Jack and Susan in 1933 (22 page)

She stared at him.

The tiny bell clanged again, and this time the conflagration seemed to be somewhere behind Jack's brilliant cheeks.

“What would that reason be?” asked Jack in a strangled voice.

Barbara paused a moment before answering. “
Anyone
would think that you had paid the woman to do the deed in order to get at the inheritance through me. And that you had to make certain she wasn't arrested, so that you wouldn't be implicated. After all, I'm a very rich young woman now, and rich young women are a good deal rarer in 1933 than they were in 1923. You paid Susan Dodge to murder my father—that's what even an
un
suspicious mind might think.”

A suspicious mind, thought Jack, might think that he was doing it merely because he was falling in love with Susan Bright Dodge.

“In any case,” said Jack, “I'm going up to Albany and look around for a few days. And I'd like you to come with me.”

“I'll stay here and look after Harmon.”

“I'm not sure Harmon needs looking after.”

“Of course he does, and I'm the one to do it.”

Jack started to protest, and then he realized he wouldn't mind if all Harmon's pleasures throughout the rest of eternity were stymied, canceled, punished, or turned into bitter ashes by Barbara's “looking after” him. In fact, he hoped that she managed to make his life quite miserable. Harmon deserved it.

“I think that's probably a good idea,” said Jack. “For you to stay here and look after Harmon.”

The bell on Barbara's slipper abruptly stopped its annoying peal.

“I don't like it when you say that,” said Barbara suspiciously. “It means you're up to something.”

“I am. I need to borrow a few dollars from you for gasoline.”

“Absolutely not. I'm not going to stop you from making a fool of yourself. But I'm not going to pay you to do it either.”

“Barbara, the banks aren't going to open again till Monday at the earliest. I don't have a penny—no, actually I have four pennies, but that's all—and all I need is two dollars to get to Albany.”

“Beg for it,” said Barbara, getting up.

“Barbara,” said Jack, ashen with anger. “I will not beg you for anything. That is not what marriage is about.”

“Oh, I didn't mean for you to beg me,” she said, going out of the room. “I meant beg on the street.”

The chiming bells of her slippers muted as she walked toward the bedroom, and when she slammed the door, they were silent altogether.

Jack looked around the room for something to destroy.

He saw Barbara's pocketbook—flat and fashioned of the skin of an infant alligator, whose reptilian head was pushed beneath a kind of miniature croquet hook for a clasp.

Jack opened Barbara's purse and went through it. He found over a hundred and forty dollars in cash. That was more legal tender than Rockefeller himself probably had at that moment. Jack started to count off five one-dollar bills, but then he decided against taking the money.

Instead, Jack took the two tickets to the opera that he and Barbara were to have attended that evening. It was
La Forza del Destino
. That seemed appropriate.

He had already packed a bag, and he left without saying good-bye to Barbara. He drove over to York Avenue, to the gasoline station where the attendant— Jack had remembered—was always whistling Verdi. In exchange for the orchestra circle tickets Jack got a full tank of gasoline, an extra two cans for the trunk just in case, and a sparkling windshield. The thrilled attendant wanted both to kiss Jack and give him a new tire, but Jack said that he already had a spare.

He drove to Albany, and was at the Cliffs by evening.

Grace Grace met him at the door. “Miss Barbara called,” said Grace, “and said that if I was to let you inside, she'd fire me and Richard both.”

Jack grinned. “She found out about
The Force of Destiny
…”

“Miss Barbara has known about
that
sort of thing a great long while,” remarked Grace, and she wasn't wrong either. “But she has another thing coming if she thinks I am turning
you
away, Mr. Beaumont. In fact, as soon as I knew you were coming, I put a chicken in the pot.”

Jack took a deep breath. “Perhaps I should just stay down at the Quarry,” said Jack. “I'd hate to get you and Richard in trouble with Barbara. After all, the house is hers now, and she's paying your salaries.”

“Quarry's shut up, Mr. Beaumont,” said Grace. “Now that poor Mrs. Dodge is gone and Louise was let go.” She took a confidential step forward. “Richard and me brought Louise back here,” she said in a low voice. “No jobs to be had these days. Not for those willing to work, not for those needing to work, not for those who'll die without work even…”

“I know,” said Jack.

“Mrs. Dodge telephoned long distance this morning,” said Grace suddenly.

“Oh yes?” said Jack.

“She is in Reno now, and wanted us to know she got there safe. She gave me her address and the number of the telephone there just in case—”

“Just in case what?”

“Just in case anybody was to ask,” she said with a grin.

Jack blushed.

So as to avoid trouble for the Graces, and more particularly to avoid another dose of embalmed chicken, Jack didn't stay at the Cliffs. He didn't stay at the Quarry because it was closed up, and more particularly because he knew the place would remind him entirely too much of Susan.

Charging the expense to his firm, Jack spent the night in a hotel in Albany, frequented principally by the mistresses of state legislators. He could tell this by the number of politicians who came in alone, tipped the staff, and waltzed alone up familiar stairs, and by the number of beautiful women who ate in cozy pairs and trios in the dining room.

Next day he visited the detective who had been attached to the Marcellus Rhinelander murder case.

“A great deal, everything possible,” was what was being done in the case.

“Nothing, nothing at all” was what was new in the investigation.

“No one, no one at all” was who was suspected of the murder.

Jack stayed two more days in Albany, not because there was anything for him to do there, but because he knew that he would be returning to the Cliffs for the sole purpose of getting Susan's address from Grace. If he went the next day, he knew how deep would be his blush when he stammered out his request.

So he spent a full day wandering the streets of Albany, falling asleep in the visitors' gallery of the state senate after only twenty minutes of a speech on the dangers of Bolshevism under the new Socialist leadership in the country, staring into shop windows and dangerously thinking of gifts to buy not his wife but a dark-haired woman whose pale skin was reddening under the Nevada sun, eating alone in the hotel dining room and trying to overhear the conversation of the mistresses of the state legislators.

The next day he went back to the Cliffs, and Richard Grace appeared.

“Just wanted you to know that I was on my way back to the city,” said Jack lamely.

“I wouldn't have kept you out of here either,” said Richard Grace, who still looked as mournful as on the day his employer died.

“I know that,” said Jack.

There followed an embarrassed silence.

It was made more embarrassing for Jack by the fact that he gradually turned beet-red in its duration.

“Are you all right, Mr. Beaumont?” Richard Grace said finally.

“Do you have Mrs. Dodge's address?” Jack blurted out.

Richard Grace looked astonished for a moment. “Yes,” he answered after a pause.

“Well, could I have it?”

Richard Grace blinked at him.

The beets in Jack's cheeks looked as if they'd just been thrown into boiling water. They got redder than you'd have believed possible a moment before. They turned a kind of cheap religious purple.

Finally, even Jack thought he might have some sort of attack if he did not bring this business to a close.

“Please, Richard, give me Susan Dodge's address in Reno! So I can write her! So I can help her in any way I can! Because I probably love her!”

Oh God
, he thought.
What have I just said?

Richard Grace stared.

“You have it already,” he said at last.

“What?”

“Mr. MacIsaac came by yesterday and said you'd sent him to get Mrs. Dodge's address. So Grace gave it to him. The telephone number, too.”

“Mr. MacIsaac?”

“The private detective, I believe, who was here the day Mr. Rhinelander was killed.”

“I didn't send him,” said Jack.

“Then perhaps Grace shouldn't have—”

“It doesn't matter,” said Jack. “Just give it to me now.”

“Of course,” said Richard. “I'll be right back.”

He brought the address a moment later, written on a sheet of Marcellus's personal stationery.

“Thank you,” said Jack. “About what I said earlier—”

Richard shook his head. “Mr. Beaumont, you'd be a fool not to love that woman.”

Jack laughed, and didn't blush for once. “No, I'm not a fool.”

“However,” Richard pointed out, “you did marry Miss Barbara…”

On the drive back from Albany to the city, Jack wondered about Malcolm MacIsaac and why he should want Susan's address in Nevada. Not for his own sake, of course; he must have been hired by someone.

By Harmon? Because of the divorce proceedings, perhaps.

By Barbara? Because Barbara wanted to stir up trouble about her father's murder, perhaps.

By the murderer? Who wanted to make sure he didn't lose sight of a possible lamb to sacrifice on the altar of justice, if more evidence were ever discovered in the case, perhaps.

But maybe MacIsaac
did
want the address for himself.