"No. I don't think he knows about either of them. And Chucky won't tell him."
"I know he won't. Listen, Ellie, try this: Tony says Alice's last name is Brown, and that she bakes. It sounds to me as though she may do it for a living. If you were ordering desserts for the diner, where would you get them from?"
"What, this place? Ralph would kill you if he heard that." She pointed to a sign over the glass-shelved pie cabinet behind her: All Baking Done On Premises.
"Okay," I said. "But what if?"
She compressed her lips in thought. "I don't know. You want to talk to Ralph? He's here."
Ralph Helfgott owned and cooked at the Park View. He was a large soft man with the look of a hard man gone to seed. The blue tattoos on his forearms were blurred and his white hair was unkempt and wispy. He followed Ellie out from the kitchen, wiping his hands on the apron that surrounded him.
"How're you doing?" he asked, shaking my hand. "Haven't seen you around in a while."
"Haven't been up. Finally got so I couldn't stay away from Ellie another day, so I came back."
He put a thick arm around her. "That's my girl you're talking about."
She pulled away grinning, slapped his arm lightly. "Knock it off, Ralph. Bill wants to ask you something important."
Ralph leaned over the counter, spoke confidentially to me. "She don't know yet how crazy she is about me. But I got time, I can wait." He slipped his hand below the counter, pinched Ellie's rear. She let out a squeak, slapped him again. He straightened up and looked at me out of choir-boy eyes. "What can I do for you?"
I told him what I wanted to know, but not why. He massaged his chins. "Desserts? Baked goods, you mean?"
"Fancy ones, I hear. And good."
"Well, there's really no place around that's any good. There's Glauber's, and there's Hilltop, over in Cobleskill. But they're both pretty lousy. That's why I do my own. There's nothing worse than serving a customer a soggy pie, you know," he said earnestly. "Except wait a minute. There is a new place. I got a brochure or something. Wait, let me think." He rubbed the stubble on his chins again with a hand like a rubber bath toy. "Yeah. Some girl called me. About six, eight months ago, I don't know. A new bakery, commercial, but small. I told her no thanks, but she asked if she could send me a brochure anyway. Of course, I don't know if they're any good."
"Did she send the brochure?" I asked. "Do you have it?"
"Of course he does," Ellie said. "He has every piece of paper anybody ever gave him. Go find it, Ralph."
"You want it?" he asked me; I nodded.
He gave Ellie a friendly leer and went off down the counter to the back. Ellie patted my hand and, taking the pencil from behind her ear, went to see to a family with three kids who'd taken over one of the rear tables. I watch the oversized Slush Puppie cup slowly rotating on top of the milk shake machine.
Ralph came back first. "Got it," he said, spreading a flyer on the Formica in front of me. "This what you want?"
It was a price list, typeset on heavy stock. Cakes, pies, cookies, other sorts of pastry. At the top of the page was a line drawing of a cozy snowed-in house with smoke coming from the chimney, circled by the words Winterhill Kitchens.
"I hope so," I said.
"Well, you can have it. I still think I'm going to keep baking my own."
Ellie came back to the counter. "Find it?"
"Yeah. Kiss me?" Ralph closed his eyes and puckered his lips.
"Oh, in your dreams! Bill, hon, will this help?"
"I hope so," I said again. "Let me call and see."
I used the pay phone by the front door to call the number on the brochure.
The young woman's voice that answered the phone was fresh and direct, the kind of voice that goes with a clear complexion and great skill at outdoor sports. I asked for Alice Brown. The fresh voice said that Alice Brown was at the market, and that she'd be back at three-thirty. Would I like to leave a message? I would, and did, leaving my name, identifying myself as a friend of Jimmy Antonelli's, saying I'd call again. We thanked each other and hung up.
I went back to the counter, dropped some coins on it for the coffee. I squeezed Ellie's scrawny hand. "I think we found her. I'll see you later. If you think of anything, call me at Antonelli's."
"Found who?" Ralph asked. "What's going on?"
"None of your business, Ralphie," Ellie answered. "How's Tony?" she asked me. "Should I call him?"
I shrugged. "You know him. The more trouble he has, the less help he wants. He's got Jimmy convicted already."
Ellie shook her head. Ralph patted her shoulder, and she didn't pull away.
I walked back to my car, unlocked it, sat with the flyer spread on the steering wheel. The bakery had an address in Jefferson, in the south end of the county, far from here but not far from my place. I could be there in forty minutes if I stood up Mark Sanderson. I could camp out there, wait for Alice Brown to come back. And hope she knew where Jimmy was. And hope she'd tell me.
And hope Brinkman didn't get there first.
I fished a cigarette from my pocket, put a match to it, started the car. I pulled out onto the empty street and headed for the bus station in Cobleskill. I didn't know many of Jimmy Antonelli's friends, but even law- abiding citizens didn't have much use for Brinkman. He probably wasn't getting a lot of cooperation from people who'd be in a position to help him. And MacGregor hadn't asked me about Alice Brown when I was up there this morning, so he might not know about her either.
It seemed to me I might be a few hours ahead of the law on this. If that was true, I had the luxury of enough time to find out what was on Mark Sanderson's mind.
The bus station in Cobleskill was in what passed for downtown, a shabby area of two-story industrial buildings and three-story frame houses on both sides of the railroad tracks. There were no trains through here anymore, and most of the industrial buildings were only half used, as warehouses now. I parked in front of a peeling brown house with a gate hanging on one hinge and bedsheets for window curtains.
I looked around as I took the package from my trunk under the heavy sky. A car rolled down the cracked street, turned the corner. It hadn't been following me. I was making sure of that now, as routinely as I did in the city.
A kid on a thick-tired bike bounced along the opposite sidewalk, and a couple of college-age girls came out of the bus station, wearing backpacks. Otherwise the street was deserted. Whatever happened in Cobleskill these days didn't happen here. It happened in the office parks and Pizza Huts and Friendlys and multiplex cinemas that lined the state highway as it ran into and out of town.
I put my package on the next bus out to New York, a one o'clock local due at the Port Authority at eight forty- five. Very local. I didn't insure it. The fewer people who knew it was worth something, the more likely it was to get where it was going. Cobleskill had a Federal Express office and I'd considered that, but this was still faster, and Lydia wouldn't have to sit around waiting for delivery.
I called her again, got her machine again, sketched in what was going on. I left the time of the bus and the number of the receipt. I told her to messenger the package in the morning to Shelley at the lab, tell her it was for me, tell her to rush it. I started to tell Lydia something else, but I wasn't sure what it was, so I stopped and hung up.
Tomorrow I'd have to figure out how to get MacGregor to run the prints for me, if they found any. I had cop friends who would've run them in New York, but that wouldn't show up anything strictly local, as for instance if someone had been arrested by a county sheriff. Maybe MacGregor could be bent; maybe I could bribe him with a new pair of waders.
Appleseed Baby Foods was west of town, at the end of a three-mile spur off the highway built just for them. The white concrete-panel building spread in various directions from the center of a sprawling parking lot. A low office annex connected to the processing plant through a glass- enclosed entranceway.