It Takes Two (22 page)

Mary Davis’s denunciation of gamblers and an unnamed hotel, clearly the Caloosa, worried me all night. But Admiral Asdeck didn’t seem remotely bothered by the very public linking of the hotel to the deaths of Hillard Norris and Wash Davis. We discussed the melee at the cemetery during an afternoon meeting. I outlined the possible fallout. Asdeck just laughed. “Mark it down to female hysteria,” he advised, “and forget about it.” When I explained that there might be something in what Mary charged—that Norris had tried to reserve a room for a dark-skinned honey and been rebuffed—Asdeck replied that at least the philandering Ford dealer hadn’t owned a Caloosa Club membership. “We can thank our lucky stars,” he added, “that Norris died on the edge of Colored Town and not in a Caloosa love nest.”

Bud showed up in my office again that afternoon. Like the day before, I found him stretched out in the easy chair, feet on the trash can, reading the sports page. Surprised and pleased to see him, I almost opened with a jokey “We’ve got to stop meeting like this” crack. Fortunately I caught myself. A guy like him could mistake irony for truth. And meeting just like this—in private, at the hotel, on my own ground—suited me perfectly. So I punched his ear lightly, circled around to the desk chair and threw him a great big smile.

Bud didn’t know about my discussion with Asdeck, of course. Dropping the newspaper and smiling back at me like a star student, he reported that he’d put in a full, useful day. He’d interviewed both widows before lunch. He’d squeezed Featherstone the snitch again during the afternoon. And he’d made extensive notes on all of it.

Pulling a small notebook from his jacket pocket, Bud proceeded to fill me in. “Mrs. Norris at first refused to come to the sheriff ’s department willingly,” he read. “She agreed to be questioned only in her dead husband’s place of business at the Ford dealership and only in the presence of counsel, a clerk named Stanley Dribble from the Boldt and Hammar law firm. Counsel demanded that her physician and a trained nurse be present, due to the precarious nature of subject’s feelings. But Detective Wright agreed only to post the emergency medical team outside the office door. So counsel dropped the request.

“Subject answered most of the detective’s questions in a sullen tone of voice. Yes, subject admitted, Mary Davis had been her house-maid for several years. Yes, subject admitted she had met Washington Davis on two occasions: once when Mary became suddenly ill and she’d driven her home, once on a downtown street during a shopping trip.

“ ‘Wash didn’t ever work for me,’ subject pointed out.

“Yes, subject had let the woman go late the previous year. No, she hadn’t written her a letter of recommendation. No, Mary’s work was not the problem. She was a good cook and knew how to keep a clean house. But she’d gotten too familiar. When pressed, Subject claimed she’d discharged Mary Davis after finding her with Hillard, in a, quote, ‘disgusting, compromising situation.’ ”

I agreed, laughing. “Pretty nasty stuff.”

“Had she discovered them in Mrs. Norris’s own bed, the detective inquired.

“No, the widow answered, it was even worse. She’d found them rooting around on the slip-covered day bed in the maid’s room out back.”

Bud had clearly enjoyed reading me this detail. “Slip-covered,” he said, grinning and slapping the notebook on the arm of the easy chair. “She finds the old man with his pants down fucking her maid and what does she remember? The goddamn upholstery.”

Bud continued reading. “After describing the crisis in the maid’s room, subject became tearful. Counsel moved to adjourn the meeting until his client was in better control of her emotions. When the detective replied that all three of them might benefit from strong coffee and fifteen minutes, subject pulled herself together and rang for a secretary to bring a tray.”

Bud threw me a smug grin.

“So did she ever discover old Hillard bare-assed again?” I asked. “Fucking Mary again—like, for instance, at the Royal Plaza Motor Lodge?”

“Denied knowing a thing about it till she saw the bodies,” Bud said. “Claimed he promised he’d quit seeing her. Swore it on a stack of Bibles. She says she believed him. Says she was a fool, just a poor betrayed woman, the wife is always the last to know—you get the drill, Lieutenant.”

“No possibility that she did the Smith & Wesson job on Hillard and Wash?”

Bud glanced up. “Wasn’t a Smith & Wesson. But no, she looks to be covered on that score. Says she stayed with her cousin Mildred at a fishing camp out on Pine Island over Saturday night.”

I snapped my fingers. “That’s the wife of Ridley Boldt. Remember? He’s the card-playing lawyer I pointed out to you last night, the one who was buddies with Hillard. So he sends his clerk to try to rope you off. Pretty tight little circle, huh?”

“Right. Yes. But this is a small town. They all do each other’s laundry.”

I asked what put Willene on the road to the Royal Plaza Motor Lodge.

“Lady wouldn’t say much,” Bud answered. “Claimed she got an anonymous phone call.”

“At a fishing camp? Where she’s staying with a cousin who’s her lawyer’s wife?”

“That’s what she said. Right. Yes. Said the call woke both of ’em up. Said they played cards late with two other biddies from down the road. And then went to bed. Slept sound all night.”

I asked what her reasons were for disturbing the crime scene—moving the pistol, stomping on evidence, all the rest of it. And why did she need to demonstrate her sorrow by taking pot shots at one innocent civilian and two county prisoners?”

“Plum out of her mind with grief, that’s what the lady will testify. Don’t remember a thing about it, she says. Turned completely crazy once she saw her husband lying in a pool of blood.”

“Was it a pool?”

“More like big spots. And he was on a dark rug.”

“With his jaw blown off.”

Bud shrugged. “There was the woman’s coat with at least a pint of blood on it too. Which she kicked around some. It was on the floor when Norris went down.”

“Two males in a room, both dead,” I said. “With a used rubber in the toilet. You don’t suppose they were mixing it up?”

Bud glanced at the door. When he turned toward me again, his lips were open but his teeth were clamped shut. He shook his head. “Naw. I never heard of a man using a scumbag to fuck ass.”

“Norris was Klan. Wash Davis’s ass was black.”

“So is Mary Davis’s whatchamacallit.”

“Maybe he put on a raincoat whenever he took a shower. Maybe he was scared of disease.”

“Ain’t even sure it was Norris that filled that bag. Doc Shepherd ain’t finished doing tests.”

“Yeah, but Doc’s examination showed Norris got all heated up the night he died. Remember he said that over lunch?”

“The one thing don’t necessarily lead to the other,” Bud said, grinning. “Investigator has to handle questions like
that
mighty careful.”

“Coach can handle anything you throw,” I said. “What about Mary? You sure Mrs. Norris is telling the truth—about Mary bending over for Mr. Hillard? In the maid’s room? Maybe Mary killed both men.”

“Mary says no.”

“What else is she gonna say?”

“Well, I mean, she says no, that Willene never caught them naked together.”

“Naked on the slip covers. In the maid’s room.”

“Right. Yes. Never caught them together period. But yes, she says she and Hillard did have an affair. Which was pretty much over by the night he was shot.”

“So she was there? And he filled a rubber in her just for old times’ sake? Did her husband watch through the window? Or come inside and hold a gun to the boss’s jaw? ‘Shoot, Mr. Hillard. Or I’ll shoot.’ ”

“Jesus, Dan, you got a mouth on you. Be serious.”

“I wouldn’t be able to shoot off for a week.”

Bud laughed. “Probably do you good to save some up. But Mary did say something that caught my attention and it didn’t have nothing to do with shooting—or shooting off. She said there was bad blood between Hillard and her husband. Seems that ex-sergeant Davis came back from overseas with big ideas. He wanted to be treated like he’d been treated in the Army—with some respect, like a white man. Wanted to manage something. You know he was in an all-coloreds unit that fought in Italy? Got a battlefield promotion. Upshot was that he couldn’t keep a peacetime job. Finally, Mr. Hillard offered him part-time pay as a driver at the Ford service department. Wash turned him down, told his wife it wasn’t nothin’ but a nigger job. She says she told him niggers can’t be choosers—claims that that was what Mr. Hillard had told her. And that was the one time Wash hit her. She stopped seeing Mr. Hillard a month or two later.”

I whistled. “So dancing on Hillard’s grave made some sense. But what about the gambling? Why did she curse the gamblers and the drinkers?” I figured this was information I needed on a number of fronts.

“Speaking of drinks,” Bud answered. “You gettin’ dry?”

I told him I’d water him down as soon as he finished with Mary. But not to skip any details.

So he finished. According to Mary, Hillard Norris had planned to open a competing card parlor somewhere in Lee County. He was going to use Ku Klux Klanners as his muscle and the Ford agency as his bank account. Free-flowing whisky and Miami strippers would serve as draws. He originally expected to start operations before the winter season was over. But then something happened—Mary didn’t know what. When Bud pressed her, she speculated that Norris had formed some kind of grudge against his friend, Sheriff Hollipaugh.

“Why, because the sheriff didn’t want to go along with his plan?”

“Don’t know,” said Bud. “I’d like to, though.”

“Christ,” I said, not bothering to censor my reaction. “My club is barely breaking even. How’d he think a second club could make out? I don’t care if he brought in Margaret Truman to do a striptease.”

Bud laughed. Then he blasted another homer right over my head. “Mary Davis admits to being at the Royal Plaza Motor Lodge on Saturday night,” he said quietly. “The laundry-marked jacket is hers. Says Miss Willene gave it to her more than a year ago. She admits that her husband did surprise her with Hillard that night, but she doesn’t know how he found them. Was only the second time they used the place. Says she agreed to see Hillard one more time, just to tell him what she thought of him.”

“So maybe she ends up lying down for one of her studs and then shooting them both?”

“Would stand to reason, in a way,” Bud answered. “Only that’s not what she says happened. She claims that when Wash busted in, she tried to stop him from shooting Hillard. Only Wash grabbed her arm. He shoved her outside half dressed and slammed the door. So she was sitting on her ass on the pavement when she heard the two shots that killed Norris.”

“And she rushed back in?”

“And she rushed back in. You want to tell this, Lieutenant? Says she tried to reason with her husband, argued with him, cried and carried on, but he shot himself right in front of her eyes.”

“You sure she didn’t see this in a movie someplace? With Lena Horne playing the dancehall girl, maybe?”

Bud leaned forward in his chair, patted the holster under his jacket, then leaned back. “Pushed his wife away, jammed the pistol to his ear, Whammo! Brain salad.”

“OK,” I said. “So now she’s batting 0 for two. She leaves, right?”

“Wrong. She says she looked at both of ’em dead and turned into an ice cube. Said that all she could hope to save out of the mess was her husband’s reputation. Said she knew the rich, white Norris family would come out OK no matter what. So she did a little rearranging before she left. Tried to make it look like Hillard shot himself after killing Wash.”

“Thereby hoping to suggest that what she wished had happened might actually be true.”

“She didn’t put it quite that way, Shakespeare. The girl don’t talk near so fancy. Took the better part of an hour, this is over at her rent property in Colored Town, to pull the story out of her. Then, after she spilled it all out, she laid her ears back, said she wouldn’t sign no statement. So I may have to start all over. Anyhow, she messed up my crime scene by moving the pistol, dropping it in Hillard’s hand. I respectfully asked her to tell me why only Wash’s hand had powder burns on it. That’s according to Doc Shepherd’s tests. Asked her to explain to me how Mr. Hillard could have killed himself with shots to both the jaw and the wrist.”

“I want a beer, now,” I said, changing my mind. “Are you almost finished? Mary sounds like a better liar than General MacArthur’s publicity man.”

Bud stood up. “Mary started getting confused at that point. Tried to claim there must of been powder on Hillard’s hand, only it got brushed off in the struggle with Wash. Tried to claim the powder got transferred someway from Hillard’s hand to Wash’s hand. Claims as evidence that Hillard was known as a fast shot.”

“Fast with a shot of whisky, maybe.”

“Look who’s talking.”

“Beer, Sarge. Set you up a Bacardi and Coke this evening?”

“Shut up, Dan,” he answered, genially. “Buy me a beer and I’ll tell you how I squeezed my snitch.”

Which I did, and he did, at a two-top table in the club room. When Bud caught the clerk Leon Featherstone alone during his afternoon break, the snitch also coughed up a tale worth hearing. Sheriff Hollipaugh, according to one of Featherstone’s associates, returned to Myers before dawn Sunday morning and spent about an hour in his office before leaving for home.