Even the Butler Was Poor (12 page)

The plates from the uneaten dinner were there, the spaghetti cold and stiff, but there was no message. Ben grabbed his glass of wine, and gulped it down then double-timed into the kitchen and the door leading down to the garage.

"Try her house first. Maybe she went there from here."

He pulled the door open, plunged through, stopped on the cement floor. "Oh, come on now. Shit."

His car wasn't there. H.J. must have taken that, too.

T
he cab driver was a bearded man in his sixties, wearing a red mackinaw and a yachting cap. "What would you guess my real profession to be?" he inquired as he sent the vehicle rattling across town by way of back roads and winding rural lanes.

"Hum?" Ben was slightly hunched in the backseat, alternately gazing out into the bright morning and consulting his wristwatch. It was nearly 10:00 AM. He had no way of knowing how many hours ago H.J. had slipped away.

"Driving a hack is not my true calling."

"Ah," said Ben.

"So I was asking if you would care to hazard a guess as to my actual line of work. This present occupation you find me in being but a temporary lull in my career."

Ben said, "Sea captain?"

"That's interesting you should guess that. Several of my passengers have."

"Possibly it's your hat."

"Hell, I picked the lid up at a thrift shop in Westport. You can find most anything in Westport thrift shops. I bought a Chinese gong there once," said the white-bearded driver. "Take another guess, why don't you?"

If H.J. had been loose for several hours, there was probably not much chance of his catching up with her. Ben scowled at his watch again. "Give me a hint," he remembered to say.

"Well sir, I hate to do that. Because it would, see, mean that I don't look like a natural born example of what it is I am."

Rubbing his fingers across his palm Ben said, "Wait now, I'm starting to get something. Let me see. Yeah, that's it. I am getting a strong image of a horse. . . yes, a great white stallion. You're in the saddle, galloping across the plains of the Old West. What else am I getting a hint of? Yep, there's a faithful companion to you for many a long year. I am also getting. . . Yeah, you're wearing a mask and a white Stetson. And I think maybe silver bullets play a part in your profession. Am I at all warm?"

"Say, what the hell is wrong with you?"

"Listen, I was just trying to pass the time pleasantly. There's no reason for you to razz me." Ben said, "You mean you didn't used to be the Lone Ranger?"

"You know, I haul a lot of people around Fairfield County, rich and poor alike. Most of them respect me and few razz me." Making a grieved noise, he fell silent.

Ben looked at his watch.

T
his time there was a note. Ben found it on the front seat of his car, weighted down with his keys. The car itself he'd found parked halfway up H.J.'s short weedy drive. The message, printed in his ex-wife's personal mix of upper and lower case letters, read—

Thanks for the loan of the car. All is well, trust me. Will contact you soon.

Love, H.J.

He stood there in the sunshine, reunited with his car yet far from happy, holding the note in his hand. H.J. had printed it on the back of a gas station credit card receipt she'd borrowed from his glove compartment.

"I bet she's going to try it," he said to himself, shivering once. "That lunatic is going to attempt to get money out of Kathkart and Beaujack and the rest of them."

Unless he found her, cut her off before she made contact with anybody. Otherwise, she was almost certain to end up like Rick Dell.

Folding the note and sliding it into his hip pocket, he shut the car door and started along the doorway toward the garage. Maybe H.J.'s auto was still in there, which would mean she hadn't gone anywhere yet. He looked over at her small house, spotting no sign of life inside.

Now might be a dandy time to look up your contacts in the Brimstone police, he suggested to himself. Either Sergeant Kendig or Detective Ryerson. Probably Kendig would be the better bet, since he's a shade more liberal.

He looked in through the dusty window in the garage door, and let out a disappointed sigh. Her car was gone.

How liberal would a cop have to be, though, to condone what he and H.J. had been up to? Maybe if they'd been able to go to them this morning with the pictures in hand. Sure, with pictures to back up their story, their activities over on Long Island could have been downplayed.

"A little grave robbing, sarge, sure, and a touch of burglary. And there was some shooting in the streets. But, hey, it was all in a good cause and we have this evidence of a murder."

Absently he rubbed some of the dust away from the window with the heel of his hand. One of H.J.'s old suitcases, the one she'd taken that time they'd gone up to Cape Cod, was sprawled against the back wall.

Without the photographs, be couldn't prove a damn thing. Except maybe that he and H.J. had broken into a funeral parlor and that H.J. had fled the Eastport Mall just after Rick Dell expired.

And now, with the photos and the negatives in her possession, she was probably contemplating blackmail.

"How would the police react to my telling them I think my wife is about to start blackmailing somebody? Even cops I did fifteen minutes of comedy impressions for at a benefit show."

Not too favorably probably.

"Officers, my wife—make that my former wife—is planning to blackmail some very influential people. Could you guys, please, toss a net over her and keep her out of trouble? Don't arrest her or anything rough like that, because she means well and is just overly mercenary at times. She's a terrific person down deep and good looking, too, not to mention trustworthy and loyal."

Hell, if he went to the police now, all that would happen would be that they'd arrest H.J. Even if she showed them the photos Rick Dell had taken, they'd probably still lock her up and charge her with something. Plus which, he still wasn't absolutely certain she was dumb enough to go up against these people. It could be she was simply going to stay off by herself for a day or two and wrestle with her conscience. Away from him, so he wouldn't be able to argue with her.

"By tonight, though, if you haven't heard from her and haven't been able to find her then, damn it, you have to see the police. Even if that means her getting arrested."

He walked up the path to the house. It was unlikely she was in there, but he wanted to make sure. He was on the porch, taking hold of the doorknob, when a calm voice behind him said, "Just stay right there, if you would. Don't make any sudden moves."

V
ery slowly and carefully Ben turned around. A pale blond man in a wrinkled tan suit was standing at the bottom of the steps watching him. He was just under six feet and just a few months from forty.

Ben said, "Morning, Ryerson."

"Well, Ben. I didn't recognize you from the back." Detective Ryerson smiled faintly. "But I guess this makes sense."

"Our running into each other?"

The policeman reached inside his coat, took out a fat canvas-covered notebook. "You used to be married to Helen Mavity," he said. "The fact is, I remembered seeing her picture the one time I was at your house. That's how I made a tentative identification."

Ben suffered a sudden chill. "Tentative identification," he managed to say. "Has something happened to her?"

"Not as far as I know." Ryerson flipped open the notebook. "Were you expecting otherwise?"

"It sounded as though you'd found her in some condition that made positive identification impossible."

"I haven't found the lady at all, though I'd like to. Is she at home?'

"I'm not exactly certain. I was going to knock."

"Do that," suggested the policeman.

Ben knocked. 'What exactly are. . ."

The door had swung inward when he hit it and was now standing half open.

Ryerson stepped up onto the porch. "Miss Mavity, are you at home?" he inquired into the opening. There was no response from within the house. "You try calling her."

"H.J., It's me."

Continued silence.

Detective Ryerson pushed the door all the way open and waited, listening for a few seconds. Then he crossed the threshold. "Anybody home?"

Ben followed him in. "Again?" he murmured when he got a look at the living room.

The books he'd helped his onetime wife put back on the shelves were on the floor again, furniture was knocked over, a lamp was broken.

Ryerson scanned the disordered living room. "Why'd you say again?"

Ben swallowed. "H.J. was never much of a housekeeper and at first I thought she'd left her place in a mess again," he ad-libbed. "But I can see now there's been some sort of break-in."

"Are you and your wife getting back together?"

"We happened to run into each other again recently. She suggested I drop over sometime."

"And you picked this morning?"

"Happened to be passing by."

"That your car in the driveway?"

"Mine, yes."

"Engine's cold."

"She borrowed it earlier, and I actually stopped by now to pick it up."

"Where might she be at the moment?"

"Well, probably out in her own car."

"She's got a car, but she borrowed yours?"

"Hers was in the shop. She got it back, though, earlier this morning."

"How'd you get here?"

"Cab."

Ryerson nodded and took a sheet of folded paper from between the pages of his thick notebook. "This is Helen Mavity, isn't it?"

Ben unfolded the sheet. It was a fuzzy copy of a photograph of H.J. She was wearing jeans and a pullover sweater, staring down at a thin man who was kneeling on the mosaic flooring of the Eastport Mall. Dell hadn't been an especially good looking man. "Vague resemblance to her I suppose, but it's tough to tell with a picture that's this blurred."

The detective was starting into the hallway. "It's a copy made off the videotape from one of the mall security cameras. All the police departments in the county got copies of it and were asked if they could identify the woman," he explained. "I couldn't at first, but then I remembered seeing that picture of your wife."

"Ex-wife." He started after the policeman.

"That might change, though."

"You can loan somebody your car and not necessarily be thinking of remarrying her."

"Know the man in the picture?"

"Which one, the guy who's all bloody?"

"Yeah, that one."

"Nope."

"Him they identified. Name was Rick Dell."

"A third-string comic. I've heard of him, but didn't know him personally."

"So learning he's dead didn't move you to tears?"

"Not especially, no."

Ryerson went into H.J.'s bedroom. "When your wife—ex-wife— borrowed your car, Ben, she didn't happen to mention that a friend of hers had recently died in the Eastport mall?"

"No, she didn't." The closet door was open and he could see that the large, sky-blue suitcase he'd seen there the other night was now gone.

"The reason Rick Dell died was that somebody stuck a knife in him."

"That's right, I read about it in the paper."

Genuflecting, Ryerson checked under the bed. "You're right about her housekeeping. Flock of dustballs under here, along with some lingerie, Kleenex and a copy of . . . what is it? . . .
Passion in Manhattan
."

"She painted the cover."

"Did she?" The detective pulled out the paperback, stood up and studied the bright cover. "Woman in the nightgown here looks sort of like her."

"She sometimes uses herself as a model."

"Very nice painting, very attractive lady." He set the paperback book carefully atop the rumpled bedspread and stepped back into the hail.

"Are the police looking for the woman in the photo?"

"The Eastport police would like to talk to her."

"Was Rick Dell killed at the mall?"

"No, elsewhere. He only came to the mall to die." The detective stepped into the kitchen. "They went through this room, too."

The cupboards had been searched again, cans and cartons were strewn about the floor.

"Did she keep much jewelry or cash around the house?"

"I don't think so. H.J. isn't much for jewels. Money she likes, but that would be in her bank."

Nodding, the policeman moved along to the small, bright room that H.J. used as a studio. "Another self-portrait," he observed, crossing over to the study the unfinished painting on the easel.

This room had been left pretty much alone, though someone had tossed a tube of vermillion paint on the floor and tromped on it. It had made an explosion of red across the straw rug.