Mother Finds a Body Read online

  I felt in my pocket for the scrap of paper with the Sheriff’s name and address on it, then continued arguing with myself. “I think we’d better talk this over with him right now.”

  Biff interrupted me. “What’s with the solo back here?”

  “I was talking to myself,” I said. “Look, honey, let’s go into town right now and get the car fixed. I’d like to get out of this town, and quick.”

  Biff put his arm around me, and we walked toward the car.

  “What did that guy mean when he said ask you what your mother was doing during the fire?”

  Biff’s voice sounded casual. I tried to keep mine that way, too.

  “I’ll tell you later. After we get the car fixed.”

  “With what I expect from the local garage setup,” Biff said, “I will be wearing a long gray beard and listening through an ear trumpet.”

  4THE GARAGE MAN WAS ON HIS BACK UNDER THE car. “Well, it’ll take three or four days. Gotta be welded, you know,” he said. “We don’t get many repair jobs like this and we may have to make a new part.”

  Biff and I started to speak at the same time. Because I’m the female side of the house, he let me go first.

  “Does it look like it was done purposely?” I asked.

  The garage man moved back and forth on his roller machine. I let him play for a minute. Then I told him to stop clowning and get up and look where I was looking. I pointed out the clean break in the hitch. “There,” I said. “Does that look like it’s been sawed or something?”

  The mechanic scratched his head. “Maybe, but who’d want to do a thing like that?”

  I didn’t bother telling him about my husband’s very good friend. It was just as well, too, because, after thinking it over, I decided that even if Corny had seen Mother bury the body, there would be no point in smashing up the car. Unless he wanted us to stay in Ysleta, and that didn’t seem to make sense.

  “That’s cast iron,” the mechanic was saying to Biff. “You know how that snaps? Almost always clean . . .”

  Biff waited patiently while the man explained all about metals, semiprecious and otherwise. The he asked him if there was a bar in town.

  The mechanic pointed a greasy hand to the side street. My eyes followed the hand.

  A bar? There were nothing but bars: The Blinking Pup, The Red Mill, The Last Hole. As far as I could see the signs read BAR and BEER.

  “Have you any other industries here in Ysleta?” Biff asked.

  The mechanic finally got the joke. “Hah!” he said. “It’s because we’re so close to the border. Lots of tourists want a nightcap when the bridge to Mexico closes. Closed up tighter than a drum over there, but we’re wide open.”

  Biff cast an eye over the street. “No kidding?”

  We picked out one of the livelier-looking bars, The Happy Hour, and stopped in for a beer. Biff picked up a bottle of Wilson’s, and we were ready to leave. A clock over the door indicated that it was ten after one.

  “Better bring home a couple containers of beer,” I suggested. Our family’ll be getting up, and when they know we’re stuck here for a few days, they’ll want a bracer. Better make it another bottle of rye,” I added after a second’s consideration. “Beer won’t handle it.”

  While we waited for the bartender to stop picking his teeth, four musicians straggled wearily to the small stage in back of the saloon. They played two choruses of Amapola and suddenly, from out of nowhere, six chorus girls came galloping out onto the floor.

  They were the tiredest-looking chorus girls I’ve ever seen, and, being in burlesque for years, I’ve seen them tired. These wore abbreviated lavender rayon panties and net brassieres. They carried stringy white fans and waved them around listlessly.

  Biff looked at the clock again. Then he looked around the saloon. There wasn’t a customer in the place unless you could count us and one very dark little man who sat alone in a booth near the stage. He had a split of champagne in front of him and not once during the girl’s routine did he look up.

  “Is this the beginning of a new day,” Biff asked the bartender, “or is it a leftover from last night?”

  The bartender shrugged his shoulders. “Guess it’s a rehearsal. I’m a stranger here myself.”

  I looked back to the floor show. The girls were making a rose with their fans. The only way I recognized it as a rose was that in burlesque we did the same routine. The rose was at the bud stage when a piece of pink cheesecloth emerged from the side of the stage.

  There was something under it, of course, and when the rose became full-blown, we not only got a glimpse of what the something was but it was enough to make me grab the bottle from the bartender’s hands and start a mad dash for the door.

  Biff had always been considered the Casanova of burlesque. I took that into consideration when I married him, and we were usually running into his ex-flames. But I never expected to find one under a piece of cheesecloth in Ysleta, Texas!

  Biff stared at the dancer with his mouth half-open. Then he grinned at her, finally at me. “It’s a small world, ain’t it?” he asked when she tossed her brassiere on the piano.

  I waited until she threw her G-string into the tuba to answer. “Indeed it is,” I replied.

  We had been too busy watching the show to see the little dark man get up from the booth. He stood next to Biff with a cigar in his mouth. The cigar was unlit, and the little man rocked back and forth on his heels.

  “You likea the show?” he asked.

  Biff jumped a foot in the air. He had to look down around his elbow to find where the voice came from.

  The little man didn’t seem to be too pleased. Maybe it was because Biff gave him a double take. I was afraid Biff was warming up for a joke like “Get out of the hole,” or “Get off your knees.” He was too surprised to be a comic, though.

  He watched the man pull a card case from his yellow vest and he stared at the man’s hands. I didn’t blame him for that. They were brown hands, and black hairs grew in little mountains on each knuckle. The fingernails were bright pink, very shiny, with black tips.

  “I owna these place,” the man said while Biff read the card.

  I looked over Biff’s shoulder. FRANCISCO CULLICIO, the card read, DEALER IN FINE PERFUMES, LINENS, LIQUORS.

  “I gotta getta me some new cards,” the man explained, “now that I’ma in the show business.”

  Biff and I grinned at him broadly.

  He didn’t smile back. He had stopped rocking on his heels but he had gone into another annoying little piece of business. He snapped a cigar cutter. He still hadn’t looked toward the stage, and the woman dancing around in nothing but a three-inch piece of adhesive plaster was getting annoyed.

  With a corny toss of her head she finished her number and threw her hands above her head, the same way she used to finish when she was in burlesque.

  The new impresario watched me smile woodenly at my naked friend.

  “She’sa good, eh?”

  “If you like that sort of thing,” I replied coldly.

  “I puta her to work. Womans costa too much money. All the time she’s askin’ me for money, so I say sure, I give you twenty fi’ a week, only you work for it.”

  He snapped his cigar cutter a few times. I think I was supposed to be impressed with the salary. I gave him a dead pan, so he went on.

  “Course, she geta more than twenty fi’ a week. She geta fi’ cents every drink.”

  Well, I thought to myself, that runs into a tidy sum, considering the way she guzzles. Then something slowly dawned on me.

  “You mean she gets five cents for every drink she drinks with a customer?”

  Cullucio didn’t answer me. He was too busy watching Biff.

  One glimpse of my husband-of-a-week and I began to wonder if it wouldn’t have been smarter to point the trailer toward Reno. He was almost a part of the floor show, waving his arms like a windmill and pointing to the empty stool next to us.

  “You can send a
card backstage, ya know,” I said.

  There was no response, just a more vigorous waving of arms.

  “Why don’t you go over and talk to the lady?” I asked.

  My voice must have been a little louder than I thought, because the dancer looked at me and smiled. I remember that smile; it was a cross between hypophrenic and a brooding cobra.

  “She’s coming out for a drink,” Biff said after she made her exit.

  I gave him my long, slow look and mumbled, “I can’t wait.”

  For the next half hour my job was to keep Cullucio from pinning Biff’s ears back. He could have handled it himself, but, between his bartender and the beefy man at the door, Biff was a dead pigeon.

  It isn’t that Biff is mentally deficient or anything; he’s just too trusting. From the moment that Joyce Janice sat on the bar stool next to us I knew the score. She and the little dark man were splitting their room rent. To me it’s in black and white, but Biff doesn’t catch. He listens intently to her life story and keeps pouring drinks down her throat.

  At a nickel each, she was building up a nice little nest egg for herself, I thought. Not that she was going to be able to keep it. The heavy breathing of my friend with the pink fingernails told me that the money would go for hospital bills.

  “Come on out of the house for dinner,” Biff said for the fourteenth time.

  Joyce said no again. “We never know when a live one might drop in, then we gotta do another show.”

  “I thought this was a rehearsal,” Biff said. “The bartender—”

  “He’s nuts,” Joyce said. “This is our tea dance. We do ’em twice a week.”

  She was wearing a blue-satin evening gown, and every time she leaned over it was show enough—hardly the costume for a tea dance, but Biff had been in burlesque too long to notice it. The bartender, though, was having himself a time.

  I tried to tell myself that Biff was just being sociable, that he felt rather sorry for Joyce. It wasn’t too hard to feel sorry for her. Her silver shoes were worn down at the heels, perspiration had stained her gown almost to her hips, and she had a black-and-blue mark the size of a Mexican peso on her flabby arm.

  She didn’t seem to feel uncomfortable, though. She knew Cullucio was burning and she liked being the center of attention. She kept track of the drinks by scratching a mark with her fingernail on the top of the bar.

  On the tenth scratch I got to my feet. I tapped Biff on the shoulder. “End of joke,” I said sweetly. “Unless you’d like to stay here alone.” On the alone line I stared straight at Joyce.

  The same clock said three forty-five when Biff tore himself away from The Happy Hour. We didn’t speak while he settled the check. The walk to the trailer camp was silent, too.

  It wasn’t that I was jealous or—oh, well, I may as well admit it. I was jealous, and annoyed, and my feet hurt and my head ached. It certainly wasn’t the time to tell Biff about Mother, but I did. He looked too complacent. Why should I be the only one to worry, I thought.

  “Oh, by the way,” I said casually. “Mother wants you to dig a deeper hole. She buried the body last night.”

  We walked on a few feet. Biff had a complacent gleam in his eye.

  “She set fire to the woods. I think that’s what Corny meant when he said . . .”

  We walked a few feet more, and suddenly Biff stopped. He stopped so suddenly he almost lost his balance. I grabbed the box of eggs from him just in time.

  “She what?”

  I couldn’t have been more casual if I’d said she took out the furniture so she could sweep under the beds. I walked on toward the trailer. If I could whistle I would have whistled.

  I said, “She set fire to the woods so she could get the body out of the trailer.”

  5GEE GEE AND MANDY WERE PLAYING CARDS WHEN we got home. I put the food in the icebox, and Biff, with a dazed look in his eye, began fixing the drinks.

  Dimples heard the clink of the glasses and came out of the trailer. She was still wearing her kimono, a faded-pink affair with a marabou trimming. Her head was covered with a Turkish towel, and little flakes of white henna were on her forehead.

  “Where in hell was you so long?” she asked. Then she saw the bottles, and her petulant mouth relaxed. She walked down the steps, being very careful not to trip. One heel of her mules was loose and she had to be careful. The grayish pompoms dragged in the dust as she made her way to the camp chair. She had her manicuring set with her and she placed it on the table, leaving room for the bottle and glasses.

  “Where’s Mother?” I asked.

  Gee Gee tossed a finger toward the burned trailer, and I saw Mother. She was walking with her arm around the woman who had been crying the night before.

  “That’s Mrs. Smith,” Gee Gee said. “Her husband died, and she used his insurance money to buy the trailer. She had a beauty shop in it and she traveled around giving permanents and stuff. You know how sympathetic Evangie is? Well, when the poor old dame gets burned out, your mother makes room for her with us. She’s in the front seat of the car for tonight, but Evangie is fixing a place for her in the bedroom.”

  Gee Gee didn’t look at me while she was talking. She busied herself with getting the glasses. She put her hand to her mouth, then she bit her thumbnail. Finally she burst out, “Oh, Gyp, I can’t tell you what we been through this morning. Your mother has the whole camp in an uproar. Everybody’s gonna sue. Don’t ask me who they’re gonna sue, but Evangie’s convinced ’em that the city is responsible for the fire, negligence or somethin’. They been holding a council of war since noon.”

  Biff opened his mouth to say something. Then he saw Mother and changed his mind.

  She was waving gaily as she passed one trailer after another. She stopped at one to inquire about the health of “little Johnny.”

  I looked at Gee Gee.

  “That’s their kid, and he wouldn’t eat his Pablum until Evangie told him a story.”

  Mother’s stories are enough to give little Johnny permanent indigestion. I wondered if she told him the one about the woman throwing her eleven children to the wolves, or the one about the man cutting off his wife’s head with a meat ax. They were Mother’s favorites.

  “Does Johnny have a wagon?” I asked Gee Gee.

  Gee Gee shrugged her shoulders. She was looking at Mother again. The sun on Mother’s hair brought out the highlights and the sky made her eyes seem bluer than ever.

  “No wonder she’s such a spellbinder,” Gee Gee said, as Mother walked toward us.

  She was lovely, I thought with pride.

  “Where were you, dear?” Mother asked happily. Before I had a chance to tell her, she thrust Mrs. Smith under my nose, introduced her, and then whispered, “She’s had so much trouble, Louise. Be nice to her.”

  It would have been difficult to be otherwise. Mrs. Smith looked as if she’d had trouble. When she came closer I could see the deep wrinkles in her leathery face, the faded blue of her eyes, the lifelessness of her badly marcelled hair. She couldn’t have been much older than Mother, but as they stood together Mother was radiant in comparison.

  I told Mrs. Smith that we were very happy to have her with us until she could find more comfortable quarters, and she burst out crying.

  “You’ve all been so wonderful to me,” she sobbed. “I never knew people like you before.”

  Mother put her arm around the woman’s thin shoulder. “Now, Mamie, don’t cry. Everything is going to be all right.”

  Biff offered the crying woman a drink, but Mother scowled and shook her head. “And you’ve had about enough, too,” she said, leading Mamie into the trailer.

  When they opened the screen door, all the dogs started barking at once and Cliff piled out the back door.

  “Can’t a guy get any sleep around here?” he complained as he fell into a chair.

  “It’s three-thirty. If you wanta sleep, go to a hotel.” Gee Gee pushed a cup of coffee under his face and banged the silver around noisily. “I’v
e been trying to clean up in there since twelve this afternoon,” she added.

  Gee Gee’s idea of cleaning up was to kick things around until they got lost, but she meant well. Biff usually did the heavy scrubbing, Mother helped me with the cooking. Dimples did the beds, and Mandy was dishwasher. Corny stood around and got in everybody’s way. He was hungover but not remorseful. When Biff asked him where he got the load, he said The Happy Hour, and then shut up.

  He knew Joyce Janice. They’d played the Eltinge together just a few seasons ago. I thought it rather strange that he didn’t mention seeing her at the saloon. Then I had another idea. It could be that he was too drunk to see anyone. I didn’t ask him about the broken hitch; I knew he’d lie about it regardless. But I did ask him how he found the sheriff.

  “He was hanging around the bar, and when I had trouble getting the car started, he said he’d drive me.” Corny went back to blowing on his coffee and finished drinking it before he said, “I thought you might want to see him. I’m sure he’d be interested in what your mother was doing with that shovel last night. Handled it pretty good, too.”

  Corny reached for the bottle and poured himself a stiff drink. Then he lit a cigarette and leaned back in the camp chair. He blew a smoke ring and stuck his finger through it.

  “It’d look like hell in the papers, wouldn’t it?” he asked quietly.

  “What’d look like hell in what papers?” Biff asked.

  Corny drank his rye and didn’t answer.

  He didn’t have to. I knew the answer.

  Corny and Biff started out in burlesque the same season. Corny went straight to the top. He was first comic, Biff was second. Corny got the billing, Biff got nothing. Corny got the salary. Biff got peanuts. Then suddenly Biff’s break arrived. Not just recognition in burlesque, but a made-to-order part in a Broadway show. I knew how Biff’s success rankled in Corny’s heart. I knew, too, that Corny would never be satisfied until Biff was back in burlesque as a second comic.

  Biff took my arm firmly. “Come on, Gyps. We’re going to the village again.”

  I would like to have put on at least half a face, but with no makeup, my hair in strings, and still wearing the dirty slacks, I allowed myself to be carried off to Ysleta.