Authors: Jeremiah Healy
CRESTVIEW MOTEL, COLOR TV, WATER BEDS, NO CREDIT CARDS ACCEPTED
, and
VACANCY
, apparently without any space allocated for a
NO
to accompany the last message. The signs looked as though they were commissioned about ten years apart from painters who didn't agree on the proper formation of most letters of the alphabet.
Each parking space was marked in faded yellow to correspond with its unit number. Counting cars, it appeared three of the roughly twenty rooms were occupied. I pulled into the unmarked area next to an awning that said
OFFICE
.
As I pushed in the door, a man looked up from the book he was reading behind the counter. He was in his fifties, wearing his hair in the still short but slightly unkempt look service lifers often assume once they muster out. His ears were large, his eyes sharp and not particularly friendly. He also had the most outlandish Fu Manchu mustache I'd seen this side of 1972.
“Help you?”
“Yes, I'd like a room for a couple of days.”
“Be twenty-six dollars per night, plus tax.”
“You're kidding.”
“About what?”
“The rate.”
Fu scowled. “You're government employee, it's 10 percent off, except for current, active-duty military, then it's 20 percent off. But you don't look active to me, and Reserve or National Guard don't cut it here.”
“I didn't mean it seemed too high. I meant it seemed awfully reasonable.”
“Wait'll you see the room.”
He slapped a registration card in front of me, followed by a Bic pen. Writing, I said, “I didn't see a sign out front for telephones.”
“Why do you suppose that might be?”
“I'm going to be some inconvenienced by not being able to make and receive calls.”
“You'll be more inconvenienced by having to drive twelve miles inland to get a phone in your room.”
I picked up a dusty business card from the front of a plastic holder on the counter. The ones behind it were a little whiter.
“This still the number here?”
“Yeah, but I don't take no messages. I'm not a goddam switchboard operator, you know.”
“I'll bet you've never been in Public Relations, either.”
“I was a master sergeant. Know what that is?”
“It's been a while, but I remember.” I extended my hand. “John Cuddy.”
He ignored my offer. “I'm Jones. You won't be here long enough to need my first name.” He scanned the registration card. “That'll be cash in advance.”
I gave him three twenties. “If I'm going to be staying a third night, I'll notify the concierge.”
Jones fished a key off a rack somewhere under his side of the counter, making a jingling noise. “Unit 18. The Honeymoon Suite.”
“Honeymoon Suite?”
“Yeah. You look like the kinda pervert would get off being in a waterbed by himself.”
I closed the door of Unit 18 behind me. In addition to containing the promised liquid mattress and color TV, it wore a cake-icing shade of pink on every surface that would take paint. I hung up the sports jacket and khaki slacks on the open-air closet pole next to the bathroom and put my clean shirts, underwear, and jogging gear into the bureau. Brushing my teeth under a flickering light, I tried to decide whether the damage to the tiles in the tub behind me came from destructive children or industrious insects.
I had Jane Rust's address from the check she had given me. Stubborn pride kept me from running it down with Jones, but the gas jockey on the next corner sent me roughly in the right direction.
The street number matched a modest, free-standing two-family on a postage stamp lot. The solitary tree and low bushes looked scraggly and parched.
Leaving the Prelude at the curb, I walked up the cracked cement path to the steps of the front porch. Up close, the wood was warping, the walls peeling. I climbed the steps to the house door. There were two buttons, one with “Rust” and the other “O'Day.” Pressing Jane's, I heard an irregular buzzing sound, like a giant bee with laryngitis. Getting no response, I leaned into “O'Day.”
From an upstairs window, an elderly woman's voice yelled, “Who is it? Come out so I can see you.”
I moved from under the overhang of the porch roof and looked upward. A woman was framed by a light behind her.
“Who are you?”
“My name's John Cuddy. I'd like to speak with you about Jane Rust.”
“Jane's dead.”
“I know. I'm investigating her death.”
“Wondered when you folks would get back around to me. Hold on. These days, takes me a while to get downstairs.”
The second-story sitting room was fussy. Too many tables with little evident purpose, and crocheted doilies on every possible plane, flat or curved. Mrs. O'Day sat in a rocker, wattles under her chin and both hands around her cane, tapping its rubber tip on the old carpeting.
“Private investigator, huh?”
“That's right.”
“Wasn't aware she had any family to hire someone like you.”
“Jane herself hired me.”
“Now that she's dead, how come you're still working for her?”
“She paid me for three days' worth. It seems to me she has that coming.”
Mrs. O'Day watched me for a moment through Coke-bottle glasses. “Are you an honest man or just a very clever one?”
“I don't follow you.”
“Are you honestly interested in Jane and honoring your contract with her, or are you just using that old-fashioned notion to get on the good side of an old lady you need to pump?”
I laughed.
She said, “Well, leastways you laugh honest.”
“Mrs. O'Day, Jane asked me to look into something. Then she turns up dead that night, supposedly a suicide. That just doesn't ring true to me.”
“Don't know much about suicide. Against the Church's preaching, which makes it kind of hard to understand it. But I can tell you this, she was a mighty troubled young woman.”
“Can you tell me what happened last night?”
“Best I can. I was home here, up pretty late planning.”
“Planning?”
“Budget planning. I get $473.50 a month social security as sole survivor of the husband, God rest his soul. I never did work outside, so I don't have any account of my own. Rent from downstairs covers the house costs and all, but still got to computate in advance where all of it should go. Today was Store Day.”
“Store Day?”
“Yes. The Church, Lord bless it, has a volunteer van, comes to pick up those like me what can't get out on our own. Takes us around to the grocery, the drugstore, laundry, that kind of thing. Regular schedule. Feel mighty sorry for the others.”
“What others?”
“Those outside the Church. They're the ones people like you never see, because they ride the buses from ten to two when you're in working. That's the only time the buses aren't so crowded you can get a seat. When's the last time you ever saw a man or child stand so an older person could sit down? Then there's the hoodlums, too. Leastways most of them are still in school of some kind, probably reform school, till two o'clock, so your purses and wallets are safe from them if you're back in and locked up by two. Your generation thinks it's all set, you wait till you get older, sonny. Back in thirty-three, when my daddy started paying into social security, there were sixteen workers for every retired person. Read that in
Reader's Digest,
I did. Sixteen to one. Now there's only about three and a half to one, and by the time you're into your sixties, never mind seventies or eighties, there's only going to be maybe one and a half workers for every retired person. I thank the Lord every night he won't be keeping me down here so long to see that day come, I'll tell you.
“About last night, you were up late?”
“Planning.”
“Planning. Did you see or hear anything unusual?”
“See? Not rightly. I've got bad eyesight, need the two different kind of glasses to see straight, but never could stand having them on those neck strings, you know? So I'm forever putting the distance ones down when I put the close-up ones on, then forgetting where they are.”
“Well then, was there something you didn't see but heard?”
“Heard a lot of things. Nothing wrong with the hearing, leastways not yet. Heard Jane coming in all the time. That's the reason I gave the tenant the downstairs floor to start with. I didn't have any use for the backyard myself, and I figured with me on the second floor, I wouldn't be disturbed so much by the coming and going. But this time of year, I keep the windows open, which means I can hear the car doors or the damned, pardon my French, motorcycles or feel the downstairs door close. 'Course, that's more vibration than sound, I guess.”
This was going to take a while. “Did you hear somebody arrive last night?”
“Well, yes, of course I did. Heard Jane first. She usually got home from work by six. Ofttimes she'd go out later. Jane was renting from me for nigh unto two years, her car door made a certain noise account of she had something loose there in the door panel or something, rattled every time after the sound of the door closing itself. Think she'd have that fixed, drive you crazy after a while, but she never did.”
“You heard somebody else, too?”
“Sure did. Jane seemed to be home to stay last night. Heard her drive in, car door, and downstairs. She'd been in the dumps lately, don't know why, just real troubled, like I said. Well, I hear her come in, put on her victrola. Didn't play it loud or anything, real considerate girl that way. Then I heard another car come up. Somebody got out, come up to the door and knocked, then Jane let them in.”
“Them?”
“Him or her. Couldn't tell. They must've cut across the lawn or was wearing sneakers or something, cause I didn't hear any clicks like from the women's shoes or taps like from the men's. Jane knew whoever it was, though.”
“How do you know that?”
“Jane knows somebody, she tells them ⦠sorry, told them not to ring the bell. Needs fixing and can wake me out of a sound sleep, so she'd warn them not to use it. Considerate that way, like I said.”
“No idea otherwise who the person was?”
“No. There were a lot of them, though.”
“A lot of them?”
“That didn't use the doorbell. Jane got more than her share.”
“Her share of what?”
Mrs. O'Day's eyes seemed to move independently behind the lenses as she leaned forward in the rocker. “Of what? Of sex, what the hell do you think, pardon my French again.”
“Did you ⦠were you under the impression that it was more than one man?”
“Was I ⦠sonny, all I know is I heard a lot of different doors slam out in that driveway, if you get my drift. The Church says we're not supposed to sit in judgment of each other, but even without the suicide, I doubt she got to spend much time before Saint Peter last night.”
“How long did this person stay?”
“Hours. Didn't really pay attention to when, I was focusing on my planning here. But they must have been going at it pretty good, because her phone rang four or five times for five rings without her answering it.”
“Was that typical?”
“Typical of her going at it, you mean?”
“Typical for her not to answer her phone when she had a man, not a woman visiting.”
“Sonny, I don't for one moment believe Jane was that way.”
“I didn't mean to imply anything, Mrs. O'Day. I just ⦠look, was Jane's failure to answer her phone something she'd do only when she had a male visitor?”
“That I don't know. Like I said, I didn't try to spy on the woman.”
“Right. So you don't know when her visitor left.”
“No, I don't. Wasn't too long before another one came by, though.”
“Another?”
“Right. After the first one left. Another car door, different sound to the motor and the door both.”
“Different how?”
“Motor sounded bigger, door more solid. Don't know much more about cars than how they sound. Never got my driver's license. The husband was always after me about that, said I'd regret it some day. But I ask you, how can I regret never learning to drive when I'd be a menace out on the roads with this eyesight? I mean, if I can't keep track of my distance specs in this house, how would I ever remember them each time before I cranked up a car?”
“You've got a point there. Did you hear anything about this second person?”
“No. Except Jane must have been expecting this one.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because this one didn't even knock. Door downstairs just opened and closed.”
“How long did this one stay?”
“Minute, maybe. Then out, banging the door shut and off into the car and tearing up the street to beat the band.”
“And no idea whether this second one was a man or woman?”
“Nope.”
I thought about it.
Mrs. O'Day said, “I found her, you know.”
“You did?”
“Yes. It was the victrola. Like I said, usually she was real good about playing it low, but I was finished with my planning, and I wanted to get four hours of sleep before Store Day. You know, so I'd have plenty of energy. Funny, four hours is enough now, even when I let the planning slide till the night before and I have to stay up most of the night to plan when I had all the week before to do it. Of course, you never know for sure what you really need till just before you go out to buy, and it'd be crazy for me to just stock up at the prices they're getting these days, although when did you ever know the prices on anything to go
down
?”
“Never. You mean her stereo was still on when you tried to go to bed?”
“That's what I said. It was, oh, two-thirty maybe? I tossed and turned for a while, but it was no good, I could still make out the words the radio announcer was saying. If it was just music, I might have been able to ignore it, but you know how it is when somebody's talking, you sort of strain to make sense of the sentences even if you're hearing only a few words from each.”