The Murder of Miranda Read online

  “I have news for you, Quinn. Everybody is out to get you.”

  “Tell them my father is buying me a stun gun.”

  “Okay, I’ll spread the word right now.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To the office. They should be the first to know.”

  Before he left, Grady combed his hair in front of the mirror in the cubbyhole that served as the lifeguards’ dress­ing room. He knew Ellen was interested in him and there was always a chance that some day he might get interested back. She was a nice sensible girl with a steady job and great-looking legs. He could do better but he’d often done a lot worse.

  “We can’t expel Frederic,” Ellen said. “He’s already ex­pelled.”

  “Then how come he’s here?”

  “He must have climbed over the back fence.”

  “There are four rows of barbed wire on top.”

  “The engineer reported yesterday that his wire cutters were missing from the storage shed.”

  “The kid’s a genius,” Grady said. “I wish we could think of something constructive for him to be a genius at.”

  “You can handle him. Opinion among the members is that you’re very good with children. They seem to like you—the children, I mean.”

  “What about the other people?”

  “What other people?”

  “The ones who aren’t children.”

  “Oh, I’m sure everyone likes you.”

  “Does that include you?”

  She fixed her eyes at a point on the wall just over his left shoulder. “It’s against the rules for you to come into the office wearing only swim trunks. You’re supposed to put on your warm-up suit.”

  “I’m not cold,” Grady said. “Are you?”

  “Stop the cute act.”

  “What kind of act would you like? I’m versatile.”

  “I bet you are. But don’t waste any of it on me.”

  He sat on the edge of the desk swinging one leg and admiring the way the sun had tanned the skin while bleaching the hair to a reddish gold. Then he turned his attention back to Ellen. Under ordinary circumstances he wouldn’t have bothered making a pass, but right now the pickings were poor. Club members were off limits, especial­ly the teenagers who’d hung around him during the sum­mer indicating their availability in ways that would have shocked their parents as thoroughly as little Frederic’s pro­jected stun gun. Anyway, it was fall and they were back in school. Ellen was still here.

  He said, “You sure play hard to get. What’s the point?”

  “And speaking of rules, tell your girlfriends not to phone here for you. Mr. Henderson doesn’t approve of personal calls at the office.”

  “Hey, you’re laying it on me pretty heavy. Lighten up, will you? I’m not your run-of-the-mill rapist.”

  “You could have fooled me.”

  “What are you so mad about, anyway?”

  “I’m not mad, merely observant. I’ve watched you spreading the charm around for your fourteen-year-old groupies all summer and—”

  “I like your eyes when you’re mad, they’re light bright green. Like emeralds. Or 7-Up bottles.”

  “Yours are grey. And strictly granite.”

  “I didn’t know you were such a mean-type lady.”

  “I didn’t know either.” Ellen sounded a little surprised. “I guess it takes a mean-type man to bring it out in me.”

  “Okay, let’s start over. I come into the office to report that I’m having some trouble with one of the kids. And you say we can’t expel him because he’s already expelled. Then I say—Oh hell, I forget what I said. You really do have pretty eyes, Ellen. They’re emeralds. Forget the 7-Up bot­tles, I just tossed them in to make you laugh. Only you didn’t.”

  “It wasn’t funny.”

  “In fact, you never laugh at anything I say anymore.” The telephone rang and she was about to pick it up when he reached across the desk and stopped her by grabbing her arm. “I notice you kidding around with some of the members and the engineer and even Henderson. Why the sudden down on me?”

  “It’s not sudden. It’s been coming on for some time.”

  “Why? I didn’t do anything to you. I thought we were friends, you know, on the same side but cool.”

  “Is that your definition of friends, on the same side but cool?”

  “What’s the matter with it?”

  “It seems to leave out a few essentials.”

  “Put them in and we’re still friends. Aren’t we?” The phone had stopped ringing. Neither of them noticed. Gra­dy said again, “Aren’t we?”

  “No.”

  “Why not . . . ? Oh hell, don’t answer that. I wouldn’t make much of a friend anyhow. Want to hear something funny? I must have had friends all along the line—I’ve got a lot going for me—but I don’t remember them. I remem­ber the places, none of them amounting to a hill of beans, but I forget the people. They walked away or I walked away. Same difference. They’re gone like they died on me.”

  “This sounds like a pitch for sympathy.”

  “Sympathy? Why would I want sympathy? I’m on top of the world.”

  “Fine. How’s the view?”

  “Right now it’s not so bad.”

  A woman was coming down the corridor toward the office and he liked the way she moved, kind of slow and waltzing like a bride walking down the aisle. She wore a long silky robe that clung to her thighs. Her blonde hair had been twisted into a single braid that fell over one shoulder and was fastened with a pink flower. With every step she took, the pink flower brushed her left breast. This seemed guileless, but Grady knew enough about women to be pretty sure it wasn’t.

  He said, “Who’s the lady?”

  “Mrs. Shaw.”

  “She looks rich.”

  “I guess she is.”

  “Very rich?”

  “I don’t know. How do you tell the difference between rich and very rich?”

  “Easy. The very rich count their money, then put it in a bank and throw away the key. The rich spend theirs. They drive it, fly it, eat it, wear it, drink it.”

  “Mrs. Shaw put hers on her face.”

  “That’s not a bad choice.”

  Ellen’s voice was cold. “I can understand a glandular type like you getting excited about some teenage groupies. But a fifty-year-old widow, that’s overdoing it a bit, isn’t it? She’s fifty-two, in fact. When her husband died a few months ago I had to look up their membership application to write an obit for the club bulletin. He was a very sweet old man nearly eighty.”

  “What’s her first name?”

  “Why?”

  “I just want to know. You make it sound like a crime no matter what I say or do.”

  “Her name is Miranda. But you’d better stick to Mrs. Shaw if you know what’s good for you.”

  “Can’t I even ask a question without you getting all torqued up?”

  “Mr. Henderson has a strict rule prohibiting fraterniza­tion between members and employees. You were warned about it several times last summer, remember? Frederic’s sister, April, the Peterson girl, Cindy Kellogg—”

  “What’s to remember? Nothing happened.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Practically nothing.”

  “Sometime when I have a week to spare you’ll have to tell me what ‘practically nothing’ covers.”

  He hesitated for a moment, then leaned across the desk and patted her lightly on the top of her head. Her hair was very soft, like the feathers of a baby duck he’d found on a creek bank when he was a boy. The duck had died in his hands. “Hey, stop fighting me. I’m not so bad. What’s so bad about me?” For no reason that he could see or figure out, the duck had died in his hands. Maybe it was because he touched it. Maybe there were soft delicate things t
hat should never be touched.

  He straightened up, crossing his arms over his chest as though he was suddenly conscious of his nakedness. “I like the girls and the girls like me. Why would you want to change that? It’s normal.”

  “So it’s normal. Hurray.”

  “Don’t you like normal?”

  “I like normal.”

  “But not in me,” Grady said. “I wish we were friends, Ellen, I honest to God do. You seem to be friends with everyone else around here. What’s so bad about me?”

  With the ointment washed off her face and replaced with moisturizer and makeup, Miranda felt a little calmer. But each minute had its own tiny nucleus of panic. There was a new brownish patch on her forehead, the mole on her neck appeared to be enlarging, and the first ominous ripples of cellulite were showing on her upper arms and thighs. She missed Neville to tell her that the mole and the brown patch were her special beauty spots and the ripples of cell­ulite existed only in her imagination. Not that she would have believed him. She knew they were real, that it was time to go back to the clinic in Mexico for more injections.

  She couldn’t leave immediately or even make a reserva­tion. Her lawyer had advised her to stay in town until Nev­ille’s will was probated. When she asked for a reason he’d been evasive, as if he knew something she didn’t and wouldn’t want to. His attitude worried her, especially since there was a story going around that Neville’s son by his first marriage was planning to contest the will. She would have liked to question Ellen about it—Ellen might know the truth, people were always confiding in her—but when Miranda went into the office the lifeguard was there and Ellen looked a little flustered.

  Miranda said, “I’m expecting to hear from my lawyer, Mr. Smedler. Has he called?”

  “No, Mrs. Shaw.”

  “When he does, have someone bring me the message, will you please? I’ll be in the snack bar.”

  She hadn’t looked at Grady yet, or even in his direction, but he was well aware that she’d seen him. She’d been watching him off and on all morning from under the floppy straw hat and behind the oversized amber sunglasses.

  She turned toward him, taking off the glasses very slowly, like a professional stripper. “You’re the lifeguard, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Grady.”

  “Pardon?”

  “That’s my name. Grady Keaton.”

  “Oh. Well, there seems to be a child screaming some­where.”

  “Yes, ma’am. It’s the Quinn kid, Frederic.”

  “Can you do something about it?”

  “Probably not.”

  “You might at least try. It sounds as though he’s suffer­ing.”

  “He’d be suffering a lot more right now if his father didn’t have ten million dollars. Or maybe twenty. After the first million who counts?”

  Her smile was so faint it was hardly more than a soften­ing of the expression in her eyes. “Everybody counts, Gra­dy. You must be new around here if you haven’t learned that.”

  “I’m a slow learner. I may need some private tutoring.”

  “Indeed. Well, I’m sure Ellen would be willing to ac­quaint you with some basics.”

  “Ellen and I don’t agree on basics. That presents kind of a problem.”

  “Then perhaps you’d better concentrate on more imme­diate problems, like Frederic Quinn.”

  She meant to put him in his place by sounding severe, but she couldn’t quite manage it. During the years of her marriage to Neville she’d never had occasion to use her voice to exert authority or raise it in anger. Everything was arranged so she’d have no reason to feel dissatisfied or insecure. Her only bad times were at the clinic in Mexico when she’d screamed during the injections. Even then the screams had seemed to be coming from someone else, a shrill, undisciplined stranger, some poor scared old woman: “Stop, you’re killing me.” — “The Señora will be young again!” — “For God’s sake, please stop.” — “The Señora will be twenty-five . . . ”

  For the first time she looked directly and carefully at Grady. He had a small golden mustache that matched his eyebrows, and a scar on his right cheek like a dimple. He was no more than twenty-five. She felt a sudden sharp pain between her breasts like a needle going through the skin and right into the bone. “Stop, you’re killing me.” — “The Señora will be twenty-five.”

  She took a deep breath. “You’d better attend to the boy.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I may be able to help. I haven’t had much experience with children but I like them.”

  “I don’t,” Grady said.

  “You must like some of them, surely.”

  “Not a damn one.”

  “They don’t all act like Frederic.”

  “They would if their fathers had ten million dollars.”

  “So here we are back at the ten million. It’s quite perva­sive, isn’t it, like a smell.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Like a smell.”

  “Well, the boy can’t be allowed to suffer simply because his father has a great deal of money. That would hardly be fair. Come on, I’ll go with you and help you quiet him down.”

  “That won’t be necessary, Mrs. Shaw,” Ellen said. “Gra­dy can handle the situation himself.”

  “Of course he can. I’ll just tag along to see how it’s done . . . if Grady doesn’t mind. Do you mind, Grady?”

  Grady didn’t mind at all.

  Ellen stood and watched the two of them walk down the hall side by side. She wanted to turn and busy herself at her desk with her own work but she couldn’t take her eyes off them. In an odd disturbing way they looked exactly right together, as if they’d been matched up in a toy store and sold as a pair.

  Having secured his notepaper, Mr. Van Eyck decided to drop by Mr. Henderson’s private office to thank him.

  Henderson was glancing through a week-old Wall Street Journal while he ate his lunch, a pint of cottage cheese which he spooned into his mouth with dip chips. He pre­ferred to read with his meals, on the theory that his gastric juices flowed more freely when they were not interrupted by the conversation of nincompoops.

  What he read was not important, was not, in fact, even his own choice. After the swimming area of the club closed for the day he went around gathering up all the reading material that had been abandoned or forgotten—paper­back books, newspapers, travel brochures, medical jour­nals, airplane schedules, magazines, even the occasional briefcase with interesting contents like the top-secret finan­cial report of an oil company, or complete plans for an air-sea attack on Mogadishu drawn up by retired Rear Admi­ral Cooper Young. Henderson had no idea where Moga­dishu was, but it was reassuring to know that if and when such an attack proved necessary, Admiral Young would be ready to take care of the situation.

  Economics, war, politics, porn, pathology—Henderson devoured them all while his gastric juices flowed on like some good old dependable river that never spilled or went dry. But even the best-behaved river could be dammed.

  “Very decent of you, Henderson, to lend me this stuff,” Van Eyck said.

  “What?”

  “The notepaper. If you hadn’t lent it, I’d have pinched it of course, but this way is preferable.” The old man cleared his throat. “You will be able to take credit for making some small contribution to the cause of world literature.”

  “What?”

  “I’m writing a novel.”

  “On our club paper?”

  “Oh, don’t thank me yet, Henderson, it’s a bit premature for that. But some day a single page of this stuff might be worth a fortune.”

  “What?”

  “You keep repeating what. Is there something the matter with your hearing?”

  Henderson dipped a chip in his cottage cheese but he couldn’t swallow, his mouth was dry. The good old de­pendable
river had stopped flowing at its source. “This writing you’re doing on our club paper, you claim it will be worth a fortune?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “To whom?”

  “Posterity. All those people out there. In a figurative sense.”

  In a less figurative sense Henderson pictured all the peo­ple out there as a line of attorneys waiting to file suit against the club for libel, character assassination and mali­cious mischief. He went over to the water cooler and poured himself a drink. Perhaps he would buy a ticket to Mogadishu. If there was going to be a war there, he might be lucky enough to become one of the first casualties.

  “By the way,” Van Eyck said, “to facilitate my research you might tell me how the club got its name.”

  “The birds.”

  “What birds?”

  “All those penguins out there diving for fish.”

  “Those are pelicans. The nearest penguin is ten thou­sand miles away. They’re an antarctic species.”

  “There must be a penguin around here some place,” Henderson said quickly. “How else did the club get its name?”

  “My dear chap, that’s what I asked you.”

  “Ten thousand miles?”

  “Approximately.”

  “This puts me in an intolerable position. I’ve been telling everyone those little beasts are penguins, and now they aren’t.”

  “They never were.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive. But go on lying if you like. No law against it.”

  Van Eyck returned to his table on the terrace. There seemed little doubt that Henderson was getting peculiar, exactly like every other manager before him. In the next few weeks the same symptoms would emerge, a tendency to twitch, to smile at inappropriate moments, to mutter to himself. A pity, Van Eyck thought, taking up his pen. He’s not really a bad sort in spite of all that money he owes his bookie.

  Admiral Young’s battle plans for Mogadishu were of no concern to his two daughters, who were busy conducting a war of their own in the snack bar. Their weapons were simple, their attacks direct. Cordelia hit Juliet over the head with a piece of celery, and as she was running for the door to avoid retaliation Juliet caught her on the ear with a ripe olive. The incident was reported to Ellen, who in turn telephoned Admiral Young and advised him to come and take the girls home.