After Dill put down the phone, he turned to Singe and said, “Let’s go.”
She asked the ceiling, “I wonder why I said yes.”
Dill unlocked the door to the narrow stairway that led up to his dead sister’s apartment in the carriage house. The airless stairway was at least ten degrees hotter than the outside temperature, which seemed to be resting for the night at 91 degrees.
Followed by Anna Maude Singe, Dill went slowly up the stairs, unlocked the door on the small landing, went inside, and turned on the brass reading lamp. When Singe started to close the door, he said, “Leave it open.”
He went to the telephone, picked it up, and again called Jake Spivey. When Spivey himself answered, Dill said, “It’s me.”
“You get it worked out?”
“Well, I think it’s both neutral and reasonably secure.”
“Reasonably don’t cut it, Pick, but I’ve been thinking and, well, the Old Folks Home just might do. All we’d have to have is somebody on the stairs and at the elevator. My Mexicans can handle that. And I expect old Clyde’ll want Harley and Sid along, so what we’ll have is kind of a Mexican standoff, which’ll suit me just fine. What time you aiming for?”
“Ten tomorrow night.”
“When we gonna meet with the Senator?”
“He gets in at four tomorrow afternoon,” Dill said. “Why don’t you go out to the airport with me? I’m reserving them a suite at the Hawkins. We can all ride back together and talk in the car and then up in the suite.”
Spivey made a counterproposal. Dill had known he would. “Tell you what,” Spivey said. “Why don’t I come down at three and carry you out to the airport in my Rolls-Royce automobile? I’ve never known fancy to hurt none when you’re doing a deal like this.”
“Okay,” Dill said, “but no driver.”
“Boy, you sure like to explain things to us dumb ones, don’t you?” Spivey said and hung up.
Twenty-five minutes later they were in Anna Maude Singe’s living room, seated on the couch. She held a glass of Scotch and water and looked around the room as though seeing it for the very first time. “So,” she said, “this is where you’re going to do it — in the only home I’ve got.”
From the other end of the couch, Dill said, “Right here.”
“You still think those phone calls worked? What if neither of them were tapped? Where does that leave you?”
“I think my phone at the hotel is tapped,” Dill said. “And Jake’s is, I’m pretty sure. I’m positive — well, almost — that the phone in Felicity’s alley place is tapped. It must be by now. So whoever’s reading those taps will know Jake Spivey’s meeting here tomorrow night with Clyde Brattle. I don’t think they want that meeting to happen.”
“Why not?” she said.
“I think that’s what Corcoran found out. The why. I think that’s why he got killed.”
“But you’re not sure, are you?”
“No.”
She looked around the room again. “Something rotten’s going to happen, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Probably.”
“Here. I mean here in this room.”
“Yes.”
“What’re you going to do when it does?”
“I don’t know yet,” Dill said.
“Maybe you’d better start thinking about it.”
“Yes,” he said. “Maybe I’d better.”
Dill was up by seven the next morning, boiling water for instant coffee in Anna Maude Singe’s kitchen. He carried two mugs of it into her bedroom. She opened her eyes and sat up in bed, bare-breasted. Dill sat down on the edge of the bed, handed her one of the mugs, bent down, and kissed her right breast. She jerked the sheet up to her neck, sipped the coffee, and stared at a still life print on the far wall. Then she said, “I wonder what I’ll do when I’m disbarred.”
“You can come live in Washington for a while and when you get tired of that, we can go live somewhere else.”
She stared at him with amazement. “Why do you think I’d want to do that?”
“Because you’re my sweetie.”
“Don’t bank on it, Dill.”
At 7:49 on that morning of August 8, a Monday, Dill got stuck in the traffic near the intersection of Our Jack and Broadway. As he waited, he watched the digital time and temperature sign on the First National Bank go from 7:49 and 91 degrees to 7:50 and 92 degrees. The radio newsreader in a tired voice was predicting 106 degrees by 3 P.M.
After parking the Ford in the basement, Dill rode the elevator up to the lobby and stopped by the desk to see whether he had any mail or messages. He didn’t. The elderly woman he had taken for a permanent hotel guest was also at the desk. As she turned, she looked at him, hesitated, and then spoke.
“You’re Henry Dill’s boy, aren’t you?” she said in a soft voice.
“Yes, I am. Did you know him?”
“A long time ago,” she said. “I’m Joan Chambers.” She studied Dill for a moment or two. “You look like your father, you know. The same nose. The same eyes. He and I had a summer together once. It was 1940 — the next to last summer before the war. I sometimes think it was the last good summer ever.” She paused and then added, “I read about your sister. Felicity. I’m very sorry.”
“Thank you,” Dill said.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” a man’s voice said. The Chambers woman stepped back. Dill turned. The voice belonged to Captain Gene Colder. He was no longer wearing his blue jogging suit or his Nike running shoes. Instead, he wore a nicely pressed tan mohair suit, a foulard tie, and a blue shirt whose tab collar was held together by a gold pin. Colder was also freshly shaven, but there were circles under his eyes, and the expression around his mouth was grim.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said, apparently indifferent to the still-listening woman.
“Why?” Dill said.
“We know who killed your sister,” Colder said.
“And high time, too,” said the woman who had spent her last good summer with Dill’s father. Then she turned and walked away.
Chapter 32
At a corner table in the coffee shop of the Hawkins Hotel, Colder explained how it wasn’t his idea to inform Dill of the department’s findings. He had come, he said, only at the insistence of the chief of detectives, John Strucker. “I’ve been here since seven,” he added.
“Who killed her?” Dill said.
The waitress arrived at that moment and Colder ordered coffee, orange juice, and rye toast. Dill said he wanted only coffee. When the waitress left, Colder brought out a small flipback notebook and began to talk, not quite reading from his notes.
“A warrant was obtained from District Judge F. X. Mahoney at 11:57 P.M., Sunday, August 7. The warrant was served and a complete search was made of the premises at 3212 Texas Avenue, which are owned by Felicity Dill, deceased, and occupied by Harold Snow, deceased, the tenant, and by Lucinda McCabe, also a tenant and the deceased Snow’s common-law wife. The search was conducted by Detective Sergeant Edwin Meek and Detective Kenneth Lowe under the supervision of Captain Eugene Colder. Chief of Detectives John Strucker was also present.”
“Who killed her?” Dill said.
Colder didn’t reply. Instead, he started to read from the notebook again, but was interrupted by the waitress, who placed coffee in front of Dill and coffee and juice in front of Colder, informing him the toast would be along in a jiffy. Colder picked up the glass of orange juice and drank it down. Then he went back to the notebook.
“At approximately 12:41 A.M., a gray steel locked toolbox was discovered. The toolbox was hidden under and behind two bedspreads and three suitcases in the closet of the bedroom occupied by the deceased Snow and his common-law wife, McCabe. Upon questioning, McCabe insisted she had no idea how the toolbox had got in the closet.”