I sighed. “Okay, Catherine. Think of it like this, if it doesn’t make you laugh too much. Think of me as the conscience of the Office, the tiny vagrant molecule of conscience that got loose and won’t stop, even when the case is closed, even after it’s become more than a little dangerous. I’m your big chance, Catherine. Get it off your chest. Tell me what you know about the case. Then you can forget it, even forget you told me what you knew. It’ll help you sleep.”
We were quiet again. I could make out the little wrinkles in her brow, and the tension around her mouth. It was a speech I’d delivered before, and maybe even believed in. Either way, it seemed my words had actually touched something in hen.
When she spoke again, her voice was deeper, less breathy, like she was talking out of hypnosis, out of some truer self. “I don’t mind if you ask me questions,” she said. “Find out what you need to know.”
I looked, but her eyes were hard. It could be I was advancing my case at the expense of what was in the air between us.
“Okay,” I said. “First of all, what’s the case against Angwine? What was in the letter they found?”
“I only saw the letter once. I wasn’t on this case until yesterday, and I read through a lot of material to try and catch up. My impression is that Angwine wanted money, for him and his sister. He got self-righteous, accused Stanhunt of moral indiscretions. Angwine saw himself as representing the interests of his sister and her baby against Stanhunt, and when Celeste moved into the house, he took up her grievances too. He didn’t approve of Stanhunt’s heavy drug use, and he accused him of seeing a woman on the sly.”
“I was working for Stanhunt. He wasn’t having an affair. He wanted Celeste back.”
“We’re pretty sure he was meeting a woman in the Bayview Motel.”
I shook my head. “He went there to spy on Celeste. She was having the affair. You can talk to another P.I. named Walter Surface. He even saw the boyfriend once, he says. Maynard Stanhunt took a room to keep an eye on her. A jealous confrontation—that’s a better motive than anything I’ve heard said against Angwine.”
She sighed. “Listen. All I can do is tell you our case. Your material doesn’t fit.”
“What’s your case? I still don’t get it.”
“Angwine threatened in the letter that he’d follow Stanhunt. Made it clear he didn’t approve of the affair, whoever the woman was. So Angwine tails Stanhunt to the Bayview and finds out that the woman in question is his sister. She’s been hiding it from him. But it happened once before, which is how she got the child, and maybe the flame never went out. Angwine goes out of his head and kills Stanhunt. It accounts for everything, including Pansy’s reluctance to shield her brother.”
I have to admit it stopped me dead in my tracks. It was the first coherent explanation I’d heard, and that included any I’d cobbled together in my head. I would have liked to believe it, except I was getting pretty attached to my idea that Celeste, not Pansy, was the mother of the babyhead. Anyway, Angwine was innocent. He hadn’t played it completely straight with me, but he hadn’t done the murder. I’d stake my life on it. Hell, I already had.
“What about the sheep?” I said.
She got sarcastic. “Aside from Angwine’s prints in the blood we don’t have much to go on. Maybe you can clear him of that one.”
“He stumbled into it, came running back to me,” I said. I realized that sounded lame. “He didn’t do it, Catherine. Take my word for it. It’s too easy.”
“Sometimes easy means right. Jesus, Metcalf. What am I doing? I should be taking you in, or maybe letting you go—anything but sitting here giving you ammunition for this idiotic, wayward inquisition of yours.” She frowned at me in the darkness. “Don’t judge me, all right? You’re on your track, I’m on mine. I said you could ask me questions. But that’s it. Don’t get me tangled up in your eccentric theories.”
I turned away, chagrined, angry at myself. I was a guy with twenty-five points of karma sitting talking to an inquisitor. Definition of a fool.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’ll try to be a little more professional. What do you know about a guy named Phoneblum?”
“I don’t recognize the name.”
I thought about opening the car door again to look her in the eye, but I didn’t do it. “He’s in this case up to his fat neck. Kornfeld sure knew the name—it cost me twenty-five points to mention it in his presence. I got the feeling he was protecting Morgenlander from something.”
“Morgenlander was a clown,” she said. “He came on way too strong. He kept filing complaints with the Main Office. Nobody could say anything around him.”
I put my hands on the dashboard, and remembered they hurt. “Morgenlander thought there was more to this case,” I said. “He was trying to keep it open.”
“I know. He was doing a good job of that until the sheep turned up.”
“Too bad.”
“Too bad for you, I guess.”
I snickered. “Morgenlander wasn’t exactly making my life pleasant. His nickname for me was Dickface. I don’t think he saw me as an asset to his inquisition.”
She was quiet. I guess she was waiting for me to run out of questions.
“Where are you supposed to be, right now?” I asked. “Were you staking out my lobby?”
“I’m on my own time.” It could have been encouraging except she said it so neutrally. I wanted her to be on my side in the case, and if I scratched the surface of my feelings, something I try never to do, I wanted a whole lot more. But it wasn’t happening. She sensed my desire for her professional allegiance, and it made her nervous. If she sensed the other desire, she was keeping her feeling about it hidden.
Something in the drone of words coming from the radio suddenly caught my attention. I thought I heard the name Stanhunt. Catherine must have thought she heard it too, because she turned up the volume and we both got quiet and listened.
They gave the address of the sex club downtown, and said something about a murder, no suspect, or a suspect, no murder. I listened for a while, but the voice looped around to other things and then back to the excitement at the sex club without giving the name again. I looked at Catherine at the same moment she looked at me.
“Maybe we ought to go have a look,” I said.
“Maybe I ought to go have a look,” she said. “You should steer clear, and you know it.”
I smiled. “I’d just go in my own car, which is a waste of gas. You might as well take me.”
She sighed and turned the key in the ignition. We didn’t say anything the whole way over. It gave me the chance to fantasize that we were just two people together, for no special reason except we liked it, and we were going for a drive, maybe to a show or a restaurant, maybe even into the country for some overnight deal. It wasn’t completely implausible. I closed my eyes and let the image wash over me while she drove, but it was pretty effectively extinguished when we pulled up in front of the sex club amidst the sirens and flares of the inquisition.
CHAPTER 26
I FOLLOWED CATHERINE PAST THE BARRICADES WITHOUT anyone asking me questions I couldn’t answer, and without having to flash my license even once. It took only a few words with the inquisitor watching the door of the murder room to get us inside. The club was a place where you could rent the equipment—leather stuff, chains, electronic safety devices—and a soundproof room to use it in, as well as the assurance that anything went, as long as both parties walked out more or less alive. That was what hadn’t happened here, and the inquisitor at the door let us know it was Celeste Stanhunt it hadn’t happened to.