Willoughby ordered a draft beer and took it to a table in the corner. He wouldn’t stay for long but wanted to gather his thoughts and sift through ideas on how to proceed before heading home to dinner. He was having trouble accepting the conclusion that Scatcherd’s death was an accident but he had no physical evidence or witnesses to suggest otherwise. He wouldn’t draw any conclusions until he could review the medical examiner’s report tomorrow. Then, he thought about Scatcherd’s prior fall and wondered if he was wasting his time on a case where an accident-prone cripple has slipped one too many times.
Willoughby didn’t like Bellows which he admitted gave him some motivation to proceed but he wouldn’t let that affect his judgment. He realized that the archivist looked down on him, so they were even. He felt certain that Bellows was concealing something and it was most assuredly connected not just to Scatcherd but most likely to the Dumonts as well. And there was still the break-in at Meacham’s apartment to consider – right after his meeting with Scatcherd. Was there a connection?
Willoughby looked up and saw Pudge McFadden approaching. “Saw you come in, Hank. Looked like you were deep in thought so I left you alone. Busy day?” asked Pudge, sliding into the chair opposite the detective.
“Just trying to sort through a lot of conflicting information. I thought I might catch Woody. He knows about Scatcherd, right?”
Pudge chuckled. “Bad news travels faster than good news. He found out just as he was finishing up this afternoon when someone rushed in from the Torpedo Factory like the proverbial town crier. Woody hurried out of here like he was chasing a fire. Told me he was heading downtown. I couldn’t help teasing him but he just grinned like the Cheshire Cat. It’s gotta be a girl.”
Willoughby knocked down the remainder of his draft beer and rubbed a paw across his damp mustache. “I’ll stop by earlier tomorrow if I need to speak to him. Now, I can almost smell the pot roast simmering in the pressure cooker. It’s not wise to keep the little lady waiting.”
If there was anything suspicious about Scatcherd’s death, Willoughby wanted Woody to be informed. He didn’t want to put out a false alarm so gave no hint to Pudge. He would sleep on his suppositions with a full stomach.
THE BELGIAN TOURIST sat in a booth in the diner where he could watch the parking lot. Almost instinctively, he scouted the place until he found the rear exit sign. He laughed to himself. Some old habits, deeply ingrained ones, had been the difference between life and death for him during the war. They never faded away.
He saw the long white Cadillac with the jutting fins pull into the parking lot and watched with bemusement as the driver twisted the rear-view mirror into a vertical position. She appeared to be doing something to her eyes and then her nose. When she exited the car, he saw that Helga was wearing a long khaki-colored coat and a dark scarf pulled tight over her cheeks so that only a sliver of her face was revealed.
He shook his head and thought of the many elaborate disguises he had worn during the war. On numerous occasions, they had saved his life. If anyone had been tailing her, the ostentatious car would have been enough to give Helga Dumont away without the amateur clandestine attire.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:
Scatcherd’s Legacy
HELGA LOOKED EARNESTLY across the booth into the eyes of Siegfried Fuettener. She would never know that he had buried his name with some hapless soldier whose face had been shot off near the Belgian border. She had forgotten all of her resolve upon leaving New York City and couldn’t suppress her yearning for the dashing, enigmatic man who had captivated and seduced her while she was an eager and pliant teenage girl. She was certain that he was too cautious a man to have used his own name since leaving Germany and she also knew better than to ask him what identity he was using now. He was here to help and that was paramount.
Siegfried looked at Helga with an impenetrable gaze. It was only for a fleeting moment that he tried to picture what lay beneath the sagging jowls, the layers of powder, the rouge, the heavily-painted eyes. It would be a futile task to even attempt to uncover the vivacious girl with whom he had once been infatuated. It had been a gambol, a diverting romp, nothing more – and yet it had inextricably bound them together in the form of Barrington Dumont, the son he had never seen. To behold the boy, in the flesh, to talk to him and protect him if called upon, without revealing himself, for that would be imprudent, was what had brought him to Virginia. For the boy, he could tolerate Helga Brunner.
Helga had much to tell him since their recent rendezvous in New York City. There was Scatcherd’s death, the snooping detective, the failures of the effete Bellows and her theory that the writer turned bartender might possibly be a front man for some master extortionist or a political foe of Barrington. He listened intently and finally spoke. “Have your two men keep an eye on Bellows. It may be necessary to search his place and, if so, I will handle it. In the meantime, I will keep an eye on the detective and try to get close to this writer – this Woodrow Meacham guy.”
WILLOUGHBY WENT TO Scatcherd’s apartment building the next morning and knocked on the door marked “Manager”. A grizzled old man with strands of flailing white hair and wearing a faded sleeveless tee shirt cracked the door and looked warily at the detective. Willoughby flashed his badge and the old timer suddenly looked pleasantly surprised, throwing open the door like he was greeting the prize team from Publishers Clearing House.
“I suspect you’re here about that Scatcherd fellow?” he said, more like a statement of fact than a question. There was a twang to his voice and Willoughby guessed that he was from a small town in the Deep South. The manager’s lips hardly moved as he spoke. It was if his jaws had been almost wired shut and it was difficult for him to speak.
“That’s right. Are you the manager?” Willoughby asked. “Yep, and the owner, too. It was my Ma’s afore she passed and I inherited the place some years back. It was a boarding house for drifters and lay-abouts in those days. My Ma was a tough old bird but squeezing rents from that collection of blackguards was no picnic. As you can see, the place is respectable now. Yep, we’re one big happy family here. Hell, even got a highly-educated Limey living here. But not much longer, I’m a feared.” The Manager saw the puzzled look on Willoughby’s face and explained, “Real sickly Englishman. Just hope he don’t die in there,” the manager said, pointing across the hall as he spoke.
“I need to look around Scatcherd’s apartment,” Willoughby said. The Manager stared at the detective for a moment and then slapped his leg like he had just solved a complicated riddle and said, “Of course, you’re wanting the key. Just a second, detective.”
Scatcherd’s apartment was sparsely furnished and attested to a grim, barren existence for the deceased clerk. Besides the television, the only thing of value that Willoughby saw was a Polaroid camera sitting on the kitchen table. Otherwise, his search revealed nothing.
Willoughby went downstairs to return the key and quickly deflected the manager’s inquiry as to what he had found. “Next of kin?” asked Willoughby. “Not a clue, detective. He didn’t talk much, at least to me, and rarely got mail.” The City would be stuck with funeral costs if a family member or even a friend didn’t step up and Willoughby knew that the bosses would ask if he had made an effort. “Friends?” Willoughby asked, but the manager just scoffed. “Seeing how you’re all ‘family’ here, maybe you’d be willing to claim the body,” Willoughby suggested. All he got back was a dark glare.