Bad Blood (13 page)

I hadn’t. I shook my head.

“Yeah. Next year, maybe year after. Then that’ll be gone, too. My father-in-law had a dairy farm. My brother-in-law, too. My father-in-law’s place you could see from that window.” He pointed across his office but he didn’t look where he was pointing. “They’re both working for other guys now. Broke their butts all their lives, what’ve they got? What’ve their kids got?” He looked up from the desk. “Where my girls go to school, all the kids go on to college. It’s expected. My girls can speak French, play the piano, paint. Their friends are congressmen’s daughters.” Tilting his chair back, he stretched, smiled tiredly. “Aaah, what do you care? You got no kids. You don’t have to worry about this crap. You’re a lucky guy.”

I didn’t answer.

MacGregor raised his eyebrows. “What do you want this girl for, anyhow?”

Now was as good as any other time. “I’m working a case.”

“Goddammit!” The front legs of his chair hit the floor and his smile collapsed like a house of cards. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me that yesterday? What case?”

“Private problem for a private client.”

“Who just happens to be looking for a friend of Jimmy Antonelli’s when everyone else in the goddamn county is looking for Jimmy? What’s the case, Smith?”

“I can’t tell you. But it’s not police business and it’s not connected to Gould’s death. And the girl might not be a friend of Jimmy’s,” I added. “I’m just guessing.”

MacGregor sat motionless, looked at me. “God, I’m tempted.”

I knew what he was tempted to do. “What for?”

He threw down his pencil, stood, yanked open the office door. “Being stupid and ugly in public. Raising the blood pressure of a Senior Investigator. Get the hell out. I’ll be watching you.”

That had been about it, there, so I’d started for the Greyhound depot in Cobleskill. The Appleseed plant was west of town; I could make my appearance at Sanderson’s office after I got the silver squared away.

When I got on the highway, though, I had a better idea. I went east to 1A over the ridge, down into the softly quilted valley and through to Schoharie, same as yesterday. Main Street seemed exhausted under the leaden sky and leafless trees, as though it had stretched out for a rest and hadn’t yet found the strength to get up and move on.

The smell of coffee and bacon grease inside the Park View was warm and familiar. The windows were still steamy, and the two old men in hunting jackets were at the same table in the front. Or maybe it was two other old men. I slid onto a stool and waited for Ellie to finish bringing them sandwiches.

Ellie came back to the counter, spotted me. Her faded brows knit together above her sharp nose; she squeezed my hand. “Hon,” she said without preamble, “why didn’t
you
tell me yesterday that what you were looking for Jimmy for had to do with a killing?”

I wasn’t sure of the answer to that. “I didn’t want to worry you, Ellie. How did you find out?”

“Sheriff Brinkman was here. He’s going to call Chucky in North Carolina.”

“I thought you said Chuck was at sea.”

“Well, sure. And I suppose Sheriff Brinkman will find that out, sooner or later.”

She grinned and I grinned back. “They have telephones on ships now, Ellie.”

“Hon, I called him myself last week, for his birthday. You wouldn’t believe the red tape before they let you call a ship at sea.” She poured me a cup of coffee.

“Thanks.” I tasted it. Not as good as Eve Colgate’s, or mine; but still better than the 7-Eleven’s. I was getting to be an expert. “Did Brinkman ask you anything about Alice, or the blond girl you told me about?”

“No. I don’t think he knows about either of them. And Chucky won’t tell him.”

“I know he won’t. Listen, Ellie, try this: Tony says Alice’s last name is Brown, and that she bakes. It sounds to me as though she may do it for a living. If you were ordering desserts for the diner, where would you get them from?”

“What, this place? Ralph would kill you if he heard that.” She pointed to a sign over the glass-shelved pie cabinet behind her: All Baking Done On Premises.

“Okay,” I said. “But what if?”

She compressed her lips in thought. “I don’t know. You want to talk to Ralph? He’s here.”

Ralph Helfgott owned and cooked at the Park View. He was a large soft man with the look of a hard man gone to seed. The blue tattoos on his forearms were blurred and his white hair was unkempt and wispy. He followed Ellie out from the kitchen, wiping his hands on the apron that surrounded him.

“How’re you doing?” he asked, shaking my hand. “Haven’t seen you around in a while.”

“Haven’t been up. Finally got so I couldn’t stay away from Ellie another day, so I came back.”

He put a thick arm around her. “That’s my girl you’re talking about.”

She pulled away grinning, slapped his arm lightly. “Knock it off, Ralph. Bill wants to ask you something important.”

Ralph leaned over the counter, spoke confidentially to me. “She don’t know yet how crazy she is about me. But I got time, I can wait.” He slipped his hand below the counter, pinched Ellie’s rear. She let out a squeak, slapped him again. He straightened up and looked at me out of choir-boy eyes. “What can I do for you?”

I told him what I wanted to know, but not why. He massaged his chins. “Desserts? Baked goods, you mean?”

“Fancy ones, I hear. And good.”

“Well, there’s really no place around that’s any good. There’s Glauber’s, and there’s Hilltop, over in Cobleskill. But they’re both pretty lousy. That’s why I do my own. There’s nothing worse than serving a customer a soggy pie, you know,” he said earnestly. “Except wait a minute. There is a new place. I got a brochure or something. Wait,
let
me think.” He rubbed the stubble on his chins again with a hand like a rubber bath toy. “Yeah. Some girl called me. About six, eight months ago, I don’t know. A new bakery, commercial, but small. I told her no thanks, but she asked if she could send me a brochure anyway. Of course, I don’t know if they’re any good.”

“Did she send the brochure?” I asked. “Do you have it?”

“Of course he does,” Ellie said. “He has every piece of paper anybody ever gave him. Go find it, Ralph.”

“You want it?” he asked me; I nodded.

He gave Ellie a friendly leer and went off down the counter to the back. Ellie patted my hand and, taking the pencil from behind her ear, went to see to a family with three kids who’d taken over one of the rear tables. I watch the oversized Slush Puppie cup slowly rotating on top of the milk shake machine.

Ralph came back first. “Got it,” he said, spreading a flyer on the Formica in front of me. “This what you want?”

It was a price list, typeset on heavy stock. Cakes, pies, cookies, other sorts of pastry. At the top of the page was a line drawing of a cozy snowed-in house with smoke coming from the chimney, circled by the words Winterhill Kitchens.

“I hope so,” I said.

“Well, you can have it. I still think I’m going to keep baking my own.”

Ellie came back to the counter. “Find it?”

“Yeah. Kiss me?” Ralph closed his eyes and puckered his lips.

“Oh, in your dreams! Bill, hon, will this help?”

“I hope so,” I said again. “Let me call and see.”

I used the pay phone by the front door to call the number on the brochure.

The young woman’s voice that answered the phone was fresh and direct, the kind of voice that goes with a clear complexion and great skill at outdoor sports. I asked for Alice Brown. The fresh voice said that Alice Brown was at the market, and that she’d be back at three-thirty. Would I like to leave a message? I would, and did, leaving my name, identifying myself as a friend of Jimmy Antonelli’s, saying I’d call again. We thanked each other and hung up.

I went back to the counter, dropped some coins on it for the coffee. I squeezed Ellie’s scrawny hand. “I think we found her. I’ll see you later. If you think of anything, call me at Antonelli’s.”

“Found who?” Ralph asked. “What’s going on?”

“None of your business, Ralphie,” Ellie answered. “How’s Tony?” she asked me. “Should I call him?”

I shrugged. “You know him. The more trouble he has, the less help he wants. He’s got Jimmy convicted already.”

Ellie shook her head. Ralph patted her shoulder, and she didn’t pull away.

I walked back to my car, unlocked it, sat with the flyer spread on the steering wheel. The bakery had an address in Jefferson, in the south end of the county, far from here but not far from my place. I could be there in forty minutes if I stood up Mark Sanderson. I could camp out there,
wait
for Alice Brown to come back. And hope she knew where Jimmy was. And hope she’d tell me.

And hope Brinkman didn’t get there first.

I fished a cigarette from my pocket, put a match to it, started the car. I pulled out onto the empty street and headed for the bus station in Cobleskill. I didn’t know many of Jimmy Antonelli’s friends, but even law-abiding citizens didn’t have much use for Brinkman. He probably wasn’t getting a lot of cooperation from people who’d be in a position to help him. And MacGregor hadn’t asked me about Alice Brown when I was up there this morning, so he might not know about her either.

It seemed to me I might be a few hours ahead of the law on this. If that was true, I had the luxury of enough time to find out what was on Mark Sanderson’s mind.

The bus station in Cobleskill was in what passed for downtown, a shabby area of two-story industrial buildings and three-story frame houses on both sides of the railroad tracks. There were no trains through here anymore, and most of the industrial buildings were only half used, as warehouses now. I parked in front of a peeling brown house with a gate hanging on one hinge and bedsheets for window curtains.

I looked around as I took the package from my trunk under the heavy sky. A car rolled down the cracked street, turned the corner. It hadn’t been following me. I was making sure of that now, as routinely as I did in the city.
A
kid on a thick-tired bike bounced along the opposite sidewalk, and a couple of college-age girls came out of the bus station, wearing backpacks. Otherwise the street was deserted. Whatever happened in Cobleskill these days didn’t happen here. It happened in the office parks and Pizza Huts and Friendlys and multiplex cinemas that lined the state highway as it ran into and out of town.

I put my package on the next bus out to New York, a one o’clock local due at the Port Authority at eight forty-five. Very local. I didn’t insure it. The fewer people who knew it was worth something, the more likely it was to get where it was going. Cobleskill had a Federal Express office and I’d considered that, but this was still faster, and Lydia wouldn’t have to sit around waiting for delivery.

I called her again, got her machine again, sketched in what was going on. I left the time of the bus and the number of the receipt. I told her to messenger the package in the morning to Shelley at the lab, tell her it was for me, tell her to rush it. I started to tell Lydia something else, but I wasn’t sure what it was, so I stopped and hung up.

Tomorrow I’d have to figure out how to get MacGregor to run the prints for me, if they found any. I had cop friends who would’ve run them in New York, but that wouldn’t show up anything strictly local, as for instance if someone had been arrested by a county sheriff. Maybe MacGregor could be bent; maybe I could bribe him with a new pair of waders.

* * *

Appleseed Baby Foods was west of town, at the end of a three-mile spur off the highway built just for them. The white concrete-panel building spread in various directions from the center of a sprawling parking lot. A low office annex connected to the processing plant through a glass-enclosed entranceway.

I gave the guard at the desk my name, which he passed along over the phone to someone else. He listened, nodded, and hung up; then he told me to sign in, pointed at a pair of double glass doors, said “Upstairs.”

I went up open-riser oak steps with an oak rail and a skylight at the top. Ferns hung in the light well in white plastic baskets. At the top was a hall lined with oak doors. The pair at the end were labeled President. I went through them into a large outer office with a beige carpet, and framed pictures of carrots, zucchini, and tomatoes on the walls.

A young woman with a heart-shaped face smiled behind a white desk in the middle of the room. Her glossy blond hair was an organized cap cut neatly at chin length. She wore a blue wool dress, and her nails were an understated length and an understated color.

“Did anyone ever tell you you have a beautiful voice?” I asked before she spoke.

She blushed but kept her composure. The effect was becoming. “Mr. Smith? Mr. Sanderson has been expecting you. Please have a seat; I’ll just tell him you’re here.”

She picked up the phone on her desk, spoke into it, smiled at me again. Smiling was something she did well, probably from practice. I sat on a beige fabric-covered chair, the kind that puts you too low to the ground. I admired the vegetables. Five minutes; ten. For a man who’d been anxious to see me, in particular, Mark Sanderson didn’t seem very excited now that I was here.

I took out a cigarette, rolled it around in my fingers a little, lit it. After the first drag the phone on the desk buzzed. The secretary answered it, hung up, smiled again. “Mr. Sanderson will see you now. Go right in.” She nodded toward a door in the wall behind her.

Funny how often that cigarette thing worked.

Mark Sanderson’s office was a corner office, as I’d imagined, with a view out over the plant, the parking lot, and the soft hills wrapping the valley. Sanderson’s desk, though, was facing the door I came through. He’d have to turn his back on his work to get the benefit of that view.

“Smith.” Sanderson rose, came out from behind the desk as I came in. He extended a well-kept hand in a solid handshake. A smile came and went on his round baby face, leaving no trace. His steel-colored eyes studied me. Then, with the casual tyranny of a man so used to being obeyed that he rarely gave orders, he said, “Sit down.”

I sat.

Sanderson perched on the edge of the desk, one foot still on the floor, one hand folded over the other. I watched the action behind his hard eyes. “Look,” he said, “I think we may have gotten off to a bad start earlier. If it was my fault, I apologize. I can be abrupt, I know.” The smile blinked on and off again.