S Is for Silence

business. In my bag I had my index cards, so while I ate, I shuffled through my notes, trying to get a sense of where I was and where I needed to go next. The wall of years between me and Violet Sullivan felt as impenetrable as ever, but I was catching glimpses of her.

9
    CHET
    Wednesday, July 1, 1953
    Chet Cramer was late getting back from lunch, having spent an interminable three hours in discussion with Tom Padgett about a partnership in his heavy-equipment business. In Chet’s opinion, Padgett was a fool. He’d married a woman fifteen years older than he was. Tom was forty-one now, which put her somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty-six years old, a shriveled-up old bag. Everyone in town knew it was her money he was after. She’d been widowed after twenty-five years of marriage to Loden Galsworthy, who’d died of a heart attack. Loden owned a string of funeral parlors, and Cora not only inherited those, but the rest of his estate, which was valued at a million dollars and included the house, two cars, stocks, bonds, and life insurance. Tom was a man with big schemes and precious little in the way of common sense. He’d hit her up for one loan in order to set up his business in the first place. He’d borrowed an additional sum from the bank. He admitted he’d been underfunded from the get-go, but now he wanted to expand, capitalizing on the inevitable demand for John Deere equipment as Santa Maria grew. The builders had to lease from someone and why not him? Chet could see his point, but he didn’t much like Padgett, and he sure as shit didn’t want to go into business with him. His suspicion was that Tom had a big balloon payment coming up, and this was nothing more than a push to find the dough before the note came due. Cora must have put her foot down and refused to bail him out.
    At the country club, over grilled trout, Chet had been polite, feigning interest when, in truth, he had an agenda of his own. He and Livia were eager for membership, and he was hoping Tom and Cora would agree to sponsor them. The place had an old-money respectability he’d always admired. The furnishings were refined, though he noticed a touch of shabbiness in the corridor on his way in to the dining room. Only rich people had the confidence to offer leather chairs so old they had cracks along the seat. The point was that members here were movers and shakers in town, and membership would put Chet on a first-name basis with most of them. Even at lunch, men were required to wear jackets and ties. He liked that. He’d looked around the room, picturing the entertaining he could do here. Livia was an avid but lousy cook, and he’d done everything he could to steer her off inviting folks for dinner. She didn’t believe in alcohol consumption, which she said was against Scripture. That made meals a dreary proposition. From his perspective, heavy drinking was the only way to survive her enthusiasms, and he employed every manner of ingenuity to keep his glass filled with something more palatable than the sweetened iced tea she served.
    Here he could see that members and guests to a man were enjoying midday cocktails—martinis, Manhattans, whiskey sours. Chet wanted to take up golf, and he liked the idea of Livia and Kathy lounging around the pool while colored waiters in white coats served them sandwiches held together with frilly toothpicks. You weren’t even expected to pay for the meal. You signed your name to a chit and then paid in full at the end of the month.
    Of course, Padgett was sly. He seemed to sense Chet’s ambition, and he was probably hoping to use it as leverage for the so-called partnership. Chet had stalled him off, suggesting that Tom put together a business plan so he and his accountant could take a look. Chet said as soon as he knew what kind of money they were talking, he’d have a chat with the bank. Which was all a bunch of crap. He didn’t need his accountant to point out the folly of underwriting Padgett’s proposal when he, Chet, was struggling to keep his dealership afloat. In some ways, he and Padgett were in the same fix. Chevrolet expected him to expand his salesroom, services, parts and accessories facilities, along with his presence in the used-car market. The company also insisted that he pay for a product sign, a service sign, and “other necessary signs,” none of which were cheap. He was in hot competition with nine other car dealerships in town—Studebaker, DeSoto, Packard, Buick,