War at Home: A Smokey Dalton Novel

by Kris Nelscott

  “I believe they were together as recently as April,” I said.

  “What could they be doing that would cause her to give up her life, her future?”

  “I don’t know,” I said quietly. “When I called you, I had hoped you could tell me.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  After Whickam left, I woke Jimmy and we drove to the Green to meet Malcolm He had had a more successful day than I had. When we met him on the Green, he came with three separate addresses for the Barn, all of them vague and none of them in Branford. He also discovered other rumors, the most common being that Daniel and his group had left New Haven in May, after the Black Panthers had been arrested for murder.

  The conflicting rumors on Daniel’s departure all agreed on one other thing: that he had taken the group to the center of “imperialistic capitalism” in the United States. I certainly hoped that wasn’t true, because tracking Daniel in New Haven was difficult, but tracking him in New York would be almost impossible.

  We decided that Malcolm would have the van the next day. He would drive past all three addresses, see which if any of them looked like the Barn, and let me know. He would also see if he could track down the New York rumor, and maybe get some kind of address.

  * * *

  An early morning phone call changed my plans. After he had left me, Professor Whickam had gone to the row house and learned that his daughter had indeed been in New Haven. Then he had gone to his office at Yale, looked up Daniel’s file, and gotten Grace’s phone number. Whickam called Grace, and she had spoken highly of me.

  Whickam wanted to meet me at the motel. I told him I would be downtown, and he offered to meet me in front of the Beinecke Library. When I suggested his office instead, he said no. He would rather talk with me away from the prying ears of his secretary.

  The Beinecke Library was somewhere between York and Grove Streets. Jimmy and I wandered until we found it—an astonishingly ugly building that looked like it had been made of papier-mâché and glue. It had no exterior windows and seemed like some architecture student’s semester project.

  Whickam was already there, sitting on one of the concrete benches outside the Memorial Hall. I didn’t approach him immediately. Instead, I stood and stared at the names carved in the granite, names of Yale men who had died in the various wars. Of course, Vietnam wasn’t up there yet, but I was certain I’d find Korea if I looked.

  Usually, I tried to honor the other veterans, the ones who had made the greatest sacrifice, by reading their names on the memorials, but that morning, I didn’t have time. I did notice, with great disgust, that someone had spray-painted the word “Murderers” across one of the columns, and someone else had spray-painted the word “Killers” along another.

  The implied violence against men who had only done what their country had asked made me turn away.

  Jimmy glanced up at me, frowning. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said, a bit more curtly than I meant to. We walked over to Whickam, who had been watching us from a distance.

  “I had thought perhaps you were not going to speak with me,” he said.

  “The memorial caught me.” I sat down beside him. “You surprised me when you called this morning.”

  “You surprised me yesterday,” he said. “I had not thought Rhondelle could be so cruel, and yet you were right. She had remained here.”

  I didn’t have any words to comfort him for her betrayal.

  “You have done more in a few days than the detective I hired in Poughkeepsie,” he said. “I would like to talk with you about hiring you to look for Rhondelle.”

  “I’m already working on a case,” I said, not wanting the conflict. If she had gone one way and Daniel another, I didn’t want to feel torn between my loyalty to Grace and my need for an income.

  “Daniel and Rhondelle seem to be together. I understand your need to put Daniel first. I respect that. But I do not want to lose your leads. I would like notice of them, so that when you are finished with Daniel’s case, you may look into Rhondelle’s as well.”

  Apparently Whickam had already thought of the potential conflict.

  “I would have to charge more than my usual rate,” I said. “Expenses alone will be quite high on this trip, and I’ll have to go slow, since Jim is with me.”

  I nodded toward Jimmy, who was standing in front of the ugly library reading one of the signs.

  “I understand,” Whickam said.

  “If I don’t find her by the beginning of the fall school year, I will have to resign from the case.” I made that stipulation because no matter where I ended up, Jimmy had to be in school. And I didn’t want him starting late. He was at enough of a disadvantage as it was.

  “I understand that, too,” Whickam said. “We will agree that I will hire you, and pay the expenses pertaining to Rhondelle, for the next few months only. At that point, you will turn over to me what you have found so that, if I need to, I will be able to hire someone else.”

  “All right,” I said. “I’m going to need a lot of information from you. I’ll need Rhondelle’s history, that photograph I requested, any letters you might have or other writings that might pertain to this case, and I’d like to be able to talk to her friends and her mother.”

  “It is already done.” He took a stiff manila envelope off the bench beside him. “I anticipated some of your needs and brought them. The rest I shall deliver to you by the evening.”

  “I’ll also need a retainer,” I said, “and I’m afraid, since I’m so far from home, it’ll have to be in cash.”

  “I shall bring that also.” He opened the envelope and pulled out a glossy eight-by-ten black-and-white photograph. Rhondelle, looking young and beautiful, was posed with her head tilted to one side, her hair flipped outward like Laura’s had been the first time I met her. “I believe you might need this. The photograph of Rhondelle and Daniel is inside also.”

  I took the envelope, holding the photo up as if I could see through it to the place Rhondelle had run off to.

  “High school graduation?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “We spared no expense with her. Perhaps that was our mistake.”

  Who knew anymore? I certainly didn’t. I took the envelope, feeling like a double agent in a James Bond movie, then got up to collect Jimmy. We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring Yale, a place Jimmy was falling in love with — all the hidden nooks and crannies, the way the buildings turned inward and were invisible from the streets, even the ivy growing on the walls.

  I let him show me his favorite parts of campus and didn’t try to dampen his enthusiasm. Nor did I encourage it. The way he was going right now, he would never have the grades to get into a place like this, nor would I have the income.

  But I said none of those things. Instead, I listened to him chatter as I clutched the manila envelope holding another father’s hopes, another father’s dreams.

  TWENTY-SIX

  When Malcolm picked us up, he reported that all of the buildings that could have been the Barn were abandoned. Malcolm stopped at each one and found nothing — no sign of recent habitation, no sign of illegal activity — until he reached a derelict building not far from the scrap metal yard.

  There he found some things that made him nervous, things he was afraid he was misinterpreting. He wanted to take me there immediately, but I couldn’t go. We had to wait for Whickam to arrive at the motel. If he came early enough, we’d go out to the Barn. If he didn’t, we’d have to wait until the next day.

  Whickam came about seven, and brought his wife. She was as pretty as her daughter, only with darker skin and prominent lips. Her hair was professionally straightened, and her sundress crisp despite the day’s heat. Her name was also Rhondelle, only her husband called her Rhondi.

  They crammed into the small motel room. I gave the Whickams the chairs, and I sat on the edge of the bed. Malcolm and Jimmy had gone to the park to give us a little privacy.

  The additional photographs, paperwo
rk, and lists they brought me seemed superficial, even though I would look the items over carefully. As the interview wore on, I heard parents who saw the daughter they wanted to see and ignored anything else that she might have done wrong.

  Finally, I asked the Whickams if they had any ties to New York City. Whickam frowned as he looked at me. “I have gone there in the past for business. A professor at Columbia and I collaborated on a series of French-language textbooks. The books were completed years ago, but we occasionally have to revise and update them.”

  “Have you done so recently?” I asked.

  Whickam shook his head. “I have not been to the city in nearly a year, and I probably will not return for another year or more.”

  “What about you, ma’am?” I asked. “Do you go to New York?”

  “No,” she said softly. “I am not fond of the city.”

  “Did Rhondelle ever go?” I asked.

  Mrs. Whickam folded her hands. “We did not believe in subjecting her to that place.”

  “She has never been there?”

  “As a young teen, she went a few times,” Mrs. Whickam said. “On school field trips to the Museum of Natural History, places like that.”

  “But that’s it?” I asked. “She’s never gone with you?”

  Mrs. Whickam shook her head. “We even protested the school trips. New York is not a place for an impressionable child.”

  “But Paris is?” I asked.

  “Yes.” She straightened in the hard-backed chair. “Especially for a child of color.”

  “Where do you stay when you go to Columbia?” I asked Professor Whickam, figuring that I might need some place to start if and when I went to New York.

  “My parents own an apartment on Sugar Hill,” he said. “They bought it in the twenties and have kept it all this time, only allowing friends and family to use it.”

  “Your daughter would know about it, then,” I said.

  “She knows about it,” Mrs. Whickam said, “but she would have no idea where it is. She’s never been there.”

  “Would she know the address?” I asked.

  “I doubt it,” Professor Whickam said. “If she knew anything, she knew it was in Harlem, but that’s it.”

  “Do you have a key?” I asked.

  “Of course,” Whickam said.

  “Where do you keep it?”

  He fished his key ring out of his pocket. The ring had half a dozen keys on it. He thumbed through them until he found one old brass key. He held it up to me.

  “Is that the only key?” I asked.

  “My parents have theirs,” he said. “A neighbor has another.”

  “Would the neighbor give the key to your daughter?”

  “Of course not,” Professor Whickam said. “I am not even sure that he knows Rhondelle. He is under strict instructions not to give the key to anyone or open the apartment to anyone without contacting us first.”

  “You’ve been gone,” I said. “Could he have tried to contact you?”

  “He would have left a message with my secretary,” Whickam said. “Or he would have contacted my parents.”

  “And he’s done neither,” I said.

  “That’s right,” Whickam said.

  I sighed. “I would like the name of the neighbor and the address of the apartment, just in case.”

  “You think Rhondelle is there?” Mrs. Whickam sounded confused. “Why would she go there?”

  “We’ve been hearing rumors that Daniel is in New York,” I said. “Maybe she went with him.”

  “Oh, dear,” Mrs. Whickam said. “Harlem is such a horrible place these days.”

  Whickam took his wife’s hand and held it in his own. “Rhondelle knows we do not want her in the city.”

  “She also knows you want her to attend college,” I said as pointedly as I could.

  He shook his head, eyes downcast. Mrs. Whickam sighed.

  “Why don’t you call the apartment?” I said. “Use the phone over there. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “My parents never had a phone installed,” Whickam said. “I never saw the need. When I was working there, I used the phones at Columbia or the pay phone outside.”

  What a great way to escape the family, I thought. Both for him and for his daughter.

  “Do you really think she’s there, Mr. Grimshaw?” Mrs. Whickam asked.

  “I don’t know what to think, ma’am,” I said. “But it’s a possibility. We have to investigate all possibilities.”

  “This is why I hired him, Rhondi,” Whickam said. “He is much more thorough than that man in Poughkeepsie.”

  Mrs. Whickam blinked back tears. “I never would have thought Rhondelle lied to us. I was always afraid that something happened to her on the way to school. I would have thought that news of her would make me feel better, but somehow this makes me feel worse.”

  I said nothing. Perhaps if they had seen their daughter clearly in the first place, none of this would have happened.

  “If you go to the city, you will report back to us?” Whickam asked.

  “I’ll send you an expenses sheet along with a cursory report each week,” I said. “Or, if things are too hectic for that, I’ll call.”

  Whickam grabbed one of the pieces of paper, and wrote down his various phone numbers. He also wrote the address of the apartment in Harlem, and the name of the neighbor.

  “I don’t have his phone number,” Whickam said. “But if you’re going to the city anyway—”

  “I don’t know if I’m going yet,” I said, “but with his name, I can get the number.”

  “I never thought Daniel would be the boy to lead her astray,” Mrs. Whickam said, not so much to me, but to her husband.

  “I’m not sure he did,” I said. “It sounds like a bunch of factors came together to change both of their lives.”

  “The incident,” Mrs. Whickam said.

  “If I had to guess,” I said. But I wondered if it was as simple as that. I wondered what else I might find, the more I looked.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Tuesday morning, I called Whickam’s neighbor in Harlem. The neighbor, an elderly man, said that he hadn’t seen anything suspicious, but he lived half a block away. He would check the apartment for us, and I would call him the following morning.

  After I hung up, Malcolm, Jimmy and I got into the van. Malcolm took us to the only promising place he had found. The address was in Fair Haven, on the Quinnipiac River. From a distance, Fair Haven seemed pretty. Lovely old buildings nestled against a hillside, with just a few smokestacks rising above the trees.

  But once we got into Fair Haven proper, the illusion of beauty vanished. Most of the buildings on the wide street were boarded up and covered with graffiti. Many of them had broken windows or empty storefronts.

  People loitered outside, watching the cars go by and catcalling. A number of the loiterers turned away from the cars, hiding their faces. If I wanted to buy drugs, I had a hunch I could have an easy time of it here.

  We headed toward the smokestacks. The closer we got, the hazier the sky grew. White smoke drifted out of the stacks, almost like trapped clouds escaping darkness. The effect would have been pretty if it weren’t for the acrid odor that seemed to permeate everything.

  Rusted scrap metal and junk lined the river’s edge, obscuring the view of the picturesque harbor. Children played in the dirt beside the scrap heap, and I shivered at such a careless disregard for their safety.

  Malcolm had me turn down a street that followed the river. The street was old and narrow, with broken pavement that denoted a road of long use. Beside it, broken-down buildings, most of them empty warehouses, lined the harbor.

  But a few were unusual: they were raised up on narrow cellars that appeared to be dug into the nearby banks. The shore was right beside them, and, in a few cases, water lapped against the lower stone wall. These buildings were old — centuries old — and had probably been the cornerstone of the area.

  Malcolm had m
e slow down. We rounded a sharp corner, and found ourselves in a varied neighborhood. A once-fancy Victorian tilted sideways, its windows covered with thick plywood, its door barricaded by long wooden slats. Next to it sat one of the old raised-up houses, and beside it, a ranch house that had clearly been moved from some other location and was now falling apart.

  No cars lined the street, and all of the houses seemed empty. Malcolm had me park the van at the base of a small rise.

  “The place is up there,” he said, pointing at yet another of the raised houses. Only its arched roof and its faded red paint did make it look like a midwestern barn. “I think Jim and I should wait here.”

  “No way!” Jimmy said. “You guys get to do all the stuff. I get to wait and read and sit and watch and it’s just dumb.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “Someone could be in that place, and then what would you do?”

  “Run,” he said.

  I grinned, and slipped out of the van. Jimmy made no move to follow me. Malcolm was leaning forward, gesturing, obviously still making my point.

  I walked toward the house. The day was already turning hot, and this area carried not only the stench of the factories, but the stink of dead fish and a slow-moving river. I rubbed my nose with my fingers, wishing the smell would go away.

  Then I stopped in front of the building.

  A long staircase led to the front door. I looked from that to the harbor. This reminded me of some old dwellings I’d seen in Boston, based on the English model. Boats were usually docked next to these old buildings, just as cars would be parked outside houses today. When the tide was high, the boats would go out, and fish or net lobster or do whatever it took to make a living here.

  These steps were chipped, broken, and worn down by water. The door wasn’t barricaded, but the upper-story windows had been boarded up. The lower story windows were closed and covered with newspaper.

  As I climbed the steps, I peered at the newspaper. It had yellowed, but the date on one of the sheets was from April. Someone had lived inside recently.