Letters

Sure, but not at the expense of A. B. & A. In my capacity as executive director of the Tidewater Foundation I retained him to investigate and report the goings-on at the Remobilization Farm, from which we ought probably to withdraw our benefaction. Then, discretion be damned, I called Jane directly and told her everything I knew, suspected, or feared about Jeannine, Drew, André Castine, and, alas, poor Morgan — everything except my quasi-incest of three weeks since.

To my surprise, she was unsurprised. Her “own people” had already informed her of all those things, Jane declared coolly, including Morgan’s regrettable suicide, and other things besides, which, given the pending litigation, she was not at liberty to share with me. My retention of a private investigator on behalf of the foundation she did not disapprove; that was my business. Her fiancé’s background, on the other hand, was not; she would thank me to cease my prying thereinto, or at least my bothering her with my “discoveries.” The blackmail threat I could forget about, as she intended to. It was nothing: it had been dealt with, or was being, or would be, by her people. As for Jeannine and Drew: she had already made clear to me her sentiments, which were unchanged. But I was to understand that that business of my possible paternity of her daughter was a fiction which she Jane had never seriously entertained. She regarded it as one of the several, should we say idiosyncratic, obsessions with which I amused myself. Now, if I didn’t mind…

Where is Harrison’s shit? I demanded. Jane chuckled: She would leave it to me in her will. ’Bye.

I telephoned Drew, thinking to go with him at once to Buffalo, Lily Dale, Fort Erie, in search of his sister. Yvonne answered, even chillier than Jane: she was sure she didn’t know where her estranged husband was; their house was hers until the end of the week, when she was leaving Red-neck Neck forever. ’Bye.

So far as I knew, Joe Morgan had no living relatives except his college-age sons. I asked Ms. Pond to make me air reservations to Buffalo for next morning and to have the foundation arrange a memorial service at the college for its first president. (In the event, when I met and conferred with the Morgan boys in Fort Erie yesterday, we arranged the funeral too, to be held in Wicomico the day after tomorrow.)

Wednesday, then, I flew to Buffalo, in pursuit of my shall-we-say-idiosyncratic-et-cetera, consulted and terminated our investigator (nothing new), hired a car, and drove down alone to Lily Dale, to “Comalot.” A ramshackle farmhouse and outbuildings; there were the goats, a rangy Toggenburg buck and two mixed-breed nans, one pregnant. No sign of Bray, but as I drove up, a wild-haired, scowling, long-skirted, granny-glassed young woman came from the barn, already shaking her head at me. The Bernstein girl! What on earth was she doing there? None of my business. Where was “Bea Golden”? Come and gone. Gone where? Didn’t know and didn’t care. Jerome Bray? Hard at work with “Lilyvac II”; couldn’t be interrupted. Might I inspect that machine and arrange a conversation with its owner? I might f — g not; if the f — g Tidewater Foundation wouldn’t put up, it could f — g shut up and get off the premises. She had spoken to me at all, declared Ms. B., only because I’d once arranged bail for her with those red-neck pigs; but that gave me no f — g permanent claims. There might be a police search, I informed her, if Bea Golden didn’t soon turn up. Ms. B. replied sweetly: Till f — g then. As she strode away I called after: Was she also known as Morgana le Fay? Without turning, she hitched up her skirt and flashed her (bare, white, uncomely) bottom. When she reentered the barn she closed the door behind her.

I considered waiting them out, or driving away for an hour and then returning unexpectedly, or concealing myself in the nearby woods and watching for Bray or Jeannine. But the detective had done all that, without success, and my rights in the matter, as no more than a concerned friend of the family, were tenuous. Back to Buffalo.