Cities of the Dead (16 page)

“Someone told me you were working on a cookbook yourself, Mr. Hampton,” Mary said softly.

Hampton wiped his mouth with his yellow handkerchief, then made an effort at a boyish grin. “You know how people talk, my dear lady. I've dabbled in recipes before, but I really do feel that TV is my métier.”

“This person,” Mary went on, “intimated that not all your recipes belonged to you.”

“It was Denise, wasn't it? Denise, Denise! Everyone worships that woman. It's hard to believe no one can see through her. Dora probably thinks of Denise as her friend.”

“Shouldn't she?” asked Spraggue.

“Well, Denise always wanted to be more than Dora's friend, if you know what I mean,” Hampton said with a sneer. “When Dora was abandoned, Denise practically took over her life. Oh, yes. She insisted that dear Dora move in with her, wanted to help dear Dora bring up the baby. Quite a fine father Denise would have made, I always thought.”

“Wait a minute,” Hayes said. “What baby? Slow down. What baby are you talking about?”

“Well, Dora thought she should give the baby up for adoption. Denise was all for keeping it. She thought a child would be better off without a man—” Something about the quality of the silence in the room made Hampton stop short. “It's nothing, really. Nothing to do with this business. It was a long time ago. I really didn't mean to mention it at all. I just get so upset about this insane hero-worship that seems to follow that Michel woman around.”

“Keep talking,” Hayes said. “I'll decide if it's important.”

For a moment Hampton fought the impulse, but then the desire to gossip triumphed. “Well, the truth is Fontenot didn't just walk out on Dora,” he said, trying to pretend he wasn't enjoying the sensation. “He dumped her when she got pregnant. Of course, the argument between Dora and Denise, that fizzled out. It was all academic anyway. The baby died.”

“Whoa,” Hayes said. “What are we talking about here? How did the baby die?”

Hampton shrugged. “All I know is she never brought it home from the hospital. Birth defects, I heard. Just a terrible story. I was certain Denise had told you. Or someone. Because you were so quick to hold Dora for Fontenot's murder. I mean, I'm sorry I had to be the one to blurt it out like that. Although,” he turned eagerly to Aunt Mary, “it will make the case stronger for the defense, don't you think? If it does come to trial. I mean what kind of jury wouldn't understand? She could plea-bargain or something.”

“Mr. Hampton,” Hayes said, “we'll need an addition to your statement, concerning this baby.”

“I don't know—”

“Or do you still want to press charges against Mr. Spraggue? Because if you do, when you leave here, which might not be for quite some time, I can guarantee that I'll keep those annoying TV interviewers away from you. You'll leave by the back door, maybe under special guard, so that the newspapers don't try to bother you either.”

“I don't want to press charges,” Hampton muttered.

“You're free to go, Mr. Spraggue. Mrs. Hillman.” Hayes nodded toward the door. He didn't want them around for any further revelations.

“One thing,” Spraggue said quickly. “You knew Joseph Fontenot when he was married to Dora?”

“Oh, no. Not at all. I didn't know anything about the man apart from his cooking until, well, until everything came unstuck. As for Dora, I knew about some man she'd married. That's all. I mean he wasn't a great cook then, was he? Wasn't a name, just a hanger-on.”

“That's enough,” Hayes said. “You two are free to go.”

The big man ushered them out and closed the door.

“I wonder,” Mary said in the elevator on the way down to the ground floor, “where Hampton was in 1966.”

“And what his name was,” Spraggue said. “I wonder about that.”

SIXTEEN

The lights on the second floor of Joe Fontenot's dream restaurant were out, except for a single lamp burning behind flimsy curtains in the front foyer, the kind of lamp one might leave on to scare away burglars. Spraggue strolled a block to a public phone and dialed Jeannine Fontenot's number. He was too far away to hear the ringing; it wouldn't carry across the heavy rain-soaked air. He imagined the bell in the upstairs apartment, echoing off empty walls. He let it ring fifteen times and hung up, satisfied.

It would have been easier if Aimee Fontenot had volunteered the key.

A rusty metal fire escape rising from the concrete slab of a back parking lot was the best bet. He didn't want to fool with the expensive alarm system Fontenot had installed to guard the first-floor restaurant. Funny how even cautious people ignored security from the second floor up. Good thing he'd noticed the cheap lock gracing the upstairs living room window and hurriedly flipped it open just before Jeannine Fontenot had demanded that the pseudo news-team depart. No doubt Fontenot would have gotten around to changing it.

An occasional car hissed by on the rain-slicked road. The area, a mixture of residential and commercial property, was the sort of place where a solitary figure in a raincoat might be noticed by a passing patrol car. Spraggue trusted to the camouflage of a grocery bag to blend into the scenery. A wonderful burglar's prop, he thought, the overstuffed innocuous brown grocery bag, binding the human race together with the shared tedium of universal checkout lines.

Through rain-spattered glass, the apartment over the restaurant seemed unreal, a cozy dreamlike scene glimpsed through a blurred TV screen. The window slipped up noiselessly. Mrs. Fontenot, bless her, hadn't checked the lock after his visit. But four inches open, the window caught.

Spraggue felt no sense of unease, no breathlessness, no rush of adrenaline. He was immersed in his role, not a burglar, but an absent-minded, respectable homeowner. He had done this before, locked himself out. Such a bother, with all these groceries. And in the rain.

A little more exertion made the stubborn sash yield. Beads of sweat mingled with the rain on his neck.

He leaned inside the window and deposited the grocery bag on the floor. Then he stepped inside.

The living room couch was still dented where he'd sat chatting with Jeannine Fontenot. Newspapers lay in a pile near a sagging overstuffed chair. He wondered if Mrs. Fontenot had belatedly checked his byline.

He moved to the tiny vestibule, wiped his feet on the rubber doormat. His raincoat dripped on the beige rug. He checked the time. The hands of his wristwatch glowed in the dark. Nine o'clock. How late would the bridge game go?

He left the window open, calculating the time it would take him to escape once he heard the front door open downstairs. Would he hear it? The steps leading up to the apartment were wooden, bare. He tested a couple. They creaked satisfactorily. He'd hear them.

Where to begin? The feeble light from the lamp in the foyer didn't do much beyond casting mysterious shadows. The living room had few places of concealment. Cardboard boxes sat, fat and dusty, in a corner. Spraggue ruled them out. He'd given them a brief glance before and found only cookbooks and photo albums. Fontenot wouldn't have left the kind of documents he was looking for in packing boxes.

Were they kept in the house? Were they secret from Fontenot's wife? Did Jeannine know all about her husband's time in prison? Was the cooking trip to France a dream she had turned into reality through repetition and belief?

First assumption: Jeannine didn't know, He'd listened to her, watched her as she spoke about Joe's cooking odyssey to France, studied her hands, her eyes.

Would papers dealing with Fontenot's past be stowed in the restaurant safe? They'd need a safe in the restaurant, someplace to store the night's receipts before the morning's visit to the bank. But Jeannine would surely know the combination. Not the safe, then. Some secret place.

He paced the length of the hallway, identifying the rooms that opened on either side. Aside from the large front room and a tiny kitchen where shiny copper pans hung eerily overhead, there was a tiled yellow bathroom and a bedroom—very French Provincial, with a flowered bedspread and tight little rosebud curtains. He drew the shades down and clicked the button at the base of a bronze bedside lamp. The light gave off a rosy glow through a tinted shade. The bedroom held a chest of drawers made of dark carved mahogany, a dressing table with a triple mirror and a needlepoint bench, and two matching end tables. One was filled with a collection of old birthday cards and matchbooks, two bottles of pinkish nail enamel, a single knitting needle: Mrs. Fontenot's side of the bed. The other was cluttered with disordered bank statements—all from the legal First National account—cold remedies, a box of coughdrops, a lurid paperback novel. In the closet, behind clothes stuffed in too closely and laundered not often enough, was a shelf six feet off the ground. On tiptoe, Spraggue found dust and two hatboxes, each complete with flowered hat.

Jeannine hadn't begun the business of sorting through her husband's clothes, the sad giving-away and getting-rid-of process that follows any death. Spraggue went through Fontenot's clothes, searching every pocket. Two movie stubs, two nickels, and a dime.

The most promising room would be a study, someplace with a desk—a desk with a locked drawer or a secret cubbyhole. A room with a desk, that was what he was after.

And that was what he found. It opened off the bedroom, so small that it wouldn't have qualified as a closet in the old Spraggue mansion. It must have been windowless like a closet, so impenetrable was the dark.

He heard the noise and stopped dead, listening intently, his heartbeat thudding like a timpani.

“Come on in, snoop.”

He reached in and rubbed the wall where the light switch should have been, found it, flicked it on. No need for secrecy any more.

A woman tilted back in a leather armchair, legs bare to the thigh, elevated and crossed on the desk. Her hands were tucked behind her head, elbows spread wide. She wore a black cotton T-shirt, scoop-necked, sleeveless. Tight. A short black skirt. Her toes, poking out of black high-heeled sandals, were painted a garish green.

He couldn't see her face.

She wore a Mardi gras mask, the visage of a great, feathered, sequined bird. Green, brown, purple. A cruel, predatory, hawklike bird.

She cawed that same rusty laugh she'd tried in the lunchroom. “So that's how you do it, huh?” Aimee Fontenot said. “You private snoopers.”

He couldn't take his eyes off the mask. Her green toenails were like talons. “Been waiting long?”

Her eyes were outlined by green sequins. “Ever since Momma went out. I enjoyed myself. Burglary must be a real turn-on. I felt kind of like a burglar, all sneaky and excited.”

“Not too boring for you?”

“Not at all.” She lifted a strand of dark hair off the nape of her neck, twisted it around a finger, elaborately at ease.

“Take off the mask.”

“Don't you like it? Doesn't it turn you on?”

“I like to see you when I talk to you.”

“You're seeing me, aren't you?” She stretched, catlike, provocative. “I did some looking around while I waited.”

“Find anything?”

“I found what you want, if that's what you're asking. But then I had a good idea where it might be.”

“Are you planning to share your discovery?”

“It depends.”

“On what?”

“Money.”

“Money?”

“Yeah,” she said. “You know I could call the cops and have you arrested.”

“What for?”

“Breaking and entering.”

“Who, me? A friend of yours? A man who bought you breakfast in a public place just hours ago?”

“Oh,” she said, pointing a finger at him. It was maddening not to be able to read her face. “I get it. You'd tell them I invited you up—that we came in the front door together. And here we are all the way at the back of the house, practically in the bedroom. Why?” She mimicked innocence behind her ageless mask. “I'm sure I wouldn't know.”

“The cops would probably figure it out,” Spraggue said. “They're imaginative that way.”

“Me and you? I thought you were old enough to be my father. And you're probably married.”

“Nope.”

“Divorced, then.”

“Never been married.”

“Well, the older they get the younger they like 'em,” she said. The offer was plain, but the hostility behind the come-on warned him off.

“I'll look you up when I'm seventy,” he said. “Right now, I'm after papers your father might have kept hidden—passports, identification—”

“The mask turn you off?” She tugged at something behind her head, shedding the bird mask.

“I like faces better.”

“You like mine?” She uncrossed her legs, swiveled a few degrees, and posed, one leg still on the desk, one on the ground. “Think about what you'd be missing.” The chair twisted back and forth, widening and narrowing the spread of her thighs. Her hand slipped into the desk drawer.

“I came here to get something.”

“Quick in, quick out? Now that you've got the owner's daughter with you, it doesn't have to be like that. Unless that's the way you like it.”

Spraggue counted to ten. Her hand under the desktop worried him. The muscles in her forearm flexed.

“Come on,” she said. “This is a deal, man. Normally I'm fifty bucks on a weeknight. But a quick screw in Daddy's bed would be a turn-on. I'll make it a freebie and hope old Joe's ghost is haunting the place.”

He watched her hand, said, “I don't want to substitute for your daddy. I want his papers. That's all.”

Her hand came out of the desk drawer slowly, talons long and green. She seemed to relax inside, as if the offer of sex had been obligatory business that had to be gotten out of the way before she could deal.