by John Lutz
He told her he did, then sat down before one of the viewers lined along the wall. He switched the machine on, clicked the reel into place, and fed the end of the microfilm into the mechanism. After turning the oversized knob on the side of the machine, playing the microfilm so it showed on a backlighted screen, he watched the front page of the March 15, 1981, edition of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat slide into view.
Nudger adjusted angle and focus, then settled back to scan as he ran the microfilm slowly through the machine. He said, “This figures to take a while.”
Adelaide rested an encouraging hand on his shoulder for a second, then left the room. Through the door, he could see her busying herself behind the checkout counter, stacking returned books on a small wooden cart to be reshelved. Her heart didn’t seem to be in her work. Murder on the Orient Express might wind up in Travel.
The only news about Nolander in the weeks before the accident was his announcement that he intended to run again for the office of city comptroller. It wasn’t a glamour office. Most people in the city probably didn’t know the name of the comptroller. Didn’t care who he was, as long as he stayed honest. So there was no more news of Nolander until the report of the plane crash.
He and his wife and three-year-old son had been flying back to St. Louis from Jefferson City, the state capital, and hadn’t landed at Lambert Airport as scheduled. People there to meet him had become alarmed, and their worst fears were realized when a farmer in Forestel notified authorities that a plane had skimmed the trees behind his house and crashed in his cornfield.
The plane turned out to be Nolander’s single-engine Cessna 170. It had flipped upside down and caught fire on impact. The pilot—Nolander—and his two passengers hadn’t had a chance. They were found still strapped in their seats, burned to death.
Nudger fed another reel of microfilm into the viewer. He read through the flowery and genuinely sad Nolander eulogies. Studied the grainy newspaper photographs of Nolander, a big blond man, and his pretty, dark-haired wife and towheaded lookalike son. Smiling in the photos, no premonition of death haunting their eyes. A family, alive and presumably happy one second, and dead and on fire the next. Nudger knew that the world could do that to anyone; it was a distressing thought.
He was getting dizzy watching the sideways motion of the microfilm, and his stomach was starting to feel as if he were seasick.
But he forgot how he felt, suddenly leaning forward, as if shoved from behind, when he saw the photograph of Nolander’s funeral.
He immediately recognized one of the mourners. A bereaved-looking man in an unbuttoned dark overcoat, his hat held before him at crotch level with both hands on the brim, as if his pants might be unzipped, his head slightly bowed.
A younger Virgil Hiller.
So much for coincidence. Mary Lacy had been afraid. That was why she’d left the newspaper lining her dresser drawers. And why, earlier, she’d left the envelope with Adelaide.
And what was in the missing envelope, and what the missing Mary Lacy had been afraid of, concerned Virgil Hiller.
The missing Virgil Hiller.
32
Before leaving the library, Nudger used one of the pay phones just inside the door to call Claudia at Stowe High School. A bored-sounding secretary told him Claudia was teaching her freshman English class at the moment, and offered to take a message.
Nudger couldn’t think of a message. There was too much he wanted to say for it to be condensed to a few notes on a secretary’s memo pad. So much he wanted to convey that he doubted it could be condensed into mere, inadequate words. This was about Death—the forever thing. The true and irrevocable finish of it all. Message indeed.
He said, “No, thanks,” and hung up.
He stuffed another quarter into the phone and punched out the number of Don Crinklaw, a friend and local free-lance journalist who sometimes did feature stories for the Post-Dispatch and various St. Louis weeklies.
Crinklaw was home. Nudger told him what he needed, and they agreed to meet later and talk at the Matrix Lounge on Grand Avenue, near Crinklaw’s home and office.
The Matrix was a working-man’s hangout with a long polished bar, a few tables and booths, and arrangements of sports photographs on the pine-paneled walls. Near the table where Nudger sat with Crinklaw was a shot of Stan Musial in his prime, grinning and demonstrating how to hold a bat, squinting against the brilliance of a long-ago sun. There was an autographed photo of Ken Reitz, who in the seventies had been a dandy defensive third baseman for the Cardinals. A photo of a soccer player Nudger didn’t recognize, standing hipshot and grinning aggressively, with a ball tucked beneath his right arm. Who knew soccer players?
Crinklaw said, “Everybody’s on the walls here except Joaquin Andujar. The owner hates Andujar.”
“I thought he was a helluva pitcher,” Nudger said. “Got a bum deal.”
Crinklaw shrugged. Sports were another world. Andujar’s problems were his own.
Crinklaw was a big man with a graying beard. He admired everything British; even drove a Jaguar. An Anglophile, Nudger thought people like that were called. Though Crinklaw was from Iowa, he spoke with what many thought was a British accent. It wasn’t a put-on—he simply spoke that way. Often wore a blue blazer and turtleneck, too, so that with his beard and English bearing he looked as if he belonged on an ale label. He wrote straight stuff, was married to Elaine Viets, a beautiful and talented woman who had a syndicated column in the Post-Dispatch, and often helped Nudger by exhuming information in the newspaper’s morgue. He’d even loaned Nudger money from time to time, and been paid back on schedule. That put him in a special category.
Nudger told him what he’d learned about the Hiller disappearance, and watched his calm but alert gray eyes brighten behind his glasses.
Crinklaw said, “Gad, now I see why you wanted the information you asked about.” Nudger envisioned him riding to hounds on a fox hunt through the cornfields.
The blond barmaid walked over with an inquiring expression, and Nudger told her to bring a draught beer and a gin and tonic.
He filled in details for Crinklaw until she returned. She left the drinks and went back to her station near the end of the bar. She knew where to place the gin and tonic, knew by looking who was beer and who was mixed drink. That was okay by Nudger. If she was that shrewd an observer, she’d probably leave the check with Crinklaw.
He waited till Crinklaw was finished with his first gentlemanly sip, then he said, “So what did you find out?”
Crinklaw’s smile was so wide it made him appear to have a handlebar mustache. “Virgil Hiller was the last important holdover from the old city administration.” He tapped the side of his glass sharply with his forefinger and sat back with a satisfied expression, as if he’d scored a point. Smug Monty Python fan.
“Why’s that significant?” Nudger asked. He didn’t really understand politics, but politics were Crinklaw’s specialty. Especially local politics.
“Because assistant comptroller is an appointed post, not elected. That means the present comptroller, Dan Gray, had to have wanted Hiller to stay on.”
“That unusual?”
“It is in my estimation. Usually a bureaucrat likes to wipe the slate clean and bring in his own cronies. The political spoils and patronage system. Sweep clean with a new broom. That was how Gray worked it—except for Virgil Hiller. Which is odd, because Gray’s a hard charger, eaten up by ambition, and Hiller’s long had a reputation for being less than alert in his work. Also, the word is that his longtime drinking problem got much worse in the past couple of years.”
“You mean he was a secret alcoholic?”
“Not so secret for years. Even less secret lately.”
That was something Gina Hiller would hardly have confided to Bonnie during Nora Dove chitchat. “What about women? Was he a skirt chaser?”
“No. He talked a good game, but he seldom scored that anyone knew about. And they’d have known. Hiller was definitely
a kiss-and-tell sort of player. He was also quite devoted to his children. Family man with an itch, I suppose you’d call him.”
Nudger said, “What did you find on the Nolander plane crash?”
“Ah, here’s where it gets even curiouser. The weather was clear, little wind, and Nolander and his family set off toward St. Louis from Jeff City after a fund-raiser. He was an experienced pilot, ex-military. The cause of the crash was never determined, mainly because the mechanic who’d done preflight work on the aircraft shortly before it took off disappeared and was unable to testify at the ensuing FAA investigation.”
Nudger almost coughed in his beer. Set down the glass hurriedly and accidentally sloshed some of the icy liquid over his hand. “Disappeared how?”
“Simply didn’t return to the furnished room where he’d lived in Jeff City for the last two years. None of his clothes seemed to be missing, but who knows? He was a kind of drifter. From California, originally. Name was Del Westerson. Does that strike a chord?”
Nudger remembered reading Westerson’s name, briefly mentioned in the newspaper accounts just after the crash, but the microfilm copies Nudger had scanned at the library hadn’t quite reached the date of the FAA investigation.
“Not much of a chord,” he said. “What was the theory at the time?”
“Officially or otherwise?”
Nudger said, “Both ways.”
“The official line was that there was no connection between the plane crash and Westerson’s disappearance, merely coincidence. Unofficially, the feeling was that Westerson had gotten scared after the crash. Knew how the FAA would dig into it and knew how intensely he’d be grilled. So he decided to cut and run. He was the type.”
“How come he was working on Nolander’s plane in the first place?”
“He was an employee at the airport. Doing regular fueling and maintenance for the pilots who frequented the place. I know what you’re thinking, and there was never anything but mild speculation that he’d sabotaged the plane.” Crinklaw made a wry face and raised his shoulders so turtleneck sweater met beard. “Private planes do fall from the sky, Nudge. People die.”
“Secretaries run away with their bosses, too.”
“Gad, yes. Every day, somewhere. Maybe every hour. How the business world often works, I’m afraid; people aren’t computers, thank God. Listen, Nudge, you didn’t give me much time on this. I’ll keep looking, and I’ll call you if I find anything else, okay?”
“Fine. Thanks, Don.”
Crinklaw glanced at his watch. “One o’clock. They serve sandwiches here. What say to a spot of lunch?”
Nudger agreed. He had to eat to energize the old machine, keep flailing away at the world. Got tougher every year. Time working away, being persistent. It was showing in the mirror lately, hairline a bit more receded, glimmer in the eyes slightly dimmed, another seam here, deeper one there; Dorian Gray bullshit.
“How’s Claudia?” Crinklaw asked.
Nudger mumbled that she was fine. Possibly she was. He’d give anything to make her fine. Anything.
“Good.” Crinklaw raised a forefinger and his bearded chin to signal the barmaid, maybe pretending he was in a London pub. He smiled at Nudger and said, “There’s no menu, but everything’s quite tasty here.”
They had open-faced beef sandwiches and another round of drinks. It was a waste of good food. Nudger hardly knew what he was eating. He wasn’t the best company. Through most of lunch he sat silently, absently chewing. Reminding himself now and then to swallow.
Thinking.
After lunch he went back to his office, refused free pastry from Danny, and thought some more. Tried to add what he knew and get a sum of at least partial understanding. He had no success.
At three o’clock Crinklaw, British bulldog with a bone to worry, phoned him with more odds-and-ends information about the Nolander plane crash.
When Nudger was about to leave to meet Claudia at her apartment as she came home from work, the penny dropped, the doors in his mind opened, and suddenly he knew how it must have been.
He called Adelaide at the library and asked her if she could get away early and meet him as soon as possible at her apartment. She caught the anticipation in his voice and agreed at once.
Nudger could get there before she did, so he had about fifteen minutes before it was time to leave. He made a few more phone calls, then held the cradle button down for a second with his thumb, let it snap up, and pecked out Claudia’s number with a pencil.
He was surprised when she answered.
“Home early?” he asked.
“They insisted I leave. Thought they were doing me a favor.” She paused. “Maybe they are.”
Her voice sounded normal enough, he thought. “You okay?”
“We’ll find out tomorrow, won’t we?”
He said, “I’ll come over later tonight, all right?”
“Not all right if you don’t. What time?”
“Can’t be sure, but I’ll be there.”
“Something happening on the missing secretary case?”
“I think so.”
She said, “Do your job before you come here. I mean that. I’ll see you afterward, whatever time it is.”
“Claudia—”
“I mean it, Nudger.”
“I love you,” Nudger said. “You’re what they call class.”
“I guess a lot depends on who ‘they’ are.”
“I’m they.”
“If you love me, be careful.”
“You betcha.” He meant that.
But he wasn’t careful enough to realize he was being followed when he left his office.
33
Low lead-colored clouds were spitting rain when Nudger parked on Oleatha Avenue across from Adelaide’s apartment. She lived in a large brick building with green-striped metal awnings. Ornate concrete urns, containing a few scraggly geraniums and a lot of something green and viny, flanked the steps off the sidewalk. The pavement was multishaded from the beginning rain, patterned wildly like modern art in mottled shades of gray.
Nudger jogged through the rain and entered the vestibule. Brushing water off his corduroy sportcoat, he pushed the intercom button for Adelaide’s apartment.
A metallic voice said something unintelligible.
Nudger leaned close to the intercom. “It’s Nudger!”
“‘M’on up.”
He began climbing the stairs. He felt the strain in his thighs and realized he was tired; his night had been restless and his day had started early and been a rough one. But he was sure that at the top of the stairs, in Adelaide’s apartment, was the answer to the disappearance of Hiller and Mary Lacy.
Adelaide was standing waiting for him with the door open. She couldn’t have been home long. She was still wearing the gray skirt and white cardigan sweater she’d had on at the library, but she’d unpinned her blond hair and let it tumble down over her shoulders. Her hair picked up the rose in the hall carpet, the bounce of light off the pale blue walls. Nudger thought, the beautiful sister.
She smiled nervously at him and stood back, moving her high heels on the carpet in a precise pattern like a dance step. “You’ve found out something about Mary?”
“Maybe.”
He brushed past her and went into the apartment. He noticed for the first time that, though the furniture seemed to have been chosen and placed randomly, there was a subtle order to the place; it didn’t reek of decorator, but there was a distinct scent. Though most of the furnishings were traditional, the sofa appeared to be a genuine antique, a reupholstered creation with what Nudger thought were Queen Anne legs. Queen Anne must have been some number.
The dining room was adjacent to the living room, separated only by a wooden arch. It contained a dark drop-leaf table and a tall china cabinet lined with blue dishes behind glass doors. The kitchen, he recalled, was beyond a door at the other end of the dining room, out of sight. There was a hall off the living room, leading to dimness and a c
losed door Nudger assumed would open to the bedroom.
Adelaide said, “Sit down, please—tell me about it.”
“Tell all of us about it,” a voice said.
Adelaide hadn’t locked her door. Arnie Kyle had walked right in. Jack Palp stood beside and slightly behind him, kept his eerie smile and his dark eyes aimed at Nudger as he twisted his body slightly and closed the door. He thought to lock it. Kyle was wearing a well-cut gray suit with light pinstripes and dark rain spots. Palp had on a long black plastic raincoat, probably the kind that folded into a small package and could be kept in a suitcase or glove compartment.
Adelaide’s blue eyes widened as if she didn’t know whether to be scared or angry. “Mr. Kyle!”
He nodded, as if politely acknowledging her greeting at a social event, and said, “Miss Lacy.”
“You and your friend can’t just barge in this way!”
Kyle said, “Shut up, Miss Lacy,” in the same courteous tone. Maybe next he’d inquire about her health.
Adelaide stuck out her chin and stepped toward him. Her fists were clenched.
Nudger said, “Adelaide, better sit here with me.” He lowered himself to sit on the antique sofa.
She paused, though it was obvious that she didn’t like it. Her lower lip trembled, jaw still jutting. Feisty as well as beautiful. Then she backed to the sofa, glaring at Kyle and Palp, and sat down alongside Nudger.
Kyle looked mildly concerned. Palp wore a lazy, watchful expression. Like something sunning itself after a meal of flies and spiders.
Kyle gave Nudger his attention and said, “We had a talk with a Mr. Crinklaw, then drove over to your office to chat with you. When we saw you driving away, we followed, even though there was no need. I worked it out the same as you did, Nudger.”
“Worked what out?”
“Play dumb some more,” Palp said. “You’re the best at it.”
Kyle shot him a cautioning glance, said, “Jack.” Palp seemed not to notice.