Miss Lizzie (21 page)

“I was with Bobby Childers in his father's Packard coupe, you've seen it, probably, it's the only Packard in this whole one-horse town, and we were parked out past the fish market, you know that little alleyway there? This was a couple weeks ago, a Thursday. I remember because I just got back from New York the day before, Wednesday, me and my friend Annabelle went down there to see some plays and pick up some culture, you know? I mean, there's nothing going on in this burg,
nothing
. Honestly, sometimes I think I'm going to
suffocate
. Why my father thinks it's such a big deal I haven't got the faintest. A beach is a beach, you know? Sand is sand.”

“You were parked with Bobby Childers,” Mr. Slocum reminded her.

“Right, yeah,” she said, exhaling a tumbling cloud of smoke. “Bobby thinks he's this big sheik or something, because of the Packard, I guess, and that's not even
his
, he only gets to use it a couple of times a week. I mean
really
. Anyway, he gets sexy all of a sudden, you know? Hands everywhere I looked, it was like being jumped by an octopus.” Here she did something that endeared her to me forever: She looked at me and gave me a conspiratorial wink, as though I knew (which of course I did not) exactly what she meant.

Then, to Mr. Slocum: “I mean I've been around and everything, but I'm not that kind of girl, at least not with a creep like Bobby Childers who doesn't even own his own car, you know? Anyway, I just get him settled down and all, cooled off, you know, when I notice that there's this woman watching us. She's standing kind of in the shadows, right next to the pharmacy? Just standing there and watching us. It was pretty spooky. I mean there was nobody else around, it was dinnertime, I guess, and everyone was home. So I tell Bobby to get the heck out of there, I don't want to hang around with this weird woman
staring
at us like that, you know? So Bobby hits the gas and we get outta there.”

“And the woman was Mrs. Burton?” asked Mr. Slocum.

“I'm coming to that,” she said, holding up her palm like a traffic policeman. “See, what happened was, the next day I'm at Drummond's, you know, the candy store? And this same woman comes up to me and says she'd like to talk to me, she says it's something real important, it'll be worth my while to hear her out. I figured what do I have to lose, at least it'll be something to
do
, you know? So I go outside with her.

“Well, it turns out she knows my name, she calls me Clare like we've been friends for years and years, and she tells me it'd be real unfortunate if Dr. Hammill—that's my father—if Dr. Hammill learned about what I was doing in parked cars.”

Mr. Slocum frowned.

“Well, I could see plain as day where she was going, she wanted money, naturally, but she never got a chance, because I just laughed in her face. I told her, and it's the truth too, that my father would rather hear that I was spooning in some car than find out I was off at a gin mill somewhere getting blotto.”

“And what was her response to that?” Mr. Slocum asked.

“She just got a tight little nasty look on her face and said, ‘We'll see,' real mean and cold, like it was supposed to scare my socks off.”

“But she never actually asked you for money?”

“Like I said, she never got a chance. But that's what she was after, all right.”

“Did she ever speak with your father?”

“Not really speak to him, no. But about four days later when I got the mail there was a letter addressed to him, and the writing on the envelope was all straight lines, like someone made them with a ruler? And it was mailed from here in town, and the rest of our mail is always forwarded from our address in Boston. So I opened it.” She inhaled on the cigarette, clearly enjoying the air of melodrama that filled the pause she had created.

“And?” said Mr. Slocum.

“The letter was written the same way as the address, like it was done with a ruler? All block letters and everything, and it said that maybe Dr. Hammill would like to know that his daughter spent her evenings carrying on in Fred Childers's Packard with his son Bobby. I mean, she actually said
carrying on
. Can you
believe
? Is that corny or what?”

“Did you keep the letter?” Mr. Slocum asked her.

Her plucked eyebrows soared up her forehead. “I only
look
dumb, okay? And I'm definitely not crazy. I mean, my father's progressive and all, but why take chances, you know what I mean? I threw it away.”

“Were there any more letters?”

“Uh-uh. I guess that she figured she'd already done all the damage she was gonna do.”

“And the woman who spoke to you, that was Mrs. Burton?”

“Yeah. See, what I did, after she pulled that little number on me outside Drummond's, I went back inside and asked Roger—he's the son, he's sort of cute but he's not really my type—if he knew who she was. He said she was Mrs. Burton, the stockbroker's wife.” If she thought Roger was cute, I wondered what she would make of his friend, Dr. Freud.

Mr. Slocum nodded. “Did she ever speak to you again?”

“I only saw her one more time, and that was on the street, just passing by. She didn't even look at me. I almost said something to her, something nasty, you know? But I figured the best thing to do was let sleeping dogs lie.”

“Probably the wisest thing, under the circumstances. Let me ask you this, Miss Hammill. Do you have any idea who might've killed Mrs. Burton?”

“Well, I mean it's pretty obvious, isn't it? She was blackmailing somebody, or trying to, just like she tried to do to me, and he got ticked off and he killed her.”

Mr. Slocum nodded.

She plucked a flake of tobacco from her lower lip. “So what's the story on this reward? I mean, it's not like I'm greedy or anything, but we can all use a little extra spending money, you know?”

Mr. Slocum smiled. “If your information proves helpful, we'll be getting back to you.”

She frowned. “It wouldn't have to be in the papers or anything, would it? I mean, you wouldn't have to use my name, or all that stuff about Bobby Childers?”

Mr. Slocum shook his head. “I think it's safe to say that we can guarantee you anonymity.”

She nodded. “Anonymity. That would be good. And the money would be cash or check?”

Mr. Slocum looked at Miss Lizzie, smiled, looked back at Miss Hammill. “I imagine we could arrange a cash payment.”

“Good,” she said. “Great.”

“Thank you for coming, Miss Hammill.”

“Don't mention it.”

Mr. Slocum showed Miss Hammill out, returned to his chair, sat down, looked at Boyle, and said, “Blackmail?”

Boyle shrugged. “From what Clara Bow says, the lady never got to mention money. But it sure sounds like it, doesn't it?”

Mr. Slocum frowned again. “Somehow I have a hard time accepting the idea of Mrs. Burton as a blackmailer.”

Boyle grinned. “You think blackmailers wear striped shirts and little black masks, like those burglars in cartoons?”

Mr. Slocum smiled. “But a middle-aged woman who's more than financially secure? Why would she bother?”

“Blackmail isn't always about cash. Sometimes it's about the kick you get from messing around in other people's lives.”

“So you think Hammill was telling the truth.”

Another shrug. “Sounded like straight dope to me.”

Mr. Slocum turned to me. “Do you know anything about this, Amanda?”

“No,” I said. “I don't.”

Miss Lizzie leaned toward me. “Do you think your stepmother could have done anything like that? Like what Miss Hammill described?”

I remembered Audrey's pettiness, her preoccupation with both money and scandal. “Yes,” I said.

Miss Lizzie nodded. To Mr. Slocum she said, “I tend, as Mr. Boyle does, to believe the Hammill woman.” She smiled. “But I confess that she's a type with which I'm wholly unfamiliar. That dress of hers, and those cosmetics. And she possesses a self-involvement I can only describe as heroic.”

“A new breed,” smiled Mr. Slocum. “The flapper. F. Scott Fitzgerald invented it.”

“Then I think he should return to the drawing board, in posthaste. But, as I say, I believe her. Unfortunately, if she's correct, and Mrs. Burton
was
blackmailing someone else, it will be a difficult thing to prove. Whoever he was, he's hardly likely to come forward and admit it.”

“Even if he didn't kill her,” said Boyle.

“But it is,” she told him, “the only possible line of approach we've discovered so far. Perhaps you could talk to Mrs. Burton's friends and acquaintances, and try to determine whether any of them knew about this.”

“Needle in a haystack,” said Boyle.

“Perhaps,” she said. She smiled. “But surrendering their needles is, after all, the purpose of haystacks.”

Grinning, Boyle shrugged once more. “It's your nickel, Miz Borden.”

Miss Lizzie turned to Mr. Slocum. “Who else is waiting to talk to us?”

SIXTEEN

THE THIRD AND final witness was a man in his forties. His face was square, weathered by the sun, creased with age or effort. A pair of thick black eyebrows bristled below (and not very far below) a thatch of wiry black hair. His eyes were brown, small, set close to a broad flattened nose; and his wide, thin-lipped mouth was downturned at both ends, as though he had once been displeased by something and had resolved to make his displeasure permanent. Atop heavy sloping shoulders was a gray cotton work shirt, somewhat the worse for wear, and over this lay the straps of his dark-blue denim overalls. His shoes were black brogues. Taller than Boyle but not so tall as Mr. Slocum, and wider than either, he was a very large man.

He moved across the room with the slow stolid comfortable walk of someone who depends on his body for his livelihood and knows that it will never fail him. Mr. Slocum, who had led him from the sitting room, introduced him as Mr. Hornsby. He introduced the rest of us and said, “Have a seat, Mr. Hornsby.”

Mr. Hornsby eyed the plush red velvet chair for a moment as though it might be an elaborate trap, then lowered himself into it and crossed his arms over his chest.

Mr. Slocum said, “Now, Mr. Hornsby. You say you have some information about the murder of Mrs. Audrey Burton.”

Hornsby said, “The nigger did it.”

For a moment none of us spoke; even I knew that this was not a word used in polite discourse.

“I see,” said Mr. Slocum at last. “And which Negro, exactly, did you have in mind?”

“The old one. Old nigger lives out at the edge of town with the rest of 'em. Charlie, they call him.”

“Old Charlie?” I said. I looked at Miss Lizzie. “He's the man who brings the chickens. He wouldn't hurt a fly.” He was an old man, stooped and white-haired, terribly sweet, with a wide ready grin that showed black spaces between nubs of yellow teeth. (Audrey, whenever pointing out the perils of improper dental hygiene, had always used Charlie as an example.) He had talked with me, joked with me, whenever he came to deliver the chickens Audrey had ordered. From the first I had wanted, but never dared, to ask him to teach me a spiritual or two. Everyone understood that all Negroes knew an infinite number of spirituals.

“What makes you believe,” Mr. Slocum said, “that this man might be involved in Mrs. Burton's death?”

“Saw him,” said Hornsby. “Saw him comin' out of the place next door to this one. That's the Burton place, right? He had blood on his shirt. I could see it plain as day. And he was carrying somethin' in a paper bag. Walked right on past me down Water Street.”

There was more in his voice than the familiar Yankee twang, some other sort of accent, but I could not identify it.

“Mr. Hornsby,” said Mr. Slocum, “if we're talking about the same person here, Charlie Peterson, he's a man who raises and butchers chickens. It wouldn't be unusual for him to have blood on his shirt. Or to be carrying something in a paper bag. A chicken, for example.”