“Glenlivet. What about him?”
“Remember his name?”
“Nope. My business is drinks, not names.”
I said to Quarles, “Maybe another glass of port will help you dredge it up,” and signaled to the bartender.
“Thank you, sir.” Quarles closed his eyes, his face screwed up with effort. Pretty soon he opened them again and sighed and shook his head. “Just can’t quite get it. Foreign name, that’s all I can remember.”
“He was a foreigner?”
“Not anymore. American citizen.”
“What nationality?”
“Greek. Sure, I remember that now.” Quarles took a sip of his port. “Came over here when he was a kid, made his money in the restaurant business. What the devil was his name? Papa something. No, it sounded like ‘papa.’” Another sip, another frown that suddenly morphed into a smile. “Pappas. That’s it, Pappas.”
“First name?”
“Wasn’t Greek. American. Wait, now… same as that actor, tall fella, played in a bunch of Westerns.”
“John Wayne?”
“No sir, no, not the Duke. Famous, though, won an Oscar for that film about the lawyer and his family down south. Had ‘bird’ in the title…”
“ To Kill a Mockingbird. Gregory Peck.”
“That’s it. Real fine actor. How could I forget his name?”
“Gregory, then-Gregory Pappas. You’re sure?”
“Pretty sure. Yep, pretty sure.”
I left Quarles smiling wistfully over what remained of his port and drove up 20th Street past the McManus house. Nobody around, the driveway empty, the Room for Rent sign still absent from the front fence. No sign of Alex Chavez’s Dodge, either. Been here and gone-I wondered how he’d made out.
Selma Hightower wasn’t home. At least, nobody answered the bell. I tried to recall which of the other neighbors had been cooperative on my first canvass, picked the likeliest of them, and was hoofing it around the corner on Minnesota Street when my cell phone went off.
Tamara. With news from Alex Chavez about McManus and Carson.
“If Alex can stay with them long enough, we’ll have some idea of where they’re going,” she said when she’d relayed the gist of it. “Wherever it is, it’s north out of the city.”
“If he’s right, they’re heading for the bridge.”
“Must be on it by now. He’d’ve called back if they’d turned off. Bet you they’re running.”
“Maybe. What do you think spooked them into it?”
“Us, our investigation.”
“Virden’s disappearance? If they’re responsible, they went through a lot of trouble to cover it up and as far as they know they got away with it. Why cut and and run now?”
“They can’t be sure we’re not close to nailing their asses.”
“Would that be enough reason for you to suddenly throw up everything and take off? Because somebody might be getting close? Running is an admission of guilt, you know that.”
“What about the ID theft?”
“Minor crime compared to homicide or manslaughter. And hard to prove without a complaint being filed. Virden didn’t call the law on them and neither did we. No, that’s not it.”
“Something to do with the property or the house? Like maybe a dead body that’s starting to stink and they don’t know what to do with it?”
“Jesus. You have a gruesome turn of mind sometimes.”
“Well, that couldn’t be what happened to Rose O’Day,” Tamara said. “Over three years ago that she went missing. I wish we had the names of the more recent roomers.”
“I’ve got one name,” I said, and relayed what I’d been told about Gregory Pappas. “It may or may not be the man’s right name. Quarles’s memory is pretty shaky.”
“I’m on it soon as we hang up. You still in Dogpatch?”
“Yes.”
“Then how about you take a look around the McManus property? Perfect time for it, nobody there.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” I said. “But don’t get too excited-I’m not about to break any laws.”
“Just bend them a little, huh?”
I let that pass. “Get back to me right away if Alex has anything to report.”
“Will do.”
I left the car where it was, walked down to the McManus place. Trespassing on private property is a tricky business, but if the house was deserted I ought to be able to get away with a look around the exterior areas without making inquisitive neighbors or passersby suspicious. First rule: always act as if you belong. I opened the front gate and marched up onto the porch, not hurrying and not looking anywhere except straight ahead.
I leaned on the bell for half a minute. Empty echoes, as expected.
There was a path that angled over to the driveway. I followed that, again taking my time and trying to look purposeful, and turned down the driveway past a narrow side porch to the backyard. Beyond the house was a low building that ran most of the property’s width, fronted by an empty wire-enclosed area-kennels and dog run. The rest of the yard was flower-bordered lawn crisscrossed by flagstone paths. The near end of the kennel building ended close to a tall neighboring fence; the entrance would be around on the far side. I headed in that direction. And that was when the frantic barking and whimpering started up inside.
At least two dogs, judging from the different cadences. Which meant what, if anything? Worth taking a look.
I opened the door, stuck my head inside. Canine odors mingled strongly with those of excrement-the kind of smells you get when a place hasn’t been cleaned in a while. No lights on, the interior shrouded in gloom. I fumbled around on the walls, found a switch, and flipped it. A couple of low-wattage ceiling bulbs chased away the shadows, let me see two facing rows of wire-gated cages.
The barking and whimpering picked up as I moved along the cement floor between the cages. Two occupied, the rest empty. The bigger and louder of the dogs, the one doing the frantic barking, was a shelty that hurled himself against the gate as I passed. The other animal, smaller, short-haired, a breed I didn’t recognize, lay on her belly with her front paws scrabbling at the cement floor; the whines and whimpers she was making had a frightened, mournful edge. It wasn’t me that had them so frantic; it was hunger, thirst. The food and water dishes in both cages were empty, apparently long empty. And the cement floor in both was stained with urine, spotted with piles of feces.
Abandoned. Coldly, cruelly left here to starve.
Anger welled up in me, cold and hot at the same time. One thing I can’t abide is the mistreatment of any living being, human or animal.
There was a utility table built against the wall farther along; a couple of twenty-pound bags of kibble sat on it, one half-empty and the other unopened. The empty cages were clean and contained water and food dishes. All of their doors, like the ones housing the shelty and the smaller dog, had thick wooden pegs for fasteners. I got clean dishes out of two of them, filled two with kibble, the others with water from a spigot alongside the table, and replaced them in the empty cages.
The shelty was still barking and frantically throwing himself against the mesh, but he didn’t look mean. And wasn’t. He bounced up against me when I opened his cage, let me take hold of his collar. He’d seen where I put the food and water, all but dragged me into the first of those cages, and immediately began wolfing the kibble. The smaller dog, a female, was harder to transfer. She cringed away from me, cowered shaking against the outer wall. I had to drag her out of there, into the other clean cage and up to the two bowls. She went for the water first, with wary eye shifts in my direction as I backed out and repegged the door.
There wasn’t anything else I could do for the dogs now. They’d be all right until I could get the SPCA out after I was through here.
Outside, I sucked cold air for several seconds to clear my sinuses of the kennel stench. The windows in the bordering houses all looked empty-no nosy neighbors to wonder what I was doing on the property. I went first to the rear entrance, still trying to look as if I belonged here. A screen door was unlocked, but the hardwood door inside it was secure.