by Ross Thomas
Dill looked at his white shirt and gray slacks. “I could roll up the sleeves, I guess.”
“There’s a TG&Y on the way that’s open,” she said. “We’ll buy you a shirt and something to swim in. Then you can take off your socks and wear your loafers barefoot and everybody’ll think you just flew in from Southern California.”
“What’s TG&Y stand for anyway?” Dill said. “I forget.”
“Tops, Guns and Yo-Yos,” she said. “At least, that’s what Felicity always claimed.”
They stopped at the large general-merchandise store in a shopping center that had been, the last time Dill saw it, a dairy farm. He bought a plain white polo shirt and a pair of tan swimming trunks. When he got back into the car he took off his buttondown shirt and slipped on the polo shirt.
“Now the socks,” she said.
“Don’t you think that’s a little daring?”
“You’re down home, not in Georgetown.”
“They dress kind of weird in Georgetown, too,” Dill said as he bent over and stripped off the calf-length black socks. They were the only kind he ever wore, primarily because they were all exactly alike and when he reached into the sock drawer, he didn’t have to worry about whether they matched.
“Well?” he said.
Singe again inspected him critically. “You still look like you’re going to the office on Saturday, but I guess there’s nothing else we can do about it.”
“Where’s your swimsuit?” he asked.
“I’ve got it on underneath—what there is of it.”
Dill grinned as he started the engine and backed out of the parking space. “You advertising?” he asked.
She smiled. “I could use a rich client. That’s who’ll be there, isn’t it—rich folks?”
“At Jake Spivey’s?” Dill said and shook his head. “There’s no telling who’ll show up at Jake’s.”
CHAPTER 28
There was a young Mexican guard on the big iron gate at Jake Spivey’s. The last time Dill had seen him, the Mexican had been helping dig something up in Spivey’s backyard. Now he sat in a canvas director’s chair beneath a Cinzano umbrella. Near his feet was a gallon Thermos jug of something cool to drink. Across his lap was a shotgun. On his right hip was a holstered revolver with a plastic pearl grip.
The Mexican rose as Dill drove the car halfway through the gate and stopped. The Mexican moved over to Dill’s side of the Ford. He carried the shotgun across his chest. Dill noticed its safety was off. The Mexican bent down to peer carefully at Dill and Singe through dark aviator glasses. He nodded thoughtfully at what he saw and said, “You are?”
“I’m Ben Dill and this is Miss Singe.”
With a forefinger still around the trigger of the shotgun, which Dill recognized now as a 12-gauge, the Mexican used his other hand to reach into a shirt pocket and bring out a three-by-five card that contained a list of typed names. He studied it for a moment, then nodded and said, “Dill,” pronouncing it very much like deal.
The Mexican used his shotgun to point toward the house. “Drive to the house,” he said. “Somebody’ll park your car.”
Dill thanked him and started up the curving asphalt drive. Once again, all the sprinklers were on and the grass looked cool and wet and very green.
“Beauchamp Lane,” Singe said almost to herself. “My God, I finally made it out to old Ace Dawson’s place on Beauchamp Lane.”
“I was eleven the first time I was out here,” Dill said. “At a Christmas party.”
“You lied and hustled your way into that, you and Spivey. Felicity told me about it. I’m really invited—well, sort of anyway.”
The asphalt drive ended just beyond the big oak front door, and then formed itself into a large square where a dozen cars were already parked. They were all new cars, mostly expensive domestic makes that included four Cadillacs, two Lincolns, one Oldsmobile 98, and a Buick Riviera convertible. But there were also two Mercedes, a Porsche, and one large BMW. Dill estimated that the small parking area contained three or four hundred thousand dollars’ worth of automobiles—and a rented Ford.
“Looks like I was right,” Singe said as another young Mexican started moving toward the car.
“About the rich folks being here?”
Singe nodded as the young Mexican hurried around the Ford and opened the door for her. He smiled politely as she got out. The Mexican then waited for Dill to get out from behind the wheel. When he did, the Mexican, still smiling, slid across the seat. He wore his squared-off white shirt outside his black pants. The sliding motion caused the shirttail to rise up just enough for Dill to see the holstered automatic. He thought it looked like a 9-mm of some foreign make. The Mexican noticed Dill’s interest in the pistol. The smile went away, then came back almost instantly, more polite than ever, as he started the engine and expertly shot the Ford into a parking space between a Cadillac and the BMW.
Before Dill and Anna Maude Singe could ring the “How Dry I Am” doorbell, it was opened by a smiling Daphne Owens who wore even fewer clothes than she’d worn the first time Dill met her. This time she had on only a pale-green bikini bottom and a kind of sleeveless top with enormous armholes that looked as if it might have been made out of an old sweatshirt, although Dill knew it wasn’t.
He made the introductions and for some reason felt gratified when the two women immediately despised each other. Although their smiles were polite, their greeting ritualistic, and their handshake casual, the encounter nevertheless produced two instant enemies.
“What should I call you,” Daphne Owens said, “Anna or Maude or both?”
“Most folks just run it together and call me both.”
“And so shall I. You must call me Daffy—as in Duck, right, Mr. Dill?”
“Right,” he said.
“Now let’s go back so you can get something to drink and meet everyone.”
They followed her down the long wide hall and through french doors that led out onto a patio that was formed, jigsaw fashion, out of large irregular pieces of black slate. Carefully trimmed and cultivated grass grew in the cracks between the pieces. Dill suspected that if he were to go high enough, perhaps up on the roof of the house, the green grass might spell out a word or a name or even a picture. Probably something bawdy, he thought, and decided to ask Spivey about it.
As he glanced around he saw there were four people splashing about in the big pool. Daphne Owens then introduced him and Singe to three different knots of guests who were in their thirties and forties. All were trim, well groomed, and held glasses of wine or Perrier in their hands, but no cigarettes. The men all looked as if they ran six miles a day; the women as if they were Jane Fonda Workout disciples. Dill immediately forgot their names.
He didn’t forget the names of the next two persons he and Singe met. Both were men and both were older. The older one was so old he might not have been able to rise from his white iron lawn chair. The other one, who was only sixty-seven, rose easily.
“I don’t believe you’ve met the Hartshornes,” Daphne Owens said. “Mr. Jim Hartshorne and this is his—”
Before she could finish, the sixty-seven-year-old man who had risen stuck out his hand to Singe and said, “I’m Jimmy Junior.”
She shook hands with him and said, “Anna Maude Singe and Ben Dill.”
“Who’s that, Junior?” the very old man said from his iron seat.
“Miss Singe and Mr. Dill, Daddy.”
“Dill? Dill?” the very old man said in a cracked voice. “Have a drink with us, Dill.”
Daphne Owens asked Dill and Singe what they would like. They told her. She said she would have it sent over and left. The older man patted the iron chair next to him and said, “You sit down here, young lady whose name I’m sorry I didn’t catch.”
“Anna Maude,” Singe said, sitting down next to the very old man, who wore gray seersucker trousers that climbed halfway up his chest. They covered most of a blue short-sleeved pullover shirt that had a little allig
ator on it. On his feet were blue running shoes. Purple glasses covered his eyes. His left ear, the one next to Singe, contained a tiny hearing aid. There was a little hair left just above the ears, but the rest was long gone. It had left a dome that was smooth and tan until it reached where the hairline had once been. There the wrinkles began—ridge after parallel ridge until they almost reached his nose, where they changed direction and turned into small vertical gulches that ran into short tiny fine wrinkles and others, not so fine, that wandered off in all directions. The old man’s lips were bluish in color and when he opened his mouth he revealed only a black hole. The nose was still sharp and inquisitive, but the once firm chin seemed ready to crumble. James Hartshorne Senior was ninety-seven years old.
“Dill, you sit down over here,” the old man said, patting the chair on the other side of him. “Junior, you drag up another chair.”
While his son dragged up another chair, the old man turned back to Anna Maude Singe. “I like women’s bare arms,” he said, giving Singe’s right one a quick stroke. “They turn me on, as much as anything turns me on these days, which isn’t a hell of a lot. But bare arms always did. Downed with light brown hair. Anybody read him nowadays?”
“Kids in college do, I hear,” Singe said. “You knew him, didn’t you?”
“Eliot?”
“I’m sorry. I meant Ace Dawson.”
“Old Ace. Yeah, I knew Ace. The slickest article ever to come up the Yellowfork.” The old man cawed like a crow and Dill assumed he was chuckling. “He came up from Texas somewhere and I came up from Shreveport. I used to think they don’t make ’em like Ace anymore. I thought that until I met the boy who owns this place now. Where’d you ever meet Jake anyhow?”
“I haven’t yet,” Singe said.
The old man turned to Dill just as the Mexican gardener-houseman arrived with the drinks. “Spivey’s your pal then, huh, Dill?”
“That’s right,” Dill said, accepting his drink.
“Known him long?”
“Forever.”
“If you were me, would you do business with him?”
“What kind of business?”
“Politics maybe?”
“I think politics might be where Jake’s been heading all his life.”
The old man smiled his blue-lip smile. “That distant shore, huh?”
“Maybe.”
“Daddy,” Hartshorne Junior said.
“What?”
“I think we ought to thank Mr. Dill.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” The old man cocked his head and examined Dill. “Both Junior and I want to thank you for last night.”
“Last night?”
“For trying to save young Laffter’s life—you know, blowing in his mouth and all, you and that Press Club nigger waiter, what’s his name, Harry. I already called and thanked him. Seems the hospital made some damn-fool mistake and called the nigger after Laffter died. Well, it seemed like a mistake anyway until I heard Fred’d left the nigger everything.” He looked at his son. “You sure Laffter wasn’t a nancy boy after all?”
Hartshorne Junior frowned. “He left everything to Harry, Daddy, because Harry put up with him all those years. I told you that.”
“Well, you oughta know—about nancy boys anyway.” He turned to Dill and cackled again. “Junior never married for some reason. He’s been the town’s most eligible bachelor for about forty-five, forty-six years now. Right, Junior?”
Hartshorne Junior ignored his father and turned to Dill. “Anyway, Mr. Dill, we’d like to tell you how much we appreciate what you did.”
“How much do you really appreciate it?” Dill said.
Hartshorne Senior slowly removed his purple glasses and slipped on a pair of round horn-rimmed ones. Trifocals, Dill noticed. The old man tilted his head back and examined Dill through all three focal planes. The eyes behind the glasses looked bright and black and curiously young.
“What’s on your mind, Dill?”
“Why’d you run that story on my sister?”
The old man looked at his elderly son. “What story?”
The son frowned again. “Felicity Dill. Homicide detective. Murdered. Financial irregularities. Laffter’s last story.”
“Oh,” the old man said and stared at Dill. “You’re that Dill, huh? The brother. I should’ve added that up right away. But I still don’t understand your question.”
“Why did you run that story on my sister’s finances?”
“You thinking of suing?”
“No.”
“Wouldn’t do you any good. Nothing libelous in it. We got lawyers who see to that. And why shouldn’t I run it? You trying to say somebody tells me what to print and what not to print?” Before Dill could answer, the old man turned back to his son and said, “Why did we print that fucking piece anyhow?”
Hartshorne Junior was a plump man with a big round head and a small pink face. The fat on his right bare arm jiggled as he moved his glass up to his lips. His mouth was small and usually pursed as if it were about to say, “Oh-oh!” He wore yellow slacks and a bright-green short-sleeved shirt with the tail out. Except for his eyes, he didn’t look very much like his father. Hartshorne Junior’s eyes were also black and shiny, but they didn’t seem curiously young. They seemed terribly old. He sipped from his glass of white wine. When he put it back down on a glass-topped table, the fat on his right arm jiggled again.
“We ran the story,” he said slowly, “because we were asked to by the police.” He cleared his throat. “We frequently cooperate with the police, especially when they tell us it will aid their investigations. Almost every newspaper does.”
“In their investigation of what?” Dill said.
“Your sister’s death, of course,” Hartshorne Junior said. “And also the death of the man who was killed yesterday—the ex-football player.”
“Corcoran,” Dill said.
“That’s right. Corcoran. Clay Corcoran.”
“Mr. Hartshorne,” Anna Maude Singe said. Both father and son looked at her. “Jimmy Junior, I mean.” He smiled. “May I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Which cop told you to run it?” she asked in a cold flat voice.
Hartshorne Senior cackled again. “Now that’s the kind of question I like. Straight out. Right to the point. No futzing around. A question like that deserves an answer. Tell her, Junior. Tell her which cop told us to run it.”
Hartshorne Junior pursed his lips. “It was a request, not an order, Daddy.”
“Tell her.”
“It was Strucker,” Hartshorne Junior said. “Chief of Detectives Strucker.”
Hartshorne Senior looked at Dill. “You gonna take it up with him, with Strucker? Maybe ask him why?”
“I might.”
“He’s here, you know.”
“Strucker?”
“Yep. Last time I saw him—wasn’t more’n half an hour ago—he was heading for a parley with your pal, Jake Spivey. In the library.” The old man looked toward the pool. “That’s Mrs. Strucker over there,” he said. “The one in the black suit.”
Dill looked and saw a tall, dark-haired woman poised on the edge of the pool at its deep end. He thought she looked about forty. She dived cleanly into the water. It was an expert dive.
“Fine-lookin’ woman,” Hartshorne Senior said. “Her husband and Jake’re in there talking politics.”
“We plan to join them later,” Hartshorne Junior said.
“Talk about the chief’s future,” his father said and turned to watch Mrs. Strucker climb up out of the pool. He turned back to Dill. “What would you say is the most important thing a wife can bring to a man’s political campaign?”
“Money,” Dill said.
The old man nodded his agreement and again turned to look at Mrs. Strucker. “And she’s got just about all there is.”
“Some time back,” Dill said, “maybe a year ago, you killed a story Laffter wrote about my sister. He said it was
a harmless girl-detective feature. Why’d you kill it—if you did?”
The old man was still staring at Mrs. Strucker. “I reckon you’d better ask the chief about that, too, Mr. Dill.”
CHAPTER 29
The foursome was broken up by the arrival of the Mexican houseman-gardener (and putative butler), who asked Dill if he would please join Señor Spivey in the biblioteca. The notion of Jake Spivey having a butler to send with an invitation for a meeting in Senor Spivey’s very own library struck Dill as funny, but no one else even smiled, not even Anna Maude Singe, who said she thought she’d go for a swim and started unbuttoning her blouse. Hartshorne Junior said he thought he’d circulate. Hartshorne Senior cawed again and said he thought he’d take a nap as soon as Anna Maude got through shucking off the rest of her clothes.
Dill followed the houseman-gardener. They went past the spot in the garden where the three Mexicans had been digging Friday. Dill now saw that what they had been digging was an immense barbecue pit. A quarter side of beef was roasting over a bed of hickory coals. The spare ribs from at least three or four hogs were cooking on a grill. A big iron pot of sauce simmered off to one side. The chef was an elderly black with white hair who seemed to know what he was doing. The smell of the cooking meat made Dill ravenous.
Just before they entered the house, Dill looked back at the pool. He saw Anna Maude Singe chatting with Mrs. Strucker. A moment later, they were joined by Daphne Owens. Singe, laughing, said something to Mrs. Strucker and then dived into the pool. Dill, who knew something about diving, thought she dived very well.
The outside heat, which already had reached 100 degrees, made it seem almost chilly in the air-conditioned house. After the Mexican slid back the library’s twin doors, Dill went into the room, where he found Spivey seated behind the desk and Strucker standing in front of it, as if about to leave. Spivey called to Dill, “How you, Pick?”
“Fine,” Dill said.
“You know the Chief here.”
Dill said yes, and nodded at Strucker, who nodded back and said, “I was just leaving.”
“I’d like to talk to you later,” Dill said.
