Secrecy (26 page)

“You people must be starved after driving since six this morning,” she had explained.

Claudia’s well-intentioned hospitality embarrassed Charlotte. Probably it had been a mistake to have Roger come here. The overstocked table and the heartiness of Claudia’s welcome must seem to him that he was being accepted as a lover, suitor, or whatever you wanted to call it.

On the other hand, Bill and Cliff were airing their catalog of worries almost as if they, too, were alone at the table. And that, too, was embarrassing.

Often Bill sighed. She had started to notice that. He was visibly aging. Pity moved in her throat.

Roger, taking quick advantage of a breach in the dialogue, inquired, “Has Charlotte ever shown you a sketch of her plan for your property?”

“No,” Bill said, “but she’s described it. It’s a pretty idea.”

“It’s much more than that. I’m an engineer in the construction business, and while I’m neither an architect nor an artist, I’ve seen enough to be a fairly sound critic, I think. Believe me, Charlotte has something superb in mind. It’s very impressive. Distinctive.”

“I understand. I’m proud of her, and I wish to God we could go ahead with it. It would be a blood transfusion for the town and for us if we could do it. But we can’t.”

Roger interposed. “Perhaps if you showed it around, you might get up a syndicate to finance it.”

“It’s too late for that. Charlotte knows our situation. We owe back taxes, and the only reason Kingsley hasn’t foreclosed on us is that they would be left with Premier Recycling—they’re the tenants—and that crowd is something to cope with, let me tell you. Kingsley would be in the courts for years. It already has been.

“Justice Niles has ordered Premier three times to clean up, and three times has granted them delays,” Bill said.

“Why on earth,” demanded Charlotte, “don’t they just clean up and avoid all the trouble?”

This time it was Roger who replied. “Because it’s cheaper to play along with the delays. They’ll go as far as they want to, then quit, declare bankruptcy, and move on to the next venture, leaving you without a lease or a tenant. That’s how it works. They’ve got nothing to lose; the real money is with the parent company.”

“If I had money, I’d fight them all tooth and claw,” Bill cried, gritting his teeth.

Claudia, who had been silent, remarked quietly, “They also have teeth and claws, strong ones.”

“Have you ever looked at those ancestor companies?” Roger asked. “They’re mostly mob operations, these carters and waste removers, interlocking pyramids of companies.” And when Bill raised his eyebrows, he continued, “My father is in business in Chicago, and once in a great while he’s had to come into contact with this sort of thing. A damned nasty contact it is too.”

“Yes,” Claudia said, “I lived in Chicago once.
Not,” she added hastily, “that Chicago is any worse than any other place.”

“There’s a rumor,” Cliff said, “that the top man in the group that owns Premier is from Chicago and that he’s in town this week, going over the books.”

“Because of the court orders?” asked Claudia.

Cliff shrugged. “I have no idea. I only heard it through the grapevine, anyway. It may not even be true.”

“If he is here, somebody should go to see him,” she said.

“Not without a lawyer and a couple of armed guards,” Roger said with a wry laugh. “These people, if that’s who they are, are smart and tough. And I mean smart and tough.”

There was a long pause. A feeling of weariness was in the air. Charlotte saw that the three who sat opposite Roger and herself were approaching the limit of their endurance. And in a way that she could not explain, she also sensed that they were concealing something, that there was something they were not telling.

Claudia got up to serve the dessert, her famous orange mousse. She had lost too much weight too suddenly; her usually full pink cheeks were sallow. Charlotte was wondering whether it was her heart again, when the doorbell rang.

“Now, who can that be?” Cliff said, going to the door.

Men’s voices were heard in the hall. A moment later Cliff came back.

“Now, take it easy,” he said, laying his hand on
his wife’s shoulder. “There are two men here from the FBI.”

Bill started up from the table. “What the devil—”

“Wait a minute,” Cliff ordered. “They showed their badges, they have a search warrant, and there’s nothing we can do but behave well. Let them go through the house. We have nothing to hide.”

Claudia sat down, clutching her chest. As she implored, her voice quavered, “It’s about Ted, isn’t it?”

“Of course it is. What else could it be about?”

Oh, God, Charlotte said silently. Of all days …

“I will take them through,” Cliff said. “They are orderly gentlemen. Sit here and have your coffee.”

“Nobody wants coffee or anything else,” Bill said. “We will sit on the porch. Go the back way, Claudia. You won’t have to see them. If you people want to leave,” he told Charlotte and Roger, “go ahead. You’re spending the night at my house, anyway, so maybe you’d better go there now.”

But Charlotte had to know. Her heart was spinning. She had to stay there, to find out, to know.…

“It’s about the son,” she whispered to Roger, drawing him out onto the lawn. “I didn’t tell you. He raped two girls, and that’s why he ran away. He was out on bail.”

“They really know that he did it?”

When she nodded, he asked how they could be sure.

“They have evidence. The girls,” she said, thinking: Oh, God, he’s coming back.

“Still,” Roger persisted, “the girls may not be telling
the truth. They may have wanted it and afterward gotten scared, and saved themselves by putting the blame on him. I don’t say it happened like that, but it could have. He was foolish to run away without defending himself.”

I am the witness who can prove that he rapes, Charlotte thought. I am the one who can see justice done, if it should ever come to that.

They stepped up to the porch. Charlotte’s eyes met Claudia’s, and turned away. After all these years of avoidance they were back to Ted. The time had come.

As if strength had even left her voice, Claudia was whispering, “He’s coming home. They’ll be bringing him home soon. That’s what this is.”

“That makes no sense,” Bill chided, though not unkindly. “If they knew where he was, why would they be searching your house? They’re looking for any letters you may have hidden, that’s what it is.”

“I didn’t say they know exactly. But he’s somewhere in that area where we were. That man we met in Thailand is the clue. Cliff was sure he was some kind of government agent. He got our name from the hotel registry, Cliff said. We even had a quarrel about it that morning.”

Voices came through the open windows on the second floor. They were in the bedrooms now, searching closets and drawers, just as in the movies. Probably even opening pocketbooks. On the porch no one spoke. The utter strangeness of what was happening in the house had silenced them all.

After a while Claudia resumed her half-hysterical
whispering. “Casper. You remember Casper, Bill. He’s been so nice. Decent. Almost a friend. He’s been telling me that the FBI would probably be coming here. Funny, I didn’t think he knew what he was talking about. But he said things were heating up. The families of those girls, especially of that one who’s married, want action, and they’ve got influence.”

Charlotte, glancing toward her father, knew what he was thinking. Influence, the kind the Daweses used to have. Not that they had ever misused it. No, never.

“Casper told me people are even saying that’s why we went on the trip to Southeast Asia, to meet Ted. They’re saying our mail should be watched. I daresay it’s been under watch for years. Oh, what this does to people! It’s so ugly. I’ve even had suspicious thoughts myself and then been disgusted over having them, for thinking that maybe Casper is a plant with his stories about those girls and how they need to have this over with so that they can get on with their lives. As if I’ve not felt for those girls! As if—”

“These gentlemen would like to see this box,” Cliff said, coming onto the porch.

The pair, in their proper business suits, were neutral, neither old nor young, and bland, neither affable nor hostile. The large wooden box toward which they moved was the only piece of furniture beside chairs and plain tables.

“There’s nothing in it but gardening tools,” said Claudia, her face so flushed with what must have
been a blend of anger and humiliation that Charlotte had to look away.

No one acknowledged the remark. The men put the contents of the box on the floor, where they made a pile of trowels, green string, gardening gloves, and packaged rose food. After looking inside the latter they replaced everything more or less as they had found it.

“Well, that’s it. Thank you,” said one of the pair, addressing nobody in particular.

Cliff went with them to the front door. “No doubt they’re disappointed,” he said bitterly when he returned.

No one answered.

“They were decent,” he said. He took a paper napkin, the nearest thing at hand, to wipe his sweating face. “They hardly spoke more than to ask directions to the attic. It was systematic. One did a cabinet, the other a highboy. I just stood in the doorway of each room. They took everything from every drawer and shelf, but they were considerate. They didn’t toss things around the way you might imagine they would. There’s not much of a mess.”

Charlotte understood that he was trying to calm Claudia, who was obviously fighting tears. Why don’t you just go ahead and cry? she thought. But Claudia would never do that. And an aberrant image came to her, something almost comical: it was Elena in a situation like this one, screaming her fury and smashing to the floor every object within reach.

“An outrage,” Claudia moaned. “An outrage to a family like this one.”

“This family is not what it was,” Bill reminded her.

He should not have said that. Claudia would take it to mean that it was her son who had changed the family’s image. But then, as if he had become aware of the same thing, Bill went on to console her.

“All they did was to find nothing and prove themselves wrong. They wasted two hours of effort. Now they’re gone, so don’t exhaust your emotions. We have too much else to think about, anyway.”

Claudia stood up. “You’re right, Bill. If you’ll all excuse me, I’d like to go tidy things. I hate the idea of those strangers upsetting everything I own.” And she went out.

“It’ll be a terrible shock to her if Ted is brought back from wherever he is,” Cliff said, shaking his head in dismay.

Bill was looking at Charlotte. Even if he and Charlotte had been alone, there would have been no need for words between them. It was the terrible shock to Charlotte that they foresaw.

“Why don’t you two go on over to our house and make yourselves comfortable?” he suggested. “There’s plenty in the refrigerator for some supper tonight. You’ve had a long day.”

Charlotte was nervous. Her whole chest quivered. “Would it be awful,” she asked Roger, “if we went back to Boston today? If you don’t think it’s a crazy idea, I’d like to. I’ll drive this time so you can rest.”

“There’s no problem with that,” he said, so promptly that she knew he, too, wanted to leave, “neither with going nor driving.”

“You don’t mind, Dad? I’ll be back again soon, I promise.”

“No,” Bill said, “go ahead. We’ve got more business to discuss today, anyway.”

Her father understood that quivering in her chest. He always did.

“It was an awful day. I’m sorry,” she said when they were in the car.

“Charlotte, I know you’re thinking that we’ve only known each other since June, and here you’ve had me witness all these private troubles. You’re embarrassed, but you shouldn’t be. You really shouldn’t,” he said gently.

“I can’t help it. The whole thing was wretched.”

“Yes, it was an ordeal. I have to admit I was a little shaken up myself when right in the middle of dessert, your uncle announced the FBI. It was terrible for your aunt. You know, even before it happened and she was being a smiling hostess, I saw the sadness in her eyes. It made me think of my mother and my brother’s accident.”

Charlotte’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. And words totally unexpected came out of her mouth. “That’s different. Claudia’s son was not lovable. He was careless, conceited, and cruel. A rapist.”

“Can you be sure?”

“Yes,” Charlotte said, “sure.”

She ought not to be talking like this. She was walking close to a ledge above a precipice; a few more words, and she might topple over.

“Then it is a real tragedy. I liked Claudia—liked them all. Anyone would look at her and never guess her story.”

“That’s true.”

“You never know what people have hidden inside, do you? The most average-seeming people on the street can tell you some amazing things about themselves if they want to.”

God knows that was true! And again there came an ugly, traitorous surmise: If the authorities were going to so much trouble to find Ted, must there not be a very strong reason, and was it possible that Claudia was helping him to hide out there beyond the Pacific?

Please God, she thought then, let her help him to stay there. Don’t bring him home. Don’t make me live it all over again.

They were crossing the bridge above the river’s curve. Downstream lay the mill, at this distance mercifully indistinct.

“Last look,” she said.

“Try not to be too dejected, Charlotte. I know you had your heart set on this, but you’ll have plenty more opportunities in your life. You’ll just have to face the truth. I hate foolish optimism. Your father’s right. From all they were saying at lunch today, there are just too many obstacles.”

Suddenly she saw herself as a little girl dressed to Elena’s fastidious taste, being taken to visit Daddy at the office. A flag flew on the pole in the center of the lawn. Along the walkway toward the long white building, there were flowers; you could see that this
was an important place. In Daddy’s room he sat at an enormous desk, and you could see that he was an important man.