Poisoned Pins (14 page)

This was the second time he'd slipped away before I could inquire into the parameters of his involvement, and I decided it was high time to have a little talk with him. The mere thought was enough to make my skin itch as if I'd rolled in poison ivy and the pustules were emerging. Rather than retreat to the bathtub, I reminded myself that I was the only person with any desire to help Debbie Anne, whether or not she deserved it.

Arnie was not listed in the telephone directory. The last time I'd been unfortunate enough to encounter him, he'd been living in a storage room at the city animal shelter. He'd subsequently been fired—for just
cause—and I had no idea where he currently lived. I could have spent the remainder of the afternoon turning over rocks in the woods or crawling under bridges in hopes of finding him, but even I had limits (although Peter Rosen would be the last to acknowledge it).

I made a pot of tea and sat down on the sofa to rely on deductive prowess rather than physical exertion, being a fan of the armchair-detective genre. Reading about the women private eyes with brass bras and testosterone for brains had always left my fingers gritty and my eyes dazed with images of violence. Tea and intuition were . . . my cup of tea.

Arnie was employed by a remodeling contractor, more specifically a painter whose name I'd heard and dismissed as unworthy of notice. If I asked Winkie for his name, Rebecca might hear about it and realize I'd seen her talking to him; I wanted to confront him before he could be warned. Under no circumstances would I ask a certain cop to track down Arnie's address.

In the middle of the second pot of tea, it occurred to me that Eleanor Vanderson would know the painter's name, if not the details of Arnie's squalid personal life. There was only one Vanderson in the directory, and she herself answered on the third ring.

“This is Claire Malloy,” I said, “and I was hoping—”

“Did Debbie Anne call you again? Do you know where she's hiding?”

“Sorry, but no. This has nothing to do with the horrible accident in the alley. I've been thinking about having the interior of my apartment painted, and I wanted to know the name of your painter—if you've found him competent and reliable, of course.”

There was, as Caron would say, A Distinct Lull. “Why, I suppose I could give you his name, but thus far they haven't started painting. I'm afraid Winkie overstepped her authority when she promised the job to him and his assistant. National requires that we take
bids in order to choose the most competitive rates, and I'm waiting to hear from several other contractors before I can finalize anything. Based on my one conversation with that man who claimed to know you, I'm as reluctant as you were to offer a recommendation. He's quite a character, isn't he? He's so”—she hesitated to find a phrase suitable for a dean's wife—”earthy and uninhibited.”

Or dirty and crude, some of us might say. I instead said, “I might as well take bids, too. His name?”

“I'll have to find the folder.” Papers shuffled in the background as she continued to talk. “My husband is forever complaining about the piles of paperwork and the amount of time I dedicate to the chapter, but now that my children have moved away and married, it helps to fill the void. Sometimes I wonder if it's immature of me to engross myself in what's basically a college activity, but it was so vital to me then and I want to do everything I can to ensure that the girls still have a memorable experience. And it is something for which I have a talent.”

Serial killers had talent, too. “As long as you enjoy it,” I murmured inanely, having agreed with her supposition that it was immature to devote one's energy to something that was indeed a college activity. It wasn't simply the response to a vacuum, I suspected, but a need for power. Her children grown, she'd replaced them with a group of girls who were depleted each spring but replenished each fall during rush.

“Here it is,” she said with a laugh. “I feel as if I've been scuba diving through the paperwork. The primary contractor is Ed Whitbred.” She spelled it for me, gave me a telephone number, then said, “Bear in mind I've not yet hired him, although his bid is the lowest I've received. Winkie has attested to his character, but as house corps president, it's my obligation to interview him personally and assure myself that he's reputable and honest.”

“I don't suppose you have Arnie's address?”

“I believe I do. I needed to send some bidding forms
to Mr. Whitbred's office, but Arnie didn't know that address and gave me his.” Papers again began to rustle like dried leaves; it was easy to imagine towering stacks of folders, each emblazoned with Kappa Theta Eta and of a uniform color. She made little noises of exasperation for a long while, then congratulated herself and said, “It was in the wrong folder. He lives at the Airport Arms Motel, which one can only assume is in the vicinity of the airport.”

“One can only assume.” I thanked her for her time and wished her a pleasant afternoon. Mine was less likely to be that, especially if I spent it tracking down and interrogating Arnie. Then again, if I stayed where I was, Caron and Inez were apt to appear to share medical insights about my deteriorating body or regale me with the details of Mrs. Verbena's analysis. Peter certainly wouldn't come by to visit.

Anyone who could find the airport could find the Airport Arms Motel. I picked up my purse and went to look for Arnie.

The Airport Arms Motel sat far back from the highway, fronted by a gravel parking lot that was sparsely populated by squatty cars, pickup trucks with gun racks, and an enormous motorcycle with improbably high handlebars and enough chrome attachments to intrigue NASA. The building, weathered to gray and as bleak as a military barracks, was a two-story structure with six apartments on each level. As I pulled into the lot, an airplane came thundering over the treetops and continued its descent onto the runway across the highway. Several seconds passed before I was able to sit up, lick my suddenly parched lips, and park near a battered car that was similar in breadth to Debbie Anne's lethal weapon.

Arnie's green truck was not there, but I'd driven several miles on my mission and it would be silly—all right, cowardly—to leave without any attempt to find him. Hoping there was a parking lot behind the building, I climbed out of my car and went to the double row of rusty mailboxes. Although the numbers of the boxes had been written in crude numerals, the few scrawled names were too faded to be legible.

It was, I decided uneasily, a bit like Russian roulette. Behind the splintery doors were twelve apartments; any one of them might be Arnie's. The eleven others belonged to the owners of the vehicles in the lot. I looked back at the motorcycle, squared my shoulders, and knocked on the nearest door.

The woman who opened it was less than excited by my presence. She had a beer in one hand and a half-eaten
sandwich in the other, and kept her eyes on the television blaring across the room and filling the room with flickery blue shadows. Only one side of her mouth moved as she said, “Whaddaya want?”

“I'm looking for Arnie Riggles, and I was told he lived at this address.”

“Why you lookin' for him?”

“I want to discuss a job,” I said semitruthfully.

She cackled at something on the screen, drained the beer and crumpled the can in one fluid motion, and said, “Never heard of him.”

The door closed inches from my nose. No one was home in the next two apartments, and from within the fourth I heard sounds of marital discord heading for a crescendo that might drown out the next incoming airplane.

Surely no one would cohabit voluntarily with Arnie. I continued down the row, interrupting another woman who was watching the same television show and had never heard of Arnie, and a swarthy Middle Eastern male who trembled in response before he slammed his door.

I returned to the middle of the building and went up the creaky staircase to the balcony, where six more doors awaited me. I knocked on the end door, perhaps with less vigor than previously, and backed into the railing when my worst nightmare opened the door.

Dressed as he was only in boots and faded jeans that rode low on his hips, I had an overwhelmingly excessive view of his body hair, all black and curly on his chest and belly, straggly and streaked with gray on his head, and sprouting in thickets on his jaw and upper lip. His nose and cheeks were rosy, his mouth almost feminine. There was nothing feminine about his arms, however; they were so densely tattooed that virtually no flesh between his wrists and his neck retained its original hue. He seemed to realize I was taken aback, and with a wry smile he said, “Be careful, ma'am. The railing's rotten and it's a long way down. Something I can do for you?”

“I'm looking for Arnie Riggles,” I said, desperately trying to prevent myself from gaping at the colorful swirls on his arms. I was not at a sideshow, and I hadn't paid a quarter to justify rudeness. Then again, he could have put on a shirt before he answered the door.

“He lives in the next apartment, but he's not home. He came by a little while ago to see if I wanted to shoot some pool. I didn't. You want me to give him a message?”

“No, I don't think so. Do you have any idea when he'll be back?”

“He didn't say, but he's only down the road at the Dew Drop Inn. You can catch him there.” Clearly amused at my demeanor and having little difficulty interpreting it, he turned around to expose his back, which was more ornate than a medieval tapestry. When he held up his arms and flexed his biceps, a mermaid rippled as if swimming amid purple and blue fish, and a dragon swished its silver tail. “Pretty neat, huh?” he said, grinning over his shoulder at me. “I've got more, but I usually don't show them to ladies unless we're intimate.”

The railing bit deeper into my back, and my voice may have risen as much as an octave as I said, “Please don't. If you could be so kind as to point me in the direction of the place you mentioned, I'll—I'll be on my way.”

“Tell you what, let me grab a shirt and I'll go with you. The Dew Drop's not the sort of place for a lady to go by herself.” Before I could decline his offer, he disappeared into the apartment. When he returned, carrying a translucent black helmet, he was more pedestrian (and a great deal less colorful) in a longsleeved shirt and black leather vest. “Why's someone like you looking for someone like Arnie?” he asked as we went downstairs.

“I need to ask him a few questions about some recent events,” I said vaguely, “That's my car. Shall I follow you?”

“You're welcome to ride with me, and I'll bring you back whenever you're ready.” He spoke politely, with no edge of challenge in his voice, but his mustache quivered as he struggled not to smile. “It's only a mile or so. Nice, warm evening like this, you might enjoy it. ‘In those vernal seasons of the year, when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against Nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth.' Milton,
Tractate of Education,
of course.”

“Of course.” I wasn't nearly as intimidated by him as I'd been when he opened the door. He was no taller than I, and although he was built like a barrel, he was hardly a massive monster seething with rage and likely to rip apart live chickens with his teeth. There was no skull emblazoned on the back of his vest. Except for the facial hair and that which I, like the Shadow, knew lay beneath his shirt, he was rather ordinary, perhaps as old as fifty, a benign, middle-aged version of Santa Claus. Ordinary, that is, except in his ability to quote Milton.

“Shall we?” He gestured at the motorcycle.

Changing my mind was one thing, but losing it was another. I stayed where I was. “I don't even know your name.”

“ ‘What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.' Or, in my case, would be as willing to escort such an attractive woman to a dive like the Dew Drop, if only because I'm curious why you want to find Arnie. You game or not?”

That was the question, all right. Approximately twenty-four hours earlier I'd decided that I had insulated myself, that I needed to expand my boundaries, meet new people, experience new things. At the time, I hadn't counted on being offered a ride on a motorcycle, particularly one that could have come screaming out of a futuristic movie that featured heavily armed cyborgs with poor attitudes. But hadn't Peter Rosen, Mr. Propriety himself, encouraged me to go out with
other men? There was no doubt about it: this was about as far out as I could go.

“Sure,” I said, “I'm game. What do I do?”

He gave me the helmet, helped me onto the padded seat, and showed me where to rest my feet. “All you have to do is hang on and flow with it,” he added as he straddled the seat in front of me, did something mysterious, and leaned back as the machine bellowed to life with a fury not unlike a rabid buffalo's.

Just hang on and flow with it, I told myself as we squealed out of the parking lot and shot down the highway, easily passing a pickup truck on one side and a tractor trailer on the other. I'd expected to be stoic yet terrified, but after a minute, I loosened my death grip on his waist and acknowledged that I was enjoying the speed, the wind that stroked my skin and ballooned under my shirt, the vibrating power, the continual roar that isolated us from our surroundings. The traffic moved; we were motion itself.

I was a little disappointed when we slowed down and pulled into a parking lot. My chauffeur cut off the engine. The abrupt cessation of sound was unnerving.

“So what'd you think?” he asked.

I took off the helmet. “A memorable experience, unlike anything I've ever done.”

The Dew Drop Inn was shabbier than the Airport Arms, if possible, and held together with splintery sheets of mismatched siding, indecipherable metal signs, spit, and a goodly amount of prayer. There were more than a dozen vehicles in the lot, and as I passed over the helmet, another car pulled in.