Mother Finds a Body Read online

  I rolled Dimples Darling out of bed and threw a kimono at her. She opened her mouth to scream, but Gee Gee pushed her out of the trailer before she had a chance to finish it.

  By the time I got out, Cliff and Mandy were leaving by the back door. They were wearing a pair of Biff’s pajamas. Mandy wore the bottoms, Cliff the tops. They weren’t awake yet and they stared at the flames stupidly.

  Dimples screamed then. Not because of the fire, but because of Cliff. She threw him her kimono and rushed back into the trailer. When she came out she had her mangy seat-warped mink coat over her arm. Her hair was rolled up in tin curlers, and she wore a pink rubber chin strap, but for once Dimples Darling wasn’t worried about how she looked. She turned the coat inside out and held it close to her chest.

  “My last faded rose,” she said with a sickly grin. Then she fainted dead away.

  By then it seemed the entire trailer camp was up. People in nightgowns and pajamas were running toward the fire with buckets and pails of water in their hands. Someone was thoughtful enough to pour one bucketful on Dimples, and she sat up with a bewildered expression on her wet face.

  “W—what’s cookin’?” she mumbled.

  “You!” Biff snapped, “if you don’t get with it.” He was searching around for something, and his language was not to be listened to. “Where’s that shovel?” is the only part I can translate.

  Finally he ran toward a neighbor’s trailer and returned in a moment with a large shovel. Then he began digging a trench near our house. As the trailerites passed by, he shouted at them to get shovels and start digging.

  “The fire can’t jump the trench,” he yelled as they stared at him.

  It took a full minute for the smartest one to catch on, but when he ran for his shovel, the others followed him blindly.

  With that off his mind, Biff started yelling for us to pour water on the trailer so the sparks couldn’t catch. “And get the cars out of the way! The gasoline …”

  I didn’t wait to hear the rest of the direction. With the animals tangled up in my arms and hair, I piled into the driver’s seat of our car and drove like mad down the road. When I found a spot that looked safe, I pulled over to the side of the road and turned off the ignition. I tied the monkey to the steering wheel and started to put the dog basket in the back seat. Then I missed Mother! Her bed wasn’t mussed; the asthma powder rested on the shelf, the glass of water was spilled over the pillow, but Mother was gone.

  I raced back to the trailer camp. Dimples and Gee Gee were pouring bucketfuls of water on our trailer. The dust streaked down the sides in mud streams. Gee Gee was soaking wet, too.

  “Where’s Mother?” I yelled above the roar of excited people.

  They didn’t answer me.

  I heard Biff’s voice. “Leave our trailer alone,” he shouted. “Get the ones nearest the fire and pour like hell!”

  We grabbed the buckets and raced past the safer trailers to those that were in the most danger. The other cars had been driven away, and that meant that the camp was in darkness. Aside from the trailers that carried their own generators, there wasn’t a gleam of light. Even the red glow from the fire was dimmed by the heavy smoke. The wind was blowing toward the end of the camp, and as I ran sparks would catch in the dry grass near my feet. I tried to beat them out with my empty bucket, but they fell so fast!

  My eyes burned and I couldn’t breathe, but I still kept running toward the fire. It wasn’t bravery. I could hear Biff’s voice up there and at that moment I would have run through hell to be near him. Whenever the shouting died down for a second I could hear him giving orders. Sometimes he sounded close by. Then it sounded as though he were miles away. His voice was so calm, so reassuring, that I ran faster.

  The handle of the tin bucket was burning my hand. As it hit the side of my leg, I could feel the heat through my heavy slacks. Then suddenly I stumbled into a clearing. The woods weren’t woods at all when I saw them close by. The trees were stunted bushes with dried brush piled up around them.

  The wind rolled them that way, I thought. But had it been done purposely, it couldn’t have made a better bonfire. I saw Biff’s shadow coming toward me. Then I heard Dimples.

  “To hell with this,” she said peevishly. “Here we are, doing all the heavy work. You don’t see Corny or Mandy knocking themselves out, do you? Damn right you don’t. Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m going to get a drink, and fast.”

  “That’s for me,” Gee Gee said. “Nothing more we can do, anyway.”

  One trailer near the woods was still burning. With the sun coming up behind it, it looked like the framework you see in automobile showrooms. A dilapidated car hitched to it was also burning. There was a strong odor of gasoline in the air.

  But I hardly noticed anything except that Mother was safe. She was there, talking to a tired-looking woman standing near the burning trailer. The woman was weeping, and I could hear Mother consoling her.

  “Such a pity. You didn’t even have time to unhitch the car.” Mother put her arms around the woman and patted her on the shoulder. “We just got here, too. And to think of driving into all this trouble. But as long as you have insurance, there’s nothing to cry about. You can get a new car and trailer. One like my daughter’s …” Mother saw me and rushed into my arms. “Isn’t it the most terrible thing, Louise?” Under her anxious voice I caught a hint of satisfaction.

  I felt a tight feeling in my throat. Just like when the manager of a theater would come backstage and ask to talk to me. I could always tell when they were going to ask me questions about Mother. It might be nothing more than a missing letter, a costume flushed down a toilet, or a piece of music missing. I would know then that Mother was “protecting my interests” again.

  Sometimes it was worse. Mother loves writing letters. She loves it almost as much as she loves steaming open letters other people have written. Unfortunately, Mother’s letters are what people call “poison pen.” Mother doesn’t call them that, of course. She thinks of her letter writing as a sacred duty. Too often I’ve heard her say, “Someone should drop that woman a line and tell her just how low she is—copying your song like that. It’s my duty as your mother to do it. I will do it.” Then Mother would get that too-innocent look in her eye and she would say, “Of course I won’t sign it. I’ll send it miscellaneously.”

  Mother was wearing her letter-writing face as I took her arm and led her away from the weeping woman. She turned back and waved at the woman. Then she wheezed again.

  “You know, Louise, I think this fire has brought on an asthma attack.” In the same tone she went on to tell me about the weeping woman. “Poor soul, that trailer was all she had in the world. She just arrived this afternoon, and then to have this happen to her! She had a beauty shop in it and used to go around giving permanents and things. She had three steady customers waiting for treatments and there she is, burned out of …”

  “Mother,” I said. “Where were you during the fire?”

  “Don’t be rude. I was telling you about poor Mrs. Smith. She told me she …”

  “I don’t want to know about her,” I said. “I asked you where you were during the fire. Your bed wasn’t even slept in.”

  Even as Mother started explaining, I was sorry I had asked. It was too easy to remember Mother’s words: leave everything to me. Too easy to remember how Mother remedied situations.

  “Mother, did you start that fire?”

  Her blue eyes looked at me calmly. Her face was flushed. I hoped the flush was from the asthma, but in my heart I knew better.

  “Why, Louise! How can you ask me a thing like that? Your own mother!”

  Then I knew it was true. But why did she do it? I didn’t ask her; I was afraid of the answer.

  “Oh, stop talking so tragic,” Mother said impatiently. “Of course I started the silly old fire. How was I to know that poor woman’s trailer would get burned up? And how did you think I could get everybody out of our trailer unless I did someth
ing drastical?” Mother tossed her head in anger. “You certainly didn’t want those friends of yours to know we were carting a dead body around, did you? You couldn’t have dragged it around in the broad daylight, could you? That’s the trouble with you and Biff. You have no gratitude.”

  It wasn’t the first time I had been staggered by Mother’s methods. I had been through a series of them since I started in show business as a kid, but nothing like this!

  “If you’d been the right kind of daughter, you would have helped me,” Mother said. “But no!” Then she became more cheerful. “Well, anyway, there’s nothing left to worry about. No one got hurt. Nothing got damaged but a few old trees and that trailer of Mrs. Smith’s. She has it completely covered by insurance, and the body’s buried away just as nice as you could ask for. The …”

  “No!” The word burst from me. “But—who—helped you?”

  “Why, no one.” Mother sounded a little hurt that I thought she needed help. “I just waited until everybody was quiet. Then I got out of the car by the back door and found the shovel. I dug a nice hole. Then I started the fire before I went back for the corpse. The hole isn’t very deep, though. I do think the very least Biff can do is dig a deeper one. Of course, if we leave town right away, it might not matter. What do you think?”

  “Did anyone see you?”

  “See me when?”

  “When you were burying the body,” I said as patiently as my trembling voice would allow.

  Mother stopped walking for a moment. “You know,” she said slowly, “now that you mention it, I did think someone was following me. It was when I was pulling the wagon over the bumps …”

  “What wagon?”

  “Why, little Johnny’s wagon. You know, the nice family that lives next door to us. The husband is in the scissor-grinding business. Goes from town to town grinding scissors. She’s having another baby, too. Three already and another one on the way. It’s disgraceful.”

  “Why that wagon, Mother?”

  “Well, we don’t own one, and you certainly didn’t expect me to carry that corpse over my shoulder, did you?”

  Mother was silent a moment. We walked on toward the trailer.

  “You know, Louise, I do believe my asthma has cleared up by itself. It’s either that new medicine or this dry climate.” Mother breathed deeply and clearly.

  “Yes,” she said. “It certainly has. Oh, by the way, dear, let’s not tell Biff about the body right now. Let’s wait until later and surprise him.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  By seven that morning the last fireman had left and the trailer camp settled down to sleep again. The smell of burnt brush and chemicals coming from the woods was like a badly kept Turkish bath, but my nose had been subjected to such a variety of odors during the last week that it was losing its sensitivity. Anyway, I kept it close to the pot of coffee that was boiling away on the relief stove, so the smell didn’t bother me as much as it did Biff.

  He divided his complaints between the smell and a blister on his hand. I rather liked the blister. It made him look as though he worked for a living, but I did agree with him about the air.

  “Smells like something Bill might have dragged into the trailer,” Biff said. Then he started laughing. “Boy, if this isn’t one for the book!”

  His laugh sounded dirty to me. I glanced up from the coffeepot, and that made him laugh louder.

  “Punkin, you ought to see yourself,” he said. “You lost half your eyebrows.”

  I don’t see anything funny about that to this day. I had lost half my eyebrows and my bangs were singed. Not only that; my hair was gray with smoke. So were my clothes.

  “I don’t think that’s very kind of you,” I said in a martyred tone. “Laughing at me when I’m bending over this hot stove making coffee for you. I could very nicely have used the time putting on a full make-up, and, anyway, if you think you’re a Rembrandt!”

  Biff rattled the cups and saucers around on the table and brought the can of milk from the extra icebox on the running board of the trailer. By then I was beginning to think the setup was funny, too, that is, everything but my singed eyebrows.

  “You were wonderful, honey,” I said offhand-like. “Thinking about digging the trench and everything. I certainly didn’t see anyone else work so hard.” I stirred the coffee vigorously. No sense in letting him think he was too wonderful, I decided.

  “You were pretty swell yourself,” Biff was just as offhand. “Driving the car away and pouring water and … Say! Where is the car?”

  In all the excitement I had forgotten it myself. Then I remembered I had left the animals in it.

  “It’s down the road a ways,” I said. “Have your coffee first. Then go get it. While you’re gone I’ll fix the dogs’ breakfast.”

  “Punkin, the Personality Girl of the Old Opera, making breakfast!’ Biff said it comfortably. He settled back in the chair and lit two cigarettes, one for me. “I bet if I told the boys they’d never believe it. Here you are, living in a trailer camp in Ysleta, Texas. Corpse in the bathtub, fire in the woods, everything you need to start light housekeeping. And me with a blister on my hand yet. A blister from a shovel!”

  Biff caressed the blister and let a dreamy light fill his eyes. I knew what he was thinking. He was visualizing the story in newspaper print. That’s the only trouble with marrying in the business—no secrets.

  The no secrets reminded me of my own secret. I hadn’t had a chance to tell Biff about Mother’s excursion into the woods, and he looked so pleased with life in general that I didn’t have the heart to spoil things. Not until we’d had our coffee, anyway. I had no intentions of surprising him as Mother suggested, but it was a difficult subject to bring up. We hadn’t been married long enough for me to say, “Look, dear, Mother did the damnedest thing. She set fire to the woods so she could bury the body.”

  As far as that goes, we hadn’t been married at all. Not if you want to be technical about it. We had a deep-sea captain say the right words, and I wore the ring on the right finger, but since the night of our marriage we hadn’t been alone for five minutes.

  It wasn’t only Mother and our guests. Even before they joined us, the studio had sent a publicity man as chaperon until we went through another ceremony that would sound legal to the Hays office. They didn’t like the water-taxi business. They didn’t like the idea of our captain being willing to disregard the technicalities of a marriage license, and they didn’t like me particularly to start with. Making a movie actress out of a burlesque queen was a tougher job than they had anticipated.

  Hays organization or no Hays organization, I had no intentions of spoiling my romantic marriage. My father had been married at sea; my grandfather had been married at sea, and I had an uncle who married himself at sea. I was being traditional, and if they wanted to call it living in sin, it was all right with me. One thing sure: they weren’t going to get me to wear a white veil and have doves flying around while an organ played bad music. I wasn’t exactly suspended by my studio, but I was too close to it for comfort. Somehow it didn’t matter. I knew I could always go back to burlesque.

  “Punkin?”

  “What?”

  “What were you thinking about?”

  “Honest? Or can I color it a little?”

  “Honest,” Biff said.

  “I was thinking if this is living in sin it sure is overrated.”

  When Biff smiles he’s rather handsome. He smiled then, an extra-nice smile. He got up and dropped an eggshell into the coffeepot, and I thought he looked substantial, standing there in the early-morning sunlight.

  He’s a little too tall, six feet four, and because he’s always been conscious of his height, he stoops. Just in the knees, though. Most people think he stoops because it gets a laugh on his theater entrances, but that isn’t true. His hair is dark and, with the exception of one lock that stands straight up in the back, it’s wavy. His eyes are a real Irish blue, almost black when he’s angry, and I like hi
s mouth. It’s big, but, like Mother says, a big mouth is a sign of generosity. She doesn’t say that about Biff’s mouth, of course. On him a big mouth means deceit. If he’d been anything but an actor he could have gotten away with no mouth at all, but Mother doesn’t like actors. Least of all she likes burlesque actors.

  “Having fun?” he asked me.

  “Uh-huh. Best honeymoon I ever had.”

  Biff placed the cups on the table. He looked closely at one and began polishing it with Mother’s asthma towel. “Mandy’s getting damn careless with his dishwashing,” he said.

  “Well, at least he tries,” I said. “That’s more than I can say for that Corny friend of yours. Do you know he wasn’t even around last night when that fire was …”

  The car driving up interrupted me. With a screeching of brakes it stopped a few feet from the table. It was our car, and Corny scrambled out of the back seat. His pajamas were wrinkled, but I was glad to see that he had on the bottoms even if they didn’t match the tops. His eyes were bleary. I glared at him as he staggered over to the table and reached for the bottle of Wilson’s.

  “I’ll have one of those brown boys,” he said.

  “You’ve had enough brown boys to populate South Africa,” I snapped, taking the bottle from his hand. “Go to bed and sleep it off. On the floor for once.”

  Corny didn’t move. He glowered at me as though he couldn’t make up his mind whether to hit me on the head or kick me in the teeth.

  “Where’ve you been?” Biff asked.

  “Where do you think I’d be?” Corny said. “Hanging around here making a damn-fool hero out of myself? Where there is smoke there is no Cliff Corny Cobb. I went into town and had me a couple of snorts, that’s where I been.”

  “You’ve got a helluva nerve taking our car out when you’re drinking,” I said. Then I remembered where I had left the car. “How did you know where it was, anyway?”

  Corny had to brace himself against the tent pole to keep from falling flat on his face. I had never seen him that tight.

  “If you must know,” he said, “I was walking into town and I passed the car down the road. You shouldn’ta left the keys in it if you don’t want nobody but yourself to drive it. And don’t go talking about me having my nerve …”