And we did. Another roadside diner, this one looked like it was a haven for the trucks that increasingly plied the three-year-old highway, offering food and gas twenty-four hours each day.
We cleaned up, ate up, and gassed up all in under half an hour. We were back on the road by seven. I didn’t ask what the big hurry was simply because I was still too tired to formulate the question. And I don’t think we’d been on the road ten minutes before I was fully asleep.
Once again it was the cessation of movement that woke me.
“We’re here,” Dex said, as he saw my head come up.
“Where’s here?” It felt like a replay of the previous day’s stop at the diner on our way to San Francisco. Though, if possible, this time I was even more disoriented than I had been then. We weren’t at my house. And we weren’t at the office. It took me a moment, and then I recognized our surroundings. “We’re at Lafayette Square?” I groaned.
Dex nodded. “I told you, I wanted to tell Mrs. Dempsey straightaway.”
“You told me?” I thought for a moment. “No. No, you didn’t. I’d have remembered that.”
“Maybe you were asleep,” Dex admitted, as he got out of the car. “Anyway, I stopped at Port Harford and called her. She’s expecting us.”
Before I followed, I pulled the rearview mirror toward the passenger seat and peered cautiously at myself. My pale and tired face peered back. Just as I’d feared, I was completely beyond hope. My hair looked as though … well, as though I’d slept in a car. And the cosmetics Morgana had applied so carefully the night before were doing nothing to help the situation. Dex stood outside the car impatiently, but I wouldn’t budge until I’d at least pulled a comb through my hair and taken a couple of swipes at the bruised makeup.
“You could have dropped me off at home before we came over here,” I groused, while we waited for the door to open. When it did, all thoughts of grousing were swept away. Though it was not yet six o’clock at night, Lila Dempsey was wearing a peignoir with a fur-trimmed collar and little else. Her getup
didn’t leave much to the imagination. The pale lilac material clung to her like a shimmery skin.
“Mr. Theroux,” she said, ignoring me completely. “It’s very good of you to see me at home. Please come in.”
She led the way from the huge foyer into an even larger sitting room. The entrance was through one of the hallways on the right that I hadn’t chosen on the night Dex and I had been there. It was a dramatic room done in shades of ivory and rose. A woman’s room, I thought, wondering if Mr. Dempsey’s sitting room was somewhere else in the big house. Or maybe he’d have a smoking room or a den or a trophy room or some other such room marked with an appropriately masculine name.
“Please,” she said, standing in front of a rose damask davenport with a couple of armchairs in the same pale fabric. A coffee table stood in front of it; a crystal ashtray and some matching glasses and a decanter holding amber liquid sat upon it. “Have a seat.”
We did as she asked, Dex and I each taking an armchair, while Lila Dempsey half reclined on the davenport. “Can I offer either of you a drink?” she asked, indicating the decanter. I think she asked us both, but her eyes never left Dex’s while she spoke. It was an offer, but to my ears it sounded like an invitation as well.
Dex accepted, then shot me a look that said I should do the same. Perhaps he thought that accepting her offer of good bootleg whiskey was the least we could do, considering the news we brought. I shrugged and asked for a small one. After all, I didn’t have to actually drink it.
Lila Dempsey poured an inch or so of whiskey into each of the crystal glasses. She handed one glass carefully to Dex, pushed one unceremoniously across the coffee table at me, then took a sip of her own drink.
“So Mr. Theroux,” she said, reaching for a cigarette from a dispenser on a side table. “The fact that you’re here makes me think you have news for me.”
She sat on the sofa expectantly, the unlit cigarette poised in her hand. Dex obligingly plucked a crystal lighter from the coffee table and lit it for her, then helped himself to one of the cigarettes. Since Lila Dempsey hadn’t acknowledged my presence at all, besides the moment when she slid my drink over to me, I felt invisible. That was fine. Considering the news we’d brought, invisible was probably a good place to be. I settled into the big chair and watched the scene unfold.
“Mrs. Dempsey, I take it you haven’t been notified yet?”
“Who?” she said. “Who hasn’t notified me of what?”
Dex took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know quite how to say this. I suppose you might already have surmised from this personal visit that our news is not good.”
“What?” She looked genuinely surprised. She took a long drag from her nearly new cigarette. Then, like a proper lady, she dropped it whole and still smoking into the ashtray. Dex looked thoughtful while he picked it up carefully and extinguished it for her. I could tell he was thinking about just what to say.
“Your husband … your husband appears to have gone to San Francisco, just as you supposed he had.”
Lila Dempsey nodded. Leaned forward slightly. “Yes … and?”
“I was not able to ascertain the entire extent of his business there.” Dex spoke so carefully I wondered if I even knew everything that he did. “But… well, Mrs. Dempsey, there’s just no sweet way to say this. I’m afraid your husband is dead, ma’am.”
I was watching Lila Dempsey closely while Dex broke the news. I was looking, I guess, for signs of either guilt or lack of surprise. I saw neither. The woman’s face registered genuine shock and distress, which I thought was rather at odds with the fact that she’d seemed disappointed that Dex hadn’t come alone.
Now, with word of her husband’s death new and raw, she finally acknowledged my presence. Her eyes sought mine out; something plaintive in them. “Is this true?” she asked, as though hoping I’d refute it.
“I’m afraid so, Mrs. Dempsey,” I said. “I saw him with my own eyes.”
“I’m surprised the coroner’s office up there hasn’t called you already.”
“I’ve been out a lot the last few days,” Lila said. “I might have missed the call.”
“Expect a call from them then,” Dex said, not unkindly.
“And I would imagine they’ll want you to come and identify the body,” Dex added, “but at this point I don’t think there’s really any doubt.”
I don’t know how I expected Lila Dempsey to act when we told her the news of her husband’s death—I hadn’t expected her to fall to pieces or anything—but her reaction was different than I thought it would be. It was the quiet devastation that impressed me most deeply. And in that moment I realized that, for whatever reason, the flirtatiousness with Dex had been an act.
After Dex told her that her husband was dead, Lila Dempsey didn’t scream at an unforgiving god; she didn’t rend her clothes or pull her hair. Nor did she say, “What shall I do now?” But I heard it, just the same. I heard it in the helpless movements of her hands, like the useless flight attempts of small, damaged birds. And I heard it in the pulse I could see jump at the base of her pale throat. I heard it in every movement, every motion, every breath she took. It was as though her center had been pulled away. One thing was clear to me from this quiet, drama-less display: whatever else she was or had been, Lila Dempsey hadn’t known about her husband’s death.
While Mrs. Dempsey flailed with these new emotions and Dex did his best to comfort her, I excused myself. Lila didn’t look up when I told her I was going to use the powder room, and as it was, I didn’t need directions.
In the champagne-and-rose-colored bathroom I locked the door, and then, steeling myself against images of the dead man, I stepped right into the tub. I’d seen the corpse myself. And what had Dex’s friend said? The bullet had gone right through him. That meant that if he’d died in this room, there would be some evidence.
I found what I was look
ing for about halfway up the wall. I found a place where the perfect tiles were even more perfect. One was a little more rose, another slightly less champagne, and unmistakably, the grout between them was brighter, newer. I wouldn’t have bet my life on it, but it looked to me as though those tiles had been recently replaced.
I used the bathroom uneasily, uncomfortable even drying my hands on the towel. I ran my brush through my hair and rubbed my finger on my teeth, but I knew that the balance of my own repairs would have to wait until I got home.
Back in the sitting room, Dex looked up gratefully when I came into the room. I didn’t want to stay any longer, and I could see he didn’t want to either. There wasn’t any reason. The cat-and-mouse game Lila Dempsey had enjoyed with Dex was over now. It was clear the fun had gone out of it for her. We could see that she needed and wanted to be alone, perhaps to lick her wounds and figure out what came next.
She let us out herself, but at the door she put a hand on Dex’s arm to stop him.
“I can’t face it alone, Mr. Theroux,” she said. I could see that her nails were buffed to a dull shine, but they were without color.
“What’s that, Mrs. Dempsey?” he said, his hat still in his hands.
“San Francisco, Mr. Theroux. Identifying the body, as you said. I can’t… I couldn’t bear it. And I’ll need to make arrangements for … for the body to come … to come back home. Will you come with me? Please. I’d pay you, of course. Your usual rates.”
Dex agreed, of course. It wasn’t like he had a million other things to do, and what the hell, he was probably thinking, he already had a car.
They arranged that he’d pick her up the following day.
I didn’t try to get included in the trip. Genuine grief or no, I figured I’d had enough of Lila Dempsey to last me a lifetime.
CHAPTER THIRTY
BY THE TIME I GOT HOME, I was so tired I could >barely see straight, despite the extended nap I’d had in the car. There’s sleep, I guess, and then there’s sleep. The kind you get in a car can’t compare to the good quality stuff you get in your own bed.
But before I got anywhere near that peace and quiet, there was Marjorie to deal with. Nor had I gotten very far either. She accosted me on the first-floor landing, the day’s dying light moving playfully through the stained-glass window, casting odd shadows on both our faces and our hands. She had a broom in hand, and it looked as though she’d been carefully sweeping the polished wood stairs and the carpet that covered them. She wasn’t fooling me any, though. I had a hunch she’d been doing busywork at the front of the house all day, in order to be certain not to miss me on my return. I chided myself for being paranoid, but her first words made me realize I hadn’t been.
Marjorie told me in no uncertain terms that she’d been having kittens about my absence. Those were the words she used.
“But, dear Marjorie, I told you I was going. I’m sure I did.”
“Hmph!” she sniffed, sweeping a perfectly clean riser absently, as though a lack of activity at this moment was unthinkable. “Is that supposed to make me feel better? You off in that city of vice with that employer of yours?”
I hid my smile as well as I could behind my hand. I should have spared myself the effort. Marjorie saw it, of course.
“And don’t you smile that way, miss! I know what youngsters get up to in these crazy times.”
“Well, Marjorie, city of vice? You’ll have to admit that’s somewhat melodramatic. It’s just a city like any other.”
“Don’t you read the newspaper?”
I gave up that angle. I knew what a losing battle looked like when I saw it.
“I told you before I left that Dex was going anyway. I thought tagging along would give me an opportunity to catch up with my friends.”
“And did it?” she demanded.
“It did. Though not as much as I might have liked because here I am, back already. And all in one piece too.” I was dog tired, but I gave her the most winning smile I could muster.
“And Mr. Theroux. He was … that is, was he …” I waited for it. I didn’t know where she was going, so I couldn’t offer any help. “Was he a gentleman?” she said finally.
“Dex? Of course, Marjorie. He doesn’t think of me that way at all.” The words earned me another grunt, but I could see she was somewhat mollified. As she could see for herself, I was back safe and sound, even if I was almost asleep on my feet. “I’m just that tired,” I said, taking a step up. “And I have to go to the office tomorrow. Maybe we can talk in the morning over breakfast.”Marjorie seemed instantly contrite. “Of course, Miss Katherine. I’m sorry. I forgot myself this time. I was just so worried.”
We said good-night and I started to head up the stairs, but just as I got to my room, she caught up with me again. “One thing, Miss Katherine. It’s about your friend, Mrs. Jergens.”
“Brucie?” I asked somewhat guiltily. I hadn’t given her a thought in what felt like days. “How is she?”
“Well, that’s just it, miss. She’s not been back at all.”
The words so caught me by surprise, I took a moment to filter them. “She’s not here?”
“No, miss. In fact, I’ve not seen her since that first evening, when you all went out.”
I checked Brucie’s room. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe Marjorie, but I wanted to see for myself.
Sure enough, everything was just as it had been when I’d last seen it. The disarray we’d left when we prepared to go out. The note I’d written for Brucie before I left for San Francisco. The flowers in a vase on the bureau, not dead but certainly beginning to look rather tired.
Marjorie had followed me up the stairs and was framed in the doorway. “You see?” she said. “She’s not been back at all.”
“I do see, Marjorie. And it’s very worrisome. I’ll call Mustard from the office tomorrow. It’s possible he knows where she is.”
I said it lightly. I meant it that way too. Probably, I told myself, she was holed up someplace comfortable, recovering from her injuries, while some besotted someone—and it wasn’t hard to paint Mustard into that picture—peeled grapes for her.
I told myself these things, and I tried to sound convincing. But I couldn’t convince myself, and even to me the words felt quite hollow. At some level I feared the very worst.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
THE NEXT DAY I was happy to take Angels Flight down Bunker Hill and then walk the few blocks to the office in bright sunshine. The funny thing about a routine is you don’t miss it until it’s gone. Parts of the trip to San Francisco had been really enjoyable, but it was good to be back and doing the things that made up my everyday life.
Stopping for Dex’s ice before I remembered he’d be in San Francisco and wouldn’t need it. Nodding hello to the shoeshine boy who always hung about the front doors of our building during business hours. Greeting the elevator operator and inquiring about his wife, because I knew she’d been ill.
I got a sense that something wasn’t quite right even before I tried the office door. Call it a sixth sense or even intuition, but I knew the door would be unlocked when I tried it. And I knew it had no reason to be. Dex had planned to leave in the morning without stopping by the office. No one else had a key. I looked at the lock. It was clear a key hadn’t been used, in any case. The lock was broken.
I poked my head inside, heart pounding, trying to decide what to do. Times were hard. If someone was inside trying to find valuables, they wouldn’t have much luck. But I didn’t want to surprise them either. Better to leave and go and get help. Even the elevator operator or the shoeshine boy could provide some sort of backup. And by the time I returned, maybe whoever had been in the office would have cleared out with whatever pitiful plunder Dex’s office was likely to turn up.
I started to back up the way I’d come, but a voice stopped me. A young man emerged from behind the door, a gun clutched tightly in his fist. Though he looked like he might know how to use it, his simple country clothes
put a lie to possible expertise with a handgun. He aimed the gun squarely at my chest and motioned for me to enter the office and close the door behind me. I didn’t feel like I had a lot of choice.
“You’re Kitty Pangborn,” he said. It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t even sure I could have said anything at that point; my voice seemed trapped somewhere in my chest. But the fact that he knew my name—and that he knew me as Kitty—gave me pause. He wasn’t just here for the typewriter then. Or Dex’s Chicago World’s Fair highball glass. He knew who I was.
He waved the gun around some, indicating I should take a seat in one of the waiting room chairs. “And no funny stuff,” he warned. He needn’t have worried on that account. All of my funny bones were suppressed at that moment. I didn’t feel humorous at all.
I took a seat gingerly, careful not to do anything he might construe as funny. The man wasn’t dressed like a killer, but since he was armed with a handgun and he didn’t seem shy with it, I judged him to be very dangerous indeed.
I sat primly on the hard-backed chair—my hands on my purse, my purse on my lap—and looked up at him expectantly. I didn’t say a word.
With his free hand, he lit a cigarette, dropping the spent match on the floor. I looked at it with distaste but didn’t say anything.
“I’m looking for my sister,” he said.
“Well, you’ve come to the right place,” I said, mustering all of the confidence I could into my voice. Instinctively trying not to show my fear. “But generally in this business, clients come with money to get us to find someone, not guns.”
“Listen to me, twist,” he said. I was surprised to find myself faintly hurt by the term. I’d heard it before, of course, but never applied to me. A twist was generally the kind of girl I’d never been. “I didn’t come here to hire a shamus. I told you, I’m looking for my sister, and I know you know where she is.” He waved the gun in a menacing way.
Death Was the Other Woman Page 15
