“All right, so-a couple of hours before he passed out, Wildman was a perfect gentleman. I should explain that I asked for his help in finding you this afternoon.”
We went through what was now becoming a ritual exchange of apologies. I thanked him for visiting my dad and mowing the lawn.
“I told your aunt not to tell you about that,” he said testily.
“She’s my great-aunt, and she probably thought you were too young to give her orders. Did you tell her your name?”
“Of course I did!”
“She’s also a troublemaker,” I muttered.
“Kelly, no wonder you are as you are. All this uppity-woman stuff is inherited, I see. You haven’t a chance.” He shrugged. “Or perhaps it’s the rest of us who haven’t a chance.”
“True. Aunt Mary says you can tell a Kelly woman anything but where to sit and when to shut up.”
“What have you been up to this afternoon, my fine young renegade?”
“I went to the barbershop.” I told him what I had heard about Griffin Baer.
“Good work,” he said.
“Thanks, but I don’t know if what he told me is true.” I told him about the house. “It doesn’t seem well situated for bootlegging.”
“It’s not as unlikely as you may think. Those old houses have tunnels that lead from their basements to the bluffs. Most of them are sealed off now, but in the twenties they would have been functioning.”
“But wouldn’t just having one of those tunnels make the prohibition agents suspicious of you?”
He smiled and said, “I was only five when Prohibition was repealed, you know.”
“I know you didn’t fight in the Civil War, either. But did Jack or Helen or anyone else ever talk to you about it?”
“From what I’ve been told, almost all of the homes along the bluff had them, and the owners always claimed that they were just a convenient way to get to the beach or take small sailboats out on the water. The government never put enough money into hiring federal prohibition agents, and locally, there were certain cops and judges who were getting protection money to shield the bootleggers.”
“So the town had speakeasies and all of that?”
“Of course. And there was the gambling ship.”
“Gambling ship?”
“A big ship that was anchored offshore, with a sign on its side telling people where they could get speedboats to come out to her. There were a number of ships that were moored between the coast and Catalina in those years, run by gangsters. They sold booze out there, too. The one off Las Piernas caught fire and burned.”
“I didn’t realize Las Piernas had such a wild history.”
“No better or worse than most cities its size.”
“So I should walk along the beach and try to find a tunnel exit?”
“You could, I suppose.”
I told him about the meeting I had arranged with Max Ducane and Lefebvre. “Do you want to join us? I think it would be good to have you there, since you saw the house the night of the murders.”
He hesitated, then said, “Sure.”
We talked about what we’d do for the next set of stories. He showed me what he was working on-an interview he had done with Auburn Sheffield this afternoon about the trust and why he had taken on Warren’s unusual request. O’Connor had asked Auburn how he felt about it now that the coroner had identified the true Max Ducane’s remains.
“While I feel the deepest sympathy for Lillian Vanderveer,” Auburn had said, “and for Warren Ducane-assuming he may learn of these recent discoveries-I have absolutely no regrets regarding the trust. It is being given to a young man in whom Warren took a sincere interest, a young man who will, I am certain, bring honor to the memory of the Ducanes.”
“This fits really well with what I’ve been working on,” I said. I waited as he read what I had written about Max. He gave me some useful feedback about it-he was right, I needed to pull back a bit.
“I have too much sympathy for him, I guess,” I said, and told him some of the things Max had said to me off the record.
“Even if it hadn’t been off the record, you were smart to leave all that out, especially since we’ve no quotes from Mr. Yeager. Not that I doubt for a moment that he abused his first wife.” He paused, then added, “It’s not bad to feel sympathy. Reporters who pretend they are objective, above-it-all recorders of the truth are lying to both their readers and themselves, and that lie can be found everywhere in their stories. They often develop a kind of cynical disdain for everyone and everything they write about. Cynicism is just another way to lose objectivity.”
“But you can’t just be a sap, either,” I said glumly.
“No. It’s what degree of that sympathy ends up in the story that you need to watch, especially if you haven’t balanced it with the other side of the tale. If I hadn’t caught that, H.G. or John would have, but in time you’ll be able to catch it yourself, long before it ends up on the page.”
My phone rang. It was Lefebvre.
“Do you know where Bijoux is?”
“The jewelry store on Third Street?” I asked.
“Yes. Can you meet me there in twenty minutes?”
“Hang on.” I covered the phone and told O’Connor about the request.
“I take it he’s not buying you a ring?”
“Yes, for me to put through your nose, if they’ve got one that big.”
“Go,” he said, laughing. “Take advantage of Lefebvre’s cooperative mood while it lasts.”
“But deadline-”
“I’ll polish the story a bit, add what I have from Auburn, and turn it in- if that’s all right with you.”
I told Lefebvre I’d be right there. I thanked O’Connor, grabbed my camera, and took off.
I was closer to the store than Lefebvre was-the police department used to be headquartered nearer to the newspaper, but they had moved to a newer and bigger facility in the 1960s, generally regarded as one of the ugliest buildings in Las Piernas, and not just by those brought to it in the back of a squad car.
Lefebvre greeted me, then looked up at the store and said, “I’m told Mr. Belen is a diamond expert, and the most reliable jeweler in town.”
“I don’t know about that, but Bijoux has been around forever.”
“As if you would have any sense of forever,” he said. “Bijoux, eh?”
“It’s hard for most of the locals to say it,” I said. “I’ve actually heard it pronounced ‘buy jocks.’ You, however, make it sound exotic.”
“I was just thinking that it is a bit plain,” he said. “In French, the word means ‘jewelry.’”
“So are we here to get the Vanderveer diamonds cleaned?”
He smiled. “And I had thought to surprise you.”
“I couldn’t think of any other reason you would invite me to come to a jewelry store.”
“Why, to get a ring for O’Connor’s nose,” he said, holding the door open for me.
“Next time, I’m using the hold button,” I said, and entered the store.
“Speaking of putting things on hold,” he said, following me, “I need you to hang on to the information you hear today. Not run it in a story until I let you know that we can release it. Can you promise me that?”
I tested his resolve on this a bit and found that he wouldn’t budge, so I agreed, with conditions. “If you’ll promise me in return that you won’t wait just for the fun of it,” I said. “Oh-and if I can get this information any other way-”
“You can’t,” he said. “But yes, I agree to your conditions.”
Mr. Belen was an elderly man with a charming accent of his own-one I couldn’t quite place. He had some photographs in hand.
“Mr. Belen is Mrs. Linworth’s jeweler,” Lefebvre said. “Before she gave the necklace to her daughter, she asked Mr. Belen to clean the diamonds and repair any loose settings. Today he told me that he photographed his finished work.”
“Yes, I did,” Belen answered. He sighed. “I’m so sorry that the next time it was seen was under such terrible circumstances. I knew Miss Kathleen. A lovely girl.”