Noir(ish) (9781101610053) (2 page)

The girl narrowed those feline eyes. Made me wonder if maybe there were claws beneath the long satin gloves. And then I wondered whether I really wanted to find out.

“What does your cat like?” she purred.

“He likes to be petted and have a soft place to sleep.”

She sidled a step closer to the desk. “So do I,” she said.

“So do most people.” I sat up. “Now why don't you sit down and tell me what
else
you'd like?”

“Why, thank you, Mr. Grahame.”

“You're welcome, Miss . . . Miss . . . ?”

The girl settled into a chair. “Duryea,” she said. “Lizabeth Duryea.”

“Miss Duryea. You can take off your coat if you like; there's a rack out there. By the front door.” I pointed to the waiting room. “It's kind of hot for it. Even with the fans.”

Miss Duryea smiled and said, “I like it . . . hot. And I get . . . chilly easily.” The smoke in her voice said she enjoyed creating heat, too. And sharing it with others. Particularly men. “But thank you.” She stood again and slowly undid the ten black bone buttons. Watching her made my mind sweat. Beneath the wool was an ankle-length dress. It was both slinky and gaudy—a silver lamé sheath with a high collar and half-sleeves that crossed paths with the black satin evening gloves just below her elbows. It was the kind of outfit I'd seen Ruby Keeler and Bebe Daniels wear in the movies but not the kind I'd seen anyone wear in real life. Not since the end of Prohibition, anyway. The dress was slit all the way up one side, to her thigh and beyond. No wonder she got cold: There were no stockings or garters underneath, just a bronze leg that looked like it got plenty of exercise.

She laid the coat on the other side chair (“In case I get . . . chilly,” she explained), sat, reopened her bag, and took out the Sobranies and a book of matches. She dropped the matches.

“I said no smoking.”

She looked at me blankly for a moment. Then she said, “Oh, of course. I—
Arual
.”

“Huh?”

“I— Oh, I— Excuse me.” She bent down and retrieved the matchbook. It looked difficult to bend that way, in that dress, but her body bowed like a sapling in a spring storm. She returned the matchbook and the cigarettes to her bag.

“It's all right,” I said. I put my elbows on the blotter and leaned forward. “What's on your mind, Miss Duryea?”

She sighed deeply. “I nee' help, Mr. Grahame.”

“People who show up here usually do. Why from me?”

She crossed her legs. That wasn't an easy task either. The sheath parted, revealing the second member of the set. It matched the first. She left it revealed. If we'd been anywhere but my office, I would have appreciated that. “You have the reputation of being . . . helpful,” she said. “And trustful. Dan says so.”

“I do my best. Who's Dan?”

She smiled again. “Dan Scott. My—brother. My twin brother. I'm here about—him.” She stopped and looked at me, eyes wide.

I felt like I was trying to peel a recalcitrant orange: all that delicious moist fruit lurking beneath that impenetrable, brightly colored outer layer. “Um,
what
about him, Miss Duryea,” I asked finally.

She sniffed and shifted her hands nervously. “He . . . disappear', Mr. Grahame.” She sounded worried. “Three days ago, and I haven't hear' from him since. He was in Seattle. He's in”—she hesitated and stared at her hands—“insurance, industrial insurance. There was some big meeting there, something to do with . . . Boeing's new airplanes. Anyway, he was due back here at five thirty Saturday—and we were suppose' to meet some . . . acquaintances for cocktails, to celebrate. Our”—she looked again to the ceiling for help—“birthday. I was getting dress' when . . .”

* * *

I took notes. The way she described it, it went something like this:

She heard the ring,
she told me,
when she was in the bathroom trying to fix the clasp of a bracelet onto her wrist.

She gave up on the clip, put the bracelet in her pocket, and ran into the living room to answer it.

“Hello?” she said, a little out of breath.

Her brother was on the other end. “Hi, sweetheart, it's me.”

“Dan! You got in early!”

“It was just past four,” she said. “I was happy, because we woul' have time for a cocktail together before we went out.”

I nodded. “Go on.”

Dan sighed. “Actually, I'm still here. I'm sorry, this is taking much—”

Then there were noises in the background, loud noises she couldn't identify.

Dan yelled to someone: “Hey! Keep it down, will ya? I'm tryin' to talk to my sister.” The noises stopped and he said, “Sorry, sweetheart.”

“You're still in Seattle?”

“Uh—yeah. Something came up; I have to stay another day or two.”

“Oh, Dan! What about our plans?”

He sighed again.

“I'm sorry, Lizabeth; give everyone my regrets. It's important or I might—”

Her voice got higher, and she bounced in the chair like a restless three-year-old.

“Then there was more noise,” she went on, “and he start' to talk more higher—”

“—or I might leave right now,” he said.

“I talk' higher, too,” she told me.

“Uh-huh.” I nodded.

“Dan, I can't hear you. What's going on?”

“What?”

“I can't hear you!”

“I can't hear you, Lizabeth,” he shouted. “I'll try to call you tomorrow.”

“What?”

“I'll try to call tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

“I have to—”

Then there was a click.

“Dan? Dan?”

* * *

“Then I hear' a dial tone.”

I nodded.

“I hung up and just stoo' there,” she finished. She played with her hands in her lap.

“Mm.” I tapped the pencil against my pad. “Your brother
usually
call you sweetheart?”

She looked nervously innocent. “We're very . . . close.”

“Yeah,” I said, “it sounds like it.”

It
didn't
sound like the truth, not the whole truth, anyway, but I was used to that: A lot of clients had more to hide than the people I investigated for them. Their secrets were none of my business, unless they got in the way of my investigation. When that happened, and it had more than once, they ended up telling me the whole truth or I took my retainer and sent them on their merry way. I was hired—usually—to uncover the truth, not to cover it up. I didn't like people who tried to cover up. I didn't even like myself when I had to do it, to protect my client's confidentiality. Like Sir Walter Scott said:
Oh, what a tangled web we weave . . .

But whatever else she might be, Lizabeth Duryea
was
worried. Her face had tightened; she looked drawn and tired. The gold in her eyes had stopped sparkling. This way, she looked like an ordinary beautiful woman. The kind, like Ruth Wonderly, ordinary PIs like Sam Spade and me always find it tough to walk past without wondering. And sometimes wishing.

“He's always been there for me,” she explained. “Especially since my divorce. I miss him, an', an' I nee' to know he's all right. I'm sure he woul' tell me if he coul'.”

“So you want me to find him and ask him to get in touch with you?”

“No!” she said, a little more sharply than I thought was necessary. “I mean, he may . . . nee' to be alone for a while. He an' his girlfrien' are . . .” She looked at me, the plea in her eyes.

“I see.”

“That's why I don't understan' why he hasn't call'. But I just want you to fin' out where he is. An' make sure he is . . . safe.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You understan'?”

“I think so.” I twirled the pencil between my fingers. “Do you think your husband—ex-husband?”—she nodded—“might have anything to do with Dan's disappearance? I gather he and Dan weren't exactly Rip Murdock and Johnny Drake.”

“Who?”

“A couple of guys who got sort of famous for being close buddies during the war.”

“Oh. No.”

“I see. . . . Your husband?”

“He was very rich. I was very young.”

“But not for very long, I gather.”

She looked down at her lap. “No,” she murmured. I couldn't see if her eyes were wet, but there was a trace of sob inside her voice.

“Mm. And
when
was this call . . . ?”

“Saturday night.”

“Saturday?” She nodded. “This is Tuesday.”

“I keep telephonicking his home,” she said earnestly. “That's where he has his office, but there's no answer. And his hotel in Seattle—it's the Greer—six or seven times. The last time, just before I de— chose to come to see you. He's still . . . register', but they sai' he hasn't pick' up any of the messages.” She dabbed at one eye with a satin-gloved knuckle.

“Here.” I handed her the package of tissues I kept in my desk. She took one and thanked me.

I turned the pencil like a baton between my fingers. “Telephonicking.” The word went along with my theory: She'd spent a lot of her life somewhere that wasn't America. I still couldn't place just where that was, and she didn't seem particularly interested in telling me. Well, it didn't matter. Everybody had problems; I knew that before I went into the Marines. Heck, anybody who's lived eighteen years on this planet knows that. I'd met a lot of kids even younger than that who knew it even better than I did, and I'd lived here thirty-nine years so far.

“Why'd you come
now
?” I asked.

She opened her purse. “I got this. About an hour ago,” she said, and took out a normal-looking envelope. She dropped it.

“Y' know, it might be a lot easier if you took those off.” I pointed to the gloves.

“Yes, it—might be.” She left them on and made several tries at picking up the envelope. She finally succeeded and handed it to me. “Someone put it beneath my door,” she said.

The envelope was the usual business size—I had a boxful just like it in the supply cabinet—white and clean. I figured the floors in her building were polished every day or the carpets were all carefully vacuumed; there wasn't a trace of dust or dirt on it anywhere. It was blank except for her name and an address beneath it that I recognized as being a mile or so from my office, all written with a pen with a fine-tipped nib, in dark-blue ink, in neat handwriting that looked vaguely familiar. My handwriting was terrible—the bank complained they couldn't even read the numbers on my checks, so I bought a check-writing machine—so I paid attention to pretty penmanship.

The glue on the flap was unused: The envelope had been delivered unsealed. “No stamp,” I noted. “The post office is gonna be upset. I hear they need the money.” I opened it and read the short, unsigned letter inside. It was written on plain white watermarked paper—I had a boxful of that, too, with the same watermark—and the handwriting matched the envelope's. When I finished, I laid them both on my desk.

“How come you didn't call the police?”

She shrugged uneasily. “I was—fearful.”

The police had their problems, too, but they were most people's first line of defense. Unless the people were rich. Or had something they didn't want the police to find out. Then they came to guys like me first. “Finding missing persons is what the police do, Miss Duryea. We
pay
them to do it, you and me.”

“But it says if I do, they'll—”

“Hurt Dan?” She nodded. “I don't think so. Dan's their bargaining chip. No Dan, no bargain.” She nodded again, this time with a worried frown. I sat back and reread the letter. “They don't say anything about a ransom.”

“No.” Her voice was trembling.

“And you haven't tried to find
them
, either.”

She shook her head. “It says I'm to wait till—”

“Yeah. I see that.”

She leaned forward and folded her arms on the desk. She laid her head on them and looked up at me, the way a kitten looks up at you when it's hungry. “Will you help me?”

I took a breath and let the air out slowly. Yeah, I wanted a distraction, and Lizabeth Duryea certainly was one. The case might be: It had been a while since I'd looked for a missing person, and I was getting tired of taking pictures of men and women frolicking in their birthday suits in cheap motels or the back seats of Chevys parked in what they thought was the middle of nowhere. But there was something about it, about her. Maybe it was the handwriting, the accent, the eyes, the coat and dress, that just didn't—fit. Or maybe I wasn't sure just how much of what she'd told me was the truth. And even if everything she'd
told
me was true, there were still the parts she'd left out. I was pretty sure that was enough to fill most of the pages of the pad I was writing on.

Well:
Money talks; dames without it—even gorgeous ones—walk
. “Depends,” I said. “I'm expensive.”

“I have some money,” she said tentatively, and sat up and opened her purse.

“I get thirty dollars a day, plus expenses. A hundred up front. Cash.”

She extracted a handful of bills and handed them to me. I did a quick count. “I said a hundred. This is five.”

“I—just want to make sure you'll . . .”

Well:
Money does talk
. “Lady, you've just made very sure. Thanks.” I stuffed the money into the Bicycle box. Later, I'd put it in an envelope, put the envelope into a desk drawer, and lock the drawer. It would be safe overnight, and Gloria could take it to the bank first thing tomorrow. “I'll have Gloria type you a receipt in the morning.”