Lily leaned back and closed her eyes. I refilled both our drinks, then sat down, ready to give her all the time she wanted.
“At this rate, I’ll keep you here till dawn waiting for me to finish,” she said ruefully, blinking. “Well, you’ve probably figured it out by this time, but Noreen was... she got... attacked.” She shook her head and ran a hand through her dusty-blond hair. “And the worst part, it was somebody she knew — she was out with him when it happened, for God’s sake!”
“Date rape,” I said quietly.
She cringed. “What a hideous term.”
“For a hideous act. Who the hell did it?”
“She wouldn’t tell me. I had enough trouble getting as much out of her as I did, but I can make a pretty good guess. She’s been seeing at least a couple of guys. One’s a nice boy — at least I think he’s nice... now I’m not so sure about anybody — she met through her brother Michael and who works down on Wall Street. The other is... I hate to say it — Sparky Linville.”
“The wild one who’s in the news a lot?”
For an answer I got a quick nod and a grimace. “In the last few months, Noreen’s occasionally been with a ‘too-rich-too-soon’ crowd — Linville among them, although I don’t think they went out very many times. You asked about drugs; I can’t say for sure, of course, but I don’t believe Noreen’s into coke, or whatever else the high-livers are destroying themselves with these days. I wouldn’t bet on some of the others, though, including Linville. I’ve met him only two times, and, Archie, we’re talking world-class jerk here. His arrogance gives the term ‘self-assured’ a bad name. But I think Noreen liked the excitement of being with him, of going to the hot clubs, that sort of thing. It had to be fun being with someone who’s recognized by every doorman and maître d’ in town.”
“And I gather you think he’s the one who—”
“I’m sure of it. After Noreen spilled out what happened, I tried to get a name. She clammed up — she was almost hysterical until I promised not to tell a soul. By this time, damn near everybody in the place was staring at us. She said nobody else knows anything about it, not even Megan. But the way she reacted when I mentioned Linville’s name — I know it was him.”
“Obviously Noreen isn’t about to bring any charges.”
Lily shook her head again. “From what little I was able to worm out of her, she seems to think that what happened was somehow her fault.”
“What do you think?”
“I think her reaction is what you would naturally expect in a male-dominated society where women who get attacked end up being accused of leading men on by their dress or their gestures or simply by breathing. Try to deny that.” She glared at me.
“I can’t. You’re absolutely right.”
“Oh, didn’t mean to come down on you, of all people,” she said softly. “But I’m livid about this, and I feel so helpless. Noreen is a great girl, so bright and enthusiastic and full of life, and it’s as if she’s been destroyed.”
“In a sense, part of her probably has. Certainly her level of trust will never be the same, and that’s only for starters.”
“Which is just as well,” Lily said bitterly. “Men can’t be trusted, present company more or less excluded.”
“Thank you for that, anyway.” I gave her a lopsided grin. “Now that you’ve gone on record, I’ll say something that may cause you to reassess me and my sensitivity: Are you absolutely convinced that your niece is an innocent victim?”
I got a long, fierce look from under lowered eyebrows. “Okay,” Lily said, setting her chin, “I suppose you had to ask. After all, you are a detective: the need for facts and all.”
“And impressions.”
“Do you think for an instant if I felt Noreen had been leading that ass on, I would have brought this up to you in the first place?”
“Point taken. But as you so articulately remarked, I had to ask,” I said, getting to my feet. “I must be going. If it makes you feel any better, it probably did Noreen a world of good to finally share this nightmare with somebody — particularly you.”
She sighed. “Well, I know it did me a world of good to share it tonight, even if I did violate a trust in the process. But that doesn’t bother me in the least, given my confidante. Speaking of which, my confidante — and I ask this, still having complete faith in your sensitivity: Do you have any advice?”
I stood in the foyer and shrugged. “For you? I’m afraid not, at least at the moment. I do have some for somebody else, though, and I’m going to deliver it in person.”
“Not to Noreen?” Lily said, a shocked expression on her face.
“No, not to Noreen — I wouldn’t do that, and you know it. But tomorrow I plan to pay a visit to a Mr. Sparky Linville.”
Two
The next day began quietly enough. At seven-forty-five I was at my small table in the kitchen of Nero Wolfe’s brownstone on West Thirty-fifth Street near the Hudson, which is the place I’ve called home for more than half my life. And that small table is just about the only spot I ever have breakfast unless I’m with Lily at her Katonah retreat or find myself in jail, which, truth to tell, has happened more than once in the years I’ve been collecting paychecks signed by Nero Wolfe. I had finished a tall glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and one cup of black coffee and was starting in on a second cup, to go with the Canadian bacon and pancakes with wild-thyme honey that Fritz Brenner was preparing for me.
Wolfe, true to his morning custom, took nourishment on a tray up in his room, and my meal company, as usual, was the Times, which was propped up on the rack I had had made so I could read and still have both hands free to tackle the meal. Fritz, chef extraordinaire and the one indispensable cog in the machinery of the brownstone — with the possible exception of Wolfe himself — quietly scurried about making preparations for lunch: baby lobsters with avocados.
Fritz and I have worked out a series of accommodations over the years that allow us to coexist beautifully in the brownstone. One is that he doesn’t talk to me during breakfast, and I don’t tell him how to cook; simple, but it works. The Times wasn’t holding my interest, especially with the Mets wallowing in fifth place and the Yankees doing no better and also behaving as if they actually were fond of their current wimp of a manager.
After the events of the previous night, though, nothing less than an article on the latest adventures of Sparky Linville would have satisfied me. Lily had done her best to talk me out of seeing him, but I tried to assure her I wasn’t going to involve her niece in any way. She had frowned and remained doubtful about the undertaking, and before we parted made me promise that Noreen’s name would under no circumstances be mentioned.
I finished breakfast and carried a cup of coffee down the hall to the office. Wolfe wasn’t there, of course, and wouldn’t be until eleven. His unvarying Monday-through-Saturday schedule calls for him to spend four hours daily — nine to eleven in the morning and four to six in the P.M. — playing with his ten thousand orchids in the greenhouse on the fourth floor, along with Theodore Horstmann, the crotchety old orchid tender who’s worked for Wolfe even longer than I have.
I touched down at my desk and contemplated the day’s work, which consisted primarily of paying the bills and updating the orchid-germination records on the personal computer. We didn’t have any cases at present, which suited Wolfe just fine, what with his case of terminal laziness. The bank balance was reasonably healthy, though, in the main because of the fat fee our fat resident genius got for figuring out — with some incidental help from yours truly — which of a Scarsdale millionaire’s domestic staff of seven had filched a coin collection valued in the high six figures.