Suspicious Circumstances Read Free

friend. Yes, yes, of course She’s heartbroken.’
    I went up to her. She was young and very smooth with very green eyes and startling red hair falling to her shoulders in one of those Carole Lombard type hairdos which someone had revived. I noticed all this about her with cool clinical detachment, for what were smooth, green-eyed California red-heads to me now? If anything, I was prepared to dislike her for representing something which was forever dead and buried.
    When she slammed down the phone, I said, ‘Give me five bucks, please.’
    She turned the green eyes on me in a long calm look. ‘What is this? A stick-up?’
    ‘I’ve got a taxi waiting.’
    She gestured to the statue. ‘Since you have your own transportation, why not highjack Buster here? You could probably peddle him to MGM for twelve-fifty.’
    I knew I disliked her then. There’s nothing more exhausting than a smart girl. I said, ‘Do we have to indulge in all this brilliant repartee? I’m Anny Rood’s son.’
    ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘In that case you come under petty cash.’
    She took a five-dollar bill out of her pocket-book. The telephone rang again. I paid off the taxi and came back with my suitcase. The girl had hung up and was feeding the goldfish from a can of fish food. She looked up again, appraising me with a brisk skepticism which might once have represented a challenge but which now, thanks to Monique, was for the birds.
    ‘So you’re the divine son who’s writing a divine book in Paris?’
    I ignored that. ‘Where’s everyone?’ I said.
    ‘If everyone means your mother, which it inevitably does, She’s upstairs.’ She smiled brightly. ‘And since you’re clearly so overwhelmed with interest, you’ll be thrilled to hear I’m a new addition to the group. Delight Schmidt, the secretary’s secretary, the goldfish’s friend.’
    ‘Delight!’
    ‘At the year of my birth, Delight was considered a cute name in the lower lower class circles of San Bernadino in which I moved. Want to make something of it?’
    When I’d left, the girl who had helped Pam had had perpetual sinus and a bedridden father and had been called Bernice.
    ‘What happened to Bernice?’ I said.
    ‘Bernice got the boot two weeks ago. I’m a brand-new broom.’
    The phone rang.
    She said into it, ‘Good morning, Miss Rood’s residence ... No, I’m afraid she isn’t … No comment. No comment at all.’ She dropped the receiver and watched me again. ‘I adore this household. I’ve always wanted to say No Comment into a phone.’
    I knew all the calls were about Norma, but I wasn’t going to show worry in front of one of the here-today-gone-tomorrow females who were constantly streaming through our lives. Certainly not in front of this Aren’t-I-The-Cute-One? little number.
    There was a matching goldfish pool on the other side of the hall. Delight Schmidt got up, still clutching the telephone, and, with the extension cord trailing behind her, started wandering towards the second pool.
    ‘My feet!’ she muttered. ‘These fish will be the death of me.’
    No sale, lady, I thought. I picked up my suitcase and ran upstairs.
    We changed houses so often that I was apt to get lost in them. But I located Mother’s room because the door was half open and I saw pink wall. Whosever house we were in for however short a time, the first thing Mother always did was to have her room made over entirely in pink. In fact, with the reckless generosity for which she was famous, she invariably put thousands of dollars’ worth of improvements into her dearest friend’s house which, I sometimes felt, was one of the reasons why everyone was so enthusiastic about loaning their real estate to her.
    I paused a moment outside the door, feeling the way I always felt when I’d been away from Mother for any length of time, a mixture of excitement and uneasiness as if I were a nine-year-old who had probably done something wrong.
    When I went in, Mother was on the bed. At least