Biltmore hitched his chair fractionally closer to Goodie’s. ‘Well, m’dear, it certainly has made you the picture of health. Tell you what …’
‘So you’re an associate of that rascal Phineas,’ beamed May Biltmore at Hammett. ‘Perhaps you know dear unfortunate Mrs Starr.. ’
Biltmore harrumphed from across the tea cart.
‘As a matter of fact, darling, it’s to interview Mrs Starr that Mr Hammett and his charming fiancee are here this afternoon.’
‘It is tragic, isn’t it?’ she asked sorrowfully. ‘To lose one’s entire family in a ghastly train wreck! No wonder she has come west to try and forget…’
‘Tragic,’ Hammett echoed. He laid a hand on Goodie’s shoulder as she also began to rise. ‘Stay here and fill up on cakes and sandwiches, sweetheart.’ He grinned at Biltmore. ‘Maybe I won’t have to feed her tonight.’
‘How charming!’ exclaimed May Biltmore.
As Hammett went out to look for the cottage just beyond the stone bridge past the tennis courts, Biltmore’s shining dome was bent solicitously over Goodie’s gleaming ringlets, and Mrs Biltmore was cooing over Bingo, the little white dog.
20
The three-room cottage was peak-roofed like the main house. Smoke wisped from the stovepipe through one side of the roof. Hammett rapped sharply at the door.
‘Hawkins, Mrs Starr. From Mr Epstein’s office. He sent me out with a few things for you.’
‘Just a moment.’
Just before the door swung open, he checked in his overcoat pockets the reassuring bulges of the weapons he planned to use against her.
‘It’s about time he sent some-’ Fire blazed in the blue eyes as recognition washed across her face. ‘ You! ’
Hammett pushed by her, tensed for a knee at the groin, but all she did was fall back, yowling.
‘That kike son of a bitch sold me out!’
‘Hush. You’ll wake the neighbors.’ He kicked the door shut with a heel, leaned against it, hands in his overcoat pockets and a sardonic grin on his face.
Molly had retreated to the center of the small living room. It was furnished with main-house castoffs. On the wall, ‘The Lone Wolf’ competed with ‘The End of the Trail’ in cheap gilt frames.
‘I thought that pickle-nose Jew bastard was dead straight!’
‘Brass Mouth didn’t set you up.’
‘I’d believe you?’ she demanded scornfully.
‘You can believe this.’
His right hand came from the overcoat pocket with a gun-drawing movement. Molly cried out in alarm. Then, when she saw what he was holding, her face unclenched.
‘You’re kidding me. It’s a mirage.’
Hammett set the bottle of Old Dougherty on the glass- and cigarette-scored top of the wicker table and dropped his coat on the sofa.
‘I figure being a fugitive as dry work.’
‘Come to mama!’ She had the cork out before getting cautious again. She went into the kitchen carrying the bottle, to return with two water glasses that she splashed half-full.
‘Let’s see you put that down, mister. Then we’ll talk.’
‘Mud in your eye.’
Hammett shook his head and reached for the bottle to replenish his glass. He sat down. Molly drank, refilled, sat down across from him with a beatific look. Hammett lit a cigarette and drank rye.
‘You make a passable grieving widow.’
‘I looked in the mirror this morning, I thought I was my goddamn mother.’ She brooded in silence. ‘Damn near a week without anyone to talk to, except that dotty old woman out there. She talks to her dog. Her goddamn dog! ’
‘So talk to me.’
Her lip curled. ‘What’s a nice girl like me doing in-’
‘What do you know about Vic Atkinson’s death?’
‘Vic Atkinson? The guy you were…’ It belatedly hit her. ‘ Death? You mean he’s-’
‘Monday night. With a baseball bat.’ It could be true, she might not have heard. In her role as grief-struck widow, she wouldn’t have been able to evince much interest in local news.
‘Look, Hammett, I’m sorry about your friend, but you can’t expect me to act all broken up. I only met the gentleman the one time.’ She shrugged. ‘I heard somewhere that Scarface Al uses a baseball bat to-’
‘Now you sound like the cops,’ said Hammett. ‘Nope, this was local, something Vic was working on.’ He paused deliberately. ‘He was going to find you, and he was going to shake you until something fell out. Say you were scared enough to make a phone call after we left your cathouse’
‘Parlorhouse,’ she interrupted automatically.
‘Bullshit.’
‘All right, I was scared.’ She wore a black floor-length dress with a cameo brooch at the throat to set it off. ‘But that’s all you’re getting from me. I know what you’re doing, bringing your bottle to-’
‘Have a drink,’ suggested Hammett.
‘Go to hell.’
‘Have a drink, Hammett.’ He leaned the other way. ‘Thanks, I will.’
Watching him pour, she said in sudden impatience, ‘Gimme that bottle. I can match a beanpole like you drink for drink any day.’
‘You’ve got more to lose,’ warned Hammett.
She laughed harshly. ‘Try it, buster, you’ll be walking like a cowboy for a month.’
‘I meant names,’ said Hammett. ‘All those big important names you’d never dare talk to me about.’
‘Damn right. Hoping I’ll get drunk…’
‘I think one of us already is.’
A surprising shudder ran through her. ‘I hadn’t ought to be talking to you like this. If certain people-’
‘I could always tell them you spilled your guts,’ said Hammett thoughtfully to help her along.
‘Jesus H. Christ, you seemed like pretty straight Ghees last week.’
‘Vic was, see what it got him.’
Hammett lurched to his feet, stood waiting for the dizziness to pass. The jug was mortally damaged. Those water glasses could fool a man. He pulled aside the Nottingham lace curtain and looked out. Beyond the path, the stream purled and foamed between its banks. Dusk. And he hadn’t learned a damn thing, except that neither he nor Molly was liable to drink the other under the table. He turned back to the room.
‘All I’ve got is that Vic was looking for you, and that he was murdered. Is there a connection? Help me out, for Chrissake! If I was going to snitch you away to the gumshoes, you’d have the sheriff’s brogans on the back of your neck instead of me with a bottle of bad hootch. Speaking of which…’
He refilled the glasses, sat down again, and cocked his feet on the edge of the table.
‘Okay, ask your goddamn questions. I probably won’t answer any of them, but you might get lucky.’
‘Who’d you call after we left last Sunday?’
She shook her head, slowly, her brilliant blue eyes fixed on his face, then grimaced and said, ‘Oh, what me hell? You were barely out the door when Boyd Mulligan called. He knew you’d been there and he wanted to know why. I told him you were after names. That’s all.’
Hammett put his feet back on the floor and found his crumpled pack of cigarettes in one pocket. He shook his head.
‘Nope. I can’t buy the Mulligans as ordering Vic killed because he’d been around asking for names. They’d
