Two other cars sat in the driveway, a Buick like Rachel’s and a mid-sized navy blue Packard. I decided my DeSoto might feel more comfortable on the street.
I’d washed my face and fluffed and primped and was wearing my dove gray suit and best silk blouse when I rang the doorbell. Enough time passed for me to notice symbols I thought were Hebrew writing running down the trim on each side of the door. When the slab of carved wood finally opened, I found myself face-to-face with Joel Minsky.
“You’re prompt.”
“I try to cultivate a virtue or two.”
He didn’t seem to notice my wit, or he wasn’t the sort to appreciate it.
“Come in,” he said, turning. “Rachel’s in here.”
I followed him halfway down a hall softly lighted by ceiling fixtures with tulip shades and a Tiffany lamp on a small console. He led the way into a parlor, which from its size wasn’t the main one. A log flickered in a fireplace faced with pink granite that showed no trace of soot. Rachel sat on one end of a sofa upholstered in deep rose. She was smoking, her familiar gold cigarette holder between her fingers.
“Good to see you,” she said.
“Better to see you, here.”
She looked tired, bereft of her usual bounce. She made no move to get up. Joel observed us.
“Sit.” She indicated the other end of the sofa. “Since you were going to be here, I brought down that book I told you about. I thought you might enjoy it while you’re cooling your heels before your appointment tomorrow.”
Her eyes caught mine and she passed me the book in her lap. I didn’t know what she was talking about. What I suspected was that I’d find some kind of message tucked in the book.
Joel moved toward the door.
“I’ll be in the hall. Don’t take too long, Rache. Mama’s not happy about this.”
Rachel gave a pale smile and squeezed his hand as he passed. The door closed firmly. I put a finger to my lips and started to rise. Rachel realized I meant to tiptoe to the door and shook her head.
“He won’t listen.” She drew a breath as if it were the first she’d had in a while. “I expect Pearlie’s disappointed I haven’t gotten in touch.”
“A little. He’s left town.”
“He said he might.” Hurt flitted through her eyes. “I didn’t get a chance to call him. Joel had to pull strings to the breaking point to get me out on bail. It’s contingent on my being in his custody, which was stretched to letting me live here. I’ve had a nest of eagle eyes watching my every move.
“My mother sleeps late, or I wouldn’t even have managed to call the office this morning. Cecilia told me about the break-in.”
“I’d already taken care of the matter you asked me to before it happened.”
“Thanks.”
“What are chances that’s what the burglars were after?”
To my surprise, she tipped back her head and chuckled, a rich, throaty sound. “Less than zero.”
“Any idea what they were after then?”
“No.”
“Money?”
“We don’t keep any, to speak of. Just what Cecilia needs for stamps and such. Nothing out front was touched, just my office. And it looked like whoever it was tried to steal a broken loader, which is totally nutso. He wouldn’t have gotten two blocks driving a piece of equipment like that down the street at night. That’s one of the reasons I’ve never had a watchman. I couldn’t see a need.”
“If you mean the big thing with the jaws, they weren’t trying to steal it. They were trying to put me out of action hitting me with the bucket.”
Her midnight eyes flared. Bending slowly she rubbed her half-smoked cigarette out in an ashtray by her feet. When she sat back up, the ends of the gold holder were gripped tightly between both fists. Her voice shook slightly.
“I asked you to help me. I didn’t expect you to put your life on the line for me, nor do I want it.”
“You’ve done it for me.”
She was silent.
“Like it or not, Rachel, I intend to get to the bottom of this.”
In as few words as possible, I filled her in on the fibs I told about going to pick up the Padraig Pearse book and losing the flower. It gave her time to get past the blow my encounter with the big machine had produced, and was something she needed to know in case of questions. I wanted to ask if any part of her office had been torn apart more than the rest. I wanted to ask about the set-to with Hawkins she’d broken up at her construction site. I wanted to ask a lot of things, but I wasn’t sure how soon her brother would pop back in, so I got to what I deemed crucial.
“I can buy the cops tracking you down in your hidey hole through the card you’d left with that neighbor—”
“Hidey-hole. Nice description. Do you know where it is, by the way?”
“Yeah. I looked up your arrest report.”
She grimaced.
“Good. You might need to go there sometime.”
Again her gaze caught mine and held, conveying something unspoken. Did she trust her brother not to listen as much as she’d let on?
“What I don’t understand is why they jumped to the idea you were Foster’s killer so fast.”
She took a cigarette from her tortoiseshell case and started the rigmarole that led to lighting it.
“They woke me in the wee hours, you may recall. Two o’clock, two-thirty, something like that. I’m not at my best when I wake up. They asked if I knew a man named Gabriel Foster. I said something like ‘regrettably, yes.’ Then one of them said, ‘Mind telling us what he was doing at your construction site?’ I more or less hit the roof, wondering what he’d done there. I said, ‘Trespassing, the s.o.b.’ Except I wasn’t awake enough to abbreviate.”
“You hadn’t realized he was dead?”
“Not until I whirled to get into some clothes and go over there only to have a cop stick his arm out and start asking me where I’d been all evening. About then another cop went in the bedroom and came marching poor Morrie out in his undershorts.”
“Morrie. Your alibi.”
She nodded.
“A sweet, funny man who didn’t deserve to get caught in this nightmare. Fortunately, people at Beerman’s confirmed he’s a drapery salesman who probably wouldn’t know which end of a gun is which, and he had connections with enough clout back in Chicago that they’ve let him go.”
Jutting her chin to the side to direct smoke away from me, she exhaled.
“Someone’s trying to pin this on me. They found an earring of mine, Joel says. One that went missing months ago.”
“Could anyone confirm that?”
“Oh, I’m sure I ranted about it. Whether anyone remembers...” Her mouth gave a twist. “I rant a lot. And if someone did remember... my mother, Cecilia... who’s going to believe them?”
“Who hates you enough to want you in jail?” Or in the electric chair.
Rachel snorted. “Do you have that pad you carry around for making lists? The thing is...” She stood and paced, her free hand cupping the opposite elbow. “We’d had words, Foster and I. Quite heated ones. In front of witnesses.”
The opening door interrupted us.
“Rachel. Go be a good daughter. I’ll show Miss Sullivan out. Tell Mama I’ll be along in a few minutes.”
She drew in breath. Her shoulders straightened imperceptibly.
“Thanks for coming, Maggie.”
***
Joel Minsky accompanied me to the front door in silence. Watching us from a vantage point farther along the hall was a stern looking man with a short steel gray beard. I nodded to him. He didn’t nod back.
“If I was abrupt when you came to my office, I apologize,” Joel said when we reached the door.
“No harm done.” I could be as cool as he was. “I expect you found it hard to believe what I was telling you, and you didn’t know me from Adam. Or at least from Eve.”
His face lost some of its rigidity. He almost smiled.
“Rac
hel’s done plenty of things I deemed unwise, but that was the first time she’d gotten herself in anything like this. I knew what a murder charge meant. I’m not sure she’s grasped it yet.”
“Oh, I think she has a fair idea.” My words came out sharper than I intended. “I saw her in jail, remember? In the cell. Your sister has nerves of steel. I’ve seen them. She was trying to hide it at Ford Street, but she was scared.”
Opening the front door, he gestured and followed me out.
“Look. Sometimes Rachel and I are able to talk, even disagree, and get along fine. She thinks about things and she’s not as insular as Marv and Sam and the rest of the family. But when she’s got her mind set on something and I try to reason with her, we fight like two cats in a bag.”
Twilight was descending. A faint humidity settled on my face. Joel paused with his hand on the half open door as if choosing his words.
“I’m afraid this may be one of those times when we’re cats. My sister may not always see that I’m trying to help her. When I try to find out things I need to defend her, she’s likely to see it as sticking my nose in. If I rub her the wrong way, she’ll explode and turn stubborn.”
A grin escaped me.
“Rachel does have a temper.”
“She’s very insistent that she wants you helping on this. I apologize for being dismissive when you offered earlier. People I know assure me you rank with the best in your line of work. I suspect Rachel will be more cooperative with you than with our firm’s usual investigator.”
He removed a check from his pocket.
“If you’re still willing, and your present workload allows you to work on this full time, or close to it, I want to hire you. Please. I suspect you know Rachel better than anyone else. Certainly better than I do.”
I took the check without looking at it.
“I’m not sure anyone knows Rachel.”
TWELVE
It was a quarter of nine when I rang the bell at the gray house across from Rachel’s construction site. Since I hadn’t had luck catching the woman who lived there at home the previous day, I wanted to try before she headed out in case she went somewhere on a regular basis. She’d been home in the daytime during the run-in with Hawkins that Rachel broke up, but people of all ages were signing up for Civilian Defense jobs. Even though it was unpaid work, some of the positions demanded regular hours.
The door flew open. The fragrance of freshly cooked bacon poured over me. A lean woman on the tall side with her pepper gray hair done up in a short braid stared out at me.
“Yes?” She had nails where her eyes should be.
I gave her a nice smile.
“Are you the woman who lives here?”
“That’s right. Willa Lee Cottle. Who are you?”
“My name’s Maggie Sullivan.”
Still smiling, I gave her a card. Her sharp eyes made quick work of it.
“A detective. Huh. Well, you’d better step in.”
Her cozy living room wasn’t anything like her. China doodads lined the mantel and crocheted doilies covered the backs of the chairs. A wedding couple, one of whom was Willa Lee Cottle at a much younger age, held pride of place in a silver frame.
“The woman whose company is putting up that building across the way hired me,” I said as she pointed me to a chair.
“About that body they found over there, I guess. I already told the police everything I know.”
“Sometimes I listen better than the police.”
Her grunt suggested she might be receptive to that.
“Miss Minsky, the woman whose men are working over there, had given you a card with her home number on it.”
“That’s right. She seemed like a nice enough lady. I can’t say the same for some of the fellows working for her. One big lummox ruined the rosebushes William had planted. Tore them up all the way down to the roots. When I raced out shouting for him to stop and to look what he’d done, did he apologize? He did not. Turned all snotty and told me to simmer down, I could plant new ones.
“But my William planted those. With his own hands. Part of him was in them.”
The grief in her voice made it easy to guess.
“Is your husband dead?” I asked softly.
Looking away, she cleared her throat.
“Two years now. Some days I still wake up thinking he’s there right beside me.”
“I’m sorry.” I looked toward the photo. “He was very handsome.”
Willa Lee shrugged, but a pleased smile tugged at her mouth.
“Had you had problems since then with the workmen over there? It seems like you found Miss Minsky’s information awfully fast when the police woke you up asking — what? How to reach someone from the construction site?”
“I never could understand folks letting things get disorganized. I keep a list in one of the drawers in the kitchen. Neighbors in case I fall or something, my doctor. I put her card right with that list as soon as I got it.” She made a face.
“‘Course I might not have understood what they wanted as fast if I hadn’t been up an hour or so earlier. I hadn’t dropped back off yet, so I wasn’t quite as fuzzy as I could have been.”
“Why were you up earlier?” I held my breath. If she’d been answering a call of nature, the question might make her indignant enough to throw me out.
She blinked. “Why, the ruckus across the way.”
Somewhere in the house a faucet dripped. Its slow beats ticked off several seconds. If Willa Lee had been up and about an hour before the cops turned up on her doorstep, the disturbance she was talking about must have occurred around the time Gabriel Foster was killed, or dumped, across the way.
“I bet you anything it had to do with that body they found over there, too,” Willa Lee volunteered. “I thought at the time it might have been shots, but they were little bitty pops, and I decided it must be kids with firecrackers. That’s bad enough, mind, boys out running around in the middle of the night. Once I decided it was just kids — and the scream made me think that too — well, once I decided that’s all it was, I went back to bed.”
The scent of information that could prove useful crowded out the smell of bacon in this orderly little house.
“Would you mind telling me more about it? If you have time?” I crossed my fingers that her prolonged absence yesterday was a fluke, and that she’d be flattered I thought she might have a busy schedule.
“I roll bandages three days a week, but not til afternoon, and not today.” She got comfortable in her chair. “There’s not much more to tell. The police didn’t make much of it, and you may not either.”
“You have a very logical mind. I’d like to hear anything more you can tell me. And your ideas about it, too.”
“Well, then.” She frowned, organizing her thoughts. “Like I said, I was up. That happens more as you get older, I guess. Afterward, I came into the kitchen to get a drink. Water tastes better after it sits, so I keep a jar in the Frigidaire. It’s warm enough now that the window over the sink was open a few inches. Guess that’s how I heard the pops.”
The kitchen would be at the back, behind where we sat now. She must have good ears, especially for someone her age.
“How many?” I asked.
“One, then a good time in between, then another one.”
“Two pops.”
“Right. But not one after another like you were shooting at something. That’s part what made me think of firecrackers.
“I know what guns sound like. My daddy ran a good-sized still in the holler where I grew up. It’s how we made ends meet, that and rabbits and squirrels for meat and the garden. The sheriff and his deputies, now, they were kind of partial to their pistols. That’s a littler sound. What I heard over there was even littler. And there was that time in between.”
“But with firecrackers, you light one and throw it.” I summoned forgotten details of summer nights. “Then you have to strike a match and get a new one lighted before you can throw it
.”
“That’s it. The other thing is, you don’t expect to hear gunshots around here where people live, either. It’s not like we’ve got honky-tonk houses and such along here.”
It was shaky, maybe, but it also made sense.
“Did you tell the police all this?”
The old woman flicked her hands in disgust.
“I tried to. They weren’t interested. Asked where I was standing and could it have been the house creaking. I know every sound of this house! Lived in it over thirty years.”
I listened to the faucet drip. Something else in her account had caught my attention.
“You mentioned a scream.”
Willa Lee nodded. “Right when I was turning to go back to bed.”
“Not during that pause between shots?”
“No. It was after. I wondered if maybe they’d started to light another firecracker and something had gone wrong and gave them a scare. Like dropping it, or the match burning one of their fingers. Something like that.”
It hadn’t been Foster screaming in fear before they finished him off then. I wondered if Willa Lee with her logic had reached the same conclusion.
“Could it have been the man they killed, do you think?”
Her head was shaking before I finished.
“No, because it was after the shots. Since I’d decided there was nothing going on to worry about, I put the stopper back in the water and set the jar back in the Frigidaire. Then I went back to close the window over the sink. That’s when I heard that part. The scream and then a voice — another one — like a squabble.
“It made me mad, all that noise when people were trying to sleep, so I started out to give whoever it was a piece of my mind. By the time I opened the door, though, all I heard was running, that slapping kind like when kids go pell-mell, jostling each other. But it already must have been half a block away by then.”
THIRTEEN
I needed time to digest what Willa Lee Cottle had told me. While I did, I still had most of the morning to put to good use if I’d interpreted the finger-sized note I’d finally found in the book from Rachel correctly. It had taken me four passes before I saw it deep in the crack between pages.
1:30 “Expected”
I hoped that meant her apartment. If so, my next stop would give me a swell chance to compare real estate.
Dames Fight Harder Page 6