Stone Quarry (16 page)

"You want something," I said.

"Well, duh! If you're so smart, what do I want?"

"I don't know. But I want something too: I want Jimmy's truck, and I want the things that were stolen from Eve Colgate's storeroom."

Her eyes widened quickly; then she laughed. "You used that one already, saying something to confuse me. Are you supposed to be a good detective?"

"Probably not. But I get the feeling you're not such a good kid, either."

She snorted. "Different meanings of 'good,' Mr. Bigshot. Don't do that shit with me. I'm in Honors English."

"Not anymore this semester, from what I hear."

"That was bullshit!" She glanced at me sharply.

"That's what your father told me, too. Not his innocent little princess."

"He's an asshole," she couldn't help saying. "But anyway, now I can go somewhere else next year. Maybe Europe or something. I hated that dump anyway."

"If I tell Sheriff Brinkman you've been fencing stolen property, you might not be going anywhere."

"Who, Robocop?" She was scornful, unimpressed with my threat. "You think my dad would let him anywhere near me? Besides"—she leaned back against my car, blew a stream of smoke into the sky—"I don't know what the fuck you're talking about."

"I don't believe you."

She eyed me thoughtfully. With a well-bred, ladylike smile, she inquired, "Who fucking cares? Anyway, forget that crazy lady and her shit. I thought you wanted to know who killed Wally."

I dropped my cigarette to the ground, crushed it. "Do you know?"

She shrugged. "Everyone says it was Jimmy."

"Was it?"

"How the hell am I supposed to know? But Jimmy's in deep shit, huh? Do you know where he is?"

"That's what you were looking for me for? You want to know where Jimmy is?"

"Hey, you figured it out! You
are
a great detective!"

"Why do you want him?"

Her voice became coy. "I can help him." She waved her cigarette casually in the darkness. "You're not the only one who knows smart lawyers and shit like that. I can help Jimmy more than you can. Only I bet you don't even know where he is."

"Why would you want to help him? You walked out on him."

"He told you that?" she asked slyly.

"Everyone knows," I countered.

She shrugged again, temporarily out of dumb detective tricks. "So what? I can still want to help him."

"Then tell me who has the truck."

"Okay," she said teasingly, "if you tell me where he is."

"Did you use the truck when you robbed Eve Colgate?"

As I spoke, a car cut around the curve of 30, swept us with headlights as it pulled into the lot. Ginny Sanderson stepped into the shadows again. When Antonelli's door had shut behind the driver and the night was ours again, she threw her cigarette away, still burning, like the one before it. "Oh, fuck this shit," she said. "I'm getting the fuck out of here. This is a drag."

She brushed past me to her car, pulled open the door, slid behind the wheel. As the engine roared to life and the loud bass thump of the stereo began to pound, she lowered the black-glass window.

"If you want to know where the fucking truck is, just tell anyone at the Creekside you want to see me."

She reversed hard, close to me, then tore onto the road. Her red tail lights whipped around the curve much too fast, and were gone.

The drive to Eve Colgate's wasn't long. The bare branches of the trees were being tossed violently now, and dead leaves scraped across the road in front of me. I drove carefully, my mind on other things.

Leo came charging to the doorbell, barking loudly. I heard Eve reassuring him as she shot the bolt and drew the door open.

She smiled, stood aside to let me pass. I walked through out of the cold wind into the warm, neat room, where the odor of damp earth was replaced by a rich confusion of herbs, garlic, tomatoes, meat. Steam fogged the windows. The table was set with woven mats, wineglasses, white china. There was music, not Schubert anymore, but Chopin, a nocturne I used to play. Hearing it now, I couldn't remember why I'd stopped.

Leo followed me, wagging, looking up; I reached down to pet him and he sniffed my hand expectantly. "Oh," I said. "Sorry, old buddy. Nothing for you."

"It's just as well," Eve said. "You were spoiling him." She took my jacket, hung it in the vestibule next to the yellow slicker. I shrugged off my shoulder holster, slipped it over another hook.

Her eyebrows raised slightly. "You don't have to," she said.

"It makes you uncomfortable."

She moved around me into the kitchen. "I just wonder how it must feel to live with what it means."

"You get used to what protects you."

"Yes," she said. "Yes, I suppose that's true."

She lifted the cover from an enameled steel pot on the stove. A cloud of steam rolled up as she added wine from an open bottle.

"Sit down," she said. "It'll be another few minutes."

I stood on the polished floor by the ivory wool couch like a tractor at Tiffany's. "Let me clean up first."

"There's a bathroom under the stairs."

I went and used it, scrubbing rock dust from my hands, my arms, my face. I examined the face critically in the mirror as I dried off on a thick, soft towel. Dark eyes, too deep and too tired; the etched lines that smokers get, on the forehead, around the eyes and mouth; crooked nose and a lumpy jaw. Dark hair, rapidly graying. And the new addition, a collection of scratches and bruises in the ugly colors of healing on the left cheek. Clean, the face was better, but it would never be good.

Back in the living room, I chose the chair, whose dark upholstery gave it a fighting chance to handle the dirt I hadn't been able to brush from my clothes.

"Do you want wine?" Eve asked. "I haven't got anything else except brandy. But this is good."

She brought over the glasses from the table, handed me one, poured a garnet-colored wine into it and into the other. I tasted it. It was liquid silk and it had no argument with Tony's bourbon.

Eve settled on the end of the couch nearest the chair. Her clear eyes swept over me, face, hands, dirt, everything. She said, "Shall we talk business before dinner?"

I put my wineglass down. "The blond girl," I said. "When I called you before, it was because I thought I knew who she was. Now I'm sure, I've seen her. It could be a problem for you."

She said nothing, watched my face.

"Her name is Ginny Sanderson. She's Mark Sanderson's daughter."

"He's a powerful man," she said after a moment. "Is that what you mean?"

"Only part of it. I also think she's mixed up in this murder, the guy in Tony's basement. If she is, your robbery may be, too."

She sipped her wine while Chopin's ambiguous tones flowed around us.

"Why do you think that?" she asked quietly.

I told her about Ginny, and about Wally Gould and Frank Grice and who Frank Grice was. I told her about the blue truck waiting outside the antique shop for Ginny

Sanderson, and about the keys that I'd found on the concrete floor by Wally Gould's body.

"The keys were to that same truck? How do you know that?"

"I don't, not for sure. But Jimmy Antonelli owns a blue four-by-four. It's been missing for a couple of days. The keys I found were his."

"Oh," she said softly. "Poor Tony. Does he know that?"

"That the keys are Jimmy's? Yes. But I haven't told him about Ginny Sanderson and the truck."

Eve's lined face seemed paler than before. Leo nuzzled her hand and she scratched him absently, sipping wine, thinking her own thoughts. She said, "You say you spoke to her . . . ?"

I nodded. "She claims she doesn't know anything about your robbery. I'm pretty sure she's lying, though I guess it's possible she's just fencing things and doesn't know where they came from. But, Eve, if she's got the truck, it could connect her to both crimes. If that's true I don't know how long I can keep your robbery a private problem."

She searched my face. "There's something you're not telling me."

I thought about Jimmy, alone up at the quarry, and nodded again. "But it wouldn't help."

She surveyed her own living room minutely, intensely. It was something she must have done a million times.

"Is there something you want me to do?" she asked me finally.

"No. Give me more time. I'll try, Eve. I know how important it is; that's why I didn't push Ginny when I saw her tonight. I wanted to talk to you first. If there's any way I can keep it from coming out, I will. But I wanted you to know."

Eve was silent. Dragged by the wind, branches scraped across her roof. The approaching storm weighed on the air.

"All right," she said, standing. "If things have to change, will you tell me first?"

"I promise."

She looked at me for a few moments. Then she walked back around the couch, over to the stove. Leo jumped to his feet, followed her. I stood, too.

"Trouble or not," she said, "there's still beef stew. Why don't you pour more wine?" She put the enameled pot on the table. "And you can change the music, or turn it off, if you want. I should have said that before."

The nocturnes had given way to Chopin mazurkas. "No," I said. "It's fine. I haven't heard these pieces in a long time."

"You know this music?"

"Yes."

She smiled. "I'm intrigued. I suppose I always thought of the detective business as rather sordid."

"It is. But I'm not sure it's any dirtier than cows and chickens."

She brought a round, crusty loaf out of the oven, set it on the table next to a dish of butter flecked with herbs. "Cows are much more decent than people," she said.

"Well, maybe. But not chickens. My grandmother kept chickens in our backyard in Louisville. I know all their secrets."

"Is that where you grew up? Louisville?"

"We left there when I was nine, but yes, until then."

"Where did you go then?"

"Thailand," I said. "South Korea, West Germany, the Philippines, Holland. My father was an army quarter master. We lived in a lot of exotic places; when I was fifteen we moved to Brooklyn."

She nodded. "Exotic."

The last thing she did before sitting was to feed two more logs into the iron stove on the hearth.

"Well, it's not fancy," she said. "But you won't be hungry."

It wasn't fancy, but it was great. The stew was thick with beef, and the beef was tender. Chunks of carrots, potatoes, onions, and stewed tomatoes glistened in a garlicky broth. The bread was dense and slightly sour, the butter sweet.

Eve Colgate and I drank more wine, and we talked, and in the silences we listened to Chopin and to the wind.

I admired her house, the spare completeness of it.

"I've been here thirty years. Things get completed, over time."

"Not always."

She poured wine for me, some for herself. "Where do you live, when you're in the city?"

"Downtown. Laight Street."

"What's it like?"

"The neighborhood? Changing."

"Your place, I meant."

"A friend of mine owns the building, and the bar downstairs. Years ago I helped him fix up the bar and the two upstairs floors. He has storerooms and an office on the second floor and I live on the third."

"You have no neighbors?"

"It's better that way."

"Why do you come here?" she asked me.

I sipped my wine. "Even fewer neighbors."

That was true, and in some ways the real reason; and in some ways, about as evasive an answer as I'd ever given to any question. Eve looked at me. She smiled, and in her smile it seemed to me she understood both the truth and the evasion.

I buttered a last piece of bread. "Why did you choose this place, Eve? When you left New York, why come here?"

She didn't answer right away. "Henri and I had come here for three summers, renting a cabin, the way you did Tony's father's. I suppose I wanted to be where I'd been happy. With him."

She rose, went to the kitchen, put water on for coffee. I started to clear the dishes. "I'll wash," I said.

"No," she said. "There's almost nothing. I'll do it later."

"It's my only domestic talent. Let me exercise it."