Requiem for a Realtor (12 page)

“Your own by the looks of you.”

Tuttle had an electric razor in his desk that if used carefully was safe. It did have a way of grabbing hold of whiskers and not letting go. He plugged it in and turned it on. A whining sound filled the office.

“You need a shower,” Hazel said.

“I don't have time.”

“Whose funeral?”

“Stanley Collins's.”

“Your late client.” Hazel spoke with disdain.

“I am now in contact with the widow.”

Hazel was impressed despite herself.

“What good is she?”

“The heir of the heir.”

“What time is the funeral?”

“Ten.”

“Go home and clean up. I'll drive you…”

But Tuttle got past her and into the outer office. “My car is parked on the street.”

“If it hasn't been ticketed and towed.”

Hazel specialized in worst-case scenarios. Tuttle skipped down the stairs of his elevatorless building and got to his car just as a meter maid was beginning to write out a ticket. She was what was once described as a tomboy. She took off her uniform cap to reveal a crew cut. She scowled as Tuttle explained to her that he was an officer of the court on official business.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I've got to run. Look. Go up to my office and talk to my secretary Hazel. She will explain.”

“What's your name?”

Tuttle flashed an old police ID Peanuts had given him. “Hazel will explain.”

He was in the car and behind the wheel now. He turned the key and the motor failed to start. Tuttle sent up a prayer to his father, tried again, and the motor coughed into life.

“Tuttle & Tuttle,” he said to the meter maid. “Hazel will take care of everything.”

If those two went mano a mano, Tuttle didn't know where he would lay his bet.

He pulled away from the curb and was nearly sideswiped by a passing car that followed its complaining horn down the street. Tuttle got into traffic and headed home for a restorative shower. You couldn't really be late for a funeral. It would run at least an hour, and it wasn't nine-thirty now.

As he drove he remembered the despair he had felt when he first got the news of Stanley Collins's death. One more golden opportunity receded from his grasp. He had bared his soul to the uncomprehending Peanuts, therapy of sorts, and then, later, at his desk, inspiration had come. And he had acted on it immediately. Sometimes he surprised himself. Somewhere his father was looking on benignly.

12

Shirley Escalante had been office manager for Sawyer and Collins for more than a year, hired after Mrs. Sawyer stopped working, and every other day she had thought of quitting. The place was a madhouse, largely because of the incessant civil war conducted by the two partners, each of whom tried to enlist her on his side in the struggle. It was hard to figure out what the quarreling was about. George did commercial property and Stanley domestic, and never the twain did meet. They were not competing with one another, the one's success was no skin off the nose of the other, but the bickering went on. Or backbiting. Most of it was conducted while the enemy was elsewhere and Shirley was the addressee of the latest grievance.

“He been in?” George Sawyer would say.

“I just spoke to him on the phone.”

“Where was he calling from?”

“He didn't say.”

“I'm not surprised.”

A significant look. Shirley retained her neutrality. What was he getting at?

But the calls from Mrs. Collins were worse. Stanley always signaled that he did not want to talk to her, and Shirley was reduced to telling lies no one would have believed.

“He just stepped out.”

“Stepping out is what he does best.”

What could she say? Even before she met Phyllis Collins there had been these veiled accusations against her husband. When Phyllis appeared in the office Shirley could scarcely believe her eyes. The photograph of her behind Stanley's desk was a studio portrait, delicately lighted, depicting a lovely woman with a dreamy look. In the flesh, Phyllis was something else entirely. She must have bought her clothes in the college coed section—everything that she wore was wrong. And her hair! Shirley had half a mind to give her a good shampoo and comb her hair out the way that it was in the studio portrait. Stiletto heels, miniskirt, that crazy hair—what was she trying to do?

“I'll wait in his office,” she said, when it was clear that showing up unannounced had not enabled her to surprise her husband.

It was like a sit-in. Two hours she was in there, with the door closed, and when Stanley came in. Following a late lunch, Shirley was on the phone and didn't have a chance to warn him. He seemed puzzled that his door was shut, but he opened it and went in. Then all hell broke loose, she screeching, he yelling, it was awful. Shirley went down the hall to the ladies' and had a cigarette and then another, but they were still at it when she came back. But now George Sawyer stood outside the closed door, grinning at the battle going on in George's office.

“The wronged wife,” he said, chuckling.

But Shirley's sympathy was with Stanley, and George Sawyer's attitude decided where she was on the war between the partners.

“This place is a madhouse,” George said after five minutes and left.

Finally the door opened, and Mrs. Collins appeared. She slammed the door shut behind her and glared at Shirley as if resenting her youth and good looks. She looked her up and down and was about to say something but then changed her mind. She couldn't have much voice left anyway after all that screaming.

Silence descended on the office after she was gone. Shirley kept glancing at the closed door of Stanley's office.

When he came out he was his unaltered self, smiling, breezy, devil-may-care. He said not a word about the family quarrel he must know she had heard. She admired him for his reticence, it was a classy way to handle it, and besides she was relieved that she did not have to respond to anything he might have said about his wife's visit.

“George isn't here?”

“He left.”

He thought about that but didn't pursue it. Another point in his favor. If she could have thought of some acceptable way to do it, Shirley would have expressed her sympathy.

Such memories flooded her mind as she sat in a pew at St. Hilary's during the funeral Mass for her late employer. How long had it been since she had been to Mass? The grim reminder that Stanley had met the end that awaits us all, if not so violently, turned her mind to the religious faith that had shriveled and almost died. In the front pew, Phyllis Collins, all in black and, for a change, not dressed like a college girl, seemed to be weeping throughout the ceremony. The tall man in the pew behind her looked familiar, and then Shirley realized it was Dr. Jameson, the dentist to whom she owed her winsome smile. Throughout adolescence, Shirley had avoided smiling, not wanting to reveal the uneven teeth that gave her an almost Halloween look. She had seen a Jameson ad and resolved that she would have her teeth straightened, no matter that she was then twenty-two years old. She had gone ready to be told she must wear braces for years, with rubber binders holding it all together, and flash metal whenever she opened her mouth. She remembered kids like that. Jameson had laughed away her fears.

“No more, my dear. Not even your boyfriend will notice.”

And he wouldn't have, if she had had one, but after Jameson had done his magic, Shirley's life was transformed. Men noticed her, women appraised her, she accepted every date she was offered. How absurd it all seemed. She was what she had always been but a few straightened teeth had changed everything. Beauty is only skin deep, and hers was by the skin of her teeth. She got her degree and landed the job with Sawyer and Collins and stopped responding to the attentions of random males. Shirley noticed that Bridget, Dr. Jameson's nurse, was in the church for the funeral of Stanley Collins.

George Sawyer was there, too, with his wife Susan, and there were a lot of old people, too. The priest who said the Mass and gave the sermon had a beautiful voice. Maybe, if she started practicing her religion again, Shirley would come here to St. Hilary's. It came as a surprise to find that Stanley was Catholic. Was George Sawyer too? Well, neither of them would have suspected that she was a cradle Catholic, so who was she to throw the first stone?

Outside, afterward, because of where she had parked, she found herself directed into the procession that was headed for the cemetery. She thought she could turn off along the way, but the chance never came. They were let through intersections with red lights and kept moving right along, so Shirley stayed with it.

At the cemetery, she did not get too close to those standing around the burial plot. In church, she had hardly noticed the coffin in which Stanley lay. Now it was inescapable that he would be lowered into the ground and earth piled over him. A little gasp escaped her, and she began to cry.

When things broke up, George Sawyer saw her, came and touched her arm, and nodded. That was all. He seemed a little embarrassed by her teary eyes. As she went back to her car, a huge man caught up with her.

“I'm Lieutenant Horvath. I understand you worked for Stanley Collins.”

“I'm the office manager of Sawyer-Collins.”

“I wonder if we could have a little talk.”

Good Lord, was it her smile? He seemed to read her mind.

“About Collins. I'm looking into the way he died. Just routine. But maybe you could help me.”

“But why?”

“Someone killed him, didn't they?”

“He was hit by a car.”

“That's what I mean. You busy now?”

What could she say? The office was closed for the day, out of respect. After what had happened to poor Mr. Collins, she had half a mind to leave the agency, but despite everything it was the best job she had ever had, and she had decided to stay on and see what it would be like without Stanley Collins there.

13

Tuttle had called Peanuts when he got out of the shower, and the two had gone to the funeral in a squad car. Peanuts said he would wait, so Tuttle went into the church alone. He was late, but that was all right. The sermon was just ending, and the rest was quick. Afterward, he wandered up and down the side aisle, against the grain of the departing congregation, showing the flag. He made sure Jameson saw him, and the widow, having convinced himself that they represented his ticket out of penury. He hung around on the steps outside, managing to catch the eye of the widow, and then went to the squad car and woke up Peanuts.

“How about the Great Wall? My treat.”

Peanuts started the car, and they were off. The prospect of Chinese always galvanized Peanuts.

Later, with a table filled with exotic dishes, he told Peanuts all about Stanley's inheritance and the new plan to represent the widow. It was like talking aloud to himself, but not a waste of time, since it gave him a chance to put his thoughts in order.

The time he had spent studying the probated will of Frederick Collins had proved worthwhile. No wonder the man didn't kill himself selling real estate with the prospect of a bundle when he turned fifty. That still might be years away, but it was like knowing you were going to win the lottery. He had followed Collins around for a while before volunteering himself as counsel, trying to take the measure of the man. Collins's life seemed to consist of long lunches and many evenings on the town. The Rendezvous was a favorite and the singer there, Wanda Janski, was wonderful. Tuttle had kept out of eyesight of Collins, nursed a Dr Pepper, and wallowed in the sentimental ballads that brought back a youth Tuttle had never had. When Wanda sang “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” Tuttle didn't mind the reek of liquor and clouds of cigarette smoke in the Rendezvous. Wanda's rendition of “You Belong to Me” made Tuttle glad for the dimness of the Rendezvous, no need to conceal the fact that he was bawling like a kid.

Tuttle's father had crooned these songs to his mother in the kitchen when the two of them did the dishes. He had sung them in the shower. He had hummed them in Mrs. Tuttle's ear and the two of them had snuggled like adolescents on the davenport while Tuttle beamed in approval. Had anyone had a happier childhood than he? Love songs stirred no personal romantic chord in Tuttle's heart; they brought back his parents and the house where there was love and not much else, since his father was only a letter carrier. Listening to Wanda was like being back in that crummy wonderful apartment on the south side with his father belting out one ballad after another. Those songs proved the entree to Stanley Collins.

“Haven't I seen you in the Rendezvous?” Tuttle said when he got past Shirley and into Collins's office.

“I don't know.”

“Whatshername, Wanda. What a singer. I could listen to her all night.”

“Lots of people do. What can I do for you?”

“I'm a lawyer. I came across your father's will down at the courthouse.”

“What the hell did you do that for?”

“I just came upon it, in the course of research on another case. I hope you are drawing on the interest of the money your father gave you?”

“I don't get you.”

So Tuttle had laid it out for him. Collins hadn't got a dime of his father's money yet, and Tuttle characterized that as damned near criminal.

“Amos Cadbury is a very shrewd lawyer, and I would wager he has made the principal grow dramatically.”

For an alleged businessman, Stanley Collins was a babe in the woods. Had he thought his father's money was in a tin box, no more now than when he had left it for his son when he reached his fiftieth birthday? Apparently he had. And the prospect of tapping into it now was obviously welcome, plus the fact that he saw that he had been treated pretty shabbily by Amos Cadbury for nearly twenty years. Tuttle left the office as Collins's lawyer in the matter.