by Ralph Dennis
“Ready.” I stepped aside while Hump took the loaves of bread from the oven. Rosemary poured the Graves. I was ladling out the sauce and shrimp when the doorbell rang.
“Got it.” Hump went to answer it.
Art Maloney said, “I was driving by, looking at the dogwoods.”
“Come on back,” Hump said.
Art stopped in the doorway. “That smells good, Jim. What is it?”
“Hungry?”
“I’ll taste it.”
I set out a bowl and a glass for him. When we were all served and seated, I broke off a big chunk of bread and said, “Eat the shrimp and dunk the sauce.”
It was all the instruction they needed. The first few bites took the edge from my hunger. I nodded at Art. “How are the dogwoods?”
“That was a lie.”
I knew it was. April and the blooming were still months away. “So what’s the real reason for the visit?”
Art chewed and swallowed. “Curly and Shorty.”
“Broke the case, huh?”
“Yesterday the word was cracked.” He forked a shrimp into his mouth. “They still insist they don’t know anything about Culp’s killing. They just say they knew he was dead. Heard about it or read it in the paper.”
I brought the skillet to the table and portioned out the rest of the sauce and shrimp. “You believe them?”
“Nothing ties them to it. Maybe they did it and maybe they didn’t. If you’ve got any proof they did it, I’ll be glad to take it home with me.”
“Nothing,” I said.
“That’s it then.” Art sopped a corner of bread in the sauce and chewed on it slowly. “Strange taste to this.”
“That’s the feta cheese,” Hump said.
“And the wine,” Rosemary said.
Art looked at Rosemary. “You didn’t introduce me to this lady, Jim. Maybe you’ve got a good reason for it.”
I did the introductions. “Sorry,” I said, “but you came at the wrong time.”
“I thought it was the right time.” He nodded down at his bowl. “And I’m going to tell Marcy about this next time I see her.”
“Tell her what?”
“That you’ve been cooking for strange ladies while she was out of town.”
“I’m not strange, Mr. Maloney,” Rosemary said.
Hump grinned, “Call him, Art.”
“I’m not strange, Art.”
“That’s strange as in stranger,” Art said. “No offense.” He turned to me. “Funny thing about those bikers. After all that asking about Carl Culp, hours of it, they seemed willing to talk about anything else that came up. They seemed to welcome it. The girl you wanted me to ask them about …”
“Billie Joe,” I said. “Rosemary’s daughter.”
It was my way of warning him. I didn’t know what he had to tell me. I wanted to hear it, but I’d put the tag on Billie Joe so that Art would cull any rough parts that might hurt Rosemary.
“They remember her all right. Culp brought her to a party.”
“The same house?”
“Yeah.”
“When was that?”
“Early September or late August. They’re fuzzy about dates.”
Whatever the date, it was probably after the trip she’d taken to Plainsville with her father. After the three or four days there before she broke with Buddy and returned to Atlanta.
“The party got rough. A lot of those biker parties do.” He was picking his words and watching Rosemary out of the corner of his eyes. “The girl, Billie Joe, didn’t want to play those games. She wanted to leave. Carl Culp got caught in the middle and roughed up. While that was going on, Billie Joe left.”
“By herself?”
“The way they tell it,” Art said. “It was funny to them. Laughed it up. Said her leaving was no great thing. Plenty of girls to go around. What they got their jollies on was that Culp came back a couple of days later. He said Billie Joe wouldn’t see him anymore. She’d washed him out completely. That, after he’d taken his lumps protecting her.”
“That all?” I ate the last shrimp and ran a crust of bread in the bowl until I’d wiped it clean of sauce.
“One bit more. Shorty said he had a yen for Billie Joe.” Art’s glance at Rosemary had an apology written in it. “The way Shorty saw it, if Billie Joe was through with Carl Culp, he might be able to interest her in something.”
“He told you that … out front?”
“I had to push him some. Anyway, he got Billie Joe’s address from Culp and …”
“Her address?” I looked at Hump.
“Sure. The apartment she was renting on Eighth Street.”
“You got a number?”
“No.”
“Damn.”
“I tried for a number but he’d forgotten it. He says it was one of those renovated ones. Cream-colored stucco with a brown slat-like fence that fronts on the sidewalk.”
“We might find it,” Hump said.
“Art?”
“Yes, Rosemary?”
“What happened with Shorty and Rosemary?”
“She locked the door and said he’d better leave before she called the police.”
“And …?”
“He left. He said he believed that crazy broad meant it.”
“Might be,” I said to Hump. Then to Art: “You still holding those bikers?”
“Holding them for what? They’ve been out since yesterday.”
I stood and drained my wine glass. “Hump and I have to take a ride.”
“Eighth?” Art said.
“Before dark. So we can still see the colors. Do me a favor, Art.”
“What favor?”
“Drop Rosemary at the Riviera.”
“No, Jim.” Rosemary moved around the table, clearing it. “I’ve got dishes to do. If I finish before you get back, I’ll watch some TV.” She was almost pleading. “I don’t want to wait at the motel. I want to know what you find out.”
I got my coat and returned to the kitchen. The dishes were stacked on the counter. She was running wash water in the sink. “If Fred Thompson calls …”
“I’ll say you’ll call him back.”
Art walked out front with us. The drive was full. He’d parked on the street. I touched his elbow and we stood in the thinning icy rain. “Anything important you left out in there?”
“About the bikers and Billie Joe?” Art shook his head. “All I left out was how rough the party games were.”
“Thanks, Art.”
Hump stood next to my Ford. “You try that cognac yet?”
“A sip,” Art said. “It’s too good to drink.”
That was true. I was surprised that Art could taste the difference. I got a new look at Art. “It won’t age in the bottle,” I said.
I headed for the car. “Jim?”
“Yeah?”
“Ellison’s been bitching about you around the department. He says you’re mixing in police business.”
Maybe it was the wine talking. I stuck a high finger as far in the air as I could. “That’s for Ellison, wherever he is.”
“Your funeral,” Art said.
“And all my friends are invited.”
CHAPTER NINE
One sweep up Eighth and one sweep back and we’d found the apartment house. In a stretch of three blocks, there were four walled and fenced-in buildings. One was green stucco, another was constructed out of brick and the third one was stone and mortar. The one we parked in front of appeared to be woven out of wooden slats. That gave it a rippled, waffled texture.
Past that wall, a breezeway ran the length of the apartments on the lower level. From the bank of mailboxes on the wall at the entrance to the breezeway, I estimated there were twenty or so units. I started at one side of the mailboxes. Hump started reading from the other side. Near the center, when I was about to say to hell with it, that we didn’t know what we were looking for anyway, Hump said, “Look at this one.”
His finger tapped a name card over t
he box for apartment number eight. The card, neatly typed, listed the tenant as Betsy M. Hart. Below her name, struck through with a double slash of a ballpoint pen, was B. J. James.
“Luck,” I said.
“Or right living.”
Apartment number eight was the final one on the left. The breezeway ended there, in an orderly row of the green garbage carts that the city had furnished a few months back. A red umbrella, closed and pointed downward, leaned against the right of the doorframe. A snake of water ran across the floor.
I pressed the bell button. I waited a minute and hit the button once more.
The door cracked a couple of inches. “What do you want?” It was a woman’s voice, deep and throaty.
“I’m Jim Hardman. This is Hump Evans.”
I could see one eye and a bit of red-blond hair. The eye was level with mine or almost there. “I don’t know you.” The door edged in, closing.
“Wait a minute. We’re here about Billie Joe.”
“That one?” The door opened to the limit of the chain. “What about her?”
“Who is it, Bet?” The voice was that of another woman. Her tone was softer, more feminine.
“Some men looking for a girl who used to live here.”
“Look,” I said, “we don’t mean any harm. Could you talk to us for a few minutes?”
“About Billie Joe?”
“Yeah. Her mother’s looking for her.”
“Is she still lost?” A scrape of the lock and the chain was gone. “Wipe your feet on the way in.” The door swung open.
I was right. She was a big one, this Betsy Hart. Five-eleven or so and built on the order of a Soviet lady shot-putter. Her hair was cut short and shaggy. A horsy face with freckles. Barefooted and barelegged in cut-off jeans. Broad-shouldered, she wore a gray tanktop without a bra under it. Heavy breasts jutted out, hardly moving when she walked.
I wiped my shoes on the thick mat. When I stepped from it, Hump followed me. I looked past Betsy Hart. A young girl, eighteen or nineteen, leaned against the doorway to the bedroom. Her dark hair was braided into a single pigtail. She wore a wine-red silk robe and was barelegged. She had on heavy wooden shower clogs.
Betsy Hart saw me look in her direction. Without turning, meeting my eyes, she said, “Take your shower, Jane. And close the door.”
The living room was plain, without frills. The bedroom, the part I’d seen before Jane closed the door, was just as functional. Both rooms looked like they belonged in the show apartment in a new housing development. Just what was needed. A dark red rug, a gray sofa, two rope-bottomed chairs and a glass-topped coffee table. There were no prints or paintings on the walls.
Betsy sat on the far end of the sofa. I sat in one rope-bottomed chair. Hump, when he was sure he’d scraped his shoes enough, sat in the other chair.
“I don’t know why you’d want to talk to me. I haven’t seen Billie Joe since the first week in October.”
“How long did she stay here?”
“About a month. I think it was from the first part of September. She answered an advertisement I’d placed in the Atlanta Gazette. You know the kind of thing. Roommate wanted.”
I nodded.
“She was a sweet little girl. Scared to death of life, if you know what I mean. Lord, the problems that girl had. And I can’t help thinking most of them came from her mother.”
“She talk about her mother a lot?”
“Enough,” Betsy Hart said. “She called her mother the Dragonlady.”
Hump leaned in and pulled an ashtray toward him. “What did she mean by that?”
“I’d rather you didn’t smoke.”
Hump put his smokes and matches away.
“What did she mean by Dragonlady?” She shrugged. “I think she meant that she could breathe fire. That she ate up people and chewed on the bones that were left.”
“That’s rough,” I said.
“Often it’s true.”
“She only stayed here a month?” Hump got out a pack of mints and popped one in his mouth. He’d really wanted that smoke.
“It didn’t work out well. It was only a matter of time.”
“What was wrong?”
“I didn’t mind that one boyfriend, Carl, being here at all hours. He seemed nice enough.”
“Culp?”
She nodded. “But she gave him his walking papers. The rest of it was a nightmare.”
“How?”
“She attracted a certain kind of man. Rough trade, I guess you could call them. A whole series of those. The last one, the soldier, was a bit much even for me.”
I waited. I knew I didn’t need to prompt her.
“It was the violence. The last straw was one Sunday night. They’d had a fight and she’d said she didn’t want to see him anymore. He didn’t accept that. He forced his way in. He was shouting and yelling and throwing furniture around. It was as if he thought he could force her, intimidate her, into caring about him again.”
“You were here?”
“The whole time. When I’d had enough of it, I called the police. He went absolutely crazy then. He took a swing at me.”
“Hit you?”
“No. I hit him. With a chair.”
I believed her. She didn’t look like anyone I’d want to duke it with.
“The police came about that time and took him away. He was charged with drunk and disorderly.”
It wasn’t much. It was good for maybe one night in jail.
“And you know what that silly little fool did? She bailed him out that same night. I’ll tell you we had an argument about that. And that was it as far as her living here. The next day, while I was at work, she moved her belongings out.”
“No good-bye?” I said.
“A note that blamed me for getting Bob in trouble.”
“Bob’s the soldier?”
She nodded. “I don’t remember his last name.”
The shower had been running in the other room. The rumble and row of it had become part of the atmosphere of the apartment. Now it ended and it seemed very quiet all of a sudden.
“This Bob, was he tall and thin with a white afro?”
“No. He was just the opposite of tall and thin. He was thick and heavyset with dark hair. A lot of greasy hair.”
“Wear a ducktail?”
“Not then, but he was the type for it. I think the army must have made him cut it every month or two.”
“He wear his uniform here?”
“Once or twice at the beginning. Then he wore civvies.”
“What rank?”
“What?”
“How many stripes?”
“Two, I think. Maybe it was only one.”
The bedroom door opened. The young girl, Jane, stopped in the doorway. She was wearing the robe and her hair was wrapped in a towel. I looked at her and I noticed that Betsy Hart was staring at me. It was the hard flat-eyed look.
“What is it, Jane?”
“Can I have a Coke?”
Betsy walked into the kitchen. While she was gone, Hump edged around and put his eyes on Jane. Jane gave him a bright, timid smile. The smile vanished when Betsy returned from the kitchen with the bottle of Coke. After she passed the Coke to Jane, Betsy gave her a gentle push that moved her into the bedroom. “We’ll be done here in a minute.” She pulled the door closed.
“Your new roommate?”
“A friend,” she said. But she’d been reading me reading her and I got that same hard, flat look. The “go to hell. It’s none of your business” look.
“The note was the last you heard from her?”
“Yes. And it was the last time I wanted to hear from her.”
I dipped my head at Hump. He stood up.
“Appreciate you talking to us,” he said. I followed him to the door. “Hated to bother you.”
“One more thing,” she said behind me. “That same week she left, another man came by looking for her.”
“What kind of man?”
“Older. Expensively dressed. He seemed very upset that Billie Joe had moved out.”
“Know who he was?”
“He said he was a friend of the family.” Her tone of voice said that she didn’t believe that.
“A sugar daddy?”
“That’s the way I saw him.”
I put my back to the door. “He give his name?”
“His name and his card,” she said. “I threw the card away and I forgot his name.”
“Describe him.”
“About fifty. Maybe late forties instead. Neat gray hair. Tanned. The pinstripe-suit kind. A businessman, I think.”
“Might be.” I opened the door and turned.
“If you see her …”
“Yes?”
“Tell her she owes me a month’s rent, leaving that way.”
In the car Hump grinned at me. “Different strokes.”
I headed for home. Now that it was getting dark the rain was like hail on the windshield. The temperature was dropping. That would make for slick roads in the morning.
“The soldier got your attention?” Hump asked.
“The robbery I told you about. The one in the 7–11 when the woman was killed. The soldier, Bob, might be the one with the stack of cat-food cans.”
“Got a way to find him?”
“I’ll think of one.” I already had.
Half a block from my house, Hump said, “Don’t turn in the drive. I’ll back out first.”
“How about a drink?”
“Not tonight. There’s this bit of trim I might stop by and bless.”
I braked on the road. “You can drop Rosemary at her motel on your way.”
Hump put a hand on the door handle. “You’re one dumb man, Hardman.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know damned well.”
I guess I did. I’d spent the whole day trying to walk around it. Maybe if I got a look at the back of it, it would disappear.
“See you tomorrow.” Hump swung the door open and stepped out. I waited while he backed his Buick out of the driveway and into the road. As I pulled past him, he honked his horn at me.
It sounded like his shave-and-a- haircut honk.
I edited it the best I could. I left out the Dragonlady remark. I changed Betsy Hart into a nice older lady who’d taken good care of Billie Joe. When I got done with her, you’d have thought she was a spinster lady who taught Sunday school.