by John Lutz
“When I find out, you’ll be the next to know.”
“If there is a next,” Hammersmith said. “You’re in shark waters, Nudge. I hope you realize that. You be careful of Kyle.” Purely by accident, he blew a perfect smoke ring. He glared at it, a bit surprised and alarmed. He’d always been skeptical of coincidence. “Shark waters,” he repeated.
“Life magazine,” Nudger said. “Remember that shot of Muhammed Ali screaming with both arms raised after a fight?”
“Sure. How ‘bout that one of the sailor in Times Square, kissing his girl just after World War Two?”
“Now you’re going way back,” Nudger said.
“Kinda magazine Life was. A great photograph’s forever in the mind.”
“Maybe Dobbs’s shot of Virgil Hiller will turn out that way.”
“Doubt it,” Hammersmith said. “Say, you remember that one of Adlai Stevenson with his foot propped up and the hole in the bottom of his shoe?”
“I remember.”
Hammersmith puffed on his cigar, leaned back, and closed his eyes, leafing again through the black and white pages of his youth.
Nudger left him like that. Then he walked through the crowded, noisy booking area and out the door. Down the concrete steps to the street.
Into shark-filled waters.
4
Virgil Hiller’s home was in St. Louis Hills, a conservative, Germanic, and immaculately clean section of South St. Louis. Most of the houses there were constructed of brick. Many featured pseudo-Gothic architecture, with steeply pitched roofs, ornate eaves, and pointed dormers. It was the sort of neighborhood where you might still see someone wearing a spiked helmet.
The Hiller house was a pale brick building with a red tile roof and a wide picture window with evenly spaced potted plants hanging in it. Along the foundation line were several windows of glass brick, to allow light but not vision into the basement. The house sat on a gently slanted hill; its spacious front yard was covered with zoysia grass, a curiously thick and low-lying type of growth that turned brown in early fall and stayed that way until mid-spring. During the summer months it was like a plush green carpet, a perfect place to display plastic flamingos and miniature Dutch windmills. Someday South St. Louis would be choked to death on zoysia grass. That would be too bad.
Nudger parked his rusty Ford Granada at the curb and strolled up the curved walk toward the front door. Hiller must have employed a lawn care service; the hedges were trimmed with topiary precision and the edged grass stood at rigid attention three inches away from the walk as if repelled by a magnetic field.
Nudger stepped up onto the concrete porch and pressed the bell button. Westminster chimes sounded faintly from deep inside the house. Traffic hummed in the distance. Birds chirped from where they were perched on a telephone line leading to the peak of the house’s roof. They weren’t perched in a tree because there were no trees in the yard. South St. Louis did not abide trees. Trees dropped leaves. Undesirable. Messy.
The door was answered by an attractively plump woman in her forties, with wise dark eyes and wavy brown hair streaked with gray. She was wearing a short-sleeved blue blouse with a delicate black sequin design on it. Dark slacks. Her upper arms were getting gelatinous and her heavy breasts strained the front of the blouse. A thick black belt cinched tight with a silver buckle showed she still had a waistline. There was something about her. She was appealing in a homebody kind of way, as if she’d be great in bed and could also bake a terrific apple strudel. Nudger cautioned himself about being a male chauvinist and said, “Mrs. Gina Hiller?”
She said she was.
Nudger introduced himself and said he was a detective. He didn’t say he was with the police department. Didn’t say he wasn’t.
“Please come in,” Gina said rather hurriedly, somewhat breathlessly. “You mind having a seat and waiting a few minutes? I’m in the middle of an important phone call about my son. With his school.”
“I’ve got plenty of time,” Nudger said, and followed her down a short hall and into a large living room with white walls. It was carpeted in a kind of rose color. The furniture was gray-blue and white and looked as if it could be soiled by a dirty look. French provincial. The room was cool and smelled strongly but not unpleasantly of perfume.
On the brocade sofa sat a dainty, attractive blond woman in a yellow summer dress that clashed with the carpet. She had a turned-up nose, pouty red lips, and nifty nyloned calves pressed close together as if Nudger might dive for her legs and try to pry them apart. What was this? Could she read minds?
Gina Hiller said, “Oh,” then “Oh,” again, flustered, as if she hadn’t known the woman was there—a pesky apparition that had appeared uninvited on the sofa. “This is Bonnie Beal, Detective Nudger. Please excuse me. The phone in the kitchen’s off the hook.” She smiled nervously and jogged out of sight, bouncing in her tight slacks.
Nudger could hear her hard leather heels make contact with a tile floor, then came the soft, indecipherable sound of her voice. He couldn’t understand what she was saying, but her tone was conciliatory.
“There’s a problem with her youngest son at school,” Bonnie Beal said. There was a controlled vibrancy in her voice. Nudger bet she’d been a high school cheerleader. She sure was the type. A freshman’s wet dream and a hell-raiser at pep rallies.
“Are you family?” he asked.
Bonnie laughed. Same vibrancy. Perfect little white teeth. Like pearls; like pearls for sure. Her tiny turned-up nose crinkled with her smile. Cute. The woman was cute. She said, “I’m Mrs. Hiller’s Nora Dove lady.”
“Nora Dove?”
Bonnie’s eyebrows rose in mild astonishment. “Nora Dove cosmetics. You’ve never heard of them.”
Where had Nudger been, in a deep hole? “Well, no, I haven’t.”
Bonnie smiled, putting him at ease in his ignorance. “We don’t manufacture or sell men’s cosmetics yet,” she said, as if that explained Nudger’s dearth of knowledge. “But the new Max Hawk line in male cologne and underarm deodorant will be out soon.”
Cosmetics. Perfume. Nudger saw the pink vinyl sample case at Bonnie’s feet, its lid open: That explained the sweetness of the room’s atmosphere. He wondered, Was there a real Max Hawk someplace? There was a Ralph Lauren. Even an Adolfo. Nudger had seen them on talk shows.
“It must be interesting, being a policeman,” Bonnie said. “How long have you been on the force?”
Nudger couldn’t lie to those wide, innocent eyes. It was unthinkable. Like Ken lying to Barbie. He said, softly enough not to be overheard by Gina Hiller, “I’m private, actually.”
Bonnie’s eyes popped open even wider. “My God, a private eye! I didn’t know such people really existed.”
“It’s not easy existing sometimes.” He knew what was coming next. It did.
“That must be a tremendously exciting life!”
“It is right now,” he said.
“Huh?”
“Never mind.” He’d better watch himself. “Is that a full-time job, selling Sally Dove cosmetics?”
“Nora Dove,” she corrected. “And I also do temporary office work. None of it’s making me rich, but I’m single instead. A real good writer once said that being single’s almost as good as being rich.”
Nudger wasn’t so sure about that. He wondered if the writer was married. Or rich.
Gina Hiller’s voice from the doorway said, “Benny kicked some pipes loose and flooded the boys’ restroom.”
Bonnie smiled, crinkling her pert little nose again, and shook her head briskly so her fluffy blond hair bounced. “Teenage boys,” she said. So exasperated. “That kinda thing’s to be expected now and again.”
Gina returned the smile. As if the two women thoroughly understood how it was with teenage boys. Nudger wondered what his mother would have done if he’d kicked plumbing loose and flooded the restroom at school. Probably not much, because there’d have been very little left of him after his father was finish
ed. The good old days had been something.
“I told the principal not to worry, that I’d take care of the cost of repair,” Gina said, as if she were trying to assure Nudger and Bonnie that she could pay, that her life was still in control even without her husband.
“They going to send him home?” Bonnie asked.
“No, I talked them out of that. He’s got study hall detention for a week. The school’s got a plumber coming out to give them estimates later today. They think the damage is in the hundreds.”
“God!” Bonnie said.
Gina shook her head helplessly and said, “Boys!” Then, more firmly and with an edge of pain, “Men!”
Bonnie stood up and smoothed her yellow dress over trim thighs, then held herself erectly, as if trying to appear as tall as possible to compensate for her smallness. For all her daintiness, she had surprisingly full breasts. Nicely flared hips. A vest-pocket-size beauty was Bonnie. She said, “I’ll leave you a bottle of Hot Shoulders and you can try it. Pay for it later if you decide you like it. The company thinks it’s going to be very popular, one of our really big sellers.”
Nudger watched as Gina thanked her and accepted a small fancy bottle with an atomizer on top. Then she escorted Bonnie toward the door.
“Been a pleasure, Mr. Nudger,” Bonnie called over her shoulder.
“Same here.” Hot Shoulders?
Gina talked with Bonnie for a moment at the door. Both women laughed, though Gina’s laughter was subdued. Then Gina said good-bye and came back and sat down on the sofa opposite Nudger. Where Bonnie had sat. She glanced down and said, “Oh, she forgot her Nora Dove scent patches!”
“Scent patches?”
Gina held up a stack of glossy papers with labeled, colored squares on them that looked like paint samples. “You just scratch your fingernail over these little squares and sniff,” she said, “and you get an exact sample scent of any Nora Dove perfume.”
“Clever,” Nudger said.
Gina said, “She’ll come back for them,” and laid the scent patches on the coffee table. She fixed her large, resigned eyes on Nudger. “I guess you think I’m frivolous, thinking about perfume at a time like this in my life. But I need something other than strife to occupy my thoughts.”
“That’s easy enough to understand,” Nudger assured her.
“I won’t inquire if there’s any news on Virgil. The answer’s always the same. There never is.”
“I need to ask you a few questions, Mrs. Hiller. Bear with me, please, because I’m sure you’ve heard some of them before.”
She tried a smile, but it didn’t quite make it all the way across the rose carpet to Nudger. “Answering questions has become almost a way of life for me since Virgil left. Asking myself questions has, too.”
“What kind of questions do you ask yourself, Mrs. Hiller?”
“Well, I have to wonder what part I might have played in whatever caused this . . . situation.”
“Did Virgil act peculiar in any way before he disappeared?” Nudger asked.
“No. They say he ran off with that woman, but I don’t believe it. Everything was going along the way it always did here at home, with Virgil, me, and the boys. Virgil loved the boys—and me. He’d never leave us. Not for good, anyway. Virgil had a happy home life. I know. A man can’t fake that for years on end, Mr. Nudger. It’s not possible.”
“Ever meet his secretary?”
“Mary Lacy? No, we never met. That wasn’t unusual, though. Virgil kept his work separate from his family. Even when something important was bothering him, he’d keep it to himself so as not to make us worry.”
Nudger decided on the element of surprise. “Have you heard from him since he disappeared, Mrs. Hiller?”
She smiled sadly and shook her head no. “Wish I had. I wish it so much. . .”
Pity constricted Nudger’s throat and made his voice break as he asked his next question. This wasn’t the job for him; he should be selling insurance or appliances. Collect his salary and commission and go home at peace with himself. Steady work, steady pay. “Did Virgil ever mention Mary Lacy to you in any context?”
Gina Hiller rubbed her palms over the roundness of her thick knees, staring at them as she thought. Her hands were surprisingly older than the rest of her, reddened and chapped, as if she worked at hard labor with them. “I don’t even recall how or when he mentioned her. He must have, though, because I knew her name.”
Nudger could see her control slipping. He was losing her. “If you don’t believe he stole the money and ran away with Mary Lacy, what do you believe, Mrs. Hiller?”
She lifted her gaze and riveted it on Nudger. Twin laser beams. “I believe my husband’s gone and I don’t know where, why, or how. I believe I have three sons to raise, and not enough money to do it. I believe if this isn’t resolved soon, if Virgil doesn’t come back, I’ll go insane. I can’t handle this at my age. just can’t. For years I leaned too much on Virgil, like a tree not in the sun and leaning on the one next to it. I’m not strong anymore.” She bowed her head and her shoulders began a gentle, rhythmic lurching as she wept, rocking on the sea of her mistake.
Nudger stood up. He’d heard enough. Done enough. Felt small enough. He said, “I’m sorry I upset you, Mrs. Hiller. Really.”
She drew a deep, rasping breath, looked up at him, and actually smiled. Smeared mascara made her face a tragic mask. “Your job isn’t easy sometimes, is it?”
Christ! Why would Hiller leave this woman? “No,” he said, “it isn’t.” He moved toward the door. “Thanks for your help.”
“I wish I was a help, but I wasn’t, was I?”
“Maybe,” Nudger said. “There’s no way to know for sure about that yet.”
He let himself out.
As he was stepping down off the porch, he noticed a blue Chevy station wagon pull to the curb behind the Granada. Bonnie Beal got out, bustled around the back of the car, and started up the walk to the house. Her golden hair bounced as she strode. The straw purse slung over her shoulder rode jauntily on her hip, and her breasts jounced firmly beneath the yellow dress.
She was preoccupied and didn’t notice Nudger until she’d almost run into him. She stopped short and looked beautifully startled, as any life-size doll would, and said, “Mr. Nudger. Didn’t see you there. Darn near bumped into you.”
“My loss.”
She ignored the remark, but in a way that somehow suggested she’d been aware of it and was above replying. She was used to clever repartee and chose not to partake. “I forgot my scent patches,” she said.
He nodded. The paint samples. “Mrs. Hiller found them and put them on the coffee table.”
“That’s a relief,” she said. “I was so worried about Niki.”
“Niki?”
“Mrs. Hiller’s toy poodle. He’s a curious little thing and likes to chew, and far as I know, some of that stuff in those scent patches might be poisonous.” She crinkled her nose in a smile and started to move around him deftly on the narrow sidewalk, brushing up against him as if it were necessary. One foot off the concrete and the grass would have her.
He surprised himself by saying, “Want to have dinner with me tonight?”
She surprised him by saying yes.
Just like that.
That was how life got complicated.
5
Why did I ask her out? Nudger wondered, as he steered the Granada onto Interstate 44 and headed west toward Lindbergh. A tractor-trailer doing at least seventy forced him to yank the steering wheel to the right and brake, staying in the acceleration lane until the truck had roared past. His heart hammering, he told himself to use one side of his brain to pay attention to his driving, if he was going to ponder with the other.
He checked his rear-view mirror and eased out into the traffic flow more cautiously. Settled the car at a safe and legal fifty-five. He knew nothing about Bonnie Beal other than that she was cute and sold Nora Dove cosmetics. This was quite a detour in Nudger’
s life. He’d been romantically involved for the past few years with Claudia Bettencourt, a woman he’d talked out of suicide and then come to love.
Still loved.
He thought.
Trouble was, Claudia’s psychiatrist, Dr. Oliver, had advised her to follow her instincts and see other men occasionally in order to bring about what he and Claudia called her self-actualization. Nudger wasn’t sure what to call it. Or what to do about it. Oliver had assured him that Claudia still loved him and would eventually wend her way back to him on a permanent basis, and the bond between them would be stronger than ever. Meanwhile, Claudia was going out regularly with Biff Archway, who taught sex education at Stowe High School out in the county, where Claudia taught English. Archway was handsome, athletic, a spiffy dresser, and a sportsman. He was probably self-actualized twice over. Nudger hated Biff Archway.
And he hated his and Claudia’s new arrangement. And maybe he was getting sick of it to the point where other women were beginning to tempt him more than they should. Adelaide Lacy, prim librarian, had come on like a young Marlene Dietrich. Bonnie Beal had struck him weak-kneed with her smile, and out had popped his invitation to dinner. Pathetic.
The hell with it, Nudger thought, with grim satisfaction. Claudia deserved this. And he deserved dinner with Bonnie the Nora Dove lady. Their relationship might develop into something worthwhile. Maybe she’d give him a deal on deodorant when the Max Hawk line came out.
The late afternoon was cool, so he had the Granada’s air conditioner off and his window cranked down. He turned north on Lindbergh, listening to the whirling air pound drumlike in the back of the car. He’d had to buy a new carburetor for the Granada last month, but now it was running like a champion. Danny had gotten him a deal on the car; it had belonged to an old lady out in Kirkwood who reputedly had given it meticulous care. Although, according to the title Nudger had examined after the sale, she’d only owned it two months before selling it. Her eyes were getting too bad for her to continue driving, she’d told Danny. Nudger had bought the Granada almost as much out of pity as need.