The waiter arrived with our meals and we dog-eared the conversation. Having grown up where money was scarce and so was the meat, I’d developed an affinity for meatloaf. Mrs. Campbell couldn’t seem to get it right, insisting on throwing big hunks of vegetables into the mix. This place got close, though.
“Did you keep an eye on Collins?” I asked after we’d gotten a few bites in.
“I kept an eye on a lot of people,” Hollis said. “Though Collins wasn’t much of a mover and shaker until a lot later.”
That threw me some. “He seemed to have done okay for himself from the jump,” I said. “He might not have been a Rockefeller, but he was in the ballpark, wasn’t he?”
Hollis shook his head. “I’m not talking money, Will. Lots of men in this city have that. Only a handful really make the decisions. Who gets appointed to what? Where does the city put its dough? What neighborhoods get developed and which get forgotten? In his early days, Collins was on the outside of that clubhouse.”
“Maybe he didn’t want to be a member,” I suggested.
“Never known a rich man to turn down a chance to make himself richer. Especially not one as cutthroat as Collins,” he said around a big mouthful of pasta.
That begged a follow-up, but I waited until we’d cleaned our plates to toss it.
“What kept him out of the big boys’ treehouse?” I asked. “And you said most of his career. Which means he eventually got let in. What changed?”
Hollis dabbed some sauce off his chin, then gave a quick look around the mostly empty restaurant. Whatever he was about to say, he didn’t want any eavesdroppers.
“It wasn’t until a couple years after I first saw him that I thought about Collins again. I was busy digging up dirt on the people who really mattered. I couldn’t spare the time for an also-ran,” he said. “Then I heard he was marrying his secretary. Big news because of the class difference and the fact that she was pregnant. I was onto the City Hall beat by then, so I was only sort of following it. But one night me and the woman who covered the society beat were sharing a typewriter getting last-minute stories in. She—this reporter—said she was real surprised Al Collins was getting married. I said something about him doing right by the girl and she laughed. I asked what was funny. And she said she knew for a fact he was a confirmed bachelor.”
Hollis looked at me, waiting for a reaction.
“What?” I asked. “So she lost the bet on him getting hitched.”
Hollis laughed, a big, loud, rolling laugh out of proportion with such a squat frame.
“Honey, sometimes I forget how young you are,” he said, still grinning. “I’m saying that he was a confirmed bachelor in the way I’m a confirmed bachelor.”
“Hang on.” I struggled to get my bearings. “You’re saying Alistair Collins was…?”
“As a three-dollar bill.”
I took half a minute and let the implications sink in. There were too many dominoes to track. Hollis kept going.
“Suddenly Collins not being in the upper echelons made sense,” he said. “Back then things weren’t as bad as they are now, but they were bad enough. With the Committee of Fourteen going after everyone they could get their hands on. But things changed for Collins when he got married. He started flexing his muscles, put down those labor strikes. There were rumors he had some people disappeared. After that, he started getting the government contracts. He moved up to the big leagues.”
Hollis downed the rest of his wine.
“Anyway, she told me about Collins and I remembered the first time I saw him here in this restaurant. Shone a whole different light on him. That look he gave me. How he grabbed his friend and hurried upstairs.”
“Any idea who the other man was?” I asked.
“Funny you should ask,” he said. “I never saw him before. Never saw him again. Not until yesterday.”
“You saw him?”
“Yep.”
“All right,” I said. “Spill it. Where’d you see this guy?”
So he spilled it.
And a whole lot of puzzle pieces fell into place.
CHAPTER 34
I walked Hollis back to the library. The flurries had finally stopped.
We said our goodbyes under the steely gaze of one of the library’s lion sentries. Hollis left me with a parting thought.
“I wasn’t kidding when I said things are getting bad. The war put a pin in it for a while. But now that everyone’s not so distracted, they’ll get back to it. Anyone who can’t be easily categorized and shelved is gonna get tossed.”
I gestured at my battered face. “You think I don’t know, Holly?”
“I think you’re young. Despite everything you’ve been through—maybe because of it—you think you’re immortal.”
“I’ve got no misconceptions of that.” I threw him a grin, but he didn’t return it. Instead he scowled and ran typewriter-callused fingers through his hair.
“Not only do you not fit, but you’re not afraid of standing out,” Hollis said. “You and your boss both. Nails that stick out get hammered down, Will. Just be careful is all I’m saying.”
His words stuck with me the whole way home. Once upon a time, Hollis was the best reporter east of the Hudson, or so I’d been told by people who’d know. I thought about how, at that moment, he was losing himself in the stacks. Far out of sight of anyone with strings in their hands. Keeping his head down. Staying alive.
I didn’t think it sounded much like living.
Back at the office, I went to put the reel of audiotape in the safe and saw a message on my desk from Mrs. Campbell. The boss had phoned. Weather permitting, she expected to be back later that night.
The intensity of my relief startled me. I wanted her back for her sake, but also for mine. She might have been a nail that was sticking out, but she held an awful lot together.
I spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening attending to leftover paperwork and looking out the window every few minutes. Eventually Mrs. Campbell emerged from the kitchen and told me, “If she can’t make it, she’ll stay put and call. Stop pacing and have a bowl of lamb stew.”
I had two bowls, and a piece of raisin nut bread and coffee. It was ten P.M. and I was on my fifth cup when I heard a car pull up in front of the house. I looked outside to see a familiar figure limping up the front steps. I ran out and grabbed the suitcase out of my employer’s hand.
“Thank you,” she said, following me in. “I was afraid I wouldn’t make it back tonight and would have to take shelter in a roadside motel.”
There were dark circles under her eyes and her skin looked dry and parchment thin. Like she could crumble to pieces at any moment and blow away.
I waited as she got settled behind her desk with a glass of honey wine. When the pink finally started coming back to her cheeks, I asked her if she’d had any luck getting in to see Orly Crouch.
“I did,” she said. “I noticed on my first attempt to see him that his farm was showing neglect. I suspected he’d fallen on hard times and that he would be open to a financial incentive to speak with me.”
“You bribed him.”
“I bribed him,” she said, taking a sip of wine.
“Did you learn anything interesting?”
“Quite a bit, though a few questions remain.”
“Before you start on that, maybe I can answer a few.”
I filled her in on the results of my day’s adventure, starting with my visit to Belestrade’s lair and my confrontation with Neal.
“I told you to be careful. You shouldn’t have let yourself be caught.”
“Yeah, that’s on me,” I said. “Curiosity and the cat and all that. But we got the tape of Abigail Collins’s session out of it.”
“Or so you assume.”
“It’s a good bet. Before you ask
, we still have the gear from the McGinnis job, so we can listen to it at our leisure,” I said. “But the tape is just the icing on a very rich cake. Wait’ll you hear the rest.”
I told her about my conversation with Hollis and what I’d learned about Al Collins. None of it seemed to surprise her.
“Why do I have the feeling you already knew all this?”
“On the contrary, I did not,” she avowed. “But it fits very nicely with what we know so far, and with what I learned in Cockerville.”
Mrs. Campbell delivered a steaming bowl of lamb stew, which Ms. P promptly tucked into. She talked as she ate. Later, she handed me a notebook full of shorthand to type up for our files.
What follows is the bulk of her conversation with Abigail’s brother, along with occasional observations I’ve cribbed from Ms. Pentecost’s notes.
NOTE FROM LP: I met with Orly Crouch in the kitchen of his farmhouse about five miles outside of Cockerville. My driver waited in the car. He held the second half of the money I was paying Mr. Crouch to speak with me. I do not believe he would have done so if I had not provided the incentive. He is a rangy, fair-haired man at least six feet in height, though his bent back belies his size. His face and hands are raw and weather-beaten and he appears a good decade older than his fifty years. His resemblance to Abigail Collins is unmistakable.
From the kitchen window I could see pigs and sheep, as well as a chicken coop. The coop, pens, and fences were all in a state of disrepair. Several outbuildings were falling in on themselves. The house itself was ill kept. Weeds grew up through the floorboards of the front porch. There were cracks in the plaster of the ceiling and the walls. While inquiries among residents of Cockerville suggest this level of distress is common for farms in the area, the Crouch farm seemed to be in a worse state than its neighbors.
All in all, it felt like a homestead slowly being reclaimed by the land around it.
LP: Thank you for agreeing to speak with me, Mr. Crouch. I hope it will prove beneficial for us both.
OC: It’s your money. And it doesn’t buy you all day. I’ve got work to get to. This farm don’t run itself.
LP: Then I will be direct and brief. When was the last time you communicated with your sister?
OC: Not since she left home.
LP: You received no word from her at all?
OC: Got a postcard a few weeks after she left. Had the Chrysler Building on it. Wasn’t signed or nothing. But I figured that was her. Letting me know she was alive.
LP: That was a concern? Her safety?
OC: It’s New York City. She was only nineteen. Lord knows what can happen to a girl alone in that place.
LP: And that was the last you knew of her?…Mr. Crouch?
OC: This fellow. Friend of mine. He’s got a good-size pig farm. Sells to some restaurants in the city. Better believe he greased some palms to get that setup. Anyway, he was making a delivery and he saw Abby’s picture in the newspaper. She was getting married. He brought me a copy.
LP: So you knew she had changed her name to Pratt?
OC: Yep.
LP: And that she had married Alistair Collins?
OC: Yes.
LP: Did you reach out to her?
OC: Nope.
LP: I find that surprising, Mr. Crouch. Your only sibling getting married. And to a wealthy man.
OC: What are you saying?
LP: That you could have used financial assistance.
OC: I was doing fine. I’m doing just fine….I mean—I didn’t need so much assistance then.
LP: But later?
OC: My sister wasn’t one to…She wasn’t the charitable sort.
LP: Even for family?
OC: She wasn’t big on family.
LP: How do you mean?
OC: I mean she never much cared for farm life. Always had one eye on the door.
LP: What was Abigail’s home life like?
OC: Her life was fine.
LP: But she kept one eye on the door?
OC: It wasn’t glamorous like maybe every girl would want. But her life was all right.
LP: Surely not every girl runs away to New York City and changes her name and cuts all ties with her family.
OC: I don’t know what to tell you. It’s what she did.
NOTE FROM LP: Mr. Crouch’s posture changed here. He became stiff and withdrawn and he would not meet my eyes.
LP: Please remember, Mr. Crouch, that the second half of your payment is dependent upon full, honest answers.
OC: Fine. Okay. Maybe she had it tough.
Our mother died when Abby was only three or so. Our pa, he…Well, he was an old-fashioned sort. Didn’t expect to have a hand in raising a girl. Didn’t know quite what to do with her. I had to help with the farm a lot. Abby had to see to herself.
LP: That must have been difficult.
OC: Sure it was. And when she got older, she and Pa butted heads more.
LP: In what ways?
OC: Little things to start. Money mostly. She wanted a new dress or bows or books or whatever girls want. Pa had to keep explaining how we couldn’t waste money on things like that. It was the times Pa kept her out of school to help on the farm when things got real heated. Screaming fights in the front yard. Neighbors could hear it a mile away.
LP: Did he discipline her?
OC: Sure. But only when she deserved it.
LP: Did she deserve it often?
OC: She was stubborn. Pigheaded. She wouldn’t learn.
NOTE FROM LP: Mr. Crouch’s body language suggested that he was uncomfortable with this line of questioning. I chose not to follow it further in the fear that he would end the interview prematurely. But, in your parlance, Will, I’d put it at even odds that Abigail Crouch was physically abused by her father.
LP: I understand that your sister had a number of suitors.
OC: That’s real sharp. Real sharp way of putting it. You’ve been talking to those little gossips at the church, haven’t you?
LP: I’ve made a number of inquiries.
OC: Well…Yeah, she was a pretty girl. She had fellas interested. But she didn’t lead them on, all right? Church women making things more than they are. She didn’t even go on a date until she was seventeen. There were other girls around that were up and pregnant by then. She was a saint compared to some of them.
LP: But she did not remain with one suitor for very long.
OC: She was always finding something wrong. Never satisfied.
LP: She was a romantic?
OC: I don’t know about that. She wasn’t…I don’t think she was…She wasn’t that kind of girl.
LP: What kind?
OC: The kind that gets wrapped up in people.
LP: How do you mean?
OC: I mean…The reason she kept dropping these boys. One was too poor. Another she said was too dim to amount to much. One boy—she didn’t get along with his sister and she said she wasn’t going to chain herself to a family she couldn’t get along with.
LP: Very practical.
OC: Yeah. That was Abby. Practical.
LP: Did any of these relationships ever progress? Did she ever say she loved any of these boys?
NOTE FROM LP: Mr. Crouch did not answer this question. He excused himself to visit the outhouse. He was gone for nearly a quarter of an hour. When he returned there was the smell of whiskey on his breath.
LP: Tell me about Billy McCray.
OC: What’s to tell?
LP: Your sister dated him for several weeks.
OC: She dated a lot of boys for several weeks. Billy wasn’t special.
LP: He was special in that he took his own life.
OC: He and Abby called it
quits by then.
LP: Was the breakup at her insistence?
OC: She was always in charge.
LP: Do you believe Mr. McCray killed himself because he was spurned by your sister?
Mr. Crouch?
OC: I’m getting a little tired of you poking into my family. You’re trying to make my sister sound like…like…
LP: I assure you, I’m only interested in the truth.
OC: The truth!
LP: Yes.
OC: The truth is Billy McCray eating a shotgun didn’t have nothing to do with my sister.
LP: What do you mean?
OC: Billy liked to gamble. Cards, mostly. He’d make these buying trips to Albany for his dad’s hardware store. Supposed to stay at a hotel at night, but he’d use that money to play cards at this place he knew. He lost a lot. Borrowed money from some guys he shouldn’t. Got in pretty deep, from what I hear.
LP: Did your sister know?
OC: Who do you think I heard it from? Shoot—that’s why she dropped him. Said men like that were weak. Said he’d leech his parents’ store dry feeding his habit. Anyway—you see how his death didn’t have anything to do with her.
LP: Yet she left immediately after he killed himself.
OC: I think I’m done.
LP: Might I remind you that the other half of your payment is contingent on—
OC: Maybe I don’t want your money.
LP: I can also inform your sister’s estate of your existence. She was a very wealthy woman. There might be contingencies in her will. For next of kin.
NOTE FROM LP: What followed was several minutes of silence. I could see some sort of struggle playing out on Orly Crouch’s face. When he continued it was without prompting and his mind seemed far afield.
OC: That was a strange summer. Pa and Abby were fighting more. She was like a hen that just won’t settle. Keeps trying to get out of the coop.
Fortune Favors the Dead Page 25