Thicker Than Blood (Alo Nudger Series)

by John Lutz

  Car trouble! Oh, Nudger just bet! “Did his car start okay so he could drive home?”

  A long, exasperated sigh. “Nudger?”

  “I mean, it’s a reasonable question. Isn’t it a reasonable question? Or am I being unreasonable?”

  “Nudger?”

  “You said he was having car trouble. So maybe he’d have to spend the night someplace else other than at home, if one of his fuel injectors got clogged or something.”

  “Nudger?”

  “What?”

  “Come over here. Right now. And stop on your way and buy some of those delicious little doughnuts. After all that pasta, I’m in the mood for something sweet.”

  He decided he could probably force down a few more MunchaBunches.

  CHAPTER 15

  By morning Nudger was convinced that Claudia’s evening with Biff Archway and spaghetti had been innocent. She lay beside him in her bed, listening to National Public Radio on the clock radio that had awakened them. A man was being interviewed about unnecessary cruelty practiced by exterminators on insects.

  Nudger was stretched out on his back with his hands behind his head. Like Claudia, he was nude and on top of the sheets. The morning was already warm and the air conditioner had been overworked last night until the condenser had frozen, so it wasn’t running at peak efficiency. Nudger liked to think he’d had something to do with its inability to cool the room.

  Traffic noises were building up outside, a steadily increasing hum from over on busy Grand Avenue, and the occasional swish of cars passing below on Wilmington. Satiated with lovemaking and sleep, Nudger was thinking of other matters. Such as Dale Rand and the stock market. Rand might be trading on inside information to make himself richer, but there was nothing to suggest it had anything to do with Norva Beane’s bad investments.

  He said, “I don’t think there’s any connection.”

  Claudia said, “Who knows what insects feel?”

  “No, I mean I don’t think there’s any connection between Dale Rand and Fred McMahon.”

  “They have families too,” the man on the radio said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Claudia asked.

  “It means I’m probably finished with the case. Whatever Rand’s into, it apparently doesn’t have anything to do with my client.”

  “I mean, about families.”

  “I don’t know. But I can’t take her money on false pretenses. She’s already lost too much of it where Rand’s concerned.”

  “Social insects, I suppose he meant. Like ants and bees.”

  “She probably made some bad investments and took a loss when the market went down. It’d be natural for her to blame somebody else.”

  “Like you will.”

  “What?”

  “Ants and bees. I guess you could say they have families.”

  “I guess,” Nudger said.

  Claudia switched off the radio and kissed his forehead, then swiveled on the mattress so she could stand up and go into the bathroom to shower. Nudger turned his head to watch her walk. Every movement was a wonderful mystery. He pondered whether other men derived the same pleasure from observing Claudia walk. Archway, probably, but what did that matter?

  When he heard the shower running, he climbed out of bed and trudged into the bathroom to try to talk his way under the water with Claudia. She’d be in a no-nonsense frame of mind, hurrying to leave for work on time. but it was worth a try.

  She didn’t see things his way in the steamy bathroom. Not at all.

  By the time he was finished showering, she was already dressed. Still damp, he slipped into yesterday’s clothes. They were only slightly wrinkled, he decided. He could make do with them instead of driving over to his apartment to change. And he’d shaved with one of Claudia’s disposable razors. He saw himself as presentable even if a little mussed and damp.

  When he joined Claudia in the kitchen for breakfast, she looked him over and said nothing.

  “I look neat enough?” he asked.

  “Did you ever see any of those modern sculptures of everyday solid objects made soft and melting?”

  “No. How do I look?”

  “You’ll do.” She poured coffee for both of them and set the cups on the table. She was wearing a navy-blue dress with white trim, white high heels. The simpler she dressed, the more elegant she became. She glanced again at him. “Have you put on a few pounds?”

  “No. Why do you ask?”

  “I noticed last night, when you weren’t wearing any clothes, you looked as if you might be gaining weight.”

  “I don’t know why I should be,” he said, more gruffly than he’d intended.

  She said nothing as she sat down across from him at the table.

  They finished the remaining MunchaBunch doughnuts for breakfast, and Nudger poured himself a second cup of coffee.

  “I better get out of here if I’m going to get to work on time.” She kissed him on the lips, and he slipped an arm around her and held her fast, pulling her down on his lap. She said, “I told you, I might be late. Be fair, Nudger.”

  He released his grip on her, knowing she was right, he was going too far. Fair was his middle name. Fair was what often got him into trouble. Fair was a curse. For instance, without fair, Claudia would still be in his lap.

  She reminded him to lock up when he left, then tap-tapped on her high heels across tile, then silent carpet, then wood, to the front door. The door opened and closed and he heard her descend the stairs to the street.

  He carried his coffee into the living room and saw that she’d brought in the morning newspaper from the hall and had tossed it on the sofa for him to read. After settling into the soft cushions, he leisurely finished his coffee and caught up on the greater misery beyond his own life.

  Well, it wasn’t all misery. Not on the financial page, anyway. Synpac was up a quarter, and Fortune Fashions was up a half. Nudger smiled, visions of feather boas dancing through his mind. He turned to the sports page and saw that the Cardinals had scored eight runs in the last of the ninth and defeated the Cubs nine to eight. He wished now he’d gone to dinner with Danny and watched the game on Ray’s TV.

  Still smiling, he decided things were breaking right and the day held bright promise. Why spoil it by reading his horoscope. It might tell him he was out of tomorrows. After all, if those readings were accurate, everybody had to get that prediction eventually, yet you seldom if ever saw it in the paper. He moved to toss the section of paper containing daily horoscopes aside, spilling a dribble of hot coffee in his lap and staining his pants.

  It was ten o’clock by the time he’d driven to his apartment, showered again, and changed clothes. His bathroom scale did indicate that he’d gained three or four pounds, depending on how he shifted his weight from toes to heels. But when he stepped off the scale, he noticed the needle didn’t return quite all the way to zero. He was pretty sure the scale was registering slightly on the high side.

  Feeling better about himself, he called Norva Beane to tell her they needed to talk.

  She offered him lemonade again, but this time he refused. While she poured some for herself in the kitchen, he sat on the sofa in her cheap but clean living room and stared at the row of stuffed bears on the shelf above the stereo. They seemed to be staring back at him as if they knew something he didn’t and it amused them immensely.

  Norva came back into the living room with her lemonade and sat in a chair opposite Nudger. She was wearing slacks with a Mickey Mouse pattern on them, and she was barefoot again. Maybe she never wore shoes when she was home, because of her country origins. She raised her cheese glass of lemonade out toward him and looked at him questioningly. “You sure?”

  “Thanks, but I’m really not thirsty.” He scratched a mosquito bite on the side of his neck and watched her sip. A lemon rind was floating among the ice cubes, and she deftly moved it out of the way with the tip of her tongue as she tilted the glass toward her lips. Lemonade seemed to be an art wi
th her, the making and the drinking.

  She carefully placed the wet glass on a cork coaster on the coffee table and sat back, clasping her hands over one raised knee. “So, you went and learned something?”

  “Yes and no. Dale Rand’s into some nasty business, but it’s got nothing to do with Fred McMahon, and there’s no evidence it has anything to do with your investments.”

  Norva said, “If you’ll pardon my French, that’s bullshit.”

  “Maybe,” Nudger admitted, “but it would be impossible to prove. You’re throwing good money after—”

  “So tell me what you learned,” Norva interrupted. “About everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “It’s why I went and hired you, to get my money’s worth. The good money I’m throwing after—”

  He got her point. “I followed Rand, listened in on conversations with business associates, eavesdropped on family conversations.”

  Norva lowered her leg and rocked forward, her elbows on her knees. “However did you do that?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Thing is, there was no conversation with McMahon about junk-bond or stock swindles, no conversation with McMahon at all. Nothing to indicate the two men ever so much as met.”

  “So what did him and his wife talk about?”

  “They didn’t talk much, but they argued a lot. Mostly about Luanne, their teenage daughter.”

  “What about Luanne?”

  “She runs around, stays out late, cuts classes. The usual thing.”

  “Hm. The wife got some kinda problem?”

  “Why would you ask?”

  “I dunno. I got an extra sense. All us Beanes has got it. If you doubt my word, you can ask anybody down around Possum Run. They’ll all tell you.”

  “The wife drinks too much.”

  “Well, that’s a curse I seen before. What about Rand? You mentioned he was into something nasty.”

  Nudger sighed. She’d paid him to find out about Rand, so maybe she was entitled to know. Well, definitely she was entitled to know. But not about the inside information on stocks. She wouldn’t have any money to invest anyway; that was why she’d hired Nudger, because she’d taken a bath in junk bonds. He said, “I saw him in the company of some known criminals.”

  “Oh? What kinda criminals?”

  “Not white-collar types. People in drugs, prostitution, those kinda things.”

  “If he’s involved in that, how come you don’t think he stole my money?”

  “I don’t know how he’s involved with those people, and proving he stole your money would be almost impossible. If I took this investigation any further, I’d be stealing your money.” He scratched again at the mosquito bite on his neck. “You know, Norva, a lot of people lost a lot of money on junk bonds.”

  Norva picked up her glass and sort of nibbled at the lemonade. Then she placed the glass back on the coaster. She didn’t seem to have heard him. “What about the daughter?”

  “Huh?”

  “There’s something more about the daughter, Luanne. I can feel it.”

  Wondering about country wisdom, Nudger said, “I’ve only got a suspicion, from listening to tapes of what went on inside the house.”

  “You’re working for me, so I got a right to know even your suspicions.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t surprise me if Rand was sleeping with his daughter.”

  Norva’s mouth fell open and she went pale.

  “It happens,” Nudger said. “But I’m not positive it’s happening with Rand and Luanne.”

  “Drugs, prostitution, incest with a child . . . What kinda man is he? An animal like that, what else might he be doing?”

  Nudger decided not to mention Rand’s presence in the house of a man who was almost certainly murdered.

  Apparently her sixth sense didn’t detect that, because.she didn’t pursue it.

  “This Luanne,” she said, “she seem happy at all?”

  “Not that I could tell,” Nudger said.

  “Gotta feel for a kid in that position,” Norva said, her voice breaking.

  “If she is in that position.”

  “She surely is. I can sense it.”

  “I’m not so sure. In any event, there’s not enough evidence for me to notify the police. Also, the way I came by the information. Well . . . ”

  “It wasn’t legal?”

  “Let’s call it a gray area. Anyway, none of it has anything to do with junk bonds or mismanaged funds.”

  “What’s the wife say about Rand and their daughter?”

  She certainly seemed hung up on that. Maybe she was an incest survivor herself. “She doesn’t say much. If it is true, which isn’t positive, I’d say the wife is into denial.”

  “How could that be, if she can stop what’s happening?”

  “Admitting that about her husband and daughter would mean the end of her world. And it would mean admitting something about herself, at least in her mind. And she probably has strong suspicions but no actual proof. So, like a lot of other women in that position, she simply denies there’s a problem. The way not to have to deal with it is not to believe it’s happening in the first place.”

  Norva ran the tip of her tongue over her teeth. “Maybe that makes sense, if you say so. I s’pect that’s why she drinks. ”

  “You’re jumping to conclusions,” Nudger cautioned. The way you did about a bond swindle and Fred McMahon. “I told you there might not be anything like that going on between Rand and his daughter.”

  Norva scrunched up her face, then shook her head from side to side violently, as if tossing away an unpleasant thought. “Yeah, I s’pose you’re right. I just can’t get it outa my mind Rand’s a creepy, untrustworthy sonuvabitch.”

  “Oh, you’re probably right about that. But the world’s full of them. They even hold conventions.”

  “Really?”

  “No, no, I was kidding.” He stood up. “I’ll send you an itemized bill, along with a refund.”

  She pushed herself up from her chair. “Whatever you think’s fair, Mr. Nudger. I sense you’re a fair man.”

  Scary.

  She saw him to the door, and they shook hands with an awkward formality.

  As he was lowering himself into the Granada, he glanced up and was sure he saw her duck back out of sight from watching him out a window.

  He had a sense about her, too, but he wasn’t sure what it meant.

  CHAPTER 16

  When Nudger got to his office there was a message on the machine to call Hammersmith at the Third.

  Instead of picking up the phone, he went down to the doughnut shop and waited for the air conditioner to make the stifling office habitable before returning Hammersmith’s call. Danny was serving coffee to a chunky, middle-aged woman at the end of the counter. Nudger recognized her, thinking she worked down the street at K-mart. She gazed morosely into her cup, as if it might contain hemlock, and didn’t look up when Danny walked away from her to where Nudger had taken a stool at the opposite end of the counter. Maybe she was working up the nerve to buy a doughnut.

  Danny coaxed another cup of coffee from the complex network of gauges and pipes running down the face of the steel urn and placed it in front of Nudger on the counter. “Doughnut, Nudge?”

  “Not this morning.”

  Danny’s sad eyes gazed with concern from their pouches. “Tummy bothering you again?”

  “Always.”

  “Eileen?”

  “Among others.”

  “Oh, yeah! Speaking of others, there was this fella came by to see you early this morning.”

  “Fella?”

  “Yup.”

  “Say what he wanted?”

  “Sure.” Danny untucked his gray towel from his belt and moved it in a circular motion on the stainless-steel counter.

  “Say what he wanted.”

  “I said sure.”

  “I mean say what he wanted—to me.”

  “I was gonna. He said he needed to
talk to you about your golf game. I didn’t know you played golf, Nudge. Some game that is. Looks like a kinda useless exercise to me. Heck, you might as well walk up to the hole with the ball in your hand and—”

  “What did this fella look like?” Nudger asked. Or maybe it was his stomach that asked.

  “Black guy, real well dressed in a casual sorta way. Wearing a fancy earring, like a Nazi trinket dangling on the end of a little gold chain. I told him you’d likely be along soon if he wanted to wait, offered him coffee and a Dunker Delite, but he said no, he had things to do and he’d catch you later. Told me to make sure you knew he was here, and to tell you he was looking forward to him and you teeing off together again real soon. I asked his name, but he just smiled and walked on out.”

  Nudger stared into his coffee like the woman down the counter. He felt sick.

  “He’s a fella you golf with, I guess.”

  Nudger continued to stare silently, trying with willpower to keep his stomach in delicate balance.

  “Sure you don’t want a doughnut, Nudge?”

  “Argh!”

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. ’Course. I better get back up to the office. If that guy comes around again, Danny, tell him I never did come in. Then phone up to me right away, okay?”

  “You betcha.” He tucked the gray towel back in his belt. “If you’re not feeling up to par, Nudge, you best go see a doctor instead of even thinking about going golfing.”

  Nudger stared at him, then decided it was true, Danny wasn’t joking. Danny often amazed him that way.

  He lifted his hand in a brief wave to Danny, then swiveled off his stool and went outside, where he made a U-turn and went through the adjacent door and upstairs.

  The office had become reasonably cool. Nudger got a fresh roll of antacid tablets from a desk drawer and chewed and swallowed three of the chalky disks in quick succession. He wished he owned a gun, but he was afraid of them. He always had been, really. They killed people, and often the wrong party.

  He assured himself that if Aaron of the earring did show up again, he could swear to him he was off the case, no longer following Dale Rand, and Aaron would believe him and leave him alone. It was possible, anyway.