Robert B. Parker: The Spencer Novels 1?6

by Robert B. Parker

  “What I don’t get is the girl, Meredith. How did she escape it? She’s very odd. She’s obviously in trouble. Most of the time she’s barely there at all. But she’s the one that will look at it, that doesn’t buy the family myth.”

  “There’s too much you don’t know,” Susan said.

  “I may have that printed on my business cards,” I said.

  The waitress appeared with a wedge of blackberry pie, and a piece of cheddar cheese beside it.

  “My father used to have mince pie for breakfast,” the waitress said, “almost every Sunday morning.”

  “And sired beautiful daughters,” I said.

  The waitress smiled and poured me some more coffee, and gave Susan a new pot of hot water, and went off. Susan watched me eat the pie. She was having All Bran for breakfast, and a cup of hot water with lemon.

  “What will you do,” Susan said, “now that you’re fired?”

  “I’ll probably go back down to Alton,” I said. “And ask around some more.”

  “Will it be dangerous?”

  “Probably not,” I said. “Most of the cat is out of the bag, by now. There’s not much reason to try and run me off.”

  “You think Alton is where you’ll find out?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know where else to look.”

  thirty-seven

  * * *

  I WAS IN the detectives’ room at the Alton County Sheriff’s Department talking with the pretty good-looking female cop who’d harassed me before. Her name was Felicia Boudreau, and she was a detective second grade.

  “I didn’t much like that deal,” she said. “But you’ve been a cop. Do a lot of stuff you don’t much like.”

  “Why I’m no longer a cop,” I said.

  She shrugged.

  “You know who put us on you in the first place?”

  I nodded.

  “Senator Robert Stratton,” I said.

  “From Massachusetts?”

  “That’s the one,” I said. “At least I never voted for him.”

  “What was his problem?” she said.

  “I’m investigating a murder,” I said. “Stratton was sleeping with the victim.”

  “Afraid you’d turn up his name?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So what,” she said. “That’s mostly what they do in the Senate, isn’t it? They get laid?”

  “He wants to be President,” I said.

  “Sure,” she said. “Give him a fancier place to get laid in.”

  “Who put the tail on me?” I said.

  She shook her head. She was sitting with her feet on the desk, crossed at the ankle. It showed a long, smooth thigh line. She had on light-gray slacks over black boots, and a flowered blouse with big sleeves. Her holstered gun, some sort of 9mm, lay on the desk beside her purse. Everybody had nines now.

  “You grow up here in Alton?” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “You know Olivia Nelson?”

  “Jumper Jack’s girl,” Felicia said.

  “Yes. Tell me about her.”

  “What’s to tell. Rich kid, about ten years older than me. Father’s a town legend, hell, maybe a county legend. Big house, racehorses, good schools, servants, hunting dogs, bourbon and branch water.”

  “What happened to her?”

  Felicia grinned.

  “Town scandal,” she said. “Went in the Peace Corps. Married some African prince with tribal scars on his face. Jumper never got over it.”

  “How about her mother?” I said.

  “Her mother?”

  “Yeah, everyone talks about Jumper Jack. I never hear anything about her mother.”

  “She had one,” Felicia said.

  “Good to know,” I said.

  “Sort of genteel, I guess you’d say. Sort of elegant woman who didn’t like the muddy dogs in her house, and hated it that a lot of the time her husband would have horse shit on his boots at supper.”

  “That’s genteel,” I said.

  “Yeah, it’s hard to describe. But she was always like someone who thought she should have been living in Paris, reading whoever they read in Paris.”

  “Proust,” I said.

  “Sure.”

  “What happened to her?” I said.

  “Committed suicide.”

  “When?”

  “I investigated it. Lemme see, nineteen . . . and eighty-seven, late in the year. Almost Christmas. I remember we were working overtime on the sucker just before the holidays.”

  “1987,” I said.

  “Yeah. That mean something to you?”

  “Year the market crashed,” I said. “October 1987.”

  “You think she killed herself ’cause the stock market crashed?”

  I shook my head.

  “Doesn’t sound the type,” I said. “Know why she did it?”

  “No. Went in her room, took enough sleeping pills to do the trick, and drank white wine until they worked. Didn’t leave a note, but there was no reason to think that it wasn’t what it looked like.”

  She got up and got two cups of coffee from the automatic maker on the file cabinet. She added some Cremora and sugar, asked me what I took, and put some of the same in mine. Then she brought the cups back to her desk and handed me one. The gray slacks fit very smoothly when she walked.

  “How about Cheryl Anne Rankin?” I said.

  “Your Lieutenant, what’s his name?”

  “Quirk.”

  “Yeah, your Lieutenant Quirk asked around about her. I don’t remember her.”

  “He talk with you?”

  “Nope. Sheriff said we was to stay away from him. Nobody would much talk with him.”

  “How come you’re talking to me?”

  “Sheriff didn’t say nothing about you. Probably didn’t think you’d have the balls to come back.”

  “There was a picture on the wall of the track kitchen,” I said. “Looked like Olivia Nelson. Woman who worked there said it was Cheryl Anne Rankin, and she was her mother. Now the picture’s gone, and the woman’s gone.”

  “Don’t know much about that,” Felicia said. “People work at the track kitchen come and go. They get paid by the hour, no real job record, nobody keeps track. If you can fry stuff in grease, you’re hired.”

  “If you were trying to find out things in this town, who would you go to?”

  “About this Cheryl Anne?”

  “About anything, Cheryl Anne, Olivia, Jack, his wife, Bob Stratton, anything. The only thing I know for sure down here is that you get your hair done in Batesburg.”

  “And it looks great,” she said.

  “And it looks great.”

  We both drank a little of the coffee, which was brutally bad.

  “Friend of mine said I might talk to the household help,” I said. “They’re in all the houses, all the offices. They’re cleaning up just outside of all the doors, and they tell each other.”

  Felicia took another drink of the wretched coffee and made a face.

  “I’ve tried,” she said. “No point to it, they wouldn’t tell me anything, just like they won’t tell you. They’ll listen politely and say ‘yassah’ and nod and smile and tell you nothing.”

  “I’m used to it,” I said. “All races, creeds, and colors refuse to tell me stuff.”

  “And when they do, it’s a lie,” she said.

  “That especially,” I said.

  thirty-eight

  * * *

  THERE WAS NO picture of Cheryl Anne Rankin in the track kitchen. The white woman who’d claimed her wasn’t there either, though the black woman I’d seen before was still there. She didn’t know where the whit
e woman was. Nawsir, she didn’t know her name. Never did know it. She didn’t know nothing about no picture. Yessir. Sorry, sir. Take a walk, sir.

  I went back to the Alton Arms and sat on the front steps. The Blue Tick hound that I’d seen on my last visit was stretched out in the sun on the front walk. He rolled his eyes back toward me, and looked at me silently as I sat down. I nodded at him. His tail stirred briefly.

  “Contain yourself,” I said.

  Across the street a couple of jays were darting about in the branches of one of the old trees. While I watched them, I put my closed fist down toward the Blue Tick hound. Without raising his head, he sniffed thoughtfully. Then he stood up suddenly and put his head on my leg. I scratched his ear. He wagged his tail slowly. Behind me the door of the hotel opened and a fat gray-haired couple came out. Sedale came behind them with four pieces of matched luggage. He stored the luggage in the trunk of a silver Mercedes sedan, accepted some change from the husband, and held the door while his wife hove herself into the passenger seat.

  “Y’all have a nice day now, y’hear?” he said.

  Then he closed the door and smiled at them. As they drove away, he tucked the change into his vest pocket.

  “High rollers,” I said.

  The Blue Tick kept his head on my leg, and I continued to scratch his ear. Sedale smiled at me.

  “How’re you today, sir?” he said.

  “You got a minute to sit here on the steps and talk to me?” I said.

  “Don’t like me to sit on the steps,” Sedale said. “But I can stand here while you sit.”

  “They don’t mind if I sit on the steps?” I said.

  “You a guest, sir,” Sedale said.

  The dog left me and went to Sedale. He put his hand down absently, the way owners do, and the dog lapped it.

  “I’m a detective,” I said.

  “I know that, sir.”

  “Be hard to prove given what I’ve detected so far,” I said.

  “Probably a very difficult case, sir.”

  The dog returned to me for more ear scratching.

  “What do you know about me?” I said.

  “Know you a private detective, down from Boston, looking into a murder. Mr. Jack Nelson’s daughter.”

  “Un huh.”

  “ ’Cept she ain’t Mr. Nelson’s daughter.”

  “You know Jefferson?” I said. “Works for Mr. Nelson.”

  Sedale smiled.

  I stopped scratching the dog’s ear as I talked and he tossed his head against my hand.

  “Sorry,” I said to the dog and scratched some more. “I saw a picture on the wall of the track kitchen of a young woman who looked just like Olivia Nelson had looked at that age. The woman at the track kitchen said her name was Cheryl Anne Rankin and that she was the woman’s daughter. Now the picture’s gone, and the woman’s gone.”

  Sedale smiled encouragingly.

  “You know anything about Cheryl Anne Rankin?” I said.

  “Nawsir.”

  I nodded.

  “The thing is, Sedale, that it is too big a coincidence that there should be two people look like Olivia Nelson in town, and then find twenty years later that one of them has disappeared and someone is impersonating the other.”

  “Yessir.”

  “And since we know that the real Olivia Nelson is alive in Africa, it seems to me that the dead woman has to be Cheryl Anne Rankin.”

  Sedale’s face was inert. He showed no sign of impatience or discomfort. I had no sense that he wanted to leave. He had simply gone inside; placid, agreeable, and entirely unavailable to a white guy asking questions about a white matter. He nodded.

  “I want to find out who killed her.”

  Sedale nodded again.

  “Tell me about Cheryl Anne Rankin,” I said.

  “Don’t know nothing ’bout that, sir,” he said.

  “The hell you don’t,” I said. “Jefferson knows something about her, so do you. But you duck into blackface the minute I ask you. Until five minutes ago, you were an actual person. Then I started to ask about Cheryl Anne Rankin, and you turned into Stepin Fetchit. Your accent even got thicker.”

  “Yessir,” Sedale said and grinned.

  We were both silent. I continued to scratch the dog’s ear. The dog continued to wag his tail. Sedale continued to rest his hips on the railing of the veranda. Then he reached into his vest pocket with two fingers and brought out a quarter and three dimes. He held them in the palm of his hand and showed them to me.

  “See what those fatso tourists gave me for a tip?” he said.

  “Let the good times roll,” I said.

  Sedale grinned suddenly.

  “You ain’t as fucking stupid as most honkies,” he said.

  “And your dog likes me,” I said.

  “For a fact,” Sedale said.

  He looked at his watch.

  “I get off in an hour. You buy me couple of drinks at the Hunt Grill on Elm Street, I’ll tell you ’bout Cheryl Anne Rankin.”

  thirty-nine

  * * *

  I WAS THE only white person in the Hunt Grill. No one appeared to care much about that fact, couple of heads turned and at least one guy nudged another, but mostly people were interested in their drinks and watching Jeopardy! The room was done in pine paneling. There were pictures of athletes on the walls, and sports pennants, and schedules of televised games. There were two big-screen television sets, and a big sign advertising Happy Hour, which, according to the sign, I was in.

  The bartender nodded at me when I squeezed onto a bar stool. I ordered a beer and got it. His dark eyes were without expression. His face held neither hostility nor welcome. He put a bowl of peanuts on the bar in front of me and moved away. I picked up a peanut and ate it carefully. No need for a whole handful. One at a time was just as succulent. I sipped a little of the beer. I picked up two peanuts. Everyone on Jeopardy! was having a hell of a time. Just like me. I drank a little more beer. I took a handful of peanuts and munched them vigorously.

  Sedale came in and walked toward me. The Blue Tick hound was with him. The bar was nearly full, but there was an empty stool on either side of me. Sedale sat on one. The hound sat on the floor near his feet.

  “Seven and seven,” he said to the bartender.

  “Do you like that?” I said. “Or do you just order it because you like the way it sounds?”

  The bartender put the drink in front of him and Sedale drank half of it.

  “You know the difference between a toilet seat and a hotel worker?” Sedale said.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Toilet seat only services one asshole at a time.”

  He drank the rest of his drink and gestured another at the bartender.

  “His tab,” Sedale said and jerked his head at me. The bartender looked at me. I nodded.

  Sedale took a handful of peanuts and ate some and gave a couple to the dog. The bartender brought him his drink.

  “My aunt Hester, my momma’s oldest sister, she a midwife. Been a midwife fifty-something years. She a lot older than my momma,” Sedale said.

  He paused and sipped his second drink.

  “Woman named Bertha Voss come to my aunt Hester ’bout forty years ago, little longer, and ask could she do an abortion for her.”

  The dog sitting on the floor had his nose trained on the peanuts. I took a couple, and held them down in the palm of my open hand, and he scarfed them off.

  “Bertha was a no-account cracker. But she was white. Those days black people get lynched for things like that. My aunt Hester say, ‘No, you got to find somebody else, or you got to have the baby.’”

  Sedale sipped again. He took in his second drink quite delicately, holding the glass in hi
s fingertips. The first one had been need. The second appeared to be pleasure. I finished my beer. The bartender looked over and I pointed at my glass. He brought a fresh beer and another bowl of peanuts. The first bowl had somehow emptied. Must have fed the dog too many.

  “Well, Bertha couldn’t find nobody, I guess, ’cause she married another no-account cracker name Hilly Rankin, and she had the baby. And she tell everybody it’s his.”

  “Cheryl Anne?” I said.

  “Yes, sir,” Sedale said and there was a gleam of mockery in his eyes.

  “Rankin believe he’s the father?”

  “Seemed to. Hilly ain’t very smart.”

  “And do we know who the proud poppa was?”

  “Sho ’nuff do,” he said. “Care to guess?”

  Sedale grinned at me like he was the host of Jeopardy! He let the pregnant pause hang between us.

  “Jack Nelson,” I said.

  Sedale’s grin widened.

  “You a by-God real live detective, ain’t you,” he said. “Bertha told my aunt Hester that it was Jumper Jack knocked her up.”

  The Blue Tick hound nudged his head under my hand and stared at the bowl of peanuts. I gave him some. On the big-screen television, Jeopardy! had ended and the local news was on. It looked and sounded exactly like local news everywhere: a serious-looking anchor; an attractive, though not frivolous, anchorette; a twit to do the weather; and a brash guy that talked fast to do sports.

  “You know where Bertha Rankin is now?” I said.

  “Sure.”

  Our voices sounded hollow to me. As if they weren’t connected to humans.

  “Where?”

  “She and Hilly got a dump out on the Batesburg Road ’bout five miles. Right past the gravel pit, dirt road goes down on the right. They at the end of it.”

  “You know Cheryl Anne?” I said.

  “Nope. She musta gone to school in Batesburg.”

  “They kept it a secret,” I said. “All this time.”

  “Sure,” Sedale said. “Only the niggers knew.”

  “And now she’s dead,” I said.