"How long before you'll be needing her again?" "I don't intend to take her back," said Tait. "Her work is satisfactory, but she has an unfortunate personality." "If you don't mind, then, I'd like to give her phone number to my friend." Tait stepped into his library and wrote the information on a slip of paper. "I'll also give you the name and address of that jade dealer in Chicago," he said, "just in case you change your mind." As they passed the living room Qwilleran looked hungrily at the closed doors. "Did Paolo do any damage in opening the cases?" "No. No damage. It's small comfort," Tait said sadly, "but I like to think the jades were taken by someone who loved them." As Qwilleran drove away from Muggy Swamp, he felt that he had wasted a morning and two gallons of Daily Fluxion gas. Yet, throughout the visit, he had felt a teasing discomfort about the upper lip. He thought he sensed something false in the collector's pose. The man should have been sadder — or madder. And then there was that heart- wringing curtain line: "I like to think the jades were stolen by someone who loved them." "Oh, brother!" Qwilleran said aloud. "What a ham!" His morning of snooping had only whetted his curiosity, and now he headed for the place where he might get some answers to his questions. He drove to the shop called PLUG on River Street.
It was an unlikely spot for a decorating studio. PLUG looked self-consciously dapper among the dilapidated storefronts devoted to plumbing supplies and used cash registers.
The merchandise in the window was attractively arranged against a background of kitchen oilcloth in a pink kitten design. There were vases of ostrich plumes, chunks of broken concrete painted in phosphorescent colors, and bowls of eggs trimmed with sequins. The price tags were small and refined, befitting an exclusive shop: $5 each for the eggs, $15 for a chunk of concrete.
Qwilleran walked into the shop (the door handle was a gilded replica of the Statue of Liberty), and a bell announced his presence by tinkling the four notes of "How Dry I Am." Immediately, from behind a folding screen composed of old Reader's Digest covers, came the genial proprietor, Bob Orax, looking more fastidious than ever among the tawdry merchandise. There were paper flowers pressed under glass, trays decorated with cigar bands, and candelabra made out of steer horns, standing on crocheted doilies. One entire wall was paved with a mosaic of pop-bottle caps. Others were decorated with supermarket ads and candy-bar wrappers matted in red velvet and framed in gilt.
"So this is your racket!" said Qwilleran. "Who buys this stuff?" "Planned Ugliness appeals to those who are bored with Beauty, tired of Taste, and fed up with Function," said Orax brightly. "People can't stand too much beauty. It's against the human grain. This new movement is a revolt of the sophisticated intellectual. The conventional middle-class customer rejects it." "Do you design interiors around this theme?" "Definitely! I have just done a morning room for a client, mixing Depression Overstuffed with Mail Order Modern.
Very effective. I paneled one wall in corrugated metal siding from an old tool-shed, in the original rust. The color scheme is Cinnamon and Parsnip with accents of Dill Weed." Qwilleran examined a display of rattraps made into ashtrays.
"Those are little boutique items for the impulse buyer," said Orax, and he added with an arch smile, "I hope you understand that I'm not emotionally involved with this trend. True, it requires a degree of connoisseurship, but I'm in it primarily to make a buck, if I may quote Shakespeare." Qwilleran browsed for a while and then said: "That was a good party at David's place Monday night. I hear he's giving another one on Saturday — for Mrs. Noyton." "I shall not be there," said Orax with regret. "Mother is giving a dinner party, and if I am not on hand to mix good stiff drinks for the guests, Mother's friends will discover how atrocious her cooking really is! Mother was not born to the apron…. But you will enjoy meeting Natalie Noyton. She has all the gagging appeal of a marshmallow sundae." Qwilleran toyed with a pink plastic flamingo that lit up. "Were the Noytons and the Taits particularly friendly?" he asked.
Orax was amused. "I doubt whether they would move in the same social circles." "Oh," said Qwilleran with an innocent expression. "I thought I had heard that Harry Noyton knew Mrs. Tait." "Really?" The Orax eyebrows went up higher. "An unlikely pair! If it were Georgie Tait and Natalie, that might make sense. Mother says Georgie used to be quite a womanizer." He saw Qwilleran inspecting some chromium bowls.
"Those are 1959 hubcaps, now very much in demand for salads and flower arrangements." "How long had Mrs. Tait been confined to a wheelchair?" "Mother says it happened after the scandal, and that must have been sixteen or eighteen years ago. I was away at Princeton at the time, but I understand it was quite a brouhaha, and Siggy immediately developed her indisposition." Qwilleran patted his alerted moustache and cleared his throat before saying, "Scandal? What scandal?" The decorator's eyes danced. "Oh, didn't you know? It was a juicy affair! You should look it up in your morgue. I'm sure the Fluxion has an extensive file on the subject." He picked up a feather duster and whisked it over a tray of tiny objects. "These are Cracker Jack prizes, circa 1930," he said. "Genuine tin, and very collectible. My knowledgeable customers are buying them as investments." Qwilleran rushed back to the Daily Fluxion and asked the clerk in the library for the file on the Tait family.
Without a word she disappeared among the gray rows of head-high filing cabinets, moving with the speed of a sleepwalker. She returned empty-handed. "It's not here." "Did someone check it out?" "I don't know." "Would you mind consulting whatever records you keep and telling me who signed for it?" Qwilleran said with impatience.
The clerk ambled away and returned with a yawn. "Nobody signed for it." "Then where is it?" he yelled. "You must have a file on an important family like the Taits!" Another clerk stood on tiptoe and called across a row of files, "Are you talking about G. Verning Tait? It's a big file.
A man from the Police Department was in here looking at it. He wanted to take it to Headquarters, but we told him he couldn't take it out of the building." "He must have sneaked it out," said Qwilleran. "Some of those cops are connivers…. Where's your boss?" The first clerk said, "It's his day off." "Well, you tell him to get hold of the Police Department and get that file back here. Can you remember that?" "Remember what?" "Never mind. I'll write him a memo."
11
On Saturday afternoon Qwilleran took Alacoque Wright to the ball park, and listened to her views on baseball.
"Of course," she said, "the game's basic appeal is erotic. All that symbolism, you know, and those sensual movements!" She was wearing something she had made from a bedspread. "Mrs. Middy custom-ordered it for a king-size bed," she explained, "and it was delivered in queen-size, so I converted it into a costume suit." Her converted bedspread was green corduroy with an irregular plush pile like rows of marching caterpillars.
"Very tasteful," Qwilleran remarked.
Cokey tossed her cascade of hair. "It wasn't intended to be tasteful. It was intended to be sexy." After dinner at a chophouse (Cokey had a crab leg and some stewed plums; Qwilleran had the works), the newsman said: "We're invited to a party tonight, and I'm going to do something rash. I'm taking you to meet a young man who is apparently irresistible to women of all ages, sizes, and shapes." "Don't worry," said Cokey, giving his hand a blithe squeeze. "I prefer older men." "I'm not that much older." "But you're so mature. That's important to a person like me." They rode to the Villa Verandah in a taxi, holding hands. At the building entrance they were greeted with enthusiasm by the doorman, whom Qwilleran had foresightedly tipped that afternoon. It was not a large tip by Villa Verandah standards, but it commanded a dollar's worth of attention from a man dressed like a nineteenth-century Prussian general.