“No, I’m going out to a dinner party later on.”
“That what that tuxedo in the bag there's for? I rented myself one of those suits too, once, back in high school. It was blue.”
“This one's black.”
“Then I chickened out, didn’t even go to that dance anyhow. I never heard how people wore ’em to eat dinner in, though. Y’all gonna dance after you eat or something?”
I said, “I’ll let you know tomorrow, Zeke.”
Zeke went to work on my desk. “Don’t leave these french fries sitting here for the ants. Shit, you got gum stuck right to the wood.” He picked up a chess piece beside the phone. “This lady part of that chess set? Where's it go?”
I said, “The queen goes next to the king.”
“Chief, sometime, you wanna teach me how to play this chess game? Sort of like checkers? It's a pretty old game, ain’t it?”
“Pretty old. It was a royal game. I think it came from India.”
He grinned. “Like me, huh? Well, is it the kind where it's hard to learn the rules, ’cause if there's too many rules, forget it, far as I go.”
I looked back out across the Hillston skyline, fading into night. “Yeah, I guess I’d say it's the kind where it's hard to learn the rules.”
Leaving work, my tuxedo on under my coat so nobody would see it, I forgot a much simpler rule—one I ought to have known by heart. Never assume that any dark empty basement parking garage—not even the police department parking garage—is safe enough to bend over and tie your shoe in, without checking around first to make sure it is empty. I keep my Oldsmobile on the opposite end from the elevator, back in a far corner spot, because I’m nervous about protecting its flanks. I should have felt the same about my own flanks. I didn’t hear, see, or sense a thing. It did flick through my mind that an awful lot of the lights were out, but I figured the circuit breaker was acting up again, and we were really going to have to give in and replace the whole box. Otherwise I just strolled toward my car, thinking I hoped Justin was right that a Sunderland Boxing Day dinner party was “definitely black tie.” Then I tripped on a shoelace, then I knelt down to tie it, then I felt a sort of whoosh of air, after which my head exploded like an ammo dump hit by N.V.A. rockets.
The next thing I was looking at after my shoe was Etham Foster's face, actually two or three of his faces. There were also bright haloed lights glaring down at me. I was lying on the concrete floor on Etham's huge sheepskin jacket, and he was squatted beside me. He held my head in one hand; the other one was poking through my hair. I said—well, I think it was me, but it sounded more like Marlon Brando in The Godfather—I said, “Dr. D. you haven’t been dribbling around the floor with my head, have you? Maybe a few dunk shots?”
“Lie back down.” The hand he pushed on my chest was the size of a catcher's mitt. “You got sapped.”
“I had a feeling that's what happened.” I tried a grin. It was a mistake. I rubbed the back of my head. It was a worse mistake.
“Didn’t break the skin,” he said encouragingly. “How about the skull?”
“Too hard. What happened? Saw you lying here. Whoever it was, was gone. Drove out or ran out. You see who did it?”
I groaned. “Well, I doubt you did, Lieutenant, but that's about all I can tell you. This is what I get for leaving Martha with Hiram. She could have at least bitten somebody's ankle. Okay, okay, I can get up. I’m fine.” Etham didn’t bother to debate this shameless lie, but slowly pulled me to my feet. The best I can say for the experience is that I felt worse when Army medics dropped my stretcher dodging bullets on the way to the helicopter.
Wes Pendergraph and a couple of other guys were down here too now, checking out the garage. Nothing and nobody. They’d found a circuit breaker off, but maybe it had just blown. None of the cars looked vandalized or broken into, including mine. Mine had a real high-strung alarm system anyhow; it would have a fit if you leaned on it funny, much less jimmied a door lock. My wallet was still in my jacket. Had I somehow just thought I’d bent down, but instead had tripped over the shoelace, lost my footing, and knocked myself out?
“No way,” grunted Etham. “Got sapped.”
“Stop rubbing it in.” My head was shrinking a little, about down to the size of a medicine ball now, and my vision had cleared enough for me to see my watch. 7:22.48. I’d been out cold for fifteen minutes. “Shit, I’ve gotta go. I’ve gotta be at a party.” I started toward my Olds. “Tell Wes to follow this up, okay? Probably juve-niles. Shit, look at these pants!” I swiped dirt off my trousers (or rather Saddlefield's Formal Fashions’ trousers). “I’m okay, Dr. D. I’m okay.”
“Go get your head looked at.”
I turned back to him; his dark, long-jawed face was furrowed in a frown. All of a sudden I realized he had as much gray in his hair as black. “Etham,” I said, “we’re getting old, you and me. You realize that? Just the other day we were playing varsity—”
“I was playing varsity. You were mostly on the bench.”
“—Now we’re getting old. It's too late for me to get my head looked at. I’ve gotta go to this party.” While I babbled at him, I was feeling in my overcoat for my car keys. They weren’t in the right pocket. I mean the right-hand pocket. I also mean the correct pocket. Now, I’m a creature of strong habits—maybe bad habits, some of them (dietary), and maybe messy habits, some of them (sartorial)—but strong habits. My books are alphabetized, my bills are filed by date, my toothbrush is on the right-hand side of the sink, my shampoo on the right-hand side of the tub, my radio's on the right-hand side of the bed, and my car keys are never in the left-hand pocket of my coat, which is where I found them. I said, “That's funny, I put my keys in the wrong pocket.”
Etham grabbed the key chain out of my hand by its wornout rabbit's foot, just as I was about to unlock the door. “Get away from there!” he snapped. “Pendergraph! Go see if Augustine's still in the lab. Get him down here.” He had his flashlight pressed against the Olds’ window; then he crawled under the hood and flashed it around.
“Etham, come on! I don’t have time to sit around here while you get paranoid. Give me those keys.”
I heard his voice from under the Olds. “Use a squad car. This one's not leaving here. I smell something weird. It's gonna take a while.”
I nudged his tennis shoe, which looked like a size fifteen. “That smell was probably Martha. She farts a lot. Get out from under there. Hey, I’m a captain, you’re a lieutenant. Ever heard of the chain of command?” I didn’t get any answer. “You’re saying somebody unset and reset my alarm? Knew the Olds was mine, knew it had an alarm system, knew where the fuse box was, plus wired a bomb in ten minutes?”
“Yeah. Kind of narrows it down, doesn’t it? But didn’t say bomb. Could be a bomb. Maybe not.”
I didn’t believe Etham enough to stick around, but I believed him enough to tell him I’d check back later, and to drive to North Hillston in a HPD squad car. I even almost made it on time because I used the siren. Well, there ought to be some perks to the job to make up for the long hours and the sore knob swelling out of the back of my head.
When I pulled in among the parked Mercedeses, I wondered if Mrs. Sunderland's neighbors were peeking out the windows, figuring her place had finally gotten itself raided by the police for throwing parties they weren’t asked to. Then I remembered that up here on Catawba Drive, nobody had to put up with neighbors, except the few and far between kind.
I bet my apology to my hostess, regal in a floor-length beaded number that matched her blue hair, was the first one of its kind she’d ever been handed in her double-storied, marbled-floored, holly-garlanded hallway. “Mrs. Sunderland, you’re gonna have to forgive me for being eight minutes and thirty-three seconds late. I was sapped with a blackjack in my parking lot, knocked out cold, and my lab people are defusing a bomb in my car.”
My hostess said, “You lucky man. Nothing's worse than a boring life, as I can testify from seventy-two years of nothing but,
and you do not appear to be leading a boring life. Call me Edwina. The others are in the sitting room swilling cocktails. I was just on the phone to Atwater Randolph. His moron of a granddaughter, Blue, ran off to Aspen with my moron of a nephew. You remember Chip, my nephew, grandnephew? Well, Blue just called to inform Atwater that she and Chip had gotten married today.”
“Is that good or bad?” I handed my overcoat to a maid who’d popped up beside me and appeared to want it.
Mrs. Sunderland walked me down the hall at her stately pace. “I imagine they’ll find out in a few months. Maybe they’ll be perfectly happy. Ignorance is supposed to be bliss. Of course, Atwater's gone berserk. Threatening to disinherit her. He's going to run out of heirs. He already cut Blue's daddy off.”
“You mean Bunny Randolph? Why’d he do that?”
“I could give you two dozen reasons, none or all of which might be true, so I won’t give you any. I always liked Bunny, though he had a spine like a wet mop. You know Atwater? He's an admirer of yours.”
“That's good to hear. I’m hoping he’ll leave me his bridge over the Shocco. I look out on it from my kitchen balcony, and since nobody ever uses that bridge much, I thought maybe I’d build some shops on it and lease them out. You know, like the Rialto, Ponte Vecchio.”
She gave my arm a squeeze that shot right up to the knot on my head. “Cuthbert, I’m sorry I didn’t meet you fifty years ago. No, let's say thirty. Then I’d already have poor Marion's money.” She had a carnal laugh with a growl in it. “And we could have built our own bridge.” She jabbed open some double doors into a room full of people. I was glad to see the men wearing tuxedos. I was gladder to see the woman introduced to me by Mrs. Sunderland as Lee Haver Brookside.
“Cuddy and I are old friends,” Lee said.
“Maybe so.” Edwina handed me a Scotch and water that was more like a Scotch and a few drops of dew. She grinned, her sharp old incisors cutting into her full lower lip. “Maybe so, but then you’re already married, Lee darling. And I’m available.”
I had the feeling Mrs. Marion Sunderland might be more dangerous than a clonk on the head. And not much more subtle.
chapter 11
“Nobody will discuss current politics this evening,” commanded Mrs. Sunderland, as we all rose after our cocktails in the “sitting room,” which could have sat a few dozen more than had gathered around the hefty marble fireplace for Boxing Day. “Nobody will discuss anything that appeared this morning in the Hillston Star,” she added, leading me to suspect that, despite Brookside's assumption, she was aware of that paper's contents. “The ‘news,’” she informed us with a contemptuous drag to her full and brightened lips, “the ‘news’ is the preoccupation only of those who have no culture. No knowledge. And no memory.” She paused to extend an arm from which round rich flesh swagged, and to drop her empty Scotch glass on a tray that a maid whisked under it. “And that, God love us, describes to a tee the vast majority in this nation of ours.” Her pouchy eyes gave us all the once-over. “No sports scores, no weather reports, and no politics.”
Arrested on our way out the double-sized doors, to cross the parqueted hall into a dining room that disdained electricity, all the guests froze in a cluster, nodding at these instructions from our hostess as solemnly as recruits getting the battle drill from General Patton. I moved over to Lee, who still stood by a grand piano covered with lace, loose sheet music, and framed photographs, including one of Mrs. Sunderland in a long-line of red-eyed people bowing and curtsying to Queen Elizabeth II.
Lee smiled at me, whispering, “The no-politics orders are for Kip Dollard. Sometimes he forgets where he is and starts filibustering the dinner table. It drives Edwina nuts. She believes in ‘conversation.’”
I whispered, “Why does she invite him?”
“Oh, I think they had an affair about a hundred years ago and she's sentimental.”
“Um hum, like the Borgia popes.”
“What happened to your head?”
“I’m okay. Somebody knocked me out.”
“Are you serious?”
“Sometimes I’m real serious.” I smiled at her. “Listen, tell me, why does Edwina—”
She put her finger to her lips. “Shhhhh.” Lee's neck and shoulders were bare. Her long dress was a sheath of pale glimmering fabric that rustled when she moved.
I whispered, “She keeps calling me Cuthbert. Did you tell her to?”
“No, she had a great-uncle whose name was Cuthbert, and he was called Cuddy. She thinks maybe you’re related.”
Hands clapped once. They were those of our hostess, who had caught us whispering while the other guests marched obediently to dinner. Chastened, we joined the end of the line.
Turning to me between the salmon and game hens, as I sat enthroned on her left in a high-backed stiff velvet chair with knobbed arms, Mrs. Marion Sunderland explained that her Catawba Hills house (which had always been her house, and not Mr. Marion Sunderland's, because it had always been a Nowell-Randolph house, and that was exactly what Edwina Sunderland had always been, even after her marriage—as was testified by the worn N-R on my thin silver napkin ring), Mrs. Sunderland's 1857 golden-brick, porticoed and columned house had always been called Palliser Farm. Though, until, as she bluntly put it, she’d “gotten her hands on Marion's money,” and fixed it up again, Palliser Farm had been a ghost house, having lost over the generations all of its live-stock and much of its furniture.
Presumably the other guests, spaced like a conference of cardinals in their own narrow thrones, already knew the name of their hostess's home; they were at any rate not listening to Mrs. Sunderland give me her genealogy, but were all busy between courses, turning from their seating partners on the right to those on their left: Lee from Dyer Fanshaw to Judge Tiggs, Mrs. Fanshaw from me to the bank, Mrs. bank from Father Paul Madison to Senator Kip Dollard, and so on, along the dark oval expanse of a dining table the ten of us could have probably slow-danced on, if the party had gotten wild enough—which it wasn’t likely to do, despite Judge Tiggs's two-handed pumping of a crystal wine carafe whenever his wife wasn’t looking. The very old and very shrunken widow of the department store, who’d told me at the Club dance to ignore her because she was hard of hearing, must have told her dinner partners the same; at any rate she was talking quite happily to the oblivious Fanshaw while he was picking at his pearl onions as if he was afraid somebody's eyeball had gotten mixed in with them. He’d avoided me during cocktails, but then so had Kip Dollard—though maybe only because Dollard had always found his sister's son, Justin, an embarrassment, and I reminded him of Justin. Judge Tiggs, on the other hand, had been friendly all evening (apparently having never noticed in our forensic dealings—before his retirement after the George Hall trial—that I thought him a disgrace to his profession who’d filled Dollard Prison with endless victims of his bias or boredom or sore fanny).
“Why's your place called Palliser Farm?” I asked Edwina (as she’d insisted I call her). “Is it because you were a Trollope as well as a Nowell-Randolph?”
Her raucous laugh bounced the loops of garnets and yellow diamonds on her ample, wrinkled bosom, and startled Mrs. Fanshaw, beside me, into spooning too much salt on her yam. “Cuthbert, you and I shall be friends,” Edwina announced, with a squeeze of my hand that left the impression of those loose diamonds of hers dinted into a few of my fingers. “Mangum…Mangum. What was your mother's maiden name?”
“Cobb.”
“No, it's not familiar. But good English names. Well, a Hillston policeman who reads Trollope. I want you to call me Eddie.”
I gave her the country smile. “Lord, what do folks read who get to call you ‘Ed’?” This set her off again, but I snatched my hand away in time by grabbing one of my sharp-stemmed wineglasses—these with a fat “S” cut into them, so post “N-R,” maybe part of Mr. Sunderland's dowry. I said, “But I’ve got to disabuse you, Eddie, I saw my Trollope on TV, and it wasn’t even your channel. It was the good channel,
you know, the intellectual one. The one you own goes more in for blood, sweat, tears, and smut. Terrible shows about tacky rich families deceiving one another, and shows with these old has-been comedians sitting up in little Tic-Tac-Toe boxes—”
“Oh, yes, yes, I know.” She picked up a tiny game hen wing with her fingers and took a sturdy bite out of it, so I dropped my useless knife and fork, and did the same. “Channel Seven is unwatchable, except by the mentally and morally retarded.”
I said, “Lucky for you, there's so many of both crowded around the Piedmont tuning in.”
“Lucky for me? Explain yourself.”
“Well, their tacky taste supports your good taste.” I gave a nod at the furnishings.
Mrs. Sunderland took a hefty sip of wine. “Cuthbert,” she swilled the wine around like a mouthwash for a minute. “Cuthbert, capitalism is not a benevolent system. It is, in fact, the pure opposite. And I have always believed it's damn silly to pretend otherwise, though I have many mealy mouthed acquaintances who do exactly that.” Paul Madison opened his mouth, but she reached across and stopped him with one of those bone-crunchers to the wrist. “Girls I went to college with. They’ll sell off their chemical stocks one year, and their South African stocks the next year, whatever horror gets to be the liberal boogyman, and then they’ll buy themselves something ‘nicer,’ that's just as profitable.”
I buttered a roll and held it up. “Have their cake and caritas too.”
“Yes, sir!” Another laugh that set her ear bobs swinging, though I don’t think a hurricane could have budged those laminated blue waves of hair. “Well, it's damn silly. I say, in or out. By the luck of birth, I’m in. I enjoy the fruits of other people's labor. And my charities I take off my taxes.”
Senator Kip Dollard, white haired and red nosed—sort of what a Dorian Gray portrait of Justin might have gotten to look like— heard the word taxes and launched a multi-metaphoric salvo across the candles that flickered their flames. “If handed the reins of this good state of ours, the Democrats will gallop their Taxation Chariot over the backs of business, sowing the seeds of inflation and misery like dragon's teeth—”
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