“And a murder in this area wouldn’t carry as high a priority as some others?”
“Now I didn’t say that, ma’am. Um, I didn’t get what your interest was in the case?”
“I want a murderer caught, chief. I’m a citizen. I worry.”
“No need to worry, Miss Cavanaugh. Our police force is very capable.” He paused. “You haven’t been threatened in any way, have you?”
“No, I have not. I have to question whether the police force is more capable for some citizens than it is for others, however.”
“What are you trying to say, ma’am?”
“I’m saying that I wonder if you’d care more about Mr. Gateley’s death if he’d been white, and a bank president.” I could hear the chair squeak in the background as his feet came off the desk and dropped onto the floor.
“The investigating officer will be reporting to me shortly, and I can assure you the Gateley case is as important to me as every other case. It’s very difficult, you know. We have no leads, there are drugs everywhere, kids carrying weap-ons...”
“Do you suspect drugs in this instance? Or kids?”
“I, I’m going to have to go now, Miss Cavanaugh. I’ve got a call on another line. Feel free to check back with me anytime.” There was a click and then the dial tone.
Scrapper was quite right to come to me.
“I’m sure they’ll be taking a harder look at the case,” I assured him when he arrived promptly at ten. “I spoke quite harshly to Chief Wilkerson.”
He stood in the middle of my kitchen, his arms at his sides. It really does annoy me when someone doesn’t carry his end of a conversation.
“It’s possible some young hoodlum killed your friend for a few dollars,” I continued. “Or he got into a disagreement of some type. Who knows what.”
“A white man killed him.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I been checkin’. Asked all round in the right neighborhoods, if you take my meanin’. Let folks know I wanted answers. Wasn’t no black man killed Rudy. I’d aheard somethin’ about it by now.”
It was my turn to look skeptical.
Scrapper dropped out of his erect stance and leaned against the pantry door, staring at my extremely clean floor as if searching for a dirt speck. “The word is Rudy was hittin’ folks up for money. He did gardening and odd jobs for people and he... heard things. Then he’d go to these people and ask for money. Not much, you understand, but somethin’.”
“The man was a blackmailer?”
“I didn’t say he was honest. I said he was my friend.” He looked straight at me while he said this. He did not mention what he had done for my aunt. For me. He did not say, “You owe me” — which, of course, would not have made any difference.
I consider myself a reasonable woman, however, and I try to help out where I can. “Very well. I assume, since you’ve already gone to some lengths to investigate the situation, that you are now going to tell me the names of some of these people and you want me to find out what I can about them?”
Scrapper gave me two names, Thomas Scaletti and Bruce Winston, and said he would be getting more.
Thomas Scaletti was the biggest contractor in town and had recently completed a new development. Bruce Winston was a county judge known for his charitable work. Both men belonged to all the right clubs and were active in civic organizations.
“You realize whom you’re accusing?” I asked.
“I’m not accusing nobody. Rudy mentioned those names, that’s all.”
“Are you sure he didn’t mention the president? Or the pope?”
“Yes, ma’am, I’m pretty sure.”
I dropped by to visit with my sister-in-law Flora that afternoon. She has her ear to the hotline of Golden City gossip, and I rely on her frequently when I require information.
“Do have some more of that lemon bread, Jane,” she insisted. “I just made it. Did you hear about Mavis Turneau?”
I ate lemon bread and listened. When Flora paused for more coffee, I said, “How are the new Scaletti houses selling, have you heard?”
“Well, the real estate market is down, you know. That’s what Harry says anyway. You know what I think, though? I think people aren’t buying Tom’s houses because of the way he treated Harriet.”
“Oh?”
“Oh yes. He left her. Just walked out of the house and left. For some girl in her twenties. A beauty operator, can you imagine? She does Ethyl Berwin’s hair, and Ethyl says she’s real good, but still... and Tom a man in his forties, old enough to know better. ’Course, he’s been fooling around for years.”
“So it wasn’t a recent thing?”
“Well, the beauty operator is new. But she won’t last. He’s always been a chaser.”
We both shook our heads over the foolishness of men. And some women.
“I haven’t seen Gracie Winston lately, either.”
“They went to Tucson for the winter, that’s why you haven’t seen her. They just got back, and she looks like a million dollars. Louella says it’s because Gracie went to one of those fat farms while they were out there. Says she bets next year Gracie will come back with a new face.” Flora took another slice of lemon bread. “I’d be afraid of plastic surgery myself. They say it only lasts a few years and then you have to do it all over again.”
“Bruce was in your class at school, wasn’t he?” I said, directing my question to my brother Harry, who had come in while Flora was speaking. After my father died, my mother, herself a Cavanaugh, waited a proper period, then married my Uncle William and had my three brothers, Harry, Arthur, and Vincent.
Harry nodded. “Always was sharp, even back then. Everybody knew he was a go-getter.”
We chatted for a while longer, but nothing else came to light. Flora and Harry walked with me to my car.
“What do you think of my roses, Jane?” Flora asked as we went down the steps. “Aren’t they lovely? That new gardener Harry hired was really doing wonders for them. Too bad somebody had to shoot him.”
Harry’s mouth set in a grim line, and he said nothing.
I ate my dinner and watched the news that night just as I always do. But my mind was on other things. Tom Scaletti was in the midst of a messy divorce, Gracie Winston might have visited a health ranch.
And Rudy Gateley had worked for my brother.
It probably meant nothing. Cavanaugh men are known for their conservative politics, their gift for mediocrity, and their penchant for hunting small animals that can’t fight back. They are admired for their skills in turning a financial profit.
But killing a man? My brother Harry? Cavanaugh men are not that resourceful. (Even my brother Vincent, who rushed off after graduation to join the military and immediately got sent to Korea, probably wasn’t that good at killing; he signed up in June and was dead before Christmas.)
I spent the next day downtown at City Hall and the following day at the public library. It’s amazing what people can learn if they’re willing to spend some time and work at it a bit.
I asked Betty about Rudolph Gateley when she came to clean.
“He’s dead,” she said. “What you want to know about him for?”
“I know he’s dead. I wondered if you knew him.”
“I knew him.”
“What was he like?”
She finished dusting my mother’s gate-legged table before she answered. “He was... sly. Slick, when he was younger; just oily when he got old. Used to work at the Rancher’s Club, you ’member it?”
I nodded. The Rancher’s Club had been a popular supper club several years ago. Rumor had it that high stake poker games and rowdy parties were conducted there and that many a prestigious businessman attended. It was on its way to becoming a possible scandal when one morning the employees arrived to find that the owner had cleaned out his bank account and left town.