by Mary Daheim
ELEVEN
JUDITH HAD CHASED after Esperanza, but the other woman refused to turn around and had driven off in a sleek pearl-colored Lexus. Standing at the edge of the cul-de-sac, Judith was still panting a bit when Joe pulled into the driveway.
“Esperanza Highcastle was here looking for TNT and she says he’s gone to the Belmont and I saw Tara Novotny come into Belgravia Gardens where I think she’s staying with Bascombe de Tourville.” The words tumbled out so fast that Joe drew back and put up his hands.
“Jude-girl! Is this a riddle? What’s a Bascombe Etc.? How many times do I have to tell you to let me get inside the house and unwind before you hit me with a bunch of crazy stuff?” Shaking his head, he turned towards the back porch just as the first drops of rain began to fall.
“It’s not crazy,” Judith called after her husband. “Don’t you want to find Tara?”
“At six o’clock after a long, hard day?” Joe was now inside the house with Judith on his heels. He got as far as the shelf that held the liquor before he spoke again. “Damn. Yes, I do.” Carefully, he closed the cupboard door. “Okay. Where is she?”
“At Belgravia Gardens. At least she was there less than an hour ago.” Judith tried to look apologetic. “I went there with Arlene to see the vacant condo, and by chance, I…”
Joe put a finger against Judith’s lips. “I’m going.”
“Can I come?” Judith tried not to sound too eager.
“No.” Joe was emphatic. “What about your guests?”
“Oh!” Judith winced. “I forgot. The hors d’oeuvres.”
During the next twenty minutes, Judith served her guests their appetizers and delivered Gertrude’s dinner. Gertrude declared that green salad and tacos weren’t dinner, but animal fodder. What next, Judith’s mother demanded? Frozen borscht on a stick? Judith tried to be patient, then made an obligatory pass by the hedge, but saw no sign of Uncle Gurd. Maybe Arlene was feeding him. Over the weekend, a solution would have to be found for the unwelcome guest.
When Joe returned just before six-thirty, Judith had poured him a Scotch on the rocks. Joe needed it. He hadn’t made contact with Bascombe de Tourville nor had he found Tara Novotny.
“So who’s this Bascombe guy?” Joe asked, hanging his holster on the back of the kitchen chair. “I never heard of him.”
Judith made herself a small drink while she explained the connection with Phyliss and the tour by Arlene. “It was pure chance. Arlene says de Tourville travels a lot. Maybe he’s involved with the fashion industry.”
Joe looked thoughtful. “That might make sense. Now Tara’s holed up with this guy instead of living in her own place up by the hospitals. Maybe they’re lovers, maybe they’re in business, maybe…who knows? I’ve contacted the squad, and they’ll stake out the condos.”
“So you are interested in Tara as a witness,” Judith remarked in what she hoped was a casual tone.
Joe grimaced. “It could be that she was the last person to see Harley alive—besides the murderer.”
Judith kept her expression impassive. It wouldn’t do to let Joe know that she felt a sense of victory. Her husband appeared to be acknowledging that she had actually seen Harley and Tara on the roof of the Belmont.
“At least she hasn’t left town,” Judith said encouragingly. She waited a few moments while Joe sipped his drink. “Let me tell you what Esperanza said about where she thought TNT had gone.”
Joe held his head as Judith recited the part about the possibility that the ex-boxer had gone to the Belmont. “Why?” Joe moaned. “Why the Belmont?”
“There must be something…that was overlooked,” Judith gulped, not wanting to suggest that her husband and his partner had been derelict in their duty. “It seems that the hotel is a magnet.”
“The hotel is history, as of Monday,” Joe sighed. “We gave the go-ahead for them to use the wrecking ball. Damn!”
“Can’t you rescind it?” Judith asked quietly.
“I suppose.” Joe drummed his nails on the table. “The last thing the city needs is a lawsuit because we held up a big bucks construction project.”
“You have tomorrow and Sunday,” Judith pointed out.
“Great. There goes the weekend.” Joe took a big swallow of Scotch.
“We had no plans.” Judith smiled thinly. “It’s raining.”
“It’s raining all over my investigation.” Wearily, Joe stood up. “I’ll call Woody. He planned to take Sondra and the kids to the zoo.”
“The zoo’s not much fun in the rain,” Judith said with what she hoped was a note of consolation.
Joe was at the phone. “This case is a zoo.”
Judith kept mum, arranging the taco condiments in small bowls. Even if she had tried, she couldn’t help but overhear her husband’s half of the telephone conversation.
“I’ll check out de Tourville…You finish up with the banks? What? I’ll be damned…How much? I wonder…Yeah, I went through his apartment again this afternoon…Nothing of interest in today’s mail…No, definitely no dog. That Mims kid said Harley refused to use a seeing-eye dog…No, nothing. So much nothing that it makes me suspicious…Okay, see you tomorrow around nine. Yeah, tell Sondra I’m sorry, too.”
“Banks?” Judith said innocently. “Harley’s banks?”
“Two of them.” With a slight groan, Joe sat down at the kitchen table and rescued his Scotch. “Both accounts were cleaned out Thursday. That’s odd in and of itself, but what’s really strange is that Harley had only a total of four grand in the two accounts.” Joe seemed to be speaking more to himself than to Judith.
“That’s not odd by my standards,” Judith noted. “We don’t have four grand in the bank right now, not after paying the June income tax quarterly.”
Joe’s response was to bury his nose in the evening paper. Judith served dinner, and refrained from discussing the case until the end of the meal.
“Were you planning to go on the stakeout at Belgravia Gardens this evening?” she asked in the same tone of voice she would have used to inquire if her husband intended to watch TV.
“No.” Joe handed his empty plate to Judith. “We can ID Tara, but not this de Tourville. You haven’t seen him, I take it?”
Judith admitted that she had not. “But,” she added hopefully, “Phyliss has. Shall I call her and get a description?”
Reluctantly, Joe admitted it was probably a good idea. Phyliss, however, proved a dubious witness:
“He’s kind of tall, but not as tall as my cousin, Klepto. He’s not really fat, in fact, he’s sort of skinny, except on top. His hair is dark—well, not dark, maybe, so much as gray streaks. I didn’t notice his eyes. He wore sunglasses.”
Judith rubbed at her temple. “In other words…” If there were other words, they failed her. “There’s nothing unusual about him? Nothing…noticeable?”
“He’s spiffy,” Phyliss replied. “I mean, I guess he’s spiffy. I’m not one for these big, baggy suits. But he wears a tie, one of them big wide kinds with all the flowers. Oh, he has a mustache and a funny little beard.”
“A goatee?” Judith suggested.
“That’s it. I think.”
Judith relayed the scanty information to Joe, who winced. “I’ll pass it along to the stakeout crew. The goatee helps, if it is a goatee.”
Twenty minutes later, Judith had finished clearing away the dinner things as well as the remnants of her guests’ appetizer hour. Joe, who again had been in contact with the officers at Belgravia Gardens, remained at the kitchen table reading the paper.
Judith put an affectionate hand on her husband’s shoulder. “Let’s go for a walk. I could use some fresh air.”
Joe twisted around to regard his wife with suspicion. “We never go for a walk. There’re too many hills in this neighborhood.”
“That’s why it’d be fun.” Judith gave Joe’s shoulder a little squeeze. “Not the hilly part, but just looking around our own neighborhood and…”
“W
e’re not going to Belgravia Gardens.” Joe resumed reading the paper.
Judith put both hands on Joe’s shoulders. “Uncle Gurd is missing. We should look for him.”
“He’s not our responsibility.” Joe didn’t move.
Judith gently massaged Joe’s neck and shoulders. “We could take Sweetums for a run. He needs the exercise.”
“Sweetums is a cat. He prowls all over the place.” Joe sighed and put the paper down. “I’m going to watch the baseball game. I’m tired and I have to work tomorrow. Lay off, Jude-Girl.”
During the top of the second inning, Judith quietly exited the cozy family retreat on the third floor, descended the backstairs, and went outside. The rain was soft yet steady, typical Pacific Northwest weather that made “damp” not merely a description, but an element. Judith, as a typical native, didn’t bother with a jacket or an umbrella. It was warm, perhaps in the high sixties, and she wouldn’t really get wet. Thus, she stood on the small patio, gazing up at the face of Heraldsgate Hill and Belgravia Gardens.
There were no lights in the penthouse, but at seven-thirty in late June, the sun wouldn’t set for another two hours. Judith was about to head down the drive when her mother appeared in the doorway of the converted toolshed.
“Where’s my ice cream?” Gertrude demanded.
“Oh!” Judith put a hand to her mouth. “We’re out. I forgot to get more at the store.” She had given the last of the blackberry ribbon to her mother the previous evening.
“What?” Gertrude shrieked. “No ice cream? First I get grass clippings and a bunch of junk piled in a big cracker, and now there’s no ice cream? Why don’t you just put me in a home and throw away the key?”
“I’ll drive up to Falstaff’s right now,” Judith promised. “What kind would you like?”
“Tutti-frutti,” Gertrude answered promptly, her outrage evaporating. “Sometimes it makes me more tutti than frutti, but what the hey? Say,” she said, her small eyes narrowing, “you didn’t feed my ice cream to that goofy old coot in the hedge, did you?”
“Ahhh…” Judith could tell all sorts of fibs to other people, her husband included, but she often stalled when confronted by her mother. “There wasn’t much left yesterday. I saved the blackberry ribbon for you.”
“Hunh.” Gertrude tapped a carpet-slippered foot. “You better get that nut case out of here. I saw him running around in his underwear the other day, and it wasn’t a pretty sight, I can tell you.”
“I’d like to get rid of him,” Judith admitted. “Have you seen him this afternoon?”
Gertrude shook her head. “Not since yesterday. In fact, I could sit here in this piano crate of an apartment all day and never see anybody, now that Vivian’s out of town.”
Judith always marveled at the friendship that had developed between her mother and Joe’s ex-wife. Perhaps it was perversity on Gertrude’s part, perhaps it was genuine affection—either way, Herself provided occasional companionship for the older woman, and Judith was grudgingly grateful.
“She’s in Florida,” Judith said absently, scanning the hedge anew for any sign of Uncle Gurd. “I don’t think she’ll be gone too long.”
“Florida!” harumphed Gertrude. “Why would she go there with all the alligators and crocodiles and dope smugglers? I know, I watch TV.”
“It’s something to do with her condo,” Judith responded, starting for the garage. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Is there anything else you need at the store?”
“Can you buy me a new gizzard? Or some good legs or better ears or eyes that can see farther than my bazooms?” Gertrude gave a sad shake of her head. “Never mind, kiddo. Ice cream and maybe some of those chocolate-covered peanuts. I’m not fussing over my figure. Who’d want to look like that bean pole who was here this morning?”
Pivoting on her heel, Judith stared at her mother. “What bean pole?”
Gertrude shrugged the hunched shoulders that were covered by a blue and orange cardigan. “One of your guests, who else? She and that knothead who was sleeping in your car took off at the crack of dawn. Didn’t you see ’em leave?”
“No,” Judith said in wonder as she took a quick mental inventory of the visitors who had stayed at Hillside Manor Thursday night. None of the women could be described as a bean pole. “I must have been upstairs on the second floor. Did this woman have short black hair?”
“What?” Gertrude had turned vague. “What woman?”
“The bean pole.” Judith exuded patience. “The woman who left with Mr. Tenino.”
“Mr. Tenino?” Gertrude looked genuinely puzzled. “Is he the weirdo who runs around in his imagination?”
“No,” Judith said, hanging onto her now-ebbing patience. “That’s Uncle Gurd. Mr. Tenino is the man who was resting in my car. Now tell me about the bean pole.”
“What bean pole?” Gertrude scowled at her daughter. “I don’t know siccum about any bean poles. Where’s my ice cream?”
Judith emitted a big sigh. “Okay, I’m off to the store.” Maybe Gertrude would remember more by the time Judith got back.
After pulling onto the main thoroughfare, Judith took a short detour past Belgravia Gardens. To the right of the main entrance, she saw the grillwork of the basement garage. Across the street and almost at the corner, she noticed a man and a woman in an unmarked city car. After going around the next block, she again drove slowly by the elegant condos. As far as she could tell, there were only two ways to get out of the building, through the main entrance or from the basement garage. Tara Novotny and Bascombe de Tourville couldn’t possibly come or go without being seen by the stakeout duo. Judith felt reassured, but she couldn’t resist pulling into a loading zone across from Belgravia Gardens.
Through the rain that spattered the windshield, she peered upwards to the condos’ top floor. All seemed quiet. Had Tara and de Tourville left during the hour interval after she had gone home and before the plainclothes officers had arrived? It was possible, of course. Or perhaps they weren’t answering either the phone or the intercom.
“My call from the lobby may have spooked them,” Judith told Renie over the pay phone at Falstaff’s. She had explained her visit with Arlene, and the subsequent sighting of Tara. “What really bothers me is that blasted Belmont. I think it holds the answer to this whole, crazy mystery.”
“So let Joe figure it out,” Renie said, sounding exasperated. “I’m working, coz. I have a deadline, remember?”
“I thought you might ride with me to the Belmont so we could take another look,” Judith said in her meekest voice.
“No!” Renie exploded. “Absolutely not. I’ve had enough of the Belmont. I thought you did, too. What good did it do to go there this afternoon?”
“That was before Esperanza showed up at the B&B,” Judith said, turning mulish. “She thought TNT had gone there. Why?”
“Because it’s a free flop,” Renie responded. “Now hang up and let me finish this wretched project.”
Judith had no choice. When she returned with the ice cream, Gertrude still couldn’t remember anything about a bean pole. Judith gave up on her mother, too. Feeling futile, she crept upstairs to the third floor and joined Joe in watching the ball game. If he’d noticed that his wife had been gone for awhile, he didn’t mention it. Judith was beginning to feel like a cipher.
And then she thought of O.P. Dooley, and her spirits rose. Oliver Plunkett Dooley was a younger brother of Judith’s former paper boy and erstwhile sleuth-in-training. The large, extended family not only lived in back of Hillside Manor, but just under the brick and granite eminence of Belgravia Gardens. When Dooley, as Aloysius Gonzaga was more familiarly known, had gone away to college, he had bequeathed his telescope to his brother. On a previous occasion, O. P.’s aptitude for spying on the neighbors had proved beneficial in tracking down a murderer. Judith decided it was time to put O. P. back to work.
Calling on the Dooley ménage required walking to the entrance of the cul-de-sac, going around the
west side of the block, and ending up at the far corner. As ever, the Dooleys’ front yard was strewn with trikes, bikes, and all manner of playthings. Corinne Dooley, an amazingly placid woman who never seemed disturbed or dismayed by domestic crises, was swaying gently in a lawn swing on the front porch.
“Judith,” she said with genuine pleasure. “How are you? I didn’t get a chance to really talk to you at Mike’s wedding reception. It was lovely.”
“Thanks,” Judith replied as two small children zipped out through the front door and chased each other around the yard. “Is O. P. home?”
“I think so,” Corinne replied, paying no heed to the little boy and little girl who were now rolling around in an uncovered sandbox that had been turned to mud. “Try the downstairs den. Or his room.” O. P.’s mother evinced no curiosity over Judith’s reason for calling on the boy. No doubt, Judith thought as she made her way through the cluttered house, Corinne’s children and grandchildren had been called upon by many people throughout the years. If it was trouble, Corinne would hear about it later. If it wasn’t, then it didn’t matter. Either way, the Dooley matriarch took whatever came in stride. Her equanimity amazed Judith.
There were several children in the downstairs den, but none of them was O. P. Judith trudged back up the stairs and made her way to the second floor. Zigzagging between piles of laundry, both dirty and clean, Judith stepped over a wary hamster and peeked into the open door that she had figured must belong to O. P. Sure enough, the boy was sitting on his bed, playing a video game.
“Mrs. Flynn!” O. P. exclaimed in a startled voice. “What’s up?”
“How would you like to do some detective work?” Judith asked with a conspiratorial air.
O. P.’s blue eyes grew wide. “Like that other time, when Mrs. Goodrich got whacked with the axe?”
The reference to a grisly neighborhood murder that Judith had helped solve made her grimace. “Like that. Except this time it wasn’t an axe.”
“Wow!” O.P. popped off the video game and perched on his knees. “Who was it? Somebody around here?”