The latch on the gate was ajar, and looked as if it had been for years. I pushed through the gate and walked up through the mud to the front door. There was no doorbell. I knocked. Ever resourceful.
After a moment, the door opened.
She surprised me. Probably I had expected someone whose disrepair would match that of the house and grounds, someone slovenly and unkempt, a slattern. She was in her mid-twenties, and she was short, maybe five foot three. Her black hair, thick and shiny, fell to her shoulders. She wore light metallic blue eye shadow, jet black mascara, lipstick the color of arterial blood. It was more make-up, especially in broad daylight, than anyone needed, and she needed none at all. Her lush young body, flared-hipped and firm-breasted, was encased in spray-on jeans and a red Danskin top so tight that one deep breath would’ve given her thread poisoning. In a few years, unless she took care of herself, that opulence of body would fill out, thicken, and she’d become a fleshy parody of herself. But right now, young and sensual and ripe, she was stunning.
The dark brown eyes moved up and down, taking me in. The striking face was vacant, an empty sullen mask. “Yeah?”
“Carla Chavez?”
“Yeah?”
“Joshua Croft. I’d like to talk to you about Frank Biddle.”
“I already talk to the cops.” A lot of Hispanics in town speak English with a lilt, as though it were Spanish. Usually it gave color and music to the language. In Carla Chavez’s case, however, it sounded simply petulant.
“I know,” I said. “But I saw Frank the day he died. I thought we might be able to help each other.”
“Yeah? How?”
“I don’t know yet. Suppose we talk.”
She pursed her lips together. At last she said, “You’re not a cop.”
“No. Private investigator.”
She nodded. “Like ‘Rockford Files.’”
“Yeah,” I said. “Exactly.”
She nodded again. “Okay, come in. But not for long. I gotta go to work soon.”
I wiped my feet on the mat and followed her in, shutting the door behind me. The living room was tiny and most of the furniture was cheap—a burgundy recliner chair, its naugahyde arms spotted with cigarette burns; a sway-backed second-hand sofa, cream colored; an end table and a matching coffee table, each of whose oak veneer, paper thin, was beginning to peel back at the edges. A black portable stereo cassette player sat on the end table; a bean-bag ashtray lay on the coffee table beside a package of Marlboros and a red Bic lighter. The only thing there that cost more than fifty dollars was the television, a big color console that was set against the wall opposite the couch.
Lying atop the television was a battered leather Bible, and hanging on the wall above it was a large wooden crucifix with a nickel-plated Jesus. I suspected that Frank Biddle hadn’t had anything to do with either the Bible or the cross.
I suspected that he hadn’t had anything to do with the house at all. He had lived here, stayed here, but the place was more hers than his. It was a young woman’s replica of her family home, and she clearly spent time and energy keeping it up. No dust lay anywhere, and although the threadbare brown wall-to-wall carpeting showed trails of wear, it was spotless.
On the television screen, a man swathed in bandages, lying in a hospital bed, was telling a woman dressed in an evening gown that she’d be better off without him. For no real reason that I could see, she was disagreeing.
Carla Chavez nodded to the TV. “‘Days of our Lives.’ You ever watch it?”
I shook my head. “I’m usually working.”
“That’s Mickie, the guy in the bed. He got hit by a truck. He just got married again to Maggie, that’s Maggie there, but he hasn’t told her yet that he’s the father of Marcella’s baby.”
I think she was explaining all this just so she could postpone turning the thing off and missing something wonderful. I said nothing. She looked back at me and then, with obvious reluctance, reached out and pushed the button. The picture folded in upon itself and the screen went black. She turned to me again. “You wanna drink?”
“No thanks. Just talk. May I sit down?”
“Yeah, sure, go ahead.”
I sat in the recliner; she sat on the sofa. She leaned forward, picked up the pack of cigarettes from the coffee table, slid one out, and lit it with the Bic. She sat back and inhaled the smoke up from her mouth into her nose, two thin streamers, then blew it out in a pale blue billowing cone. Very sophisticated. I wondered then if she were a good deal younger than she looked. “So,” she said, “what you wanna talk about?”
“I’m working for the company that insured a diamond necklace that was stolen last year.”
“Yeah,” she said, “I know all about the necklace from the cops. They were buggin’ us about it last year.” With her thumb and fourth finger, she plucked a flake of invisible and—filtered cigarettes being what they are—probably nonexistent tobacco from her lower lip. “Frank din’t steal no necklace, man. We were in Amarillo, Texas, a thousand miles away.”
“Did the police tell you that Frank came to my office last Friday and offered to sell it back to the insurance company?”
“How could he sell it, man? I tole you, he din’t have it.”
“Did they tell you that he came to see me?”
“Yeah, sure, they tole me. But Frank din’t have no necklace.”
“You didn’t wonder why Frank would offer to sell something he didn’t have?”
She laughed. “No, man. Frank was always cooking up some scam. Frank was good at scams.”
There was something in her voice, but I couldn’t tell whether it was bitterness or admiration. Maybe she couldn’t either.
I asked her, “What kind of scam do you think Frank had in mind?”
“How do I know, man?” She sucked in the cigarette and put her head back to exhale, staring at me, eyes narrowed, over the plume of smoke. “You said you were gonna help me. So how you gonna help me?”
“There’s a reward,” I said, “a finder’s fee being offered for the necklace. If you can provide information, any kind of information, that helps me locate the thing, I’ll see to it that you get some of the money.”
“Yeah?” Dubious. “How much, man? Five bucks?”
“That depends on the information.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t have no information. And Frank din’t have no necklace.”
“Do you know Stacey Killebrew?”
“Yeah, I know him. He’s a pig.” She leaned forward to stab the cigarette out in the ashtray.
“He was a friend of Frank’s,” I said.
“No, man, not for a long time.”
“Since when?”
“Since we got back from Amarillo.”
“And that was when, November?”
“Yeah.”
“Why’d you leave Amarillo?”
“Thing weren’t workin’ out.” Her eyes narrowed. “What difference does it make?”
“Just curious.”
“Yeah, well, curiosity, man.” She nodded. “You know what it did to the cat.”
“In a private detective, it’s considered a plus.”
She leaned forward and slipped another cigarette from the pack. Holding the lighter poised before it, she said, “How much they payin’ you, that insurance company?”
“Nothing unless I find the necklace.”
She lit the cigarette, sat back. “Rockford gets a hundred bucks a day.”
“Rockford retired. Why weren’t Frank and Killebrew getting along?”
“How do I know? Frank din’t talk business with me.”
“What kind of business was Frank involved in since he came back from Amarillo?”
“This and that. Odd jobs. Cars. He fixed cars for people. He was good at cars.” She narrowed her eyes. “Shouldn’t you be payin’ me some money for all this?”
“For all what? So far you haven’t told me anything.”
“I got bills to pay, man, it’s not gon
na be easy now I’m on my own.”
“Where do you work?”
“At the Donut House. My tips are okay. The truck drivers like me, but the tips, they don’t cover everything.”
“Maybe I can help. Tell me about Frank and Kille brew.”
She shrugged. “Nothin’ to tell. They used to hang out, go hunting and stuff. Then Frank got pissed at him.”
“Why?”
“How do I know? Stacey, he called here one time, just after we got back, and Frank tole him if he ever come around again he’d break in his head.”
“Killebrew’s a pretty big guy for Frank to be talking to him like that.”
“And he’s crazy, man. Mean. Evil-mean. I seen him beat up on people, nearly kill ’em, just ’cause he don’t like the way they look. But Frank wasn’t afraid of nothin’, man. Someone lean on him, he get a baseball bat and come back and break their knees. He was short, you know? But strong. And he wasn’t afraid of nothin’.”
As good an epitaph as any, probably. “Did Frank have a gun?”
“A rifle. Like I say, sometimes he went out hunting deer.”
“No pistol.”
“Uh-uh.”
“Did Frank have any close friends beside Killebrew?”
“No. Not anyone close, you know? Acquaintances, like, he had a lot of acquaintances. Everybody liked Frank a lot.”
“Did your brother Benito like him a lot?”
She frowned. “Why you asking?”
I shrugged. “Curiosity.”
“Me and Benito, we don’t get along too good. Benito only saw Frank one time, maybe two.”
“Did Frank do coke, Carla?”
She nodded. “I knew that was why you were askin’. No, never. Never. I don’t have no drugs in my house. I tole him, that’s the one thing I don’t put up with.”
“Frank never dealt coke?”
“I tole you, no. I don’t allow it.”
“Okay. What about these acquaintances of his. Do you know any of them? Know their names?”
“No, man. How’m I gonna know? They were guys. You know. Guys who hung out at the bars. Guys Frank knew.”
“Which bars?”
She shrugged. “He liked the Lone Star. Everybody knew him there.”
“The country-western place north of town?”
“Yeah.”
“What about other women? Was he seeing any?”
She frowned. “What’s he need other women for? He had me. He take care of me; I take care of him.”
Involuntarily, I glanced around the tiny room, took in the shabby second-hand furniture. I kept to myself my opinion of Frank’s abilities as a provider.
But it must have shown on my face, because suddenly her mouth turned down in a frown and she said, “This was only temporary. We were only staying here until Frank made his score, and then we were off. We were history, man.”
“Off to where?”
“Mexico. We were going to buy a ranch down there and settle down for good. Frank was good at that, at ranching. He knew all about it, the animals, everything.”
“What was his score going to be, Carla?”
She shook her head, her lips pursed. “He never tole me.”
“When did he start talking about it?”
“Always,” she said. She looked away, remembering. Her voice softer, she said, “Ever since I knew him. He was always talkin’ about it.”
“How long was that, Carla?”
In the same soft faraway voice, still not looking at me, she said, “Two years. We been together—” she corrected herself, “—we were together for two years, almost. Two years in June. We met in June.”
This wasn’t helping me. I had probably learned all I could from the girl.
It wasn’t helping her, either. I saw that her mascara was making dark slick trails down her cheeks. Sitting there, immobile, silently crying, she suddenly looked somehow smaller, and even younger, like a child badly made up for a costume party.
I asked one more question. “Carla,” I said, “do you have any idea who killed him?”
Silently she lowered her head, silently shook it.
I stood up. “All right, Carla, thank you. If you think of anything else, give me a call.” I put my card, and a twenty dollar bill, on the coffee table. And then, as I had at the Leightons’, I saw myself out.
SEVEN
“WHY ON EARTH didn’t you call me?”
“Rita,” I said into the phone, “I didn’t—”
“Someone shoots at you, smashes your window out, and it never occurs to you to let me know?”
“It occurred to me, but I didn’t see that there was a whole lot you could do about it. There wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it.”
“So I have to wait until I read about it in the newspaper.”
“I’m calling you now,” I pointed out.
“Thanks, Joshua. Thank you very much. Now do you think you could see your way to explaining what happened?”
“I can tell you what happened, but I’m not so sure that I can explain it.”
“Joshua, don’t play word games with me.”
“Ah, Rita, those are the only kind you’ll let me play.”
“Stop smirking.”
“How do you know I’m smirking?”
“You have a very loud smirk. Where are you, at the office?”
“Yeah. I’m waiting for the Leightons’ son to show up.”
“All right. In the meantime, tell me what happened.”
I told her. About the conversation with Mrs. Leighton, parts of which I edited slightly, about the smashing of the window and the discussion last night with Hector. Told her I’d fixed the window and talked with Carla Chavez, Biddle’s girlfriend.
“So you and Mrs. Leighton were just sitting there, innocently, and someone took a shot at you.”
“Actually, we weren’t sitting at the time. We were standing.”
“Innocently.”
“Absolutely.” I told her what Hector had suggested, that perhaps the shot had been a warning of some kind.
“Maybe,” she said, “but even if that’s true, you and Hector are both making an assumption.”
“Which assumption?”
“That the warning was meant for you.”
I frowned. “You think it was meant for Mrs. Leighton?”
“I don’t think anything yet. I don’t know enough.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, Rita. It was a thirty-eight slug that came through the window, so it’s probably safe to assume that whoever fired it was the same person who killed Biddle. What would he have been warning Mrs. Leighton about?”
“What would he’ve been warning you about?”
“Beats me, Rita. You’re the brains of this operation. I’m just the muscle.”
“Sometimes I can almost believe that. By the way, are you carrying your gun?”
“No.”
“I think you should, Joshua.”
“It spoils the drape of my jacket.”
“Get a new jacket. What did Carla Chavez have to say?”
I related the conversation.
Rita said, “Do you believe her, about the drugs?”
“I believe that she believes Biddle wasn’t involved in drugs. But she also believes that Biddle wasn’t involved with other women. And we know from Felice Leighton that he was involved, at least temporarily, with her.”
“Felice, is it?”
“Aha,” I said. “Do I detect a note of jealousy?”
She laughed. “No. Sorry. But I have a hard time picturing you with someone like her. You’ll have to buy yourself a pair of handcuffs.”
“Hector has some nice ones, he tells me. Maybe he’ll let me borrow them.”
“If you’re planning on a long-term affair, it might be better to invest in a pair of your own.”
“We’ll see how it goes. Maybe she carries some with her, just in case.”
“Before you begin this courtship, do you plan to do an
ything else to find the necklace?”
“I talked to Peter Ricard yesterday, and he tells me that Leighton was in a bind for money last fall, around the time the necklace was stolen. He needed thirty or forty thousand to make payment on a note, and somehow he managed to come up with it. I thought one of us could give Aaron a call, at the bank, and see if he can find out where Leighton got the money.”
“If it’s insurance money, the claim might’ve been fraudulent.”
“Yeah.”
“I know Allan Romero. Atco wouldn’t have paid out the money if there were any question of fraud.”
“I’d still like to know if it was the insurance money that saved his ass.”
“All right. I’ll call Aaron. What else did you have in mind?”
“Like I said, I’m talking to Kevin Leighton this afternoon. Tonight I’ll drive out to the Lone Star and talk to the bartender there. I know him. Maybe he can tell me something about the people Biddle hung around with.”
“I wonder why Biddle and Killebrew had a falling out.”
“Well, sooner or later I’m going to have to talk to Killebrew. I’ll ask him that very thing.”
“From everything I’ve heard about Killebrew, he sounds a dangerous man.”
“You forget, it séems, that you’re talking to a guy who can bend steel in his bare hands.”
“Steel doesn’t try to bend you back. I know you’re terribly strong, Joshua, and terribly competent, but I suggest you be careful with this one.”
“Right, Rita. I’ll talk to him on the telephone. Long distance.”
“And wear the gun when you do.”
“Right.”
AT FOUR O’CLOCK, half an hour late, Kevin Leighton sauntered through the door, hands in his pockets, and walked across the room with a wrangler strut that immediately reminded me, as perhaps it reminded him, of Frank Biddle. “You Croft?” he asked, his head canted slightly back.
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