Requiem for a Realtor (11 page)

“Many are parishioners from St. Hilary's,” Phil said.

“That his parish?”

“More or less.”

Why else would Dowling be in charge? Perzel was talking to a nervous overweight guy in a loud sport jacket. Cy joined them.

“This is George Sawyer.”

“Stanley and I are partners. Were,” he corrected.

“Sawyer and Collins.”

“That's right.”

“You sold me my house.”

Sawyer looked at him quickly. This was no place to talk with a dissatisfied client.

“Any problems?”

“Yeah. I'm not there enough. Helluva way for your partner to die.”

Sawyer shook his head. “I will miss him.”

“Too bad the driver didn't.”

Sawyer walked away. He had spoken in solemn tones and didn't care for Cy's crack. Cy didn't care for it too much himself.

Amos Cadbury took Father Dowling away, and Phil suggested they all go for a drink.

“How about the Rendezous?” Perzel said.

“Where's that?” Phil asked.

“I'll show you.” Someone passed them, and Joe called out, “Hey, Wanda. Hi.”

Wanda was a lot of woman with enough hair on her head for several more. But her eyes were red and tears flowed down her cheeks. She had to blink to get Joe into focus. Then she took him in her arms and began to sob. Nobody was more surprised than Joe. He looked over her head at Cy with a silly pleased expression.

“We work together,” he explained. He spoke into her hair; he had little choice. “Wanda, we're going for a drink. Come on along.”

She stepped back and looked at him with anger. “Now? Tonight?” She didn't hit Joe, although she seemed to consider it. They all watched her leave, a treat in itself.

“You work with her, Joe?”

“That is Wanda Janski,” Joe said, as if they should have known. “She sings at the Rendezvous.”

“But not tonight.”

“You heard her.”

“So let's go somewhere we can see one another.”

At that hour, the sports bar across from the courthouse was all but empty. They took a booth and ordered a couple pitchers of beer. When those were gone, they ordered another. Joe didn't drink much. “I see too much of it.”

That left a lot of beer for Cy and Phil. On the third round, Agnes Lamb came in, sober as a probation officer. She pulled up a chair. Joe, who was a bit of a racist, decided to have a glass of beer after all. A mistake. After three glasses, his tongue was thick, and he wouldn't shut up.

“I knew the guy. He drank at my bar. He was, well, not a friend exactly, but someone I knew. That makes it different. It hits you, someone you knew…”

“Who's he talking about?” Agnes asked.

“Stanley Collins.”

“Did Cy tell you we found the car, Captain?”

“Where?” Joe asked.

“In the parking lot at some dive called the Rendezvous.”

“Dive,” Joe protested. “I work there.”

“Sorry.”

“His car?”

Agnes nodded. “Pour me another.”

“Right there in the parking lot?” Joe asked.

“Not twenty-five yards from where the body was found.”

“What do you make of that?”

Agnes thought about it. “I don't think he was driving it.”

10

The talk around the press room at the courthouse was of the way Stanley had been killed, and Bob Oliver wondered how many of the reporters knew that the victim was his brother-in-law. It wasn't something he had bragged about.

“It wasn't a hit-and-run,” Tetzel said in an authoritative voice.

“He didn't get hit by a car?”

“Sure he did. But it was his own car.”

Everybody began to talk at once. Bob Oliver left unobtrusively while Tetzel's pronouncement had everyone's attention.

He took the elevator to the main floor and then walked around the rotunda, thinking. Which meant he was going around in circles, literally and metaphorically. His first thought was of Phyllis. God knew she had reason enough to run Stanley over. If it came to that, and if she was brought to trial, she would probably get a standing ovation from the jury when they found out how Stanley catted around.

Something Verdi had said to him displaced this thought. The manager of the Frosinone had walked into Luigi's the other night with Flora on his arm and he seemed to steer her in Oliver's direction.

“How's the intrepid reporter?”

Oliver was trying not to look at Flora.

“This is my wife,” Verdi said, and he might have been a crowing rooster.

“Hi,” Flora said, and her manner seemed to promise professional discretion.

“My third wife, to be exact.”

“It's best to be exact.”

Was the idiot serious? But Verdi was dumb enough to marry one of the escort girls who worked out of the Frosinone.

“Congratulations.”

“Oh, we're divorced,” Flora chirped.

“Which is it, Verdi?”

“Both.” Why was the manager grinning?

“We've met,” Oliver said.

“I know.”

And off they went to a table where the sound of their laughter had rankled Oliver.

Oliver had left his unfinished drink and got out of there. Now, in the rotunda of the courthouse, he decided to pay a visit to Verdi. Tuttle hung around the Frosinone, and it occurred to him that Verdi was capable of saying something to the lawyer.

“You still thinking of writing up this place?” Primo Verdi said when Bob came to the registration desk of the Frosinone.

“We have a family readership.”

“I thought you were interested in architecture.”

“This place is an architectural ruin.”

“I finally read your piece about the dentist.”

Bob looked at him.

“Nice photographs. That's how I recognized him.”

“Jameson?”

“He's a patron.”

“Of this dump? You must have mistaken him for someone else.”

“Well, he did sign the register as Jones. We get a lot of Joneses here. I doubt the lady with him was Mrs. Jones.”

“Yeah?”

“One of those women trying to look like a kid, you know? Hair streaked, miniskirt, blouse half unbuttoned. Nice smile, though.”

This word portrait of Phyllis filled him with anger. Was Verdi putting him on? But how could he have gotten such an accu-rate version of Phyllis? It was the thought that she had come to the Frosinone with Jameson that angered him. Stanley would have dropped her in a minute if he had known of it.

“When was this?”

Verdi thought, and then consulted his computer. “Thursday.”

“Last Thursday?”

“Last Thursday.”

“The bar open? I'll buy you a drink.”

“At eleven-thirty?”

“What are you, a Methodist?”

The bar was open, if empty. At his station, the bartender looked like the Maytag repairman. He brightened up when he saw that his boss was bringing in a customer. Bob ordered a Bloody Mary, and Verdi told the bartender he would have his regular, which turned out to be a foamy brandy Alexander when the drinks were put on their table.

“A habit I picked up in Vegas.”

“I can't stand that town.”

“It's where I met my third wife.”

“The one you divorced?”

“I divorced them all. The course of true love never runs smooth.”

“Tell me about Jameson and the woman.”

“What's to tell? We don't have security cameras in the rooms. Actually, I gave them a suite.”

Verdi's smirk was more than annoying. It occurred to Bob that Verdi was Phyllis's alibi, if she should need one. But what a story. I was in a suite at the Frosinone with my dentist when my husband was run over. Now that the police had decided it wasn't a routine hit-and-run, a picture of Phyllis could appear on television and in the paper. If Verdi saw it and made the connection, what might he do? Primo Verdi was a menace. And just when Phyllis seemed home free, rid of Stanley and due to come into a fortune.

Verdi wiped foam from his lips. “So what brings you here?”

The question caught Bob off guard. He brought his drink to his lips, trying to think of a plausible story.

“Flora is semiretired, Oliver, but there are others.”

How long had it been since he blushed? It was bad enough to know that he had availed himself of one of the Frosinone escorts, but for Primo Verdi to know was something else. Who knew what resentment he felt at men who had squired Flora?

“You're a lucky man, Verdi.”

“Some luck is bad.”

“It will be our secret.”

It was a question. To Bob Oliver's momentary relief, Verdi nodded and lifted his foamy drink. But after he left, the thought of trusting the discretion of Primo Verdi was disturbing. After all, it was the fear that Verdi would tell Tuttle about Bob Oliver and the Frosinone escorts that had decided him to pay a visit to the manager. The result was at best equivocal.

11

Tuttle had been avoiding his office since the body of Stanley Collins was found. It was dangerous there in the daytime, with Hazel around. His big mistake had been to tell her what a killing he was going to make on Stanley Collins. He would take Amos Cadbury to the cleaners. His client and his shrewd lawyer could live in ease for the rest of their lives on the settlement Tuttle would wangle out of Cadbury. He had expected the icy reception the first time. He knew what Cadbury thought of him. Well, maybe if he had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth he could have become a lawyer like Amos Cadbury. But Tuttle had crawled his way up from the bottom, not too far from the bottom, sustained by the unflagging trust of his paternal parent.

Law school had been almost a career in itself for Tuttle. Most courses he had taken at least twice before he passed, and getting by the bar exam had required him to have sleeves full of little reminders of this and that. Tuttle senior had been prouder than Tuttle when, at last, success was attained. He then expired, as if the point of his life had been achieved. He was commemorated in the title of the firm, Tuttle & Tuttle. People often asked who the other Tuttle was. Sometimes it was enough just to say, “My father.”

To those who knew him too well, Tuttle would say he was schizoid. “One of us is manic, the other depressive.” But his father's place on the door was no joke to Tuttle. Tears would come to his eyes when he remembered his father's trust in him, the sacrifices he had made for him, the pride he had taken in having a son who was a lawyer.

He could tell Peanuts Pianone about his father. But then you could tell Peanuts anything. Every day was a new world for Peanuts, and his spot on the Fox River police force was a triumph of nepotism. His uncle had taken the exams for him, the one who was now in Leavenworth. Peanuts was on a perpetual roving assignment, meaning he was to keep out of the way, take his check, and not bother anyone. Peanuts and Tuttle were fast friends.

“Fire her,” Peanuts said, when Tuttle told him he couldn't go to his office because Hazel was there.

“I don't like scenes.”

“Who's the boss?”

Good question, and not one he would want to put to a vote with Hazel in the room. So he kept clear of the office, going in when night had fallen to see what was new. There was a note on his desk, written in Hazel's unmistakable hand.

“Nice going, jackass!”

Well, what prophet was honored in his own country, or what lawyer in his own office? Thoughts of Amos Cadbury worried the edges of his mind. Ah well, you had to play the hand you were dealt.

Sitting in his unlit office as the sounds of night traffic lifted from below, Tuttle reviewed the situation, looking for some way to redeem his efforts. Stanley was out of the picture, poor devil, nailed by a hit-and-run driver, doubtless in his cups, probably both of them were. Through Peanuts, he had gotten the slim file on the case. No one seemed particularly anxious to pursue it, willing to write it off as the collateral damage of modern civilization. Then he thought of Stanley's widow.

He found the number in the book and dialed it. A man answered.

“Mrs. Collins, please.”

“Who is calling?

“This is Tuttle. The lawyer. I represented her husband in an effort to get at the inheritance that was left him.”

“Her husband?”

“Stanley.”

“I don't think she would want to talk to you.”

“Why don't we let her decide? Who is this?”

“A friend.”

Stanley had confided that his wife was running around with a dentist. That was why he wanted to unload her. Tuttle had not encouraged this at the time. He didn't handle divorces, a bargain with his sainted father who was a champion of hearth and home, God bless him. What was the name? Guinness? Powers?

“Is this Dr. Jameson?”

There was a significant silence. “How did you know that?”

“I told you I was Stanley's lawyer.”

An experienced angler could feel the tug on the line. Tuttle gave it a little jerk.

“Maybe the three of us should meet.”

“The funeral is tomorrow.”

“I will be there, of course.”

“Well…”

“See you then.”

He put down the phone and closed his eyes, breathing a prayer to his father, certain that it had been his inspiration that led him to remember the name Jameson. He had half a mind to leave a note for Hazel. He rejected the idea. He had run aground before by anticipating triumph. This time he would be Mr. Cool until the fish was landed. He put his feet on the desk, tipped his tweed hat over his eyes and drifted into sleep.

He was awakened by a shrill voice.

“Did you sleep here!”

Tuttle scrambled awake, setting his chair in motion. It shot away from the desk, hit the wall, and dumped him on the floor. He got to his feet.

“It's about time you got here.” He looked at his watch. “I have to get to a funeral.”