If I could afford one of those Bluegrass country homes, I’d never envy anyone who lived in New York. Not to mention Carmel, Cal., the Isle of Capri, anywhere you like on the Riviera. Or what have you.
When I woke up in Lovelawn’s west guest room next morning, my vista was a golden green sea of rippling corn, an emerald knoll where jet-black cattle browsed, a bronze mare and her nuzzling colt silhouetted against the sun on the crest. Prettier than Central Park. Much.
There was more to it than My Old Kentucky Home atmosphere, too. A shaving-kit the Syrian had set out in my private shower room. Tasty old ham with eggs goldenrod, corn cakes and country butter, clotted cream and coffee our breakfast chef should have taken a cue from — served in solitary splendor off Limoges china, by a Negress who had as much aplomb as any of our Gallic waiters.
I couldn’t understand how Tildy Millett would have been willing to give up all that. She’d have had to, of course; Dow Lanerd wouldn’t have been the type to move into any wife’s home.
The females of the household had petit déjeuner upstairs. The youngster’d been up for hours, was ky-hootin’ around the yard on a palomino pony, buckarooing all over the place.
I had seconds on old ham, made a note to ask Emile why we couldn’t get flavor like that on our menu, went over Nikky’s story, step by step.
It dovetailed neatly with the official version. Maybe too neatly. I’d stayed up half the night with her, trying to discover discrepancies. She’d had answers for everything.
Why’d she described the murderer’s suit as dark instead of cream-colored? To divert suspicion from “her baby’s” fiancé.
What reason could Tildy have had for claiming the man who killed Roffis looked like Roy Yaker, an acquaintance of Lanerd’s? Must have been because Yaker was the first person who’d come to Tildy’s mind, when I’d insisted on some description. The pollster’d been loitering around 21CC and the corridor with what Nikky diagnosed as lecherous intent. Once he’d been in the elevator with Tildy and managed to let his hand come into contact with her — Nikky illustrated with scornful distaste — her behind! Tildy’d ignored him. But she’d have remembered him, unkindly.
Nikky got peeved at my persistence.
She did add a few details. Which dropped into place snugly, too. For one, Tildy’d left Lanerd’s table at the Blue Blazer to phone Nikky, who was with her cousin Golub in Brooklyn. That’s why Nikky hadn’t been near her mistress at the time Gowriss shot the Grocer-boy. For another, Nikky was convinced Gowriss, or someone working for him, had tracked her down at the Narian house, sometime Sunday, in the belief Tildy’d confided in her maid even if she hadn’t told the D.A.’s men about Gowriss.
That would have been important, if true. It could have accounted for the blitz on Atlantic Avenue. But in that event, why did Tildy claim the guy who’d shattered my windshield had been the one who’d stabbed Roffis? The gent who could have been Yaker’s twin? I didn’t ask Nikky that.
I did ask her to plane to Manhattan with me in the morning. She refused. I had to bear down.
I told her Tildy was in the greatest possible danger; wasn’t going to be able to get to the Bluegrass right away; would need her friend and companion as never before. That didn’t work.
So I hollered cop. If she wasn’t going to come back to New York willingly to testify, I’d have no recourse except to have her held for extradition. Of course I couldn’t have done it. But she didn’t know that. She agreed sullenly.
Whether she thought she’d put over her yarn about Lanerd, or suspected I’d uncovered the truth, I couldn’t tell. She was a cool one. The Prosecutor’d have little luck trying to fluster her, if he got her on the stand.
While I finished that sumptuous breakfast, I wondered what she would admit, when it came right down to the courtroom.
I wandered out to the porch with the torn screen door. Castor and Pollux were agreeably noticeable by their absence.
“Whoopee-ti-yo,” I called as Tony hightailed ’round the corner. “Practicing to give Roy Rogers a run for his box office?”
“Uh, uh.” He brought the pony to a prancing stop. “I wouldn’t give a candy bar to be th’ best doggone cowboy there is. I wanna be a champion skater like Aunt Tildy. Ever see her do the sword dance? On ice?”
“She’s great.”
“Bet she is! She can do stunts Ev Chandler and Idi Papez can’t — an’ they’re tops, not countin’ Aunt Tildy.” He dismounted. “’Course in the summer I can’t practice, an’ Mamma says it takes an awful lot of practice. But Aunt Tildy’s goin’ to take me to New York when I pass my class-one test. I can do a Mohawk and a rocker pretty good, already.”
“That’ll be swell. You come stop at the hotel, when you get there.” That, I thought, was one invitation that might not be taken up for some time.
Nikky came out on the porch. She carried a small, cloth-covered suitcase.
Tony wailed, “You aren’t goin’ away again, Nikky!”
“I have to, Tony. I don’t want to. But I have to go back with this gentleman.” Her resentment hadn’t decreased a bit.
“You bring Aunt Tildy back with you, huh?” He could tell there was something disturbing going on.
“I hope so.” She ruffled his hair. “I hope I can bring her back. I’ll tell her how well you’re getting along with your riding. Let me see you gallop.”
He mounted, went pounding down the lane of oaks. Mrs. Marino came out. We got in her car, passed Tony almost at the gate. I waved good-by.
Nothing but polite chitchat on the way to the airport. Even winging north to Cincinnati, Nikky wasn’t inclined to conversation.
What did she know about “Seven for a secret”? She gave me an inscrutable Syrian stare. I even started her off with “One for sorrow, two for mirth.” She remained a sphinx.
When we’d changed planes, were kiting along at ten thousand over the Alleghenys, I did get one scrap of information. I wanted to know who might have been hunting her through Little Syria down on Washington Street.
She didn’t know. Couldn’t conjecture.
After she thought about it awhile, she said, “That Scotsman in the advertising agency. Jeff MacGregory. He was asking me, week or so ago, if I’d ever eaten in the Syrian restaurants. I told him once in a while I went there to get some shish kibbab or mehche with rice. He said perhaps he would see me there sometime.”
That was all. She didn’t elaborate. I didn’t comment. She went to sleep, or pretended to. I tried not to think of all the various kinds of trouble I could be in when we got to Manhattan.
There are always a brace of plain-clothes men on eagle-eye duty at the LaGuardia ramps; I thought we might be picked up on orders from Hacklin, as we came in. But nobody paid any attention to us. I was content not to have any loud huzzahs or dancing in the streets.
It was half past one when we climbed into a cab and headed for the city, nearly two when I left Nikky in the taxi with the meter clicking, while I descended to the broiling basement of the Finnish Baths.
Pud registered tremendous relief. “Am I glad you come back! I been havin’ one hell of a time with that tizzy you dump in my lap.”
“You have to tie him down with wet sheets?”
“Nah. No violence, whatsoever. It’s only this here is a healtherie,” Pud said, “not a nut house.”
I braced myself. “Cutting out paper dolls? Or what?”
“Nothin’ like that. He’s no trouble, akshally. But he’s blacked out. He can’t remember a thing. His name. His home. How he got here. Where he come by that shiner. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”