“Nine steps up to a covered porch that wraps around the front and the west side,” she said. “The front door’s solid wood and lit by what’re probably hundred-watt bulbs inside two frosted globes. There’s a narrow stained-glass window just to the right of the door. Bunches of fruit, I think. It’s a three-story house and big, probably fifteen, sixteen, even seventeen rooms, and there’s a light on in one room on the second floor, but it’s dark on the first and third floors. No cars except for that Toyota pickup and the MG that looks like it hasn’t been moved in six months, maybe a year.”
“No cars and a ‘no vacancy’ sign don’t match,” Overby said.
“Maybe her lie-lows all come by limo.”
“Maybe,” Overby said and opened his door. She joined him at the steps and they mounted them together. It was Overby who found the doorbell and pressed it, causing a loud buzz instead of a ring. When no one answered the summons, he rang again — this time for at least twenty seconds. They waited another twenty seconds before Georgia Blue tried the door. It was locked. Overby shrugged and turned away, as if giving up. If she hadn’t been watching for it, Georgia Blue wouldn’t have seen the quick sudden move of his right elbow as it slammed back against the narrow stained-glass window, breaking a six-by-ten-inch panel of what had been a bowl of ripe cherries.
Overby spun around, reached through the broken panel and unlocked the front door from the inside. “I must’ve slipped,” he said with his hard white grin just before he went inside.
It was Georgia Blue who found the light switch and turned on a pair of lamps that revealed a large foyer with a well-cared-for parquet floor. The two lamps were a pair of milky globes on fluted brass columns that grew out of the staircase’s twin newel-posts. The staircase went halfway up to the fourteen-foot ceiling before turning back on itself for the rest of the rise. A hall on the left side of the staircase led back to what seemed to be a pantry and probably, farther on, to a kitchen. At the far left of the foyer were two panelled sliding doors. On the foyer’s far right, the same thing.
Overby cleared his throat, then barked a question: “Anybody home?”
When there was no reply, Georgia Blue said, “The doors on the left probably lead to a dining room and the ones on the right to the living room.”
“A house this old, it’d be the parlor.”
“Okay. Parlor.”
Overby went to the sliding doors on the right and knocked. When there was still no response, he shoved one of the doors back into its walled recess and again asked, “Anybody home?” He waited a moment or two, heard nothing, then looked back at Georgia Blue, who nodded.
Overby moved slowly into the room, followed by Blue. He fumbled for a switch, found it and turned on some lights that were at the room’s far end. Before either he or Blue could turn toward them, a woman’s voice snapped out a warning, “You move, I shoot.”
Overby and Georgia Blue froze. Then Overby, moving only his lips, asked, “You Colleen Cullen?”
“Hands on your heads,” the voice said. “Do it.”
Overby and Blue did as instructed.
“Turn around slow, then go down on your knees, but keep your hands where they are.”
“That’s kinda hard to do,” Overby said.
“Try one knee at a time, asshole.”
“You want us to turn around first?” Overby said.
“You as dumb as you sound? Turn around, get down on your knees and lemme see if you look as dumb as you sound.”
Overby and Georgia Blue, hands on their heads, turned around slowly and stared at the woman who held a sawed-off 12-gauge double-barrelled shotgun with a chopped stock.
“What’s the matter?” she said. “You expecting something with blue eyes, blond hair and dimples?”
“Well, sepia’s nice, too,” Overby said.
Nineteen
Georgia Blue frowned at the woman with the shotgun for nearly ten seconds before the frown went away and she said, “Now I remember.”
“Remember what, Slim?”
“Junior Gibbons. Before he joined the Panthers he lived with Mary Margaret Cullen, who used to raise money for the IRA in Chicago.
You’re their daughter, right?”
The twin barrels of the shotgun moved until both were aimed at Georgia Blue. “On your knees, sis. You, too, Ace.”
Once Blue and Overby were on their knees with their hands on their heads, Cullen said, “Okay. You know my name and my mama’s and daddy’s names. Now let’s hear yours. You first, Slim.”
“Georgia Blue.”
“And you?”
“Maurice Overby.”
“Maw-reese. That sounds way uptown, don’t it?”
Her skin had too much luster to be the sepia Overby had called it. It was more like coffee two-thirds diluted by rich cream. Although her eyes were too large and her nose a trifle thin, and her mouth a bit wide, the combination was so striking it would make her face stick in memory far longer than mere prettiness and almost as long as true beauty.
Below the face was a long neck, then a black tank top that revealed smooth shoulders, well-muscled arms and the outline of small taut breasts. A pair of tight black pants advertised a firm butt and exaggerated the length of the long legs. Her stance and the familiar, confident way she held the shotgun suggested good coordination and also a possible oversupply of self-assurance.
Colleen Cullen gave her head an almost reflexive shake that got the thick black hair out of her eyes. The hair had been cut in a virtual 1920s bob — short in back, parted in the middle and long enough at the sides to hang down just below her ears. With the hair out of her eyes, she stared at Overby and said, “I gotta hear why you broke into my house.”
“Maybe we should talk about the money first,” Overby said.
“Whose money?”
“Mine.”
The shotgun barrels dipped a little but then came back up. “What you got, I can take.”
“I’ve got maybe three hundred tops in my right pants pocket. My partner’s got sixty more, if that. But we came here hoping to buy something for important money, and somehow I don’t think any of us’d call three hundred and sixty bucks important.”
The shotgun barrels dipped slightly again and this time stayed dipped. “You’re looking to buy what exactly?”
“Information.”
“About what?”
“The Goodisons, Pauline and Hughes,” said Georgia Blue, who rose, then bent over to brush real or imaginary dust from her knees.
“I say you could get up, Slim?”
Georgia Blue straightened and said, “When money was mentioned you forgot about the sawed-off.”
“You wish,” Cullen said, again aiming the shotgun at her.
Overby then rose and also bent over to brush dust from the knees of his blue London suit. While still dusting, he said, “You know the Goodisons, Colleen? Say yes and you get a thousand dollars.”
“We met,” Cullen said.
“That’s one thousand,” said Overby, straightening up all the way.
“How much if I got ’em locked in the cellar?”
Overby, taking his time, examined her for signs of trick and guile. Finding none, he said, “Too bad you don’t.”
Colleen Cullen lowered the shotgun, turned and went to a large round oak table that held a brass lamp with a bowl shade of green glass. Also on the table were a bottle of Virginia Gentleman, four tumblers and a pitcher of water.
“I was about to have a toddy,” she said, placing the shotgun on the table. “You guys drink bourbon?”
“Now and then,” Overby said.