“Saturday night, I been watchin television, musta been about one in the mornin’ when I went in the bedroom. She’d been out on the beach all day, had herself too much sun, turned in early. Way I happened to spot the pitcher, I planned to do some fishin the next day, Sunday, and there was this ole pair of boots I kept in the back there, way back in the closet, an’ thass where the pitcher was, face to the wall. So I wondered whut it was doin there, an’ juss then she got up t’go to the bathroom an’ I ast her. An’ then it all come out.”
“What did she tell you?”
“Said it was her an’ Lloyd in that pitcher, said they’d begun seein each other reg’lar in Germany, right after that night they fust met. Said she... Mr. Hope, I can’t tell you this, it hurts me to have to say this. Thass why I been keepin it all inside me, you unnerstan? Because of the shame of it.”
“Tell me,” I said.
“She... tole me she loved him, Mr. Hope. Said she’d... loved him from the start.”
“What happened then?”
“I got dressed an’ left for Miami.”
“Why?”
“To go fine him,” Harper said, and suddenly raised his head and looked directly into my eyes. “To kill him, Mr. Hope. Thass why I went to Pompano an’ Vero Beach. Thass why I went back to Miami when I couldn’t find him either of those places. To kill him. I planned to stay in Miami till hell froze over, waitin for him to come home from wherever he was. But then I heard the news about Michelle, an’ I come right back here to Calusa. I busted outa jail to go lookin for him again, Mr. Hope. They’s still business needs tendin to, Mr. Hope. Once I get outta here—”
“Let’s worry about that later, okay? Right now, they’re going to ask you about Sally Owen’s murder. You’re not to answer a single question, do you understand?”
“I dinn plan to anyway, Mr. Hope. I answered all they questions ’bout Michelle, an’ I ended up in jail. I dinn kill Sally Owen neither, an’ I don’t plan to tell them nothin now but my name, rank, an’ serial number.”
“Name, rank, and serial number, right,” I said, and smiled for the first time in three days.
I got home at a little after seven that night, mixed myself a martini, and then went directly into the study to play back the messages on the answering machine. There were only three crank calls; sic transit gloria mundi. One of the callers was my secret admirer, Lucille. “Still waiting for your call, honey,” she said, and hung up. The other two calls were from men who described in detail what they would do to me if that nigger didn’t get the electric chair. Castration was the gist.
The next call was from Jim Willoughby.
“Matthew,” he said, “don’t bother calling me back, okay? I simply want you to know I’m ending my association with you on this case. I don’t like the way you’ve been handling it, I feel in fact that you’ve jeopardized any chance we might have had for an acquittal, and I want out. Good luck with it.”
Mealymouthed Eliot McLaughlin was the next caller.
“Matthew, this is Eliot,” he said. “I’d like you to call me back on this very serious matter of breaching the settlement agreement. I think you know what I’m referring to, Matthew. Hasta la vista.”
Stupid son of a bitch, I thought.
“Matthew,” the next caller said, “this is Frank. Your partner, remember? I wanted to remind you that you’ve got a closing at Tricity tomorrow morning at nine. Our fee is close to twenty thousand dollars on this one, need I say more? Rumor in the trade has it that you’re planning to open an office in Miami. Is that true?”
I smiled.
The machine hummed.
I snapped it off, and then picked up the receiver and dialed Kitty Reynolds’s number. She answered on the fifth ring.
“Miss Reynolds,” I said, “this is Matthew Hope.”
“Oh,” she said.
“I’d like to ask you some questions if I may. Will you be home for a while?”
“Well, actually...”
“Yes?”
“I was just on my way out to dinner.”
“What time will you be back, Miss Reynolds?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Would ten o’clock be convenient?”
“Well... can’t this wait till morning?”
“I’d rather talk to you tonight, if that’s all right with you.”
“Well then... can you make it a bit later?”
“Ten-thirty?”
“Eleven?”
“I’ll be there at eleven. Tell the security guard I’m expected, will you?”
I put the receiver back on the cradle, took off my jacket, and went out into the kitchen. In the freezer compartment of the refrigerator, I found a package of frozen chicken cacciatore, read the instructions on the back of the box, set a pot of water to boil, and then mixed myself a second martini. When the water was boiling, I dropped the plastic package into it, set the timer on my Japanese watch for twenty minutes, and then went into the living room and tried to make sense of the bits and pieces of information I now possessed.
There were still some questions that needed answering.
Why had Michelle Benois, for example — apparently enough in love with Lloyd Davis to have followed him to the States three months after he’d left Germany — settled for marriage with Harper instead?
Why had Michelle waited two weeks before coming to Calusa to find Harper?
Where had Lloyd Davis gone when he’d begged off drill at Vero Beach early Sunday morning, November 15, after receiving a phone call from—
Who?
Where had he been since?
Where was he now?
And what the hell was The Oreo?
Lots of questions.
The timer on my watch went off. I went out into the kitchen, spooned the plastic bag out of the boiling water, cut off one corner of it with a pair of scissors, spilled my chicken cacciatore out onto a plate, sat down at the kitchen table to eat, and hoped all through the meager meal that Kitty Reynolds would have the answer to at least one of those questions when I saw her at eleven o’clock.
I asked her flat out.
“What’s The Oreo?”
She answered me flat out.
“I have no idea.”
“What does that word mean to you?”
“Nothing. What does it mean to you?”
“It means a cookie. A layer of white icing between two chocolate wafers.”
“Oh yes,” she said, “of course. Oreo cookies.”
We were sitting in her living room. She was dressed more sedately than I’d ever seen her, wearing a simple navy-blue linen dress with muted horizontal stripes of a paler blue and pink, a checked sash in the same colors wrapped around her waist. A fire was going on the grate; apparently she’d learned how to make one since the last time I’d seen her.
“Does an Oreo cookie suggest anything to you?” I asked.
“What could it possibly suggest? Are you hungry?”
“No.”
“Then why are you asking me about cookies?”
“Lloyd Davis’s wife told me Sally Owen had given her a painting — and I’m quoting now — ‘from when we still had The Oreo.’ ”
“Leona’s a junkie,” Kitty said, “I wouldn’t trust anything she—”
“Oh? How do you happen to know that?”
“Well... it’s common knowledge.”
“Have you seen her recently?”
“No, but—”
“Have you seen Lloyd Davis recently?”
“Not since we had the committee.”
“Was Leona a drug addict at the time?”
“I really don’t know.”
“Then how do you know she’s an addict now?”
“Look, Mr. Hope, I’m not under oath here. I was kind enough to let you come here, but you can just walk right out again if this is going to turn into a third degree. I don’t know anything about when Leona got to be an addict, I just know she is one, period. And I don’t know anything about Sally’s black-and-white paintings, either, or this Oreo you’re—”