Murder in the Hearse Degree (33 page)

“Cindy never said anything about a cousin,” Paula said, eyeing me with a perfectly justified uncertainty.

“Well, who does? I mean, how often do you talk about your cousin?”

She didn’t answer. She pivoted to face me straight on. Behind her, the Sphinx was pretending not to listen.

“What’s going on?” Paula said.

“I’m looking for Cindy,” I said. “Nobody at home has heard from her for a couple of weeks now, and I’m down here on business so I thought I’d look her up. I understand this is one of her spots.”

“And you just happened to run into me?”

“The truth is I asked around,” I said. “I was told she’s living with you.”

“Who told you that?”

The Sphinx gave me a bloodless look.

“That’s not important,” I said. “The thing is the family’s worried. I just thought I’d tell her. My aunt and uncle are concerned.”

“Who’s that? Her parents?”

“Yes.”

“I thought her father was dead.”

“He is.”

“But you said her parents were concerned.”

“Her stepfather. I meant her mother and her stepfather were concerned.”

“I didn’t know Cindy had a stepfather.”

“She . . . she doesn’t talk about him much. That concerns him as well.”

Paula considered this. “So you’re in contact with them?”

“With Cindy’s parents? Well, sure. That’s what I just said.”

“Then maybe you can get them to send me some money,” Paula said. She tapped a purple claw on the bar. “Cindy owes me close to a thousand bucks. I’m not going to get it out of her, but maybe her parents will pay me.”

“Why does she owe you so much money?” I asked.

“Rent. Last month and this month. Plus I loaned her a hundred dollars. She’d been yakking about all this money she was going to be getting and the next thing I know I’m out two months’ rent and she’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Any idea where she went off to?” I asked.

I’d made the question sound as casual as I could manage. Nonetheless, Paula took a pause. She pulled a cigarette from a small purse she was carrying and lit it. She directed the smoke out the side of her mouth. That was nice. Into my face and I would have had to clobber her.

“Cindy’s in some sort of trouble,” she said.

“Well that’s what I was beginning to wonder,” I said cautiously. “What kind of trouble is she in?”

Paula held up her hands. “Hey, I don’t know. She was just my roommate, she didn’t tell me stuff like that. All I know is that she got real freaked out one day and took off.” She added, “Without paying me what she owes me.”

I asked again, “And do you know where she went?”

Paula frowned. “She told me not to tell anybody.”

“So you do know.”

“What if I do? She said not to tell.”

“But she didn’t mean family, did she?”

“I don’t know. . . .”

“Look, I just want to talk to her. It’s no big deal. Come on, I’m her cousin. We used to take baths together.”

Paula pulled on her cigarette. I hoped that the ultrainnocent look I had slapped onto my face didn’t look too dopey.

“Let me call her,” she said. She reached into the purse and pulled out a cell phone and punched in a number. The phone was about the size of a half-eaten chocolate bar. She held it to her ear and leveled her eyes on me.

“It’s ringing,” she said. A second later she added, “It’s the machine.”

“Don’t bother to—”

Paula held her hand to her ear so that she could hear better. “Hey. It’s me. Paula. It’s a message for Cindy. Cin, there’s a guy here at the Swan who says he’s your cousin from Boston. His name is Hitchcock. At least that’s what he says. Like the director. He says he wants to make sure you’re okay and everything. If you get this message in the next couple of hours call me on my cell. This guy says your family’s worried and all that, so maybe you should call them, you know? And look, I still need that money, okay? And I—”

She lowered the phone.

“It cut me off.”

She dropped the phone back into her purse and finished her drink. I bought her another, as promised. She asked me what I did up in Boston and I decided to tell her the same thing I did down in Baltimore. It wasn’t that my lying skills needed oiling; it just seemed simpler. Besides, there are certain questions I can guarantee being asked of me when someone hears what I do for a living. Paula asked them. I was able to keep an amiable chat going with Paula while reserving a corner of my brain to think about what to do next. Somewhere along Paula’s third cosmopolitan an idea came to me. The plan involved a little jostling and close contact, but that was certainly no problem, given the environs we were in. I ordered another beer. A few minutes after it arrived, a guy was squeezing in behind me to order a drink and I made as if he had accidentally bumped too hard into me. I pitched forward, knocking into Paula, and spilling half the contents of my very full mug very specifically on Paula’s skimpy blouse. My jostling Paula caused her to bump into a few people who had been standing in close. Nothing huge. Just a little domino action. It quieted down in no time. I handed Paula a napkin and reached down to fetch her purse, which had fallen to the floor. Just as I’d planned.

“Sorry about that.”

Paula dabbed at her soaked front with the napkin then popped off to the ladies’ room. And I popped out of the bar and into my car. I waited until I was down the street and around the corner to pull Paula’s little cell phone out of my pocket. I hit the redial button. The machine picked up. It was a male voice.

I didn’t.

 

I swung by the George Washington Inn and started down the stairs to the Wine Cellar. I stopped halfway. Lee and her combo were working their way though “Miss Otis Regrets.” I scanned the crowd but couldn’t see Pete anywhere. I watched for a minute. Lee didn’t seem especially engaged in the tune; it was a walk-through. I scanned for Pete a second time. No dice. No enchilada. None of it. He wasn’t there.

I went back upstairs and peeked through the porthole window of the kitchen door. The scene was a blur of activity and smoke. I went to the bar and wrote a note on a cocktail napkin and asked the bartender to get it to Faith before the end of the night. I knew that he would read it so I didn’t make it cute.

 

 

And I ran.

I can walk and chew gum at the same time and I can even hum a nonsense tune in the bargain, but trying to punch numbers into Paula’s itsy-bitsy cell phone while driving a car at highway speeds nearly showed me my limits as a human being. I managed. I called Julia’s number. I was surprised when she answered.

“I didn’t really expect to find you in,” I said.

Julia crooned, “There’s no place like home.”

“But on a Saturday night? Don’t you want to be where the action is?”

“You’re not listening. There’s no place like home.”

“I see. Say, old Saint Nick wouldn’t be there by any chance, would he?” I asked.

“Well, as a matter of fact he is.” She giggled. “He seems to be wandering around in a daze. Would you like to speak with him?”

“Is he capable?”

“I’ll put him on.”

Fallon came on. Rather, a murmur and a groan came on.

“Hey, Nick. It’s Hitch. How’s it going?”

His voice was low. I thought I detected a slight tremor. “I can’t even begin to—”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said.

“Look, I’ve got to go.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on, partner. I need to ask a favor of you.”

“Now? Hey, man, I don’t think so. You don’t understand, this—”

I cut him off again. “I do. Nick, I do understand. Completely. But just get a grip for a minute, okay? This is important.”

“I’m hanging up.”

“Christ. Give the phone back to Julia.”

I realized that I was slowing down too much. A pickup truck was riding me. He leaned on his horn and I sped up. Julia came back on the line.

“Jesus, Jules, don’t kill the guy,” I said.

“Aw, he’s a tough bird.”

“That’s all fine. But look, Julia. I need Nick to do me a favor and I need him to do it right away. I’ve got a phone number where Cindy Lehigh is staying. It’s a Baltimore number. She’s not there right now, but there’s a message on the machine that might scare her off when she gets it. I need to get the address of this place pronto.”

“What do you want from Nick?”

“I need him to get ahold of some crony of his at the paper or with the police, whatever he can do . . . someone who has a reverse directory. He’ll know what that is. I’m going to give you a phone number. I need Nick to get me an address.”

“He can do that?”

“I’m sure he can. Honey . . . lock yourself in the bathroom and tell him you’re not coming out until he does this. From the sound of things, he’ll set a new speed record.”

She laughed. “Okay, give me the number.”

I gave her the number. I tried to find the number for Paula’s phone so that Julia could call me back. I nearly ran into a road sign trying.

“Have you got star 69?” I asked. “You can get the number of the last call that came in?”

“I’ve got that.”

“Use it. Dial it as soon as we hang up. That’ll give you this number.”

“Okay. I’ll get back to you,” Julia said, and she hung up.

I hadn’t gone much more then ten miles when the cell phone went off. It played a beepy version of “Hall of the Mountain King.” It was Fallon. He sounded out of breath. He gave me an address.

“Are you happy?” he growled.

“She’ll make it up to you, Nick. Now run along.”

I was talking to air. He was already gone.

 

 

The sun came peeking
through the telephone lines, sending an orange splinter across the hood of my car and through my closed eyes to a section in the northwest quadrant of my brain, where it began to sizzle the goods with a sound not unlike bacon and eggs on the griddle. At least that’s what I thought. The sizzling sound turned out to be a man hosing down his car in the driveway across the street from where I was parked. My right eye popped open and watched as the man thumbed the hose, training the spray along the roof of his car. In his other hand he was holding a coffee mug. He was in his bathrobe. I opened my other eye. . . . He was still in his bathrobe.

The sun was a shiny bald head now and I was bathed in its glow. I watched as the man moved to the front of his car—which was parked in the driveway facing out—and focused the water on the headlights. I did similarly, rubbing my knuckles into my bleary eyes. I glanced at my car clock. It had read 3:18 for as long as I’d owned the car. It still did. My head was tilted back, resting on the top of the seat—my car is preheadrest—and my neck complained bitterly when I endeavored to lift my head up. I swiveled my head to the left, letting out a soft groan as I did.

I was a stakeout boob. I had fallen asleep on the job. The address that Nick Fallon gave me had directed me to a part of town called Rogers Forge, a middle-income neighborhood of so-called semidetached brick row houses. After pulling up directly in front of 493 and seeing no lights on in the small two-story house, I had settled in to wait for Cindy Lehigh’s return from her Saturday night. I have no idea what time it was when I drifted off (3:18 comes to mind), but regardless, I slept upright in the figure S, which is fine if you’re lying on your side on a soft or even semisoft surface, but not fine if you’re in a car seat with your head thrown back and your mouth wide open. I had no idea if Cindy Lehigh had come home at all, or if maybe she had listened to the phone messages and already skedaddled. The small brick house was giving me no clues. It simply sat there, small and brick.

The man in the bathrobe moved around to the rear of his car, where I couldn’t see him clearly. A woman emerged from the front door of the house. She was also wearing a bathrobe. She was carrying a drip coffeepot and she padded over to the driveway. The man’s arm extended and she refilled his coffee cup, then she disappeared back into the house. I guess the remarkable thing is that somewhere in this little scenario there existed—at least for the two of them—a logic.

While I was working the kinks out of my neck and trying to put together a plan of action, a car rounded the corner behind me and pulled to the curb, skidding to a stop just behind my bumper. I watched this in the rearview mirror. The driver’s-side door opened and I saw a woman getting out of the car. I switched to the side mirror as the woman swung the door shut. It was her. It was Cindy. Tall and thin, wearing a pair of tight-fitting leather pants and a pink fuzzy sweater. She was barefoot. A pair of spiky high heels dangled from her right hand. I glanced over at the neighbor. He had come around to the side of his car and was standing with the hose at his hip, looking across the street.

Cindy ran her free hand through her long thin hair and started up the walk toward the house. She stepped heavily, like someone who is still getting the lead out. I had to make a snap decision. Do I let her get inside the house or do I get out of the car and confront her here in the front yard? Hitchcock Sewell, Man-Who-Sits-on-His-Ass-for-a-Continued-Unspecified-Amount-of-Time? Or Hitchcock Sewell, Man-of-Action? Oh what the hell. As Cindy was approaching the pair of steps leading up to the front door, I got out of the car.

She didn’t see me. And she apparently didn’t hear me approach. She had pulled open the storm door and was keeping it open with her hip as she fumbled with her free hand in her shoulder-slung purse. It wasn’t until I came up onto the first step that she noticed me. The rising sun was behind me and my shadow crossed over her.