Murder in Mount Holly (8 page)

The room was covered with blood. Sheets and curtains were torn and hanging in shreds, the mirror was shattered, and on the floor lay the bank guard, a large knife-handle sticking out of his back. Bloody handprints were smeared all over the walls and floor. In the corner, a murderous look in his eye, was Juan. His shirt was torn and bloody, his hair bristled. He glowered.

“Dobble cross me! Dat agli gringo bestid don't know what heet heem. I been seeting that share for two jowers.”

“Warren!” screamed Miss Ball. He turned. Mr. Gibbon took aim and fired. The impact sent Juan into the wall like a swatted fly. Then he fell, his head making a loud bump on the floor.

“There's two commies out of the way,” said Mr. Gibbon. “Get a mop! See if anyone heard! Lock the front door! This is it, boys! It's war! We won a battle but we haven't won the war yet! Fall to, get this mess cleaned up, load the guns!”

Neither Miss Ball nor Mrs. Gneiss moved a muscle. They looked at Mr. Gibbon with horror.

“Hurry up!” said Mr. Gibbon. “You all
dee
f
?”

11

Mrs. Gneiss's empty suitcases came in handy for storing the dismembered bodies of Juan and the bank guard. At first, Mrs. Gneiss was all in favor of getting the bank guard's ­fingerprints on the gun and calling the police. They would tell the police that there had been a terrible fight between the two men. Juan had stabbed the guard and then the guard had shot Juan for stabbing him. Tit for tat, so to speak. It made some sense. But Mr. Gibbon saw that if the guard had been stabbed he wouldn't have been able to shoot Juan. Or if Juan were shot the guard would have survived. The murder was without precedent if it was to be believed. They gloomily hacked up the bodies with Mr. Gibbon's hunting knife, stuffed them into Mrs. Gneiss's suitcases and put the suitcases and the clothes into the attic. Miss Ball's Stay-Kleen and Surfy Suds took care of the gore on the rug.

Good Old Providence had done them a turn. The neighbors had miraculously not heard “The Fracas,” as Miss Ball called the double murder. The three comrades had stayed up all night keeping a vigil over the bodies in case the police should come. Then they would have said, yes, we killed the lousy commies. But the police never came. And just as well, the two ladies thought. Mr. Gibbon thought differently: he was convinced that Juan and the bank guard were “in cahoots” (the bank guard more than anyone was a stoolie and a cheat, working for coons as he did). Mr. Gibbon was, as he put it, “pleased as punch” to have plugged Juan, a man he suspected to have been spying on him for nearly a year.

But they had to make short-range plans. The morning after the fracas the three sat around the table (the news was on, but spoke only of the gallstones and the war, both with fervor; the disappearance of a certain bank guard was not mentioned). They looked haggard and mussed, having stayed up all night keeping their vigil. They tried to think of a way to cover up the murder for the time being. They knew that afterward, when the truth about the Mount Holly Trust Company was known (a Com­munist Front Organization filled with black pinkoes), the murder would be laughed off and their fortune would be secure. Mean­while, they would have to think of a way to pacify the bank guard's wife. Unless he had been lying when he told Miss Ball that he had to take the groceries home to his wife; maybe he didn't have a wife at all. But how could they find out?

It was Miss Ball that came up with the solution. Without a word she darted upstairs to the suitcases. She came back almost immediately, seated herself as before and dropped a blood-stained wallet on the table. Gingerly—because the plastic wallet was still sticky with the gentleman's blood—Miss Ball picked through it. Out tumbled membership cards, wedding pictures, snapshots of little kids with beach pails, and finally the prize: a picture of the man himself and a woman—obviously his wife; she looked grim and stood apart from him—who was leaning on the very same umbrella that was now resting against the wall upstairs in Miss Ball's attic. On the back of the photograph was printed: “Benny's Fotoshop—Close to You in the Lobby of the Barracuda Beach Hotel,” and under that in ballpoint: “Baracuta Beach, 1962.” There was also an identification card which read:

Harold Potts, Jr.

1217 Palm Drive

Mount Holly

In case of accident please notify a priest and

Mrs. Ethel Potts

(address as above)

Harold's blood type, a little ragged card with a picture of Jesus on the front and a prayer on the back, and a relic of a tiny piece of cloth that had “touched a piece of the True Cross” sealed in plastic, were also among the valuables. Mr. Gibbon searched in vain for a party card. He came up with a few suspicious-looking documents, but remarked, “He'd be a fool if he carried the thing around with him.”

Miss Ball paid no attention to Mr. Gibbon's investigation. She had found what she wanted.

Dear Ethel (Miss Ball wrote),

I wonder if you remember me? We spent those lovely days together at the Barracuda Beach Hotel back in '62. We met briefly during a bridge game. (I can't remember if we were playing, watching, or just passing by the bridge tables—goodness how the memory starts playing tricks as the years go by!)

To make a long story short I met dear old Harold just yesterday at the Mount Holly Trust Company—well, I tell you Harold just couldn't stop talking! We came to my house for tea and just talked and talked and talked of the wonderful days we spent at the Barracuda Beach Hotel back in '62. Harold said he had a touch of gastritis and wanted to go straight to bed, couldn't walk so he said. Well, here it is 10 in the
am
and he's still sleeping like a baby! I called the bank and told them he wouldn't be in this morning. I think his tummy needs a rest, frankly Ethel, and I just hate the thought of waking him up, so peaceful he looks. I think he should be improving in the next few days and I'll be sure to have him call you when he wakes up.

I just wanted to let you know that he's safe in the hands of an old friend and that there's no need to get all flustered and call the Missing Persons Bureau! Ha-ha! And that I look forward to more happy days like the ones we spent at the Barracuda Beach Hotel back in '62.

Your old friend,

Nettie

“Perfect,” was all Mr. Gibbon said.

“I feel as if I know her,” Miss Ball said.

The letter was sent special delivery (“What's thirty cents,” Mrs. Gneiss said), without a return address, in a plain envelope. Mr. Gibbon estimated that it would be in Ethel Potts's hands before noon.

“What about Warren's nearest of kin,” Mrs. Gneiss asked.

“His nearest of kin? Well, that's
me,
I guess, and
I
know where he is!” Miss Ball said. She did not say it with regret; but there was no joy in her voice either. Miss Ball did not quite know what to think about Juan's death. He had been very pleasant—if a bit jumpy—at first. Only lately had he been asking for more pin-money. He had also recently demanded to move in with Miss Ball, but she had discouraged that. He had a good heart. He had bought things for Miss Ball. He was constantly surprising her with little mementos like the framed picture of Clark Gable or the doilies—he adored doilies for a reason Miss Ball could not even guess at. He had “been with” Miss Ball for about ten months and had never once shown the sort of jealous rage that had prompted him to stab Harold Potts to death.

Juan would have died violently sooner or later. It's in the blood. Better he died in the privacy of Miss Ball's own home than in the gutter. And then maybe Mr. Gibbon was right: maybe Juan
was
a communist. He was certainly dark, a Puerto Rican, there was no denying that! Mr. Gibbon was more familiar with the You-Know-Whos than Miss Ball. She knew that. He knew what he was doing. So goodbye, Juan,
hasta luego
and sleep well, Miss Ball thought.

Meanwhile, Mr. Gibbon was getting impatient. “An itchy trigger-finger,” he said. Sooner or later Ethel Potts would start wondering who in Sam Hill was Nettie and might turn the letter over to the police. This would ruin Mr. Gibbon's timing. Floor plan or no floor plan, they would have to rob the bank quickly—at least in the next week or so. Here Herbie was out of boot camp, on his way to the front lines—probably he had nailed a few dozen commies already. A greenhorn! And here was Mr. Gibbon with only these two rather unimportant fellow travellers to his credit.

Mrs. Gneiss agreed. She said she was getting edgy. She didn't enjoy getting edgy. If the robbery was to be done, it should be done as speedily as possible, so that they could all relax and enjoy the rewards and fame the robbery would bring them. She for one didn't want Ethel Potts going haywire and accusing them of killing her husband. But as usual she said nothing more. Charlie knew best. She would wait until he gave the word. The whole thing was his idea, he was the brains and should make the decisions.

“I'd just like to have a look around the bank tomorrow before we go ahead with it,” Mr. Gibbon said. Miss Ball should not come along. They didn't want to arouse any suspicions. He and Mrs. Gneiss would just sort of mosey around the bank, seeing what they could see and getting the general layout of the place and, in short, “casing the joint.”

Miss Ball said that suited her fine. They sat around the house reading and puttering around for the rest of the afternoon. Mr. Gibbon attended to his long-neglected paper bags; Mrs. Gneiss watched TV. But Miss Ball sat and scowled. Her brow grew more and more furrowed as the afternoon wore on. By five o'clock she was genuinely distressed. Something had just occurred to her. No one took any notice of her, not even when she scribbled a little reminder on the notepad, which she always carried in her apron.

12

Miss Ball kept looking into store windows. Before each one she paused, touched at her hair, pressed her lips together and, reasonably satisfied with the reflection that stared out at her from the foundation garments or baked goods, she walked on toward the doctor's office.

She had begun to worry. She had read of a man who woke up one morning with the beginnings of a sixth finger; she had heard of a lung ballooning to twice its normal size when it had to do the work of two. And there were tonsils, adenoids, and the appendix, which often grew back if they were not watched properly and nipped, so to speak, in the bud. It was her operation that was making her jittery. How could she be sure that her insides wouldn't grow back when so many other things grew back?

Nature was hard to understand. You clip grass and trim bushes and pluck hairs and what do you get? More grass, stray branches and bushy eyebrows. Miss Ball found that she could not cope with nature. Nature was always ahead of her, ahead of everyone she knew.

Miss Ball had been a farm girl. She could remember seeing her father pushing whole barrows of nourishing dung across rotting boards to the fields. She had peeled potatoes, she had awakened in a musty room covered with a damp quilt. That's how it was when you lived close to the ground. It was damp and you were always kicking plants and dirt back into place, sifting stones, building walls, rocking on the porch and watching the crops fail. This was where Miss Ball learned Mother Nature's spiteful ways.

But her operation had cost her a pretty penny and now, with her childhood thoughts of crabgrass and her recent discovery that lungs ballooned and adenoids reappeared, and—most discouraging of all—that Juan had been extremely, shall we say, virile, and now was dead, Miss Ball could not remember if the doctor had given her a warranty.

She had gotten one with her Snooz-Alarm—it was a big green-edged one-year warranty that looked like a savings bond. And she had gotten one with her hair dryer, her mixer, her vibrator and her juicer. If anything went wrong she didn't have to raise a fuss. She just told the clerk that it was not in working order and she would get a new one, a new dryer or juicer. But she hadn't got a warranty from the doctor.

She had asked herself many times if she needed one and had always decided no. But she had not yet realized her power over men. She had thought she was too old for that sort of thing. She could always reassure herself that Juan was doing it for the money. Was she too old? Harold Potts didn't think so. And that's finally what scared her.

“You look marvellous!” the doctor said with professional enthusiasm as Miss Ball seated herself on the other side of the desk.

“That's the outside you're looking at. It's the inside I'm worried about.”

“There's not much left to worry about,” the doctor said. He was going to say ha-ha, but he changed his mind when he saw the expression on Miss Ball's face. He decided to reassure her. “What I mean is, you're empty. So why worry?”

“Empty? That doesn't sound too medical to me.”

“I try to simplify things for my patients.”

“I'm not stupid, doctor. You can talk plain to me.”

“I'm talking plain, Miss Ball. Now what's wrong?”

“I want a warranty and I want it now.”

“A what?”

“A warranty. I haven't had a wink of sleep for the past two days. All I could think of was my things, the things you say you removed, only God knows whether you did or not.”

“Miss Ball, I'm a medical doctor. I have taken the Hippocratic Oath. Every doctor takes it—it's part of being a doctor.”

“I'll take your word for it,” Miss Ball snapped.

“About the guarantee . . .”

“Warranty.”

“As far as the warranty goes. Why, I can't imagine why you'd want something like that.”

“I have one for my radio, my juicer and everything else.” Miss Ball laughed helplessly, hollowly, for no reason at all. “I was foolish to have the operation without getting it warranteed.”

“You want it warranteed, is that it? That's why you came here today—so I could swear out a warranty?”

“You could have been taking me for a ride.”

“A
ride
?” The doctor aimed the top of his head at Miss Ball. “Do you know what you're saying, Miss Ball? Now you're talking about ethics. Yes you are. You're talking about my ethics!”

“How's a body supposed to know what's going on? You come into the room and stab me with a needle. I fall flat and then you fiddle around for three hours . . .”

“Fiddle around? I take you for a ride to fiddle around, and for this you want a warranty?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I'm a very busy man.”

“I lived on a farm, don't worry.”

“Why should I worry about you living on a farm?”

“Sure,” was all Miss Ball said.

“I want to assure you that I operated on you. I did my level best, as I do with each and every patient. I have not hounded you for the money.”

“You can whistle and wait, for all I care.”

“I have nothing but your health in mind.”

“Don't worry, I've seen things grow back—grass, eyebrows, adenoids. I've seen things go wrong—my toaster, my dryer, my mixer . . .”

“That's a doctor's business—health. We don't try to frighten patients. We are very busy men.”

“Busy my foot. You think you're special, you doctors. That's the trouble with you—you think you're
better
than other people that have to work for a living. You wouldn't know about that, would you? Hard work! Hah! Ever get your hands dirty, real dirty and filthy with hard work?”

“Not that I remember, Miss Ball. I couldn't call myself a doctor if I went around getting . . .”

“And you call yourself a man! Ever wheel a whole barrow of cow manure up a plank? Bet you think it's easy!”

“I never said that wheeling cow manure was easy. It's probably very hard work.”

“Probably,” said Miss Ball in the same tone of voice.

The doctor asked Miss Ball if she thought he was a quack. “You think I'm a quack, don't you?” he asked.

“Who cares what I think. No one cares.”

“I care, Miss Ball. I care a great deal what you think,” the doctor said softly.

“All right, I think you're a quack,” said Miss Ball.

The doctor bit his lip. He said he had been a doctor a long time. He had healed a lot of wounds, not all of them physical. He had seen a lot of people come and go.

Things grow, Miss Ball thought. Things kept growing and there was little or nothing you could do to stop them. It was Mother Nature's way of getting even with the human race. Everyone suffered. Nature liked ugliness and suffering. Nature wanted fat people and failed crops. Nature wouldn't make you lovely and light. She would keep you fat and fertile. Fertile.

Miss Ball leaned toward the doctor. She almost did not have to act scared. She was scared. But she acted scared just the same, and she shook her head from side to side and up and down, and she said very plainly, “Doctor, I want you to know I'm a very frightened person. I never get a wink of sleep any more.”

The doctor reflected and was about to speak. But it was Miss Ball that spoke.

“I think they're growing back, and I want a warranty so they don't.”

When all the words reached the doctor he still did not seem to understand what Miss Ball was saying.

“You think
what
are growing back?”

“My things.”

“You mean your fallopian tubes?”

“Yes,” Miss Ball bit her lip, “those. And the other things you said you took out.”

The doctor started to giggle.

“You think it's funny!”

The doctor could not answer.

“You think human suffering and worry is a big laugh!” Miss Ball began to cry, loudly at first, then worked it down to a whimper. Miss Ball sniffed and dabbed at her cheek with a lace hanky. “Cruel. You're a cruel, cruel man.”

The doctor apologized. He asked Miss Ball to explain what she meant by the warranty.

After a little hesitation Miss Ball told the whole story. She talked about Mother Nature, about weeds that grew all night and were tall in the morning, about lungs and tonsils, about how she had seen Mother Nature kill her father, about her things—how they would be back as sure as shooting. The least the doctor could do was give her a warranty so they wouldn't grow back. She finished with, “. . . I haven't had a good night's sleep for ages.”

The doctor said nothing. He played with his lips for a few moments and stared at the far wall. When Miss Ball thought he was going to laugh once again she started to unfold her hanky. The doctor swiveled his chair back at her and said in a low voice, “I think I understand.”

“What about it?”

“I'll do anything you say.”

“I want you to warranty the operation.”

“I'll do it,” said the doctor. He took out a piece of paper and wrote on it.

“Make it a five-year warranty, like my juicer. Five years is good enough. I'll be satisfied.”

“No, I won't hear of it, Miss Ball. I'll give you a lifetime warranty for that operation of yours.”

“
A lifetime warranty!
Good God,” said Miss Ball. Her mouth hung open. She could not find the words to express her thanks. Just when he seemed about the biggest quack she had ever seen he reached into his skinny heart and came up with a lifetime warranty. It was almost too much to ask. “Golly,” she finally said, “that's the nicest thing anyone ever did for me.”

The doctor handed Miss Ball the piece of paper. He said he had done nothing. Miss Ball protested, and felt like throwing herself at his feet.

On the way out of the office Miss Ball's heart was full of love and life. It pulsed. She felt it thumping there under her brooch and lace like a giant Snooz-Alarm. She was a new woman. Mother Nature could do her worst, could twist nice little tissues into ugly old organs. What did it matter? The wonderful warranty was right there in her handbag.

“When God closes a door he opens a window,” Miss Ball murmured over and over again as she walked home to find out what success Mr. Gibbon and Mrs. Gneiss had had with their looking around the Mount Holly Trust Company. Personally, Miss Ball felt she could rob a thousand banks single-handed.