“Thanks, I think.”
“This is Webster Ig,” I said, “friend of Jackie’s.”
“Two letters,” Jackie told him. “An I and a G.”
“Feel free to lose the tie, son,” said Hodges. “Been a while since we had a dress code in here.”
“And the fish of the day?” I asked.
“Cooked.”
“Excellent. Cooked all around. And a burger for the pup.”
I spent the rest of the night trying to squeeze more information out of the FBI, while giving up as little as possible to Jackie about my recent night out. The two of us never shared any kind of romantic life, which I think gave her the idea she could nose her way into mine. None of which right at that moment mattered a whit. All I cared about was that I was alive, eating at a friend’s crappy little joint, watching another friend try to flirt through a layer of unhealed plastic surgery, feeling my little mutt pressed up against my leg and, for a moment anyway, not afraid for life, limb or soul.
FIFTEEN
I DIDN’T BOTHER with anything more elaborate than a polo shirt and pair of khakis to go see Joyce Whithers, assuming her to be impervious to the persuasive power of my sole surviving business suit.
The Silver Spoon was in a refurbished Italianate farmhouse set tight to the edge of a working potato farm about a half-mile north of the highway in Watermill. The approach to the two-story stucco building followed a long sandy drive that afforded an agreeable perspective on the old-world facade. The parking area was completely sheltered beneath a huge pergola on which grew a tangle of native vines meant to simulate Tuscan grapes and wisteria. In the evening a gang of hustling valets in bow ties and black sneakers fielded the flow of imported cars coming in for dinner, the only meal the place served. It was now the middle of the day so I had to park the Grand Prix on my own.
I’d called ahead this time, and brought Eddie for back-up, though I suspected the only creature on the premises approximating a Doberman was Joyce herself. On the phone she took the story of valuating Jonathan’s business without much argument. She said she’d been considering a lawsuit against him to recover some of her losses, though her lawyers had advised her on the difficulty of suing a dead man. I guessed she saw my project as a possible way to pursue Jonathan into the hereafter.
“Are you empowered to discuss a settlement?” she asked, briskly.
“Valuation is the first step in that process,” I told her.
“Then come,” she said, and hung up.
Once inside the restaurant, she wasn’t hard to find—in the middle of the reception area, struggling with a small tree planted in a big clay pot. She wore a pair of baggy denim shorts that fell just past her knees, an untucked men’s dress shirt and tattered running shoes. Her glasses and a Bic pen were stuck up in a wad of thick dark gray hair that looked a month or two past the last brush with a beauty parlor.
I’d been told she was around Hodges’s age, and also widowed, though some time ago. Maybe I could fix them up. They could swap notes on preparing whitefish and the trade-offs of keeping Slim Jims out on the bar or back near the cash register.
She probably didn’t notice me standing there, but didn’t flinch when I grabbed the lip of the pot to help her drag it into an open corner next to the maitre d’ stand.
“Damnable thing,” she said, standing back to appraise the situation.
“Looks good.”
“Not yet. Needs something.”
“A maitre d?”
“Not likely. That fig tree has the greater wit.” She finally looked at me. “And you are?”
“Sam Acquillo. Representing the Eldridge estate.”
She took my hand.
“Whenever I think of the money that person cost me I could just spit. What’s your part in this again?”
“I’m valuating the business for possible sale, or perpetuation under his widow’s ownership.”
“What on earth for?”
“To see if it has any value.”
“It doesn’t.”
“To keep serving a list of happy clients?”
“Not all.”
“So I understand. That’s why I’m here.”
“To see what kind of trouble I’ll cause you.”
“Just to talk.”
She went back over to the little tree and starting fussing with the branches, snapping off delinquents with a deft twist of the hand. Then, without asking my help, she tried again, unsuccessfully, to swivel the heavy clay pot. She moved like a woman who’d been raised to use her hands to get things done. To build, configure and dominate her surroundings. Schooled to value things practical as well as cultural. In times of revolution, a woman prepared to man the artillery, to go down swinging the butt of an empty rifle, honor intact.
Two guys in white kitchen uniforms came in from the outside carrying plastic shopping bags. They looked straight ahead as they passed through the reception area and went through a door I assumed led to the kitchen. They ignored the gray-haired woman grappling with the clay pot and she ignored them.
I let her struggle with the pot until they were gone from view, then reached down and helped her rotate it about twenty degrees.
“It’s not my department, ma’am, but I’m guessing the possibility of litigation would put a damper on plans to reformulate Jonathan’s operation.”
“Not your department?”
“I’m not a lawyer.”
“My husband was, and he’d say you’d be an idiot to try to sell a one-man financial consultancy, especially if all it did was provide a target for people to sue, which he’d certainly take advantage of, as would I.” She stood back to study the results of our latest effort.
“Let’s give it another half a turn,” she said, this time waiting for me to join her.
“Almost,” she said.
“Did you ever talk to any of his other clients? Anyone else who had less than spectacular success?”
“Heavens no,” she said, waving the question away like an annoying insect. She narrowed her eyes at me. I fought the urge to back away toward the door.
“You’re asking because he was killed.”
“Just gauging the mood of the clientele.”
“You said you aren’t a lawyer. Don’t speak like one.”
“Okay bluntness it is. It’s going to be very difficult to reconstitute, much less market, Jonathan’s business given that it was solely dependent on him. Although he did have some proprietary analytical tools that could be marketed under his name or absorbed into some other operation. It’s just the way he departed the scene that makes me question even that strategy. Not fair, maybe, but that’s the irrational world of finance for you. I personally don’t care one way or the other. I just want to learn what his clients are thinking so I can write my report and move on to the next goofed-up situation.”
“That’s better,” she said. “Mercenaries I understand.”
“So, any thoughts?”
“I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you mean. Not that I didn’t mull it as an option, I was so angry. But I couldn’t have, even if I had the means. Which I don’t.”
I tried my best to look embarrassed by the thought.
“No accusations, not at all. I’m just asking your opinion.”
“The lesson learned is never do business with friends, or their children, and definitely not their idiot sons-in-
