Mrs. Strucker held out a hand. Dill found she had a firm strong grip and a firm strong voice that said, “I thought it was a beautiful dive.”
Dill thanked her and sat down next to Singe, who was seated crosslegged on a large towel. Mrs. Strucker was in a chair made out of aluminum tubes and plastic webbing. She had long tanned solid-looking legs, not quite heavy hips, a very small waist, large firm-looking breasts, and magnificent shoulders. An abundance of ink-black hair was piled up on top of her head. Below it was a bold face: high-cheekboned and black-eyed and wide-mouthed. There was also a touch of the hawk in her nose, an attractive touch, and Dill wondered if she’d had some Indian ancestors and how she had come to be so rich. He guessed her age at forty-three, although she could easily shave five years off that should the need arise. Chief of Detectives Strucker, he decided, had married well.
Singe said, “I was telling Mrs. Strucker—”
Mrs. Strucker interrupted. “Dora Lee, please.”
“Right. I was telling Dora Lee here how you and Jake Spivey go back years.”
“Eons,” Dill said.
Singe grinned. “How long’s an eon anyway?”
“Two or more eras, I believe,” Mrs. Strucker said, and since that had a faintly geological ring to it, Dill decided she must have made her money in oil. Or her ex-husband had. Or her father. Or somebody. She smiled and added, “Which is quite a while.”
“That’s about how long I’ve known Jake,” Dill said. “Quite a while.”
“Has he always been so — well, so damned optimistic?” Mrs. Strucker asked.
Dill made a small gesture that took in the pool and the house and the grounds. “Maybe he’s got good reason to be,” he said with a smile. “It’s the Micawber syndrome. Something’s bound to turn up, and for Jake it always does and always has.”
“You don’t sound in the least envious, Mr. Dill — or Ben, if you don’t mind sudden old-pal familiarity.”
“Not at all,” Dill said. “I mean, I’m not at all jealous of Jake and I don’t at all mind being called Ben.”
“I’ve noticed,” she said, “that one old friend’s good fortune is sometimes another old friend’s despair.”
“You’re probably right,” Dill said. “When somebody you know fails, your immediate reaction is, Thank God it’s him and not me. But when somebody you know succeeds, it’s, Why him, Lord, and not me? But as for Jake — well, I think of Jake as sort of a walking miracle: you don’t quite believe it, but you sure as hell hope it’s true.”
“You’re very fond of him, aren’t you?”
“Of Jake? Let’s say Jake and I understand each other and always have. It goes a little beyond fondness.”
“Johnny — that’s my husband — says Jake Spivey’s the smartest man he ever met.”
“I’m not sure what your husband means by smart. I think Jake may be the shrewdest man I ever met, the most cunning, the most—”
“Wily?” Singe suggested.
“And the most wily.”
Mrs. Strucker examined Dill carefully, a half-smile on her lips. “I also have the feeling that you trust him implicitly.”
Before Dill could tell her she was dead wrong, Jake Spivey’s voice boomed from twenty feet away. “Who’s that pretty little half-naked thing there that nobody’s introduced me to yet?”
Dill turned and said, “She’s not so little.”
When Spivey reached them, he grinned down at Anna Maude Singe and said, “By God, you’re right, Pick, she ain’t.”
“Jake Spivey,” Dill said, “meet Anna Maude Singe, my sweetie.”
“Sweetie!” Spivey said. “Damned if you don’t use old-timey words.” He was still grinning down at Singe. “You know what he calls me sometimes? He calls me a brick, except you gotta listen real close to make sure how he’s pronouncing it.” Spivey shifted his grin to Mrs. Strucker. “How you doing, Dora Lee?”
“Quite nicely, Jake; thank you.”
“Well, that’s fine. We’re gonna eat in about thirty minutes so lemme know if there’s something you all need.”
“There is one thing,” Singe said.
“What’s that, darlin’?”
“If I stand on my head and eat a bug, will somebody give me a tour of your house?”
Spivey cocked his head and smiled down at her. “You grow up rich or poor, Anna Maude?”
“Sort of poor.”
“Then I’ll give you Jake Spivey’s personally escorted poor folks, lawdy-lookit-that tour of the Ace Dawson mansion.”
Singe rose quickly to her feet. “No kidding?”
“No kiddin’.” He turned to Dill. “By the way, Pick, that fella you wanted to see. I think he’s waiting for you in the library.”
“Thanks.”
Spivey turned back to Singe. “Let’s go, sugar.”
Chief of Detectives Strucker didn’t smile or even nod this time when Dill, dressed again in shirt and slacks, came into the library. Strucker was seated in front of Spivey’s large desk and Dill, for a moment, thought of sitting behind it, but immediately discarded the idea as silly. Strucker was also wearing casual clothes — an expensive dark-blue sport shirt, ice-cream slacks, and a pair of new-looking Top-siders with thick-ribbed white socks. Dill thought Strucker wore the outfit like a new and uncomfortable uniform.
As soon as Dill sat down in the other chair in front of the desk, Strucker said, “Your sister was on the take.”
Dill said nothing. The silence grew. They stared at each other and the older man’s gaze somehow managed to be both impassive and unforgiving. It was the gaze of someone who had long ago determined the real difference between right and wrong — and who should get the blame. It was a gaze without pity. It was the law’s gaze. Finally, Dill said, “How much?”
Strucker looked up at the ceiling as if trying to do a difficult sum in his head. He also fished a cigar from his shirt pocket. “In eighteen months,” he said, and lit the cigar with a wooden match. “Give or take a week.” He made sure the cigar was going well. “We figure ninety-six thousand two hundred and eighty-three dollars passed through her hands.” He waved the match out and dropped it into an ashtray on Spivey’s desk. “About one-two-five-o a week or a little less if you wanta average it out.” He paused to reexamine the cigar’s burning tip. “We also know where some of it went: on the duplex; on the insurance policy she took out; the rent for that other place she had — the garage apartment — but there’s still about fifty thousand missing.” He puffed on the cigar. “The fifty grand’s kind of interesting.”
Dill nodded. “It’s just about what she’d’ve needed for the balloon payment.”
“Just about.”
“Why’d you feed all that crap about her to the Tribune and then make damn sure they ran it?”
Strucker shrugged. “Publicity is often the most useful tool in any investigation. You know that, Dill.”
“Old Fred Laffter told me he wrote a harmless cutesy feature about Felicity some time back. They say you killed it. Why?”
Again, Strucker shrugged. “We thought it was premature, that’s all. That it might’ve done her more harm than good.”
“Whose pad was she on?”
“We don’t know.”
“Why was she killed?”
“We don’t know that either, and before you ask me who killed her, or what she was doing to earn her one-two-five-o a week, I’ve got to remind you this is an ongoing homicide investigation and there’s not much more I can tell you than I’ve told you already.”
“Tell me how Clay Corcoran’s death is tied in with my sister’s.”
“It isn’t.”
“Bullshit.”
“Bullshit,” Strucker said thoughtfully, much as if he had just stumbled across a new and interesting synonym. “Well, here’s some more of it: Corcoran was killed with a twenty-five-caliber softnosed slug at a range of approximately twelve yards. I’m surprised the hole in his throat wasn’t bigger than it was. I’m even more surprised that whoever shot him hit him. He must’ve been the best fucking shooter in the world if, in fact, he was aiming at Corcoran.”