Blowing Smoke

by Barbara Block

  “I was wondering where she’d gotten off to,” the landlady, a skinny redhead with a bad tattoo of Daffy Duck on her shoulder, said as she handed me the bundle of Amy’s mail that she had sitting on a table in the foyer of her apartment. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the noise of the television set. “Usually, she checks in. Isn’t she coming back?”

  “Probably not,” I replied, amazed, as always, by how readily most people will take somebody’s word. “She’s pretty sick.”

  “Poor dear.” The landlady clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “She’s got eight months on her lease left to run. Who’s going to pay me?”

  “Get in touch with this person.” I scribbled Moss Ryan’s name and address on a piece of paper and gave it to her.

  She glanced at it. “Because this puts a different complexion on things, as it were. I can’t be letting you take her stuff if she isn’t paid in full.”

  “She just wants me to get her a couple of CDs. I’ll leave the rest.” I handed the woman a twenty-dollar bill.

  “I suppose that wouldn’t hurt,” she allowed, slipping both the money and the paper into the side pocket of her jean shorts. “Just so you don’t take anything else.”

  Amy’s apartment turned out to be on the second floor. “So no one has been here?” I asked as I followed the landlady up the stairs.

  “No. Her husband hasn’t been around for a while. Usually, he shows up once a month or so. I guess he travels for a living.”

  “Husband?” I couldn’t keep my voice from rising in surprise.

  The landlady stopped in front of Amy’s apartment. “You’re telling me you didn’t know she was married?” she said, favoring me with a suspicious glance. “You can’t be much of a sister if you don’t.”

  “We’ve been estranged for the past couple of years,” I explained.

  “I’ll say.”

  “We’ve just reconnected,” I improvised. “I can’t believe she didn’t tell me she and Neff finally got married.”

  “Sinclair,” the landlady corrected.

  “That’s right.” I snapped my fingers and laughed. “How stupid of me. I always forget that guy’s name. They’ve had one of those off-again, on-again relationships for years. He’s one of the reasons my sister and I stopped talking.”

  “Yeah,” the landlady said. “I’ve had a couple of those myself.” A wistful look crossed her face. “They’re hell on the digestive system.”

  “I’ll say,” I said, thinking of Murphy. I tipped her another twenty and took the key out of her hand. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just let myself in.”

  Amy’s apartment looked like mine had after I graduated college. The sofa and chairs in the living room were shabby and mismatched; the coffee table was one of those large wooden spools the utility company stores its wire on. The bookcase that ran along the dining alcove wall was made of unstained wooden boards and bricks, while the scratched table and chairs looked as if they had been picked up in the Salvation Army. A curtain of red and pink plastic beads separated the kitchen from the dining room. I was thinking that I hadn’t seen something like that since the seventies when I heard the front door open.

  “Hillary?” Sinclair called out.

  I walked back to the middle of the living room. “Guess again.”

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded.

  “I might say the same of you.”

  He peered around nervously, ready to flee out the door if need be. “Where’s your friend?”

  “George? At home.”

  Sinclair relaxed a little.

  “You look a hell of a lot better than the last time I saw you.” The marks from the beating George had given him had almost faded.

  Sinclair pointed to his side. “Yeah, well, my ribs don’t feel any better. I should have had him charged with assault.”

  “Go ahead.” I waited for Sinclair to reply. When he didn’t, I said, “I thought you’d be on your way to California by now.”

  “Don’t worry. I will be soon enough.” He glanced around the room. “Where’s Hillary? The landlady said Amy’s sister was here.”

  “She couldn’t come. I’m playing surrogate. You should have told me you were a married man.”

  A look of surprise crossed Sinclair’s face.

  “The landlady told me,” I informed him.

  He straightened up. “Good. I’m glad you know. I don’t like secrets.”

  I tried not to laugh. “So how long ago did this happy event take place?”

  “About eight months. Give or take.”

  “This is just a wild guess, but would that be right around the time you got the use of the lodge?”

  Sinclair didn’t say anything.

  “I’m assuming you and Amy didn’t invite Rose to the nuptials.”

  “Amy didn’t want to. She said it would make things too complicated.”

  “I bet it would have. So are you going to tell her?”

  “I just have. I’ve just come back from seeing her.”

  “That must have been a nice surprise for her. Having such a distinguished son-in-law”

  Sinclair shrugged. “When it comes down to it, she’s a sensible person.”

  “I bet. When it comes down to it, you’re two of the same kind. What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve come to get my suit. I have an appointment at the Federal Building. Rose’s lawyer has been kind enough to arrange for representation for me.”

  “How nice of him. But then I suppose it’s in everyone’s best interests. How much has Rose been paying her help, anyway? Or is all of it just going in your pocket.”

  Sinclair moved by me. “I resent that accusation. I think you’d better leave.”

  “I don’t think it’s going to be so easy for your wife when it comes to Pat Humphrey. Or for you, for that matter. A homicide rap is harder to work around.”

  Sinclair stopped. “She had nothing to do with that.”

  “It certainly sounds as if she has. She certainly acts as if that’s the case.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “Well, if you say so, then I guess everything is fine. But here’s what I think. I think Amy was jealous of her. I think she was furious at her. Not only was she going to take her inheritance from her; she was screwing her husband. Give me a better motive than that.”

  “It’s true,” Sinclair admitted. “Pat and I had something going—it didn’t mean anything. Pat was like a guy in that regard. Just because she went to bed with you didn’t mean she wanted an emotional attachment. In fact, she was hung up on some other guy. But as for the inheritance angle, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you do. Pat had Rose convinced she was Rose’s long-lost daughter, the one she’d had when she was young and gave away. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if you were in on the scam with her.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Sinclair scoffed.

  “I’m not. Rose told me.”

  “Well, maybe Rose’s stroke killed off more brain cells than anyone is admitting. Trust me, I know. Pat and I talked. She never mentioned anything like that.”

  “Maybe she didn’t tell you.”

  “Why the hell wouldn’t she?”

  “I can think of lots of reasons—like she was going to get all this money and she didn’t want to share it with you.”

  “No. Pat wasn’t like that.”

  “Like what?”

  Sinclair chewed on the inside of his cheek while he thought about what to say. Finally, he came out with this: “Look, scam artists are like everyone else. You do what you’re used to doing. You have something that works for you, you continue in that vein. You don’t change in midstream. Embezzlers don’t run cons. Pat Humphrey had her thing, her pet psychic thing. Not,” Sinclair quickly added, “that Pat was without psychic ability. She did have it. She was the genuine article. Sometimes she had these flashes . . .” Sinclair’s voice drifted off.

  “I k
now,” I said softly, thinking about what Pat had said.

  “It always gave me the creeps,” Sinclair said. “The way she’d just blurt this stuff out. But the thing is that sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. She couldn’t always count on it. Her pet-psychic shtick was half-true, half-bullshit. Sometimes she really could understand animals. I always thought it was just because she was very observant.

  “But in the end that really doesn’t matter. What matters is that it was working for her. It was making her a good living. She was getting a large clientele list. Hell, vets were sending clients to her. There was no reason for her to do something like what you’re saying. Something that would open her up to prosecution. She really did not want to go back to jail.”

  “Maybe she was greedy.”

  “No. She wasn’t.”

  “Then why would Rose lie about something like that?”

  “Why does Rose do anything? Because she wants to.”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  As it turned out, I didn’t have to take a day off to drive out to where Pat Humphrey’s parents were living to find out whether or not she’d been adopted. According to the pet sitter, they were in Syracuse, staying with a cousin in Eastwood. She didn’t tell me much else, though, because between the bad connection and the dogs that were barking in the background I had trouble hearing what she was saying. I called the cousin and she told me to come over.

  Ann Fitzsimmons opened the door for me when I rang the bell. She was a large, blowsy woman, and the only resemblance I could see between her and Pat was in the shape of her mouth and the coloring of her skin.

  “Everyone is in here,” she said, motioning for me to follow her into the living room.

  The room, the antithesis of Pat Humphrey’s place, was crammed with cheap furniture, photos, and tacky souvenirs. Pat Humphrey’s parents were huddled together on the sofa, holding hands. They had that dazed look that people get after an accident or a fire. Small and fragile, they seemed lost in the expanse of black leather that framed them. Even though the temperature outside was in the eighties, and it was probably higher in the house, they both were wearing cardigan sweaters.

  The cousin introduced us, and we shook hands. “They’re having trouble understanding,” she confided to me, referring to them in the third person, in the way that some people speak about children even when they’re in the room.

  I nodded and carefully placed the box with their daughter’s possessions on the coffee table in front of them. Pat’s mother stared at it and wet her lips. Her eyes were vacant. As if her heart had traveled to somewhere else and wouldn’t be returning.

  “It’s just not right a child dying before her parents,” she declared, aiming her statement at the world in general.

  Her husband patted her hand. I don’t think she noticed.

  “I never thought I’d be having to pick out Patti’s tombstone.” She shook her head at the wonder of it. “I was thinking about getting one of those nice little angels carved on it. Do you think she would have approved?”

  “I’m sure she would,” I replied, even though I thought from my brief acquaintanceship with Pat Humphrey that she wouldn’t.

  The mother went on as if she hadn’t heard me. “Because, you know, our tastes. They weren’t alike. She never liked the clothes I used to send her. Claimed they weren’t stylish enough. I like prints. Things that are bright and cheery. But Patti just wanted beige and brown and black. Time enough for those when you’re an old woman, I told her.”

  The mother stopped talking as she realized what she’d just said. Her lips trembled, then collapsed. She hid her face in her hands. “I’m fine,” she said to her husband as he hugged her. “Really. Just give me a moment.” A few seconds later, she raised her face. Her eyes were shiny with unshed tears.

  “So,” she said to me, her voice bright in a ghastly parody of social chatter, “I know you told my husband when you talked to him on the phone, and he told me who you are, but tell me again. I’ve forgotten. I seem to be doing that a lot lately.” She unconsciously brushed the edge of her hand across her forehead. “Not being able to keep a thought in my head. Were you Patti’s friend?”

  “No,” I said gently. “I’m a private detective. But I’ve met your daughter.”

  “She was nice, wasn’t she?” the mother asked as she leaned over and dipped her hands into the carton that I’d brought.

  “Very,” I said, watching her lift things out and reverentially place them on the table.

  “She had the gift, you know.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  She paused and searched my face. I got the feeling she was seeing me for the first time. “She told you things, didn’t she?”

  I nodded.

  A hint of color bloomed on her cheeks. “She used to do that with me, too,” she confided. “Especially when she was little. Just used to blurt things out. It used to drive me crazy, because you never knew when it was going to happen. Once, when we were at the grocery store—Patti must have been about three then—she went up to this woman and told her her dog was peeing in the house because his wee wee hurt. It turned out he had a bladder infection. I just about died.”

  She fingered her cardigan. “My mother had the gift, too. It skipped me. But I’m glad. I never really wanted it. I never saw what good it does having it if it doesn’t tell you to get out of the way when a truck is coming.”

  “So then Pat wasn’t adopted?”

  “Adopted?” Her mother stared at me incredulously. “Whatever makes you say something like that?”

  I made a noncommittal noise. “It was just something someone told me.”

  “Well, I don’t know where they got that from. I really don’t,” she complained. “I tried to get pregnant for years. I had to stay in bed with Patti from my sixth to ninth month. Complete bed rest. I could only get up to pee. Ask Fred here.” She indicated her husband. “He’ll tell you.” She picked up the stuffed dog that had been lying in the carton and buried her face in it. “But she was worth it. My little baby. This smells like her.”

  “Sorry.”

  “She didn’t tell you she was adopted, did she?” her mother demanded, putting the dog on the coffee table as the thought crossed her mind.

  “No,” I reassured her as she took the photographs of her daughter out of the box, studied them one at a time, and laid them out on the coffee table.

  “She was a really good athlete,” the mother was saying. “We have a case in our den devoted to her trophies. I don’t know where she got that from, either. No one else in our family is at all athletic.” She picked up the photo of her daughter as a waitress. “She got a job in this place just so she could use the courts. Of course, she had to play after hours, when the members weren’t on them.”

  I stared at the photo of Pat Humphrey in front of the fireplace, smiling as she held a tray. I’d seen that fireplace before.

  In fact, Moss Ryan had been standing in front of it when I was speaking to him.

  Pat Humphrey had worked at the club as a waitress, and she played tennis. I remembered the tennis racket I’d seen in her hall closet and the trophy for winning a singles—or was it a doubles?—tournament. I couldn’t remember.

  Geoff played tennis there, too.

  “How long ago did she work at the club?” I asked.

  “Let me see.” Pat’s mother thought for a little while, then gave me the answer I was expecting to hear. “Of course, she’s always given readings on the side.”

  “Of course.”

  Here it was. Pat Humphrey’s entrée into Rose Taylor’s house.

  I could see it all. She and Geoff meeting on the courts, the conversations, tentative at first, something along the lines of, wouldn’t it be funny if—Everything just a joke until it turned serious. Who had come up with the idea? It must have seemed so simple. A little money for everyone. No harm done. Only now Pat Humphrey was dead. No wonder Geoff looked the way he did.

  The next day, I tracked dow
n the tennis pro at the country club. I wanted to make sure that I was right before I said anything to anyone.

  I found him in the shop straightening out shelves. He was about forty-five and had the kind of ready smile people in his business have to have if they want to stay in it for any length of time.

  “Oh, sure,” he said when I showed him Pat Humphrey’s picture. “Her. Had a very good backhand.”

  He slipped my card and the two hundred dollars I’d pushed across the counter into the pocket of his tennis whites. It was around one o’clock on a hot, sunny Monday afternoon, and the courts were deserted. Twenty years ago they would have been filled with women playing a round before the children came home from school, but now most of the women worked, too—even in this income bracket.

  “She played every chance she could get.” The pro took a shirt off the shelf and slipped it underneath the rest of the pile. “She used to sneak on the courts when she wasn’t supposed to. Not that I was going to kick her off.”

  “And why was that?”

  When he didn’t answer, I said, “Was it because she was friends with one of the members?”

  He got busy rearranging the next pile of shirts. “Listen, if you’re looking for someone to swear out an affidavit in a divorce proceeding, you’re speaking to the wrong person. If I talked about everything I see going on here, I’d be out of a job.”

  “This has nothing to do with a divorce. It has to do with a possible homicide.”

  The pro lifted his head. His expression indicated that as long as no one was killed on his court, he didn’t care. “This is a very small community. I say something to you, and you say something to someone else, and pretty soon everyone knows where the story originated, and bang, I’m out of a job.”

  “I’m not asking you to say anything.”

  “Then what are you asking me to do?”

  “To nod if I mention the right name.”

  “Which is?”

  “Geoff.”

  “There are a lot of guys that go by that name here,” he observed as he nodded, picked up a racket, and started inspecting it.