There was a young Mexican guard on the big iron gate at Jake Spivey's. The last time Dill had seen him, the Mexican had been helping dig something up in Spivey's backyard. Now he sat in a canvas director's chair beneath a Cinzano umbrella. Near his feet was a gallon Thermos jug of something cool to drink. Across his lap was a shotgun. On his right hip was a holstered revolver with a plastic pearl grip.
The Mexican rose as Dill drove the car halfway through the gate and stopped. The Mexican moved over to Dill's side of the Ford. He carried the shotgun across his chest. Dill noticed its safety was off. The Mexican bent down to peer carefully at Dill and Singe through dark aviator glasses. He nodded thoughtfully at what he saw and said, “You are?”
“I'm Ben Dill and this is Miss Singe.”
With a forefinger still around the trigger of the shotgun, which Dill recognized now as a 12-gauge, the Mexican used his other hand to reach into a shirt pocket and bring out a three-by-five card that contained a list of typed names. He studied it for a
moment, then nodded and said, “Dill,” pronouncing it very much like deal.
The Mexican used his shotgun to point toward the house. “Drive to the house,” he said. “Somebody'll park your car.”
Dill thanked him and started up the curving asphalt drive. Once again, all the sprinklers were on and the grass looked cool and wet and very green.
“Beauchamp Lane,” Singe said almost to herself. “My God, I finally made it out to old Ace Dawson's place on Beauchamp Lane.”
“I was eleven the first time I was out here,” Dill said. “At a Christmas party.”
“You lied and hustled your way into that, you and Spivey. Felicity told me about it. I'm really invitedâwell, sort of anyway.”
The asphalt drive ended just beyond the big oak front door, and then formed itself into a large square where a dozen cars were already parked. They were all new cars, mostly expensive domestic makes that included four Cadillacs, two Lincolns, one Oldsmobile 98, and a Buick Riviera convertible. But there were also two Mercedes, a Porsche, and one large BMW. Dill estimated that the small parking area contained three or four hundred thousand dollars' worth of automobilesâand a rented Ford.
“Looks like I was right,” Singe said as another young Mexican started moving toward the car.
“About the rich folks being here?”
Singe nodded as the young Mexican hurried around the Ford and opened the door for her. He smiled politely as she got out. The Mexican then waited for Dill to get out from behind the wheel. When he did, the Mexican, still smiling, slid across the seat. He wore his squared-off white shirt outside his black pants. The sliding motion caused the shirttail to rise up just enough for Dill to see the holstered automatic. He thought it looked like a 9-mm
of some foreign make. The Mexican noticed Dill's interest in the pistol. The smile went away, then came back almost instantly, more polite than ever, as he started the engine and expertly shot the Ford into a parking space between a Cadillac and the BMW.
Before Dill and Anna Maude Singe could ring the “How Dry I Am” doorbell, it was opened by a smiling Daphne Owens who wore even fewer clothes than she'd worn the first time Dill met her. This time she had on only a pale-green bikini bottom and a kind of sleeveless top with enormous armholes that looked as if it might have been made out of an old sweatshirt, although Dill knew it wasn't.
He made the introductions and for some reason felt gratified when the two women immediately despised each other. Although their smiles were polite, their greeting ritualistic, and their handshake casual, the encounter nevertheless produced two instant enemies.
“What should I call you,” Daphne Owens said, “Anna or Maude or both?”
“Most folks just run it together and call me both.”
“And so shall I. You must call me Daffyâas in Duck, right, Mr. Dill?”
“Right,” he said.
“Now let's go back so you can get something to drink and meet everyone.”
They followed her down the long wide hall and through french doors that led out onto a patio that was formed, jigsaw fashion, out of large irregular pieces of black slate. Carefully trimmed and cultivated grass grew in the cracks between the pieces. Dill suspected that if he were to go high enough, perhaps up on the roof of the house, the green grass might spell out a word or a name or even a picture. Probably something bawdy, he thought, and decided to ask Spivey about it.
As he glanced around he saw there were four people splashing about in the big pool. Daphne Owens then introduced him and Singe to three different knots of guests who were in their thirties and forties. All were trim, well groomed, and held glasses of wine or Perrier in their hands, but no cigarettes. The men all looked as if they ran six miles a day; the women as if they were Jane Fonda Workout disciples. Dill immediately forgot their names.
He didn't forget the names of the next two persons he and Singe met. Both were men and both were older. The older one was so old he might not have been able to rise from his white iron lawn chair. The other one, who was only sixty-seven, rose easily.
“I don't believe you've met the Hartshornes,” Daphne Owens said. “Mr. Jim Hartshorne and this is hisâ”
Before she could finish, the sixty-seven-year-old man who had risen stuck out his hand to Singe and said, “I'm Jimmy Junior.”
She shook hands with him and said, “Anna Maude Singe and Ben Dill.”
“Who's that, Junior?” the very old man said from his iron seat.
“Miss Singe and Mr. Dill, Daddy.”
“Dill? Dill?” the very old man said in a cracked voice. “Have a drink with us, Dill.”
Daphne Owens asked Dill and Singe what they would like. They told her. She said she would have it sent over and left. The older man patted the iron chair next to him and said, “You sit down here, young lady whose name I'm sorry I didn't catch.”
“Anna Maude,” Singe said, sitting down next to the very old man, who wore gray seersucker trousers that climbed halfway up his chest. They covered most of a blue short-sleeved pullover shirt that had a little alligator on it. On his feet were blue running shoes. Purple glasses covered his eyes. His left ear, the one next to Singe, contained a tiny hearing aid. There was a little hair left just above the ears, but the rest was long gone. It had left a dome that was
smooth and tan until it reached where the hairline had once been. There the wrinkles beganâridge after parallel ridge until they almost reached his nose, where they changed direction and turned into small vertical gulches that ran into short tiny fine wrinkles and others, not so fine, that wandered off in all directions. The old man's lips were bluish in color and when he opened his mouth he revealed only a black hole. The nose was still sharp and inquisitive, but the once firm chin seemed ready to crumble. James Hartshorne Senior was ninety-seven years old.
“Dill, you sit down over here,” the old man said, patting the chair on the other side of him. “Junior, you drag up another chair.”
While his son dragged up another chair, the old man turned back to Anna Maude Singe. “I like women's bare arms,” he said, giving Singe's right one a quick stroke. “They turn me on, as much as anything turns me on these days, which isn't a hell of a lot. But bare arms always did. Downed with light brown hair. Anybody read him nowadays?”
“Kids in college do, I hear,” Singe said. “You knew him, didn't you?”
“Eliot?”
“I'm sorry. I meant Ace Dawson.”
“Old Ace. Yeah, I knew Ace. The slickest article ever to come up the Yellowfork.” The old man cawed like a crow and Dill assumed he was chuckling. “He came up from Texas somewhere and I came up from Shreveport. I used to think they don't make 'em like Ace anymore. I thought that until I met the boy who owns this place now. Where'd you ever meet Jake anyhow?”
“I haven't yet,” Singe said.
The old man turned to Dill just as the Mexican gardener-houseman arrived with the drinks. “Spivey's your pal then, huh, Dill?”
“That's right,” Dill said, accepting his drink.
“Known him long?”
“Forever.”
“If you were me, would you do business with him?”
“What kind of business?”
“Politics maybe?”
“I think politics might be where Jake's been heading all his life.”
The old man smiled his blue-lip smile. “That distant shore, huh?”
“Maybe.”
“Daddy,” Hartshorne Junior said.
“What?”
“I think we ought to thank Mr. Dill.”
“Yeah, you're right.” The old man cocked his head and examined Dill. “Both Junior and I want to thank you for last night.”
“Last night?”
“For trying to save young Laffter's lifeâyou know, blowing in his mouth and all, you and that Press Club nigger waiter, what's his name, Harry. I already called and thanked him. Seems the hospital made some damn-fool mistake and called the nigger after Laffter died. Well, it seemed like a mistake anyway until I heard Fred'd left the nigger everything.” He looked at his son. “You sure Laffter wasn't a nancy boy after all?”
Hartshorne Junior frowned. “He left everything to Harry, Daddy, because Harry put up with him all those years. I told you that.”
“Well, you oughta knowâabout nancy boys anyway.” He turned to Dill and cackled again. “Junior never married for some reason. He's been the town's most eligible bachelor for about forty-five, forty-six years now. Right, Junior?”
Hartshorne Junior ignored his father and turned to Dill. “Anyway,
Mr. Dill, we'd like to tell you how much we appreciate what you did.”
“How much do you really appreciate it?” Dill said.
Hartshorne Senior slowly removed his purple glasses and slipped on a pair of round horn-rimmed ones. Trifocals, Dill noticed. The old man tilted his head back and examined Dill through all three focal planes. The eyes behind the glasses looked bright and black and curiously young.
“What's on your mind, Dill?”
“Why'd you run that story on my sister?”
The old man looked at his elderly son. “What story?”
The son frowned again. “Felicity Dill. Homicide detective. Murdered. Financial irregularities. Laffter's last story.”
“Oh,” the old man said and stared at Dill. “You're that Dill, huh? The brother. I should've added that up right away. But I still don't understand your question.”
“Why did you run that story on my sister's finances?”
“You thinking of suing?”
“No.”
“Wouldn't do you any good. Nothing libelous in it. We got lawyers who see to that. And why shouldn't I run it? You trying to say somebody tells me what to print and what not to print?” Before Dill could answer, the old man turned back to his son and said, “Why did we print that fucking piece anyhow?”
Hartshorne Junior was a plump man with a big round head and a small pink face. The fat on his right bare arm jiggled as he moved his glass up to his lips. His mouth was small and usually pursed as if it were about to say, “Oh-oh!” He wore yellow slacks and a bright-green short-sleeved shirt with the tail out. Except for his eyes, he didn't look very much like his father. Hartshorne Junior's eyes were also black and shiny, but they didn't seem curiously
young. They seemed terribly old. He sipped from his glass of white wine. When he put it back down on a glass-topped table, the fat on his right arm jiggled again.
“We ran the story,” he said slowly, “because we were asked to by the police.” He cleared his throat. “We frequently cooperate with the police, especially when they tell us it will aid their investigations. Almost every newspaper does.”
“In their investigation of what?” Dill said.
“Your sister's death, of course,” Hartshorne Junior said. “And also the death of the man who was killed yesterdayâthe ex-football player.”
“Corcoran,” Dill said.
“That's right. Corcoran. Clay Corcoran.”
“Mr. Hartshorne,” Anna Maude Singe said. Both father and son looked at her. “Jimmy Junior, I mean.” He smiled. “May I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Which cop told you to run it?” she asked in a cold flat voice.
Hartshorne Senior cackled again. “Now that's the kind of question I like. Straight out. Right to the point. No futzing around. A question like that deserves an answer. Tell her, Junior. Tell her which cop told us to run it.”
Hartshorne Junior pursed his lips. “It was a request, not an order, Daddy.”
“Tell her.”