“John Alderdyce. He’s retired now.”
“Apparently he’s a man of his word. Nobody with the press ever tried to contact me. Frankly, the reason I agreed to see you is I wanted to know if I was going to be dragged into the business after all.”
“I can make the same promise. Did you and Paula ever meet in Allen Park?”
He dragged on his cigarette deeply enough to burn it halfway down. The smoke stuttered out between his lips like steam escaping from a pressure valve. “So I have to clear myself with you as well.”
“I’ve known Alderdyce most of my life. If he’s satisfied, that goes for me too. That town is so far on the other side of the tonier suburbs—geographically and culturally—it’s made-to-order for hookups after hours. The likelihood of either of you running into someone you know is so small a thimble could hold it. If she went there to meet you, she might have gone there to meet others.”
“So one word from me and she’s a slut.” He ground out the butt in the glass tray. “I don’t think we’re going to get along after all.”
“My work isn’t white-collar, Mr. Hoyle. I get a lot of grease under my nails and I don’t make many friends. I’ve read the reports, I brushed up on the press coverage. Anything I might say or think has already been said out loud. The difference between cops and the press is the police try to keep it in the family while the people who are supposed to report the news use it to sell papers, goose up ratings, and elect friends. If there were anything to it beyond speculation—anything that could be attributed—it would still come up every time the story gets a fresh transfusion. I don’t have anything to sell except answers. It’s what puts the private in private detective.”
“Sure. Forget I said anything. Are you a drinking man?”
“On rainy days.”
We returned to the living room, where I sat on brown distressed leather with bulbs flickering in a chandelier eight feet overhead, pretending to be candles. The room made me want to gnaw on a mutton joint and wash it down with mead. Instead I accepted a whiskey sour in a highball glass and clinked it against his. He ditched his latest cigarette in a saucer on the trestle coffee table, settled into an upholstered torture rack of a chair, and sipped.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Start turning the spit.”
I swallowed good bourbon and crossed my legs. “Nothing like that. Alderdyce has made up his mind Lawes killed his wife.”
“Not because of Paula and me. The inspector himself decided that in the end, or he wouldn’t have sat on what I told him about us. Also Lawes was too cold a fish to work up what’s needed to commit a crime of passion.”
“You know him?”
“Met him just once, at a Christmas party Baylor threw for clients and staff; he was Paula’s plus-one. I’m an editor, which makes me a fair judge of character by profession. It didn’t take me more than one cup of eggnog to get his number.”
“Alderdyce agreed, which is why he cleared you in the end. He’s got it worked out as a straight case of murder for money. The Lawses had life insurance policies on each other to the tune of a million apiece.”
“He must be worth several times that.”
I plucked the lemon twist from the lip of my glass and laid it in the ceramic plate; it tickled my nose, and spoiled the effect of the liquor. “Net worth’s complicated,” I said. “It can be all tied up in real estate in a seller’s market, mortgages, bonds set in concrete till they’re ripe. Also just because you’ve got a bundle doesn’t mean you can’t use more; even Lawes admitted that. It’s an old cop standby, very convenient. And most of the time it happens to be right.”
“So why did you take the job?”
“I think this time it happens to be wrong. When rich people need money, they almost always need it fast. Why rig it so her body was never found? Insurance companies don’t pay on spec. He’d have to have known that without solid evidence of her death the process would take years.”
“That’s what you do, clear the innocent?”
“Only when it pays.”
He smiled for the first time; drank off the top of his whiskey. “I’m glad you said that. Idealists make me nervous: so intent on doing only the right thing they wind up doing nothing. You know the Gamesman Inn?”
“No.”
“There’s no reason you should. I’m not even sure it’s still there. It advertised itself as a sports bar, but the big-ass monitors were just for show, to keep the bluenoses from picketing out front. The screens were set just high enough on the walls to keep the rest of the room in darkness. They gave the local cops a discount so they didn’t decide to bust the place anyway for complicity in immoral activities. There’s a state law still on the books prohibiting extramarital sex.”
“Like the one requiring motorists to engage a pedestrian to walk in front of automobiles waving a red flag.”
“Right. It costs less to ignore those than to take them off the books. You never know when some D.A. might decide to dust one off, either to nail someone he couldn’t otherwise or bring it to light to disgrace the other party when it’s in office. Anyway it was the place to go in Allen Park when you get tired of meeting in backseats and no-tell motels.”
“That where you and Paula went?”
“I didn’t say that. I’m just telling you it exists.”
I lit a cigarette, to give me an excuse to pull a face. “How do you think my job works? If I go there, assuming it still exists, and show Paula’s picture around, I’m going to ask who she was with. The idea is to find out who else she might have been seeing who had a better reason than you to keep the thing quiet, but if anyone remembers that far back, your description might come up.”
“You really think anyone will?”
“No. If the joint survived, and on the meager possibility that anyone who worked there then is still on staff, the odds of picking out one face from the thousands who have passed through in the meantime are worse than tapping the lottery. But records don’t always get thrown away, and if someone who met her there was dumb enough to use a credit card…”
“Okay, since none of that’s going to happen. What do you want to know—aside from the details you won’t drag out of me with a tow chain?”
“This. Did anyone—a waiter, a bartender, or a customer—show any sign of recognizing her when you were there together?”
He frowned into his drink. “No. It’s been—well, one thing. I told you cops stopped there sometimes, because of the break on the bill.”
He hadn’t said that, exactly; but I nodded.
“One night—I think it was the last time we went there—a group of local police officers was drinking at the next table. One of them spotted us and came over. I seized up; thought maybe he was some red-hot looking to enhance his arrest record or shake us down. But he spoke only to Paula, leaning a hand on the back of her chair.”
A bad molar that had been in hibernation lurched awake, stabbing me to the bone. It was as if I’d bitten down on tinfoil. Sudden insight is seldom pleasant to the senses. I jumped, brushing cigarette sparks from the front of my coat.
He didn’t appear to have noticed. “I couldn’t hear the conversation,” he said. “The place had a low ceiling, trapped all the jabber from the tables and the monitors—but he called her Paula and she smiled that tight little noncommittal smile of hers and said something back. I think she called him—” His face screwed up. “Mark? No; Marcus, I think. Yes. Marcus. No last name, of course. She didn’t introduce us.”
“Root,” I said. “Marcus Root. Someone shot him to death the night Paula went missing.”
II
REMEMBERING MARCUS
ELEVEN
He played with his drink while I gave him what I’d gotten from ex-Commander Albert White, rolling the glass between his palms in the wet circle it’d made on its cork coaster.
“He ruled out coincidence?” he asked when I’d finished.
“I’ve never seen the word on a police report, and I’ve read thou
sands. I’m not sure any cop ever bothered to learn how to spell it.”
“Because if the driver of that Impala he was following shot him, he probably wouldn’t take time to read Root’s notebook to see if he’d written anything down that would tie him to it. He’d just grab it and go.”
“Granted. White’s got a mad on for that youth gang. Either he couldn’t let go of it or thought he could use the shooting for a catchall to break it up. Nothing lights a fire under a police department like a cop-killing.”
“You sound convinced.”
“I’m not convinced the Big Dipper will come out at night until I see it. I think I’ll check out this bird Steadman and see what he’s got to say.”
“Give up on the Gamesman?”
“Did you tell Alderdyce about it?”
“Sure. I got the impression if I held anything back he’d sniff it out, and there it’d all be on the official record.”
“You got the right impression. Anything the staff and clientele could have to offer he’d have gotten out of them at the time. I try not to stretch the expense account covering ground the Detroit Police Department has already scraped clean. Did you tell him about the cop dropping by your table?”
“No. He didn’t ask the question you did, and I didn’t think of it at the time. If I ever did afterwards, it didn’t seem important. How come you thought to ask and he didn’t?”
“If I knew how to read his mind, I might be retired myself, with a pension from the city. At a guess I’d say he was working a different angle. When a case is this old, you grasp at whatever flotsam may still be bobbing about.”
He stopped rolling the glass and took a sip. The face he pulled told me he’d regretted warming it up. He set it down with a thump and pushed it away. “You know, this is the kind of murder I could see being committed by the Francis X. Lawes I met that one time. No emotion involved.”
“Didn’t Paula ever talk about him?”
“No, apart from the fact there wasn’t a great deal of affection in the marriage; that’s kind of important territory in cases of—well, what we were involved in. ‘My husband doesn’t understand me,’ that sort of thing. That’s boilerplate, wouldn’t you think? In her way she was as tight-fisted about personal history as she seemed to be in general.”
“So it was just sex between you.”
“That’s a hell of a cold-blooded way to put it. We were both lonely. Let’s leave it at that.”
I finished my drink and put it down. “No soap. I’m no good at it. But if it turns out to be the missing piece I need, I’ll come to you with it first. If it doesn’t break another way.”
“Now you sound just like Alderdyce.”
“Thanks—for taking the time.” I stood, shook his hand, and left him to deal with Evelyn Waugh and Joe Hollywood.
The slushy mess had settled into sullen rain. My head was a balloon. I blamed the bourbon. Scotch comes by sea; the cradling influence gentles it down. On the other hand, I wasn’t aging as well as the bottled in bond. I guided the Cutlass into a lot next to a chain steakhouse, where I sponged up the poisons with a medium-rare sirloin, baked potato, and a demijohn of caffeine.
Twenty minutes later, synapses sparking, I let myself into my waiting room, just to punch in, check the mail, and go through the motions of maintaining office hours. I hadn’t had any street traffic all year, but if you let one thing slip you can wind up living in sweats and eating over the sink.
Which wouldn’t happen today. I had a customer.
* * *
She stood with her back to me, studying the framed Casablanca poster on the wall to the left of the coffee table with its selection of tired magazines. Some people are as identifiable from behind as when you’re facing them, even on brief acquaintance. Today it was a linen slack suit, mocha-colored, with matching steeplejack pumps strapped by some engineering feat to her heels. Her short hair was as white as refined sugar, tapering to a point two inches above an ivory silk collar. Her weight rested on her right leg, shooting her hip. Her crossed arms squared off her shoulders with the precision of an architect’s drawing.
“Is it original?” A gold-flecked brown eye gazed back over a shoulder.
“Early re-release. I got it from a client who came up short in the divorce. I haven’t started accepting livestock yet.”
Holly Pride turned around. Her bangs were still slanted. Embroidered braided vines canted down the left side of her blouse, same color as the fabric, following the line of the gorge of her jacket. She was a fan of acute angles.
She frowned at my reaction. “You don’t approve?”
“It’s better than yesterday; but then we’re only on the third floor. I think I can get through this without Dramamine.”
“You talk as if I made an appointment.”
“If you did, would I be late?”
She glanced down at the tiny octagonal face of a gold watch on her wrist. “Probably. You should hire a receptionist if you can’t be here during office hours.”
“An intern, once. I caught him making for the door with the poster. I can barely afford to pay my own salary. Let’s go into the isolation booth.” I jingled my keys.
She came in past me as I held the door, glanced at the furnishings without comment, and sat in the customer’s chair, resting her elbows on the arms and crossing her legs. A tiny blue tattoo winked at me from the little depression between the protruding bone of her left ankle and the Achilles tendon. I couldn’t make out what it was without staring; but I was curious.
“Have you made any progress?” she asked when I sat facing her across the desk.
I smiled. “Can you believe it’s the middle of April? What’s the global warming crowd got to say?”
“So we’re going to go through that again.”
“Last year it was La Niña. Now it’s El Niño. Next year, who knows? What Mexican family ever stopped at two kids?”
“His interest in this case is mine. Withholding from me is the same as withholding from your client. That’s unethical. Just what are you grinning about?”
“Was I? I’ll stop.” I reached up and touched my mouth. “Nope.”
“Did I say unethical? I should have said slimy.”
“Does this approach work with Francis? Maybe. I guess even the Pope sheds his bulletproof vest at the door.”
Coral nails rattled on the wooden chair arm. She uncrossed her legs and recrossed them the other way. I tried to get a better look at the tattoo, but she was too fast. “You know this investigation will lead nowhere. What if I let you off the hook? What do they call it? A kill fee?”
“Does Lawes know you’re here?”
“I don’t have to file a flight plan when I’m on my own time.”
“You won’t mind if I call him and ask if he objects to your paying me off to walk away?” I picked up the telephone.
She rolled a shoulder. Her diamond-shaped chin was firm. I started pressing keys. A trim hand darted out and closed over mine. I cradled the receiver and sat back.
She did the same. I got a glimpse of the tattoo then: a thistle, prickly with sharp thorns. I hadn’t expected a rosebud. Her nails rataplanned again. “What if you find Paula’s remains? Because I’m sure that’s all she is, a bundle of bones. The police would reopen the investigation, come to the same conclusion as before, which is no conclusion at all, and meanwhile Francis’ name would be dragged through the mud worse than before. It would ruin him professionally. It wouldn’t matter if he were cleared publicly. Our court system carries no provision for proving innocence. What politician would continue to employ someone who’s been the prime suspect in a murder?”
“You should be making this speech to Lawes. As he sees it, I’m his wedding gift to you.”
“If he’d discussed it with me before he spoke to you, I’d have asked him to buy me a pair of earrings instead. What’s another eleven months out of a lifetime together?”
“Put it to him that way. If he buys it, he can call me off over t
he phone. My time’s already paid for.”
“You don’t know him the way I do. Once he gets his teeth in something he never lets go.”
“Something tells me yours is a match made in heaven, Ms. Pride. You wouldn’t have another reason for wanting me off this one, by any chance?”
“Such as?”
“Such as you were there when his wife dusted. Maybe you know something you think nobody else does and that it might jump up and smack your fiancé in the face.”
“And what might that be?”
“If it’s Paula’s affair with George Hoyle, you can relax. The cops know all about it and have dismissed it as a motive for murder.”
A line of emotions crossed her face. It was like watching a magic-lantern display. When she got to anger it stopped. She scissored her legs and stood. “I should throw something at you for that.”
“Better not. I’m a little fragile. You could break me with a block and tackle.”
As curtain lines went it wasn’t that good, but she took it to the exit. I heard her heels clicking down two flights of stairs, but I wasn’t really listening. The first of the emotions that had swept her from ear to ear was relief. I’d thrown a dart in the dark and hit the bull square in the eye. I just wished I knew what to do with it.
TWELVE
“Michigan State Police, Jackson post.”
I introduced myself to the owner of the crisp female voice and asked if Oakes Steadman was available.
“Hang on.”
I listened to Barry Manilow for three minutes. Then a shallow, boyish voice came on the line. “Gang Unit, Steadman.”
I gave him my name and said I was cooperating with the Detroit Police in a homicide investigation.
The voice lost some of its youthful quality. “Who says I ever had anything to do with Homicide?”
“Albert White. He’s retired from the Allen Park Police.”
“You said Detroit.”
When Old Midnight Comes Along Page 6
