Carter, speaking in a slow southern way, asked, "More woman than man?" He said it as if such a thing had never occurred to him. He was playing at the hayseed just arrived in the big city for the first time.
The cabbie warmed to his subject. "Sure, buddy. I think he even wore makeup. His lips were bright red." The man chuckled to himself. "Lots of hand gestures. Everything dramatic. You know. Just like a woman. A lot like my Marie, in fact." He paused after saying that. I wondered whether he'd found Michael attractive and was having a hard time with that. The Kinsey Report, after all...
"Yeah. He was a real queer." He paused long enough to honk at a slow-moving truck. "Sad for his pop. You ever see the man talk? Hypnotic, I call it. The senator could sell ice to Eskimos, right?"
The man was looking at me in the mirror and I nodded.
About five minutes later, he turned left down a leafy one-way street. He pulled over to the right and said, "That's it." He pointed at the house on the far corner. It was made of a granite-looking stone that was painted gray and covered in wooden gingerbread accents. It had a basement, three stories above that, and a conical roof at the top of what looked like a turret.
In front of the house was a short, broad man with a scowl on his face wearing an ill-fitting suit. He stood maybe 5'7" tall, had folded his big arms across his broad chest, and looked like he was ready for a fight.
I gave the cabbie a folded ten. He looked at it and then back at me. "Hey! You're that Nicholas Williams fella, ain't you?" He looked a little embarrassed. "I hope you don't mind what I said about the senator's son."
I said, "Don't sweat it," as I slipped out of the cab behind Carter. I closed the door behind me. The man sped off down the street.
Carter and I crossed the street where we stood. As we got to the curb, the man said, breaking out with a big grin on his face, "That's jaywalking, boys."
I stuck out my hand to shake his. He took it, held it tight, and shook hard. "Lieutenant Dawson Runson, Metropolitan Police, boys. And I know who you are, Nick." His hand was very dry and callused. I wondered if he lifted weights like Carter.
He and Carter shook as well. I noticed that Runson was on the second step of the stairs leading up to the front stoop and so didn't have to reach up to shake Carter's hand.
Without any further words, he turned and walked up the rest of the stairs to the front door. It was made of a dark-stained wood, wider than most, and reminded me of the front door of the house where I grew up on Nob Hill. There was a sign posted on the big glass pane in the middle of the door that said, "Crime Scene. No Unauthorized Entry."
Carter and I walked up the steps together. Runson was unlocking the door as we came up behind him. He opened the door and grandly beckoned us in with a wave of his arm, standing aside to wait for us to go through. Carter went in first, I followed, and, as I did, Runson slapped me hard on the ass.
"Glad you're here, Nick."
I turned around, wanting to punch him hard, and started to laugh when I saw his face. He looked just like a kid in the candy store who'd been given the biggest lollipop in the place with the promise of more to come. He just seemed to be happy to be among his own kind. I'd seen that look before and now I understood Tom's earlier cryptic comment about having him on the team.
He reached up, pinched my cheek, then slapped it lightly with great affection.
"Yeah, boy! We're gonna have some fun on this case, aren't we?"
. . .
The front room, to the right of the door and entry hallway, was a sitting room. It had a large window that looked over a flowerbed and then out to the street. I stood in the window and could see into the house opposite. A middle-aged woman in a plain blue house dress was looking at us and, when she caught me staring, stepped back. A moment later, the drapes closed.
The sitting room opened into a dining room. The hallway followed past a staircase going upstairs and another one going downstairs, each above the other.
Walking through a swinging door into the kitchen, I noticed that this room had been enlarged from the original construction as it extended out into the back garden an extra twenty or so feet beyond the dining room's external wall. There was a back door at the end of the kitchen.
I looked out into the back garden through the window of the back door. It was surrounded by a stone wall, about eight feet high, and made of the same stone as the front exterior. There were two canvas folding chairs arranged around a small table holding an ashtray. The table and chairs sat on a concrete oval in the center of a section of small rocks. The rest of the garden area was covered in bright green grass that looked well cared for. There were no weeds growing through the rocks. It was a peaceful scene that was in stark contrast to the first floor of the house.
Every room of the first floor was a mess. Pillows and cushions had been slashed and the stuffing flung in all directions. Mirrors, lamps, and picture frames had been pulled down, stomped, kicked, or cracked in some way, shape, or form.
Two paintings, very modern in design and color, were laying face-up on a rug in the front sitting room in a small pile of goose feathers. Both had been slashed with a knife or maybe a pair scissors. A corner of the sliced canvas of the larger piece was curling up into the afternoon sunlight.
In the dining room, there was a large mahogany cupboard. The doors were swinging on broken hinges. Every dish had been pulled out and, from the look of things, thrown on the floor one by one. I squatted down to look closely at the back of one of the plates. It was marked "Royal Doulton." I peered down at the other broken pieces. The design was mostly white with some large flowers in places. Practical, pretty, but not too frilly.
A separate windowed cabinet had contained wine and cocktail glasses. Some had survived being thrown to the floor. Others were broken or shattered. Obviously each and every piece had been pulled off its shelf and thrown down. None of the cabinets were on the floor. Each pane of the cabinet doors, however, had been broken, one fist at a time.
In the kitchen, flour and sugar covered everything. Two of the metal cabinet doors had been pulled off their hinges. Broken drinking glasses were everywhere. They were on the counters and on the floor. There were even a couple on top of the icebox.
Someone official had tried to mark the floor to show the position of the dead body, but hadn't done it well. There was just so much debris. But I could see drops of blood on top of the flour and sugar on the floor. Whoever it was had ransacked first and killed second.
Runson was standing in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs. Once Carter and I had finished looking around, we joined him there. None of us said anything. It was like being at the scene of a recent battle and I felt almost reverent. The only sounds had been the crunching of glass and china under our shoes.
Runson led the way up the stairs to the second floor. There was a towel on the floor right at the top of the stairs. He stopped to wipe his shoes. We both did the same.
Although it was chaos and clutter downstairs, it was completely serene and calm upstairs.
Every stick of furniture was Danish Modern. All of the downstairs furniture had been conventional. It was the kind of stuff you might find in any house furnished about six or seven years ago. We even had the same sofa at home as the one in the sitting room. We'd bought our sofa in '49 when we bought our house. Up here, there were blonde woods in every room. Walls were painted in pale blues and greens. The floor had recently been painted white and it was covered with tan and off-white rugs in all the rooms.
The bathroom was clean. Using Carter's handkerchief, I lifted the lid to the toilet. It was immaculate. I opened the mirror to discover bottles organized by use and, perhaps, by name. I couldn't easily tell.
The bathtub was lined with brightly colored bottles. I opened several and found bath salts, shampoos, and skin lotions.
The front bedrooms were obviously for guests. Each room looked out on Q Street. They were identical. They had the same colors, the same sheets on the same beds, and the same layout.
The back bedroom was large and occupied the width of the house. It was minimally decorated. A large bed stood at one end of the room and was covered by a white duvet, something I'd only seen in a movie. There was a single nightstand on the side of the bed next to the window that looked down on the garden. Through that window, I could see the garden of the neighbors at 1702 and somewhat into the garden of the house behind the alley. The muffled sound of traffic on 17th Street came through the closed window. Leafy trees planted down below kept this room cool.
The closet ran the length of the room on the side opposite the bed and closest to the door. I opened the closet door and found something right out of the movie Rebecca. There was a long line of perfectly arranged clothing, organized by color, and hung on wooden hangars. There were probably over a hundred coats and then a variety of trousers to match or mix. Two rows of perfectly polished shoes occupied one end of the closet. I opened some of the built-in drawers and found socks organized by style and color. Garters were kept in their own box, showing the only sign of riot in the whole room. They were just thrown in there and not organized. I felt mildly offended at the way they didn't follow the order of everything else I could see.
As I took stock of all the other items in the closet, I figured Michael could have opened his own haberdashery and be fully operational as long as his customers wore his size.
Carter and I met Runson at the bottom of the next flight of stairs. These were narrower than the first set. We followed him up to the top floor, which was a single large room. It was an art studio. It was an organized mess.
The floor was rough and hadn't been sanded or even swept in a while. Dots, lines, and streaks of many colors of paint covered the floor, even in the far corners.
Against the wall near the northwest window there were three rows of canvases leaning against the wall. The first two rows were protected by paint-spattered cloths. Curious to see what was underneath, I pulled back the first cloth. That revealed a row of blank and stretched canvases ready for use. The second row consisted of finished artwork all similar to the pieces on the floor in the siting room downstairs. The final row contained art that the artist had rejected. Each had an "X" painted over it in red or black and, as a group, they were not covered.
Three easels stood around the room in random spots. Each one had a work in process on it. The ceiling had four skylights, each about four feet square, making the room bright and airy. One of them was open and a dove was looking down at me when I looked up. It flew away. As it did, I looked down and saw two or three patches where birds had left their droppings. They were hard to see since they covered streaks and drops of random paint colors. I knelt down for a moment to look more closely at the floor. Carter walked up as I did so.
"What?" he asked.
"Small pebbles."
Runson spoke for the first time since we'd been walking the house. "I knew I liked you, Nick."
There were a variety of work tables and cabinets. Some stood against the wall. Others were in the middle of the floor. There was no rhyme or reason to their placement that I could see. All of the furniture was covered in paint, just like the floor. All of the surfaces were covered with the trappings of the artist: sketchbooks, pencil sets, charcoal sets, discarded oil paints, and glass jars filled with brushes that were no longer usable.
Any surface not covered by art debris was covered with candles. There were two or three hundred candles in various states of use. Some were affixed to the wax of the ones used before. Some were standing in holders, ranging from wood to brass to ceramic. Some had been lit. Others had never been lit.
Against one wall stood a small wardrobe that probably dated to the 1880s. Opening the door, I found several paint-spattered white smocks, each neatly placed on a wooden hangar. I pulled opened the single wide drawer at the bottom and found four sets of folded white coveralls, like a house painter might use. They were similarly covered in paint like everything else in the room.
The style of the artist was simple: throw paint on the canvas and you're done. I was no expert, but I could see no discernible skill. Maybe Michael was just very good at squeezing tubes of oil paints in the air. But he had brushes and they had been used. And, truth be told, I didn't really know what I was looking at.
We followed Lieutenant Runson back down to the first floor. I asked, "How about the basement?"
"Lemme show you something interesting outside, first."
We followed him through the kitchen, out the back door, and down into the garden. He walked over to the stone wall bordering 17th Street. There were no trees here and the sun was warm.
Runson pointed and I peered around the wall to see a newly-installed fire escape that descended from the roof.
I said, "So, that's how you get out of a house locked from the inside."
Putting his hand over his eyes to shield them from the sun, Runson looked over at Carter and asked, "Was he always this smart?"
Carter grinned down and replied, "Well, I'm here, right?"
We all laughed.
. . .
Runson led us back inside, walked to the front door, and opened it. I stopped and turned to Carter. "I think you need to go visit the gal over in 1701. She looks like she'd be willing to talk to a tall drink of water with a winning smile and a sweet, southern voice."
Carter smiled at me, flicked the brim of his hat, and said, "Will do."
Runson said, "Meet us at the restaurant on 17th Street. Just around the corner. Can't miss it. Between Q and R."
Carter again said, "Will do." He walked down the steps and across the street.
I muttered, "Jaywalking again."
"He's gonna get a ticket if he isn't careful." Looking up at me, he winked and said, "But that's OK. We'll treat him well if we have to lock him up."
I had no doubt about that.
Chapter 16
Paramount Steakhouse
1609 17th Street, N.W.
Tuesday, June 1, 1953
Half past 6 in the evening
Runson and I sat down in a booth in the back of the restaurant. A tall, thin, elegant woman with light mahogany skin and upswept hair came over to our table.
"Dawson, my darling! How are you?" Her voice was southern honey and was probably from Virginia or North Carolina.
He stood up, took her hand, and kissed it. "Doing great Veronica. This is--"
"Child, I read the papers. I'd know this man anywhere. How are you, Mr. Williams?"
I stood up and shook her hand. "Fine. Nice to meet you, Veronica. And, please, call me Nick."
She held my hand for a moment. She was almost as tall as me and striking. She said, "You must be here about poor Michael."
I nodded as Runson asked her, "Have a seat?"
"Just for a moment."
She sat where I'd been sitting. I pulled over a chair to the end of the table. Runson sat down across from her.
He asked, "What do you know?"
"Well, my dear. I wonder, as I'm sure you do, how a murderer gets out of a house that's locked from the inside."
Runson nodded but said nothing. I just looked at the basket of crackers, waiting.
"Well, aren't you both quite the detectives? Give a woman enough rope and she'll hang herself." She laughed.
I looked up and caught her watching me. She blushed slightly. To cover herself, she ran the tips of her fingers over her lips. I'd seen women do that in the movies.
"What do you think happened, Veronica?" asked Runson.
"Can it really be anything other than suicide?"
"Someone was very angry." I threw that in to see how she reacted.
"Oh, I would say so. But who? The candidates are so many."
"Who?" asked Runson.
"Well, there's daddy, dearest. Michael told me he was threatening to end his generous allowance if Michael didn't clean up his act."
"Clean it up how?"
"Stop flouncing around the nation's capitol like a demented flapper. I have to agree wit
h daddy on that one. Miss Michael, she could be a real mess."
"Who else?"
"Well, then there's the boyfriend. Thomas Jefferson." Veronica laughed. "I once sat on Mr. Jefferson's lap and tried to seduce him. Oh, it was years ago. But it was right here." She pointed at a long table near the front of the building.
"Any luck?"
"No sir. Mr. Jefferson don't take up with colored, if you get my drift."
Dawson said, "What was the beef between them?"
"Who knows? Who could keep track? On Monday, it was because Michael was tracking in mud. On Tuesday, it was because Michael had been too flirtatious with a cab driver. On Wednesday... Well, you get my drift, don't you sweetheart?"
She reached her hand across the table and began to feel up Runson's left bicep under his jacket. He purred under his breath and then whispered, "Later."
She withdrew her hand and looked at me. "I doubt you are scandalized, Nick. After all you live in San Francisco. Do you know The Nightingale?"
I smiled and nodded. "Yes. I'm a big fan."
"Someday, I'm gonna kick this two-party town and go out west. I hear it's freezing in August, though."
I tried not to roll my eyes as Runson quoted Mark Twain, "'The coldest winter I ever spent...'"
Veronica finished him off, "'...was a summer in San Francisco.'"
I smiled tightly.
Veronica looked around and then at me. "Where's your better half?"
"Carter?"
"Yes. I want to get a real good look at him. I'm sure the pictures in the paper don't do him justice." She turned to Runson and asked, "You know Miss Louella over in Georgetown?"
"Of course."
"Well, I ran into her the other day and she brought me into her little shack, and, oh Dawson, it really is dismal. Someone ought to do something. Just bring in a bulldozer and start over, I say." She put a finger to her lip and smoothed out a bit of lipstick. "Anyway, we were having tea and by tea, of course, I mean some Georgia moonshine that her third cousin, or something like that, runs up here twice a month and Miss Louella showed me her scrapbook."
The Sartorial Senator (A Nick Williams Mystery Book 3) Page 10
