Blowing Smoke

by Barbara Block

  “You know as much as I do.”

  “So the detectives haven’t said anything to you.”

  “Just that her parents are flying in to claim the body. A thing like that makes me glad I never had a child.” Moss Ryan paused for an instant, then said, “To get back to the matter at hand, I’d like to give Rose a little time to adjust before we hit her with more bad news.”

  “What if Amy’s indicted?”

  “Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.”

  I thought about the blood and the gun. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that if I were you.”

  Ryan dropped his pencil, leaned forward, rested his elbows on his desk, and steepled his fingers. “I’ve heard Amy’s story, and it sounds extremely credible to me. She tells me she stumbled across Pat. And I mean that literally. She fell over her. Naturally, in the dark she didn’t realize what had happened. She thought Pat had had some sort of seizure. Evidently she’d been complaining about headaches.” He sighed. “Amy tried to rouse her, and that’s when she must have gotten the blood on her shirt.”

  “Funny thing, but when I got to Pat Humphrey, she was talking. How do you account for that?”

  “Perhaps she passed out from the bullet, then came to again. The doctors I’ve consulted have told me that that can happen.”

  “Even so, why didn’t Amy call the police?”

  “Because she was in shock.”

  I thought about how George and I had found her. “She certainly has a unique way of showing it.”

  Moss Ryan frowned. “Everyone is different. Don’t forget, Amy thought Pat Humphrey was dead.”

  “And the gun?”

  “She found it on her way to the lodge as she was going for help.”

  “And Amy just picked it up and brought it with her?”

  “Stranger things have happened.”

  “But not by much.”

  Moss Ryan stiffened. “It’s possible.”

  “Anything’s possible. Is the D.A. preparing an indictment?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “And you believe Amy’s story?”

  “Absolutely.” Moss Ryan straightened his tie. “The idea that Amy shot someone, let alone Pat Humphrey, whom she adored, who was aiding her in making contact with her favorite childhood pet, is ludicrous. Why would she? As I said, Pat was helping her. She was the only person that could. Added to everything else, Amy is terrified of guns. She always has been.”

  “Childhood pet?”

  Ryan had the grace to look abashed. “I’m told the dog’s name was Corky. It was some sort of mixed terrier. Amy watched a car run over it. Maybe because it happened soon after her father died, Amy never got over it. Pat was helping her achieve closure. Look,” Ryan said, “I know it sounds stupid, but it was important to Amy. Very important.”

  “Maybe Corky told Amy it was her fault that she died, that she should have had her on a leash and she got angry and killed the messenger.”

  Moss Ryan rubbed his eyes. “I’ll tell you the truth, I don’t know what to think anymore.” He picked up his pencil again, clicked it twice, put it down, and leaned back in his chair. “The only thing I do know is that Rose wants you to come out to her place at seven-thirty tonight so she can discuss hiring you to investigate Pat Humphrey’s death.”

  “The police are doing that.”

  “Over the years, I’ve observed that the police tend toward the ready-made and the obvious when it comes to suspects.”

  “Like Amy.”

  Ryan shot his cuffs. “I’ve always conducted my life along the motto that forewarned is forearmed. Actually, if the investigating officers look further, I’m sure they’ll find that Amy isn’t even their best suspect.”

  “Meaning?”

  “We can talk more about this later if it becomes necessary.”

  I rubbed my arms. They had goose pimples on them. The air conditioning in the office was beginning to get to me. “And Rose doesn’t know about any of this.”

  “No. Not at the present time.”

  “How does she think Pat Humphrey died?”

  “She knows she was shot, if that’s what you’re asking. I just didn’t read her the last part of your report.”

  “Is getting me involved in this your idea?”

  “Actually, it was Rose’s. But if she hadn’t suggested it, I would have.”

  “I’m not equipped for this type of thing.”

  “Just listen to what she has to say.”

  “Without telling her about her daughter? What if she asks?”

  “Lie.”

  “I don’t think I can do that.”

  “Please,” Moss Ryan begged. “When you see her, you’ll understand.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  It was a little after seven-thirty when I pulled into the Taylor estate. I was hot and thirsty and thinking I should have stopped at Burger King and picked up something to eat and drink on the way over as I watched a crow pecking at a dead squirrel in the driveway. He hopped away when I neared, then returned once I’d parked the car.

  Remnants of the yellow crime-scene tape fluttered from the hedges and hung from the trees, a remembrance of the violence that had recently jarred the serenity of the place. I was surprised everything hadn’t been tidied up already and consigned to the dustbin. Even if money can’t buy happiness, it can buy order. It was probably my imagination, but the grass and the bushes looked a little scragglier than they had the last time I’d visited.

  Geoff rushed forward to greet me as I got out of my car. He’d been leaning against the doorframe, biting a cuticle, when I’d pulled up. The last week had aged him, too. His face looked bloated, as if he’d been spending too much time with a bottle for company. He had dark circles under his eyes, and his hair, normally perfect, had several cowlicks sticking out around the back of his head.

  As we walked to the front door, I noticed he had a grease splotch on the front of his polo shirt. “You spoke to Ryan, right?” he asked me. “He told you about not mentioning Amy?”

  I nodded. “I said I’d try not to bring her into the conversation, but if her name came up or questions were asked, I told him I wasn’t going to lie.”

  Geoff opened the door for me and escorted me inside. “It would kill Rose if she knew, just kill her.”

  “Well, we wouldn’t want to do that.”

  “No, we wouldn’t.”

  I noticed the flowers in the vase on the table to the left needed to be replaced. “So how are you dealing with Shana’s death?”

  “Managing.” He paused for a second as a new thought occurred to him. “Ryan didn’t say anything about Shana and me, did he?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  Geoff was so close to me that his breath tickled my ear. “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Because if he does, you can tell him for me to say it to my face.”

  “I think you should tell him that yourself.”

  “Maybe I will.” Geoff continued his walk down the hallway. The polished marble floor, the high ceilings, gave off a chill despite the warm summer night.

  “I have a question for you.”

  “Yes?”

  “How could you afford to give Shana Driscoll a pair of earrings from Tiffany’s?”

  He stopped. “That wasn’t a question.”

  “No. I guess it wasn’t.”

  “Why assume it was me?” he demanded. “She could have been seeing someone else.”

  “I suppose she could have, but I don’t think they would have typed the card. I think they would have signed their name.”

  Geoff folded his arms across his chest. “I don’t know anything about it.”

  “All right.” I changed the subject. “How’s Rose doing?”

  “Rose? As well as can be expected, given the circumstances. We had her doctor here this morning. He prescribed some tranquilizers. We gave them to her, but I’m not sure that they’re doing much good.”

  I�
��d assumed Rose would be in her sitting room, but Geoff led me to the sunroom, the room in which I’d first seen Rose. She was sitting on the same sofa, wearing slacks and a long-sleeved linen blouse. A heavy gold chain hung around her neck. Her cat was sprawled out across her lap.

  “This is my favorite place,” she said to me when Geoff and I entered, answering my unasked question. She made a sweeping gesture with her right hand. “The plants give us solace, don’t they?” she asked Sheba, who twitched her tail in response and slightly altered her position on her mistress’s lap. “You can leave,” she told Geoff. “I’ll be fine.”

  He hesitated while Sheba regarded him disdainfully out of unblinking cobalt blue eyes.

  “Really.”

  “But...”

  Rose made a gesture of dismissal. “If I need anything, Robin will get it for me.”

  Finally, after hesitating for another few seconds, Geoff walked out the door.

  Rose continued petting her cat as I sat down in the armchair next to the sofa. The events of the last few days had taken their toll, but given what Moss Ryan and Geoff had said, I’d expected Rose Taylor to look a lot worse than she did. It’s true she looked frailer, almost translucent, as if a piece of her had been rubbed away, but she was fully made up, and even though her eyelids drooped slightly, her eyes regarded me with a shrewd, measuring gaze.

  “Geoff and Ryan.” She shook her head. “They think I’m going to come apart. It hasn’t occurred to them I wouldn’t have gotten to where I am if I wasn’t tough-minded. But women are stronger then men. Much stronger. Even though men don’t like to admit that. The truth is, men go on being little boys, but the moment that baby comes out from between your legs, a woman has to grow up.”

  I remember my grandmother saying something along the same lines to me. I hadn’t agreed with her then, and I wasn’t sure I agreed with Mrs. Taylor now, but I nodded, anyway.

  “Good.” She smiled. “Which brings me to why I sent for you. I’m sure you’re wondering.”

  “I assumed you wanted to talk to me about the report,” I lied.

  “That was fairly clear-cut. Not much to discuss in it.” She buried her hand in Sheba’s fur. “Except for the fact that while it’s true you found Pat Humphrey for me, you unfortunately didn’t find her soon enough.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “If you had been faster, Pat Humphrey might be alive today.”

  “I’m not so sure. She had a reason for disappearing the way she did.”

  “And what was that?” Rose snapped.

  “She was scared of you.”

  Rose laughed derisively. “And who told you that, Hillary?”

  “Actually it was Amy.”

  “Even better. She has no idea what’s going on, none at all. Of course, none of my children do. I can’t figure out what I did wrong.”

  “She seemed pretty convinced.”

  Rose studied her perfectly manicured nails for a minute before looking back up at me. “Amy was also convinced that Louis raped her when she was fifteen. Did you know that? And in case you’re wondering, no, he didn’t; he was playing football at the time. Naturally I checked.” Rose took a deep breath. “Unfortunately, to be blunt, my daughter is a liar. She makes up stories. She always has.”

  I thought about Amy’s yelling that Sinclair was trying to rape her. I hadn’t believed it then. I believed it even less now.

  Rose continued. “I’ve been told it’s the only way she feels she can get attention. I’ve tried to explain to her that there are other ways to go about that. I’ve offered to pay for a personal trainer so she can lose some weight. I’ve even offered to send her to a plastic surgeon, but she isn’t interested.” Rose waved her hand in the air. “It’s sad, but one has to accept the truth and move on. Stop moving and you die.”

  A vision of a tiger shark endlessly circling around a coral reef came to mind.

  Rose went back to petting her cat. “Now, what were we talking about? I’ve lost my train of thought.”

  “You were talking about your children.”

  “Before that.”

  “You were saying that Pat Humphrey would be alive today if I’d been faster finding her.”

  “It’s true, isn’t it?”

  She looked at me expectantly. I was sure she had her arguments marshaled, but I didn’t give her a chance to trot them out.

  “So,” I said instead, “if you were dissatisfied the first time, why do you want to hire me now?”

  “Because I think you can do better. Anyway, you already know everyone. It would be more time consuming to bring someone else up to speed.”

  “Is that your idea of a compliment?”

  “As anyone who knows me will tell you, I don’t give compliments out easily.” She tapped her fingers on the sofa. “I want you to get up and go over to the desk on the far left-hand corner and open the top middle drawer. Take out the large white envelope addressed to you.”

  I did as I was told.

  “Now open it.”

  I peered in. The envelope was stuffed with hundred-dollar bills.

  “There’s ten thousand dollars in there,” she told me.

  I took a deep breath. Down in someplace like New York City or Silicon Valley ten thousand dollars was walk-around money, but in my world it was a lot. Judging from what she said next, Rose Taylor knew that.

  “I want you to use it to find out who killed Pat Humphrey,” she told me. “There’s enough there to allow you to concentrate exclusively on this. Hire someone else to run your store for you. By the way, that money is in addition to any expenses you incur. To be reimbursed for those, just submit your receipts to Moss.”

  It pained me, but I closed the envelope flap. “That’s very generous of you, but I can’t trump the police on a homicide investigation.”

  “I realize that. But you can speak to people.”

  “The police will, too.”

  “Exactly my point.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I know you don’t.” Rose Taylor bit her lip. She looked down at her hands, then back up at me. She took a deep breath and let it out. “This is just hard for me to talk about.”

  “If it upsets you ...”

  “No.” She brushed my objections aside. “It’s simple. You’re my insurance policy.”

  Moss Ryan’s statement about being forewarned is forearmed flashed through my mind.

  “It might not happen, but I’m afraid that sooner or later the police are going to stumble on a certain fact, and when they do, I’d like to have a name to give them.”

  “And what fact is ... ?”

  “That Pat Humphrey was my daughter.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  I got up, went over to the sideboard situated on the opposite wall, picked up a tall glass etched with gold trim, and poured myself a healthy shot of Black Label.

  “Pour one for me, too,” Rose said. “A long one. And add some ice to it if you don’t mind. Use the tongs,” she instructed as I opened the ice-bucket lid. “That’s what they’re there for.”

  The ice cubes clinked as I filled the glass with them. I put in a couple of fingers of scotch and handed Rose her drink. “You forgot the napkin,” she said. “Not the paper ones, the cloth ones over on your right.”

  If this was any indication of what Geoff had to put up with, I wondered if the cars and the clothes and the money were enough compensation as I went back and got Rose her napkin. It was hand embroidered Irish linen.

  She took it out of my hand, then looked at the coffee table and back up at me. “I don’t know what you do in your house, but in mine we put coasters under our glasses.”

  A House Beautiful was lying on the table. I pushed the magazine toward her. “In mine we use these.”

  Rose glared at me for a second, and I glared right back. After another second she laughed. “Most people automatically do what I tell them to.”

  “So I’ve observed.”

  “Which,
I suppose, is why I want to hire you.”

  I waited for Rose to speak, but she just sat there lost in thought, holding her drink in one hand and petting her cat with the other, while I listened to the clock on the other side of the room ticking the minutes away.

  “Are you sure about Pat Humphrey being your daughter?” I finally asked.

  “As sure as I can be.” Rose took a sip of her drink and set her glass down on the magazine. The cat flicked her tail in annoyance at being disturbed, but Rose took no notice. “Evidently, Patti got her birth certificate, or if we’re going to be precise, a copy of the certificate—originals are never given out—from the agency that handled her adoption. I saw it. My name was there, typed in on the line that says mother.”

  “I didn’t think agencies were supposed to do that. I thought that was illegal.”

  “They’re not, and it is. Unless I give my consent. Which I didn’t. Nor would I have. As far as I was concerned, that part of my life was closed. I certainly didn’t want to open it again. But Patti can be, could be, terribly persuasive.”

  “Do you still have it?”

  “The certificate? No.” Rose gave a dry little laugh. “Patti took it back.”

  “That’s convenient. What did she do with it?”

  Rose brought her free hand up and let it fall back down in the equivalent of a shrug. “I suppose what most people do with documents like that. Put it where she thought it would be safe.”

  By now the police would have sealed off Humphrey’s safe-deposit box, her bank account, and her house. If the birth certificate was in there, Rose was right. It wouldn’t be long before the police were knocking at her door.

  “And it looked authentic to you?”

  “I’m not an expert, but yes, it certainly did, insofar as reproductions go.”

  “Did it have a seal?”

  Rose picked up one of her cat’s front paws and touched the pads. The cat twitched its tail in annoyance and unsheathed its claws. Rose smiled and dropped the paw. “Of course it had a seal. That’s one of the first things I checked.”

  “Do you remember the name of the adoption agency?”

  “That’s a stupid question. It was the Oxford Agency.” She leaned forward a little. “Listen, do you have a cigarette on you?”