by John Lutz
“Effie Prang thought her brother’s marriage to Karen was a mistake.”
Silence. Then: “What the hell does that mean? You think she might’ve been in on it with her brother! Hey, you think that’s possible? A conspiracy?”
“I don’t know,” Nudger said. “I’m trying to find out.”
“Well, keep trying. And hard. Remember, they can say what they want, but I got faith in you.”
“Everybody seems to have faith in somebody,” Nudger said. “You in me, Effie in Roger, Heidran in Ray. Amazing.”
“Who’re Hydrant and Ray?”
“Heidran. It’s a German name.”
“You think a German’s mixed up in this case?”
“I’m not ruling any country out at this point,” Nudger said.
“You gonna be in court tomorrow afternoon?”
“As long as you promise not to defend me. By the way, I found out something else kind of interesting.”
“So why didn’t you tell me? I pay you good money and call you up and you make small-minded small talk—”
“Joleen hates Roger.”
“Who? His sister-in-law?”
“The same Joleen. The presumed victim’s sister.”
“Hmm. Plenty of hate going around in that family.”
“Maybe too much for Karen.”
“Meaning?”
“Roger might be telling the truth. She simply might have gotten fed up with the lot of them and struck out for Chicago. Which would mean she’s still alive and your client is innocent.”
“Santa Claus, Nudger! You must believe in Santa Claus, the bunny that brings eggs, the tooth fairy, guardian angels—”
“That last,” Nudger said.
“Well, Roger’s gonna need his guardian angel if I can’t convince him to plea-bargain. And he’s got one. Know who I mean?”
“Yes,” Nudger said, “and he has an ego for a halo.”
“Listen, Nudger—”
Nudger hung up again.
This time Fleck didn’t call back.
Thank God, Nudger thought, and peeled back the silver foil on his roll of antacid tablets.
Chapter Eleven
After finishing his antacid tablet, Nudger left the office and descended the hot stairway to the street door, then entered Danny’s Donuts.
It was plenty hot in there, but a solitary customer on the end stool at the counter was braving it out to finish his Dunker Delite. He was a raggedly dressed, possibly homeless man named George whom Nudger had occasionally seen roaming Manchester late at night and poking around in the trash receptacles. George had a toothless grin, a yellow-white beard, and fierce blue eyes. Nudger figured Danny had probably treated him to the Dunker Delite and coffee. George didn’t look happy about it, but he chewed and swallowed dutifully. A handout was a handout was a Dunker Delite.
Danny was wiping his hands on the gray towel tucked in his belt. Nudger didn’t see anything on his hands; he knew the gesture was mostly nervous habit. Danny was so often wiping flour or grease from his hands that he went through the motions unconsciously dozens of times a day. He was watching George eat, a beatific expression of satisfaction on his basset-hound features, and when Nudger entered he looked over and smiled.
“Hi, Nudge. You talk to Ray?”
“Sure did,” Nudger said, sitting down several stools away from George at the counter. “Talked to Heidran, too.” He glanced over at George, who appeared to be in his own world and totally without interest in their conversation.
Danny let the gray towel fall limply against the front of his thigh and walked over to stand near Nudger. “You work fast. That’s why I hired you.”
Nudger didn’t remember being hired, but he let it go.
“What’d Ray say?” Danny asked.
“Said to do everything possible so he wouldn’t have to go to work.”
Danny nodded solemnly. “Yeah. Well, you know . . . his back and all. And going to work right now would mess up his unemployment benefits.”
“I mentioned that to Heidran. She wasn’t impressed. She says the heaviest thing he’ll have to lift is a hamburger. She has a point.”
“Well, sometimes with a bad back, Nudge, it ain’t the weight, it’s more the bending motion.”
“Sometimes it isn’t even a bad back,” Nudger said. “We both know Ray would rather sit out the summer slurping beer and watching Cubs baseball on television.”
Danny glanced over at George, who ignored him and chewed. Danny lowered his voice anyway. “Between you and me, Nudge, you might be right. I mean, neither of us is a doctor, so we can’t tell about a sore back. But Ray has always been on the slothful side.”
“The man probably has two toes on each foot,” Nudger said.
George glanced over but said nothing.
“So what can you do if Heidran phones and tells him to come in to work.”
“I think he’ll have to go, Danny. If he doesn’t show up, my feeling is that Heidran’s next call will be to Unemployment, and that will be the end of Ray’s benefits.”
Danny looked as if he might be about to cry. “I just don’t understand. What’s wrong with her? Why would she do a thing like that to Ray, make him go to work?”
“She thinks she can make man of him.”
“That’s silly, Nudge.”
“I know, but she doesn’t think so.”
“She blind?”
“In a sense.”
“Whoa,” Danny said. “I’m forgetting my manners. You had supper?”
“No, but I’ve got to run,” Nudger said, suddenly alarmed at the prospect of a free Dunker Delite headed his way like a Scud missile. “Got to interview a witness.”
“Oh, that Roger Dupont thing.”
“Right.” Nudger got down off his stool.
“Wait up! Take one to go!” Danny hurried over to the display counter and got out a Dunker Delite, which he handed to Nudger on its white napkin.
“Thanks, Danny.” Nudger took the weighty object and held it down at his side. “I’ll eat it while I drive.” He turned to leave.
“Make a man of Ray, huh?” Danny said. He seemed bemused.
“So she says, though not in so many words.”
“Who’s she think she is, the Marines?”
“You talkin’ about that Heidran works down at Shag’s?” George asked abruptly.
Nudger and Danny stared at each other and nodded.
“She’s the Marines,” George said. He belched then began work again on his Dunker Delite, apparently determined to finish it so he wouldn’t have to eat again for several days.
Nudger carried his Dunker Delite something like a football as he jogged across Manchester, dodging traffic like a broken-field runner, to where the Granada was parked by the faulty meter. The quarter-size slug was still jutting from the meter’s coin slot, where it was stuck firmly, making it obvious to the police that the problem was mechanical and the city’s and no blame could be attached to the driver of the car parked alongside.
Inside the Granada, Nudger got the engine and air conditioner started, then pulled away from the curb. After driving about a block, he tossed the Dunker Delite on the floor, telling himself not to forget to remove it before Danny might find it. The last time he’d left one on the floor and forgotten it, Danny had been walking toward the car to get in when Nudger saw the thing. Leaning across the seat, Nudger had been able to slide the Dunker Delite out onto the ground, but that was the best he could do. Fortunately, as Danny rounded the car to get in on the passenger side, a woman walking a dog passed, so the Dunker Delite didn’t draw any undue attention.
He decided that since he was in the car and moving, he might as well do what he’d told Danny and drive over to University City and see if he could talk to Roger Dupont’s neighbor. The woman who supposedly had heard screaming the night of Karen Dupont’s disappearance.
Twenty minutes later, he parked in front of Dupont’s house on Devlon. It was pretty much as Fleck had descr
ibed, moderately expensive in an upper-middle-class neighborhood of professional people and faculty members from nearby Washington University. Nice, but several hundred thousand dollars below the value of Effie Prang’s house in the more affluent suburb of Ladue.
Most of the houses on Devlon were about the same age, maybe sixty or seventy years old, brick with some stucco here and there, and tile roofs. Dupont’s had lots of stucco and some exposed beams to make it seem English Tudor. There was a two-car garage attached that looked newer than the rest of the house.
Nudger wanted to talk to the neighbor, a Miss Alicia Van Moke, without Dupont seeing him if he happened to be home. So he parked a hundred yards beyond both houses, then strolled back along the tree-shaded sidewalk.
The Van Moke house was separated from Dupont’s by about twenty feet of yard overgrown with ivy. Some of the ivy was crawling up the brick sides of both houses. Nudger quickly made his way along a curved, stepping-stone walk to a concrete front porch with an arched, tiled roof. As he’d walked, he’d gotten a glimpse of the small pool and tennis court in Dupont’s backyard. They weren’t in a league with Effie Prang’s; the pool was round and reminded Nudger of a fish pond with a diving board, and the tennis court had weeds growing up through cracks in its blacktop surface. Still, court and pool were good for working up a sweat then cooling down.
Nudger pressed the doorbell button and Westminster chimes sounded inside the Van Moke house.
A moment later a tall, thin woman with straight gray hair and dramatic features with high cheekbones opened the door and stared out at him. She was in her mid-fifties but dressed and carried herself as she might have thirty years ago. She wore a long gray dress that was loose-fitting and almost shapeless, large silver bangle bracelets on each arm, black leather sandals. She smelled fresh and clean, not like perfumed soap but like exotic spices Nudger couldn’t identify.
He introduced himself and explained that he was investigating the Karen Dupont disappearance.
Alicia Van Moke started to say something, then caught herself and smiled. “Won’t you come in, please?” she said, instead of what she’d originally begun saying.
Nudger followed her into a foyer, then through a room furnished in dark woods and Oriental print drapes and carpet. There was a lovely Steinway upright piano in one corner with dog-eared sheet music opened on it beneath a brass lamp. Nudger got the impression the piano was played frequently.
When they’d reached a large room, more brightly furnished in lighter woods and pale blue throw rugs, Alicia Van Moke asked Nudger if he wanted something to drink. He told her ice water would be fine, then stood in the center of the room and looked around. There were two large ceiling fans slowly rotating, rows of windows with white mini-blinds raised high so the view outside was visible beyond potted plants hanging from the low eaves on the outside of the house. A glass-fronted set of shelves held books haphazardly placed at angles against each other. At least two of them were books of poems by Alicia Van Moke.
Nudger looked back outside. What had really caught his attention were the obvious signs of recent digging in the Dupont yard next door.
Alicia Van Moke returned and handed Nudger a large, stemmed goblet of water with cracked ice in it. An ornate AVM was engraved on the side of the glass.
“I understand you’re a poet,” Nudger said.
She smiled slightly as if pleased by his knowing. He decided not to tell her he’d deduced that by looking at her bookshelves.
“Of some small reputation,” she said, still smiling. She really must have been beautiful when she was younger, but in a more conventional sense. Her beauty was different now and perhaps more impressive. She’d held its essence and doubtless would until she died—it was in her direct gray eyes and effortlessly erect bearing, in her character.
He realized she knew he was admiring her. He looked away and sipped ice water.
“Do you know if Roger Dupont is home now?” he asked.
“He isn’t. He’s been out on bail, but since the trial starts tomorrow, he’s been incarcerated again. Is it the usual thing for an accused killer to be roaming around on bail while awaiting trial?”
“Not the usual,” Nudger said, “but it happens.”
“Among upper-class White folks like Roger,” she said with a trace of bitterness. “Bankers and such.”
“Generally they’re the ones,” Nudger said. “Were you afraid? I mean, with an accused murderer next door?”
“No,” she said. That was all, simply no.
“Do you think he killed his wife?”
“I’m not sure. I understand there’s a great deal of evidence against him. The trout in the milk.”
“Pardon?”
“Circumstantial evidence. Someone once said it could be strong but wrong, such as when one finds a trout in the milk. The milk is assumed to be water, but it’s still milk.”
“I see,” Nudger said. He thought he did.
“I really can’t tell you much,” Alicia Van Moke said. “The Duponts and I have been neighbors for quite a while, but we really didn’t know each other well. We got along, exchanged pleasantries, but that’s all. I travel a great deal, and when I am home, I usually stay in the house.”
“You live alone, then.”
“No. I have my books and my work.”
And no time for people like the Duponts, Nudger thought.
“The only times I saw much of Roger were when he was out on his tennis court. He’s a very noisy player. Always urging himself on, taunting his opponent, telling the ball to drop in. He’d only be quiet when he was losing.” She gave her placid smile. “I treasured those times. I’d get some peace.”
“Did he lose often?”
“No.”
“He was very good then.”
“Not really. If somebody beat him, he wouldn’t invite that person over again.”
Nudger took another sip of water. He had the feeling that Alicia Van Moke was assessing him, playing out line to see how he swam. Or rope to see something else altogether. “You said you didn’t know the Duponts,” he told her, “but did you know about them?”
She smiled again, as if he’d done something right. “They argued a lot. They were loud. I don’t think he physically abused her, but they quarreled.”
“About what?”
“Things that didn’t matter.”
“Someone told me Karen Dupont was impulsive.”
“Was it meant as a compliment?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Did the person who said this think that impulsiveness was a good or bad thing?”
You had to think hard, talking to a poet. Nudger considered Effie Prang and said, “This person feels that impulsiveness is bad.”
“Ah. Our impressions probably won’t jibe, then. I think impulsiveness is a very good thing”—she shot him another disturbing look—“and I would never have called Karen impulsive. Quite the opposite.”
“How so?”
“She was such a dedicated little hausfrau. Everytime I looked out the window I’d see her slaving over her house and grounds. She wanted it all to be perfect. That’s so hard, and such a waste of effort, with a seventy-year-old house. Perfection is for the new. The old should wear their imperfections proudly, don’t you think?”
She gave him another direct look. Nudger was feeling out of his depth here. “Do you think there’s any chance that Roger’s story’s true? That Karen left him and went to Chicago?”
“I can’t see Karen leaving her house. I think she would have done the old-fashioned thing: stayed in the house and ordered him out.”
“I don’t think Roger was the type to go quietly.”
“Well,” said Alicia Van Moke, “there you are.”
She stood hip-shot in her long, loose gray dress, shapeless except for the tantalizing hint of her shape beneath. It seemed a deliberately seductive pose. When he didn’t say anything, she said, “There really isn’t much I can tell you. No more than I told the polic
e.”
So she wasn’t assuming he was from a law enforcement agency. “You told them you heard Karen scream at around eleven o’clock,” Nudger said.
“Three minutes after. I was in bed, reading, and I looked over at the clock.”
“What kind of scream was it?”
“She screamed, ‘No! Stop! Stop! No!’ and then was silent. Those words, in that precise order.” Again the wise smile that suggested images of wildflowers beneath wide skies, calm as a prairie with its secret knowledge and perhaps secret desires. “I thought it was simply another of their arguments. It’s a shame they couldn’t maintain the tender and fulfilling intimacy that so enriches the lives of men and women who are in love or at least in lust with each other.”
“I’d like to read some of your poetry,” Nudger said nervously.
“It’s in most libraries.”
So, she was a pro. No free books.
She turned to stare out the window toward the Duponts’ backyard, and so did he.
“It looks as if the police have been doing a lot of digging,” he said.
She nodded, still with her back to him. “Yes. Searching for Karen. I tried to get them to search over here on this side of the fence.” She twisted her long body gracefully to gaze over her shoulder at him. “I need my soil turned, Mr. Nudger. Need it badly.”
Puzzled, he thought he’d better get out of there. Poets! Ignoring the weakness in his knees, he thanked her for the water and her time.
She saw him to the door, walking so close to him that the long gray dress flowed and rustled against his leg.
“The police aren’t as thorough as they think,” she said. “They didn’t find the door key the Duponts kept in the artificial rock near their front porch.”
“Artificial rock?”
“Yes. One of those cheap mail-order gimmicks they sell to make people think they’re clever. Well, it was clever enough that the police, as far as I know, never noticed it. The rock hasn’t been moved.”
