Andy staggered backward across half the room, landing with a jarring impact against the wall, his hand to the cheek on which Tully’s heavy fist had landed.
“Say anything like that about Ruth again and I’ll tear that filthy tongue of yours out by the roots.”
Tully stood rigid, fighting the steel band tightening about his chest. He kept watching the boy murderously, licking his torn knuckles.
Andy Gordon lurched away from the wall. There was a wild look in his eyes, a sort of crazed happiness.
Tully set himself for a brawl.
It failed to come. Instead, the boy grinned. “So I’m wrong about Ruth, huh? Man, you’re as blind as they make ’em.”
“I wasn’t kidding, Andy. You’d better get out of here now.”
“You’d rather not hear it, huh?”
In spite of himself, Tully growled, “Hear what?”
“While you were away upstate, she had a man calling her here. And he wasn’t anybody in our crowd, either.”
“You’re lying,” Tully said. “Or making something out of nothing.”
“Am I?” Andy Gordon laughed. “Let me ask you one question. I know the answer because I heard the newscast, but I don’t know if you did. What was the name of the guy they found shot in the Hobby?”
“Crandall Cox.”
“So you do know. Good enough! Now you listen to me, big man, because I’m going to give it to you good, where it’s going to hurt the most.” The young voice crackled with hate. “I was out for a drive with Sandra Jean a couple days ago when she said, ‘Let’s drop in on my sister and cheer the poor darlin’ up.’ So we dropped in. Your poor darlin’ wasn’t home. We helped ourselves to some of your liquor, and just then the phone rang. Sandra Jean told me to answer it, so I did. It was a man with a funny kind of voice — flat and sneery and like he talked out of the side of his mouth. A voice I never heard. He asked for Ruth — he didn’t say Mrs. Tully, Dave-boy, he used her first name. I said she wasn’t here and asked if he wanted to leave a message. He said, ‘I sure do,’ and the way he said it — well, ‘drooly’ would be the only word to describe it. And then he said, ‘Tell Ruth that Cranny called,’ and he hung up. Crandall Cox — Cranny; get it, Mr. Tully? Do you get it?”
Tully rubbed his eyes. He had an overwhelming wish to lie down and go to sleep and sleep on and on and on.
“Did you tell Sandra about the call?” Tully said.
“Why, sure,” Andy Gordon said gayly. “No secrets between us. But don’t worry, Dave, it’s all in the family. We won’t tell anybody... Say, you throw a pretty good punch, do you know?”
And, still grinning, the boy left.
5
Julian Smith’s office at police headquarters was as tidy as Smith himself. He nodded pleasantly to Tully and indicated a chair.
“Don’t bother to ask, Dave,” the lieutenant said. “The answer is we still haven’t found a trace of her.”
Tully sank into the chair. “When you phoned me to come right over, Julian, I was hoping—” Tully stopped without hope.
Smith filled two paper cups from a container of coffee and offered one to Tully.
“She hasn’t tried to contact you, Dave?”
He shook his head.
The lieutenant regarded him with sympathy. “Not much sleep last night, I take it.”
“Not much.”
“You look as if you could use some lunch.”
“I’m not hungry. Julian, why’d you call me?”
“We have a rundown on Crandall Cox.”
Tully set the paper down on the Homicide man’s desk; it was scalding his hand. He felt as if he weighed a thousand pounds. The headache still drummed between his temples.
“Have you linked Ruth to him?”
The detective said, “Not yet.”
“I told you,” Tully said. “It’s some nightmarish mistake.” Where was she? Running? Hiding?
Julian Smith glanced at him again, then picked up some papers from his desk. You’ll be interested to learn that Cox originally came from these parts.”
“Really?” It was just something to say.
“As a matter of fact, the name Cox rang a bell the minute I heard it. This fellow’s father, Crandall Cox Senior, owned a big hardware store where the Macklin department store now stands. He — the father, I mean — served a couple of terms on the City Council.”
“I don’t remember him.”
“It was a long time ago. Junior was the apple of his father’s eye — a rotten apple, as it turned out. Kicked out of school — he went to college here — wouldn’t go into the business, thought the world owed him a living; you know the type. When Cox Senior died and the store was sold, Junior ran through the estate in short order. Spent it mostly on women. Then his mother died. He had no other family here, so Cox liquidated what was left and lit out for bigger fields.
“Through his fingerprints, clothing labels, baggage and a few other leads we got a quick make on him from upstate and a few big cities in neighboring states. He was arrested and tried at least twice for extortion, once on a charge of blackmail, but no convictions.” Lieutenant Smith shrugged. “There’s probably a big book on him that’ll turn up when we’ve had more time to dig.”
“Sounds charming,” Tully said dully.
“Until comparatively recently Cox lived pretty well. Off women. Mainly middle-aged widows and well-heeled married women with busy husbands and too much time on their hands.”
Tully flushed at that, and Smith went on, looking through his window at the town’s main street. “About a year or so ago he began to go to pot physically — kidneys kicked up, an almost fatal pneumonia, a stomach ulcer, heart attack... He wound up in the charity ward of a city hospital, and we’re pretty sure he headed for here not long after he was discharged.
“Dave... I don’t think Cox came back to the old home town for sentimental reasons. He was sick and broke, and the way I figure it he had a pigeon here ready to pluck — some woman he could blackmail out of a lot of money. And she lost her head and killed him.”
“You mean Ruth,” Tully said.
“The shoe seems to fit, Dave.”
Tully swallowed the dregs of his coffee, crushed the paper cup and flung it at the window. Smith patiently picked it up, dropped it into his wastebasket and waited.
Tully’s skin was gray and his eyes looked as if they had been wiped with sandpaper.
“Thanks for nothing!” he said through his teeth.
“It may not be so bad, Dave. She’d certainly get the sympathy of a jury. Probably could even plead self-defense and get away with it. Why don’t you think it over?”
Tully laughed. “You think I’m hiding Ruth?”
“You’re head over heels gone on her, pal. It might have warped your better judgment.”
“This is one nightmare that seems to have no end.” Tully’s laugh was more like a bark. “What good would it do me to hide her, Julian?”
“You might be figuring on smuggling her out of the country — Mexico, South America, anywhere. Then turning your assets secretly into cash and slipping away to join her.”
“Julian, you can’t be serious—”
“Can’t I?” the detective said. “Item: We’re pretty good at looking for people. Ruth’s hiding in no back-street hotel in this town, believe me. Item: You cut short your visit upstate. Why, Dave?”
“I’d finished sooner than I’d expected. I’d only just got back to the house when you drove up and found me!”
“Or you left the capital two hours before you claimed. Figuring normal driving time, there’s still about two hours of your return trip we can’t account for, Dave. Maybe more, if you really pushed the Imperial.”