“I paid for your dinner out of an act of kindness. Do you want ex-cons to be kind and thoughtful or not?”
“Well, when you put it that way, the answer seems obvious, I suppose. So thank you very much for dinner.”
“Good, now it’s a fine evening. We can walk off dinner.”
“I... I really should be—”
“I can at least walk you home.”
She glanced at him sharply. “If you saw Dan Bullock, you know where I live.”
He nodded. “So what happened to him? You never said.”
“He was sent back to prison based on my written account and the knife that he had with his fingerprints on it. I called the police as soon as I got in my house. They picked him up trying to hitch a ride out of town.”
“I think he’s right where he belongs, then.” He stood, put on his hat, and looked down at her. “You ready?”
She picked up her purse and hat, and they set off together.
Chapter 19
The air was crisp, which was a nice change, though the sky was clear to the horizon and probably beyond. Archer kept glancing at his companion curiously as she walked along rigidly and uncomfortably.
Crabtree said, “So, with Pittleman dead, that means you no longer have a job?”
“The jury’s still out on that, so to speak.”
“How so?”
“I have an opportunity to still make it pay off, only I have to handle things delicately.”
“With Lucas Tuttle?”
“Right. I’m going out to meet with him at some point.”
“Why not right away?”
“Well, with Mr. Pittleman being murdered and all, it’s probably smart to let things quiet down a little before I go making money off something connected to him.”
“Oh, I guess I can see that.” She suddenly eyed him sharply. “Archer, you didn’t have anything to do with the man’s death, did you?”
“I swear on a stack of Bibles that I didn’t.”
Her gaze lingered on him for a bit. Her look had told Archer all he needed to know. She and Jackie both thought he might have killed the man.
“Did you finish that book you were reading, by, who was it again?”
“Virginia Woolf. And yes, I did. It was wonderful.” She paused. “The writing of hers I like best isn’t a novel or a short story, but an essay entitled A Room of One’s Own.”
“What’s it about?”
“A woman working in a man’s world, essentially.”
“Is that how you see it?”
“Perhaps.”
“I read a lot in prison. I like detective stories. You heard of Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade, and that little fellow from Belgium?”
“Yes, I have. They’re quite entertaining.”
“And maybe I can make a living doing that sort of work,” said Archer. He had thought of this before and had decided to try it out on her.
“From convict to detective? Quite a leap.”
“I was a scout in the Army. My job was to look at things, take in a bunch of information, and then take a course of action. Probably close to what Detective Shaw is doing right now, don’t you think?”
She looked impressed with his logic. “I think you might be right.”
They eventually arrived at her house.
“You own it?”
“No, I’m renting it for the time being.”
“It’s really pretty.”
She smiled. “It wasn’t so pretty when I got here, but I’ve had some things repaired. Though the door to my bedroom still jams. I can never fully close it.”
“I can fix that in a jiffy.”
She looked alarmed. “What? No, that’s all right.”
“Ma’am, I’m right here. Probably take me no more than a few minutes.”
“Archer, I wouldn’t feel comfortable letting you do that.”
“Ma’am, let me just say something.”
“All right,” she said, looking at him warily.
“I spent time in prison with the likes of Dickie Dill and others like him. They’re hard men, and some of them live right here. And one of them followed you home.”
“But I took care of that.”
“And one of them wrote you that nasty note. So you need to lock your doors — that includes your front door and your bedroom door. Because if they get the jump on you, well...”
She stared at him very deliberately for a long moment.
“I think you’re sincere,” she said at last.
“That’s because I am.”
She turned and led him inside.
The interior of the place was Spartanly furnished but it was neat and overly clean, at least to Archer’s mind. There were also a goodly number of books on the shelves. From a glance he could see novels by people named Faulkner, Brontë, Whitman, Wharton, Austen, Dickens, Twain, and Steinbeck. And there were quite a few legal tomes, too.
“Got a lot of law books there.”
“I actually wanted to be a lawyer once.”
“Pardon my ignorance, but can women be lawyers?”
“Of course they can! But I will admit, it’s unusual.”
“If you want to be one, then I say go for it. Sure you’d make a fine one.”
“Thank you, Mr. Archer,” she said, evidently pleased by his remark.
“You have relations who are in the law?”
“No, but my father—” She faltered.
“Your father was a lawyer?”
“No, he was—” She broke off and said, “Let me show you the door.”
Crabtree led him down a short, plain hall to her bedroom. She took off her hat, dropped it on the bed, and put her purse down on a dresser with a tilt mirror topping it.
“This is the problem, Mr. Archer.”
She attempted to close the door, but it caught on the floor.
“Okay, let me see this thing.”
He swung it back and forth until the door rubbed like before.
“It’s not the door. I believe the floor might be off a bit.” Archer took out a nickel and set it on one end on the floor, and they watched it roll right over to the closet door.
“Yep, I’d say the floor is definitely not plumb.”
He pointed to the door hinges.
“I think if I tighten the screws up enough on these hinges, it should clear the floor, warped though it is. You got a screwdriver?”
“Let me look. It might take a few minutes.”
“I got nowhere to be.”
After she left, he looked around and noted the perfectly made bed and the shade on the window that he had watched before she had cut the view off by closing the drapes. He looked in the corner and saw the pair of high heels that she had been wearing the night before.
As he glanced once more at the bed, Archer saw what looked to be the edge of a book poking out from under a pillow. He checked that she wasn’t coming back, and then hurried over to the bed. He had no right or business to be doing this, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. For Archer, more information was always better than less. And he just thought, at first, that it was a novel. But when he slid it out, he saw that it was a scrapbook. He turned the page and saw the old, yellowed news article. It was from a local newspaper in Amarillo, Texas.
It detailed the trial of Carson Crabtree, who had killed three men in separate encounters. There was a photo of Carson within the news article. It showed a huge man with a bald head and a fierce countenance. He had, surprisingly, worked as a police officer, and curiously enough considering his features and the crimes committed, had the reputation of being kind and considerate to all who knew him. Yet not only had Carson not blamed his actions on mental affliction, the report said, but he also had confessed to the murders. He had died in the electric chair leaving behind a wife, Jewell, and one daughter, Ernestine.
Archer flipped to the next page and saw the grainy image of Ernestine Crabtree, then only fourteen. She looked small, drab, and dour, and it was hard for Archer to believe that she had grown up into the tall, lovely woman he knew her to be. There were a few other stories about this incident, including ones about the three men killed. And their pictures were included, too. Archer studied the men, and then read about their backgrounds. Each was twenty and had been in and out of trouble with the law since their midteens. As Archer read down the list of crimes committed by them, one caught his attention.