by John Lutz
Beep! “Mr. Nudger, this is Marlou Dee.” He immediately picked up the tension in her voice. “There was this man standing out in the street watching my apartment. I closed the curtains, but when I looked outside he was still there. About five minutes ago he came right up and knocked on my door, but I didn’t answer. He went back outside and he’s sitting in a car now, like he’s waiting for somebody. Something, like, creepy about him—”
She’d run out of time on the machine.
Beep! “You can win two fun-filled weeks in Jamaica just by answering-”
Nudger hung up. Got Claudia’s phone directory from its drawer and looked up Marlou’s number again. He went back to the phone and pecked the number out carefully with his forefinger.
Her phone rang five times. Nudger knew if a phone wasn’t picked up by the fifth ring the odds of it being answered became very long indeed.
He waited four more rings, then pressed down the phone’s cradle button and called Hammersmith. He told him about Marlou Dee and the message on the answering machine. As soon as Hammersmith got her address, he hung up.
Nudger punched the Off button on the microwave and hurried toward the bedroom. Claudia wasn’t there. She was in the bathroom with the door closed. He knocked lightly and said, “I’ve gotta go, Claudia.”
“I’m about to step into the shower.”
“I mean I’ve gotta leave. Get someplace in a hurry on business and meet Hammersmith. Can you put that flounder back in the freezer?”
There was an eruption of water under pressure in the bathroom as she turned on the shower. Maybe she answered him and he couldn’t hear over the sound of the blasting water. He didn’t have time to wait and find out. Yelled good-bye to her and got out of there.
Marlou’s apartment was only fifteen minutes away from Claudia’s. When Nudger got there Hammersmith hadn’t arrived, but there was a police car at the curb. It’s roofbar lights were off, so no neighbors had gathered. Or was that because in this neighborhood people automatically tended to shy away from police cars.
Nudger parked the Granada behind the cruiser and got out. As he entered the building, an image of Vanita at the Dropp Inn Motel flashed on the screen of his mind and he had to force himself to move fast up the stairs toward Marlou’s apartment. He wanted to get there but didn’t want to be there.
Christ, what he might see!
Her door was standing open. Nudger heard voices from inside. Saw a blue-uniformed elbow. It occurred to him that maybe Bill Stockton had discovered Vanita had a sister, and that he was the man who’d been watching Marlou’s apartment and then knocked on her door. It was possible. If Stockton hadn’t already known about Marlou, he might have found out. Might even have followed Nudger to her apartment the first time, learned about her that way.
Nudger stepped into the apartment. A man was braced against the wall while a uniform held a gun on him. He was leaning forward at an extreme angle, his feet spread wide and his hands splayed against the plaster. As if the wall were pushing back.
He wasn’t Stockton. He looked vaguely familiar, but Nudger couldn’t place him.
Another uniform, with his revolver holstered, turned toward Nudger. “Hold it right there.”
Nudger froze in the doorway. Said, “I’m the one called the police. Where’s Marlou?”
“Where’s who?”
“The woman who lives here.”
The cop holding the gun on the man braced against the wall said, “She’s in the bedroom.”
Vanita had died in bed at the Dropp Inn Motel.
Nudger plodded through his fear toward the bedroom door. The other uniform told him to stop but he barely heard. He might be the one responsible for this.
He was aware of the uniform moving toward him as he reached the bedroom door.
“I wouldn’t go in there if I was you, pal.”
But Nudger ignored the cop’s warning. Gulped. Flung the door open.
Marlou said, “Oh!”
She was standing with her Levi’s unzipped and had a black T-shirt stretched between her arms, about to work it over her head. She wasn’t wearing a bra.
As soon as she recovered from her surprise, she crammed her head through the shirt’s neck and yanked it down so violently she almost tore it. The only body on the bed was that of an inanely grinning Raggedy Ann doll propped against a pillow. It seemed to be laughing at Nudger.
He said, “I—uh, I’m sorry. I got your message and tried to phone. Didn’t get an answer.”
She smiled. “S’okay, Mr. Nudger. That man I told you about, him and I got into a kind of argument in the hall. When I tried to get back inside and answer my phone, he wouldn’t let me. Said he wasn’t finished talking to me.”
“The man the cops have got in the living room?”
“Yep.”
“You mean he physically kept you from going back into your apartment to answer your phone?”
“Not exactly. He more like threatened.”
“What were you arguing about?”
“You ain’t gonna believe—”
“This guy a friend?” The uniform who’d warned Nudger not to open the bedroom door had come in. He was glaring at Nudger.
“Sure is. No problem, Officer.”
The uniform looked confused, shrugged, then swaggered from the bedroom. He left the door standing open.
Nudger started to drift after him. Marlou straightened the twisted T-shirt. It had one of those yellow smiley faces on it, right over her breasts. Nudger tried not to think about that as she followed him into the living room.
The guy who’d been braced against the wall was standing up straight now, and the other uniform had replaced his revolver in its holster. But he had his nightstick resting lightly in his right hand, as if he could use it in a second.
There was a noise on the landing and the obese but graceful Hammersmith glided in. Fat but sleek, like a seal under water.
Both uniforms recognized him and stood taller and put on their professional faces. Just this side of being bored, but very alert. The one holding the nightstick said, “He was banging on the door when we got here, Lieutenant.”
“This one?” Hammersmith asked, staring at Nudger with a mean, amused glint in his eye.
“No, sir, not him. He’s a friend or something of the woman who lives here. This one”—he nodded toward the man standing and looking embarrassed-“a Mr. Edward Franks. Woman who lives here, a Mizz Marcy Lou Dee, says he used threatening and abusive language toward her.”
Nudger studied Franks, who was a middle-aged, paunchy man with his shirt twisted up and unbuttoned in front from when he was braced against the wall with his arms raised. His navel was visible. There was lint in it. Franks had thinning sandy hair and rheumy-looking blue eyes. A fleshy, mottled face. Though he seemed embarrassed, he didn’t look fearful or dangerous. Not like a proper cornered diamond thief and killer.
Hammersmith said, “Tell me about him.”
One of the uniforms said, “Mr. Franks is a private inyestigator. Says he’s doing work for a law firm. Whazza firm, Franks?”
Franks said, “Schlozzel, Barnes and Schlozzel.”
The uniform was taking notes now in his leather-bound pad. “That with two Z’s?”
“And a C.”
The uniform looked puzzled, then finished writing and flipped his notepad shut.
Nudger was no longer puzzled. Henry Mercato was a partner at Schlozzel, Barnes and Schlozzel.
Franks said, “I was only trying to ask Miss Dee about her connection with this case I’m on.”
“What kind of case?” Hammersmith asked.
Franks glanced at Nudger. “I’m trying to establish that our client’s former husband is spending an unreasonable amount , of time and money on women instead of making his alimony payments.”
Hammersmith had it now. He shook his head so that his smooth pink jowels quivered. “And your client is?”
Franks said, “Schloz—”
“And th
eir client?”
“They might want that confidential, Lieutenant.”
Nudger said, “It’s Eileen, Jack.”
Everyone stared at him.
“That little bastard Mercato’s having me and Claudia watched. Franks probably followed me here earlier today and figured it wasn’t a business call.”
“Only trying to find out,” Franks said apologetically. “My job. There was no reason for the lady to get so excited.”
“She thought you might be somebody else,” Hammersmith said. “So’d the rest of us. That’s why Nudger phoned me when he learned a strange man was menacing Miss Dee.”
“Somebody else?”
Hammersmith said, “You goddamn blundered into the middle of a homicide investigation, Franks.”
Franks’s pinkish eyes took on a sickly sheen. “Jesus, Lieutenant, I had no idea the lady was off-limits. How could I have?”
Hammersmith ignored the question. “Mercato the one who hired you?”
“That’s right,” Franks said. Eager to cooperate now. A homicide case.
“You follow Nudger here earlier? That what set you onto Miss Dee?”
“That’s it. I was told to check things out when he saw other women. That’s all I was doing. just my job.”
“You already told us that.” Hammersmith frowned at Franks. “You used to be a cop, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, for a while. Second District.”
Nudger remembered now. Franks had been forced to resign three or four years ago after roughing up the black wife of a fire chief. Mistook her for a woman wanted on a bad-check charge. Franks had made racial remarks. Then, in an interview, he’d lost his composure and made the same remarks to the press and defended his prejudice. So now he was in Nudger’s line of work. Great.
Franks stood up straighter. “I’d appreciate any cooperation from the police in this matter, Lieutenant.” Getting haughty now. Going on the offensive, even if feebly.
Hammersmith pulled one of his greenish cigars from his shirt pocket, then removed the cellophane wrapper and crammed the cigar in his mouth. He looked hard at Franks and said quite clearly around the cigar, “Go away.”
After Franks had hurried out and clomped down the stairs to the street door, Hammersmith told the two uniforms they could return to their car and call back into service. Then he wandered over to the window and gazed outside. He said, “I didn’t know you were aware of Miss Dee’s existence, Nudge.”
“Her sister told me about her.”
Hammersmith, still with the unlit cigar in his mouth, turned around and faced Marlou. Said, “That how it went? This Franks question you about Nudger?”
She said, “Yep. And he got downright insistent that there was something going on. I mean, like in a romantic way between me and Mr. Nudger.”
Hammersmith snorted. “Wouldn’t be the first time Franks arranged to find what he set out for.”
Marlou smiled her blue-skies-and-waving-wheat smile and said, “S’okay by me if you smoke in here, Lieutenant.”
Nudger thought, God, no! You shouldn’t have told him that.
But Hammersmith was smiling benignly at Marlou and already had his lighter out. Within half a minute he was emitting more air pollution than the Hertz fleet.
Marlou didn’t seem to mind the greenish haze. She said, “I was watching Mr. Franks watch me for the last hour or so. Then I just had to get to the funeral parlor where Vanita’s gonna be laid out. But when I started to change clothes there was this knock on the door (So she’d been removing the T-shirt when Nudger interrupted her) and ... well, he knew I’d ignored his knock before, so when he came back anyway, I got mad. Decided to answer it and tell him to leave me alone whoever he was.”
“Didn’t you realize he might be the one who killed your sister?” Hammersmith asked.
“It was only possible,” Marlou said calmly, “not, like, definite.”
Nudger decided both Dee sisters were born with more nerve than was good for them.
Hammersmith inhaled. Blew out green thunderclouds. “You wanna bring a complaint against Franks? Disturbing your peace? Threatening to do great bodily harm? Whatever?”
“Would it do any good?”
“Naw. But I think he’ll leave you alone, now that he knows you haven’t succumbed to Nudger’s charms.”
Marlou glanced at Nudger. Did she blush?
Hammersmith said, “I gotta go, Nudge. Miss Dee, there anything else?”
“Nope, Lieutenant. And I do appreciate you sending somebody here so fast.”
Hammersmith beamed, blew more smoke, and glided out of the apartment.
Nudger looked at Marlou, who was grinning at him like the Raggedy Ann doll. “After what happened to Vanita, I sure was scared.”
“You didn’t seem so scared,” Nudger said. “You went to the door the second time.”
A certain light entered her green eyes. “I got Dee blood in me, Mr. Nudger. That means I get pushed only so far, then I turn around and push back. Sorta automatically. Means I’m cursed with a fiery kinda temper sometimes gets the better of sound judgment.”
Nudger smiled. “I’ll remember that, Marlou. Has a man named Bill Stockton been to see you?”
“Oh, sure. That insurance guy. He was by here ’bout an hour after you left. I didn’t like the way he talked about Vanita. Didn’t like him, either. He put me in mind of Heck Adams, used to play linebacker for our high school football team.”
“Yeah? Stockton doesn’t strike me as the football type.”
“More like baseball,” Marlou said. “Heck used to play that, too. First base.”
Where, Nudger thought, he hadn’t yet reached. He said, “Stockton told me some unflattering things about Vanita. I don’t like to ask you this, Marlou, but is there any truth to them?”
She gave him the Dee look. He wondered if it could bend spoons.
“I mean, to any small degree,” Nudger said. “It’s important I know. Your sister paid me, and it’s my responsibility to clear her name on this, as well as to save both our necks if her killers decide one of us has the diamonds.”
“I told you, I never had anything to do with Vanita’s private life.”
“But what did you know about it?”
Marlou gnawed on her lower lip a while. Then she put her fists on her scrawny hips and stood defiantly. “Vanita liked men, is all. ’Specially that Rupert Winslow. But all men, it seemed.”
“Would it be accurate to say she slept around?”
“Well, maybe. I don’t know.”
“How about drugs?”
“Drugs?”
“She use anything? Carry any kind of habit?”
“Not so far’s I know. Men, Mr. Nudger. That was probably her only habit she couldn’t seem to quit.”
She’s quit now, Nudger thought, but didn’t say it. What he did say was, “How about telling lies? Did Vanita stretch the truth from time to time?”
“A tad, maybe.”
“Marlou?”
“Well, yeah, she did tend to come up with some wild tales now and again. But mainly for entertainment’s sake, I’m sure.”
Sisters! Nudger thought. He’d had some bad luck in cases involving sisters. And now this! “Why don’t you finish getting dressed, Marlou. I’ll go with you to the funeral home if you’d like.”
She radiated surprise and gratitude. Looked like an actual glow from inside her. “Would you really? I’d sure appreciate it. This’s been a weighty burden to shoulder alone.”
“No trouble. It might be interesting to see who shows up. Besides, Vanita was my client.”
She touched Nudger’s arm, then hurried into the bedroom to change to funeral attire. He watched the neat switch of her Levi’s-clad hips. Still felt her touch on his arm.
He couldn’t help wondering if more than just a fiery temper ran in Dee blood.
13
Delgado’s Funeral Home was on Southwest Avenue in an area of St. Louis known as the Hill. It was a largely Ita
lian part of the city, and Nudger wondered why Marlou had chosen it to take care of arrangements for Vanita’s funeral. When she told him someone at police headquarters had recommended it, he understood. A number of St. Louis policemen were of Italian descent, and Delgado’s had been the scene of more than a few police wakes.
Still, unfairly, Nudger couldn’t help thinking Mafia. But there was nothing to suggest Vanita had been connected. Besides, since Jimmy Michaels was blown up in his car several years ago, and the Leisure faction had been decimated by long prison terms, organized crime in St. Louis was minimal.
He parked next to Marlou in the funeral home’s blacktop lot and walked inside with her. She was wearing a plain darkgreen dress that was a size too large. Black high heels. No jewelry. No makeup, either. That and her lanky frame made her look like a gangly schoolgirl. The gap between her front teeth would make her appear even younger, but she looked as if she’d never smile again.
In the ornate foyer, Nudger told her he saw someone he knew, and she nodded, then started alone toward the room where Vanita was laid out. He touched her arm and offered to go in with her, but she assured him she was fine and didn’t need him. Her walk slowed, but she moved with a steady determination. Gritty and practical country girl getting done what was necessary. The way it must have been when she’d identified her sister’s body.
Nudger crossed the plush blue carpet to where a large man in a gray suit, standing with his head bowed and his hands folded across his stomach paunch, was staring into the round pool of an indoor fountain. He walked right up next to the man, who hadn’t moved a muscle or looked in his direction. But Nudger knew his approach had been noted. He stood quietly beside the man and gazed down at the goldfish swimming lazily in the fountain pond. Waited a while, then said, “Hi, Joe. Somebody you know pass away?”
The fountain, comprised of several stone lily pads and cherubs, made a soothing, repetitive gurgling sound.
Detective Sergeant Joe Martini said, “That a rhetorical question, Nudger, or you want an answer?”
“Rhetorical.”
Martini nodded toward the fish. “Don’t they make you wish you was on a riverbank somewhere, doing some serious fly casting?”