The Dreadful Lemon Sky Read online

  “She didn’t say who she was going to try next.”

  “Where did this happen? And when?”

  “On Thursday, May sixteenth, at about three or four in the morning aboard my houseboat moored at Bahia Mar in Fort Lauderdale.”

  “Why would she come to you?”

  “Perhaps because she trusted me. We were old and good friends. I loaned her my houseboat for her honeymoon.”

  Freddy had long lashes, rather delicate features, olive skin. His eyes were a gentle brown, his manner ingratiating.

  “Why did you come here, Mr. McGee?”

  “I had a long talk with Mr. Hascomb. I just thought Mrs. Omaha would like to know about Mrs. Milligan coming to me. I thought it might answer some questions about her husband.”

  “You wouldn’t listen to me, would you?” the woman said to Freddy in a whiny and irritating voice. “I told you that Milligan slut had to be in on it somehow, but you wouldn’t listen to me. I happen to know as a fact that Jack was screwing her for years, even though he didn’t know I knew, and—”

  “Be quiet, Chris.”

  “You can’t tell me to be quiet! You know what I think? He cleaned out the business and mortgaged everything in sight, this house and even the boat, and she was going to run off with him, but she probably had some boyfriend and they decided it was safer and easier to chunk my husband on the head and throw him into—”

  He moved close to her. “Shut up, Chris!”

  “I can put two and two together even if you can’t, Freddy, and let me tell you one thing—”

  She didn’t tell him one thing. He was one very fast fellow. He had a sinewy hand and a long whippy arm and a very nice clean pivot. He slapped her so fast and so hard I thought for one crazy moment he had shot her with a small-caliber handgun. It knocked her completely off the hassock. She landed on her hip and rolled over onto her shoulder and ended up face down on the carpeting. He got to her quickly, turned her, and pulled her up to a sitting position. Her eyes were crossed. The impact area was white as milk. I knew it would turn pink, then red, and finally purple. She was going to be lopsided for quite a few days. A little trickle of blood ran from the corner of her mouth down her chin.

  He sat on his heels, holding her hand, and said, “Darling, when your attorney tells you to be quiet, there might be a very good reason for it. So you have to learn to be still when he tells you to.”

  “Freddy,” she said in a broken voice.

  He pulled her up to her feet and turned her toward a doorway and gave her a little push. “Go in and lie down, darling. I’ll come in and say good-by in a few minutes. Close the door, please.”

  She did as ordered. He turned mildly toward me and said, “Now let’s understand where you fit, Mr. McGee. You just wanted to get involved?”

  “Doing my duty as a citizen.”

  “I’m familiar with your type. The smell of money brings people like you out of the woodwork. I can’t think of a way you can work any kind of a con in this situation. So give up and go home.”

  “I’m familiar with your type too. I saw the way you tied that tie. Very quick and neat. Ready Freddy, servicing another client. I bet you’re in and out of those clothes as often as a fashion model.”

  I saw the little flare behind his eyes and hoped he would try me. I tried to look smaller and slower than I am. Finally he smiled and looked at a microthin gold watch gold-clamped to a lean and hairy wrist.

  “With a deposition at four o’clock, there’s no time for schoolyard games, my friend.”

  “Nor will there ever be, eh?”

  A sudden flush made him look healthier, and then pallor turned him gray-green. “I think you’d better leave, McGee. Now!”

  So I left that enchanting place. Pale shag, silk lampshades, velvet wing chairs, brocade, imitation Tiffany stained glass, Japanese lacquer, gilt mirror frames. Somehow like a matinee in a department store. Van Harn looked about thirty, or a shade under. The lady looked well over. They were consenting adults, consenting to afternoon games in the tangly bed under the long exhalation of the air conditioning.

  As I backed out a phone truck pulled up. I smiled and waved at him and wondered what kind of reception he’d get. Good luck, fella. Must be an interesting line of work.

  It was quarter to four. The yellow Gremlin was hot enough to bake glaze on pottery. The steering wheel was almost, not quite, too hot to touch. I stopped wondering what to do next and ran around for a mile or two trying to get cool in a hot wind.

  I found a shopping center and discovered that they had left some giant oaks in the parking lot. This runs counter to the sworn oath of all shopping center developers. One must never deprive thy project of even one parking slot. And, wonder of wonders, there was an empty slot under one tree, in the shade. As I got out of the Gremlin, a cruising granny glowered at me from the air-conditioned, tinted-blue depths of her white Continental.

  I found pay phones in a big Eckerd Drug, the phone stations half hidden by huge piles of pitch-man’s merchandise.

  At the Holiday Inn they had a Miss Dobrovsky registered in Room 30, but she did not answer the phone. I looked up Webbel, who had driven the truck. There were about fifteen of them, but no Roderick. I wondered why Susan Dobrovsky would stay in the Holiday Inn instead of in Carrie’s apartment. Squeamish, maybe. But sooner or later she would have to decide what to do with Carrie’s personal belongings. That made me think of personal arrangements, and so I looked up the number for the Rucker Funeral Home and asked for Miss Susan Dobrovsky. After a long wait the man came back on the line and said that Miss Dobrovsky was busy with Mr. Rucker, Senior. I told him to tell her to wait there for me. Wait for McGee. Right there.

  Rucker’s Funeral Home was from the orange plaster and glass brick era. It had arches and some fake Moorish curlicues along the edge of the flat roof. A small black man was listlessly rubbing a black hearse parked at the side entrance. There was a large cemented area at the side and in back where doubtless they shaped up the corteges. I saw Carrie’s bright orange Datsun in the parking lot on the other side of the building. On one side of the home there was a savings and loan branch, and on the other side a defunct car wash. I stuck my yellow Gremlin beside the orange Datsun, wondering if the industrial abrasive was still in the trunk. The bright colors screamed at each other.

  She was sitting on a marble bench in the hallway just inside the front door. She looked enough like Carrie so that I was able to recognize her at once. She was a taller, younger, softer version of Carrie. She had on a dark gray tailored suit, a small round hat. She carried a purse and white gloves. Her eyes were swollen and red. She looked dejected and exhausted. But she was a marvelously handsome lady.

  “I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. McGee.”

  “Did Carrie write you about me?”

  “No. It was just … she phoned me long distance over a week ago, one night about ten. I was getting ready for bed. She talked a whole hour. It must have cost a fortune. She was funny. She kept laughing and saying silly things. Maybe she was drinking. Anyway, she made me get a pencil and paper and write down how to get in touch with you. She said that if anything happened to her, it was important I should get in touch with you. She said I could trust you. She said you’re a nice person.”

  “She was in a loyal minority, Miss Susan.”

  “I … I don’t know what to do about this,” she said. She took a sheet of letterhead paper, folded once, out of her dark plastic purse and handed it to me. It was a heavy, creamy bond, and the statement of account had been typed with a carbon ribbon electric, flawlessly. It added up to $1677.90. It contained all manner of processing charges and service charges and mortuary overhead charges. It contained a coffin for $416 including tax, and it included an embalming fee, crematorium fee, death certification fee.

  “She wanted to be cremated. It’s in her will even. I can’t pay all that. He has some kind of installment note he wants me to sign. He seems very nice … but …”

  By being v
ery firm with a chubby sallow fellow I gained an audience with Mr. Rucker, Senior. If you shaved Abe Lincoln and gave him a thick white Caesar hairpiece, and left the eyebrows black, you would have a reasonable duplicate of Rucker, sitting there in perpetual twilight behind his big walnut desk.

  His voice was hushed, gentle, personal.

  “I should be pleased to go over the billing with you, sir, item by item. Let me say I am glad the little lady has someone to help her in this time of need.”

  “Shall we discuss the coffin first?”

  “Why not, if you wish? It is very inexpensive, as you can see.”

  “The decedent is to be, or has been, cremated.”

  “Cremation will take place this evening, I think. I can determine for sure.”

  “So there’s no need for a coffin.”

  He smiled sweetly and sadly. “Ah, so many people have that misconception. It is a regulation, sir.”

  “Whose regulation?”

  “The State of Florida, sir.”

  “Then you will be willing to show me the statutes which pertain?”

  “Believe me, sir, it is standard practice and …”

  “The statutes?”

  “It may not be specifically spelled out in the law, but …”

  I reached and took the pen from his desk set and drew a thick black line through the coffin and said, “Now we’re down to twelve sixty-one ninety. I see you’ve charged for embalming.”

  “Of course. And a great deal of cosmetic attention was required. There were severe facial lacerations which—”

  “It wasn’t ordered and is not required by law prior to cremation.”

  He gave me a saintly smile. “I am afraid I cannot accept your judgments on these matters, sir. I must refer them to the sister of the deceased. We must bring her in on this. I must caution you that this is a very difficult situation for her, all this petty squabbling about the account as rendered.”

  “It’s easier on her to just go ahead and pay it?”

  “This is a very sad occasion for her.”

  “Wait right here,” I said.

  I went and found Susan on the bench in the hallway. I sat beside her and said, “We can cut that bill by a thousand dollars, but he thinks it will be such a rough experience for you to haggle over price, we should go ahead and pay it. What do you think?”

  For a moment she was blank. Then I saw the tender jaw clamp into firmness and saw her eyes narrow. “I know what Carrie would say.”

  Mr. Rucker Senior stood up behind his desk when I walked in with Susan Dobrovsky. “Do sit down, my dear. We’ll try to make this as painless as we possibly—”

  “What’s this crap about you overcharging me a thousand dollars?” she said in a high, strident, demanding voice.

  He was taken aback but he recovered quickly. “You don’t quite understand. For example, it may not be absolutely legally necessary for you to purchase a casket, my dear, but I think it would be a gross disrespect to your poor sister to have her … tumbled into the burning chamber like some kind of … debris.”

  She braced her fists on his desk and leaned closer to him. “That is not my sister! That is a body! That is debris! My sister is not in there any more and there is no reason for you to … to try to get me to worship the empty body, damn you, you greedy old man!”

  He moved around the side of the desk, his face quiet as any death mask, and said, “Excuse me. I’ll have this account recomputed. It will take just a few minutes.”

  He went out a side door. When it was open I could hear an electric typewriter rattling away. When he closed it behind him, she turned blindly into my arms. She rolled her head against my shoulder and gave three big gulping sobs and then pulled herself together, pushed away from me, honked into a Kleenex, and tried to smile.

  “Was I okay?” she asked.

  “You were beautiful.”

  “I was pretending I was Carrie and it was me who was dead. She’d never let him take advantage. I was just so confused when he gave me the bill before.”

  “Is the memorial service to be here?”

  “Oh, no. Betty Joller sort of arranged it. It’s going to be on the beach there at Mangrove Lane where she used to live.”

  Rucker Senior came back into the room and tried to hand her the new billing. I reached across her and took it. It was far more specific. It came to $686.50. I noticed he had included a sixty-dollar urn, sixty-two forty with tax. I was tempted to strike it but decided it was best to let him have a minor victory.

  “Here are the rings from the deceased,” he said, holding out a small manila envelope. She hesitated, and I took that also and slipped it into my shirt pocket.

  “Satisfactory arrangements for payment will have to be made,” the man said.

  I took out my money clip, slipped the currency out of it, and counted out seven one-hundred-dollar bills on the front edge of his desk. “We’ll need thirteen fifty in change and your certification on this bill, Mr. Rucker.”

  He expressed his opinion by looking most carefully at each bill, back and front. He made change from his own pocket and receipted the bill. Paid in Full. B. J. Rucker, Sr.

  “You may pick up the urn here between one and two tomorrow afternoon,” he said.

  I nodded. There were no good-bys. We walked out.

  Out in the afternoon sunshine of the parking lot, she swayed against me, leaned heavily on my arm as we walked. She shook her head and straightened up and lengthened her stride.

  “He had me go back in there and see her,” she said. “I thought there was some mistake. Her face wasn’t the right shape even. She looked like she was made of wax. He showed me how the inside of the casket is all quilted, the kind he was selling me. Would he have really had it burned up, or would he have saved it for the next person?”

  “I think B.J. would have it burned up.”

  The lower angle of the sun had stretched casuarina shadows across our two bright little cars. Before she unlocked the Datsun she turned to face me and said, “About that money in there, I’ll be able to …”

  “It was your money.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I owed it to Carrie.”

  “Is that true? Is that really true?”

  “Really true.”

  “How much did you owe her?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Well, I’d like to know.”

  “She told you to trust me.”

  “Yes …?”

  “Trust me not to tell you now, and trust me to have good reasons not to tell you. Okay?”

  She looked at me for a long moment and then slowly nodded. “Okay, Mr. McGee.” Her hair was long, and a couple of shades darker than Carrie’s cropped silvery mop. The face was as round as Carrie’s, the cheekbones high and heavy, but her eyes had more of a Slavic tilt, and their color was a seagreen-gray.

  I made her try calling me Trav, and after three times it came easier and she smiled.

  “How long are you going to stay?”

  “Well, I guess until the lawyer says it’s okay to go back to New Jersey. I’ve got to sort out all her stuff in that apartment. It’s in a terrible mess. Somebody broke in and tore up the furniture and rugs and emptied everything out on the floor.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “So much is happening, I’m getting confused on the dates. She was killed Wednesday night. Betty Joller was in bed and heard it on the eleven o’clock news. Betty, being her best friend, got dressed and drove to the apartment figuring my phone number would be in Carrie’s phone index someplace, and I should be told. Betty has a key to the apartment that Carrie gave her. Betty got to the apartment about midnight and found it all in such a mess it took her a half hour to find my phone number. She was crying so hard I couldn’t understand what she was trying to tell me. And when she did … wow, it was like the sky falling down. Carrie was seven years older, and I saw her just once in the last six years, when she came back to Nutley five years ago f
or our mother’s funeral. I had no idea it would hit me so hard. I guess it’s because she was the only close family I had left. There’s some cousins I’ve never seen since I was a baby.”

  “Did Betty Joller report it to the police?”

  “I don’t really know. I guess she would have. I mean it would be a normal thing to tell the police about it. I told the lawyer about it, and he asked me if there was any specific thing we could report as being taken in the robbery, and I said maybe Betty could figure out what was missing, that I wouldn’t know.”

  “Who’s your lawyer?”

  “He’s a good friend of a girl that lives at 28 Mangrove Lane. I keep forgetting his name. But I’ve got his card here. Here. Frederick Van Harn. He just has to straighten out about the will and the car and all that. I guess it will be okay because he is the one who drew up the will for her. After she broke up with Ben she wanted to be sure he didn’t get a dime that was hers if anything happened to her. Ben was at the funeral too, five years ago, but I can’t remember him at all.” She looked at her watch. “Hey, I’ve got to get going. Betty is coming over to the Inn, and we’re going to work it all out about tomorrow. You’re coming, aren’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  She drove away and I drove back to Westway Harbor.

  Six

  I parked my rental in one of the reserved slots. As I walked past the office toward the docks, Cindy Birdsong came to the door and said, “Can I speak to you a moment, Mr. McGee?”

  “Of course.”

  She had changed to a white sunback dress, and she wore heels, which put her over the six-foot line. A big brown lady with great shoulders and other solid and healthy accessories. And a mighty cool blue eye, and a lot of composure and pride.

  “I want to apologize to you for the trouble my husband gave you this noon. I am very sorry it happened.”

  “It’s perfectly all right, Mrs. Birdsong.”

  “It’s not all right. It was a very ugly scene. If they release him on bail, I am sure he will want to apologize personally. I’m going to visit him this evening in the hospital, and I know he will be very ashamed of himself.”