“So you can’t very well pretend you didn’t get it.”
“I guess not.”
“Have you showed it to Ellen?”
“No.”
“Do you intend to?”
“No. It’s strictly between Miranda and me, or rather between Miranda and Miranda. I can’t be held responsible for what’s cooking inside her head.”
Frederic slalomed across the parking lot on his skateboard between parked cars and lampposts and concrete markers. When he reached Aragon’s Chevy he came to a stop by jumping off the skateboard. The board kept right on going, under a BMW and a Lincoln and ending up against the front tire of a Ford van. Frederic retrieved it, spun the wheels to make sure they weren’t damaged and approached the two men. His recent tears had cleared little paths through the dirt on his cheeks.
“Bug off,” Grady said.
Frederic shook his head. “Can’t.”
“Try.”
“Can’t. Your girlfriend sent me here on an errand.”
“What girlfriend?”
“Don’t rush me, man.” Frederic took off his plastic helmet, releasing a squashed yogurt carton and two sticks of gum now soft as putty and molded to the shape of his head. He looked up at Grady, red-eyed and reproachful. “I waited a long time in that stinky shed for you to come back with the keys.”
“The situation changed,” Grady said.
“You never meant to come back.”
“Sure I did.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Have it your way. What’s the errand and who sent you?”
“Maybe I won’t tell you.”
Grady put his hands on the boy’s shoulders and squeezed. “Then again, maybe you will, right?”
“Sure. Right. Lay off the rough stuff. I was only kidding. Can’t you take a joke? Ellen sent me to tell Mr. Aragon to come back to the club and call his office. A lady wants to talk to him.”
“Thanks, Frederic,” Aragon said.
“You don’t have to thank me,” Frederic said. “A small tip will be enough.”
“I’ve only got two dimes. You can have one.”
“One skinny little dime. There ought to be a minimum-tip law like the minimum-wage law. Say, how’s that for a new political idea?”
“Great. In another twelve years you can run for Congress.” It was a sobering thought.
Aragon used the other dime on the public telephone in the corridor. Only one lady was likely to know where he was, and the switchboard transferred the call to her office.
“Miss Nelson? It’s me.”
“Who’s me?”
“Tom.”
“Tom who?”
“Aragon.”
Charity tapped the phone sharply with a pencil by way of reprimand. “I’m beginning to wonder if you’ll ever make the big time in this business, junior. An attorney headed for the larger life doesn’t say it’s me. He says this is Tomás Aragon of Smedler, Downs, Castleberg, McFee and Powell.”
“You already know that.”
“It won’t kill you to practice a little.”
“All right. This is Tomás Aragon of Smedler, Downs, Castleberg, McFee and Powell. So what’s new?”
“Plenty. Smedler just came from the courthouse and the whole place was buzzing with rumors. The report on Iris Young’s death arrived from the crime lab last night by special messenger and the word is she was murdered.”
“Whose word?”
“There’s an old babe in the D.A.’s office who has a crush on Smedler — he’s fairly attractive if you squint a little and the light’s not too good — and she’s always getting him in a corner and feeding him goodies to arouse his interest. Verbal goodies, I mean. He’s on a diet. Anyway, she told him that the D.A.’s in seventh heaven.”
“What does it take to put a D.A. in seventh heaven, or even fifth or sixth?”
“Evidence for a case that will make him look good to the voters in the next election,” Charity said. “You saw Iris Young once, didn’t you?”
“Briefly.”
“Was she using a cane?”
“Yes. It was burned in the fire.”
“Wrong. There was a lot of intricate metalwork on the head of it which didn’t burn. Where the metal joined the wood some blood seeped into the cracks. It matched the blood taken from Mrs. Young’s body, but there was a difference in the two samples that’s supposed to be very significant.”
“In what way?”
“Smedler’s snitch didn’t know.”
“Why are you telling me all this, Miss Nelson?”
“Smedler asked me to clue you in. He thought maybe you could find out more by sort of hanging around the sheriff’s department.”
“If I sort of hang around the sheriff’s department, somebody’s going to sort of wonder why.”
“Tell them you work for Smedler, Downs, Castleberg, McFee and Powell. After all, Miranda Shaw is one of our clients, or used to be, and she was living in the Youngs’ house when the murder occurred and we have a right to — Oh my God, you don’t suppose she’s actually involved. Yes, you do. I can tell by your silence.”
“I—”
“And so does Smedler. And that’s why he’s so curious about the report from the crime lab. Well, if he really wants to find things out, I wish he’d pick somebody more competent than you.”
“So do I,” Aragon said and hung up.
Ellen Brewster was standing outside the door of her office waiting for him. She wore a short sleeveless white dress which showed off her newly acquired tan but made her look as if she was trying too hard to be like one of the teenagers herded in flocks on the beach and in the snack bar and around the lifeguard towers.
Her voice was strained. “Do you have time to come in for a minute, Mr. Aragon?”
“I think so.”
He went in and she closed the door behind him. The room was still noisy. There was shouting and laughing from the pool area, and outside by the roadway some men were pruning a eucalyptus tree with a power saw.
She said, “Did you talk to Miranda?”
“Yes.”
“It wouldn’t be fair for me to ask what she told you, would it?”
“No.”
“I can’t help it, I have to ask one question anyway. Does she know that Grady and I — that we—”
“No.”
“I was pretty sure she didn’t but I had to be positive.”
“Why?”
“I guess I’m afraid of her.”
“She’s not exactly formidable — twice your age, about half your size and a little nuts.”
“She isn’t a little nuts,” Ellen said. “Where Grady’s concerned she’s totally irrational. She hasn’t changed since the night you dumped her on me when you drove her here from that clinic in Mexico. She told me then that she’d do anything to make it possible for her and Grady to be together again. She said if he needed money to be happy, no matter how much money, she’d get it somehow and buy him back. Can you believe it?”
“Yes.” They were the same words Miranda had used in the cabana half an hour ago. “So what are you afraid of, that he can be bought?”
“I don’t know whether he can or not. I just don’t want her to try. It’s not fair.”
“Don’t worry. She hasn’t a nickel.”
He sounded more confident than he felt.
“Nothing,” he told Charity when he returned to the office later in the day.
“Nothing?” she repeated. “You’ve been gone all afternoon, and nothing?”
“Nothing definite. I did what you told me to — hung around here and there, kept my ears open, asked subtle questions like how are you, got subtle answers like fine. There are the usual rumors which a case of this kind inspires. But one of them may possibly be worth something.”
“What is it?”
“That the D.A. has enough evidence to ask the grand jury for an indictment.”