Neal Rafferty New Orleans Mystery #1: The Killing Circle (A Neal Rafferty New Orleans Mystery) (17 page)

I got another fast glint as she hoisted the bag and started up the steps to the back door. “No,” she said without turning around. She slammed the door shut with a foot. Apparently this wasn't one of those neighborly suburban areas you get the hype about in the Sunday paper real estate section. My feet were glued. I shoved my hands in my pockets for added balance. A few seconds later the door opened a crack, then a little wider, wide enough for a voice. “An ambulance came last night.” The door shut without a sound.

I walked back to the car where the atmosphere as well as the temperature was several degrees warmer and drove to the office. As I pulled into the garage Gabe made a tired jump off the conveyor belt and soft-shoed over to the car with a smile that showed off every white tooth in his black face.

“Hey there, Mistah Rafferty. Heard you had some trouble up there in yo’ office.” He pulled a toothpick that had already been reduced to a splinter from his pocket and started working on its total disintegration.

“Have you heard anything new?” I asked in a hushed conspiratorial mumble.

The smile vanished and his mouth drooped open, the toothpick supported by his lower lip. “Nothin’ new,” he mumbled back, shaking his head, opening his eyes wide and rolling them around by keeping them still and moving the rest of his face.

I nodded sagely. “Well,” I said, “keep one ear to the ground.”

I took the express elevator to the ninth floor with my favorite elevator operator, the one with a smile like Howdy Doody's who does a one-armed Hawaiian dance as the door glides open and shut.

Back in the office, I looked through the yellow pages. There was a little more than a column of hospitals listed. I leaned back in my swiveling office chair and watched a moth do its dance around the light fixture in the ceiling. I moved the phone in closer. I was getting ready to dial the first number on the list when one name stood out like it was printed in eighteen-point type. It was the Lakeside Hospital for Women. I dialed the number and asked for Mrs. Stanley Garber's room. After a tense silence I was told that she was in the intensive care section where visting hours were ten minutes every two hours, for the immediate family only.

23

We Have Dinner

It was getting Late, but the traffic to Metairie was still thick and sluggish as a fat caterpillar crawling its way west. I got impatient with it and exited from the expressway on Bonnabel to finish the drive on Veterans Highway. The going wasn't much better, but there's plenty to look at, though the view isn't particularly scenic unless you happen to like a lot of neon. The buildings go up faster than an old building downtown can be demolished because most of them are prefabricated rectangles with a plastic facade that arrived intact on the back of a truck. But the signs in front of them are another matter. Everybody tried to erect one that was fancier and bigger than his neighbor's, with the result that you can see any one of them about as easily as you could spot a ping pong ball in a snowbank. And everybody's got a gimmick. There's a shopping center that isn't just a shopping center—it's a replica of a western town. Someone else had a cute idea for their castlelike bar. You walk across a drawbridge over a moat to get to the front door. Only the moat is always dry and littered with crushed beer cans and wadded napkins with jokes about the boys’ night out and the office sexetaries who are pictured with long, skinny legs ending in points. Everyone was so busy being cute that they forgot about trees and sidewalks.

A kindly white-haired lady at the hospital's information desk directed me to the waiting room outside intensive care. There was no one waiting. I moved aimlessly around the floor, figuring Catherine had gone to dinner, and happened to wander into a solarium on the other side of the building. She was sitting alone in a corner near a window, her chin cupped in one hand and a book opened in her lap. I stood for a few moments in the open doorway watching as the last sunlight played in her hair. I sat down beside her.

“Hello,” I said softly. Weariness pulled at the corners of her eyes. “What's happened?”

“My mother had another attack.” Something like panic surfaced for a moment and displaced the weariness. “Too much strain,” she said huskily and looked down at her long fingers spread over the pages of the book. They closed it and folded over the edges of the binding, gripping hard so that the knuckles looked large and white.

“How bad is it?”

“It's the worst one yet. They're being so careful about what they say to me that I know they think she won't make it.”

I'm sorry wasn't enough and I couldn't think of anything else to say.

“The other night—after you left—the doctor wouldn't let the police stay,” she said. “But they came back yesterday. I think that's what did it. So many questions.” She sounded as if she were trying to muster up some fight, but it only chopped up her sentences and made her sound tired.

“They wanted to be thorough so they wouldn't have to come back,” I said lamely. “Were you here all night?” She nodded. I pulled out a cigarette and put it in my mouth and took it out again. “Let me take you to dinner,” I said as positively as possible.

She stirred in the chair and leaned her head on a closed fist. “I'm not hungry,” she stated flatly.

“Well, you have to eat anyway. Not only that, I can't hear you if you say no.” I said it with finality and put the cigarette back in my mouth but didn't light it.

She turned a mocking smile on me. “That was very forceful.” The old belligerence swarmed up and flushed her cheeks. “Alright. But don't get any ideas because of the other night.”

I started to say something in further reference to our passionless kiss that night and was counting on the cigarette being stuck to my upper lip. It wasn't and fell into my lap. I grinned. “Look. A man in my business has got to have ideas.”

“Have you always got an answer for everything?” She stood up putting one hand on her hip and looked down at me.

“I try, but sometimes a certain face will even take my breath away.”

“Oh, God,” she said and closed her eyes, shaking her head.

I took her to a candlelit Italian restaurant with soft music coming out of the ceiling. Her golden glow had returned as soon as we were out of the last pale hospital corridor. We settled ourselves at a table and I ordered drinks before dinner We both seemed agreed about getting the first one down before we went into any serious conversation. As soon as we were set up with the second round I asked her if she always had to be pressed into spending an evening out.

I got a very level look. “There have been few men I preferred an evening with to a decent book. I wish you would stop prying and being tough.”

I raised my drink to her. “You are pretty tough yourself, Catherine.” I ran my thumb down the index finger she had stuck out of her fist while making her prior statement.

She put her hands in her lap. “Are you still working for Carter Fleming? I told the police you were working for him before the doctor made them go away,” she stated vindictively.

“No, and stop giving me a hard time or I might kiss you again right here in the restaurant.” It was a bad joke or bad timing or something. Her face froze with anger or tension, but she relaxed as I went on. “I found the books in New York yesterday. His son had them. So I'm not working for him anymore; I finished the job.”

“Oh.” I thought she would be glad, but she seemed distressed again.

“I still want to find your father's murderer, Catherine. I want to help you. And your mother. Finishing Fleming's job just means that I'm not necessarily connecting the books with the murder anymore.”

“Not necessarily? But what else could there be?” She put her palms up on the table. “Why would anyone want to kill him? I've gone over it and over it. Why?” Anguish started settling on her features. I ordered more drinks.

“Don't you find it strange that Lucy McDermott just disappeared the way she did?”

“Yes, yes, of course it's strange.”

“Don't you figure that there must be some connection there? It's a little hard to take as pure coincidence, isn't it?”

“I don't know,” she cried. The drinks came. She raised hers to her mouth before the waiter had it firm on the table and gulped from it. When she spoke she was calmer. “We've gone over this before—I have a thousand times since. I can't believe Lucy would kill him. I just don't know anymore.”

“Do you like Lucy?”

“I like her well enough.” Her cool and composure were in full force now. She made a small, impatient gesture. “Whether I like her or not really has nothing to do with it, does it?”

I didn't answer. “Would you like dinner now?”

“Order, but I want another drink.” I complied, feeling the first three buzzing around in my veins and wondering if she did.

We gazed at each other across the table. “You don't tell much about yourself, do you Catherine?”

“What do you want to know?” she asked indifferently.

“Probably more than you'd be willing to tell without accusing me of prying.”

She smiled at me. It was the first genuine smile I'd seen on her face. I felt rather pleased. “Probably,” she agreed.

“We talked for a while about the bookstore. She had decided to run it alone and said she would open up again after her mother was out of the hospital. She told me she liked the place and felt her best there surrounded by the books. All through dinner her soft, just-throaty-enough voice purred at me on the subject of books. I liked the sound of it and wished the piped-in tangos the Muzak seemed to be stuck on would pipe down. Her knowledge was extensive; an entire young lifetime had been spent accumulating it. It was as if she had cloistered herself within the walls and pages of the volumes, and a sad voice in my own mind told me it was all she would talk freely about. Over coffee I got back to the subject I was going to be stuck on until I found her.

“Catherine, there must be something, some offhand remark Lucy made that would give you an idea of where she was from or where she used to live and where she might be now.”

She shook her head emphatically. “No, it's no good. I've gone over every conversation I ever had with her, which wasn't too hard because I didn't have that many with her, and I simply can't think of a thing.”

“Do you think your mother might have some idea?”

“No, I'm sure not. We went over the same thing with the police. She didn't know.”

“Well, your father must have known something about Lucy if he worked with her for a year You don't think he would have said something to your mother?” I was getting the feeling that there had been no real communication among the three of them which, as it turned out, was a pretty good guess.

That tension that seemed to freeze Catherine's face settled on it again. “My mother and father have what you might call a strained relationship.” Here voice seemed to come from way back in her throat. “They always have for as long as I can remember.” Her use of the present tense and the strange faraway depth of her voice startled me slightly. Her eyes got shallow, then deep as they dilated. She was looking through my face. I wanted to stop her.

I touched her forearm. “Stay here with me, Catherine,” I said very quietly.

Her eyes snapped back and she was looking at me instead of through me. “I am here with you, but you're beginning to pry.”

“We won't talk about it anymore,” I said.

We left the restaurant and got in the car. Before I could get the key in the ignition Catherine said, “Maybe you should be looking for someone else besides Lucy.”

I changed my mind about starting the car and turned in the seat to face her. “Like who?” I asked.

“Well, something happened about four months before Lucy came to work at the store.” She was speaking very slowly. “I found a letter my father had thrown away. It caught my eye because it was addressed just Stan Garber. Someone could have been blackmailing him.”

“Did you keep it?” She nodded. “Why didn't you tell me about this before?”

“I—nothing ever happened. I mean, it wasn't necessarily a blackmail letter, only it wasn't signed. I forgot about it until he was killed because I never saw any more. I worked on the books, too, and I never saw any money missing. Would someone kill him after all that time?”

“What did it say?”

“I can't remember the exact words. Something like, remember what I said and the person needing money and depending on their friendship. Then it said, your two daughters don't have to know about each other. And the person would be in touch.” She stated it very matter of factly.

“Did it bother you?” I asked.

Her shoulders lifted an inch. She held them there and shook her head. “No. I didn't believe it.” And I didn't believe her. “But it doesn't sound like the first or the last one, does it?” Her brow furrowed.

I told her I wanted to see it. She said it was at the house. We had an argument about whether she should stay at the hospital all night again and she finally agreed that she shouldn't, but she wanted to see her mother one more time that night.

I drove back to the hospital. There was a slight chill in the air that almost convinced me fall was on its way. Catherine stopped as we walked through the parking lot, her hands clutching her bare upper arms.

“Neal,” she whispered, “I'm frightened.” She didn't resist my arm around her shoulders.

24

After Dinner

Catherine's car was at the hospital so I followed her back to the house after her ten minutes with her mother. Mrs. Garber's condition was still the same and that wasn't saying a lot for it, but somehow she was managing to hold on.

The air in the house was stagnant and hot. Catherine moved around adjusting thermostats. I sat down on the living room sofa and lit a cigarette. She came in with a cut-glass decanter of brandy and two glasses perched on a silver tray. She sat the tray on the coffee table in front of the sofa and remained standing opposite me. “It may take me a while to find the letter,” she said. “It's probably buried at the bottom of my cedar chest.”