Cat With a Fiddle (9781101578902)

by Adamson, Lydia

  Tony went on grumbling. “I don’t understand this! We shouldn’t have any traffic at all now. We’re going in the wrong direction at the right time. The traffic is supposed to be going into the city this time of morning, not out to the east end of the Island.”

  “Where are we now?” I finally asked.

  “Just at the Nassau-Suffolk line. Route 110. We’ve got at least another forty-five minutes to go on this road.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m sorry we’re stuck, but thank you for helping me, Tony. Really. I have, I am afraid, been maltreating you.”

  “Maltreating.” He repeated the word, giving it a kind of Jack Nicholson inflection with a smile to match. “What a beautiful word you just used.” He leaned over and kissed me, obviously constrained by his suit and tie.

  We were both in, as Tony had dubbed it earlier, “yuppie drag.” I had borrowed Mrs. Oshrin’s fur jacket, and under it I wore one of those female Wall Streeter suits with a string tie on my white silk shirt. I’d purchased it at a discount house in 1984 and had worn it only once before: when I was despairing of ever making a decent living from acting, and had applied for a job as head of the theater department at an expensive and very arty girls’ school upstate. I didn’t get the position.

  The car moved ahead a few inches.

  “Maybe,” Tony speculated, “all these people are driving out to the Island to buy their Thanksgiving turkeys.”

  “They raise ducks out on Long Island, Tony, not turkeys. And I don’t think there are many duck farms left.”

  “Well, maybe they’re on the way to their summer places in the Hamptons.”

  “It’s November, Basillio! November!”

  I saw the merest hint of a smile on his lips then. That was me—gullible old Alice. Always ready to snap at the bait of one of Basillio’s dumb put-ons.

  At last the traffic was beginning to thin out. Tony maneuvered us into the speed lane and we started to move.

  “Now don’t forget who we are,” I cautioned him.

  “How the hell can I forget who we are?” he said huffily. “You’re New York’s finest unemployed middle-aged actress. And I’m the man without a family, a permanent place of residence, or a single prospect in the world. And of the two of us, I think you’ll agree my story is sadder. At least some people know how good you are. But tell me when the last time was you heard it in the street that Tony Basillio is the most imaginative, gut-wrenching stage designer working in the business today?”

  I let him ramble on. For a while. “I was talking about who we’re supposed to be in the context of this little journey we’re making today, Basillio—today.”

  “Oh, that. Yeah, I know who we are. We’re writing a Sunday supplement piece on sex and sin in the Hamptons. Soon to appear in that nowhere little newspaper we work for: the Nowhere Times-Mirror.”

  “Not exactly. The Manhattan Messenger.”

  “And how sweet it is.”

  “Slow down, Tony. Here we are.”

  We exited from the Expressway and took Old Montauk Highway into the town of Southampton. What a lovely gem of a town it looked that early-winter morning, reeking of genteel, kindly money. And there were all kinds of parking spaces, which seemed to excite Tony more than the town itself. The shops were just opening for the day. After leaving the car, we found a small coffee place on the main street and went in.

  “What now?” Tony asked when we’d finished our repast.

  “Follow me,” I said.

  We walked one long block to a red-stone Victorian building which housed the Southampton library. Just next to it was a museum with a sculpture court.

  The librarian was extremely attentive and professional as I explained that I needed issues of the local newspapers dating back to early spring or late winter of 1974.

  She then told me that the library held local papers only for a week or so. They didn’t keep a back issue file of any kind. Since the information I wanted was from 1974, she suggested I go to the editorial offices of the Southampton Star, because in 1974 it was the only daily paper of record for the area.

  The offices weren’t far from the library—unassuming quarters on the floor above a dress shop. A thin little man in a red V-neck sweater heard me out patiently, and then informed me that, unhappily, while they did retain back issues, they had nothing earlier than 1981, as the files, and indeed the entire old office, had been destroyed in a 1980 fire.

  I stomped down the stairs, feeling there was some demonic plot against me.

  “Where next?” Tony asked. He looked so forlorn and out-of-character in that suit. His dress overcoat flapped about wildly in the cold wind.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, straightening his tie. “I’ll make this up to you.”

  “Where have I heard that one before?”

  I shrugged. “Let’s go to the police station.”

  We hurried along the near-empty streets until we reached the municipal building, half of which housed the Southampton Police Department. Two patrol cars painted in garish purple and yellow were stationed in front of the building. The station house was empty except for one officer, who was seated at a folding table stapling some reports. He was a young man with a bristle-brush haircut and a heavily starched uniform. He did not look happy in his work.

  I knew full well that he had noticed us come in, but he absolutely refused to look up at us until I said loudly, “Excuse me, officer.”

  “Help you folks?” he asked.

  Behind me, Tony muttered, “I ain’t no folk. Are you?”

  I silenced him with a quick backward jab from the heel of my shoe.

  While I was explaining to the officer that I wanted information on an almost twenty-year-old prostitution arrest, he went on stapling. I finished my presentation and smiled pleasantly at the top of his head.

  Instead of a reply, however, I received a mercilessly appraising look from him. And then Basillio got the same treatment. He let us know that we’d both come up short.

  But finally he spoke. “Just what kind of information are you talking about?”

  “The name of an arresting officer, for instance,” I said. “The circumstances and time of the arrest—just general information.”

  He drove a staple home with great force then. “We don’t give out things like that,” he said briskly, “unless you’re the lawyer representing the accused.”

  “But there is no accused, officer. As I said, the arrest occurred in 1974. And no, I’m not a lawyer, but—”

  “Obviously you’re not,” he said, cutting me off. “Or you’d know the statute of limitations on a charge like that expired long ago.”

  “Yes, I know. I don’t want to contest the charges, I’m only researching—”

  “Can’t help you, miss. Try the county seat—in Riverhead. We ship the closed files there. Maybe they have it, maybe they don’t. Can’t help you—and if I could, I wouldn’t.”

  Basillio took a step forward then, but I stepped in front of him again.

  “And why wouldn’t you?” I said, looking into his grinning face.

  “Because storming in here and demanding things is not the way it’s done. Not around here. Understand?”

  Storming? Demanding? Had I done that? Had this case turned me into some kind of a shrew who alienated total strangers? I turned to Basillio and started to put that very question to him.

  “Time to go, Swede,” he said, taking my arm. “We only think we’re in the Hamptons. It’s really the Village of the Damned.”

  We found our way back to the coffee shop where we’d initiated our visit to the charming town. The waitress, a pretty young girl with long red hair, greeted us warmly.

  “Cold out there, isn’t it?”

  We took the same table and Tony ordered another coffee and another muffin bursting its l
ittle paper jacket with cranberries and nuts.

  “Not our day, eh, Sherlock?” he asked as he began to ladle on the butter.

  I had to agree. I was frustrated and angry, and the wholesome smell of fresh bread was making me gag. The town library had nothing. The files at the newspaper office had been burned to a crisp. Then the big finish: that nasty young cop with the chip on his shoulder—an unhappy little bureaucrat.

  “I can’t see why this is so important,” Tony said, his mouth full of muffin, jam painting his lips.

  “Well, it is important. It’s damn important to me.” The RETRO computer was generally a whiz, I had to admit. But how did I know the police hadn’t made a mistake that night? Maybe Beth had just had a bit too much to drink at a party and gone off with someone. Maybe it was a simple one-night stand, and someone mistook it for soliciting. Maybe she’d lent her ID to another girl for the night. I had to be sure.

  “So she was young and stupid and she turned a trick,” Tony said. “It happens.”

  I ignored him. I had to think. What next? Who next?

  Tony had finished half of his second breakfast. “Well, what now?” he asked. He was holding the paper coffee cup in both hands and seemed to be looking over my shoulder.

  “We need another source,” I answered him.

  “Right, right . . . obviously,” he said distractedly.

  I saw then that he was following the young waitress’s every move with his eyes.

  His glance was so predatory that I said caustically, “You’d like to take her to a motel right now, wouldn’t you, Basillio?”

  He pulled his eyes away, looking caught. “Now, now, Swede.”

  Had the “John’s” eyes followed young Beth that night in the same hungry way? If indeed it was our Beth. And what in the world would make a beautiful young violinist turn a trick in a place like Southampton? Had she been stranded out here? Did she need a place to sleep?

  My goodness! I flung my hands up in exasperation at my own denseness. A place to sleep. A motel!

  Tony looked at me with alarm. Oh, I was stupid not to have thought of it before. If she did do what they said, and was arrested for it, it had to have happened in a public place. Like a motel. That was where this arrest had to have occurred.

  I caught the waitress’s eye and beckoned her over.

  “Are there any motels close by?” I asked her.

  She smiled, understanding, or in this case, misunderstanding, that Basillio and I were eager lovers looking for a room. “Sure,” she said. “A lovely one about five blocks from here, nearer to the water. But it’s a little expensive.”

  “Is it a new place?”

  “Fairly new.”

  “What about an old one? Is there one around that was in business as early as 1974?”

  Understandably, she looked at me as if this demand for a motel of a particular vintage was odd. “Well, yeah. The Dolphin Inn. By the municipal building. But you don’t want to go there—it’s a fleabag.”

  “The municipal building—you mean where the police station is?”

  “Right.”

  How strange. Tony and I had just come from there, and we hadn’t seen a motel.

  I thanked her and hustled Basillio out of there without allowing him to finish muffin number two.

  ***

  We walked past the police department entrance. A cobblestone alley adjoined the building. Tony pointed up at a decrepit sign nailed to the trunk of a sycamore tree: DOLPHIN MOTOR INN. DAILY RATES. TV.

  We followed the winding alley, and suddenly looming up in front of us was an ancient two-tiered wooden structure with perhaps ten rooms on each landing. At the edge of the ground floor was an office. There were only two cars parked in the guest spaces.

  The office was a gray old place with sticky linoleum. An elderly woman in multiple sweaters sat on a high stool behind the counter, turning the pages of her newspaper with gnarled fingers poking out of fingerless gloves. She shoved the paper aside and put on her welcoming face as soon as she spotted us at the door.

  “How’re you folks today? Need a nice room?”

  “We’re not exactly looking for a room . . . ” I began.

  “Not looking for a room at this very moment, that is,” Basillio interrupted me, “but we’d like to make a little down payment on one.” Tony placed a twenty-dollar bill on the counter, and the lady had it in one of her many pockets before I could even blink.

  “We’re planning to stay here on our honeymoon,” Tony told the woman. “That’s so you’ll remember us.”

  “You be sure of that, young man,” she said, picking up her burning cigarette from a makeshift ashtray fashioned from tinfoil.

  I allowed Basillio to take hold of my hand and keep it in his, while I resumed speaking to the old lady. “Actually, what we need today is some information about something that happened here in town about twenty years ago.”

  “Try me. Not much I don’t know.”

  “Well, I think a young girl was arrested here—in this motel—for prostitution,” I said haltingly. “The year was 1974.” The words had come out all wrong. It sounded as though I was accusing her of running the kind of place where such an arrest was routine. I yearned to begin again. But it was too late.

  To my surprise, though, she didn’t seem insulted. “Oh, my,” she said indulgently. “Can’t say I remember the particulars, but if it was something like that, it had to be Hy up to his old tricks.”

  “Who is Hy?”

  She shook her head. “Old Hiram Kenally. Rest his soul. He had a . . . weakness . . . for the girls. For the young girls, if you know what I mean. Not that my husband or I had anything to do with that sort of thing, but we figured what Hy Kenally did was his business. He was quite the regular here at the Dolphin—he and his lady friends. The thing was, his wife Vera always seemed to know exactly what he was up to. She’d wait and time it perfect, and just when Hy and his friend were . . . well, Vera seemed to get a kick out of calling the police on them. We had a ruckus going on here many a night, I’ll tell you. It got to be pretty silly.”

  “I take it Mr. Kenally is dead,” I said.

  “Long dead. More than ten years. And Vera went the next year. They were something, the two of them Funny part is, I think she really loved that old bastard. Had’ve been my husband, I’d have killed him long before his heart did.”

  I brought out the little photograph of Beth Stimson then. “Do you recognize this girl as one of the ones Mr. Kenally brought here?”

  She took a brief look at the picture. “Not really. But I never took that much notice. Besides, my husband was probably the one on duty the night she was here. He worked nights more than me.”

  “Would it be possible to speak to him?”

  “Be a pretty good trick if you could. Bill passed away too.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t suppose you’d know anyone else who might talk to us about the arrest? Anyone who’d remember what happened?”

  “Well,” she said slowly, “I guess you could try Tom Scott. He’s the one who usually came to pick up Hy and the girl. He retired from the force a while ago. But he still lives out here, in Bridgehampton. It’s not far.”

  “Think he’d talk to us?”

  “I don’t see why not, honey. But with Tom, who knows? He’s about as nuts as Hy was. Spends all his time fooling around with old wrecks instead of other people. Probably do him good to see two human beings for a change.”

  She wrote down the directions to Mr. Scott’s home for us. I thanked her profusely, and Tony said something to her I couldn’t hear. Whatever it was, it made her laugh. “See you soon!” she called out as we left.

  We followed her driving instructions carefully: east to Bridgehampton, north along the main street, past the war memorial—though we cou
ldn’t see which war was being memorialized—turn left, and two miles on, look for a little gray house.

  The place was easy to spot. It was as the innkeeper had said—strewn with old cars.

  “Oh, brother,” Tony sighed. “Do you suppose that’s Tom Scott?” He meant the lanky man in shirtsleeves leaning against a fender, calmly smoking a cigarette. “He looks about as friendly as Dan Duryea.”

  We parked just off the road, then got out and approached the tough old man cautiously.

  “Mr. Scott?” I inquired.

  After a long, critical look at us, he touched the brim of the baseball cap turned backward on his head. “The very one,” he said.

  “Nice to meet you. My name is Alice Nestleton.”

  I might just as well have announced that I was an extraterrestrial. He waited for me to go on.

  “Mr. Scott, I was wondering if I could talk to you about an arrest you made years ago, in 1974.”

  “Who sent you out here?”

  “The proprietress of the Dolphin Inn in Southampton.”

  “That old bat always did have a big mouth.”

  I thought perhaps he was waiting for us to laugh. But we didn’t, and he fell silent again. Obviously he had no intention of inviting us inside, and no curiosity about our reason for being there. I decided to dispense with the cover story about our being journalists, to just tell the truth to this wiry old policeman and hope for the best.

  “Mr. Scott, I’m an investigator looking into a murder—and frankly, time is short. I believe that one of the suspects was a young girl you arrested on a prostitution charge at the Dolphin in 1974. The man involved may have been someone named Hiram Kenally. I realize it was eighteen years ago, but . . . this was the girl.” I held the photo up close to his face. “Does she look at all familiar to you?”

  He didn’t look at it.

  “Half the prostitution arrests I ever made had to do with that idiot Kenally.”

  “Please look at the picture.”

  He studied it for a minute. “Looks familiar.”

  “Is it possible the whole thing was a mistake?”