One Good Deed

by David Baldacci

  “He was.”

  “Does that help you or hurt you?” she asked bluntly.

  “I was sitting here thinking about that myself.”

  “And what have you concluded?”

  “That it’s not a simple answer one way or another.”

  “I guess I can see that.”

  He cocked his head. “Can you now?”

  “The man who is owed the debt is dead. Is the debt still owed? Legally, yes. But pragmatically? And what if his widow isn’t aware of the liability? Men often don’t tell their wives anything about their business, believing, wrongly, that they won’t understand. Now Lucas Tuttle may decide he never has to pay it back. In which case, you probably won’t be compensated. But the upside might be that you won’t have to pay back the forty dollars to Pittleman’s estate.”

  “Couldn’t have said it better myself, ma’am. In fact, you show a right logical mind.”

  “Are you sure you weren’t about to add, ‘For a girl’?”

  He put a hand over his heart and held the other one up. “So help me God, I was not.”

  She smiled at this.

  “A man named Irving Shaw has already talked to me. Do you know him?”

  “I know of him. He’s a lieutenant detective with the state police. Very highly respected.”

  “Yeah, I imagine so. He asked a lot of questions.”

  “Why did he question you?”

  “I’m on the same floor as the dead man. Shaw wanted to know if I’d heard or seen anything.”

  “And did you?”

  “No. And I told him so.”

  “I wonder who could have killed Pittleman?”

  “From what I’ve learned about the man, that list might be pretty long.”

  “As I said before, he owns a lot of property in town, including the Cat’s Meow.”

  Archer lit up a cigarette and studied her, tapping his ash twice into the ashtray before speaking. “Speaking of the place, Dan Bullock’s back in jail, I take it, after coming after you with a knife when you were on your way home from there?”

  To her credit, Crabtree didn’t even flinch. “So, you followed me?”

  “I followed him because he was following you. I wouldn’t have let him hurt you. Turns out, you didn’t need me.” He glanced at her purse. “You got the snub-nose in there now?”

  “In my line of work, I rarely go anywhere without it.”

  “Why’d you choose that ‘line of work’ in the first place?”

  She took a few moments to light her smoke, tapping her ash alongside his.

  “It’s a job. And I do help people. The ones like Dickie Dill and Bullock are hopeless cases, I will freely admit that.” She paused and took a long draw on her Pall Mall. “But you’re not, Archer, not by a long shot, if I’m any judge.”

  “How’s the story you’re writing coming?”

  “Slowly. But I have a lot of material.”

  “Where do you get that?”

  “Life.”

  “So, where’d you live before coming here?” he asked, bending his matchstick in half and depositing it in the black ashtray sitting between them.

  In response, Crabtree waved the waitress over.

  She stood next to the table, pad and pen in hand. She was in her fifties, tired and worn-out looking, with gray hair partially covered by the cap that was part of her uniform—a dark brown short-sleeved one-piece with a frilly, stained apron built into the front.

  “What are you all having?” she said curtly.

  Archer glanced at Crabtree, who said, “I’ll have the beef stew.”

  “To drink?”

  “Lemonade.”

  She wrote this down and turned to Archer. “You, sir?”

  “Steak rare, with the potatoes and green beans. And coffee to drink. Black. And for dessert, how about a slice of that coconut cream pie I see behind the glass over there.”

  She wrote this down and departed.

  Crabtree took another puff of her cigarette. “I was born and raised in Texas. I left when I was seventeen. When the war started, I worked building airplanes.”

  “Really, which kind?” he said with interest.

  “Quite a few actually. The last one I worked on was the B-29 bomber at a plant in Georgia.”

  He nodded appreciatively. “The Superfortress, they called it. Seen them in the skies when I was over there. And didn’t one of them drop the A-bombs on the Japs?”

  “Yes, I believe that’s right.”

  “Building airplanes. That’s impressive, Miss Crabtree.”

  “I wanted to do my part, as I’m sure you did.”

  “You still have family in Texas?”

  “No. I have no family left. None.” She stared down at the table.

  He nodded, felt sorry for her obvious uncomfortableness, and decided to say no more for now. They waited in silence until their food came. They ate with only the occasional glance at each other. In the middle of it, Archer excused himself to use the washroom.

  Later, when he’d finished off his steak and vegetables, he eyed the slice of pie the waitress had set off to the side of the table.

  “I’d be honored if you’d split the pie with me,” he said.

  “No, I really couldn’t,” said Crabtree, setting down her utensils.

  “One bite of pie isn’t going to kill anybody.”

  She sighed and looked unsure but reached for her fork.

  “It is good,” she said as they ate away at it.

  “Lot better than what they fed us in the war. It was either rotted or too hard for the teeth.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “Scrounged off the countryside.”

  “You mean you stole from people?”

  “I never stole from anybody. Lots of places were abandoned. If I put a hunk of bread or an apple or some raw carrots in my pocket, I don’t think anybody minded.”

  Crabtree wiped her mouth with a cloth napkin. “Well, I’m just glad the war’s over.”

  “You and me both.”

  “Thank you for the pie. I should go now. I will pay my bill separately, of course.”

  “Already paid the bill when I went to use the john.”

  “Now why did you do that?”

  “I knew if I’d offered, you wouldn’t let me, so.…”

  “It’s against the rules for me to—”

  “You tell me how it’s wrong for a man to buy a woman a meal? I mean, you’re helping me out with all the parole stuff. This is a way of thanking you.”

  “It’s my job. It’s what I’m paid to do. It is not done out of friendship or kindness.”

  “I paid for your dinner out of an act of kindness. Do you want ex-cons to be kind and thoughtful or not?”

  “Well, when you put it that way, the answer seems obvious, I suppose. So thank you very much for dinner.”

  “Good, now it’s a fine evening. We can walk off dinner.”

  “I…I really should be—”

  “I can at least walk you home.”

  She glanced at him sharply. “If you saw Dan Bullock, you know where I live.”

  He nodded. “So what happened to him? You never said.”

  “He was sent back to prison based on my written account and the knife that he had with his fingerprints on it. I called the police as soon as I got in my house. They picked him up trying to hitch a ride out of town.”

  “I think he’s right where he belongs, then.” He stood, put on his hat, and looked down at her. “You ready?”

  She picked up her purse and hat, and they set off together.

  Chapter 19

  THE AIR WAS CRISP, which was a nice change, though the sky was clear to the horizon and probably beyond. Archer kept glancing at his companion curiously as she walked along rigidly and uncomfortably.

  Crabtree said, “So, with Pittleman dead, that means you no longer have a job?”

  “The jury’s still out on that, so to speak.”

  “How so?”
>
  “I have an opportunity to still make it pay off, only I have to handle things delicately.”

  “With Lucas Tuttle?”

  “Right. I’m going out to meet with him at some point.”

  “Why not right away?”

  “Well, with Mr. Pittleman being murdered and all, it’s probably smart to let things quiet down a little before I go making money off something connected to him.”

  “Oh, I guess I can see that.” She suddenly eyed him sharply. “Archer, you didn’t have anything to do with the man’s death, did you?”

  “I swear on a stack of Bibles that I didn’t.”

  Her gaze lingered on him for a bit. Her look had told Archer all he needed to know. She and Jackie both thought he might have killed the man.

  “Did you finish that book you were reading, by, who was it again?”

  “Virginia Woolf. And yes, I did. It was wonderful.” She paused. “The writing of hers I like best isn’t a novel or a short story, but an essay entitled A Room of One’s Own.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “A woman working in a man’s world, essentially.”

  “Is that how you see it?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “I read a lot in prison. I like detective stories. You heard of Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade, and that little fellow from Belgium?”

  “Yes, I have. They’re quite entertaining.”

  “And maybe I can make a living doing that sort of work,” said Archer. He had thought of this before and had decided to try it out on her.

  “From convict to detective? Quite a leap.”

  “I was a scout in the Army. My job was to look at things, take in a bunch of information, and then take a course of action. Probably close to what Detective Shaw is doing right now, don’t you think?”

  She looked impressed with his logic. “I think you might be right.”

  They eventually arrived at her house.

  “You own it?”

  “No, I’m renting it for the time being.”

  “It’s really pretty.”

  She smiled. “It wasn’t so pretty when I got here, but I’ve had some things repaired. Though the door to my bedroom still jams. I can never fully close it.”

  “I can fix that in a jiffy.”

  She looked alarmed. “What? No, that’s all right.”

  “Ma’am, I’m right here. Probably take me no more than a few minutes.”

  “Archer, I wouldn’t feel comfortable letting you do that.”

  “Ma’am, let me just say something.”

  “All right,” she said, looking at him warily.

  “I spent time in prison with the likes of Dickie Dill and others like him. They’re hard men, and some of them live right here. And one of them followed you home.”

  “But I took care of that.”

  “And one of them wrote you that nasty note. So you need to lock your doors—that includes your front door and your bedroom door. Because if they get the jump on you, well.…”

  She stared at him very deliberately for a long moment.

  “I think you’re sincere,” she said at last.

  “That’s because I am.”

  She turned and led him inside.

  The interior of the place was Spartanly furnished but it was neat and overly clean, at least to Archer’s mind. There were also a goodly number of books on the shelves. From a glance he could see novels by people named Faulkner, Brontë, Whitman, Wharton, Austen, Dickens, Twain, and Steinbeck. And there were quite a few legal tomes, too.

  “Got a lot of law books there.”

  “I actually wanted to be a lawyer once.”

  “Pardon my ignorance, but can women be lawyers?”

  “Of course they can! But I will admit, it’s unusual.”

  “If you want to be one, then I say go for it. Sure you’d make a fine one.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Archer,” she said, evidently pleased by his remark.

  “You have relations who are in the law?”

  “No, but my father—” She faltered.

  “Your father was a lawyer?”

  “No, he was—” She broke off and said, “Let me show you the door.”

  Crabtree led him down a short, plain hall to her bedroom. She took off her hat, dropped it on the bed, and put her purse down on a dresser with a tilt mirror topping it.

  “This is the problem, Mr. Archer.”

  She attempted to close the door, but it caught on the floor.

  “Okay, let me see this thing.”

  He swung it back and forth until the door rubbed like before.

  “It’s not the door. I believe the floor might be off a bit.” Archer took out a nickel and set it on one end on the floor, and they watched it roll right over to the closet door.

  “Yep, I’d say the floor is definitely not plumb.”

  He pointed to the door hinges.

  “I think if I tighten the screws up enough on these hinges, it should clear the floor, warped though it is. You got a screwdriver?”

  “Let me look. It might take a few minutes.”

  “I got nowhere to be.”

  After she left, he looked around and noted the perfectly made bed and the shade on the window that he had watched before she had cut the view off by closing the drapes. He looked in the corner and saw the pair of high heels that she had been wearing the night before.

  As he glanced once more at the bed, Archer saw what looked to be the edge of a book poking out from under a pillow. He checked that she wasn’t coming back, and then hurried over to the bed. He had no right or business to be doing this, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. For Archer, more information was always better than less. And he just thought, at first, that it was a novel. But when he slid it out, he saw that it was a scrapbook. He turned the page and saw the old, yellowed news article. It was from a local newspaper in Amarillo, Texas.

  It detailed the trial of Carson Crabtree, who had killed three men in separate encounters. There was a photo of Carson within the news article. It showed a huge man with a bald head and a fierce countenance. He had, surprisingly, worked as a police officer, and curiously enough considering his features and the crimes committed, had the reputation of being kind and considerate to all who knew him. Yet not only had Carson not blamed his actions on mental affliction, the report said, but he also had confessed to the murders. He had died in the electric chair leaving behind a wife, Jewell, and one daughter, Ernestine.

  Archer flipped to the next page and saw the grainy image of Ernestine Crabtree, then only fourteen. She looked small, drab, and dour, and it was hard for Archer to believe that she had grown up into the tall, lovely woman he knew her to be. There were a few other stories about this incident, including ones about the three men killed. And their pictures were included, too. Archer studied the men, and then read about their backgrounds. Each was twenty and had been in and out of trouble with the law since their midteens. As Archer read down the list of crimes committed by them, one caught his attention.

  Peeping Tom.

  Each of the three men had been shot, their bodies left where they fell. The sidearm used was Carson’s police-issued one. There had been no trial, what with the man’s confession, and no deal worked to avoid the death penalty for that confession. And Archer wondered why.

  He heard footsteps coming and he hastily slid the book back under the pillow exactly as it had been before and stepped over to the door.

  A few seconds later she appeared in the doorway. “Here it is, Mr. Archer.”

  He took the screwdriver from her. “I’m gonna loosen the screws first. When I say so, if you can, just pull up on the edge of the door. Use the knob to grip.”

  She did so when he told her to, and he tightened the upper hinges. Then he got down on his knees and partially unscrewed the ones there.

  “Just pull up as much as you can now.”

  Crabtree let go of the doorknob, lifted her arms high, and gripped the upper edge of the door and
pushed toward the ceiling, which raised the lower right edge of the door about a half inch.

  “Just a little higher now. The holes are almost lined up where I need them to be.”

  She went up on her tippy-toes and stretched out even more.

  “Okay, hold it right there.”

  He glanced over and saw that, with her efforts, the woman’s dress had ridden up some. And with him where he was, he had a clear sightline up her dress, revealing her stocking tops and pale thighs above them. He quickly looked away, feeling embarrassed for her. And maybe for himself, too. That was a new one for Archer.

  My mother always said I would grow up at some point. And maybe Poca City’s the place.

  “Okay, that should do it.” He got up off the floor. “Try it now.”

  She did so, and the door swung freely. She smiled. “That’s wonderful, Mr. Archer. Thank you.”

  “And don’t forget to lock it now. And you may want to sleep with that gun under your pillow, too.”

  They went back into the other room, and Archer spotted a bottle and two glasses on a bureau. He picked up the bottle. “Rebel Yell. I hear they make it from wheat, not rye.”

  “You’re not supposed to drink alcohol, Mr. Archer.”

  “Oh, I know that. Number 14 on the list. I was just wondering. A man does get thirsty here. With all the dang dust.”

  “Well, you did fix my door, and I guess one nip won’t hurt.”

  She poured out two small portions, and they clinked glasses.

  “I’m growing to like this town,” he said, taking a sip.

  “Why’s that?”

  “You have good people, for one thing. Like yourself. Trying to help others, like me.”

  She smiled and nodded. “You seem to have come a long way since our first meeting.”

  “So what does the J stand for?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Ernestine J. Crabtree. It’s on your office door. What’s the J stand for?”

  “Oh, um, Jewell. It was my mother’s first name.”

  “Well, it’s a pretty name.”

  “Yes…”

  He finished his nip. “Well, I better get on.”

  “Thank you for a nice evening, Mr. Archer.”