“I’m sorry, Mrs. Summerville isn’t here just now. May I take a message, please?”
Study across the hall was worthless. Dead end room, high windows.
“Yes, Mrs. Horowitz, I’ll remind her. A meeting tonight, yes. Could you spell that, please?”
But maybe…
“The league to what?”
Run across the hall, pop into the study. Stay in there till Brunnhilde vacuumed her way up the corridor and into the master bedroom, then run like hell for the front door.
“Florida wildlife, yes, ma’am. The league to protect Florida wildlife, yes, ma’am, I’ve got it. And the meeting is tonight. Yes, ma’am. Mrs. Colman’s house. Yes, ma’am. Eight o’clock. Yes, ma’am, I’ve written it all down. I’ll leave the message right here by the phone in case she’s not back by the time I leave. Yes, ma’am, thank you.”
Click of the receiver being replaced on the hook.
The housekeeper came up the corridor and switched on the vacuum cleaner. She vacuumed her way past the study and the second bedroom and then vacuumed herself into the master bedroom.
And opened the closet door.
And vacuumed around the shoe racks there.
Toots Kiley was already across the hall in the study.
Two minutes later, she was out the front door and walking very quickly toward where she’d parked the Chevy.
“How’re we supposed to get back to the motel?” Billy wanted to know.
“We take a bus,” Hurley said.
“They got buses in this two-bit town?”
“I saw buses,” Hurley said.
It was a long walk to U.S. 41. It was almost twelve noon, the day cloudy and uncertain, the temperature hovering around seventy degrees Fahrenheit, twenty-one centigrade.
“This means we zeroed out, you realize that?” Billy said.
“Yeah,” Hurley said.
“I mean, we steered wide of the murder rap, but we both told them about the pictures…”
“Yeah.”
“I mean we had to.”
“I know.”
“Otherwise why were we watching the house? To kill a fuckin’ cop was inside there?”
“I know, I know.”
“So we had to tell them about the pictures.”
“Nobody’s blaming you.”
“Who’s saying anybody’s blaming me? I’m saying unless we told them about the pictures, they’d have been all over us about the dead cop. ’Cause they knew we were casing the Parrish house.”
“Yeah. And you know where they got that, don’t you?”
“Where?”
“From that fuckin’ mouse-fart lawyer who came to the motel.”
“Right, I didn’t think of that. It had to be him.”
“Of course it was him.”
“But what I’m saying, we can forget all about those pictures now. ’Cause the cops’ll go in there with a hundred guys, they’ll toss everything in the house, they’ll find the pictures. And without the pictures, the old lady’ll keep telling us to fuck off, and that’s that. The deal is blown, Artie, we’re finished here in this shit town.”
“Yeah,” Hurley said.
But he was thinking they weren’t quite finished.
The first thing he had to do was teach little Miss Helen Abbott with her big fuckin’ belly not to be so quick about letting strange lawyers in and telling them the secrets of the universe. That was the first thing. Teach her what it meant to keep her mouth shut about important matters, knock out all her fuckin’ teeth if that was the way to teach her.
The next thing to do was to locate Mr. Matthew Hope and let him know that you don’t fuck with Arthur Hurley.
You don’t go to the police and blab that Arthur Hurley was watching a house where a cop got killed, you don’t fuck Arthur Hurley out of a million bucks because you got a big fuckin’ lawyer mouth, you don’t do that to Arthur Hurley, man.
You just don’t.
10. This is the malt that lay in the house that Jack built…
Ralph Parrish did not like the way Calusa County was taking care of him.
The Indiana corn farmer had a lot of complaining to do about the jailhouse clothing he was wearing, and the jailhouse swill they were forcing him to eat, and the fact that he had to protect his ass day and night or he’d pretty soon be wearing dresses the way his dead faggot brother had. Those were Parrish’s exact words: “My dead faggot brother.”
Matthew was here at the county jail to ask Parrish about his dead brother and some of his friends. He had to wait until Parrish went through his roster of complaints, though, and then he had to wait further while Parrish told him he saw no reason for a law-abiding citizen to be kept behind bars without bail when no one had the slightest shred of evidence to prove he had committed a crime. Matthew explained that the State Attorney believed he had proof enough to convict Parrish for the crime of murder, fratricide no less, which a judge had considered heinous enough to cause him to deny bail. Parrish went on complaining for the next ten minutes. He was a man of the outdoors, used to the sun on his shoulders and back, used to working under an open sky. Confinement was taking its toll. Matthew listened patiently and sympathetically. Keeping the farmer under lock and key did. in fact, seem like cruel and unusual punishment. But someone had killed his brother. And the state believed he was the man.
“I hate this place,” he said in conclusion.
“I know,” Matthew said.
“Are we making any progress?”
“Maybe,” Matthew said, and filled him in on the most recent developments.
“I knew he’d go back to that house!” Parrish said. “He’s our man, Matthew. Find him and…”
“Yes, but that hasn’t been too easy so far,” Matthew said. “Does the name Arthur Hurley mean anything to you?”
“No. Who is he?”
“Someone who was watching your brother’s house. Together with a man named Billy Walker. Ring a bell?”
“No.”
“Do you know anything about these baby pictures Abbott mentioned?”
“No.”
“Anything about his daughter. Helen? Or her alleged mother. Elise Brechtmann?”
“I’ve never heard of either of them.”
“Brechtmann Beer? Golden Girl Beer?”
“I don’t drink beer.”
“Tell me, Mr. Parrish…”
“Gall me Ralph.”
“Ralph then. Why’d you buy the house here in Galusa?”
“I had plenty of money, my brother had nothing. I figured if I could help him…”
“No, that’s not what I meant. Seven years ago, you bought the house down here. Why?”
“I just told you. My brother needed…”
“But why Calusa? Why not Key West, or Miami, or Pahn…”
“Actually, my brother did spend some time in Key West, but he said it was a bit too fruity, even for him. He much preferred Calusa.”
“When was that?”
“Key West? It must have been during the Sixties sometime. When young people were roaming all over the country. All over the world, in fact. In tattered blue jeans, but with thousands of dollars in American Express checks in their pockets.”
“Was your brother one of those?”
“Yes. A plastic hippie.”
“How old was he then?”
“Well, let me think. This had to have been 1968, 1969 — he would’ve been twenty or so. Yes. Around twenty.”
“When he went to Key West?”
“Yes. Well, all over Florida.”
“Calusa?”
“Yes, Calusa.”
“Was he gay at the time?”
“He was gay before he left Indiana.”
“How long was he here in Calusa?”
“I have no idea. This must have been… well, let me see. I know he left home sometime in September, yes, it was the fall of 1968, and he wasn’t home for Christmas, so I know he was still here in Florida someplace, and I think… just a minute now… yes, now I remember. I sent him a birthday card here in Calusa. His twenty-first birthday. He was renting a house on Fatback Key, I sent it to him there. Yes. I’m sure of that.”