Chapter 16

Perry was momentarily confused as he stood in the hallway outside Jameson Street's study. Right or left? Upstairs or outside? Anger burned his brain and clouded his vision. He shook his head. He needed a cigarette to quell the bile rising in his throat. He reached into his pocket but nothing was there. Cursing under his breath, he realized his case was in Della's purse along with his lighter. He knew she needed time before she would talk to him but he couldn't very well march upstairs, knock on her door, ask for his cigarette case and walk away without acknowledging what had been said and done earlier. Or maybe he could, after bearing witness to her father's cleansing of his soul. He turned right and headed up the stairs.

He stood in front of her door for several seconds nervously debating and it galled him. Never in five years had he been nervous with Della. The stricken look on her face, her tears, her constant pleading for him to understand what her life had been like in this house swam before his eyes and nausea nearly overwhelmed him as the startling words of both her parents echoed in his mind. He would apologize for practicing psychiatry without a license and if he was supremely fortunate, Della would forgive him and they would go home to deal with what they had learned. He knocked on the door.

Thirty seconds and several more knocks later he tentatively tried the knob. It turned easily and he swung the door inward, expecting to come face-to-face with her, but the room was empty. A window had been left open and a warm breeze stirred sheer white curtains, billowing them out into the room. He crossed to the vanity table where her purse rested and picked it up. His cigarette case and lighter were easily located and as he replaced the bag on the vanity, Della's voice, high-pitched and agitated floated in through the window from outside. Perry moved to the window and bent to discover what or who was upsetting her now.

Della and Carter were standing in the middle of the long curved driveway, practically nose-to-nose. Della was giving him what-for, her index finger poking Carter's chest, emphatically underscoring her words. Carter laughed and said something Perry couldn't make out. Della visibly shrank from her brother and brought her fist up to her mouth in distress. A split second later she was halfway down the driveway at a dead run, Carter's laughter punctuating her every step. Perry slammed down the sash, cursed out loud, and hurried from the room, his cigarette case and lighter forgotten on the vanity.

By the time he made it down the staircase, through the hallway and out the front door, Carter was climbing the porch stairs. Perry flew at him, grabbed him around the neck and ran him up against a pillar, pressing his head to the painted wood.

"Hey! What's the big idea?"

"What did you say to her, Carter?" Perry shoved his face into Carter's belligerently.

"What did I say to whom?"

"Don't play dumb with me, Carter. I saw you and Della from upstairs. What did you say to her? Where did she go?" He tightened his hold around Della's brother's neck in much the same way he had earlier held her father.

"I don't know what you're talking about." There was no fear in Carter's eyes, only a steely defiance.

"Tell me what you said to her," Perry said in a low, ominous voice, "or I will gleefully pull every appendage from your worthless body."

Carter's defiance shrank to a self-serving smirk. "I told her what she needed to hear. She should take her inheritance graciously and be glad she has it instead of whining about it. The money will more than make up for her, ah, shall we say, shortcomings."

Nausea again gripped Perry and he feared he might not be able to resist the urge to throw up on Della's brother. "My God, Carter, how could you say something like that?" His voice was strangled, his mind in a frenzy of worry about Della.

"Yes, Carter, how couldyou say something like that?" Henny Vander Velde exclaimed in horror from the doorway. "Della's your sister. She has feelings and…and…it was a despicable thing to do after what Mrs. Wyman said." Carter's administrative assistant took two steps out onto the porch, arms clutching her middle as if she shared the same nausea felt by Perry Mason.

Carter's face turned red as the smirk transformed into panic. "I – I…she…why are we coddling her? Why is everyone so worried about Della? She got everything. She ran away from home AND SHE GOT EVERYTHING!"

Perry pressed Carter Street more firmly against the pillar. "Where did she go, Carter? Where would she run to?"

Carter's answering shrug bordered on insolence. "I don't know."

"Carter," Henny's lyrical voice snapped his name. "Tell Mr. Mason where she went."

"She went to the 'vangcant' lot."

Everyone turned to where Jameson Street stood in the doorway now, stirring a fresh drink with his finger.

"The what?" Perry demanded. Carter squirmed and he kneed him in the thigh. Carter yelped but stilled his movements.

"My son Daniel couldn't say the word vacant," Jameson Street explained. "It came out 'vangcant' no matter how hard he tried. There is a vacant lot one street over. Della most likely cut through several yards and is there already. She often spent time in that lot as a child. Both she and Daniel did."

Henny moved forward another step. "I know where it is, Mr. Mason," she said. "I'll drive you there."

Perry Mason shook his head. "Thank you, Miss Vander Velde, but I'll find it." He knocked Carter's head against the pillar one more time before releasing him and hurrying down the stairs toward the rented Ford Galaxie.

Carter's hands flew to his neck. "Maybe that kind of violent behavior is acceptable in Los Angeles, Mr. Mason, but here manners still count for something," he called ineffectually after the attorney.

"I believe Mr. Mason to be a civilized person, Carter," Jameson Street declared with parental authority toward his adult son. "However, we have attacked the person he holds dearest and we shouldn't fault him for resorting to force." His grey eyes shifted from his son to Perry Mason as the big attorney fumbled in his pocket for the car keys. "Find her, Mr. Mason," he instructed. "I'll deal with my son."

"I'm not a child," Carter protested.

"Then stop acting as if you are," Henny told him succinctly.

"Very well put, Henny," Jameson Street praised.

Perry had little trouble finding the 'vangcant' lot Jameson Street was convinced his daughter would run to. He parked at the curb opposite the overgrown lot and hurried across the street, circumnavigating a buckled sidewalk and a cobblestone path choked with moss and piles of 'helicopters' released by the surrounding maple trees.

"Halt! Who goes there?" Della's voice rang out from the depths of the lot.

Perry continued picking his way along the treacherous path. "It is I, my lady, your knight in shining armor come to slay the dragon that vexes you," he answered.

"Don't know any knights," she called back. "And the dragon has fortuitously expired on its own."

Perry broke through a tall hedge barrier commonly known as a 'burning bush', and came to a dead halt at the sight before him. Della, atop a crumbling stone wall that had once been the foundation of a rather large house, arms outstretched for balance as she calmly walked back and forth over jutting stones, executing a perfect pivot turn on one foot that presented her back to him.

She looked young and innocent in the full blue cotton skirt sprinkled with daisies that stopped just shy of her knees and the sleeveless blouse of white eyelet that exposed her long, slim arms. He followed her progress along the wall as she turned right at the corner that had been the back wall of the house and tottered partway down, then stopped to reach up and pluck a bunch of helicopters from a low-hanging branch. She ignored him completely as she pulled the seed pods from the stem and tossed them into the air one by one.

"You might think that I have achieved a certain maturity at my age and will not exploit this opportunity to look up your skirt." Perry leaned back against the crumbling wall, tilted his head, and grinned up at the view as she methodically dispensed with the helicopters. "You would be wrong."

"Boys will be boys," she opined unconcernedly.

"Indeed they will." He had discovered a partial pack of cigarettes and a book of matches in the glove compartment of the rental car and shoved them into his pocket. With shaking hands he pulled the crushed pack out and lit up, hoping to calm his nerves. By the time he resumed his ogling stance, she was no longer standing above him. He pushed himself away from the wall and scanned the ruined foundation. She was nowhere to be seen. "Della?" When she didn't answer, he picked his way through the tangled brush around the corner of the vine-covered stone wall. "Della?"

She was no longer on top of the wall. Breaking into a panicked sweat, Perry stubbed the cigarette out against a rock and made his way back to the spot he had last seen her. "Della!" He was at the lowest part of the wall now, where stones had either been removed by the kids who played in this 'vangcant' lot, or had simply collapsed after years of exposure to the elements. He didn't care that his weight might cause a full collapse as he scrambled up and over the wall – all he cared about was not finding Della lying in a crumpled heap on the other side.

The vegetation wasn't quite so overgrown as on the outer edge of the wall and he easily spotted Della crouched in the corner of the foundation, frantically pulling at climbing vines that clung to the stones. Expelling a huge sigh of relief, he reached her in a few long strides.

"For the love of Mike, Della, when I call you, answer." Beneath the wall where she had recently stood was a mound of dirt. She must have simply jumped onto the little hill and slid to the gravelly ground, as evidenced by long scrape marks in the stony earth.

She barely acknowledged him with a faint shrug of her shoulders. "I know it's here." Her slender hands continued to pull vines and leaves from the ancient foundation.

Perry grasped one arm and pulled her back onto her haunches. "What are you doing? Those vines will tear your hands to shreds."

She looked at him with glazed eyes. "I have to find it. Help me find it."

Perry squatted next to her and turned her to face him, frightened by the blankness he saw in her eyes. "Find what? What are you looking for?" This had nothing to do with the will reading, or what her mother had announced to everyone, or even what Carter had said to her that made her run away. This was something new, something different, and it worried him. She seemed lost, detached from him and her surroundings, desperate for a touchstone of some sort that could center her universe again.

"Danny's stone," she said urgently. "Help me find it."

Perry brushed unruly curls from her flushed face. "Of course I will. What am I looking for?"

Della suddenly sat down hard, her skirt ballooned around her with trapped air. "Danny chiseled his name in a rock the summer he died. He told me he did it so people would know he had been here. I need to know he was here."

He placed his hands on either side of her head and forced her to meet his eyes. "I'll find it, Della. I promise."

It didn't take him long to locate the stone Della so desperately needed to see. She had cleared away about three square feet of vines in the time it had taken him to scale the wall, and miraculously all he did was dislodge a stubborn knot of twisted leaves and there it was. The stone was grey with reflective flecks of black, approximately the size of his hand. Carved deeply into the surface, in meticulous block letters, was the name DANIEL.

Perry brushed his hand over the stone, which despite its recent camouflaging covering of vines felt warm, almost alive. "Della," he called quietly. "Come look."

Della crawled over the weed infested gravelly ground and came to lean against his shoulder. "He was here," she said with awed relief. "Everything I ever knew suddenly isn't real…I was so afraid…I was afraid I'd imagined him."

Perry straightened on his knees, turned, and pulled Della tenderly into his arms. "Danny existed, so therefore you exist? Is that it? Is this why you ran away – to find Danny's stone?"

Della held her body stiff and unyielding in his embrace. Her blank eyes stared off over his shoulder at her younger brother's name carved so neatly into the rock. "Among other things. Carter said I –"

"Carter is an idiot," Perry bit out harshly. "I could kill him for what he said to you."

"Don't say that," she said sharply. "You know better than to say anything like that, because the next thing you know we'll find Carter lifeless at the bottom of the stairs just like my grandmother and you'll be the prime suspect." Her hands slid up along his rib cage and over his chest before encircling his neck. "I hate that Carter told you what he said to me. It was bad enough you heard what my mother said."

"He pretty much had to tell me when I threatened to tear him limb from limb. Just say the word and I'll gladly perform the same operation on your mother."

Della sighed and laid her head on his shoulder. "You really shouldn't punish people for telling the truth."

"Nothing Carter said is the truth, Della. He may think it's the truth, but he's too small-minded and ignorant to see the actual truth. Don't even get me started on your mother."

"And what exactly is the actual truth, Perry? I'm the pivot on which everything is turning, and even I don't know the truth. The evidence is irrefutable. My great-grandmother and grandmother did die young. I know exactly where their headstones are in the cemetery. And my mother has spent much of her life in institutions."

Perry brought one hand up to cup her chin. His lips were firm and familiar, and she was so happy to recognize his kiss in her suddenly surreal existence that she wept again. "The only truth that matters is what we have between us, baby," he told her gently. "I've wanted you to tell me about your family for years, but now that I've met them I say to hell with this place and these people."

Della laid her head back down on his shoulder. "I didn't want you to know what it was like growing up here. I'm not like them."

Perry tightened his arms around her. "Peas and asparagus," he said, harkening back to how she had once described herself in relation the rest of her family. "I know who you are, Della. Nothing anyone says can change the way I feel about you."

She raised her head to reveal eyes again pooling with tears. She had never cried so much in her life than in the past three days. "Nothing?"

"For better or for worse, kid," he said softly.

She sniffed. "You can't possibly still want…now that we know about…marriage is out of the question, Perry."

Perry smiled at her crookedly. "All these years of rejecting my proposals didn't mean marriage was out of the question? There was a chance you would have eventually said yes?"

"Maybe," she replied, as evasive as ever on the subject.

He hugged her to him tightly with a chuckle. "My darling, you have given me renewed hope."

"How can you say that?" she persisted, pushing herself away from him again. "The main purpose for getting married doesn't exist with me."

"What do you mean by 'main purpose'? Why do you think I want to marry you?"

Della stiffened once again in his arms. "I can't say it out loud."

"Della, I want to marry you because you make me happy. It's as simple as that."

"I can't marry you, Perry," she said sadly.

"You still make me happy."

"But will you continue to be happy? Can you honestly say that in ten years you won't look at me and regret that you didn't have a normal life?"

An odd reflective expression passed over his face before he replied. "I could have had normal. I could have had a lot of things, but Della, I never wanted them. I didn't want them until I met you. Not marriage, not the big house in Brentwood, and most assuredly not children."

"I can't let you…you should be a father. You deserve to have that experience, and with me…"

Perry brought her hand to his lips and kissed the palm very softly, tasting the bitter juices of the vines. "You've been telling me for years that I'm not the marrying type, and now you think I should be a father? That doesn't make sense, Della, and I won't allow you to use it as an excuse not to marry me."

"Nothing makes sense anymore," she said with great distress.

"We make sense, Della. You and I make all the sense I need in this world."

"Oh come on, the most eligible bachelor in Los Angeles, a brilliant attorney with unlimited prospects, and his secretary, a small town girl with virtually no prospects and a trunk full of secrets and lies to sort through? Sure. Everyone sees the sense in that."

"Everyone doesn't need to see it. Only we need to see it."

She looked at him with misty eyes. "Why are you being so nice to me?"

"You are very easy to be nice to. And let's not forget you are more than likely extremely wealthy."

She settled against his broad chest with a sigh. "I'm glad I get to see this side of you and not just the cranky disposition you present to everyone else."

He laughed out loud. The deep sound echoed off the crumbling foundation walls and caused chipmunks to scurry for cover. "So being authoritative and professional is now considered being 'cranky'?"

"You're also opinionated and impatient."

"Call me all the names you want, kiddo, you can't chase me away."

She snuggled closer, secure in his embrace. "Aren't you the least bit disappointed?"

"Of course I am," he admitted gently. "I know this has hurt you deeply, and when you hurt, I hurt, too. And furthermore, if that 'maybe' you admitted to ever becomes 'yes'..."

"But if that 'maybe' never becomes 'yes'…?" she interrupted.

He sucked in a breath and expelled it slowly. "I don't want anyone but you, Della, for now and forever. Do you refuse to marry me to hedge your bet? Do you want to be free to leave without a messy divorce in case someone else comes along and makes your heart go pitty-pat more than I do?"

She clutched at him. "No! I don't want anyone but you, either. When I'm old and grey my heart will still go pitty-pat for you."

"Then I'm happy to wait for you, Della."

"Why do you keep asking me to marry you if you know I'll say no?"

"Because I'm an eternal optimist."

"Or a glutton for punishment."

He placed his hands on her upper arms and held her away from him. "Or that," he agreed, his smile decidedly lopsided. "My mother always told me how happy she and my father were being married and that when I met a woman I couldn't live without I should marry her and do everything in my power to make her happy…I can't live without you, Della. I want to make you as happy as my father made my mother."

"You know the stellar examples of matrimony I've been exposed to. Add to that the fact that I…" she looked away momentarily to take a shaky breath. "There is still the little matter of the man you are."

"And the woman you are," he reminded her quickly.

"We are the perfect couple, aren't we?" The lopsidedness of her smile matched his.

He released her, got to his feet, and held out his hand to her. "Yes, we are."

She allowed him to haul her to her feet. "I forgot to include arrogant on your list of personality traits."

"It's a good thing I know you admire my arrogance or I would be deeply and irreparably wounded." He pulled her to him and brushed his lips over hers briefly. "Now, Miss Street, we have a very pressing problem to address."

"There are so many problems. Which is the most pressing?" She tucked her hand securely in his, picking her way carefully through the brambles and brush as he led her toward the low portion of the wall. Everything seemed to be a pressing problem lately. She longed for the days when only a client's life hung in the balance while they tried desperately to stay one step ahead of the police and the District Attorney. Familiar territory she could easily manage.

"Visitation is tomorrow and the funeral day after tomorrow and I know for a fact that you stubbornly refused to pack anything but a white dress of inappropriate material and design for such an event in your garment bag. What shall we do about that?"

"Up until this morning I would have worn the white dress and danced on her grave," Della replied without anger or bitterness. "Now I think I probably should wear something more appropriate. What time is it?"

He glanced at his watch before turning and lifting her up onto the wall. "Almost seven-thirty." She draped her arms over his shoulders and he leaned in for another quick kiss

"Lorna's is open until nine on Saturdays."

He scrambled over the wall and caught her as she catapulted herself at him. "Does Lorna supply a chair for weary male companions?" During their tour of downtown earlier she had pointed out Lorna's, and described it as the county's swankiest dress shop.

She nodded her head, her expression overly serious. "It's a town ordinance that a chair be provided for weary male companions to sit in while their women try on dresses."

"Well, if you think Estelle won't mind you wearing another dressmaker's creations and there is a chair for me to sit in, then I say we take a trip to Lorna's right now."

She giggled nervously. "I need to clean up a bit first. If I go to Lorna's looking like this, the town's gossip grapevine will burn up."

"It only needs to make sense to us," he reminded her. "I think you look sweet."

She made a face at him and shook out her dusty, wrinkled skirt. "I look like a ragamuffin. I was all of eighteen the last time I wore this skirt."

"You don't look nearly eighteen all disheveled and freckled," Perry told her. "I feel as if I'll be committing a crime if I act on my current urges." He pulled back the gap he'd made in the burning bush hedge earlier and helped her through.

"I want ice cream. From Dean's," she announced as they walked hand-in-hand down the destroyed cobblestone path toward the sidewalk.

"One thing at a time, my dear. Dress first, then ice cream."

"I need shoes, too. And underwear." She didn't, but since she planned to allow him to pay, literally and figuratively, she might as well go all out.

"Now that's a shopping chore I don't mind participating in." He nudged her gently across the street and opened the driver's door of the Galaxie.

"Dirty old man." He helped her into the car and she moved over just enough for him to slide beneath the wheel. "You do understand that I'm still very upset with you for clapping your hand over my mouth." She laid her head on his shoulder as he started the engine.

"I understand."

"Good. I wouldn't want you to think that my forgiveness can be bought with underwear."