowly chewing the Teaberry gum I’ve given him. The Sheriff has the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. They’re baked blue, as if they’ve been fired in a kiln. “That’s really a possibility,” he’ll say, of some point or other I’m making about Mary-Evelyn. He’ll say it as he pulls out his spiral notebook and makes a note to himself.

On this particular Friday, we walked on, slowly. Up ahead, Helene Baum, the doctor’s wife, was plowing towards us. Towards the Sheriff, I should say. Helene Baum was La Porte’s biggest troublemaker. She always had some complaint about someone or something—a person, a dog, a cat, a bench by the bus stop. Probably, she’d just seen the parking ticket we’d left under her windshield wiper. The Sheriff took my arm and we walked across the street to continue our parking-meter ticketing on the other side.

Helene Baum crossed the street too. Walking behind us was a wall of Friday shoppers, and they blocked us from her view just long enough for the Sheriff to grab my arm again and pull me into the nearest door. It happened to be our favorite place, the Rainbow Café.

The Rainbow is owned and operated by a woman people just call “Shirl” who is well known for her ways with customers. You get the same impression from her as from Lola Davidow, and that is that their places of business are private residences and the customers are more like intruders. Between Mrs. Davidow and Shirl there is no love lost, especially since Shirl outright stole my mother’s recipe for Angel Pie and sells it right and left. I’d love to see Mrs. Davidow and Shirl duke it out right there on Second Street.

The person I especially like who works in the Rainbow is Maud Chadwick. Maud Chadwick is the sort of person you don’t mind seeing when you don’t want to see anyone. And a lot of the time I don’t want to. (Mrs. Davidow tells me I’m “moody,” and I always think that’s pretty funny, considering the source.)

The Sheriff really likes Maud Chadwick, I can tell. They are a lot alike underneath, although on the surface very different. Maud appears to be quite shy, except with a very few people like the Sheriff and me. But since I’m only twelve, I suppose she can feel fairly easy around
me. Kids like her. She doesn’t have that uppity manner that most adults put on for children.

I have always thought Maud Chadwick has a kind of pixie look, like the fairies in my old
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens
book, which I don’t read anymore, of course, but I sometimes look at the silvery-blue illustrations, just to see if they are as I remember them. As I said, Maud has that sort of look. Her eyes are wide-spaced and her mouth hooks up at the corners in an expression like a little kid’s. Maud is the only adult I call by a first name, for I have received strict instructions from my mother not to use adults’ first names. But since Maud waits tables (something else we have in common) and has to wear a little name tag on her dress, it’s only natural that everyone uses her first name—just as they called Shirley “Shirl” and Charlene “Charlene.”

There are hand-lettered signs tacked up on the wall of each wooden booth, instructing the customers how many have to be in a party before the booth can be occupied. These signs seem to change constantly, depending on Shirl’s mood. Most of the time, three people are needed to occupy one booth. But two people are permitted to take up one of her precious booths if she’s in a good mood. At one point when she’d been on a real rampage there had to be four in the party to get a booth to themselves. And
one
person, well, occasionally some poor soul who doesn’t know the rules tries to sit in a booth
alone
, and that’s the last you ever see of him or her. That’s the truth. Shirl is always saying around the cigarette dangling from her mouth that she isn’t about to play host to the homeless of La Porte.

But there are days when Shirl has to be absent from the Rainbow for one reason or another. She does her shopping in Hebrides two or three times a month, and regular as clockwork has her appointment at the Prime Cut (a poor name, I always thought, for a beauty shop). When Shirl isn’t there, Maud Chadwick always lets me have a booth to myself. On days when I figure Shirl isn’t going to be at the Rainbow, I take my notebook with me into town. I often walk the two miles from the hotel into La Porte, sometimes accompanied by Ree-Jane. Once in town, Ree-Jane goes off looking for new worlds to conquer, maybe going into the other beauty parlor (the Hair and Gone) for a makeover, and comes out looking like the neon sign above Arturo’s diner; or sometimes she drifts into the courthouse and the Sheriff’s office.

As for me, I slide into a booth, usually the one at the back of the café, and set up shop. I sit there writing, sometimes about the people
at the counter when I finish with the ones in my head. At some point, Maud will walk back and set a bowl of chili before me. Oh, that chili! I cannot explain its appeal to me, and I’m sure any real chili expert would find it much too watery and bland. I tear the cellophane from the cracker packages and crumble the crackers all over the surface. I don’t think I would like this chili if I ate it at the hotel, or at school, or anywhere else except sitting in a back booth at the Rainbow.

And I love the booths, too, despite the signs. They’re made of dark wood, the entire booth, including the table between the high-backed benches, backs so high I can’t see over the top, so that if someone approaches, or I want to check out something, I have to peer around the side. I guess that adds to the island-like isolation of the booth, and I like that.

I also talk to Maud about Mary-Evelyn Devereau and the whole odd story. Maud isn’t a native of La Porte, and even if she were, isn’t nearly old enough to remember the Devereau business. Yet she shows a lot of interest. Sometimes she sits with me in my booth and has a cup of coffee and a cigarette.

“Don’t you think it’s kind of funny the police were notified at six a.m.?” Maud asked once.

I thought about this for a moment, sipping my cherry Coke. “Well, I guess that’s when they found out she was gone. Or wasn’t back.”

“Does anyone check to see if you’re in bed before six a.m.?”

“No.” I didn’t bother to add that nobody checked to see if I was in bed at six, nine, or midnight. “But why would they lie to the police?”

The question had no answer, of course, and Maud knew it, and we both sat in silence and reflected on it: Why would they lie? The “they” in question were the Devereaus, the aunts with whom Mary-Evelyn lived. People had known very little about them; a lot that got gossiped around was pure speculation—stories have a way of growing up around women living alone as they did.

One thing that people did know—because they could hear it—was that they loved music, especially opera, especially
Tannhäuser.
Marge Byrd told me this. Marge is knowledgeable about music, although she hadn’t been well acquainted with the Devereaus either, having been about the same age as my mother back then. And now, I supposed. But even as a little girl she’d been steeped in music, for her family was very musical and she inherited this inclination. I have always envied those who, because of their upbringing, inherit a love
for art or music or books. All I inherited was good breeding. Oh, my mother likes to read a lot, so I like it too. But what my brother and I were brought up to cherish was not Wagner or Mozart or Shakespeare or Rembrandt, but Emily Post.

Anyway, Marge let me have a few of her old records to play on the ancient wind-up Victrola I had found up in the garage. I would sit in the Pink Elephant playing
Tannhäuser
and the aria sung by the Elisabeth character and picture the house at Spirit Lake when the Devereaus all lived there. The lake gray and cold, a mist swirling above it or rising from it, and no sound except for the faint slap of water over the little falls off to the right, and all of it informed by the voice of whichever of the sisters (I have since found out there were four, not three) had a voice singing Elisabeth’s song from
Tannhäuser.

Or else I walk the half-mile to Spirit Lake, stand there, usually at dusk, and hear the music in my mind. The aria from that opera drifts from the great big gray-shingled house and floats along the surface of the water, weaving in and around the water lilies and the tangled grass in which (I can’t help this) I often see the small figure of Mary-Evelyn floating.

I find all of this eerie and frightening and spectacular—the empty house, the misty cold lake, the music. It is plain spectacular. I have a strong imagination.

“Unlumbered by reality,” Sheriff DeGheyn says to us. “The two of you.” He was speaking of me and Maud, for Maud occasionally joins us on our meter-checking mornings and walks along.