The Recycled Citizen Page 10

  “Throwing the place into utter confusion, as far as I could gather,” Theonia replied with uncharacteristic waspishness. “I felt like the Lady of Shalott when she came bounding toward me. Doom staring me in the face, you know. I just stood there feeling idiotic. Fortunately Appie took me at face value and thought I was. She started asking me inane questions in that briskly sympathetic voice she puts on when she’s being helpful. I kept croaking ‘Huh?’ as if I were either too deaf or too stupid to understand, and holding out my bag of rubbish. Finally Joan came over and led me into that back room where they take the salvage and pay you. I made a dollar and eighty-five cents! Aren’t you proud of me, Brooks dearest?”

  “I am indeed, more proud than I can say. You’ve done a phenomenal job today, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stand for your staging a repeat performance. I don’t often play the heavy husband, Theonia”—understandably not, since his wife outweighed him by at least twenty-five pounds—“but you’re worth something more than a dollar and eighty-five cents to me. What if whoever killed Chet Arthur happened to be there when you went in? What if Appie had recognized you and spilled the beans, as she surely would have? Sarah, didn’t it dawn on you that Appie might take it into her head to do good works? Couldn’t you have kept her away?”

  “No it didn’t, and why me, anyway? Appie’s more your relative than mine.”

  “I dispute that! Appie was merely the daughter of my father’s second cousin Byram.”

  “Which makes her your third cousin in the direct line. She was Alexander’s third cousin, but Alexander was only my fifth cousin once removed, which puts Byram so far from our particular branch of the family tree that he doesn’t even count. The only real connection I have with Aunt Appie is that she married Uncle Samuel, who was, I grant you, first cousin to my own grandfather.”

  “Makes sense to me,” said Max. “Brooks, I don’t blame you for not wanting Theonia to take such a risk again and I certainly wouldn’t ask her myself, but she did handle herself like a pro, and she did get back safe and sound.”

  Theonia waggled her abused toes. “I’m not so sure about the sound, but I knew I was never in any real danger with my stalwart bodyguard around me. I say we were all magnificent. But as far as Appie goes, you know she’s such a dear, muzzy-headed soul that she doesn’t know whom she’s talking to half the time, anyway. The chances of her blowing my cover, as I believe it’s called, probably were not great in any case. If she had, I’d simply have said ‘Huh?’ again and faced her down. Now shall I get on with my report, because I really do have to go and bathe pretty soon.”

  “First, let me just say I did try to call Aunt Appie, not to put her off going to the center, because that never entered my mind; but to get Tigger’s address as I said I would,” Sarah put in. “However, she wasn’t there and the housekeeper couldn’t tell me where she’d gone. I’m wondering if Mr. Loveday coaxed Tigger into getting her to volunteer, or if he approached her himself. Anyway, I’ll track her down this evening, if I can. Do go on, Theonia.”

  “Yes, tell us about that little fracas down by the corner of Blackstone Street,” said Max. “I thought you were in real trouble there for a second.”

  “So did I. What happened,” Theonia explained to the others, “was that I’d spied a soft drink can in the gutter and stooped to pick it up. Just as I was about to put my hand on the can, some young fellow dressed all in purple rushed over and kicked it away, almost kicking me in the process. So naturally I got up and scooted away from him as fast as I could. I didn’t know whether he was planning to rough me up or what. Did he start to come after me, Max?”

  “No, he did something I thought was pretty damned strange. He paid no further attention to you but very carefully kicked the can back to the exact same spot where it had been before. A few seconds later a woman carrying an SCRC bag and wearing a purple sweater came along, picked up the can and stuck it in her bag. The guy stood right there watching her and never moved a muscle. I had to hurry along after you, so I couldn’t follow up on her but I’d have liked to. What kind of can was it, Theonia? Did you happen to notice?”

  “I did, partly because the can was purple, like the fellow’s clothes. It was some kind of grape soda with a name that wasn’t familiar to me. Graperoola, something like that. It was a longish name, I know. The lettering went all around the can.”

  Brooks, who still took a youthful pleasure in carbonated beverages, shook his head. “That’s a new one on me, as the monkey said when he scratched his back. I must find out who sells it.”

  “Purple suit, purple sweater, purple can—wait a second!” Max shot out of this chair, whipped into the tiny spare room he used for an office and came back with the torn collecting bag that had been Chet Arthur’s. “Take a look at this.”

  He spread the remnant out on the floor in front of Theonia’s hassock. The bag was no different from the one she’d acquired at the center, except that it was in far worse condition and had somehow got splashed with purple paint from some graffiti artist’s spray can.

  “I’ll bet if you’d been carrying this bag instead of your own, Theonia, you’d have got to keep the Graperoola can.”

  “But it won’t even hold anything. Max dear, I don’t understand.”

  “I think what you and probably Chet Arthur, too, stumbled into was a drug transfer. As we all know, the police are really cracking down on drug dealers these days. They’ve tightened up everywhere, yet the dealing goes on. It looks to me as if some pusher may be cracking the blockade by using SCRC people as caddies.”

  “You said I’d have been allowed to keep that can. Surely you can’t think I’d smuggle dope?”

  “You wouldn’t know. Assuming that by some chance I’ve guessed right, the mechanics go something like this: First they choose a type of soft drink can that won’t attract any particular notice if it’s thrown down in the street but is in fact not a common brand in this area. The organizers may even have gone to the bother of designing their own and having a bunch of them made.”

  “Wouldn’t that be terribly expensive?” Theonia objected.

  “Not in proportion to the kind of money involved in narcotics. And it would make the operation more nearly foolproof.”

  “Packing heroin in soft drink cans and tossing them around the streets?” said Brooks. “You call that foolproof?”

  “They don’t just toss them around the streets. They pick their spots, and they watch to make sure the wrong person doesn’t get the can, as Theonia found out. The guy in purple was one of the scouts, of course. He’d probably spotted the woman with the purple sweater and the SCRC bag coming along and had laid his bait especially for her. I expect a good many of the SCRC collectors have more or less regular routes. Those would be the ones who are watched and used. If he hadn’t been able to find somebody wearing the purple code color, he’d have contrived to mark the bag in purple, as Chefs was marked.”

  “So that the peddler making his pickup will know whom to mug,” said Sarah. “Max, we must find that woman with the purple sweater before she gets hurt.”

  “If you say so, little mother.”

  Max stepped over to the telephone, looked up a number in Sarah’s book and dialed. “Hello, Dolph. Glad I caught you. Look, do you have a heavyset woman wearing a black skirt and a thick purple sweater in the center? That’s right, the one who got her bag snatched this afternoon. What do you mean how did I know? My spies are everywhere. Is she okay? Well of course, naturally she’d be upset. Wouldn’t you? No, just give her a pat on the back and another cup of tea. I’ll talk to you later. Regards to Mary.”

  He hung up and came back to Sarah. “Want another slug of milk to calm your nerves?”

  “Oh, don’t be so infuriating! How did you know she’d be at the center?”

  “Simple logic, sweetie-pumpkin. It stood to reason she wouldn’t be allowed to keep the can in her possession for long. There’d be hell to pay if she gave their contact the slip and got back to the recycl
ing center with it. I’d guess she got ripped off not more than ten or fifteen minutes after she made the pickup, and naturally she’d go straight back to the center with her tale of woe. Where else would she find a sympathetic ear a free meal, and a new collecting bag so she can go out and play sitting duck again? Damn, I hope we can convince Dolph that his bright idea is getting the center in big trouble.”

  “Try offering him a different lot of free bags,” Brooks suggested. “Theonia my dear, if you want that bath before the thundering herds descend upon us, we’d better get cracking.”

  Chapter

  12

  SARAH WAS BETTER PREPARED for dinner tonight. “Tomato soup and boeuf bourguignon,” she announced. “I made enough for us while I was about it.”

  “Good thinking,” said Max. “Good soup too. Not canned, I take it.”

  “Perish the thought. These are the last of our own tomatoes from the garden at Ireson’s Landing. Well, not the last because Miriam and I put up scads of them for the winter, but the last fresh off the vines. Oh, darn that phone! Go on with your soup, dear. I’ll answer it.”

  She should have known better. Apollonia Kelling was on the line.

  “Sarah dear, I’m so glad I caught you. Now, what we have to do—”

  “What I have to do is serve Max his dinner,” Sarah interrupted. “We were just sitting down.”

  “But this will only take a teeny, tiny minute. I have everything organized and written down. Somewhere. Oh dear, I thought—just hold the line a second while I see—”

  “I’ll call you back.” Sarah broke the connection and went back to her soup, leaving the receiver off the hook.

  “What was that?” Max asked her.

  “Something dire, I’m sure. Aunt Appie has everything organized and written down.”

  “Has what organized?”

  “We may never know. She’s mislaid the paper. However, that won’t stop her from nipping at our heels until we do it. I assume it’s something to do with the SCRC. Oh, Max, you don’t suppose she’s calling about Theonia? Maybe she did spot her after all, and thinks she’s gone batty and we’re all going to have to be very, very kind and take turns reading to her from the works of William Cullen Bryant.”

  “Why William Cullen Bryant?”

  “Because that’s what they read to Great-aunt Perseverance after she started imagining she was Yvette Guilbert.”

  Max looked interested. “Did it help any?”

  “I don’t suppose so. Bryant wrote ‘Thanatopsis’ when he was only eighteen, as you may remember, and he appears to have spent the rest of his life exploring the ramifications. I remember Great-aunt Perseverance’s sister Letitia coming to read Bryant to my mother. That was after Mother got so sick she couldn’t get out of bed to hide in the bathroom.”

  “Was that your mother’s customary practice?”

  “Only when Great-aunt Letitia called. She was in her eighties by then. She wore black skirts down to her ankles and so much jet on her bosom that she clattered every time she moved. She managed to get through ‘No Man Knoweth His Sepulchre’ and ‘Blessed Are They That Mourn.’ Halfway through ‘Hymn to Death,’ though, Mother pulled herself together. ‘Sarah,’ she said, ‘bring me a Manhattan cocktail and fix Aunt Letitia a dose of Epsom salts. She appears to be suffering a bilious attack.’”

  Sarah laughed. “That’s one of the fondest memories I have of Mother. She died three days later. Great-aunt Letitia lasted another ten years. She gave a little party for me and Alexander after we got married. I was still in mourning for my father, so we couldn’t have had any big splash even if we’d wanted one. But anyway, Great-aunt Letitia recited Bryant’s ‘The Death of the Flowers,’ which is about a young girl fading away with the violets. I was still only eighteen, you know, and people did wonder.”

  “I can see why they might.” Her husband didn’t seem to think it was funny.

  “Cousin Mabel came right out and told me Letitia was giving me a hint to do the same because she’d always wanted Alexander for her own daughter. He and Xanthia were a lot closer in age than he and I, I have to admit. Xanthia was about fifty-five by then, and totally devoted to rock climbing. She fell off a precipice in the Andes under mysterious circumstances not long afterward. Uncle Jem wanted to read “The Murdered Traveler’ at the memorial service, but they wouldn’t let him. Here, darling, there’s just half a spoonful of beef left.”

  “You have it. You’re eating for two. Am I supposed to set fire to the pears?”

  “No, I thought we’d eat them in a state of nature.”

  “Us or the pears?”

  “Don’t be coarse. You might help me clear the table.”

  They finished their meal, then Sarah bowed to the inevitable and put the telephone receiver back on the hook. She was looking up Apollonia Kelling’s number when her aunt beat her to the dial.

  “Sarah, I’ve been trying and trying to get you. Is something wrong with the line?”

  “Not now,” said Sarah, “only I mustn’t tie it up because Max is expecting a man from Marseilles to call. What’s on your mind, Aunt Appie?”

  “I simply thought if we all put our shoulders to the wheel and pitched right in—one day a week isn’t too much, surely?”

  “For what?”

  “To work at the center, dear.”

  “Why us? Dolph and Mary have it all beautifully organized so that the members take turns and get special treats for helping. Outsiders would be dreadfully in the way.”

  “Oh no, dear. Osmond Loveday says what they need over there is a refining influence.”

  “Well, he couldn’t be more wrong. What they need is a chance to retain their self-respect by doing things for themselves and each other, and that’s what Dolph and Mary are giving them. If Osmond Loveday wants a bunch of rich do-gooders flapping around him, he’d better find himself a different job. Sooner or later Dolph’s going to realize Osmond’s worse than useless at the SCRC and chuck him out.”

  “Sarah, that is hardly a charitable remark. Osmond Loveday is a truly dedicated man.”

  “Dedicated to buttering up people with money and nicking them for all he can get,” Sarah retorted. “Has he started hinting to you about a truly meaningful donation yet?”

  “He did touch on the sad fact that so few patrons have come forward,” Appie admitted.

  “I’m sure he did. He didn’t happen to say that’s because Dolph and Mary have never asked for patronage. So far they haven’t needed it. The center pretty much supports itself through the sale of salvage and the members’ volunteer services, and that’s the way they want it.”

  “Sarah dear, I’m afraid we’re straying from the point. Shall I put you down for Thursday or Friday?”

  “Neither. I’m already out straight on the auction and Dolph wants me to help on the publicity drive for the new housing facility. Max says that’s enough.”

  In fact, Max had said no such thing, but Appie had been bullied by Uncle Samuel for forty-three years and took it for granted all wives were willing doormats. “Oh well, if Max feels—”

  “He certainly does. Aunt Appie, I was going to call you myself. What’s Tigger’s real name?”

  “Tigger? What an odd digression, dear. Whatever made you think of Tigger?”

  “Wasn’t it she who roped you into this nonsense about volunteering at the SCRC?”

  “One would hardly say ‘roped in,’ dear. Tigger did happen to drop by yesterday at teatime and mention she’d spent the day there in good works. You cannot imagine how happy that made your old auntie. I’ve tried so hard to steer the poor lamb in constructive directions. I enrolled her in a number of worthwhile courses: Appreciation of Gregorian Chant, Balinese Tie-dyeing, History of New England Theology with special reference to Cotton Mather—I felt so sure Cotton Mather would catch her interest, but she gave me one of her looks and that was the end of that. I had to take the courses myself in order not to waste the money, and I must say Cotton Mather wasn’t quite what I
’d—however. So when Tigger came to me last evening and told me she’d volunteered at the center, it was a vindication of my fondest hopes. You do see why we must all rush to support her in her well-doing. Are you quite sure about Friday?”

  “I’m quite sure you ought to find out whether well-doing is what Tigger’s really up to before you leap in with both feet,” Sarah retorted. “You still haven’t told me her name, and I have a perfectly sound reason for asking. How she got to the center yesterday is that she followed me when I went to get the mailing list for the auction. I tried to introduce her to Mr. Loveday; then realized I didn’t know what to call her. When I said so, she hadn’t the grace to tell me. I don’t want to be put in that silly position again.”

  “Tigger’s shy, you know,” Appie apologized.

  “She was brassy enough about forcing herself on me when I tried to shake her off. Aunt Appie, please quit dodging the question. What is Tigger’s name?”

  “Oh dear, I can’t seem to—something A. A. Milne-ish, I’m sure. Hence the Tigger, you know.”

  “No, I don’t know. Is it actually Milne?”

  “Not that, but something.”

  “Pooh? Eeyore?”

  “Dearie, that’s hardly kind. I’ll think of it. Just let me get the rusty old thinking machine cranked up.”

  Appie’s cranking brought no spark. “Never mind,” Sarah said at last. “I’ll call Lionel’s place. Surely Vare will know.”

  “Oh my dear, you mustn’t ask Vare. Lionel has forbidden her ever to mention that name again under his roof. He’s growing more like his dear old dad every day. It quite wrings my heart.”

  Sarah could see why it might. There were curmudgeons enough in the Kelling family, but Uncle Samuel had been the acknowledged king of snap and snarl. Lionel would never be the grouch his father was, there was too much of the wimp in him; but why shatter Aunt Appie’s fond illusions?

  In the end she had to settle for, “Just be patient, dear. It will come to me,” and a promise to let Appie know if she had to reschedule her hours at the SCRC. She might have known enough to say yes in the first place and then wipe it out of her mind, since Appie would have forgotten, too, in a day or so.