Jack and the Beanstalk (Matthew Hope) (20 page)

“I didn’t think it would.”

“Burrill wrote a will leaving everything he had to his only daughter, woman named Hester Burrill in New Orleans, named her personal representative too. I’ve been trying to reach her all day. She’s either busy talkin’ on the phone, or else it’s off the hook or out of order. Anyway, I wanted you to know I’m going to recommend the same thing to her I recommended to Burrill. She keeps the property, a’course, and you forfeit the four thousand, plus you fork over the Mustang and five thousand in damages. You had a chance to talk this over with Mrs. McKinney yet?”

“I mentioned it to her.”

“What’d she say?”

“She said I should tell you to go to hell.”

“Sounds like a right nice lady,” Loomis said.

“She is,” I said.

“Well, you know our position, and we ain’t budgin’ an inch from it. Save us all a lot of trouble if your client agreed to it now. ’Cause otherwise, what I’ll recommend to Burrill’s daughter is to file an action against the estate, see if we can’t turn up that cash.”

“I’m not going back to Mrs. McKinney on this,” I said. “She’s already refused your offer.”

“Suit yourself,” Loomis said. “You’ll be hearin’ from me soon’s I talk to the daughter.”

The buzzer sounded again almost the moment he’d hung up.

“Your wife,” Cynthia said. “On six.”

“I don’t
have
a wife,” I said.

“Shall I tell her you’re out?”

“I’ll take it,” I said, and sighed, and pressed the button. “Hello?” I said.

“Matthew?” she said. “How
are
you?”

The Waif.

“Fine,” I said.

“And you?”

“My eyes are watering a lot,” she said. “My allergies.”

The Waif, for sure.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.

“One of these days I may just leave Florida,” she said.

She knew she couldn’t take up residence outside the state until Joanna reached the age of twenty-one. I’d made damn certain of that in the settlement agreement. I refused to rise to the bait.

“So what’s on your mind?” I asked.

“Matthew, I feel embarrassed asking you this, you’ll think I’m taking advantage of you.”

I thought, perhaps unkindly, that she had taken everything
else
in the divorce settlement, so what would it matter if she took mere
advantage
now? And then I wondered what catastrophe Susan the Witch had conjured for Susan the Waif to lay on me in order to spoil whatever little time I’d be spending with our
daughter this weekend. In the next three seconds, I felt I was getting omniscient when it came to Susan.

“Matthew,” she said, “I don’t want Joanna to be sulking around your house all weekend. You know how she can get when she’s been deprived.”

I did not know how she could get when she’d been deprived. To my knowledge, I had never deprived her of anything but my presence in her mother’s house.

“Matthew,” she said, “do you remember Rhett Robinson?”

“I remember her,” I said.

“She got divorced just about the time we did, do you remember?”

“I remember.”

“She’s getting married again this weekend. To a lovely man from Bradenton.”

“That’s nice,” I said.

“Do you remember her daughter? Daisy?”

“I remember her.”

The Robinsons all had rather fanciful names. Rhett had been named after Mr. Butler in
Gone with the Wind
; I assumed her mother had been hoping for a boy. Her former husband, Bruce, had been named after Bruce Cabot, the actor who’d played Magua in the film based on
The Last of the Mohicans
. Their daughter, Daisy, had been named after Daisy Buchanan in
The Great Gatsby
. An entirely literary family, the Robinsons. I seemed to recall, however, that Bruce had remarried just before Christmas, and his new wife’s name was Mary—plain as any name can be. The last time I’d seen
Daisy
Robinson was when she was ten years old and sleeping over at the house Susan and I then shared. I remembered her as a runny-nosed little girl who kept calling Joanna a cheat, because Joanna consistently beat her at the game of jacks.

“What about her?” I said.

“She and Joanna are
such
good friends,” Susan said.

This was news to me. I had not heard Joanna so much as
mention
Daisy in the past several months. I suddenly remembered what we used to call
The Great Gatsby
back when I was an undergraduate at Northwestern.
The Light on Daisy’s Dock.
This was supposed to have sexual connotations. When I was an undergraduate,
everything
had sexual connotations. “Daisy’s dock” referred to Daisy’s vagina. The possibility that it had a
light
on it was enough to send all of us pink-cheeked sophomores into gales of hysterical laughter. We also used to enjoy singing a song called “I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now,” the “now” being synonymous with the “dock” Daisy had a light on. Oh my, we were such great wits back then.

“It would be a shame,” Susan said morosely, “if Joanna couldn’t be there.”

“Be where?” I said.

“The wedding,” Susan said. “She virtually grew
up
with Daisy, you know, and her mother
is
getting remarried, after all, and I know she—”

“No,” I said, “I’m sorry.”

“What?” Susan said.

“I won’t forfeit another weekend.”

“I haven’t even
asked
yet,” Susan said.

“You’ve asked. And the answer is no.”

“The wedding’s on Saturday. I thought I might bring Joanna over to your place on Sunday morning—”

“No.”

“This means a
lot
to her, Matthew!”

“I doubt it. But if she
really
wants to go see Rhett Robinson marry—who’s she marrying, anyway? Some guy named Heathcliff? Ahab? Beowulf?”

“His
name
happens to be Joshua Rosen,” Susan said coldly. “He
happens
to be Jewish.”

“That’s very nice,” I said, “but I don’t care if the
Pope
is marrying Bo Derek. The last time I saw Joanna was on—”

“Do you know what you are?” Susan asked, and suddenly the Witch rode into view on a broomstick trailing brimstone and fire and eyes of newt. “You are an unmitigated son of a bitch. Your daughter’s best girl friend in the
entire
world—”

“Daisy Robinson is not Joanna’s best friend. Susan, I really don’t want to get into an argument, okay? If Joanna
really
wants to go to the wedding—”

“She
does
want to go!”

“Then have her call me. If she honestly wants to go, I’ll—”

“You’ll pressure her, right?”

“No, I won’t pressure her. All she has to do is say, ‘Dad—’”

“
Dad!
” Susan sneered, as if the word, coming from my lips, were sheer blasphemy.

“I
am
her father,” I said with some dignity.

“
Some
father,” Susan said. “Denying her the opportunity to—”

“Not if she wants to go,” I said. “All she has to do is tell me so herself.”

“I sometimes wonder why God made you so fucking mean,” Susan said.

“Just ask her to call me, okay?” I said, and hung up. My hands were trembling. I truly hated these bouts with Susan. I was still shaking when Cynthia knocked on the door and came into my office.

If a person didn’t know that Cynthia Heullen had a mind like a switchblade knife, he would automatically assume she was a beach bum. This was because she spent every weekend outdoors—swimming, boating, shelling, gardening, walking, whatever—and as a result had become the tannest, blondest young woman in all
Calusa. I think she even spent
rainy
weekends outdoors. Cynthia was twenty-five years old and blessed with a grasp of the law that sometimes caused envy in our modest offices. Frank or I would often be fumbling around for a pertinent section in the Florida Statutes, fitfully leafing through pages, and Cynthia would pop up out of the blue with “Child Abuse, Section 827.03,” even though she had never studied law in her life, and had come to us as a receptionist directly after she’d earned her Bachelor of Arts degree at USF. Frank and I kept begging her to go to law school, promising to take her into the firm the moment she passed the Florida bar exams. But Cynthia was happy with being exactly what she was. I knew very little about her private life; Karl Jennings, the youngest lawyer in our firm, told me in confidence that she was living with an itinerant folksinger out on Sabal Key. I told him I didn’t want to hear anything more about it. Whatever Cynthia did on her own time, in the sun or out of it, was her own business. In the office, she was resourceful, hardworking, even-tempered, quick-witted, and good-humored. And that was more than enough.

She looked at my face.

“I’m never going to put her through again,” she said. “
Never.
”

“We occasionally have to talk,” I said.

“I don’t even
know
her, and I hate her,” Cynthia said, shaking her head. “Your car’s here. The mechanic’s outside, wants to know if you’ll pay for it now, or should they bill you?”

“Ask them to bill me. What’d he do to it?”

“Put in a new battery and a new fan belt.”

“Why a new fan belt?”

“He said the old one was shot.”

“Did he fix the windshield wipers?”

“He didn’t say anything about windshield wipers.”

“I guess I forgot to tell him about them.”

“Do you want him to take the car back? To fix the—”

“No, no. Don’t forget to get the keys from him.”

“I won’t. Also, there’s a lady outside to see you. A Miss McKinney.”

“
Mrs.
McKinney, do you mean?”

“
Miss
McKinney,” Cynthia said. “About my age, I’d guess, long and lovely and almost as blonde as I am. She says it’s personal.”

“Ask her to come in,” I said.

“She’s dressed for the beach,” Cynthia said, and surprised me with a wink.

Sunny McKinney wasn’t quite dressed for the beach, but neither was she dressed appropriately for a visit to a law office. You get to know a person’s colors; her mother’s were white, hers were purple. She was wearing very short purple shorts and purple sandals, and a braless purple T-shirt. She was carrying the same purple leather shoulder bag she’d had with her last Friday night at my house. Her tanned legs looked very long indeed, and her long blonde hair was swept to the back of her head and clasped there with a silver barrette. She seemed very nervous. I did not think it was because she felt underdressed.

“Hi,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind my breaking in on you this way.”

“Not at all,” I said.

“I was doing a little shopping, thought I’d drop in.”

“Sit down, won’t you?”

“Sure,” she said, and took the chair opposite my desk and crossed her long legs.

“So,” I said, “what’s on your mind?”

“Well, first off, I wanted to apologize for Friday night. For using your pool, you know. And for trying to turn you on and all. I realize it was a mean trick. You’re old enough to be my father.”

Her apology made me feel ancient, which I was sure hadn’t been her intention. I told myself I couldn’t
possibly
be old enough
to be her father, not unless she’d been born when I was fifteen. But I made no comment.

“So that’s the first thing,” she said. “I really
am
sorry for the way I behaved that night.”

“Okay,” I said.

“You mind if I smoke?” she asked.

“Go right ahead.”

She reached into her bag, found her cigarettes, shook one free from the pack, and held a purple disposable lighter to it. Everything color-coordinated. The hand holding the lighter was shaking as badly as my own hands had after my little chat with Susan. She blew out a cloud of smoke. I pushed an ashtray across the desk to her.

“I
do
hope I’m forgiven,” she said, and smiled suddenly—and a trifle wickedly, I thought—as if absolution were the furthest thing from her mind. The smile dropped from her face almost instantly. It had been a smile generated by habit; Sunny McKinney was a natural flirt. She could not help being seductive even while she was
apologizing
for having been seductive. I waited. I remembered Cynthia’s wink just before she’d left the office. Sunny uncrossed her legs, and then recrossed them in the opposite direction. I kept waiting.

“I suppose you told Bloom everything I said that night, huh?” she asked at last.

“I did.”

“What’d
he
think?”

“He thought it was interesting.”

“About Jack stealing my mother’s cows, I mean.”

“Yes, I know.”

“That’s all he found it, huh? Interesting?”

“He’s still toying with the idea that your brother may have been trafficking in dope.”

“No, no,” Sunny said. “You tell him he’s wrong.”

She was silent for several seconds, puffing on her cigarette, reaching over to flick the ash into the ashtray. She was jiggling one foot now. I wondered why she was so nervous.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“Huh? Oh yeah, sure.”

“You seem worried about something.”

“No, no,” she said, and shook her head, and stubbed out the cigarette.

“Well, yes,” she said, “I guess I am. Worried, I mean.”

“About what?”

“You remember I told you I was listening in on this conversation? With Jack and the Spanish guy? Last October, remember?”

“Yes?”

“The guy he was selling the cows to, remember?”

“
If
that’s what he was doing.”

“Oh sure,” she said, “that was it, all right. So...I’ve been thinking...suppose it was this Spanish guy who stabbed Jack? I mean, suppose he was afraid Jack would
tell
on him or something? And he went there to...well...to make sure he
wouldn’t
tell. ’Cause this is
rustling
, you know, this is serious. I mean, it didn’t even have to be the Spanish guy
himself
. He could’ve sent somebody else to kill Jack, you know what I mean?”