Fadeout: A Dave Brandstetter Mystery

3

"To make it a success story?" she asked. "We came to Pima. . . . But look, really I haven't told you about him. I've left out too much. For instance, how funny he was. I've only told you about the despair. But he had a marvelous sense of humor." She touched the scripts on the desk. "You'll see when you read these. Antic and zany and never cruel. Just warm and wildly funny." "And the music," Dave said. "What about that?" "Yes, that was there too. Not that he ever counted it much. It was"-she gave a little shrug and went back to the couch and sat down and picked up her glass-"a habit. His people were musical. He'd sung and played ever since he was old enough to make a noise. It was in his blood. He took it for granted, like breathing." Her brown eyes warmed, recalling. "Sometimes, when the gloom grew gloomiest about the writing, he'd suddenly dust off his gui17 tar and sing all evening. Old songs, songs he made up himself . Friends would come in. We'd drink beer.... It wasn't all dust and Dostoevsky." She glanced at him wryly and away again. "Just mostly. And the good times grew fewer and fewer. We weren't in our twenties anymore. Then we weren't even in our thirties anymore. Gretchen was growing up and needing things girls need. So Fox quit the bookshop and went to work in a factory because the wages were better. And he didn't have the energy he used to have. Naturally, who does? It grew harder and harder for him to write. He kept trying. But he didn't joke much anymore. There were a lot of silences. . . ." She gazed out the window again, looking her age, looking like someone too much has happened to. "So you came to Pima," Dave said. "Why?" "My father had a stroke and sent for me." "I'm sorry. Is he all right now?" "He'll never be the same, but he manages. He can walk again. Drive his own car. That was a year ago last summer. It was strange, coming back." "You hadn't been back at all?" Dave asked. "Not in twenty-two years. Dad was very angry about my running away. He was even angrier about my marrying Fox. He wrote to tell me so and then he never wrote again, not even when Gretchen was born. You see, he'd planned for me to marry somebody else, a rich boy here in Pima. I didn't want to. Not a very original story, is it?" Her smile was thin, self-mocking. "And I thought, we'll show the' old bastard. My husband will be the most successful writer in America. While I was down on my knees scrubbing worn18 out linoleum in our grubby little rented kitchens in L.A., I'd dream of the sweet, vengeful day I'd come back to Pima. In glory. Wife of the famous novelist. Small-town girl makes good." "And thumbs nose at Dad. He's well off, is he?" "He came to California in 1933, the dust bowl time. From Oklahoma. I was ten. The way he tells it, he arrived" -she said it with a country twang-" 'in a five-dollar Ford with myoid woman and my sprout here and thirty cents in my pocket.' By 1938 he owned his own ranch free and clear. And in a matter of months after the government ran the Japanese Americans out in 1942, he had one of the largest spreads in this valley. Grapes, citrus, truck. Yes ... my father's well off. And nobody'd better forget it." She glanced at her watch again. "But we're wasting time. You want to know about Fox. I want to tell you.... " "The success story." Dave nodded. "It was purest accident." She lifted the bottle at him. He shook his head. She poured herself a finger of brandy and lit another cigarette. "I was at the A&P in Pima, buying supplies for Dad's ranch. And this man stopped me and asked if I wasn't Thorne Loomis. It was Hale McNeil. We'd gone to high school together. Well, not exactly together . He was three years ahead of me. But it's a small school. We knew each other. His father owned the Pima Valley...