by Ralph Dennis
“Say it, Wilt.”
“Say what?”
“What you’re thinking,” Joe said.
“Okay. Marrying money is a hard way to get rich.”
“Who said anything about getting married? That lady gets my motor running.”
“When are you calling her?”
“A couple of days. No hurry. I mean, I have to do her the courtesy of letting her know if her information was useful.”
“You think she’ll remember you?”
“I’d lay a year’s pay on that.”
Wilt leaned on the counter between them. “Since you’re about to move into society, I guess I ought to school you for it.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t chew toothpicks or clean your teeth in public. Picking your teeth is one of those private matters, to be done alone like taking a crap. And buy yourself some boxer shorts. No one in her circle wears jockey shorts. And keep your nose hair and the hair in your ears trimmed.”
“And that’s all?”
“I’ll add to the list as we go along.”
“How come you know so much?” Joe asked.
“I used to be an officer and a gentleman.”
“That.”
“I even know how to use a fish knife. I bet you don’t even know what a fish knife is.”
“A knife for cleaning fish?”
“Table manners and use of strange utensils, that’s going to be lesson number two.”
Before Wilt left the Station, he told Joe to wear civvies the next morning. They were going to do some stalking and walking and it might be better if they didn’t look like the law.
Wilt reached his apartment and stood beside the cruiser and looked around. There was a faint hope in him that he’d spot the silver-toned Celica. No such luck. No sign of it.
Diane was probably showing her tattoo to strangers at the Blue Lagoon.
Climbing the stairs to the front door of his apartment building, he felt disappointed and even a little hurt.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Wilt arrived at the Station about twenty after eight. He looked like he hadn’t slept well. The skin of his face had a corrugated look like he’d slept on a bundle of steel tying iron rods. He gulped coffee. A cigarette curled smoke into his eyes as as Joe popped his head in.
“Morning,” Joe said.
“Old Oak Terrace Road,” Wilt said. “We have any complaints out there recently?”
“Something a month ago …” Joe stopped. “Let me check the reports.”
Wilt was on the phone when Joe returned with the stack of complaints. The one he’d selected was on the top of the pile. He placed the stack on the desk and turned it toward Wilt.
Wilt leaned over it while he talked. “… to hold the desk down while Joe and I are away for a couple of hours. Hell, I know you need sleep. Everybody here needs sleep. And you can forget the shower. Won’t be anybody here who’ll notice but Susie and you know she likes her men overripe.” He nodded and listened. He tapped the report. A shake of his head meant he didn’t agree with Joe on his choice. Joe reached across the desk and uncovered the second report. While he read, Wilt said, “Make that ten minutes and you’ve got a bargain, one we can live with.”
The call completed he said, “This is the better one. Just vague enough.”
Five minutes after Buster arrived at the Station, Joe and Wilt were on Old Oak Terrace Road, the far end of it, headed for the Plowden estate.
Wilt decided that Joe was moody this morning, even disgruntled. And to tell the truth, it didn’t matter a gnat’s ass to him, just as long as he did his job and his scrambled emotions didn’t cause any screwups.
If Wilt had to make a guess, he’d say Joe’s mood had something to do with Charlotte Winters, the rub and smell and spur of her. But it wasn’t only the woman. There was a touch, a smell, and a claw to money. Well, he’d learn or he wouldn’t learn. And Wilt believed a man learned as much from his bad choices as he did from the good ones.
The Plowden home sprawled, it angled away from its center in several directions. One could play a game called Find the Original House, what was there before the owners decided that improvements were needed.
What looked permanent was the heavy log fence that bordered what was either a large lawn or a small pasture. The logs were stripped and aged and unpainted.
Joe didn’t find a parking area at the front of the house. He followed a curving road that ran around the right side of the structure. The road continued about another quarter of a mile toward a small house that sat on the edge of a deeply wooded stand of second growth. The guest house, Wilt thought.
The parking spaces were behind the main house, on the edge of a slope that overlooked a patio where there was a sunning platform and roofed-over jacuzzi.
Joe braked the cruiser between two cars, a lipstick red Porsche and a white Thunderbird. The Thunderbird was on the driver’s side. After Joe stepped from the cruiser, he tapped the Thunderbird on the hood and looked over his shoulder at Wilt.
Wilt nodded. A possible. A very good possible.
From the front, it had looked like the Plowden house had two floors. At the back, from the side, it was obvious that the building had been done on a hill or the earth had been scooped away so that two additional floors could be inserted. In contrast to the home’s front, which was more traditional in the placement of windows, the back of the structure was a hodgepodge of many windows and sliding glass doors and natural wood terraces.
“Like it?” Wilt asked.
“I could get used to it.”
“I bet you could.”
A staircase of wrought iron and stone ran in a straight line from the slope down to the patio. In the patio, after the climb, Wilt stopped to give his hip a chance to recover. He filled the time by looking around.
“How’s your suntan? You ever been in a jacuzzi?”
“I’m about bleached out and no, I’ve never, but I’m looking forward to my first dip.”
Wilt headed for the door that was off-center in a wall of plate glass. A soft glow of light showed beyond a cloudy condensation.
A minute passed after he first knocked. He knocked again. He’d lifted his hand to try again when the door opened with a sliding sound and the maid stood there. Her black face was thin and disagreeable.
“Sheriff Drake and Chief Deputy Croft to see Mr. and Mrs. Plowden.”
“You call ‘head of time?”
“No, I didn’t. My with the Plowdens is official, not social. Part of an investigation.”
“I ain’t sure what Mrs. Plowden can see you.”
“She’ll see me one way or the other. The easy way or the hard way.”
“I see if she ‘vailable.”
“Do that.” Wilt took a foot and placed it forward, ready to step inside. The maid, without seeming to notice his intention, slid the door closed in his face.
Joe stood a step behind Wilt. “I’d say she doesn’t like the law much.”
Almost five minutes passed before the maid returned. The warm air as it rushed past her carried on it the breakfast smells. Eggs and bacon and coffee. And the burnt dry scent of toast.
“She say she see you for a minute.”
Wilt and Joe followed her inside. The room they entered was set up as a bar. To one side there was the deep dark glow of burnished wood and bar stools that were arranged along a c-shaped bar counter. There was a gleam from racked glasses and the colorful patchwork of bottle labels.
To the left, there were tables, a grouping of marble-topped and wrought iron stands and captain’s chairs. Wilt stopped when he saw the woman seated at a table next to the glass wall. The table had been converted into a breakfast nook. Seated there, with a single service and a silver coffee pot was Missy Plowden. The serving dishes were arranged over a low gas flame unit.
Her hair was gray but, on her, with whatever help the beauty shop contributed, the color seemed almost platinum blonde. She wore no makeup this time of day and her sk
in, while it was tight and almost without pores, looked thin and brittle.
It was a casualness, a studied one, that let them know how unimportant she considered them. Otherwise she wouldn’t have received them with so much truth showing. As if she considered them on a scale with the maid or the gardener. Menials didn’t matter, that was what she was saying to them.
“You wanted to see me?” Her voice was soft and tinged with a southern accent. Each word was carefully enunciated, as if she’d had a voice lesson or two, perhaps back in her college days. It was fine to have the charming southern accent, she seemed to have learned, but there is no reason to speak like a field hand.
“You’re Mrs. Plowden?”
“Yes.” She buttered a toast corner and placed her knife carefully at an angle on the back of her plate. The plate contained enough breakfast to feed a field hand, a generous serving of scrambled eggs, several slices of bacon and a mound of grits. To one side there was toast, honey and butter.
After he introduced her to Joe, Wilt he did his verbal tapdance. The call was about complaints he’d received about teenagers using Old Oak Terrace Road as a drag strip late at night. Had she heard the noises?
“Goodness,” she said, “it would be impossible not to.”
More tapdance. Had she seen the cars? Did she know if any of the young drivers lived on Old Oak Terrace Road?
“Certainly not.” Her kind of people didn’t let their children run wild. More was expected of them.
“Anyone else in the house who might have seen the cars?”
“Jonathan, my husband, is ill. He hasn’t mentioned being disturbed. However, he’s under medication and he wouldn’t notice even those loud noises at that hour.”
“If I could speak with …” He broke off when he heard the whine, a mechanical grinding. The maid stepped around Wilt and stood beside what looked like an ordinary door. The whine ended. The maid opened the door and revealed the cage front to a narrow one-man elevator.
The maid pushed the cage front open and a man in a wheelchair rolled himself from the elevator. He stopped about three feet from the elevator door. The maid circled him and grasped the wheelchair handles and pushed him toward the breakfast table.
“I didn’t know you had visitors,” he said.
The voice was thin and reedy. The pitch, the weakness went with the rest of the man. From the bones, Wilt could tell that the man had been large and heavy-shouldered at one time, before the flesh melted away. Now he was a dry, dying tree waiting to fall. His hair was neatly cut but it looked damp and brought to Wilt memory of a dying father, the lifeless feel of his father’s hair and the smell that was sour.
“I think we’re going to be arrested.” Missy lifted her head and laughed. “I believe the Sheriff is going to arrest either you or me for drag racing on the road.”
“It’s an excellent idea,” Jonathan Plowden said.
Play the game a bit. Wilt laughed. “I don’t think anyone could out drag you in that Thunderbird.”
“I think it’s seen its best days,” Missy Plowden said.
“But the Porsche …”
Missy smiled at her husband. “Jonathan prefers the Porsche.”
“It’s a beauty,” Wilt said. He looked over his shoulder at Joe. Joe had his notebook in his hands. It was his service, his question.
“Is there anyone else in the household who …?”
“No,” Jonathan said. “There’s Raymond.”
“Raymond?” Wilt kept it lowkey and casual.
“Raymond Thorpe,” Missy said. “He’s staying in the guest house.” A wave of a hand indicated the location, the small house Wilt had seen. “Raymond is my husband’s friend, his guest.”
“Do you think we could talk to him?” This from Joe. “We might as well touch all the bases.”
“By now he should have left for work,” Jonathan said.
“Does he work in Edgewood? We could drop by on our way to the Station.”
“His firm has offices in Raleigh.” Jonathan didn’t look up or acknowledge that the maid had placed a cup of hot tea in front of him.
“Too bad. Which firm is that? We could give him a call.”
“Weigard & Timmons. Insurance.”
Joe had him spell “Weigard” for him. Then he closed the notebook. Wilt knew he was aware that they were in danger of stepping across the line. One or two more questions, and the Plowdens might be alerted to the fact that the law’s interest was far more than just a routine investigation.
“I don’t think he’d like to be bothered,” Jonathan Plowden said.
“We’ll be brief,” Wilt said.
“I’m sure he knows nothing. The guest house is so far from the road that I doubt he even hears the cars at all.”
“Then we probably won’t have to talk to him at all.” Wilt closed and buttoned his topcoat. He made all the motions that meant he was ready to leave. “Appreciate you taking the time to see us.”
“We’ll let ourselves out,” Joe said. He almost bowed over Missy’s hand when he said his own goodbye and thank you.
They stepped through the doorway. Just before he and Joe pushed the door closed, Wilt heard Jonathan protest that he wanted some bacon with his eggs. And Missy telling him that he knew how bacon acted on his stomach. Then the door was closed and they were in the harsh morning wind again.
Wilt was halfway up the stairs when he saw the man standing at the top of the slope. He was five steps from the top before he was close enough to get his close look at the man. His heart thumped in his chest. The likeness was that good. The lean face, the bleached-out acne scars.
The man waited until Wilt reached the top. Joe was a step behind him. The man gave way and then stepped by Wilt and Joe. His foot was on the top stair when Wilt’s voice stopped him. “Raymond Thorpe?”
The man turned and stopped. “Yes.”
He was dressed for the office, a suit and a topcoat, a tweed hot. The hair that showed under the hat was lighter than Gus Triffon had said. And under that clothing the solid feel, the sense of strength and power in a trimmed-down body.
“We’ve been talking to the Plowdens,” Wilt said and introduced himself.
Raymond Thorpe waited. His face revealed nothing, neither interest nor impatience.
Wilt had to give in first. Otherwise, he had the feeling that Thorpe would walk away. “It’s about the drag racing on the road. Have you noticed anything? Seen any cars that you can identify?”
“No to all of that,” Thorpe said. In the harsh wind, the pocks were redder now, as if the cold swept about fifteen years away and left him with the skin he’d had as a late teenager.
Thorpe moved down two steps and looked over his shoulder. “That all your questions?”
“That’s all. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome, Sheriff.”
Wilt turned away. Joe followed him. A black BMW was parked on the other side of the red Porsche. Wilt nodded at Joe. “Get the tag numbers.”
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
Later, in the car, headed for the straight flat length of Old Oak Terrace Road Joe said, “He’s our man. I’ve got the feeling.”
“Feelings aren’t doodly-squat in a courtroom.”
“That one, I get the smell off him.”
“We need a case,” Wilt said.
“What now?”
“Back to the Station.”
“Aw, Wilt …”
“And at the Station we trade this cruiser in for some unmarked car.”
“And then?”
“Raleigh. We follow our number one boy around all day.”
“He’ll probably know us,” Joe said.
Wilt grinned. “Now wouldn’t that be a terrible thing? It might even make him nervous.”
“That’s an interesting concept.”
“Not really.” Wilt shook a cigarette from his pack and lit it. “He already knows we’re bird-dogging him. That is, he’s guessing. Now, if we have to, we let him know for sure.”
/> Joe whapped the steering wheel with a palm. “I like it. I like it.”
Wilt rolled down the window and tossed the match out. Joe was so easily pleased. Why, for a moment there he’d probably even forgotten about Charlotte Winters.
It wasn’t a prestige address. Not like downtown where some form of urban renewal was always going on at one street corner or another. The buildings where Weigard & Timmons had their offices were old and most well-kept. Most of the businesses concerned themselves with the care and feeding of North Carolina State, The State campus buildings towered over the street. The modern architecture overpowered it.
Joe found a parking slot down the street, about half a block from the sing hanging from the second-floor level: Weigard & Timmons, Insurance. The engine wasn’t completely cold before a stocky, dark-haired man in a Durham Bulls ballcap and wearing a dark blue windbreaker stepped from the doorway of a cafe and stopped next to Wilt’s window, the one on the passenger side.
“Sheriff Drake? I’m Billy Egan.”
Wilt lowered the window. “Wake County Sheriff’s office?”
Egan nodded.
Wilt nodded him into the backseat. Egan got in and peeled the windbreaker away and dropped it on the seat.
At the Station, before leaving for Raleigh, Wilt had placed a call to the Wake County Sheriff’s office. He stated his business and that he would be moving across county lines. The man he talked with switched the call to Egan. Egan said he understood and that he would meet him, just to keep the visit and the protocol in place. “Not to look over your shoulder,” he said. “Say I’ll assist you if you need it since your jurisdiction doesn’t extend beyond the Webster County line.”
Now, in the backseat, Egan blew on his hands to warm them. “It’s a bitch out there today.”
“Breezy,” Wilt said.
“Heard about your troubles, the two little girls. That’s a bitch too. I could blow the asshole who’d do that away and not have a second thought about it.”
Wilt nodded that he understood and changed the subject by introducing Joe Croft.
Egan shook hands. “Call me Billy.”