The Empty Hours (6 page)

“Huh?
What are you talking about?”

“Recompense
for
what,
Mr. Courtenoy?”

“For
missing three days’ work, what the hell did you think?”

“How’s
that again?”

“No,
what did you
think?”
Courtenoy said angrily, waving his finger at Meyer.
“What did you think it was for? Some kind of payoff or something? Is that what
you thought?”

“Mr.
Courtenoy . . .”

“I lost
three days’ work because of that damn inquest. I had to stay up at Triangle
Lake all day Monday and Tuesday and then again on Wednesday waiting for the
jury decision. I’m a bricklayer. I get five bucks an hour and I lost three days’
work, eight hours a day, and so Miss Davis was good enough to send me a check
for a hundred and twenty bucks. Now just what the hell did you think, would
you mind telling me?”

“Did
you know Miss Davis before the day at Triangle Lake, Mr. Courtenoy?”

“Never saw
her before in my life. What is this? Am I on trial here? What is this?”

From
inside the house the woman’s voice came again, sharply, “Sidney! Is something
wrong? Are you all right?”

“Nothing’s
wrong. Shut up, will you?”

There
was an aggrieved silence from within the clapboard structure. Courtenoy
muttered something under his breath and then turned to face the detectives
again. “You finished?” he said.

“Not
quite, Mr. Courtenoy. We’d like you to tell us what you saw that day at the
lake.”

“What
the hell for? Go read the minutes of the inquest if you’re so damn interested.
I’ve got to get to work.”

“That
can wait, Mr. Courtenoy.”

“Like
hell it can. This job is away over in . . .”

“Mr.
Courtenoy, we don’t want to have to go all the way downtown and come back with
a warrant for your arrest.”

“My
arrest!
For what? Listen, what did I…”      

“Sidney?
Sidney, shall I call the police?” the woman shouted from inside the house.

“Oh,
shut the hell up!” Courtenoy answered. “Call the police,” he mumbled. “I’m up
to my ears in cops, and she wants to call the police. What do you want from me?
I’m an honest bricklayer. I saw a girl drown. I told it just the way I saw it.
Is that a crime? Why are you bothering me?”

“Just
tell it again, Mr. Courtenoy. Just the way you saw it.”

“She
was out in the boat,” Courtenoy said, sighing. “I was fishing. Her cousin was
on the shore. She fell over the side.”

“Josie
Thompson.”

“Yes,
Josie Thompson, whatever the hell her name was.”

“She
was alone in the boat?”

“Yes.
She was alone in the boat.”

“Go
on.”

“The
other one
— Miss Davis — screamed and ran into the water, and began swimming
toward her.” He shook his head. “She didn’t make it in time. That boat was a
long way out. When she got there, the lake was still. She dove under and came
up, and then dove under again,
but it was too late, it was just too late.
Then, as she was swimming back, I thought
she
was going to drown, too.
She faltered and sank below the surface, and I waited and I thought sure she
was gone. Then there was a patch of yellow that broke through the water, and I
saw she was all right.”

“Why
didn’t you jump in to help her, Mr. Courtenoy?”

“I don’t
know how to swim.”

“All
right. What happened next?”

“She
came out of the water
— Miss Davis. She was exhausted and hysterical. I tried to calm
her down, but she kept yelling and crying, not making any sense at all. I
dragged her over to the car, and I asked her for the car keys. She didn’t seem
to know what I was talking about at first. ‘The keys!’ I said, and she just
stared at me. ‘Your car keys!’ I yelled. ‘The keys to the car.’ Finally she
reached in her purse and handed me the keys.”

“Go on.”

“I
drove her into town. It was me who told the story to the police. She couldn’t
talk, all she could do was babble and scream and cry. It was a terrible thing
to watch. I’d never before seen a woman so completely off her nut. We couldn’t
get two straight words out of her until the next day. Then she was all right.
Told the police who she was, explained what I’d already told them the day
before, and told them the dead girl was her cousin, Josie Thompson. They
dragged the lake and got her out of the water. A shame. A real shame. Nice
young girl like that.”

“What
was the dead girl wearing?”

“Cotton
dress. Loafers, I think. Or sandals. Little thin sweater over the dress. A
cardigan.”

“Any
jewelry?”

“I don’t
think so. No.”

“Was
she carrying a purse?”

“No.
Her purse was in the car with Miss Davis’.”

“What
was Miss Davis wearing?”

“When?
The day of the drowning? Or when they pulled her cousin out of the lake?”

“Was
she there then?”

“Sure.
Identified the body.”

“No, I
wanted to know what she was wearing on the day of the accident, Mr. Courtenoy.”

“Oh,
skirt and a blouse, I think. Ribbon in her hair. Loafers. I’m not sure.”

“What
color blouse? Yellow?”

“No.
Blue.”

“You
said yellow.”

“No,
blue, I didn’t say yellow.”

Carella
frowned. “I thought you said yellow earlier.” He shrugged. “All right, what
happened after the inquest?”

“Nothing
much. Miss Davis thanked me for being so kind and said she would send me a
check for the time I’d missed. I refused at first and then I thought, What the
hell, I’m a hard-working man, and money doesn’t grow on trees. So I gave her my
address. I figured she could afford it. Driving a Caddy, and hiring a fellow
to take it back to the city.”

“Why
didn’t she drive it back herself?”

“I don’t
know. I guess she was still a little shaken. Listen, that was a terrible experience.
Did you ever see anyone die up close?”

“Yes,”
Carella said.

From
inside the house Courtenoy’s wife yelled, “Sidney, tell those men to get out of
our driveway!”

“You
heard her,” Courtenoy said, and finished rolling up his garage door.

* * * *

8

Nobody likes Monday morning.

It was
invented for hangovers. It is really not the beginning of a new week, but only
the tail end of the week before. Nobody likes it, and it doesn’t have to be
rainy or gloomy or blue in order to provoke disaffection. It can be bright and
sunny and the beginning of August. It can start with a driveway interview at
seven a.m. and grow progressively worse by nine-thirty that same morning.
Monday is Monday and legislation will never change its personality. Monday is
Monday, and it stinks.

By
nine-thirty that Monday morning, Detective Steve Carella was on the edge of
total bewilderment and, like any normal person, he blamed it on Monday. He had
come back to the squadroom and painstakingly gone over the pile of checks
Claudia Davis had written during the month of July, a total of twenty-five,
searching them for some clue to her strangulation, studying them with the
scrutiny of a typographer in a print shop. Several things seemed evident from
the checks, but nothing seemed pertinent. He could recall having said: “I look
at those checks, I can see a life. It’s like reading somebody’s diary,” and he
was beginning to believe he had uttered some famous last words in those two
succinct sentences. For if this was the diary of Claudia Davis, it was a
singularly unprovocative account that would never make the nation’s
best-seller lists.

Most of
the checks had been made out to clothing or department stores. Claudia, true to
the species, seemed to have a penchant for shopping and a checkbook that
yielded to her spending urge. Calls to the various stores represented revealed
that her taste ranged through a wide variety of items. A check of sales slips
showed that she had purchased during the month of July alone three baby doll
nightgowns, two half slips, a trenchcoat, a wrist watch, four pairs of tapered
slacks in various colors, two pairs of walking shoes, a pair of sunglasses,
four bikini swimsuits, eight wash-and-wear frocks, two skirts, two cashmere
sweaters, half-a-dozen best-selling novels, a large bottle of aspirin, two
bottles of Dramamine, six pieces of luggage, and four boxes of cleansing
tissue. The most expensive thing she had purchased was an evening gown
costing $500. These purchases accounted for most of the checks she had drawn in
July. There were also checks to a hairdresser, a florist, a shoemaker, a candy
shop, and three unexplained checks that were drawn to individuals, two men and
a woman.

The
first was made out to George Badueck.

The
second was made out to David Oblinsky.

The
third was made out to Martha Feldelson.

Someone
on the squad had attacked the telephone directory and come up with addresses
for two of the three. The third, Oblinsky, had an unlisted number, but a
half-hour’s argument with a supervisor had finally netted an address for him.
The completed list was now on Carella’s desk together with all the canceled
checks. He should have begun tracking down those names, he knew, but something
still was bugging him.

“Why
did Courtenoy lie to me and Meyer?” he asked Cotton Hawes.  “Why did he lie
about something as simple as what Claudia Davis was wearing on the day of the
drowning?”

“How
did he lie?”

“First
he said she was wearing yellow, said he saw a patch of yellow break the surface
of the lake. Then he changed it to blue. Why did he do that, Cotton?”

“I don’t
know.”

“And if
he lied about that, why couldn’t he have been lying about everything? Why
couldn’t he and Claudia have done in little Josie together?”

“I don’t
know,” Hawes said.

“Where’d
that twenty thousand bucks come from, Cotton?”

“Maybe
it was a stock dividend.”

“Maybe.
Then why didn’t she simply deposit the check? This was cash, Cotton,
cash.
Now
where did it come from? That’s a nice piece of change. You don’t pick twenty
grand out of the gutter.”

“I
suppose not.”

“I know
where you can get twenty grand, Cotton.”

“Where?”

“From
an insurance company. When someone dies.” Carella nodded once, sharply. “I’m
going to make some calls. Damnit, that money had to come from
someplace.”

He hit
pay dirt on his sixth call. The man he spoke to was named Jeremiah Dodd and was
a representative of the Security Insurance Corporation, Inc. He recognized
Josie Thompson’s name at once.

“Oh,
yes,’ he said. “We settled that claim in July.”

“Who
made the claim, Mr. Dodd?”

“The
beneficiary, of course. Just a moment. Let me get the folder on this. Will you
hold on, please?”