"Nah. She just thinks I'm cute."
"With a puss like you got?" Tony muttered as I walked away.
Eve Colgate's mouth smiled as I put her drink on the scarred tabletop. Her eyes were doing work of their own. They were the palest eyes I'd ever seen, nearly colorless. They probed my face, my hands, swept over the room around us, followed my movements as I drank or lit a cigarette. When they met my eyes they paused, for a moment. They widened slightly, almost imperceptibly, and I thought for no reason of the way a dark room is revealed by a lightning flash, and how much darker it is, after that.
I smoked and let Eve Colgate's eyes play. I didn't meet them again. She took a breath, finally, and spoke, with the cautious manner of a carpenter using a distrusted tool.
"I'm not sure how to begin." She sipped her brandy. If I had a dollar for every client who started that way I could have had a box at Yankee Stadium, but there was a difference. They usually said it apologetically, as if they expected me to expect them to know how to begin. Eve Colgate was stating a fact that I could take or leave.
"I called you on a matter difficult for me to speak about. I don't know you, and I don't know that I want you closely involved in my—in my personal affairs. However, I don't seem to have many options, and all of them are poor you may be the best of them."
"That's flattering."
She looked at me steadily. "Don't be silly. I can't pretend to welcome the intrusion you represent. I'm too old to play games for the sake of your pride, Mr. Smith. I may need you, but I can't see any reason to be pleased about it."
I couldn't either, so I let it go.
She went on, her words clipped. "However, things are as they are. At this point, Mr. Smith, I'd like to know something more about you. All I have up to now are other people's opinions, and that's not enough. Is this acceptable?"
"Maybe. It depends on what you want to know."
"I'll tell you what I do know. I know you bought Tony's father's cabin ten years ago. You come up here irregularly, sometimes for long periods. Tony says you're moody and you drink. Other than that he speaks very highly of you. I understand you helped get his brother out of serious trouble recently—and went to considerable trouble to do it."
"The kid deserved a chance. He was in over his head in something he didn't understand. I bought that cabin twelve years ago. I sleep in the nude."
She looked at me sharply over her brandy. Her movements were small and economical. In contrast to her eyes, her body was composed and still.
"And are you always rude to your clients?" she asked.
"More often than I'd like to be." I refilled my glass from Tony's bottle. "I've been a private investigator for sixteen years, twelve in my own shop. Before that I was carpenter. I've been to college and in the Navy. I drink, I smoke, I eat red meat. That's it."
"I doubt it," said Eve Colgate. "Have you a family, Mr. Smith?"
I took a drink. "I had."
"But no longer?"
"I'm hard to live with."
"Was your wife also hard to live with?"
"Her second husband doesn't think so."
"And children?"
That was territory where no one went. I drank, put my cigarette out. "Look, Miss Colgate, you called me. I can use the work, but not the inquisition. I gave you references; call them if you want, ask about me."
"I have." She didn't continue.
"Well, that's all you get."
We drank in silence for a while. Eve Colgate's eyes never rested. They swept the room, probing the corners, counting the bottles on Tony's shelves. They inspected the cobwebs at the raftered celling. Every now and then, unpredictably, they returned to me, settling on my face, my hands, taking off again.
"Yes," she said suddenly, draining her glass. "You'll do. I'll expect you tomorrow morning. Do you know where I live?"
"You'll expect me to do what?"
"Some—things were stolen from me. They're worth a good deal of money; and yet they're not as valuable to the thief as they are to me. I want them back."
"The police are good at that sort of thing."
Her eyes flashed. "I'm not a stupid woman, Mr. Smith. If I'd wanted the police involved I would have called them."
"Why haven't you?"
She stood. So did I. "I don't want to discuss it here. If, after I tell you what I need done, you don't want to do it, I'll pay you for your time and your trip. Thank you for the drink, Mr. Smith." She walked from the room, her back straight, her steps measured.
When the door shut behind her the bar was the same as it had been before, as it had always been. Men and women who'd been stopping in at Antonelli's after work since Tony's father had run the place bought each other drinks, talked quietly about sports, the weather, their cars, and their kids. In the back, laughing, smoking, drinking beer from the bottle was a tableful of young kids who'd been children when I first started coming here. Now that rear table was clearly theirs, Antonelli's as much their place as their parents'. Room had been made for them, and Antonelli's continued.
I swirled the bourbon around in my glass, then signaled to Marie, Tony's waitress, who was leaning on the bar chewing gum and trading wisecracks with the Rolling Rock drinkers. "Hi," she said, bouncing over to my table. "Can I get you something?" Her shaggy hair was bleached to a very pale blond, fine and soft.
"Hi." I pointed to my glass. "I need more ice, and I'm starving. What do you have?"
"Lasagna." She nibbled on a maroon fingernail that must have been an inch long "And bean soup. And the usual stuff." She giggled.
I ordered the lasagna. Marie bounced off chomping openmouthed on her gum. I glanced up at the TV. The golf was over, the news was on. That meant there'd be NCAA basketball soon. I had a client, a bellyful of bourbon, and Tony's lasagna coming. I stretched my legs and idly watched an elderly couple a few tables over. They were eating dinner in a silence punctuated only by quiet remarks and small gestures that dovetailed so perfectly they might have been choreographed.
I'd told Lydia I was coming up here, told her I'd be away; but I hadn't said I'd be meeting a client, that I might be working.
I got up, bought a Mountain Eagle from the pile by the bar. Sipping my bourbon, I caught up on what had been happening since I'd last come up.
There was federal DOT money coming along and with it the state was planning to replace or rebuild three county roads. That was bad. Seven years ago they'd replaced this stretch of 30 with a faster, straighter road on the other side of the valley. Now this was strictly a local road and most of the establishments along it had died slow, lonely deaths. Antonelli's was one of the few still open.
I glanced at the other lead stories. Appleseed Baby Foods was expanding. That was good. Appleseed was the only major employer in the county. Appleseed CEO Mark Sanderson smiled from a front-page photo. I sipped my bourbon, considered the photo. In the old days, pictures of the state senator's Christmas party or the county Fourth
"I July bash always included a shot of Mark Sanderson with his arm around the usually bare shoulders of his stunning wife, Lena. Then four years ago shed left him, just waIked away. Consensus among the women in the county seemed to be that anyone married to Mark Sanderson would have considered that option, maybe much earlier than Lena Sanderson did, but Sanderson reported her to i he county Sheriff and to the State Troopers as a missing person, made anguished televised pleas for her to come home, and waited. My professional opinion at the time was that the cops would come up empty and wed seen the last of her, and I was right. Looking at Sanderson's round, smiling face now, it seemed to me he'd come through the whole thing pretty well.
I drank more bourbon, read on. New York State Electric and Gas had run an open meeting to get local comment on a natural gas pipeline they wanted to pull through the county. It would be heading down from Canada, where the gas was, to New York City, where it was needed. Local comment pro had to do with promised jobs. Local comment con was about tearing up fields, fencing off pastureland, polluted water, damaged crops, and the chance of major explosions. Pro won, hands down.