The Devil's Only Friend (24 page)

“Has Ray come in yet?”

“He's dead asleep,” she whispered. “He's been running himself into the ground lately.”

“I'm sorry.”

“He's a grown man. I can tell how much he cares for you, Mr. Caudill.”

Patty Federle kept herself as well as any woman I'd ever known. Her eyes were too strong, but everything else was set in place just like a picture. She had already made up her hair and dressed for the day, with just a touch of powder on her face. I could not take the time to think about how she had managed to stay with her husband after everything. A woman will carry her worry by pressing her lips together or by tightening around her eyes, but as I saw her that morning I couldn't see any of it.

A slight movement took my eye from her. The littlest girl was stuck in a kind of chair that kept her from moving around, and she had been sitting there in plain sight the whole time. I noticed that the older girl was there, too, sitting at a small table near the window, staring dully at me. Her eyes were almost perfectly round, and circled by thick black lashes. Her brows were full, too, for such a young girl, and the effect was like a bird staring.

“He means well,” Patty said. “He's been through so much.”

“I'm sorry,” I said, “but I'm short of time.”

“Do you want me to wake him?”

“No. It's all right. Do you know where he put the key to my car?”

She turned and walked to the end of her kitchen counter. The key hung from the last hook in a row of four, next to a shoehorn on a little chain. Patty brought the key to me, dangling the ring from her thumb. When I brought up my palm to take it, I could see that she felt at least a little something, because her eyes had grown dark.

“I hope you can see how it is,” she said.

“Sure, I can see it exactly.” If there had been anything right to say, I might have said it. “I'd better go. Tell Ray— Tell him I'll swing by later to pick him up.”

“I'll tell him.”

I slipped out and hurried down the hall with the desperate feeling that Ray Federle might come bounding after me. There was another girl dead, and if she was at the Lloyd place, it would have been best for me to take the car and any money I could scrounge and cut out of town right away. I thought of the time, but since I did now own a wristwatch, I could only try to put off thinking of it while I bowled down the stairs to the street.

It wasn't sensible, but I drove over to pick up Walker. He was sitting forward on a folding chair outside his door, holding his hat in his hands and hanging his head. When I pulled up, he stood and began to walk toward the stairs. I pushed on the horn to get him to hurry, and I heard the secret panel pop open and the heavy gun tumbling out to the floor in back.

“Where's the other one?” Walker asked as he slipped into the car.

“Well, he's asleep, or so the story goes.” The Chrysler's tires left a little rubber on the pavement as I pulled away.

“I was looking for you yesterday.”

He knew where I had been, but I spelled it out for him anyway.

“I spent most of the day in the clink.”

Walker nodded.

“You know why they threw me in the clink?”

Walker shook his head somberly.

“I come across Hank Chew Friday night.”

“Did you take care of him?”

“I mean I came across a part of him. His right arm from the elbow down. The dicks took me down to talk about it.”

“How do you know it was Chew's arm?”

“You can take my word for it.”

“I thought you might want to have a day of rest today,” Walker said. “Emily's off to church with the children.”

“Listen, Walker, I'm trying the best I can.”

“You'll get us killed if you don't begin to drive a little better.”

“There's another woman been found dead. She's out on the grass at Lloyd's place.”

Walker sat quietly for a moment. He shook his head. “That should be the end of it,” he said.

“How's that figure?”

“Can you imagine the ruckus this will cause? Mr. Lloyd won't have any need for us now. Mr. Hoover will come out himself to have a look at this.”

“We're trying to get over there to have a look before the dicks can make it.”

Walker didn't have much more to say.

“So far they haven't found the rest of Chew,” I said. “Or I don't think they have. So far as I know, he might still be walking along.”

Since he made no reply, I shrugged and looked out the window. Lake St. Clair glittered in the sun. There was a fair chop to the water, and only a few larger yachts were out. Maybe it was too early in the season for the boats. A freighter crept along out in the channel, moving down toward the Detroit River.

At the gatehouse, two security men came out, one on either side of the car. They were two-suiters, dressed up nicely for their duty but brought up the hard way, from the look of them. They might have been brothers; both had the flattened noses and battered brows of pugs and the genial nature of men who can handle themselves. They were not the same pair who had allowed me in to see the Old Man when I had strolled up on foot the first time. They knew us on sight—they were expecting us—but still they looked us over well before they let back the gate.

One said, “You're Caudill.”

I nodded.

“All right,” he said.

“I'm Walker.”

“Go down the path over there to the circle of ash trees.” The pug looked out to the road. “They'll be coming pretty soon,” he said.

Walker and I looked across the broad lawn and saw how the open space was broken by stands of trees and rock walls made to look older than they were. I pulled the Chrysler through the gate; the brick arch seemed like the entrance to a tunnel.

I said, “We'll come around the circle and set up the car to go out in a hurry. We'll walk down.”

We were outside Detroit, and so any call to the police would bring Grosse Pointe public safety men. They'd be a little softer toward the Lloyd family and would have an interest in keeping a lid on things. But it was an even bet that they'd have been talking to the Detroit boys, and they'd surely know me if they saw me.

Walker and I walked down the path across an open meadow and into a grove of trees. I thought I could see flashes of an odd whiteness inside the blooming greenery.

“Step right behind me,” I said. “Watch what you do. Don't drop anything. Don't pick anything up. Watch where you put your feet.”

I stepped a few yards closer to the ring of trees and looked closely at the ground. The dew had burned off the grass already, and I couldn't see much in the way of tracks. The trees weren't far from the water. The Lloyd property swung out at either end to form a calm little bay, and in the middle of it they had built a long pier jutting out. Because of the budding and blooming ground cover, the lake was mainly out of view, but I could smell it. We stepped into the circle carefully.

“What a place,” Walker said, looking out toward the main house.

As I drew closer, I could clearly see the whiteness of the girl's dress against the darkness of her skin.

Another colored woman,
I thought.
How does Chew fit in to all this?

I took a few more steps and held out my arm to bar Walker from moving closer.

She was propped up against the bole of a big ash, her legs spread. Her dress had been pulled up, and from the bloody mess there, I could guess how it had gone. Though we never went closer than ten steps from her, I could see that someone had gone to the trouble of opening her eyes. Her lips were pulled back, showing the teeth like a sneer. On the side I could see, her elbow cocked stiffly upward a bit to show how her arm ended in a dainty stump. On the grass beside her I saw what I took to be her hand.

Walker said nothing. He stared over my shoulder, and I could smell the trace of coffee on his breath and the oil in his hair. When he saw that it was a colored woman, I swear I could feel how his heart skipped. He wanted to rush past me.
He thinks it's his sister,
I thought.
He feels so much for her still.

Maybe it wasn't more than a few seconds, but I took in all the details before I finally recognized her. My gut sank when it hit me, and I had to grit down the white panic: She was not a stranger to me. It was too clear just how personal it had become. From the way the girl had been arranged—facing the big house, with her dress pulled up, fouled down below and bloodied everywhere—l knew that the killer or killers had a mean sense of humor. The whole scene was set up to match Jane Hardiman's murder, and there was no mistaking it. I had seen it firsthand, and I had burned the crime scene photographs into my skull. This girl was set up to match that scene, point for point, except for the severed hand.
I knew her.

Who could know about this?
I thought.
What did I tell them?

“She isn't on her way to church,” said Walker.

I turned angrily toward him.

“You should have some respect,” I said.

“Detective, you can't tell me anything about respect.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don't know,” said Walker. “But we can't help her now.”

I looked again at the scene. Death made her look younger than I knew she was. In the bright light of day I could see that her tattered dress was something a younger woman would wear—she might have kept it all through the hard years of the war.

She had been dragged up from the lake. Even if she had not been brought in from a boat along the pier, the Lloyd property had hundreds of feet of shoreline where a little boat might be brought up in the night. I could see clearly how the old leaves and dirt of the ash circle had been disturbed by her body dragging. Doubtless she had been wrapped in a tarpaulin or a carpet just as Jane Hardiman had. My chest was seizing up, and it might have been fitting if I had just dropped dead of a broken ticker right inside the circle of trees. I wanted to get rid of Walker somehow and grab the girl and make every trace of her disappear. Ideas went reeling through my head in a panic. We could drag her into the water, into one of the smaller boats that Lloyd kept along the shore for his rich paddling friends. The guards, the secretary, James, the household help, Old Man Lloyd—

“Step back out the way you came,” I said.

“Here they come, Detective,” Walker murmured.

“We're covered,” I said hastily. “We've got badges, haven't we? This qualifies as Lloyd security business, am I right?”

In fact, I was not certain that I had brought my own badge, and of course Walker had been forced to do without.

“Let's go on up to the house. They can come and find us if they want us.”

It was a walk to the main entrance, and I supposed that the Lloyds would have a driver take them to the various areas of the property. It was uphill, too, set along rolling hills unusual for flat Michigan, and both Walker and I were panting when we stepped up to the entrance. There was a buzzer to the side, and a pair of ornamental knockers—brought over from Switzerland or England, I supposed—in the center of each great door. I picked up one heavy brass knocker and let it thud down a few times.

Whitcomb Lloyd swept back the door.

“Mr. Caudill, you've arrived too late!” He was smiling with dark humor, but I could see in his eyes that he knew what a mess it would be.

“I thought you were in California,” I said.

“I was, indeed, until yesterday. I arrived late last night. And now this.”

“I'm Walker. Jonas Walker.”

“Hello, sir. And Mr. Federle?”

“He couldn't make it,” I said. “How was California?”

“Beautiful, as always. My wife sends her regards, Mr. Caudill.”

“She never met me.”

“Nevertheless, she's certain she'll be charmed to make your acquaintance. You've a reputation for a sort of impish charm for the ladies. Do you believe that?” He was still holding the doors open with his long arms. He let one go and swept an arm inward. “You must come in,” he said. “I expect there will be quite a crowd today.”

“You should put some men out there to keep the shutterbugs away,” I said.

“I like the way you think, Mr. Caudill,” said Lloyd. “That's a critical appraisal of the situation. You'd make a good businessman.”

The butler appeared and stepped neatly toward us. The strain of keeping his distress below the surface made his eyes red, his mouth sour. “Your hats, gentlemen?”

“We'll keep 'em,” I said.

“Some refreshments? Coffee? Tea?”

“No,” I said. “We won't be long.”

“I think I'd like a cup,” said Walker. “Just plain black, if it's no trouble.”

“Why don't you bring a pot,” said Lloyd. “We'll be in the library.”

Like the rest of the house, the library was covered with paneling, carved along the edges and around the fireplace with old designs of flowers and knots, heads of ladies in profile, birds in flight, and even tiny reliefs of German cottages and farmhouses. The furniture was a mess of too-fancy chairs and sofas from different periods and heavy wooden tables, some inlaid with patterns of veneer or with mother-of-pearl. Strewn along the walls and atop flat places, precious art pieces made it hard for the servants to dust the place. There were a number of books as well, arranged carefully in the built-in shelves. They looked as if they might have been read, but I supposed that they, too, had been purchased from some formerly wealthy estate on the Continent.

“I can offer you a pipe, gentlemen, or a cigar,” Lloyd said. “My old father has no vices, but I could spin tales about the men who have gathered in this room. Charlie Chaplin once sat in that chair, Mr. Walker.”

“Fatty Arbuckle gave me an apple one time,” said Walker. “He had a bushel of apples, and he was tossing them from his open car out front of the Opera House.”