As a Favor (17 page)

He stepped back, sighed professorially. “Because, Jill, I knew you would create a scene, like you’re doing now.”

I took a breath. Another familiar tack. “Nat, you can’t lie to the police.”

“I will not have you checking up on me!”

Gearing my voice to the impersonal tone that always infuriated him, I said, “Then you will have to move out of Berkeley. The Department isn’t going to change its procedure to suit your delicate nature.”

“Jill, I will not have—”

“File a complaint.”

The blood vessels throbbed against Nat’s temples. His teeth pressed hard together. “I can’t trust you. I asked you to see what happened to Anne as a friend and—”

“File another complaint!”

“This isn’t business. This is personal…”

“It’s not personal. Nothing’s personal now. You were—”

He spun and slammed out the front door. In a moment I heard the car door bang closed.

I turned back toward the pan in which his omelet was burning. The center was black and around it ran the goo from whatever he had in the center. I stared down, seething, as I had so many times. His demeaning accusations! The gall that he would think I cared who he spent his time with! And all this, and he hadn’t even seen Delehanty, much less the black woman.

The engine of Nat’s car ground and started; the tires squealed as he pulled away.

Obviously he was even more furious than I. In his rage, Nat had erased the last year. He had forgotten I no longer lived here.

I glared at the open door. I could have run into the street and screamed after him, loud enough to wake any neighbor who wasn’t already up and angry.

Instead, I scraped the runny blackened eggs onto a plate, carried them into the dining room, and emptied them onto Nat’s dissertation notes.

I
T WAS AFTER NOON
when I woke up Friday. Outside the sun shone; the backyard lawn had been mown but I hadn’t heard the noise. Even after nine hours of sleep I was still tired.

I dragged myself out of the sleeping bag, pulled the bottom end up over my pillow and shuffled to the closet. Pairs of jeans, pale and navy, new, frayed, heavily patched, hung from two hooks. T-shirts and sweaters were suspended from another. Only a cashmere sweater, my one skirt, and my special-occasion dress merited the three hangers. When I’d first moved in seven months ago, there was some excuse, but by now the general slovenliness of the place was an embarrassment. Maybe when my day off came I’d buy hangers, a tatami (I’d long since given up so formal a thought as a bed), sheets, towels, curtains, a decent rug…

I rooted through the clean T-shirts that had fallen onto the heap on the closet floor, chose one that was nearly unwrinkled, grabbed jeans, and headed to the shower.

But I could put off thinking about the case only so long. The suspects, the possibilities, the things I hadn’t done, those I shouldn’t have, washed over me with the hot water. I didn’t want to consider it all alone. Using my one Holiday Inn towel, I dried off. Then, plugging in the phone, I called Howard. He’d had breakfast (five hours earlier) but said he’d meet me for lunch.

At one-thirty when the lunch crowd had left most places, Priester’s was still full. Students were drinking coffee before two o’clock classes, or dawdling over lunch, pushing their food around their plates while leaning forward in discussion of the University’s involvement in nuclear weaponry, of black holes, of Zen and Moliere. A pair of women, with bags of purchases filling the seats next to them, was in our regular place.

“At least we’re not in uniform,” Howard said, sitting down by the front window.

But familiarity had its perks. Two cups of coffee appeared and our order—pancakes for me and cheeseburger, fries, salad, and strawberry pie for Howard—was taken immediately.

“No donut?” Howard asked. “You sure wholesome food won’t ruin your digestion? Not that pancakes are so healthy. You could at least have an egg.”

“Actually, I couldn’t,” I said. “I really could not face an egg this morning.” I told Howard about interviewing Nat and the eggs and the dissertation notes.

Howard’s face reddened. He howled. People at nearby tables stared. I realized I, too, was laughing.

“Nobody,” Howard said finally, “could appreciate that more than me. If I could have suspended him by the heels and shaken the truth out of him I would have. That interview with him this morning…well, let’s just say I can see why you divorced him.”

“What did he tell you?”

“In words, nothing. In wariness, hesitations, looking around, changing the subject, objecting—he said plenty.”

“Did he tell you he was at Spaulding’s apartment Monday night?”

“No, but I’m hardly surprised.”

I related Fern Day’s information and Nat’s reaction. “I’m not looking forward to explaining this to the lieutenant.”

Howard nodded. The food arrived.

Howard took a bite of his cheeseburger. “It won’t do anything for your record, you know.”

“I know.”

“This case could be a great opportunity for you. There are still likely to be openings in Homicide. They’ll take beat officers who have special assignment experience, ones who’ve shown they can handle themselves on the street, ones who can keep on top of interviews, who can deal with murders. With that case you had last month, if you finished off this one you’d be in good shape, very good shape.”

Howard, who had been a motivating force in a sizeable drug bust in July and a fencing operation in September, was a likely candidate for upward movement himself. As ambitious as he was, his eagerness to consider my chances was a rare quality. “However,” I said, “if I don’t do anything with this case, if I have to explain that I took the initial report from my ex-husband and then didn’t realize he was lying to me, it’s not going to look good at all. And there’s no way it should.”

Howard forked his french fries. “I know. Listen, I don’t have to write up my report on Nat till end of shift. Maybe you’ll find the answer by then.”

“No. There’s no need to drag you into the messy end of this.”

He swallowed the fries. “A couple hours, anything could cause that delay.”

“No. The lieutenant knows we’re friends. If this case is still in a shambles when it goes to Homicide, there’ll be plenty of questions. You’ve got your career to think of.”

“Jill, it doesn’t matter what you say, unless you’re planning to write my report for me. It’ll be done when I get to it. It’s not a priority.”

“Howard—”

“Hi. Remember me? Daisy Arbutus?” The question was directed at Howard. He looked up and it took even him a moment to place this version of Daisy. She looked entirely different, like a little girl playing a vamp in a school play. She wore a clingy low-cut dress that exposed the ribs in her little-girl chest. Her eyes were outlined in stripes of black, white, and blue, and her curly hair was piled on her head.

“I went down to the police station, but they said you weren’t on duty yet. I waited, then they told me you wouldn’t come till three.”

Howard glanced at me, a tacit reminder that we both had things we didn’t want on our records. All he’d need would be Daisy taking up adoring residence in the waiting room.

I asked, “Did you have something to tell Officer Howard?”

Daisy turned, surprised. Already she’d forgotten I was there. “I’ll tell
him
.” She slid into the seat next to him.

“Well, Daisy,” Howard said, trying to avoid the adoring gaze, “what is it, then?”

“You said for me to watch the hotel and the people. I’m doing that.”

Howard waited.

Daisy smiled proudly.

“Is that it?” he asked.

“I’m doing what you wanted.” Her smile faded. “It is what you wanted?”

Howard nodded, playing for time. But there was no reason he should know what to ask her. It wasn’t his case.

Daisy had been hanging around the hotel; she had to know
something.

“What about the letters, Daisy,” I asked. “Who picks the letters up there?”

Again she looked at me with surprise. “People. They come in. They get them off the table.”

“What about special mail? Isn’t it held somewhere?”

“I don’t think so. No one said so.” She looked at Howard, worried, as if she should have the answer.

“Okay, Daisy,” he said. “What about the mail on the first of the month, when checks arrive? Who comes then, did you ask?”

“I didn’t ask, but Ronnie—he’s a doper who lives right by the lobby—he told me all about it.”

I took out my pad.

Turning full face to Howard, she said, “Ronnie says the lobby’s really busy on the first. That’s the day the welfare checks come. The people don’t want to miss the mailman. They don’t want to leave their money lying around. And—” She started to giggle.

“What?” he prompted.

“Well, Ronnie said it’s real funny. No one wants to have anyone else see him, so all these people just hang around, and don’t look at each other. No one talks. They just walk around in that little lobby, or in the hall. Ronnie said—” She giggled again. “He said one day he went into the lobby and said, ‘Hi, folks, why don’t we all sit down and talk.’ But they didn’t think it was funny. I think it’s funny, don’t you?”

“Sure, Daisy,” Howard said. “Now, these people, what did Ronnie say about them?”

“He’s spent a lot of time watching them. There are four who come all the time. There’s one Japanese guy. Ronnie says he has a moustache and looks very unscrewed, or something.”

“Inscrutable?”

“Yeah. That’s it. How do you say that?”

“In-scru-ta-ble,” he said. “And who else?”

“Then there was an old guy who looks, well Ronnie says he looks like, wait, he looks like a poor man’s Quentin Delehanty.”

That, I thought, should be quite a sight.

“And there’s a guy who’s really hooked on something. Ronnie says he shakes bad, Officer Howard.”

“And?”

“And then there’s this woman.”

“What kind of woman?”

“She’s black. Ronnie says she’s got a big Afro.”

The black woman at Anne’s apartment? Ermentine Brown? Yvonne McIvor? They both wore Afros. Did it all fit together? Controlling my excitement, I asked, “What did Ronnie say about her?”

Daisy turned abruptly toward me, her face pulled into a pout. “He said she seemed okay. He didn’t say much about her.”

“Anything else? Anything?”

Daisy seemed to be reaching down into unused pockets of memory. But she remained empty-handed. Distressed, she looked at Howard. When he smiled, she said, “Can I have some of your pie?”

“Sure, Daisy.” He stood up. “You can finish the coffee too. I have to get ready for work. But you stay and eat.”

I followed him as he hastened to the register, handed over a ten and headed for the door.

Outside, he said, “Maybe it was better to be losing aerials.”

“No. Amazingly enough, Daisy’s given me a lead.”

“What?”

We were next to my car. “I have to think it through. I’ll see you later.”

“At dinner, then. My house.”

“Okay.” I got into the car, took out my pad, and began writing, trying to fit what Daisy had told me with what I already knew. Anne had been sending the checks to the hotel. The recipients of those checks didn’t live there. Could the clients have moved and not notified Anne? No, not with the memos listing their new addresses stashed away ready to be put into the case folders. Had Anne continued sending checks to the hotels even when she knew the new addresses? But what did she get out of it—more kickbacks? Twenty dollars a month was hardly reason for murder.

Maybe when Pereira finished checking out these clients and their new addresses we’d find that those addresses were false. Maybe the clients were living in San Francisco or Contra Costa County and collecting welfare checks there too? And the black woman, was it her job to pick up and deliver the checks and give Anne her cut?

I sat, tapping my pen. I felt sure the new address memos had been placed in the case folders after Anne was gone. Someone else—not Anne—had done that. Someone else knew about them. That someone had to be in on it. Who? Alec? Mona? Fern? Or Nat, Nat whom Anne had trained?

Or was I, I wondered as I put the pad back, getting caught up in those cases again and missing the obvious? Fern Day couldn’t be sure the black woman had come from Anne’s apartment. The last person she had actually seen in there was Quentin Delehanty.

I
RAN UP THE
hotel steps, through the lobby, to Delehanty’s door and knocked.

There was no answer. He could be out still, crashing at some friend’s place for a few drunken days. I banged on the door.

On the third round, I could hear footsteps and a hoarse, sleepy voice growling for a minute more.

“Come on, Delehanty!” I yelled. “I don’t have all day.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m coming.”

When the door opened I brushed past him before he had time to reconsider.

“I’ve got to talk to you, Delehanty,” I said, leaning against the chipped dresser. It and the bed were the only items of furniture in the room. The walls had once been beige, but the paint was chipped now and swatches of blue, aqua, and rose showed through.

Delehanty slumped onto the bed, reaching under it for a nearly empty bottle. The movement to his mouth was surprisingly quick.

“It’s about Anne Spaulding.”

He drank again.

“Put that down. You’re drunk enough as it is.”

“Yeah,” he said, taking another swallow.

I grabbed the bottle, spilling the deep red wine across the floor.

“Hey, lady, what…” He looked as if he wanted to say more but couldn’t form the words.

“Tell me about Anne Spaulding.”

He aimed his watery eyes up at me, his scowl melting into a glazed expression of amazement. His long gray hair was matted; his undershirt was grimy and days of sweat emanated from it

“Anne Spaulding?”

He nodded, and kept nodding, rocking himself back close to sleep.

“Okay, Delehanty, get dressed.”

His eyes opened. He said, “Huh,” but it didn’t come out like a question.

Taking out the card, I read him his rights, then I handed him his suit jacket, shoved one arm into it and pulled it around behind him, aiming the other arm toward the sleeve. Delehanty made no attempt either to help or hinder. He looked vaguely at the arm as if watching a movie on dexterity.