Cat With a Fiddle (9781101578902) (12 page)

Chapter 20

“What time is it, Bushy?”

The cat didn't answer me, so I pulled his tail gently. He
hates
that.

“Ha ha,” I said, and kissed him on the nose. I stood up to go after another cup of coffee.

“Why the hell are you asking your cat for the time?” Tony yelled into the kitchen. “Does he own a watch? Huh? It's ten
P.M.
Do you know where your other cat is?”

I took my usual seat on the rug, next to Bushy. Arrayed at my feet were the items I'd brought back from Covington: the disk, the photos, the pedigree papers, Will's notes for his roman à clef. In my mind the items had by now taken on a kind of totemic quality.

“Here's how I figure your meeting with Leo,” Tony said knowingly. “He's heard that you're being considered for something big-time. And he wants in. It's not another off-off-and-under-Broadway thing. I mean a big-ticket deal.”

I merely nodded. I had no idea whether Tony's speculations were worth anything. But whatever Leo Trilby was up to, it didn't interest me in the least.

Tony came over and stared down at the objects on the floor. “Isn't that against the law, by the way? You stole evidence in a murder case.”

“Wrong!” I snapped. “For one, I
found
the evidence, I didn't steal it. And two, Donaldson doesn't believe it has any meaning. He doesn't even consider it evidence. So at least as long as I have it, they're still frightened.”

“Oh, yeah. They're shaking in their booties.”

“Don't be so quick to scoff. I promise you, Mathew Hazan will soon be shaking in his. I'm going to get him!”

“Why don't you give it a rest, girl? What's it to you if the Riverside Quartet breaks up? Where's all this self-righteous ire coming from?”

“I'm not being self-righteous, Basillio. I just happen to take the concept of justice very seriously.”

“Whoa! Aren't we getting a little messianic here?”

“Basillio,
you
didn't see that chisel in Will's chest. And all that awful blood. I did.”

“I know that. But first it's the breakup of the group that makes you mad. Then it's the hateful manager. Now it's the horrible memory of finding the body—and the idea that justice has been cheated. Your motivations are all over the map, Miss Nestleton. You're way out of focus!”

“Am I? Well, watch me get back into character!” I snarled as I headed for the telephone.

“What are you doing?”

“Calling Beth Stimson,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because I've got to make her listen to me. I've got to explain why I did what I did. And ask her help in continuing the investigation. To persuade her that Mathew Hazan and his henchman Miranda are murderers.”

I half expected the answering machine to click on. But it was Beth herself who answered.

“Beth, this is Alice Nestle—”

The receiver was slammed down ferociously.

“Bad connection?” Tony asked disingenuously.

“She hung up on me.” I dialed the number again. As soon as she picked up I began speaking desperately. “Please, Beth, let me—” But the phone clicked off again. It was no use.

“One thing I've always said about you, Swede. You've got the knack for making friends wherever you go.”

“If all you can do is make wisecracks, Tony, why don't you just leave?”

He threw up his arms. “I've got a better idea,” he said in resignation. “Why don't I make some pasta?”

I wasn't paying much attention to him. My mind was on other things.

“How would that be, Swede? Hungry?”

“Whatever,” I mumbled. He disappeared into the kitchen, Bushy trailing along behind him.

It was obvious Beth Stimson wasn't going to listen to me. What next? How to restart a stone-cold investigation? I thought of a move: call John Cerise again. He had given me solid information on the Scottish Fold thefts back in the 1970s. Maybe there was more where that came from. Maybe John knew more, or knew others who did.

I called him and, in a refreshing change of pace,
he
seemed delighted to hear my voice.

“Did what I gave you help any?” he asked.

“A great deal, John—but I need more.”

He laughed softly. “Alice, sometimes I think you're part cat. You always want more.”

“I know I'm being awfully pushy. And I'll make it up to you soon. But I need to contact the people whose litters were stolen. Or anyone who was involved on some basic level: vets, buyers, breeders. Anyone. I need names and addresses and phone numbers, John.”

There was a lengthy pause, and I heard him take a deep breath. I wondered if there was someone there with him in the house.

“John, dear, am I calling at a bad time? I guess this could wait till morning.”

“No, no. It isn't that. I was just taken aback. You know, that information I got for you . . . Well, you have to remember, those things happened twenty years ago, Alice. I have no idea where all those people are today, if indeed they're all still alive. But I guess I could give it a try, if you can give me a few days to work on it. Okay? I'll see what I can come up with.”

“Thank you, John, thank you very much.” We made a little small talk and then said good-bye.

I began to pace. I had little confidence in John's ability to come up with those names and numbers, in view of what he'd said. And I had no time! While I was up in New England I'd had no sense of “Time's wingèd chariot,” but from the moment I saw that article in the
Times
about the dissolution of the Riverside and Hazan's new assignment, all I'd been able to think of was time passing. This had to be done quickly—
now
—or not at all.

All I really had were the cat thefts in the seventies. I had to concentrate on those. There had to be some kind of trail that could be followed. There had to be some source of information other than John Cerise.

I kept pacing. First Bushy came in to watch me. And then Tony.

“You ought to put on a pair of sneakers if you're going to keep this up.” Tony was holding a couple of unpeeled garlic cloves.

“I haven't even
started
pacing yet, Tony. When I really get going I take in the hallway and the bedroom too.”

“Well, it's always good to expand your horizons.”

It was a mildly funny line, but I didn't laugh. I didn't laugh because his comment opened up a possibility for me. What if Miranda and Roz had expanded
their
horizons? What if their kitten-napping ring was in fact a large-scale organization that operated even outside the local area?

And maybe their thefts had stopped not because they'd reached a financial goal but because they'd been caught—or at least suspected by the authorities. In fact, if they stole one type of property, why not other types? Perhaps one or both of them had even been arrested in the past.

If any of that was true, there would be a record somewhere.

“Who are you calling now?”

“Remember Detective Rothwax? My old colleague from the police?”

“I remember him well,” Tony said balefully, and headed back into the kitchen.

Rothwax didn't sound overjoyed to hear my voice. But luckily, I knew his bark was a great deal worse than his bite.

“Well, I'll be damned,” he said. “It's Cat Woman. You keeping yourself out of trouble?”

When he'd first called me by that name, while I was a short-lived consultant for the NYPD special unit called
RETRO
, it had infuriated me. He seemed to have a talent for infuriating me back then. But we had eventually become good friends and he had helped me out often.

“Detective Rothwax, I need that darling little computer of yours again.”

“So what else is new?” he said. “I didn't think you were calling to find out how my goldfish are doing.”

“Seriously, can you help?”

“Who do you want checked out this time?”

“Four women.”

“What kinds of dirt are we looking for?”

“Arrest records. Any kind of contact with the law. Any kind of anything, I guess.”

“Who are they?”

“Musicians.”

“You don't say.”

“Yes, I do. Classical musicians who belong to a rather famous chamber music group.”

“Nobody like you, Cat Lady. Nobody.”

I spelled all their names for him and gave him the few trivial bits of hard information I had on each. Naturally, it didn't go much farther than knowing that Beth Stimson was from Denver, or that Roz was married to a well-to-do businessman.

“Do you think you can have something for me tomorrow?” I asked. “I could meet you at
RETRO
.” I hoped that my voice echoed my sense of urgency.

“Sure. Why not? If they put the cuffs on me for unauthorized use of the computer, you can accompany me down to central booking.”

“I appreciate it, Detective.”

“Anytime, Cat Woman, anytime.”

I had done all I could for the moment. Now I had to wait till tomorrow.

It turned out to be a long night. I couldn't sleep. Tony prescribed the time-tested remedy for that—making love. I said I'd pass, I just, didn't want to. But neither did I want him to leave. So he ended up sleeping in my bed. I ended up on the sofa. And the put-upon cats roamed all night from one room to the other.

***

I thought morning would never come. But of course it did, and Basillio and I went out for breakfast. I ordered poached eggs on buttered whole wheat toast and he had pancakes and bacon, starting a minor fight with me because I wouldn't sacrifice one of my eggs to be dumped onto his flapjacks. We returned to the apartment and glared at each other for about thirty minutes. I chalked it up to sexual tension.

At eleven I left the apartment and started the long, cold walk down to Centre Street. I arrived ten minutes late—a last-minute phone call had delayed me—and Rothwax was standing behind the frankfurter wagon where we always meet, when we do meet. He was griping bitterly between bites.

“The least you can do is be on time, C.W.”

“I'm really sorry, Rothwax. I didn't get a wink of sleep last night and I guess I'm . . . It just isn't going very well with this man I . . . The lights were against me.”

He sighed forgiveness wearily.

“What do you have for me?” I asked.

“Nothing very interesting. Three of them weren't in the system under anything but driver's license and state taxes.”

“But one was,” I crowed triumphantly, “and her name is Miranda Bly!”

“Nope. You're dead wrong on that one, Cat Woman. The only one with a police connection is Elizabeth Stimson.”

“
Beth?
”

“Right. Arrested for prostitution, Southampton, Long Island, 1974.”

“You must be joking!”

“Computer don't joke, C.W. The charges were dropped. She paid a twenty-five-dollar fine for misdemeanor loitering. The end.” Rothwax laughed at me then. “Better close your mouth, Alice. You're going to start catching flies.”

When I'd recovered from the news about Beth, I offered to pay for his hot dog.

“No,” he said. “You owe me, all right. But not now.” And then he trotted off.

But I didn't move a hair. I stood rooted to that spot, feeling too stupid to come in out of the rain that had begun to sweep in off the river.

Chapter 21

Like the proverbial fly in amber, we were stuck in molasses-thick traffic on the endless stretch of highway. We were driving in a car Tony had borrowed from his friend Greg Roman, and the strong winter sun was right in our eyes.

Basillio jerked violently at the knot in his tie. “This is why all fathers give their sons two pieces of indisputable advice,” said Tony. “One: never eat the chili in a diner. Two:
never
get on the Long Island Expressway.”

Only half listening to Tony's complaints, I was staring down at that twenty-year-old photograph of Beth Stimson, part of the mysterious group of items I'd discovered in Will Gryder's room up at Covington.

Tony went on grumbling. “I don't understand this! We shouldn't have any traffic at all now. We're going in the wrong direction at the right time. The traffic is supposed to be going
into
the city this time of morning, not out to the east end of the Island.”

“Where are we now?” I finally asked.

“Just at the Nassau-Suffolk line. Route 110. We've got at least another forty-five minutes to go on this road.”

“Oh. Well, I'm sorry we're stuck, but thank you for helping me, Tony. Really. I have, I am afraid, been maltreating you.”

“Maltreating.” He repeated the word, giving it a kind of Jack Nicholson inflection with a smile to match. “What a beautiful word you just used.” He leaned over and kissed me, obviously constrained by his suit and tie.

We were both in, as Tony had dubbed it earlier, “yuppie drag.” I had borrowed Mrs. Oshrin's fur jacket, and under it I wore one of those female Wall Streeter suits with a string tie on my white silk shirt. I'd purchased it at a discount house in 1984 and had worn it only once before: when I was despairing of ever making a decent living from acting, and had applied for a job as head of the theater department at an expensive and very arty girls' school upstate. I didn't get the position.

The car moved ahead a few inches.

“Maybe,” Tony speculated, “all these people are driving out to the Island to buy their Thanksgiving turkeys.”

“They raise ducks out on Long Island, Tony, not turkeys. And I don't think there are many duck farms left.”

“Well, maybe they're on the way to their summer places in the Hamptons.”

“It's November, Basillio! November!”

I saw the merest hint of a smile on his lips then. That was me—gullible old Alice. Always ready to snap at the bait of one of Basillio's dumb put-ons.

At last the traffic was beginning to thin out. Tony maneuvered us into the speed lane and we started to move.

“Now don't forget who we are,” I cautioned him.

“How the hell can I forget who we are?” he said huffily. “You're New York's finest unemployed middle-aged actress. And I'm the man without a family, a permanent place of residence, or a single prospect in the world. And of the two of us, I think you'll agree my story is sadder. At least some people know how good you are. But tell me when the last time was you heard it in the street that Tony Basillio is the most imaginative, gut-wrenching stage designer working in the business today?”

I let him ramble on. For a while. “I was talking about who we're supposed to be in the context of this little journey we're making today, Basillio—
today
.”

“Oh, that. Yeah, I know who we are. We're writing a Sunday supplement piece on sex and sin in the Hamptons. Soon to appear in that nowhere little newspaper we work for: the
Nowhere Times-Mirror
.”

“Not exactly. The
Manhattan Messenger
.”

“And how sweet it is.”

“Slow down, Tony. Here we are.”

We exited from the Expressway and took Old Montauk Highway into the town of Southampton. What a lovely gem of a town it looked that early-winter morning, reeking of genteel, kindly money. And there were all kinds of parking spaces, which seemed to excite Tony more than the town itself. The shops were just opening for the day. After leaving the car, we found a small coffee place on the main street and went in.

“What now?” Tony asked when we'd finished our repast.

“Follow me,” I said.

We walked one long block to a red-stone Victorian building which housed the Southampton library. Just next to it was a museum with a sculpture court.

The librarian was extremely attentive and professional as I explained that I needed issues of the local newspapers dating back to early spring or late winter of 1974.

She then told me that the library held local papers only for a week or so. They didn't keep a back issue file of any kind. Since the information I wanted was from 1974, she suggested I go to the editorial offices of the
Southampton Star
, because in 1974 it was the only daily paper of record for the area.

The offices weren't far from the library—unassuming quarters on the floor above a dress shop. A thin little man in a red V-neck sweater heard me out patiently, and then informed me that, unhappily, while they did retain back issues, they had nothing earlier than 1981, as the files, and indeed the entire old office, had been destroyed in a 1980 fire.

I stomped down the stairs, feeling there was some demonic plot against me.

“Where next?” Tony asked. He looked so forlorn and out-of-character in that suit. His dress overcoat flapped about wildly in the cold wind.

“Don't worry,” I said, straightening his tie. “I'll make this up to you.”

“Where have I heard that one before?”

I shrugged. “Let's go to the police station.”

We hurried along the near-empty streets until we reached the municipal building, half of which housed the Southampton Police Department. Two patrol cars painted in garish purple and yellow were stationed in front of the building. The station house was empty except for one officer, who was seated at a folding table stapling some reports. He was a young man with a bristle-brush haircut and a heavily starched uniform. He did not look happy in his work.

I knew full well that he had noticed us come in, but he absolutely refused to look up at us until I said loudly, “Excuse me, officer.”

“Help you folks?” he asked.

Behind me, Tony muttered, “I ain't no folk. Are you?”

I silenced him with a quick backward jab from the heel of my shoe.

While I was explaining to the officer that I wanted information on an almost twenty-year-old prostitution arrest, he went on stapling. I finished my presentation and smiled pleasantly at the top of his head.

Instead of a reply, however, I received a mercilessly appraising look from him. And then Basillio got the same treatment. He let us know that we'd both come up short.

But finally he spoke. “Just what kind of information are you talking about?”

“The name of an arresting officer, for instance,” I said. “The circumstances and time of the arrest—just general information.”

He drove a staple home with great force then. “We don't give out things like that,” he said briskly, “unless you're the lawyer representing the accused.”

“But there
is
no accused, officer. As I said, the arrest occurred in 1974. And no, I'm not a lawyer, but—”

“Obviously you're not,” he said, cutting me off. “Or you'd know the statute of limitations on a charge like that expired long ago.”

“Yes, I know. I don't want to contest the charges, I'm only researching—”

“Can't help you, miss. Try the county seat—in Riverhead. We ship the closed files there. Maybe they have it, maybe they don't. Can't help you—and if I could, I wouldn't.”

Basillio took a step forward then, but I stepped in front of him again.

“And why wouldn't you?” I said, looking into his grinning face.

“Because storming in here and demanding things is not the way it's done. Not around here. Understand?”

Storming? Demanding?
Had I done that? Had this case turned me into some kind of a shrew who alienated total strangers? I turned to Basillio and started to put that very question to him.

“Time to go, Swede,” he said, taking my arm. “We only
think
we're in the Hamptons. It's really the Village of the Damned.”

We found our way back to the coffee shop where we'd initiated our visit to the charming town. The waitress, a pretty young girl with long red hair, greeted us warmly.

“Cold out there, isn't it?”

We took the same table and Tony ordered another coffee and another muffin bursting its little paper jacket with cranberries and nuts.

“Not our day, eh, Sherlock?” he asked as he began to ladle on the butter.

I had to agree. I was frustrated and angry, and the wholesome smell of fresh bread was making me gag. The town library had nothing. The files at the newspaper office had been burned to a crisp. Then the big finish: that nasty young cop with the chip on his shoulder—an unhappy little bureaucrat.

“I can't see why this is so important,” Tony said, his mouth full of muffin, jam painting his lips.

“Well, it is important. It's damn important to me.” The
RETRO
computer was generally a whiz, I had to admit. But how did I know the police hadn't made a mistake that night? Maybe Beth had just had a bit too much to drink at a party and gone off with someone. Maybe it was a simple one-night stand, and someone mistook it for soliciting. Maybe she'd lent her ID to another girl for the night. I had to be sure.

“So she was young and stupid and she turned a trick,” Tony said. “It happens.”

I ignored him. I had to think. What next?
Who
next?

Tony had finished half of his second breakfast. “Well, what now?” he asked. He was holding the paper coffee cup in both hands and seemed to be looking over my shoulder.

“We need another source,” I answered him.

“Right, right . . . obviously,” he said distractedly.

I saw then that he was following the young waitress's every move with his eyes.

His glance was so predatory that I said caustically, “You'd like to take her to a motel right now, wouldn't you, Basillio?”

He pulled his eyes away, looking caught. “Now, now, Swede.”

Had the “John's” eyes followed young Beth that night in the same hungry way? If indeed it
was
our Beth. And what in the world would make a beautiful young violinist turn a trick in a place like Southampton? Had she been stranded out here? Did she need a place to sleep?

My goodness! I flung my hands up in exasperation at my own denseness. A place to sleep. A motel!

Tony looked at me with alarm. Oh, I was stupid not to have thought of it before. If she did do what they said, and was arrested for it, it had to have happened in a public place. Like a motel. That was where this arrest had to have occurred.

I caught the waitress's eye and beckoned her over.

“Are there any motels close by?” I asked her.

She smiled, understanding, or in this case, misunderstanding, that Basillio and I were eager lovers looking for a room. “Sure,” she said. “A lovely one about five blocks from here, nearer to the water. But it's a little expensive.”

“Is it a new place?”

“Fairly new.”

“What about an old one? Is there one around that was in business as early as 1974?”

Understandably, she looked at me as if this demand for a motel of a particular vintage was odd. “Well, yeah. The Dolphin Inn. By the municipal building. But you don't want to go there—it's a fleabag.”

“The municipal building—you mean where the police station is?”

“Right.”

How strange. Tony and I had just come from there, and we hadn't seen a motel.

I thanked her and hustled Basillio out of there without allowing him to finish muffin number two.

***

We walked past the police department entrance. A cobblestone alley adjoined the building. Tony pointed up at a decrepit sign nailed to the trunk of a sycamore tree:
DOLPHIN MOTOR INN. DAILY RATES. TV.

We followed the winding alley, and suddenly looming up in front of us was an ancient two-tiered wooden structure with perhaps ten rooms on each landing. At the edge of the ground floor was an office. There were only two cars parked in the guest spaces.

The office was a gray old place with sticky linoleum. An elderly woman in multiple sweaters sat on a high stool behind the counter, turning the pages of her newspaper with gnarled fingers poking out of fingerless gloves. She shoved the paper aside and put on her welcoming face as soon as she spotted us at the door.

“How're you folks today? Need a nice room?”

“We're not exactly looking for a room . . . ” I began.

“Not looking for a room at this very moment, that is,” Basillio interrupted me, “but we'd like to make a little down payment on one.” Tony placed a twenty-dollar bill on the counter, and the lady had it in one of her many pockets before I could even blink.

“We're planning to stay here on our honeymoon,” Tony told the woman. “That's so you'll remember us.”

“You be sure of that, young man,” she said, picking up her burning cigarette from a makeshift ashtray fashioned from tinfoil.

I allowed Basillio to take hold of my hand and keep it in his, while I resumed speaking to the old lady. “Actually, what we need today is some information about something that happened here in town about twenty years ago.”

“Try me. Not much I don't know.”

“Well, I think a young girl was arrested here—in this motel—for prostitution,” I said haltingly. “The year was 1974.” The words had come out all wrong. It sounded as though I was accusing her of running the kind of place where such an arrest was routine. I yearned to begin again. But it was too late.

To my surprise, though, she didn't seem insulted. “Oh, my,” she said indulgently. “Can't say I remember the particulars, but if it was something like that, it had to be Hy up to his old tricks.”