“Kids in college do, I hear,” Singe said. “You knew him, didn’t you?”
“Eliot?”
“I’m sorry. I meant Ace Dawson.”
“Old Ace. Yeah, I knew Ace. The slickest article ever to come up the Yellowfork.” The old man cawed like a crow and Dill assumed he was chuckling. “He came up from Texas somewhere and I came up from Shreveport. I used to think they don’t make ’em like Ace anymore. I thought that until I met the boy who owns this place now. Where’d you ever meet Jake anyhow?”
“I haven’t yet,” Singe said.
The old man turned to Dill just as the Mexican gardener-houseman arrived with the drinks. “Spivey’s your pal then, huh, Dill?”
“That’s right,” Dill said, accepting his drink.
“Known him long?”
“Forever.”
“If you were me, would you do business with him?”
“What kind of business?”
“Politics maybe?”
“I think politics might be where Jake’s been heading all his life.”
The old man smiled his blue-lip smile. “That distant shore, huh?”
“Maybe.”
“Daddy,” Hartshorne Junior said.
“What?”
“I think we ought to thank Mr. Dill.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” The old man cocked his head and examined Dill. “Both Junior and I want to thank you for last night.”
“Last night?”
“For trying to save young Laffter’s life — you know, blowing in his mouth and all, you and that Press Club nigger waiter, what’s his name, Harry. I already called and thanked him. Seems the hospital made some damn-fool mistake and called the nigger after Laffter died. Well, it seemed like a mistake anyway until I heard Fred’d left the nigger everything.” He looked at his son. “You sure Laffter wasn’t a nancy boy after all?”
Hartshorne Junior frowned. “He left everything to Harry, Daddy, because Harry put up with him all those years. I told you that.”
“Well, you oughta know — about nancy boys anyway.” He turned to Dill and cackled again. “Junior never married for some reason. He’s been the town’s most eligible bachelor for about forty-five, forty-six years now. Right, Junior?”
Hartshorne Junior ignored his father and turned to Dill. “Anyway, Mr. Dill, we’d like to tell you how much we appreciate what you did.”
“How much do you really appreciate it?” Dill said.
Hartshorne Senior slowly removed his purple glasses and slipped on a pair of round horn-rimmed ones. Trifocals, Dill noticed. The old man tilted his head back and examined Dill through all three focal planes. The eyes behind the glasses looked bright and black and curiously young.
“What’s on your mind, Dill?”
“Why’d you run that story on my sister?”
The old man looked at his elderly son. “What story?”
The son frowned again. “Felicity Dill. Homicide detective. Murdered. Financial irregularities. Laffter’s last story.”
“Oh,” the old man said and stared at Dill. “You’re that Dill, huh? The brother. I should’ve added that up right away. But I still don’t understand your question.”
“Why did you run that story on my sister’s finances?”
“You thinking of suing?”
“No.”
“Wouldn’t do you any good. Nothing libelous in it. We got lawyers who see to that. And why shouldn’t I run it? You trying to say somebody tells me what to print and what not to print?” Before Dill could answer, the old man turned back to his son and said, “Why did we print that fucking piece anyhow?”
Hartshorne Junior was a plump man with a big round head and a small pink face. The fat on his right bare arm jiggled as he moved his glass up to his lips. His mouth was small and usually pursed as if it were about to say, “Oh-oh!” He wore yellow slacks and a bright-green short-sleeved shirt with the tail out. Except for his eyes, he didn’t look very much like his father. Hartshorne Junior’s eyes were also black and shiny, but they didn’t seem curiously young. They seemed terribly old. He sipped from his glass of white wine. When he put it back down on a glass-topped table, the fat on his right arm jiggled again.
“We ran the story,” he said slowly, “because we were asked to by the police.” He cleared his throat. “We frequently cooperate with the police, especially when they tell us it will aid their investigations. Almost every newspaper does.”
“In their investigation of what?” Dill said.
“Your sister’s death, of course,” Hartshorne Junior said. “And also the death of the man who was killed yesterday — the ex-football player.”
“Corcoran,” Dill said.
“That’s right. Corcoran. Clay Corcoran.”
“Mr. Hartshorne,” Anna Maude Singe said. Both father and son looked at her. “Jimmy Junior, I mean.” He smiled. “May I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Which cop told you to run it?” she asked in a cold flat voice.
Hartshorne Senior cackled again. “Now that’s the kind of question I like. Straight out. Right to the point. No futzing around. A question like that deserves an answer. Tell her, Junior. Tell her which cop told us to run it.”
Hartshorne Junior pursed his lips. “It was a request, not an order, Daddy.”
“Tell her.”
“It was Strucker,” Hartshorne Junior said. “Chief of Detectives Strucker.”
Hartshorne Senior looked at Dill. “You gonna take it up with him, with Strucker? Maybe ask him why?”
“I might.”
“He’s here, you know.”
“Strucker?”
“Yep. Last time I saw him — wasn’t more’n half an hour ago — he was heading for a parley with your pal, Jake Spivey. In the library.” The old man looked toward the pool. “That’s Mrs. Strucker over there,” he said. “The one in the black suit.”
Dill looked and saw a tall, dark-haired woman poised on the edge of the pool at its deep end. He thought she looked about forty. She dived cleanly into the water. It was an expert dive.
“Fine-lookin’ woman,” Hartshorne Senior said. “Her husband and Jake’re in there talking politics.”
“We plan to join them later,” Hartshorne Junior said.
“Talk about the chief’s future,” his father said and turned to watch Mrs. Strucker climb up out of the pool. He turned back to Dill. “What would you say is the most important thing a wife can bring to a man’s political campaign?”
“Money,” Dill said.
The old man nodded his agreement and again turned to look at Mrs. Strucker. “And she’s got just about all there is.”
“Some time back,” Dill said, “maybe a year ago, you killed a story Laffter wrote about my sister. He said it was a harmless girl-detective feature. Why’d you kill it — if you did?”
The old man was still staring at Mrs. Strucker. “I reckon you’d better ask the chief about that, too, Mr. Dill.”
Chapter 29
The foursome was broken up by the arrival of the Mexican houseman-gardener (and putative butler), who asked Dill if he would please join Señor Spivey in the biblioteca. The notion of Jake Spivey having a butler to send with an invitation for a meeting in Senor Spivey’s very own library struck Dill as funny, but no one else even smiled, not even Anna Maude Singe, who said she thought she’d go for a swim and started unbuttoning her blouse. Hartshorne Junior said he thought he’d circulate. Hartshorne Senior cawed again and said he thought he’d take a nap as soon as Anna Maude got through shucking off the rest of her clothes.
Dill followed the houseman-gardener. They went past the spot in the garden where the three Mexicans had been digging Friday. Dill now saw that what they had been digging was an immense barbecue pit. A quarter side of beef was roasting over a bed of hickory coals. The spare ribs from at least three or four hogs were cooking on a grill. A big iron pot of sauce simmered off to one side. The chef was an elderly black with white hair who seemed to know what he was doing. The smell of the cooking meat made Dill ravenous.