“Two guys?”
“Yeah. They hurt Grandma.”
Grandma was watching us and listening and was obviously not happy. To the phone she said, “Hey’m Phyllis, I gotta hurry, okay?”
“Who were the two guys?” I asked Sandy quickly.
“I don’t know. They wore masks.”
I took a shot at it. “Dracula and Frankenstein masks?”
“Yeah. They were really scary.”
Grandma slammed the phone and came over. “What the hell you been tellin’ him?”
She kicked Sandy in the buttock. Not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to make her point.
“One of them hit me with a crowbar,” I said. “They’re not people to take chances with. I assume you gave them her book.”
She glared at me. “You assume what you want.” She flung her arm toward the door. “Get out.”
I nodded good-bye to Sandy and started my way back through the debris.
“I hope for your sake you gave them the book, otherwise they’ll be back.”
“You’re damn right I gave them the book. I saw what happened to my own daughter, didn’t I?”
I looked back at Sandy, a child already so lost no amount of social programs could ever reclaim her.
“So long, Sandy,” I said.
She didn’t acknowledge me. She was back to Scooby-Doo. It was all she had.
I spent an hour at a casting for a walk-on part as a daddy in a pizza commercial (I’ve got a pretty good daddy-style grin). They’d let me know. Of course.
Then I called the security service I work for and talked to my boss, who must have bathed himself in Preparation H because he was actually in a decent mood. I wanted to find out if the store I was working in was happy with my work. He said peachy-keen.
Finally I got to my real work. I drove over to the phone company and looked up a balding guy I’d known from my days on the force. He was an executive now and had the pinkie rings to prove it. But we liked one another and each did the other favors whenever possible or necessary. He took Eve’s phone number from me and went to check it out. He came back twenty minutes later and said, “A hotel suite. Posh fucking territory, my friend. Unlisted number and the whole nine yards.”
Half an hour later I stood ankle-deep in carpeting in front of the manager’s office at the Wyatt-Smythe hotel, the only luxury place left in the loop. They overdo their image. I wouldn’t want to have illicit kicks in a place that comes on like a cathedral.
The manager was the new breed. No longer do they try to resemble Adolphe Menjou. Now they’re Corporate America. This guy could be a prosperous word-processor salesman. Gray flannel suit and all.
He was my age and infinitely brighter. He didn’t seem haughty, just comfortably superior. He didn’t invite me into the office. I wasn’t important enough. He talked to me standing by his receptionist’s desk.
“I’m working on an investigation,” I said.
“Oh. You’re a policeman?” He knew better. He just wanted to impress the receptionist.
“Private.”
“I assume you have a license.”
“Of course.” I showed him.
His receptionist tried to see it too. Probably just curious. He handed it back to me. Then I handed it over to her. I thought it was kind of funny. He didn’t laugh. She smiled, anyway, with cute little baby teeth.
“How may I help you?”
I showed him the phone number. “This is the number of the penthouse.”
“It seems to be. Yes, indeed.”
“I need to know who was in there last night.”
“Why?”
“As I said, I’m working on an investigation.”
“It’s not our policy to divulge things like that.”
“I can always bring the police in.”
“Exactly what does that mean?”
I shrugged. “I’m doing you a favor. This is a nonofficial inquiry. No publicity of any kind.”
“Why would there be any publicity?”
“If you knew what I was investigating, you’d know why there would be publicity.”
I tried to make it sound as ominous as possible.
He sighed. “Helen Dodson is the lady. Older. Wealthy. One of our best clients, and has been for many years.”
“Nobody named Eve?”
“As I said,” he reminded me tartly, “her name is Helen Dodson.”
“Does this Helen Dodson have a servant?”
“I wouldn’t call him a servant, exactly. That’s a little ostentatious. More like a man Friday, I would say.”
“Is she up there now?”
“I’m afraid she checked out.”
It was becoming obvious that Eve and Helen Dodson probably had nothing in common. The number I’d gotten from Larry-the-motel-clerk’s phone book could have been written down months earlier. This was the kind of wrong turn you got used to as a homicide detective.
“I wonder if I might have her address?”
He looked startled. “Mrs. Dodson’s?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To be honest, I’m not sure.”
“I’m afraid I can’t help you.” He consulted a wristwatch worth enough to feed any small African country. “And I’m also late for an appointment. Good day, sir.”
With that, he was gone.
The receptionist smiled at me as soon as he disappeared. “Why don’t you wait here a minute?” she said.
I watched the pleasing shape of her hips work against the fabric of her tweed skirt as she walked over to one of those formidable filing systems that rotate.
A few minutes later she was back and handed me a slip of paper.
“Here’s Mrs. Dodson’s address.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“I’ve never met a real private eye before,” she laughed. “Wait till I tell my son.”
Around two that afternoon I pulled into a quiet residential street that dead-ended on a few acres of timberland. In the assault of cold wind only the houses — mostly brick two-stories that only doctors and accountants could afford — looked warm.
The large white wood house with the captain’s walk that sat on the edge of a ravine belonged to Mrs. Helen Dodson.
After a heart-attack lunch in McDonald’s, I decided that checking her out might be worth the trouble. If nothing else, it would eliminate her from future consideration.
The call from Dr. Chamales had given me my edge back. The police planned to push Jane Branigan as their one and only suspect — without looking at any other possibilities.
The brown grass on the edge of the driveway leading to the Dodson house was frozen from an earlier rain. I sensed rather than saw somebody staring out at me from one of the windows. I went up and knocked. Getting no response, I rang the bell. Then I knocked again. The grim day chafed. A collie came up, looking cold. He inspected me, then passed on. Still no response from inside, even though I was sure somebody was in there.
I tried the bell again. Nothing.
I decided to commit the unpardonable sin in suburbs such as these. I walked across the grass to the next house.
A stout woman in a housedress whom I took to be a maid — she was dusting — saw me from the front window and opened the door before I reached it.
“Hi.”
“May I help you?” she said. The welcome wagon would probably never hire this woman as a representative.
“I need a little information about the Dodson house.”
“My employer isn’t home. You’d need to talk to her. Anyway, I don’t know nothing about Mrs. Dodson.”
“You know how long she’s lived there?”
“Why?”
I showed her my wallet.
“I don’t know nothing about Mrs. Dodson,” she said. Then she closed the door.
The collie I’d seen earlier was jumping around a panel truck that was just now pulling into the Dodson driveway. A uniformed delivery man got out and brought a package to the front door. From the green wrapping, it was easy to see that he was bringing flowers.