More Good Old Stuff Page 3

  Seventeen hundred for the car and at least twelve thousand for the house. Counting incidentals and insurance, you could figure on twenty-six thousand after all expenses.

  Through her sobs she said, “Mr. Brown, I—I can’t stay here. The—the memories. I won’t be able—to stand it.”

  “I understand,” he whispered. “We’ll all understand.”

  Mr. Davis, the vice-president of the Wanderloo National Bank, coughed a few times and said, “This is—well, it’s rather a large sum of money for a woman to take away in cash, you know. We could establish a trust for you and send you the income every—”

  She lifted her chin bravely. “Mr. Davis, I’m sorry, but I want to cut all strings tying me to Wanderloo. If you’d authorize the cashier to give me the cash balance—”

  “Possibly traveler’s checks, Mrs. Goodkin?”

  “No one but you and the cashier and myself will know I’m taking that amount of cash with me. And I certainly don’t plan to advertise it. If you must know, Mr. Davis, I plan to pin the major share of it inside my girdle. I rather imagine it will be safe there until I decide where I want to settle.”

  Mr. Davis blushed, scratched his chin and sighed. “How do you want it, Mrs. Goodkin?” he said, standing up.

  “Twenty one-thousand-dollar bills and the balance in fifties, hundreds and twenties.”

  “I may have to contact the other two banks.”

  She glanced at her watch. “Please hurry. My train leaves in an hour and fifteen minutes.”

  With the money on her person, she bought her ticket to Detroit. She carried one suitcase containing her best clothes and the all-important packet. In Detroit she could shake off any possible pursuit and then take a train to Chicago. The large bills would go into one of the four boxes. The remaining four thousand and something would give her a new start with a new name in a new place. Resort places were best.

  She decided that this time she would look for a younger man. They felt so flattered when an older woman became interested.

  The trip from Chicago to whatever resort she decided on could be used in devising a new name and new background. A new identity was the easiest thing in the world to establish. It was merely a case of arranging to take out a driver’s license, opening a checking account and a few charge accounts.

  She would be forgotten in Wanderloo. “I wonder what happened to that sweet little Mrs. Goodkin. She left town, you know, after her husband died. Tragic affair. They had a perfect marriage. A good thing there were no children, you know.”

  As she waited for her train to be announced, she looked at herself in the oval mirror in her compact. The off-lavender eyes stared back at her with clarity—innocence—and an uncanny youthfulness. It was good to be free again. Free for adventure …

  Jay Kelso sat like a scrawny Buddha in his bed, clad only in blue silk shorts that were too big for him. The afternoon was hot and he was bored and troubled. A pair of faun slacks were slung over the back of a straight chair not far from the bed. He knew without looking that there was but forty-two dollars in the gold money clip in the pocket of the slacks.

  He had intended to stay a week in this hole called Komfort Court, but the week had turned into six weeks. That was bad.

  By now the finance company in New Jersey would have turned the license number over to the skip tracers and they would be hunting the yellow wagon. He knew from experience that his equity was just large enough so that they would enjoy repossessing the wagon.

  And maybe that Myra dish in Camden had hired lawyers. That would be bad, because they could make trouble and he didn’t have the money to buy the legal talent to squeak out of it. He had always felt wonderfully independent of the female sex.

  And here he was stuck in inland Florida just because a hick babe was keeping him on the hook.

  He wondered if he should run out, make some dough and come back this way for a second attempt. No, that tan bruiser, Lawton, had too eager a look in his eye when Serena—what a hell of a name—walked by. It would be a sad thing to come back and find that Lawton had nailed her on the rebound.

  He knew that the longer he stayed, the worse shape he would be in. He knew that already his stake was too small.

  He smacked his fist into his palm and glared at the far wall. Suddenly a startling thought entered his mind. Maybe he wanted to marry the girl.

  Maybe that was the right deal. Unload the car. Sell it for cash. Then ease that Lawton punk out of his job and settle down right here. After the old man kicked off, which shouldn’t be long, he and Serena would own the business. Then if he got sick of her, he could sell and shove off.

  But he remembered how the muscles stood out on Lawton’s back while he worked. No, better keep Lawton around for the heavy stuff. Besides, it might be too tough to ease him out. He and the old man seemed to get along pretty good.

  He grinned. Jay Kelso—thinking of marriage. That was a hot one!

  Slowly he got off the bed. He put on a sand-pink sports shirt, carefully knotted the white and crimson tie, belted the high-waisted faun slacks around his trim, flat middle and slipped into a pair of brown-and-white moccasins.

  At that moment there was a knock on his door. A gentle knock. Eagerly he opened the door, hoping that it was Serena Bright. Instead he saw Lawton’s bronzed broad chest, impassive face.

  “After the trash,” Lawton said.

  “Hell, you knock like a woman,” Jay Kelso said, turning away in disgust.

  “Thought you might open quicker if I did,” Lawton said gently.

  Kelso wheeled on him. “Are you being wise?”

  Lawton smiled tightly. “I wonder exactly what you’d do if I said yes.”

  Kelso straightened his shoulders. “I might take a poke at you. I was Golden Gloves, guy. Remember that.”

  Lawton grinned lazily and said, “Yes, sir. Anything you say, sir.” The contempt was obvious.

  At that moment a small woman stepped to the doorway. Jay Kelso gave her a quick appraisal. Not too bad for a biddy in her middle thirties. Nicely stacked. Wearing a dress that spells dough. No gray in the brown hair. Funny color of blue for eyes. Not bad at all, at all.

  She smiled at Kelso, turned to Lawton and said, in a voice of throaty silver, “You are the man that works here, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Oliver.”

  “I just moved into Cabin 11 an hour ago, and I can’t seem to get any hot water. I wonder if you’d—”

  “Right away, Mrs. Oliver.”

  Jay Kelso noted the “Mrs.” But there had been more than casual politeness in those odd blue eyes. Maybe a chance to chisel a little money. Badger game in reverse. A “loan,” please. You can lend it to me, or I can ask Mr. Oliver for it.

  With his best smile, he stepped forward, extending his hand, and said, “As long as we’re almost neighbors, Mrs. Oliver, we might as well know each other. I’m Jay Kelso.”

  “How do you do, Jay Kelso,” she said, dimpling. “I’m Betty Oliver.”

  Her hand was very soft in his, and lay passive, warm, giving him an oddly protective feeling. Also, it was nice that she was short. He liked short women. Even with the trick shoes, he was only about a half inch taller than Serena.

  Lawton carried out the trash and went up toward Cabin 11.

  Jay Kelso sauntered out, said to Mrs. Oliver, “How do you and your husband like it here?”

  “Oh, there’s just me, Mr. Kelso. George died over a year ago.” She laughed softly. “I guess I’m just a footloose, lonesome woman.”

  He beamed at her. “Footloose, yes. Lonesome, never.”

  “And I thought courtliness was dead!” She laughed. “We must get better acquainted.”

  “We certainly shall,” he said warmly.

  “Is your wife with you, Mr. Kelso?” she asked.

  “I’m the footloose, lonesome type too,” he said, “Yes, I’m on a little vacation all by myself. I’m in the—real estate business in Camden, New Jersey. I got pretty tensed up over a few f
air deals I pulled lately and decided I needed a rest.”

  He laughed. “I told my employees when I left that they’d better make all decisions themselves because they wouldn’t be in touch with me at all. At first I thought I’d go to my usual hotel at Miami Beach, but then I realized that I’d run into friends and there’d be parties and all that sort of thing. So you might say I’m hiding here.”

  He strolled casually over to the canary convertible, leaned on the door.

  “Is this your car?” Mrs. Betty Oliver asked. “It’s pretty.”

  Jay coughed. “This is the one I brought along.”

  “I’ve never learned to drive,” she said wistfully. “I’m really a helpless woman.”

  “If you’re staying long enough, I could teach you.”

  She looked up into his face, swayed so that for a moment she brushed against him. “Oh, would you?”

  Jay Kelso was suddenly faintly dizzy and very exultant. This was pie in the sky. This was coin in the pocket. It wouldn’t be too tough to fix it with Serena. Milk this doll for a few hundred or a few thousand, and then grab Serena and kite off to a license bureau. From there he and Serena could hit the tracks. By the time they came back the Oliver woman would be gone. Perfect!

  When the last sobs were finished, Serena waited, the damp pillow against her face. It was dark outside. On the highway an occasional car roared by at high speed. The headlights made patterns that flashed across the ceiling of her darkened room.

  After a time she stood up, padded into the bathroom, stepped into the shower stall. The chill water felt fresh and good. She made up carefully to conceal the signs of tears, put on a cool white dress, walked out into the warm night. The sound of laughter from some of the cabins accentuated her loneliness.

  In Cabin 2 four old people were engaged in their nightly bridge game. A radio was playing a sweet, sad tune from a distant cabin. Far off, near the marshes, the frogs croaked dolorously.

  The cool breeze stirred her pale hair. She tried not to look up the slope toward Cabin 11. Of course, that woman, that Oliver woman, wasn’t there. No, she was out with Jay. Out with Serena’s Jay. Probably at their spot—at the Palm Club.

  She wondered bitterly if Jay would park with her, would try to kiss her. How could he? Why, that Oliver woman was old, old, old. A hag. A simpering, silly hag with a lot of money.

  She wondered how many hours Jay had spent with the Oliver woman since she had arrived four days before.

  Jay had acted so funny. He had taken her out for the last time the same evening that Betty Oliver had arrived. He had been quiet at the Palm Club. Later on, in the parked car, he had made no attempt to kiss her—had merely said, “Serena, honey, there are a lot of things about this world that you don’t understand.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look, baby. I love you. That’s the first time I’ve said those words since I was fourteen.”

  “Oh, Jay.”

  “Now don’t go soft on me. Understand? Love means trust. Look, baby. Look into my eyes. I trust you. See? Now, the sixty-four-buck question is, does Serena trust Jay?”

  “You know I do.”

  “Now, here’s the kicker. I got my own angles, see? I can’t talk about them. And I don’t want you to talk to anybody about what is going to happen.”

  “But what is going to happen, Jay?”

  “You and I are having a fight. We don’t talk anymore. We don’t go out anymore for maybe a long time. You are going to see me running around with that Mrs. Oliver that checked in today. But you don’t ask any questions. You trust me. Remember?”

  “But, Jay, I—why do you—”

  He had touched one finger to her lips. “No questions, baby. Then after maybe a week, maybe two, maybe longer, we move fast. I ask you the ring question and you say yes and off we go. Right?”

  “But I—”

  She had seen the gleam of his teeth as he smiled in the darkness. “Look, baby, it’s a wonderful night. Come here.”

  Yes, it had been easy right then not to ask questions. But the next day it wasn’t so easy. Not when she had seen the yellow car head out with Betty Oliver’s brown head next to Jay’s shining dark one. It hadn’t been easy to see Betty wriggling kittenishly, smiling up into Jay’s shining smug face. Nor had it been easy to hear their merged laughter, their warm friendliness.

  And on the third day she had walked by the two of them, had heard Betty Oliver giggle and whisper to Jay. Jay had laughed also. Serena Bright knew that they had talked about her.

  She strolled aimlessly down the narrow street between the cabins, avoided the glare of the floodlights that lit the front of the main building. She circled the left wing of the building, saw the pale gleam of Ben Lawton’s white shirt in the darkness. He was sitting on the concrete step at his doorway.

  “Hi, lady,” he said softly. “Sit down and smoke up one of my hard-earned cigarettes.”

  “Thanks, Ben,” she said gratefully. He moved over to make room. She glanced at his face as he held the match to her cigarette, and she detected no expression that she could identify.

  “Nice night,” he said.

  “I guess so.”

  “Little bit blue, gal?” he asked.

  It was too much. She buried her head in his shoulder. “Oh, Ben!” Then great, hoarse sobs shook her.

  But they didn’t last long. Finally she moved back to her side of the step, dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. She laughed thinly. “Sorry to use you for a crying towel, Benjamin.”

  “The guy isn’t worth it, you know. Not by half,” he said flatly.

  In cold rage she stood up. “I’ll be the judge of that,” she snapped.

  She walked off into the night. But the night was lonesome. The sky was an immeasurable distance away and she felt small, futile, purposeless. Everything seemed to be going wrong. If only Jay could send her a note, or glance at her, or arrange to speak to her. But every time he looked in her direction his face was cold and his eyes were hard.

  She wandered into the part where the tables and soda fountain were. Jonas Bright sat in a wooden rocker, his shoulders slumped.

  He smiled up at her and said, “I’m sure glad, honey, that you aren’t running around with that fancy-clothes fella anymore.”

  She glared at him for several seconds and then walked aimlessly out into the night. Ben and her dad were fools, both of them. In some funny way they were jealous of Jay Kelso. Jealous because his clothes were nice and he had nice manners and was a perfect gentleman. And his dark eyelashes were long. And his lips were hard and demanding. She felt a deep warm tumult inside her as she thought of his lips and his arms.

  Then like an angry child, she bent over, picked up a stone and hurled it out across the highway. She remembered all the bad words she had ever overheard, and she said them under her breath. She went back to her room and stretched out across her bed, her chin propped in her palms. What could he be thinking of, going out with that hag? That silly, simpering hag!

  The feeling of excitement had been growing for a full week, and this time there was something completely different about it. She had fallen so completely into her assumed part that she really thought she was Betty Oliver.

  She looked at Jay. He was cupping his hands around the flame from his lighter, and the orange-red light threw his cheekbones into sharp relief, deepened the hollows in his cheeks.

  Yes, Jay Kelso had created a puzzle. Not in himself, because she knew all too well exactly what Jay Kelso was. She had seen many of them. Flagrant little men strutting around in gay plumage, hard and selfish, unbelievably greedy and cruel. A most despicable little man. Yet there was something so pathetic about his swaggering and his strutting, something so forlornly second-rate about his tin-plate veneer, that he oddly touched her heart, as no man ever had.

  A plucked little chicken of a man trying to be masterful, sophisticated. His clothes were in horrid taste, she knew. His manners were frightfully obvious. And he was full of a deadly ser
iousness as far as using proper English was concerned.

  All in all, a very amusing little man. And obvious. She guessed from the way he licked his lips when he had to pay a check that he was close to the end of his small hoard of money. And pretending to be such a big shot.

  Such a second-rate little person should have revolted her, she knew. And yet she wanted to cradle his head in her arms, hold him close and soothe him—tell him that she knew the wide world and he could cease his frantic struggling that got him nowhere.

  She wondered if it could be some misshapen form of love.

  He must be at least thirteen years younger than I, she thought. At least. Maybe more.

  She smiled in the darkness. Jay Kelso had been quiet for a long time. She knew that he was going over in his mind the words he had planned.

  Abruptly he laughed. “A pretty funny thing has happened to me, Betty,” he said, a nervous note in his voice.

  “Yes, Jay, dear?”

  “You remember I told you how I was having my employees make their own decisions while I was gone? Well, I got a letter yesterday from the man I left in charge. He has my power of attorney. He got a line on a big deal and sunk all the working capital into it. I didn’t bring along as much as I should. I was wondering if you’d trust me with a little until I got word that the deal has gone through and the bank account is back to where it should be.”

  “Why, of course, Jay! How much do you need?”

  “Oh, a few hundred ought to carry me over all right.”

  “Will five hundred do?” She grinned inwardly as she saw him suck hungrily on his cigarette.

  “Fine. That is, if it won’t put you out.”

  She knew how it would work. He would take the five hundred and be very attentive and spend quite a bit of it on her—and then he would come to her, very excited and yelling about the big deal that his man in charge was pulling off, only they needed just a few more thousand to grab the property options necessary. Just a few thousand. And then she’d never see Jay Kelso again.

  She said, laughing, “Goodness, Jay. You’ve kept me so busy that I haven’t gotten around to opening up a bank account down here. I’m carrying far too much cash on me. You might as well take the five hundred right now. Hold your lighter over here so I can see into my purse.”