Strachey's Folly - Stevenson Richard - Страница 24

Both Suters were handsome, conservatively dressed people who looked as if they would have been comfortable posing for a Buick ad in Town & Country. They served cocktails and hors d'oeuvres and chatted volubly about themselves in a way that felt just a little forced. Mrs. Suter was a real estate agent and George a computer-program analyst for a big Maryland HMO. It came out in the conversation that Mrs. Suter had been married four times and George twice. Both were currently unattached.

Mrs. Suter had agreed to meet with a reporter, she said, in order to reassure me. She said she was certain that the quilt panel with her son's name on it was "a prank." The vandalism of the panel was harder to explain, she said, but "nothing James gets mixed up in ever surprises me," she added with a laugh. "James has always gone his own way." She said she had told the Post reporter the same thing and was surprised that editors might continue to consider the incident newsworthy.

"I've been told," I said, "that Jim may be out of the country, and that's why he hasn't responded personally to the quilt-panel mystery. Is that the case?"

George Suter glanced at his mother, who hesitated for just an instant before replying, "I think he is, yes. That's the case in-sofar as any information I have." Her language was flat and with­out nuance, but she spoke to me in the "gracious" tone I guessed she employed with potential buyers and sellers in her real estate business.

"You aren't sure where Jim is?" I asked.

"No, not precisely," she said. "He did say he thought he might be abroad for some time. But Jim's travel plans hadn't quite firmed up the last time we spoke." Mrs. Suter and her son both peered at me now in a way that said no additional infor­mation would likely be forthcoming on this topic.

"When were you last in touch with Jim? Either of you."

"To tell you the truth," George said, "I haven't seen Jim—or talked to him at all—since early summer sometime, I'd say it was. I don't recall his discussing any particular trip he had planned. But Jim has always been something of a gadabout, and he doesn't always inform me or Mother where he's off to or when he'll be back. It's actually a rather annoying habit Jim has." Suter, who appeared to be in his midthirties, had a head full of the famous male-Suter locks, and they were indeed golden and fell across his brow fetchingly.

"So Jim might not be out of the country, just out of the Washington area?"

"That's right," George said. "Jim hasn't answered his tele­phone or returned messages for some time. So I'd say there's a good possibility that he's out of town."

"That would be my guess, too," Mrs. Suter added.

Jim Suter's mother and brother sat watching me with eyes that looked as if they were going to reveal nothing because the Suters did not intend for them to reveal anything. I guessed they were not only lying—poorly—but that they knew Suter was in trouble and probably that he was in trouble in Mexico. But if that's all they knew, then there was no point in pressing them, for I already knew that much and more. And if they knew more than I did, they certainly weren't about to reveal it to a newspa­per reporter from Baltimore. They had agreed to see me, they said, only to dampen interest in the strange quilt panel and the vestigatory quest, and I headed back out in the direction of the Silver Spring metro station.

As I -walked away from Mrs. Suter's building—La Fuente, it was called, spelled out next to the entrance in a silvery script— I turned and looked up at the location where I estimated her third-floor balcony must have been. In the dimness behind the glass door at the rear of the balcony, two figures were standing and seemed to be watching me go.

Chapter 14

When I met Timmy at eight at a Thai restaurant near Dupont Circle that had been recommended by one of Maynard's friends, he was despondent. He told me that he had just visited Maynard again. And while Maynard's condition had been up­graded from stable to fair, Timmy hated seeing his friend so weak and damaged, so helpless, so not the person Maynard had always been.

" 'Fair,' they're labeling him," Timmy said. "He didn't seem so 'fair' to me. I asked him if he felt 'fair,' and he shook his head. But I told him he was improving, day by day, and he nod­ded and—I think—tried to shrug. But if what Maynard is is 'fair,' I'd hate to see him doing poorly."

"You did see him doing poorly Saturday night, on that side­walk in front of his house. 'Fair' is preferable to that."

"True."

"Any estimate on when Maynard will be able to speak?"

"Maybe tomorrow, the nurse said. And I'm not the only one waiting to talk to Maynard. You-know-who was up in Maynard's room nosing around a while ago."

"Ray Craig?"

"Smelly Ray."

"When you and I met, I must have smoked as much as Ray does. I must have stunk that way, too."

"You did. It was awful."

"How did you stand it?"

"You said you intended to quit. And you did. Anyway, I'd spent a month once visiting an Indian friend who lived next to a chemical-fertilizer factory in Poona. So I'd developed an adapt­ability toward vile odors when the cause was good."

"Lucky for me."

"Yep. Me too."

Timmy and I were seated at a table for four against a side wall at the Bangkok Flower. We were waiting for our two din­ner companions, Martin Dormer and Peter Vicknicki, two of Jim Suter's embittered former lovers who had since met and become friends. We didn't know what they looked like, but the maitre d' had been alerted to send them our way.

I asked Timmy if Ray Craig had spoken to him, and he said, "Yes, and he asked where you were."

"What did you say?"

"I told him you were dropping some clothes off at the dry cleaner's."

I laughed. "Why did you say that? I think I know."

Timmy laughed, too. "You probably do. It was the first thing that popped into my head, and I guess I was trying to plant the idea that maybe Ray ought to have some clothes dry-cleaned, too. Although, Don, even Freud said, sometimes a cigar is only a cigar."

"No, I don't think Freud ever actually said that. That was dis­information put out by the behaviorists."

"Right. Next you're going to tell me Freud never said, 'Round up the usual suspects.' Or, 'At least we had Paris.'" _ t   "No, those are both Freud."

"Anyway," Timmy said brightly, "if Craig was in the hospi­tal checking up on Maynard, that means he wasn't following you. That's reassuring."

I could have said, "Yes, but maybe Craig had you under sur­veillance and one of his junior officers was following me," but Timmy already had enough gnawing on his mind. Anyway, I had watched carefully for a tail out to Silver Spring, and I hadn't spotted any.

I said, "I suspect maybe Ray has done some checking on us, Timothy, and he's been reliably informed that we're not likely to turn out to be agents for the Medellin cartel. Did he say anything to you about how the shooting investigation was going?"

"No. I asked, but he didn't answer me. He just asked where you were. Maybe it's because he's an orthodox Freudian that he always answers a question with a question."

I said Timmy's analysis of Officer Craig sounded as good as any I could come up with and went on to describe to Timmy my unsettling meeting with Jim Suter's chilly and unforthcoming mother and brother.