The tap at my door had to be Penny bringing back the two fifty-dollar bills, and as I went toward the door I was uncomfortably aware of a hollow feeling in the belly that was a lustful anticipation that maybe she could be induced to stay awhile.
But there were two men there, and they both stared at me with that mild, bland, skeptical curiosity of the experienced lawman. It must be very like the first inspection of new specimens brought back to the base camp by museum expeditions. The specimen might be rare or damaged or poisonous. But you check it over and soon you are able to catalog it based on the experience of cataloging thousands of others over the years, and then it is a very ordinary job from then on, the one you are paid for. The big, hard-boned, young one wore khakis, a white fishing cap with a peak, blue and white sneakers, and a white sport shirt with a pattern of red pelicans on it. It was worn outside the belt, doubtless to hide the miniature revolver that seems to be more and more of a fad with Florida local law. The smaller older one wore a pale tan suit, a white shirt with no tie. He had a balding head, liver spots, little dusty brown eyes, and a virulent halitosis that almost concealed the news that his young partner had been wearing the same shirt too long. "Name McGee?"
"That's right. What can I do for you?" I was stripped to my underwear shorts and barefoot.
"Well, for a starter, just turn around real slow with your arms out, then you can go stand by the window." He flipped his wallet open and gave me the glimpse of the little gold badge. "I'm Stanger," he said, and, indicating the younger one, "he's Nudenbarger. City."
"And for a starter," I said, "search warrant?"
"Not unless I have to have one, McGee. But you make us go through the motions, everybody gets pissed off, and it's a hot night, and it all adds up the same way anyway. So you-if you want to-you can like invite us to just poke around."
"Poke around, Mr. Stanger. You too, Mr. Nudenbarger."
He checked my wallet on the countertop while Nudenbarger checked the closet, the suitcase, the bathroom. Stanger wrote down some bits of information copied off credit cards into a blue pocket notebook, dime-sized. He couldn't write without sticking his tongue out of the corner of his mouth. Credit cards hearten them. The confetti of the power structure.
"Plenty cash, Mr. McGee."
Cash and credit had earned me the "mister." I moved over and sat on the bed without permission. "Seven hundred and something. Let me see... and thirty-eight. It's sort of a bad habit I'm trying to break, Mr. Stanger. It's stupid to carry cash. Probably the result of some kind of insecurity in my childhood. It's my blue blanket."
He looked at me impassively. "I guess that's pretty funny."
"Funny peculiar?"
"No. Being funny like jokes. Being witty with stupid cops."
"No. The thing about the blue blanket--"
"I keep track of Beethoven's birthday, and the dog flies a DeHavilland Moth."
"What's that?" Nudenbarger asked. "What's that?"
"Forget it, Lew," Stanger said in a weary voice.
"You always say that," Nudenbarger said, accusingly indignant.
It is like a marriage, of course. They are teamed up and they work on each other's nerves, and some of the gutsy ones who have gone into the dark warehouse have been shot in the back by the partner/wife who just couldn't stand any more.
Stanger perched a tired buttock on the countertop, other leg braced with knee locked, licked his thumb, and leafed back through some pages in the blue notebook.
"Done any time at all, Mr. McGee?"
"No."
"Arrests?"
"Here and there. No charges."
"Suspicion of what?"
"Faked-up things. Impersonation, conspiracy, extortion. Somebody gets a great idea, but the first little investigation and it all falls down."
"Often?"
"What's often? Five times in a lifetime? About that."
"And you wouldn't mention it except if I checked it would show up someplace."
"If you say so."
"You have been here and there, McGee, because for me there is something missing. Right. What do you storm troopers want? What makes you think you can come in here, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But you don't object at all."
"Would it work with you, Stanger?"
"Not lately. So okay. Would you say you left about noon and got back a little after one today?"
"Close enough."
"And sacked out?"
"Slept like death until maybe eight o'clock."
"When you make a will, Mr. McGee, leave a little something to Mrs. Imber."
"Who is she?"
"Sort of the housekeeper. Checking on the job the maids do. Opened your door with her passkey at four o'clock, give or take ten minutes. You were snoring on the bed."
"Which sounds as if it was the right place to be."
"A nice place to be. Let me read you a little note. I copied this off the original, which is at the lab. It goes like this:... By the way, it was sealed in an envelope and on the outside it said Mr. T. McGee, One-O-nine. So we check some places and find a place with a One-O-nine with a McGee in it. Which is here, and you. It says: `Dear Honey, What do I say about the wages of sin? Anyway, it was one of his lousy ideas and overlooked, so here it is back. Woke up and couldn't get back to sleep and went into the purse for a cigarette and found this. Reason I couldn't get back to sleep? Well, hell. Reasons. Plural. Memories of you and me... getting me a little too worked up for sleepy-bye. And something maybe we should talk over. It's about something SS said about memory and digital skills. Have to go do a trick as a Special at eight, filling in for a friend. I'll drop this off on the way. No man in his right mind would pick a girl up in the hospital lot at four fifteen on Sunday morning, would he? Would he? Would he?' "
Stanger read badly. He said, "It's signed with an initial. P. Nobody you ever heard of?"
"Penny Woertz."
"The hundred bucks was the wages of sin, McGee?"
"Just a not very funny joke. Private and personal."
Nudenbarger stood looking me over, a butcher selecting a side of beef. "Get chopped up in the service?"
"Some of it."
Nudenbarger's smirk, locker-room variety, didn't charm me. "How was she, McGee? Pretty good piece of ass?"
"Shut up, Lew," Stanger said with weary patience. "How long did you know Miss Woertz, McGee?"
"Since we met in the bar last night. You can ask the man who was working the bar. His name is Jake."
"The room maid said you must have had a woman in here last night. So you confirm that it was the nurse. Then you took her back to her apartment at about noon. Did you go in with her?"
I did not like the shape of the little cloud forming on the horizon in the back of my head. "Let's stop the games," I said.
"She mention anybody she thought might be checking up on her?" Stanger asked.
"I'll give you that name after we stop playing games."
Stanger reached into the inside pocket of his soiled tan suitcoat, took an envelope out, took some color Polaroids out of it. As he handed them to me he said, "These aren't official record. Just something I do for my own personal file."
He had used a flash. She was on a kitchen floor, left shoulder braced against the base of the cabinet under the sink, head lolled back. She wore a blue and white checked robe, still belted, but the two sides had separated, the right side pulled away to expose one breast and expose the right hip and thigh. The closed blades of a pair of blue-handled kitchen shears had been driven deep into the socket of her throat. Blood had spread wide under her. Her bloodless face looked pallid and smaller than my memory of her, the freckles more apparent against the pallor. There were four shots from four different angles. I swallowed a heaviness that had collected in my throat and handed them back to him.
"Report came in at eight thirty," he said. "She was going to give another nurse a ride in, and the other nurse had a key to her place because she'd oversleep sometimes. The other nurse lives in one of those garden apartments around on the other side. According to the county medical examiner, time of death was four thirty, give or take twenty minutes. Bases it on coagulation, body temperature, lividity in the lower limbs, and the beginning of rigor in the jaws and neck."
I swallowed again. "It's... unpleasant."
"I looked in a saucepan on the stove to see if she was cooking something. I picked up the lid and looked in and the sealed-up note to you was in there, half wadded up, like she had hidden it in a hurry the first place she could think of. That part about remembering you and getting all worked up would be something she wouldn't want a boyfriend to read. Think the boyfriend knew she spent the night here in this room?"
"Maybe. I don't know."
"She worried about him?"
"Some."
"Just in case there was two of them, suppose you give me the name you know."
"Richard Holton, Attorney at Law."
"The only name?"
"The only boyfriend, I'd say."
Stanger sighed and looked discouraged. "Same name we've got, dammit. And he drove his wife over to Vero Beach to visit her sister today. Left about nine this morning. Put through a call over there about an hour and a half ago, and they had left about eight to drive back. Should be home by now. This is still a pretty small town, McGee. Mr. Holton and this nurse had been kicking up a fuss about Doc Sherman's death being called suicide. That's the SS in the note, I guess?"
"Yes. She talked to me about the doctor."
"What's this about... let me find it here... here it is, `memory and digital skills'?"
"It doesn't mean a thing to me."
"Would it have anything to do with the doctor not killing himself?"
"I haven't any idea."
"Pictures make you feel sick?" Nudenbarger asked.
"Shut up, Lew," Stanger said.
It was past midnight. I looked at my watch when the phone rang. Stanger motioned to me to take it and moved over and leaned close to me to hear the other end of the conversation.
"Travis? This is Biddy. I just got home. Tom found her about twenty minutes ago."
"Is she all right?"
"I guess so. After looking practically all over the county, he found her wandering around not over a mile from here. The poor darling has been bitten a billion times. She's swelling up and going out of her mind with the itching. Tom is bathing her now, and then we'll use the Donned. Sleep will be the best thing in the world for her."
"Use the what?"
"It's electrotherapy. She responds well to it. And... thanks for being concerned, Travis. We both... all appreciate it."
I hung up and Stanger said with mild surprise, "You know the Pikes too?"
"The wife and her sister, from a long time ago. And their mother."
"Didn't she die just a while back?"
"That's right."
"They find that kook wife?" Nudenbarger asked.
"Tom Pike found her."
Nudenbarger shook his head slowly. "Now, that one is really something, I swear to God! Al, I'll just never forget how she looked that time last spring she was missing for two days, and those three Telaferro brothers had kept her the whole time in that little bitty storeroom out to the truck depot, keeping her boozed up and bangin' that poor flippy woman day and night until I swear she was so plain wore-down pooped that Mike and Sandy had to use a stretcher to tote her out to--"
"Shut your goddamn mouth, Lew!" Stanger roared.
Nudenbarger stared blankly at him. "Now what in the world is eating you, anyway."
"Go out and check in and see if there's anything new and if there is, come get me, and if there isn't, stay the hell out there in the car!"
"Sure. Okay."
After the door had closed gently behind the younger man, Stanger sighed and sat down and felt around in the side pocket of his jacket and found a half cigar and lit the ash end thoroughly and carefully. "Mr. Tom Pike should send that wife off someplace. Or watch her a little more close. She's going to go out some night and meet up with some bug who'll maybe kill her."
"Before she kills herself?"
"Seems like if a man has good luck in one direction, McGee, it runs real bad some other way. When she lost the second kid, something went wrong in her head. I say it would be a blessing if she had made a good job of it when she tried. Mr. McGee, I think it would be a good thing if you stayed right in town for a few days."
