Bury Me Deep

  “Oh, Marion,” he said, as he ran water from the basin through his hair. “Marion, how could I have left you in a place, exposed to such dishonest men?”

  “It is my fault,” Marion said. “I surrendered to him. Even knowing he was a man who dallies and deceives.”

  “Marion, it is beyond all that,” he said, shaking his head. “I paid a visit to Valiant Drugs today.”

  Marion’s head jerked. “You didn’t see him? He’s never in his stores. He—”

  “No, Marion, but I wanted to see…I wanted to see what kind of man he is, I suppose. I had some suspicions, based on what I learned at the hospital, so I went to one of his stores.”

  He reached into his inside pocket and pulled out a small bottle, much like the countless ones Marion had seen, had served from, had even drank from, on Hussel Street.

  He set it on the bed between them. Then he reached into another pocket and set before her a vial and a packet of pills, much like the ones Louise always had.

  “Understand, I did not tell the young man at the counter that I was a physician. This corn liquor, or what have you, this vial of—Marion, this one here is a barbiturate, do you understand? He’s a wet druggist. I asked the right questions, I asked the right way—and you know I know the right ways. And this is what they gave me.”

  She nodded.

  “I talked to a man buying a pint of such-named cough syrup,” Dr. Seeley went on, excited. Marion could not remember him so excited. His eyes glittered. “Marion, I could see it on him. The bad stuff. He was…as I was. And he said before he struck gold at a card game he’d bought the rough magic down on Gideon Square, that area. He said it was the same stuff, different quality. I need to see if it goes that far for our man. He said everything is for sale there. I will see what ‘everything’ means.”

  The darkest parts of Marion’s heart shimmered forth darkly. For what of this did she not know, really? And to be reminded was shameful.

  She could not bear to tell him that there were no surprises here. That she had known, even as she had not really worked it through. That she had known but hadn’t considered it enough to judge it wrong. That she knew and hadn’t cared at all.

  DO YOU REMEMBER, Everett, when we first met? You took me to dinner at the Rotary Club, which was the finest place I’d ever been. I took you to a meeting at the church and you had never been to anything like that before. I had to sing a song that night, do you remember? It was my turn. I had to sing a song; it was “O Africa, dark Africa, God’s love has set us free” and you thought that was so funny because you had never seen anything like it before. Because you were a man of the world.

  LYING IN BED, his breath fast, his fingers twitching against the mattress, his body squirming.

  “Oh, Marion, when I think of this man and what he has done.”

  It is I, she wanted to say, but somehow didn’t. The weight on her, she couldn’t keep saying it, she was too tired to say it. He would never believe her anyway.

  “I know,” he said, and he touched her arm light as a feather, “there’s probably more even than you could say.”

  She turned slightly and watched his profile, moonlight shot, a drooping silhouette of an aging statesman, sunken to ashy folds.

  “Things he…Bedroom affairs for which you lack even the words. Words you don’t have in your head, much less on your tongue. Such words.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Oh, Marion,” he said, and he laid a tentative hand on her. She felt his breath catch.

  That was when she understood. Understood what he was asking of her without asking.

  She would give him something. Under coverlet here, she would. She knew how to now and she would do those private things for him that she had not known of just six months before. Things Joe had shown her. In the dark, under softly worn coverlet, she would.

  But she knew he would hate himself for it. Not her, never her. She would give him this and this kind and good man, this noble man would only hate himself for it.

  AND IN THE MORNING, trying to meet her eyes, yet not meeting them, Dr. Seeley walked her to the streetcar and then rode with her to the clinic and helped her off and kissed her soft on the forehead.

  “Marion, I want you to tell them today.”

  “Tell them?”

  “Marion, I must insist we leave…”

  “I see.” She knew he was right, but it was hard to make that matter.

  “Today I will see what more I can learn about him,” he said, and it struck Marion that he could not seem to say Joe Lanigan’s name aloud to her. “But we would be foolhardy to remain any longer. Those bodies are bound to be found and identified, no matter how many steps you took to…You can tell the clinic that your husband has come to retrieve you and bring you to Mexico with him. They will understand.”

  “If I leave, might that raise suspicions?” As much as she knew its urgency and even after the things Joe Lanigan had said to her the day before, the thought of leaving panicked her.

  And it was hard for her to look at her husband. She tried to forget the things done in that creaking bed the night before. He would not forget. Where did one go from there? Everything between them had changed twice over.

  “Better to raise their suspicions, Marion, than to bear them out entire.”

  “You know best,” she said, and she was sure he did.

  What choice had she? Joe Lanigan, her corrupter, was no longer hers, would permit her to fall to the guillotine before he sullied his overcoat. It had to be.

  She tried not to think of the stretch of years before her. Of the mine doctor’s wife in remote Mexico, days spent without child, they could never seem to manage that either, never could seem to bring her to term. So what would it be? What would her days be? She tried not to imagine that.

  Instead, she walked into the clinic as if it were any other day, as if all were not in ruins around her.

  AS FIVE O’CLOCK APPROACHED, Marion typed a resignation letter. She could not bear to speak to Dr. Milroy. She could not. She slipped the letter under his door and left quickly. The whole ride home she feared she might see him, even as she knew he never took the streetcar. Drove the same gleamy Packard Joe Lanigan toured around town in. The very same one.

  Mrs. Gower gave her a sharp look when she walked in the door of the rooming house.

  “You have visitors,” she whispered. “Earlier, another man was here. From the newspaper. He said he had to speak with you and he left his telephone number. I don’t like this kind of business, Mrs. Seeley. This is not the kind of house I run.”

  There in the frayed, lavender-cloyed living room she found them, like gentleman callers come to tea. There were two, Officer Tolliver, whose head kept hitting the chipped chandelier, and Officer Morley, who had a mustache like John Gilbert and was very kindly to Marion and told her he had never seen such pretty eyes. They said they just had a few questions about her friends Louise Mercer and Virginia Hoyt. They asked if they might speak to her in the drawing room.

  “Is there something wrong?” Marion asked, trying so hard to think. Almost convincing herself, with Officer Morley’s genial face, his relaxing way, that everything would be just fine. “Have the girls gotten into trouble?”

  “We’re just checking into some things, Mrs. Seeley, and we were told you saw the girls before they left town.”

  “Yes.”

  “And did they tell you where they were going?”

  Marion nodded. Smiled lightly. Tried not to twist the handkerchief in her hands. Tried not to tug at the bandage on her hand. Tried to make herself believe her own story. It was a good story, wasn’t it?

  Joe Lanigan’s instructions stretched out so cleanly, like pressed sheets. It was easier each time. She told them that the girls said they had met two men and these men were very handsome and invited them to join them in their automobile on the way to Los Angeles, where there were many jobs and fine times to be had. They were the kind of girls who liked to pick up and move,
you know. Anyone will tell you. Denver. Illinois. Nevada. They had been to many places. Marion, will you send our trunks along, they had asked her. And she had called a delivery service and they had come and picked up the trunks and that was the last she had heard.

  “What was the address they gave you?”

  Marion felt her head whirling uncontrollably. What was she to do here? If she said Southern Pacific Station, they would call the station and the man would surely remember her, wouldn’t he? He would remember her and say that the trunks belonged to a young woman and then and then…there seemed no way out. If they called the delivery service, what would those men say?

  “They filled out the slips. I don’t know. Some general delivery address, maybe?”

  “They didn’t intend for you to have any way to reach them?”

  “They said they would write when they had an address,” Marion said. “I’m sure I will hear from them soon.”

  “Mrs. Seeley,” Officer Morley said, and he looked deeply into her eyes. His face was so kind, and he was so gentlemanly, and Marion felt safely curled in the warmth of his voice. “I don’t want to alarm you, but you should know. Their landlord was concerned about the girls. It seems they owed quite a bit of back rent.”

  “Oh,” Marion said. “The girls have slender means. We all have a rough time of it these days, don’t we?”

  “That we do, Mrs. Seeley. You can imagine the landlord was eager to at least gain possession of items in the home. He understood there to be a radio, silverware and some other more valuable items. I assume they shipped many of those things?”

  “I assume so, yes,” Marion said. She wondered where the girls stowed their pawn tickets.

  “Mrs. Seeley,” Officer Tolliver broke in, “you should know. There was blood found in the house. Do you know why that might be?”

  “Oh,” Marion managed before all the warmth slid from her face, from her head and chest. There couldn’t be any blood left. She’d cleaned it from floor to ceiling. “Oh no.”

  “A small amount. On a pair of curtains.”

  A vision floated before Marion of her fingers twaining the front curtains, looking for headlights. Whose blood might that be, she could not guess. But it was there.

  “Oh my goodness.”

  “Did you actually see the girls leave with these men?”

  “No, I never saw them leave. I never met the men.”

  “It may be nothing, you understand, Mrs. Seeley,” Officer Morley said, one hand to her forearm, gentle. “It may be nothing at all.”

  “I wish I could…I just don’t know.” Everything was going to pieces and who knew what they might…Who knew what Joe Lanigan…Who knew?

  “All right, Mrs. Seeley. But please, keep yourself available to us, will you?”

  “Of course,” she said, and her thoughts, so rambling, so jangled, stopped suddenly on an idea. “And say hello to Sheriff Healy, will you? He visited the girls often. What a wonderful man.”

  Officer Tolliver looked at her, eyebrows lifted. “The sheriff, eh?” And he shared a glance with Officer Morley. “Well, Mrs. Seeley, we thank you for being so helpful. You let us know when you hear from those girls, now, won’t you?”

  “You will be my first step,” she said.

  EVERETT WAS AGAIN not home and it was late, very late. Hours Marion spent going over the policemen’s questions in her head. They shuttled around and she couldn’t stop them. There was no way to shut them off.

  As the hours passed, she tried to pack. She tried to organize herself. She cleaned her gashing wound. She replaced buttons on her husband’s sagging shirts. Her face was damp. She felt a fever coming. She felt she was falling into some dire state and there was no stopping it. Her knees rubbery, she felt a faint coming on and cursed herself.

  Lying on the bed was worse, though. It was a buffering quiet like cotton in her throat. It made her head go funny. Somehow, somehow, lying there, she came upon the feeling of Louise and Ginny in the room with her. She could feel them there. She could smell Ginny’s avid perfume in her hair, feel Louise’s fingertips on her hand. And then it was like they were beneath her somehow, under the bed, writhing, trying to crawl free. She felt if she looked to the floor, she would see their glowy white arms, splayed hands, reaching, tugging at the carpet, trying to pull themselves out.

  She would have done anything for one of Joe’s magic pills now.

  But her husband had sent them down the drain.

  Down the dark belly.

  There would be decades with him. Decades.

  He was a good man, a kind man.

  Oh, he was.

  IN THE PITCH OF THE NIGHT, the doctor returned and told her he had so much more to share about Joe Lanigan and she wanted to say what did it matter, what did it, and she told him about the police, but he did not seem concerned. He seemed to expect it.

  “Marion, do not worry. Tomorrow first thing, we will buy our train tickets, and by midday we will be gone.”

  In early morning, as they walked down Mrs. Gower’s stairwell, the newspaper on the front landing caught Marion’s eye, and Dr. Seeley’s too.

  BLOOD FOUND IN MISSING GIRLS’ HOUSE

  FRIENDS SPEAK OF GAY REVELS AND WILD LIFESTYLE

  With trembling fingers, Marion read about the blood found on the premises and how the police were pursuing the possibility of violence. Most of the article, however, swelled with the breathless first-person account of one Florence Loomis.

  “Do you know her?” Dr. Seeley asked.

  “Yes. She was a friend. She was at the house a lot, at least.” The sight of plump and smeary Mrs. Loomis, tight as a drum on New Year’s Eve, flashed through Marion’s head. Once, she remembered her tearing her blouse open and asking Sheriff Healy to arrest her for gross indecency.

  Marion looked back down at the article. There was a photograph of Louise in her nurse’s uniform and one of the house, which looked grim, menacing.

  “‘According to Werden Clinic staff,’” Dr. Seeley read, “‘the girls left town last weekend with two unidentified men on their way to California. Their belongings were shipped by a friend, Mrs. Everett Seeley, who also works at the clinic. She could not be reached by deadline.’”

  Marion thought of the reporter who had come to the house, knew he would be back.

  Dr. Seeley read on: “‘Neighbors said the house was often the site of “gay parties” that lasted until the early morning hours, the most recent marked by frequent trips to the local drugstore for ginger ale. The women’s loud voices intermingled with those of many men and kept neighbors awake for most of the night.

  “‘“They are a peacocky pair,” said Mrs. Loomis, who befriended the young women last year. “They came to town with nary a nickel between them. They were dreadful poor and I helped them.” Mrs. Loomis, who said that the girls had recently borrowed thirty-eight dollars and an electric hair-waving iron from her, added, “Good times, that’s what they wanted. They had many friends to help them out. I tried to talk sense into them, but they would have none of it. I’m not surprised by any of this. They entertained many men. Men in this town.” While Mrs. Loomis would not mention any names, she added that she would help the police in any way she could.

  “‘One neighbor confirmed that one of the most frequent guests was Mr. Joseph Lanigan, owner of Valiant Drugs and vice president of the Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Lanigan could not be reached for comment.

  “‘The sheriff ’s office refused to reveal any details about the investigation but police were a constant presence in the Hussel Street residence today.’”

  Dr. Seeley set the newspaper down and looked at Marion. “They will be speaking to him soon.”

  “I know,” Marion said.

  “Do you know what he intends to say?”

  Marion looked at him. Your beauty is blinding but behind it I see death. That’s what he had the nerve to say to her. The stuff of tear-lashed confession magazines. That was what he had said.

  “Marion, have
you seen him since you’ve returned? Have you…been with him?”

  “No. No. I saw him only once,” she said, “at the clinic. He made me see that…I am alone.”

  “You’re not alone, Marion,” Dr. Seeley said. “You’re not.”

  She looked at him and it felt a glimmer of long ago, he the elegant doctor spiriting her away, rescuing her from something, even.

  “He gave me one hundred dollars,” Marion blurted, ashamed she had not mentioned it before. But to have mentioned it would have meant revealing she had seen him. Seen this man whose name her husband could not bear to utter. She opened her purse and showed it to him.

  “We will need it,” Dr. Seeley said.

  THEY WALKED STRAIGHT OUT the front door and to the streetcar. Dr. Seeley said they should leave their things at the rooming house. There should be no appearance that they had gone. But they would not return.

  They rode downtown to a small hotel with a fraying fringe overhang—the Kenwick Arms, the electric sign had said before its globes had burned out.

  They registered as Mr. and Mrs. Leroy and it was not until Dr. Seeley had shut the creaking door behind them and the dust motes rose and settled that Marion asked him what in fact his plan was.

  “Leaving town now has become hazardous. Police will be watching the train station. This way, we have perhaps purchased a day, maybe two. I have thoughts. I have thoughts. We may shore ourselves up by culling as much on this man as possible.”

  “How will that stop the law?”

  “He has powerful friends. That is clear. After the news story he will be rounding up his horses. Marion, he does not intend to go to the gallows. We will not let him place you there in his stead.”

  “That is his plan, back to the wall,” Marion said, surprised by the coolness in her voice. The hardness wedged tight between teeth. What had happened to her? Where was the shuddering young girl, gone forever? In some strange way, she was glad. That girl was her doom.