Jack and Susan in 1933 (23 page)

Because, perhaps, MacIsaac himself was the murderer.

Jack ran over some small animal that had hurtled itself out into the road. Then, looking behind him to see what life he had snuffed out, Jack nearly rammed into the automobile coming toward him. Then, swerving to avoid that, he narrowly missed flipping the car over in a ditch. Finally, he struck another small animal—possibly the anguished mate of the first.

At last, however, Jack regained control of the Ford. But during that brief excitement of two animal deaths framing two very near automobile crashes, Jack had become utterly convinced that Malcolm MacIsaac was the murderer of Marcellus Rhinelander. The detective was at the Cliffs that day. He had parked his automobile next to the touring car. He must have had ample opportunity to make the simple cuts in the brake cables. He was a wily, conniving, scurrilous, slimy scoundrel, and wouldn't have given a second thought to the moral question behind a planned murder, and wouldn't have suffered a moment's regret over the fact that he had done it.

The only difficulty, of course, was that Jack knew of no reason why Malcolm MacIsaac should want Marcellus Rhinelander dead so much that he'd risk the electric chair for getting him out of the way.

In the scheme of things, this seemed a secondary question.

The primary question was Susan Bright Dodge, and whether she was in any danger from the real murderer.

It wouldn't do to take chances. In his head Jack composed a telegram:

IMPERATIVE THAT YOU IMMEDIATELY SEE THE BLOSSOMS IN THE NEVADA DESERT STOP LEAVE NO FORWARDING ADDRESS STOP TELL NO ONE STOP TRUST ME STOP DESTROY THIS STOP

JAB

She'd be safe at her cousin's, and even if Blossom's last name were not Bright, Jack would find her somehow. But he did not want Susan to remain anyplace where Malcolm MacIsaac could find her.

Feverishly, he parked the car and ran inside the apartment building. He didn't wait for the elevator, but raced up the stairs. He fumbled with the key in the lock, calling all the while, “Barbara! Barbara!”

He couldn't get the key to turn in the lock, but it didn't matter. Barbara threw open the door. She was stunningly dressed and made up, wearing a yellow crepe suit with a shined bosom and a yellow hat with a wide black brim.

“Barbara,” Jack said breathlessly, “I know who murdered your father.”

“I do, too,” she said. “I'll say hello when I see her.”

“What?”

“I said, quite plainly, I believe, that I will give Susan your regards when I see her.
Fondest
and
most loving
regards are the words I think I may use.”

“When you see her where?” said Jack, forgetting to protest that Susan
wasn't
the murderer he had been talking about or to wonder much about the meaning behind
fondest
and
most loving
.

“When I see her in Reno.”

“Why are you going to Reno?” asked Jack, mystified.

“Why does anyone go to Reno?” Barbara replied, picking up a small suitcase Jack hadn't noticed before.

He stared at the suitcase. He stared at Barbara.

“I'm getting a divorce.”

SUSAN ONCE MORE

R
ENO IS THE
Biggest Little City in the World. Even if it isn't, everyone believes so because of the relentlessness with which everyone in Reno makes the claim.

Certainly, for a city its size—about twelve thousand permanent residents—it has the biggest courthouse in the world. Reno's courthouse would probably do for all five boroughs of New York.

For a city its size, Reno has the greatest number of gambling casinos and other places of doubtful resort. More than would do for any five sovereign nations of Europe you could pick at random.

For a city its size, Reno has the greatest number of temporary residents at any one time—two or three times its stable population—than any other place in the world except perhaps Mecca. But whereas the streets of Mecca are generally filled with righteous Islamic men come to worship at the holiest shrine of Allah, Reno's streets are filled with the unhappy, the disappointed, or the treacherous wives of America.

Consequently, Reno is a city with three principal components—a massive courthouse whose principal business is that of record-keeping for cases of divorce; a web of gambling casinos and nightclubs whose clientele is an amalgam of the rich and unhappy of every American city, town, and village; and street after dusty street after depressing street of rooming houses whose tenants never stay more or less than six weeks by the court calendar.

Susan took a room in a boardinghouse belonging to Mrs. Bertha Pocket, a large woman in middle middle age with a thick waist and a pickled countenance. She had come to Nevada for the six weeks' residence necessary for a divorcement of marriage certificate, and had so far fulfilled sixteen years of that brief requirement. Her ex-husband had married again, and again unhappily, and had sent his second wife to Mrs. Pocket's boardinghouse with his recommendation. That lady had stayed on in Reno as well, and now owned a small nightclub of her own, and was splendid friends with the first Mrs. Pocket.

The boardinghouse was a vast, rambling, old Victorian house, with peeling paint on the outside, and on the inside, dusty walls, dusty rugs, dusty furniture, and enough dusty knickknacks to fill a hundred curiosity shops and make them all seem uncommonly dusty. From her dusty room Susan could look through a dusty window and see the courthouse where she established her residency in Nevada. In anticipation of six weeks spent in that large, empty, dry state, she filled out a petition of divorce against Mr. Harmon Squire Dodge, of Albany, New York, and New York, New York.

After two days Susan decided Reno must be the most boring and expensive place in the world. The rent for her room in Mrs. Pocket's boardinghouse was triple the rent for her flat in New York, and it was every bit as inconvenient, small, and unpleasant. It was, moreover, a great deal dustier.

The boardinghouse was filled with women in her straits. Susan hoped she didn't flatter herself when she considered that the similarity ended there.

The other women, rich and supercilious, deplored the exigencies of the system that condemned them to the mercy of Mrs. Pocket and her ilk. Or they were loud and determined to run up as large a bill as possible for their ex-husbands to struggle to pay. On one side of Susan was a woman from Pennsylvania, suicidally depressive over the prospect of losing her husband, the only man she'd ever seen with his shirt off. On the other side of her was a woman who knew every nightclub in Reno, and the maître d's by name, and whose own bed hadn't been turned down since she'd arrived four days before Susan.

It was this young woman, Esther Ladd, who tried to persuade Susan to go out to a nightclub her first night in Reno. According to Mrs. Pocket, Esther Ladd's husband was a notorious criminal in Pasadena. Esther Ladd not only looked the type who would marry a notorious criminal, but would marry another one once she'd divorced the first. She was what was known as a bottle blonde, because that's where the color came from.

“Thank you,” said Susan, “but I'm very tired.”

“You're not tired,” said Esther boldly, “you're miserable. You're depressed. You're pale blue from the bottom up. You can't get him out of your mind.”

“Him?” said Susan, wondering how Esther Ladd, who was from Pasadena, knew about Jack Beaumont.

“Your husband.”

“Oh,
him
. No, I can't,” Susan lied, “but despite that fact, I'm very tired, and I really don't want to go out.”

So she stayed in, and shared a little supper with Mrs. Pocket, who told her more than she wanted to know about all the women who were currently in residence. Then she walked Scotty and Zelda around several blocks, and was depressed by the number of boardinghouses just like Mrs. Pocket's. Each, she was sure, was jammed to the rafters with women either wanting or being forced into a divorce.

After breakfast she lingered about the parlor till it was nine o'clock and the only bookstore in town opened. She walked over to it, bought a novel, brought it back to the boardinghouse, started it, stopped in the middle to have lunch with Mrs. Pocket, who told her more than she wanted to know about the last set of women who'd stayed with her, walked Scotty and Zelda again, but took a different route and found even
more
boardinghouses, came back, finished the novel, checked her watch, and discovered it was too late to go back and buy another book. Thus, on her second night in town, Susan visited the Owl Club, owned by the second Mrs. Pocket, Olita.

The Owl Club was just like the clubs in New York and Albany—too small, too crowded, too loud, too expensive, and totally insufficient as a means to acquire either pleasure or mere forgetfulness. Susan sat at a tiny table between Esther Ladd and the suicidal lady in the room next to hers.

“I'm sorry!” Susan shouted above the din of the music, the hysterical laughter, and the other shouted conversations, “but I don't think I ever heard your name!”

“Oh, don't bother,” said the suicidal lady, “my divorce comes through tomorrow and I'm leaving on the four o'clock train for Mexico City.”

“Why Mexico City?” shouted Esther.

“Why not?” shouted the suicidal lady.

Susan saw women she remembered from New York. She had sung for some at the Villa Vanity. Others she'd been introduced to by Harmon. Still others had studiously and pointedly
avoided
being introduced to her by Harmon.

Here in Reno, however, they were all her best friends.

They saw her from across the room. They smiled and caught her eye. They waved and raised their eyebrows.
You, too, I see
. They waded over through the crowd. They leaned down closely and confidentially between Susan and the suicidal lady bound for Mexico City.

“So surprised to see
you
here,” they all said in a tone that belied all surprise. “But it happens to the best of us.”

Many of them added, “Are you here to sing?”

“No,” replied Susan invariably.

One who had always avoided being introduced to Susan went to Olita Pocket and informed her that a well-known café chanteuse from New York was in the house, and if called upon, would probably be more than happy to favor the crowd with a song or two.

Susan was prevailed upon.

Susan refused politely.

The dreadful woman from New York smiled a simpering smile of entreaty. It was not surprising to Susan that this woman had once professed undying admiration for Barbara Beaumont's hats.

Olita Pocket pressed, saying that Susan owed it to Mr. Pocket's first wife, Bertha, because not everyone in Reno would take in a woman with even one pet, much less two.

Esther Ladd pressed, maybe not because she wanted to hear Susan sing, but because if Susan went up before the microphone, there was a very handsome dark-haired man who had indicated by certain movements of his eyes that he would take Susan's place at the tiny table.

Susan wouldn't be persuaded.

Then the suicidal lady leaned over and whispered, “Do you know that song—‘Don't Ever Leave Me'?”

“Yes,” said Susan with misgiving.

“Please,” said the suicidal lady, “please sing it for me.”

Susan took a deep breath. She couldn't refuse. She got up. Her identity had been spread around the room already, and her reputation for any number of things inflated as dangerously as Roosevelt was going to inflate the economy. She conferred with the leader of the orchestra. She was introduced by Olita in such a way as to suggest that she was a combination of Fanny Brice, Eva Le Gallienne, and Mahatma Gandhi. Susan smiled and gave the bow of an amateur, not a professional. The lights dimmed, and Susan began to sing.

Don't ever leave me, now that you're here
Here is where you belong.
Everything seems so right when you're near,
When you're away, it's all wrong.