Pandora by Holly Hollander

How I Saw the Black Sedan But Not Larry

While I was hiking up our private road I caught sight of a green van parked in front of our house. Yes, the exact same van (what an astounding coincidence!) with Magic Key of Barton on the side that I’d hitched a ride to town in. So naturally, genius that I am, I figured Megan had come over and wanted to Do Something; so I hollered and ran into the house.

Nobody was there. Nobody at all.

I checked the family room, which would have been where Mrs. Maas or Elaine would have dumped Megan, then my room, thinking she might have gone up there to play some tapes and wait for me. Zilch.

Finally I went through the whole damn house looking for anybody—all the bedrooms and the kitchen and the dumb little storeroom Elaine always called the butler’s pantry. Nothing.

I stuck my nose into the study, too, because I figured that was the one room where nobody, not even Bill, would take her, so naturally she’d be there. Naturally she wasn’t.

So then I thought, well, I’ll just take a look at the box, because that guy Blue was so anxious to find out what’s in it, and I felt like a dummy telling him I didn’t know. Maybe I can even figure out how to get the damned thing open.

I poked around for a minute before I remembered that Elaine had said somebody from the bank was coming out today to pick it up and put it in their window as part of the hype for the Fair. My father locked the study door a lot, so sometimes the cleaning lady and Mrs. Maas didn’t get in to vacuum and wipe off all the furniture and stuff like they should have, and I could still see exactly where Pandora’s Box had been sitting on the big library table, a ghost of its shape in the dust.

But the whole room felt funny somehow, like something else was missing. At first I thought it was just the box, but really I’d only been in there twice when it was there, as nearly as I could remember—when Bill lugged it in and that morning when I’d gone in to sneak a peek at the letter. Finally I decided it was just because the house was so quiet.

So you can bet it was just then that I heard a door close someplace, and if you come around asking about a certain teenage hellcat who practically jumped right out of her harness boots, I’ll be able to show her to you straight off.

I suppose you’ve got it all figured out that this being the kind of story it is, why naturally that door was being closed by a syndicate hit man at the very least. Wrong. It was only Mrs. Maas, and when I asked her what the heck was going on, she said “Mrs. Hollander” (my mother Elaine to you and me) had asked her to pick up a few things at the drugstore, and she had taken the opportunity to do a little grocery shopping. I looked through the “things” and told her Elaine practically never went in the water. It sailed right over Mrs. Maas’s head, but it started me thinking about Garden Meadow again. I wished I could have asked her about Uncle Herbert, who I was nearly ready to start calling Uncle Bert again. Only Barton isn’t exactly Pippington-on-the-Squeak, where all those nice English ladies drop arsenic in the tea and stab dubious women with Florentine daggers … .

(Hey, I don’t mean to change the subject all of a sudden, but hasn’t it ever struck you that if the Secretary of Defense was really smart he’d issue those Florentine daggers to all the combat marines? I think I’ve read a dozen books where somebody gets it with a Florentine dagger, and none of them even twitched afterward. Today I read in the News where a sixty-nine-year-old retired machinist got beat over the head with a beer bottle and slashed and stabbed with a big hunting knife, and after the guys had taken his wallet and split, he made it to the emergency ward on foot.)

Anyway as I was saying, in Barton we haven’t got those old family retainers who remember when Sir Rollo was but a wee tyke. Mrs. Maas had only been with us about four years and Bill less than two, so if I wanted to hear old family stories I’d have to make them up or ask the folks.

So I said, “Where’s Dad?” and Mrs. Maas told me she didn’t know, he’d gone out in the morning and hadn’t come back. (That would be to Garden Meadow, but he must have stopped somewhere on the way home.) So then I asked, “Where’s Elaine?” and Mrs. Maas said, “She was here when I left.”

No matter what my old math teacher may have told you, I’m a gritty brat who hangs right in there. I said, “What was Larry Lief doing here?” and she said, “Who’s Larry Lief?”

Strikeout.

Then she said, “Oh, is he that good-looking blond man who wears coveralls? About twenty-five?”

“He’s Megan’s brother,” I told Mrs. Maas, “and I’m pretty sure he’s quite a bit older than that.”

“Well, Mr. Lief’s been here several times to talk with Mrs. Hollander about Pandora’s Box. He’s the one who’s going to open it, you know, at the Fair, when they have the drawing.”

I hadn’t. But it made sense, because Larry was a locksmith and ran the only lock shop in Barton, the only one I knew about anyway, and since his shop hadn’t been open that long, he could probably use the publicity. I figured my father could have done it about as well, but that would have made it look like too much of a Hollander Family deal maybe, and besides you couldn’t ever count on him to be around; if there was trouble at some company and he was on the board he might have to fly to Algiers on about an hour’s notice. He could have loaned the Fair an expert from his plant, sure, but the plant’s way to hell and gone down below Gary.

Anyway I wandered out to the garage, just hanging around, thinking that the Caddy would be gone. But the Caddy was right there shined up like a wet seal, and Bill was in his room above the garage reading a comic. And Larry’s van was gone, having started up without my hearing it while I was looking around the house, probably before Mrs. Maas came back, because she hadn’t said anything about it. Okay, I’m hip.

So I went over to our little pasture, caught Sidi (not very hard because by that time I had a couple of lumps of sugar in my pocket), saddled up, and Hi-Yo!

Since I wasn’t going to catch a train or anything, I rode him right into town. There are two liquor stores in Barton, a big one and a little one; the big one’s My Case, at the corner of Main and Woly. Woly’s just a grotty little deadend street that folds when it bumps into the CW&N rightof-way, but there’s a string of shops down one side of it behind the liquor store: the Redman Lounge, one of the very few spots in Barton where you (you, not me) can buy a drink, the Whileaway Travel Agency, the Magic Key, and so on. I tied Sidi to a parking meter (no ticket for me, because where would the meter maid put it, right?) and went in.

I guess locks run in the Hollander blood; one of these days I’ll get in the business if I have to open a deli. That was a joke, but it’s really the truth about locks. They’re nice and solid, and they’ve got this shine to them and snap with a good, solid chink. There’s not much plastic even about the cheap ones you have to buy for your locker at school, and the classy ones have more class than any car I’ve ever seen. What I’m trying to say, I guess, is that I always liked the Magic Key. It wasn’t one of those bright places like a chain drugstore, and it wasn’t dim like the Wicker Works. It was dim in places and bright in others, which I think is how a store should be, and it smelled a little bit of sewingmachine oil, which is okay with me. A lot of my friends go for incense, and it’s a great cover-up for pot; but I think incense belongs in church.

“You!” somebody yelled. “Put that down unless you’re going to buy it.”

I turned around—I’d picked up one of those fancy gadgets you snap on to keep your sister-in-law from calling Nome on your touch-tone phone—and naturally it was Megan, sticking out her lip trying to look tough. Molly was there, too, working on the books or something behind the counter.

Molly was Larry’s wife. She was from some little place the other side of Nashville, and it was my opinion that if somebody thought she was pretty that somebody’d make a pretty good truck driver. Basically what she had was one of those thin poor-li’l-me hillbilly faces, with lots of yellow hair as puffy as cotton candy (and as sticky, too, I’d bet) piled up on top, and a shape like a sack of grapefruit.

Now that I’ve got that out of my system, I ought to be fair and tell some good stuff about her. Even though she could stop the average heavy construction job dead in its tracks, she knew she wasn’t pretty. You could see it in her eyes and the way she held herself when she thought nobody was looking, and as far as I was concerned that was ten points in her favor. The teasing and all that hair spray were just her dim-bulb way of trying to get pretty, so you had to feel sorry for her. And she tried to be nice to Megan and me, so who cared if she was really too old to be buddybuddy? Also, she did her best to sit on her accent. She didn’t succeed very well, but you could tell she was trying, and I’ve got to give her more points for that; I’m not going to spell out the way she really talked, or at least not very often. Megan said that Larry had met Molly while he was stationed down south after his second tour. It was getting married, she said, that made him decide to chuck the army.

“Well,” (“Wa-al”) “hello, Holly. Haven’t seen your smil-in’ face ’round here for many a day.”

“Gosh,” I said, “I can’t make everybody happy all at once.”

Molly and Megan both laughed.

Back then Megan was about my best friend—if not really the best, awfully close to it. Her father owned the Corner Cobbler, which wasn’t a shoe-repair shop like it sounds but a shoe store; but the Liefs weren’t rich, and when you are (or think that you are) it’s hard to get to be best friends with anybody who isn’t. I’ve already described Molly, so I might as well describe Megan, too. She’s really pretty, with page-boy blond hair and a perky baby-face that goes just fine with it. I’d have paid a yard at least for those big, brightblue, dirty-flirty eyes of hers, and nobody’s ever called me stone ugly. Her worst feature was her hips, I’d say; Megan’s a little wide across the pockets.

“Holly, can’t you tell us—just us, we won’t tell anybody—what’s in that box? Is it gold?”

“Stop hissing,” I told Megan. “You sound like the radiator on Kris’s Mustang.”

“I’m playing pirate.” Her voice went into a parrot squawk. “Pieces o’ eight! Pieces o’ eight!”

“Well,” (“Wa-al”) “it could be gold, couldn’t it, Holly? I believe I’m goin’ to go. Maybe they’ll pick my name.”

“They’re going to draw by number,” I told Molly. “And for all I know it could be chock-full of diamonds—it’s plenty heavy enough. It could also be full of rocks. Elaine got it at some junk shop. She says they didn’t have a key and didn’t want to bust it open.”

“Whatever ’tis, it’s mine. That sign in the bank’s got me purely fascinated.”

“You birds busy now?”

“I am. I got to watch out for things here. But you and Megan can go traipsin’ off if you want to.”

“I’m learning the business,” Megan explained. “Larry says if I do he might put me on the payroll.”

So Larry had come up without me even having to do it. When you’re hot, you’re hot. Naturally I asked, “Where’s Larry now, anyhow?”

Did you ever make some innocent little remark that laid the festivities stone cold? You know, “My, my, what’s that doing in the punch bowl?” And nobody says, “Looks like the backstroke,” because there really is something in the punch that ought to be in the zoo. Sure you have, so you know just how I felt. Megan quit smiling, and for a second there I thought Molly was going to cry. Her face had a sort of spasm.

Megan said, “He’s in South Barton someplace. Changing the locks to keep sombody’s ex-wife out.”

“Something’s the matter, huh?” (Subtle’s my middle name.)

“Oh, someone’s been phoning for him, and Molly’s a little scared about it.”

“I don’t believe it amounts to cow flop,” Molly said, and the way she said it you could tell she was worried stiff.

“Who is this someone?”

“They won’t give no name.”

Megan said, “He only calls when Larry’s gone. Or if he calls when Larry’s here Larry won’t admit he talked to him.”

“What’s he say?”

“Nothin’.” That was Molly.

“He just says, ‘Let me speak to Sergeant Lief.’ When we say Larry’s not here, he hangs up.”

“Sergeant Lief? I thought Larry was a lieutenant.”

Molly stood up and smoothed her dress, looking proud for a minute. “He was a sergeant first, Holly. It was what they call a battlefield commission.”

“It’s not what this guy says,” Megan put in. “It’s the way he sounds. Sometimes when I hear him, I wonder whether Larry’s coming back at all.” She looked at Molly. “I guess I shouldn’t have said that.”

I didn’t think she should have either. Molly wasn’t strong on lips at the best of times, and when Megan came out with that beauty her mouth looked like the cut a can opener makes. She reached down under the counter by the cash register and came up with a .38 snub-nose, not pointing it at us but just laying it there on the glass and turning it around and around with one long bright-red fingernail. “Maybe I never went to no college, but I witness that I learned to shoot from my brothers, and it was a hard school. You might want to pass it around town that the day Larry don’t come home somebody else won’t eat no supper either.”

“You put that away before you get us all busted,” I said. The Barton cops are damn near afraid to touch their own guns.

Molly picked up the revolver again and held it, weighing it in her hand. “You tell them what will happen if sometime Larry don’t come home,” she said; but after a second or two she stuck it back under the register.

“How long have you been learning the business?” I asked Megan, trying to pretend that nothing had happened.

“Two hours, maybe.”

“Then come on before you suffer terminal brain-strain. I need you to help me pass judgment on a new blow-drier.”

It must have sounded retarded as hell, but Molly wasn’t the type to notice; hair was serious business for her, and it let me pull Megan out of the shop.

When she was up behind me on Sidi she whispered, “He names guys sometimes, and then he gives a year. Corporal Raglan, nineteen seventy-two. Like that. It isn’t just that, either. I think he’s told Molly that Larry’s got another girl someplace.”

I guess my face must have looked about like Molly’s had in the shop; it’s a damned good thing Megan couldn’t see it. “She know who it is?”

Megan said no, and reeled off a list of suspects, none of them Elaine. By the time she got to the end I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention. Across from the Redman Lounge a black sedan was pulling away from the curb, and I hadn’t seen anybody get into it.