"I plan to stop by there now."
"Swell idea. Well, nice meeting you. Sorry we couldn't help out."
"Thanks anyway. See you again."
"Oh. Yeah. Well, that would be nice."
"Bye," Sandra Deem called from the kitchen.
"By-eee," another voice added.
In the car, I got out my notebook and wrote: "1. Joey Deem."
I guessed her age to be between twenty-five and seventy. Phosphorescent blond wig, the last beehive north of Little Rock, and beneath the mountain of shimmering hair, active black eyes in a wide mottled face that still held suggestions of the youthful pretty face under the mask that age had grown there. She was grandly voluptuous in a white halter above the waist, a vast lumpy pudding below. Her tight powder blue shorts had worked up into her crotch, and as I approached the porch, where she occupied a sagging plastic chaise, she laid her National Enquirer demurely across her lap.
"If you're lookin' for Bill," she said, giving me a what-the-hell's-this-one-want look, "he's down to the plant. Won't be back till later."
"I'm Don Strachey from Millpond Plaza Associates," I said. "Are you Mrs. Wilson?"
She perked up at the sound of Millpond and set her can of Pabst on the concrete floor as her eyes widened. "Yeah, I'm Kay Wilson. You work for Crane Trefusis?"
"Right now I do, yes."
She struggled upright with one hand, adjusted her wig with the other, and, offering a toothy grin, motioned for me to sit in the lawn chair next to her. Her opinion of me had risen.
"Now, that Crane, he's quite a guy, ain't he? Quite… a… guy. Bill and I had Crane over for a 22 drink on the Fourth of July, he tell you that, Bob? Crane's wife was feeling poorly and couldn't make it, but Crane, he came. Sat right where you're sitting. Drank Chivas Regal with a chunk of lemon. Say now, what's your pleasure, Bob?"
"It's Don. Don Strachey. A cold beer would be great."
"Hot enough for ya?" she said, winking, and commanding her inertia-prone lower body to raise her more willing upper body off the chaise, like an elephant trainer urging the mammoth beneath her into motion. She stepped carefully across the gap between the new porch and the old house and returned a moment later with two more Pabsts.
"Did you happen to see the TV news this evening, Mrs. Wilson?" I said.
"Nah, I just got home a bit ago. You got the big check with you?" she asked, watching me expectantly and raising her beer can, poised for a toast. "You bring ol' Kay that big, beautiful hunert 'n' eighty grand from Crane?"
"No such luck," I said.
She shrugged and drank anyway. "I didn't s'pose you would. Crane said when the big day came he'd bring it out himself. Hell with it anyway. We ain't gonna get it."
"You seem resigned, Mrs. Wilson."
"Kay. Crane calls me Kay. Yeah, I know we're screwed. Hell with it anyway. Old Dot Fisher, she's not gonna give in. She's one tough old cookie, Dot is."
"She says you used to visit her sometimes."
"Yeah, I know Dot. We got no water pressure here sometimes, so I go down and draw from Dot's spring. She's real nice. I always liked talking to her. I damn near shit a brick-pardon my French, Bob-when I saw on the TV last year Dot was one of those women goes for her own. She never laid a hand on me, I'll say that much for her. Knew she hadn't better try, I s'pose, with Bill around. I ain't been down to her place for a time. Bill's mad at her, so why start trouble when you got enough already." She gulped from the Pabst can and fanned her face with the Enquirer.
"I guess," I said, "you don't know about what's been going on at Dot's place in the past twenty-four hours." I explained about the graffiti and the threats. She listened with big eyes and an open mouth.
"Now that stinks!" she said when I'd finished. "That just makes me want to puke. Now who on God's green earth would want to go ahead and pull a stunt like that?"
"That's what I'm trying to find out. I'm a private investigator. "
"A cop?" She looked startled. "You said you worked for Crane."
"I do. I'm a private detective on assignment for… Crane. He asked me, as a matter of fact, to drop by here, Kay, and convey his warmest personal regards to both you and Mr. Wilson. And to ask you and your husband if you had any idea who might be harassing Dot and Mrs. Stout. Crane is disgusted by what happened, and he wants to put a stop to it." I nearly added, "He's paying me ten," but didn't.
"That Crane, he's quite a guy," she said, nodding and wistfully remembering. "Tell him we'll have him over again real soon, soon as ol' Kay gets herself organized. I'm on the two-shift at Annie Lee till Labor Day and when I get home I'm just too pooped to pop. But after Labor Day I can draw unemployment again, and then I'm gonna just lay back and take it easy for a time shoot, I've earned it-and then Bill and I'll start having people in again."
"I'll pass the word. I take it, Kay, there's no one you know who might be mad enough at Dot Fisher to threaten her in any way to try to force her our of the neighborhood. Or is there?"
"Oh, boy," she said, making a face. "Oh, boy. Oh, boy." She nodded at her beer as she considered the possibilities. "Well," she said with a snort, "there's Wilson. Or he was mad, anyways. A month ago Bill was so P.O.'ed with Dot Fisher I was afraid he was gonna march right down there and just slug her one. A couple of times, as a matter of fact, he'd had a few drinks and was really gonna go down there and do it. Just pop her one, show her who's boss. He'd've done it too-used to try the rough stuff on me thirty years ago until my brother Moose hadda set Wilson straight one night. Hasn't laid a finger on me since then, and knows he hadn't better try.
"Anyways, Wilson says he's gonna go down there and pop Dot, he says. Well, I just put a stop to that right then and there. I said, Bill, I'll call the cops on you, you dumb son of a bitch. And I meant it! Even if she deserved it, Dot's an old lady and it wouldn't've been right. Anyways, Bill got over it after a while-finally got it through his thick skull that the old lez wasn't gonna give in, and he just said the hell with it.
"Coulda used the dough, though. I mean, could we ever! But then Bill went off on some other tangent of his a week or so back. Some hotshot idea of his that's gonna make us rich, so he says.
So then he forgot all about Dot and Millpond. Bob, I wish I had a nickel for every time Bill Wilson was gonna make me a rich woman."
"Where does Bill work?" I asked. "What does he do?"
"Presently," she said, popping the tab on the second Pabst she'd brought out, "Bill is employed at the Drexon plant. He's a forklift operator. Bill's the restless type, though, so who knows where he'll be next week. Wilson wants so awful much to get ahead. He asked Crane if Millpond had anything, and Crane said he'd keep an eye open for the right spot for Bill. Crane didn't mention anything about that to you, did he?"
"I'm sorry. He didn't."
She laughed, but not with amusement. "Sure. Well… Bill means well. He's got all that Wilson energy. If he could just learn to apply himself…" She looked away wistfully, then back at me.
"Know what I mean, Bob?"
I nodded knowingly. She watched me, then grunted, knowing I knew that we both knew that Bill Wilson was not, at his age-mid-fifties, I now guessed his wife to be-going to get into the habit of "applying himself." Though I did wonder what Wilson had applied himself to lately that might make the Wilsons rich. And if Crane Trefusis had, in fact, found a "spot" for him that he hadn't mentioned to Kay.
I said, "Were you at home last night, Kay?"
"Sure. Why do you ask that?"
"I thought you or your husband might have heard some unusual traffic after midnight sometime.
I don't suppose you get a lot of cars going back and forth on Moon Road. Was Bill here too?"