Murder in the Hearse Degree (15 page)

I quoted, “ ‘We Blow ’Em Out of the Water.’ ”

Fallon raised his glass. “By God we try.”

“I’m Hitchcock Sewell,” I said. “And this superficial bauble is Miss Julia Finney.”

Julia handed him her fingers. Fallon wasn’t exactly sure what to do with them. He looked like he might want to put them in his pocket but Julia slid them free and took a two-hander on her glass.

“I’m sorry we’re not the Ostrows,” she said.

Fallon made a face. “Ah, screw the Ostrows. This
Bells of Titan
is a load of tin trash anyway, be glad you haven’t seen it. How the hell they roped the ARK into sinking so much money into that dog I don’t know. I guess it’s the ridiculous ending. Everyone’s calling it redemptive. All I know is that if redemption is as tedious and maudlin as that then go ahead and make my bed in hell and I’ll be happy.”

Julia asked, “Are you drunk, Mr. Fallon? Or are you just a teensy bit insane?”

Fallon let off a huge laugh. “I like that!” He jerked a thumb at her. “She’s something else.”

I agreed. “She is.”

“Is she yours?”

“I take her out for a walk once a week.”

“That must be fun.” Fallon took a long pull on his drink. “I’ll tell you, I like the two of you more than the Ostrows already. I was supposed to get a quote from them but you know what, I’ll just make one up. Hollywood people never read anyway.”

He finished off his drink just as a young black woman was coming by with a tray collecting empties. Fallon set his glass on the tray.

“Are they paying you enough?” he asked gruffly. The girl smiled awkwardly. Fallon produced a ten-dollar bill and set it on the tray. “Of course they’re not. You deserve to drive out of here in a gold Cadillac.” He winked at her. “That’s a vodka martini. Dry as a boot.”

The girl moved off.

“I think they only collect empties,” I said. “They don’t deliver.”

Fallon polished his tie with his knuckles. “They deliver.”

Fallon latched on to us as we meandered the room. I asked him if he would point out Crawford Larue for me.

“I think Crawford must be in the living room,” Fallon said. “It’s about time for his speech. You might want to find a blanket and pillow.”

“What speech is that?”

“What speech do you think?”

“I have no idea.”

“Come on then. Follow me.”

As we crossed to the next room we were met in the doorway by a young blonde woman in a black pants suit. She couldn’t have been much more than twenty or so and she was very pretty, with a wide red mouth and Cherokee cheekbones. She came through the doorway like she was negotiating the deck of a ship.

“Mrs. Jenks!” Fallon cried. The young woman’s head turned in our direction and her eyes settled like those little globe compasses people have on their dashboards. They were as black as the bottom of a well. Her hair was cut short and angular, with too much of it on one side. I suspect it was stylish. Her neck was the width of my wrist.

“Mrs. Jenks,” Fallon said again. “Nick Fallon.
Daily Cannon
. How are you doing?”

The young woman peered at Nick like a raccoon from a hole. When she spoke her voice was nearly a whisper.

“I am . . . fine. Thank you.” The voice was faint, but the accent was huge. It twanged like a banjo. Her gaze drifted to Julia and me. If she noticed that the woman in front of her was wearing harem pants and a teeny tiny silk vest, she didn’t let on. If she noticed that I was trying out my best smile, she didn’t let on about that either. Her gaze seemed to settle on my left earlobe.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hello,” she whispered.

“We’re looking for your father,” Nick said. The young woman’s compass globes traveled back to Nick’s vicinity.

“Daddy is in there.”

She winced a smile, though it looked more as if someone had just landed a whip on her back, then she moved on into the room we’d just left.

“That was an odd one,” I said. “Has she been on our planet long?”

Fallon tugged on his ear. “That’s Crawford’s daughter. The former Sugar Larue.”

Sugar Larue. I couldn’t be certain, but I believe I once met a stripper with a name like that. Or maybe I just dreamed about her.

“Is she sleepwalking or is that her usual party demeanor?”

Fallon shrugged. “She’s a wacko kid, isn’t she? I couldn’t tell you. Did you see those eyes? Long ago and far away.”

We moved into the living room. It was packed tighter than the room we’d just left except for a spot near the fireplace that had been cleared out. A lone figure was sitting there, in a wheelchair. His face was gaunt and pasty, splotched with an ash-gray beard. His shoulders were hunched and his large head hung forward like a vulture’s. He was dressed in a seersucker suit and had a transparent tube running from his nose to a small red tank next to the wheelchair, strapped to a luggage caddy.

“Is
that
Crawford Larue?”

I had spoken too soon. The crowd was just quieting down and a little man shaped like an egg stepped over next to the wheelchair and turned to address the gathering. I recognized the rich mellifluous syrup immediately.
This
was Crawford Larue.

“Mah friends, mah honored guests. Ah’m indebted to the Lord for the gift He has made to us
all
of the great man you see seated before you. . . .”

Fallon let out a low groan. “Ah need mah mahtini.”

Crawford Larue was all of five feet two if he were standing on a bucket. He was decked out in a three-piece cream-colored suit, shiny brown-and-white saddle shoes and a dark blue bowtie. A transparent frosting of sugar-white hair thinly covered a terrifically pink scalp. The face was also pink and somewhat elfin. On the phone with Larue I had pictured a larger, Noah-like figure. In the flesh he was a Weebles toy.

The egg rested a small pink hand on the old man’s shoulder.

“Jack Barton was the agent of mah salvation in mah hour of need. We would not be here today . . .
Ah
would not be here . . . and possibly the ARK itself would not be here today, if not for the blessing of this magnificent man. . . .”

Larue blew on in this fashion a while longer. The man in the wheelchair glared out into the room as if he were trying to ignite the guests through the power of his watery eyeballs. It wasn’t working. The girl collecting empties had tracked us down and she delivered Fallon his drink.

“Is that old guy going to live to the end of the speech?” I muttered. “He looks awful. Who is he?”

Fallon purred as he took a sip of his drink. “Big Jack? He’s an old horse trader, like Crawford. The Virginia version. I’ll tell you, it’s a crime seeing him like this. That was one powerful man in his day, believe me. Jack Barton had more politicians in his pocket than most people have change. The poor old pisser stroked out a couple of years ago. It’s been downhill ever since.”

As Larue was wrapping up his tribute, the crowd parted and a tray came wheeling forward. There was a large rectangular cake on the tray with somewhere in the neighborhood of a thousand candles planted in it. Pushing the tray was an attractive redhead. She was packed into a conservative blue dress, and packed rather nicely, as I see these things. Larue concluded his speech, and the redhead turned to the room and pumped her arms in the air, getting the Happy Birthday song going. As it often does, it came out sounding more like a dirge. The woman bent down and planted a kiss on Jack Barton’s forehead. The old man’s hand raised, as if on pulleys, and swung out in the direction of the woman’s sumptuous fanny. She slapped the hand away with a high laugh.

“That’s Jack.” Fallon chuckled. “Ain’t dead yet.”

The cake was rolled in front of Barton, and there was a bit of awkwardness at the realization that the old guy didn’t have the wheeze to even begin working on the candles. Crawford Larue and the redhead bent over the cake and blew out the candles for him.

As the cake was being cut and pieces placed onto plates, Fallon led Julia and me over to Larue, who had moved off to the side of the fireplace and was engaged in conversation with an angular man wearing horn-rimmed glasses. He was around my age, with a narrow isthmus of curly black hair, the last holdout on a prematurely receding hairline. He jabbed his glasses up onto his nose as we approached and showed the world what a good solid sneer really looks like. Larue’s eyes snagged on Julia and he stopped talking mid-sentence. A large smile crossed the oink face. Nick began the introductions.

“Mr. Larue, this is Julia Finney. Miss Finney, Crawford Larue.”

Julia pinched her harem pants and curtsied. Larue nodded solemnly. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, dear.”

I stepped forward. “We spoke on the phone this morning, Mr. Larue. I’m Hitchcock Sewell.”

The smile froze on his face. “
You’re
Mr. Sewell?”

“That’s right.”

He studied my face a few seconds. “Well, aren’t we full of surprises?”

“I wanted to apologize for hanging up on you this morning.”

“And you came all the way down here to do it in person. How thoughtful of you.” He took hold of the points of his vest and gave them a sharp tug. “I believe then that we have some business to discuss, Mr. Sewell. If the rest of you all will excuse us. Russell, why don’t you circulate this exotic creature?”

Larue’s companion aimed an uncertain look at Julia.

“Watch out, Russell,” Fallon said. “I think she bites.”

Julia slid her arm through the man’s elbow. “Not true. Maybe a nibble now and then.”

“Be sure to introduce her to Virginia,” Larue instructed.

They moved on and Larue led me into his office, which was down a small hallway. The room was wood paneled, book lined, and stank of money. It also stank of leather. There was a large leather-appointed mahogany desk at one end—clutter free—a brown leather couch and matching armchair, puckered with leather buttons. On the far wall a wooden gun rack was mounted behind glass doors. I don’t know my guns terribly well—I’d flunk the NRA quiz in a heartbeat—but the half dozen guns in the rack appeared to be shotguns. I wondered if the kick from one of those fellows wouldn’t knock little Crawford Larue right onto his roly-poly. The wall by the door was dominated by a series of five leather-framed black-and-white photographs that showed from left to right a racehorse pulling away from the pack. In the first photograph the horses were clustered, but with each succeeding photograph, fewer and fewer horses appeared, until finally in the fifth shot the lead horse was all alone, straining for the finish line, its closest competition being the jockey on its back, who was himself straining forward, his chin down near the animal’s ears.

“Damascus.” Larue pronounced the name with a mixture of reverence and deep melancholy.

“The Derby?”

“Belmont. His Triple Crown.”

“He’s a beautiful horse,” I said. The truth is, I don’t really know one glue factory from another. But you say it about babies who in reality pretty much look like Eisenhower, and you say it to a man who has just said his Triple Crown winner’s name the way Crawford Larue had just said it.

Larue directed me to take a seat on the leather couch. I did. The leather squeaked. Larue took the armchair. Even though the furniture was cleverly scaled down—my knees felt suspiciously close to my ears—Larue’s shoes still didn’t quite reach the floor without his having to tip the toes downward, which he did.

“Mr. Sewell, I would appreciate our getting directly to business. I do not want to be absent long from my party.”

“That’s fine with me.”

A silence fell. Apparently we each felt that it was the other’s to fill. Larue stepped in first.

“You said on the phone that you had business to discuss with me concerning Miss Potts?”

I corrected him. “In fact, you’re the one who said there was business to discuss. I simply want to ask a few questions.”

Larue balled his hands into a single fist and leaned forward in his chair. “How is the young lady? Is she well?”

“I’d say not. She’s dead.”

“She’s dead?” Gravity took hold of the man’s face. “Bless her soul. Young thing. What horrible news. Grievous. If I may ask, what happened?”

“She drowned. She went off a bridge.”

“That’s horrible.” Larue sat back in his chair. As he did his feet rose from the floor. “Ah pray for her soul.”

And by God he meant it. He folded his hands and bowed his head, nearly touching his forehead to his fingers. My hands felt suddenly like two large dripping fish. I pressed them together. Larue remained still for nearly a minute.

“Amen,” he said presently. “Praise the Lord.” He lowered his hands and raised his head. I detected the hint of something smug on his mug. The small eyes twinkled.

“You have me at something of a disadvantage, sir,” he said.

“I’m sorry. How so?”

“I was expecting someone else.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Your friend Miss Potts was accompanied by a young man when she visited. I expected you were he.”

“I gave you my name on the phone. Two
l
s? Two
e
s?”

“The young man also gave me a name when he was here. He was very studied about it and I have to say, not terribly convincing. To be blunt, I believed very little of what came out of the young man’s mouth. I was not born yesterday. There was an obvious deception going on. The young man was a bad actor.”

I laughed. “That’s a very good observation, Mr. Larue,” I said. “The fact is, he’s a terrible actor. I mean onstage.”

“I am afraid I do not follow you.”

“His name is Tom Cushman. He’s in a community theater production of
The Seagull
right now, down in Annapolis. I caught it the other night.”