“‘Course.” I’d miffed him and he rubbed his chin, trying to bluff. “A quarter and a pair of pants, huh?”
“From this place. Plus a pair of shoes if you want ‘em.” Cardboard showed through the bottoms of his.
In answer he stuck out his hand.
“What’s your name?” I asked as we shook.
“Heebs. That’s a corker, ain’t it?”
“Don’t say ‘ain’t’ so you sound right tomorrow. Heebs your last name?
“Nah. When I was a kid I always got spooked going down this one alley. Guys I pal with started calling me Heebs – like heebie-jeebies.” His grin resurfaced. “I already know who you are, sis.”
All at once I felt a flutter of worry. It forced me to ask another question. “You ever work for Woody Beale?”
It startled him so he forgot to be cocky. His tousled head shook. “Now and then I sell him a paper. Reckon if he give me a dime to run in a store and ask a question I would. Other than that I mean to steer clear of him. Ain– I’m not fixing to get shut up in jail, and it don’t take a genius to look at the guys who hang around him and know Woody Beale’s hands are dirtier’n a ditch digger’s.”
Thirty-three
As arranged, I let Heebs into my building by the alley door the next morning. He’d been disappointed that I kept the clothes he’d picked out, but I didn’t know where he slept and didn’t want to risk them getting dirty before he showed up. When we got to my office I sent him down the hall to the gents’ to change. I’d brought soap and a washrag, but he’d scrubbed up pretty well before he arrived, so I didn’t insult him by offering. When he returned he looked like a stranger with a passing family resemblance to the kid who’d left. Until he grinned.
“Look like I’m ready to work in a bank, don’t I?”
“Or chase after the news instead of peddling it after it’s printed, at least. Put these on.”
He willingly took the vest I’d borrowed for him, but scowled at the wire-rimmed glasses. “Don’t need those.”
In answer I settled a pair with thick maroon frames on my own nose. They were what passed for fashion if you had money enough to be a clothes horse but had to wear cheaters. Heebs’ scowl turned into a snicker as he surveyed me. I struck a pose in my peplum jacket, which I’d dolled up with a neck scarf and a fussy hat sporting a feather the length of a bayonet. Heebs peered at his own specs, saw the lenses were plain glass, and put them on, trying a pose of his own. The transformation from a kid who didn’t yet need to shave was impressive. I gave him a hand mirror.
“Guess I don’t look too bad,” he said casually, standing as tall as he could. He eyed me while he decided if he should speak. “You know that get-up doesn’t do much for you, don’t you, sis?”
“Good.” I smiled and handed him a steno pad and pencil. “Oh, and you’ll be carrying my camera for me, Clemmy dear.”
“Clemmy!” he sputtered. “That ain’t – isn’t my name!”
“It is for the morning, dear,” I said in a supercilious voice. “You’re quite free to show that you hate it, but of course you’d be very rash to actually say anything, as I might fire you.”
He caught on immediately and plunged in.
“Yes, boss.”
“Miss Cox, Clemmy. How many times must I tell you to call me Miss Cox?”
“Cox? Reckon I can remember that name,” he chortled.
James Cox had served three terms as governor. He’d also run for vice president on a losing ticket. The kid most likely knew him as the press baron whose holdings included The Dayton Daily News. The name would come to his tongue when he needed it, and if somebody where we were going thought I might be a Cox relative, all the better.
Since there were two of us and my current outfit was worlds removed from the drab skirt and tam I’d arrived in that morning, we went out the front door. We sashayed along with Heebs lugging my Kodak while I held my purse in front of me in a fussy two-handed grip unlike my own. Beale’s surveillance glanced up as we passed, then returned to his paper, or maybe his girlie magazine. We reached the parking lot, got into my car, and pulled out with no indication he’d wised up. Even if he followed, I could pull off what I needed to.
“So now I’m a Peeping Tommy like you, huh?” Heebs folded his arms behind his head and lounged in the passenger seat of the DeSoto. “Maybe you better give me the dope on what’s cooking.”
“You call me Miss Cox. You scribble when I tell you to. You rush to open the door and jump when I snap my fingers. Most important, if I say something that sounds crazy, you don’t let on.”
“That ain’t saying what’s cooking.”
“No, but it’s all I’m telling you. Don’t say ‘ain’t’.”
“What kind of assistant?”
“What?” I navigated around a truck.
“What kind of assistant? Are you supposed to be one of those efficiency experts, or what?”
The kid had brains even to wonder about it.
“A decorator,” I said. “An interior decorator.”
He frowned, none too pleased to find himself stumped. “What are they?”
“People who tell rich people what kind of furniture to buy for this room or that. What paintings or do-dads they ought to put with it. What color the walls ought to be and so on.”
“Don’t make fun of me, sis.” The frown was deepening into a scowl.
I laughed and raised my right hand from the steering wheel. “Honest Injun. People get paid for it.”
He turned in his seat. “You’re telling me people with money enough to buy whatever chair they want don’t have sense enough to pick it out for themselves?”
Put like that it was hard to explain.
“I think it has to do with fashion,” I said. “Like a woman who can buy new dresses any time she wants doesn’t pick one because she likes it but because someone somewhere lets on like everything else is old fashioned.”
Heebs snorted, as mystified as most of us would be by such doings. He kept peppering questions at me all the way to The Wellington.
* * *
“Three, please,” I intoned as we traipsed onto the elevator.
The Negro attendant who’d been unhelpful yesterday didn’t give me a first glance, let alone a second. Heebs and I were the only passengers. We rode up in silence with me using the time to double check the extra flashbulbs in my pocket. When we got out we hunted the number the directory downstairs listed for Miami Valley Guardian. Heebs looked around, taking in as much as his eyes could hold. At a frosted glass door marked 306 I paused and gave him a wink.
“Okay, ‘Clemmy’,” I whispered. “Open the door.”
Heebs complied, all but genuflecting as I swept past.
“Please inform Mr. Houseman that Madeline Cox is here,” I told an efficient-looking receptionist as I stripped off my gloves. “Oh, my. This does need a bit of spiffing up, doesn’t it? That stretch of wall there simply begs for decoration – perhaps a nice bas relief. Are you getting this down, Clemmy? Don’t just stand there!”
As instructed, Heebs gave me the camera, then scrambled for his note pad and pencil.
“I’m sorry. I’m afraid there’s no mention of you on Mr. Houseman’s list of appointments,” the receptionist interjected.
I waved a hand, grandly unoffended. “Quite possibly it’s just listed as ‘decorator’. He was a bit sozzled when we exchanged names. Oh dear, though, I did assure him this first little visit wouldn’t take long – Some sculpture there, I think, Clemmy–” I brought the camera up and snapped a picture, washing the place with light. “Make a note. Nefertiti on a pedestal, or–”
“Excuse me!” The receptionist was getting upset. “Mr. Houseman hasn’t mentioned anything about a decorator.”
“Why don’t you just tell him I’m here, dear? I assume that’s what that box on your desk is about.
“And color, Clemmy. It needs color. Plum, perhaps; that’s madly fashionable just now.” I directed the last part more or l
ess toward the receptionist, who hunched over her intercom speaking urgently. A younger woman slaving away at a desk in the corner had looked up. Ears on the other side of a wood partition had probably pricked up as well. “We could set it off nicely with a pale, pale mauve. Mauve with a nice hint of gray.”
As I spoke I removed the spent flashbulb, which was just cool enough to handle. Unclasping my purse I dropped it in and took out a measuring tape which I handed to Heebs.
“Jot down the measure on that wall. We’ll wait for Jimmy to take the others.”
The receptionist looked up, unsure whether she should try to stop Heebs as he pulled out the tape. I fitted one of the bulbs from my jacket pocket into the Kodak and dithered this way and that, pretending to decide my next angle. In the wall behind the reception area, maybe six feet right of the desk, was a closed door. At the sound of it opening, I centered it in the viewfinder, drew a steadying breath the way Jenkins had taught me, and pressed the shutter.
The flashbulb gave its satisfying pop. Momentarily blinded, the towhead with the darker mustache stood blinking.
“What’s this about?” Off balance from his temporary blindness, he batted at the air in front of his eyes. “I don’t know anything about–”
“Madeline Cox.” I grabbed his hand and pumped it warmly. “We met at Kitty Dixon’s little do last week. You were so keen to have decor that’s more moderne that I promised to pop ‘round the first chance I had to squeeze you in.” While I talked I whisked the lace-trimmed hanky from my breast pocket. Its folds protected my fingers as I hurried the still-hot bulb from its socket. “Your assessment of what your customers see was very, very accurate, too. A rare perceptiveness in a man, if I may say. But never fear. The space itself allows great scope–”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Houseman managed to interrupt. “I don’t know anyone–”
“That wall in particular,” I gestured as if I hadn’t heard. Houseman’s head turned automatically. Having fitted a new bulb in, I clicked the shutter again, getting him in the edge of the scene, illuminated.
“I don’t know anybody named Kitty Dixon.” He’d reddened and was growing impatient. “I certainly didn’t go to her party. And I haven’t talked to anyone about decorating. You’ve made a mistake.”
“Shall I call Mr. Gaynor? Perhaps he spoke to someone,” the receptionist offered.
Houseman’s glare sent her quickly back to her work. I drew myself up indignantly and thrust the camera toward Heebs, who hastened to take it.
“Let me see that address, Clemmy.” I flipped to a page in the notepad. I stabbed at it with my finger. “Archibald Houseman. It is not a mistake.”
“Well my name’s Lyle. And we don’t need a decorator,” Houseman said through his teeth.
“The address is right,” I insisted. “Isn’t that this address, Clemmy?”
He edged closer. Eyed the pad. Looked at me nervously.
“Actually, Miss Cox, I think that might be an 8 instead of a 3.”
Letter perfect.
“Well–”
“And I think that last name is supposed to be Hanneran.”
“Well!” I almost choked at the sound of him speaking again, going off on his own. It undermined the force of my pretended indignation, which maybe wasn’t bad. “That’s twice that girl has mixed things up with her dreadful penmanship. She’ll be looking for another job the minute we get back. You did look a teensy bit unfamiliar,” I conceded to Houseman. “But Kitty’s do’s have that effect.
“I am sorry to inconvenience you,” I apologized to the office in general.
Houseman had already stalked out. I turned to make my departure with Heebs tripping over himself to open the door. Halfway through it, I leaned back toward the receptionist.
“But really, dear, do consider plum. It would make you terribly au courant.”
Thirty-four
It was time to make Beale’s lookout think he was keeping his eye on me. Heebs had wanted to leave his new duds at my office and stop by whenever he needed them, but I couldn’t be responsible for a kid. I gave him the name of a place that would let him store his things in a basket for a nickel a month and saw him out the alley door in his new shoes. Then I changed into the everyday clothes I’d arrived in that morning and went out the front.
A block and a half away was a place that developed film. Usually it took three or four days, but I had an arrangement with the owner. For double the price, Ernie would give me prints from this morning by quitting time. As I swung along I was pleased to see the car with Beale’s boy creep out to follow.
“Ah, Miss Sullivan. Always a ray of sunshine,” Ernie greeted. A well-girdled matron went out shuffling happily through a handful of snapshots she’d just picked up.
“I’m guessing she’s not one of the girls in nighties who pose for you back there.” I tilted my head at the heavy black curtains behind the counter. Ernie snorted. “End of the day?” I slid him my roll of film.
He nodded, scribbling on a scrap of paper. He wrapped it around the film and added a rubber band. “You picking them up?”
“Drop them off at the hat place again.” A few times, when I wasn’t sure how my schedule would go, I’d asked him to leave them with Mr. Seferis. “You have some throw-away prints I can put in an envelope to carry out?”
His eyebrows raised but he didn’t ask, just as I never told anyone about his sideline in the back room. He rummaged through a wastebasket, finally coming up with a handful of snapshots. People. A couple of mutts.
“Somebody doesn’t pick ‘em up in a year, I toss ‘em.” He slid them into an unmarked envelope.
“Thanks. In case anyone asks, I just came in to pick up some pictures.”
Ernie winked.
Outside the shop I paused and made a show of flipping eagerly through the abandoned pictures. The car that had watched my building all morning was parked across the street now. I looked around furtively, took a folded manilla envelope from my purse and slipped the photos into it. Then I bounced off toward the main post office. My knee felt fine.
Inside the post office I dumped the pictures back into my purse so I could burn them at Mrs. Z’s. I refolded the envelope since it was still perfectly good and hid it too. After treating myself to a well-deserved tongue sandwich at the Arcade, I walked back to my office and picked up my car. I drove across the river to the art museum.
With its grand hilltop perch and white columns the museum looked the way I imagined temples had in ancient Greece, or maybe Rome. Wandering its vast, silent rooms made a fine change from sitting in a car all day waiting for lowlifes like Al to make a move. My trip here, like waving useless snapshots around and the trip to the post office, would give Beale plenty to wonder about. And worry some. Meanwhile I could enjoy myself. Being here always felt like visiting a foreign country, and I could think here as well as I could in my office.
I went to the medieval cloister, which as usual was deserted and peaceful. This time of year the chill crept in quickly, but I sat down anyway.
Beale had to be behind these burglaries. All had occurred where or when burglar alarms weren’t working, which wasn’t a likely coincidence. Beale’s henchman Al knew Houseman, who worked for an outfit that sold burglar alarms – who in fact appeared to be a big-wig in the company. What did it all tell me?
I was fairly sure the manicurist from Ollie’s would identify Houseman as the “rich guy” who had argued with Beale. I was only a shade less certain that Houseman was the “muckety-muck in a fancy building” Benny Norris had been angry about.
Houseman was the linchpin. I needed to find out more about Houseman.
* * *
My office looked drab after the museum. Maybe I needed a fancier pot for the dead plant. An urn that looked a million years old.
The phone rang.
“Miss Sullivan, I am paying you quite well and I’ve had no report from you in some time. Are you making any progress at all?”
&nbs
p; “Yes, and I’m trying to follow up on it – which I can’t if I’m talking to you.”
I hung up. Something about Throckmorton rubbed me the wrong way.
Since he’d interrupted my thoughts about redecorating, I picked up my pencil and called the other two burglar alarm places Abner had mentioned.
“This is Lula Thompson,” I said when someone answered at Caldwell-Carter. “Is Mr. Houseman in, please?”
“Who?”
“Lyle Houseman.”
“I’m sorry, there’s no one here by that name.” The voice sounded young.
“Dear me. Could I possibly speak to someone who’s been there, oh, five or six years and might possibly know where he’s gone? It’s about his cousin.”
“I’ve been with the company twelve years. No one by that name has worked here.”
Sometimes how a voice sounds is about as reliable as a Ouija board.
Things looked up when I tried Montgomery Security.
“Is Lyle Houseman there, please?” I asked.
A hiccup of silence alerted me. “There’s no one here by that name. Could someone else help you?”
“Oh, my. I’m a friend of his aunt’s. She asked me to look him up when we got to town. I’m sure she said this was where he worked; I wrote it down–”
“Just a minute please,” the voice at the other end said hastily.
I heard her lay the receiver down. Somewhere in the background there was a murmur. Maybe just conversation in progress. Or maybe not. The phone was picked up again. A different voice spoke, this one lowered and uncomfortable.
“The person you asked about hasn’t worked here for some time. Three or four years I should say. I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you. Thank you for calling.”
The line buzzed in my ear. That was okay. I’d learned something. Lyle Houseman had worked there, and the reaction his name produced told me he hadn’t left under good circumstances. I leaned back and used my emery board on a bothersome spot while I thought.
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