I walked out of his office but not out of the store. I shopped the cases, looking at golden goodies, waving away the shirt-waisted ladies until the one who had caught my eye drifted close enough for me to beckon her over.
“Would you take that bracelet out of there for me?”
“Here you are. Lovely, isn’t it? Fourteen carat.”
“Now let’s pretend to be talking about the bracelet.”
“Sir?”
“I investigate insurance claims. There was a big one from here, settled in full. Now Laneer won’t talk to me.”
“The bracelet is four hundred dollars, plus tax.”
“You don’t look as demure and bloodless as the rest of the sales staff. I hope Laneer isn’t one of your favorite people.”
“Hey. Hold it down. Why?”
“What’s the office gossip, or store gossip, about where Farley is right now?”
“I can’t talk here!”
“I’m in the hotel. I saw a little lounge over on that balcony thing. Named after an animal.”
“The Blue Raccoon.”
“Five-thirty? Six?”
“Like ten past six.”
The Raccoon got a good after-work play, and they were jammed up close and deep at the bar. I had a fine little leather corner with the lady. She said her name was Libby Franklin, a married name but she was not working at it lately, and she thought all guys named Rhoades were called Dusty; and I told her that for the first, terrible twenty-five years of my life, I had been called that, and that my real name was Oliver. But in my twenty-sixth year I had begun to look remotely like John Wayne. She tipped her head and squinted at me, pursed her lips and finally said, “Faintly.” So I told her I was a sort of sawed-off version of the real Duke, and then did my imitation, which knocked her out. She told me I certainly was no great judge of womankind if I thought the other girls at Wescott and Sons looked demure and bloodless. She said they were about as sweet and demure as a pool full of barracudas. She said Wescott and Sons had always hired better-than-average-looking women and made them dress alike, paid them well, and gave them a commission on sales over a certain figure each week. She had been there a little over two years, and J. Trevor Laneer was not, repeat, not one of her favorite people.
When I asked her why not she explained that he was a very autocratic person. “He expects and gets total obedience. The girls who can’t take that, who give him an argument, last about two weeks. ‘Clean the fingerprints off that case, Laura.’ ‘I don’t like that hairstyle, Wendy. Change back to the way it was before, please.’ ‘Print the sales slips, everyone. Do not use script. Is that clear?’ ‘Bring me my tea at eleven, Miss Farley.’ ”
“And Anne Farley didn’t resent it?”
“Resent it? She adored it! She worked for him for twelve years. Of course, most of that time was at the old store on Piedmont before he moved the business here.”
“He owns it?”
“Well, for all practical purposes. His wife, Betty, is a Wescott, the last of the clan. Poor old thing is an invalid.”
“And Farley had something going with J. Trevor?”
“What a truly gross idea! She was sort of the head vestal virgin. She thought it was something very special to sell gems to people who got their name in the papers. Laneer was cruel and mean to her, and she passed it along to us peasants.”
“So why would she steal?”
She looked at me in a measuring way, head atilt, bright blond hair hanging to her shoulder. “Fido will be howling his poor head off. Want to eat Chinese?”
She had a townliouse-type apartment in a new development in an old area north of Candler Park, near Emory University. I followed her out in my rental. She had an old Volvo that looked as if it had been stomped flat and then patted back into shape by a huge, hasty child. She undid three locks and defused the alarm system. Fido turned out to be a huge gray altered tomcat, very, very impatient for his supper. As she waited on him she had me fix drinks. The apartment was clean, but it was certainly cluttered, mostly with books, magazines, records, and tapes.
“I don’t really have any date-type dates, anything sincere,” Libby said. “This is my one night of the week without classes. Communications and media. I should be studying this evening, but the thing is, nobody would listen to conjecture, you know? Just the facts ma’am. Well, hell, that may be the legal way, but after a couple of tries I shut up because I do not like being classified as some kind of gossipy broad.”
Fido sat and washed for a while, and then he came over to my chair and studied me for a long time, then lowered his head and started gently butting it against my leg, while making a sound like a distant snare drum. Libby was astonished that he liked me, and I told her I was hurt that she should be so astonished, and how about the gossip nobody would let her mention officially.
To prove, I guess, that she had an orderly and logical mind, Libby ticked off the facts I knew already. It had been known in the shop that J. Trevor Laneer would not be in on the Friday when apparently the theft took place. At night a great deal of the stock was locked in the vault. In the rear portion of the vault, there was a sturdy cabinet that locked with a key. Laneer, Anne Farley, the bookkeeper, and Laura Wheelock, who had been with the company almost as long as Anne Farley, knew the vault combination. Only Anne Farley and Trevor Laneer had keys to the inner cabinet where the best things were kept. Anne Farley’s vacation started on the Monday. On the following Wednesday morning Laneer went and got a tray of rings to show an old and valued customer. He took a close look at one of the rings and became very agitated. In an hour he knew thirty-two had been switched. He informed the police and telephoned the news to Equity Protection. It was soon learned that Miss Anne Farley, age thirty-five, had apparently left for good. She had given up the shadowy old paneled apartment in the downtown apartment hotel, which she had shared with her mother until her death a few years ago, and had lived alone in a motel until that weekend before the Friday theft, seven months ago.
“Starting way before she took the diamonds,” Libby said, “she sold everything. Furniture, clothes, books, dishes. Even her old pink VW. What she couldn’t sell, she gave to Good Will. Shall we order Chinese now? It takes them eighteen minutes on the average from when you hang up to when they ring my doorbell. Fix the last drink, Duke, and I’ll phone. I know what they do best.”
I let her keep talking. I was waiting for nuances, looking for inflections, hesitations. It followed the reports I’d studied, to the letter. Farley had moved into a motel by the airport a week before she took the diamonds. Registered as Arleen Fay — a typical amateur selection, almost an anagram. Checked out Saturday morning early. One suitcase. No messages. No mail. A check of airline reservations and travel agencies had come up empty. I was on a very cold trail. By the time I get on them, they are always cold.
Libby had changed to ancient jeans and a work shirt. The man had brought fine food. Fido was eating his egg roll. He was very weird for egg rolls, leaving only the small bits of onion.
“Farley is a bright lady?”
“You can bet on it. She saw everything, knew everything. The thing about it, the store was her life. Come early, leave late. Keep track.”