'Something's happened to that relationship lately,' Hazel said quietly. 'I see it in her, not him. She always had a cocky way of flipping a hip that had the pigeons crossing the street to bask in the sunshine. It used to be that Blaze rolled over when she snapped her fingers. I don't see that now. She's lost weight, and her eyes look like two burned holes in a blanket. Something's gnawing
on that gal. I'll tell you the truth, I've been wondering lately if she isn't dipping into the till at the post office.'
I had to hold myself down. 'Why in hell would she need to do that?'
Hazel planted her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands. 'I'll tell you a tale out of school. When Charlie died, he was on his best winning streak ever, and he left me cash. I invested it. When Lou died, I inherited a whole bunch of stuff I never knew he had. In a small town that kind of thing gets around.'
Her voice took on a brooding quality, as if she were thinking aloud. 'Two months ago Blaze Franklin came to me and tried to borrow three thousand dollars. He had a red-hot business opportunity, he said. I'd learned from Charlie how to keep an approach like that from becoming a problem. Blaze knew that my investments were being handled by Nate Pepperman, a business consultant with an office above the bank. I told Blaze to explain his proposition to Nate, and if Nate okayed it to tell him I said it was all right for Nate to milk something and finance the deal.'
Hazel gave me a little-girl grin. 'I've seen Charlie send three a week like that to his business consultant, and then he'd light up another cigar and tell me that the day the guy okayed a proposition was the day Charlie got himself a new business consultant. When they couldn't lean on friendship, most propositions turned out to be swiss cheese in texture.'
She sobered again. 'A couple of weeks later Nate came ill to see me about something else, and I asked him about Blaze. I wasn't too surprised to hear Blaze had never been near him. Even a professional big-touch artist might choke up trying to explain a deal to a gimlet-eye like Nate.'
Hazel shook out a cigarette from my pack on the table and leaned forward to accept my proffered light. She blew out a lungful of smoke and licked at a loose filament of tobacco on her lip. 'About the same time I heard from one of my barflies that Lucille Grimes had been into Dick
Turnbull's auto agency pricing foreign sport cars. That seemed to be two and two adding up to four.' Hazel leveled the cigarette at me. 'Then lo and behold, the next time I saw Lucille she was burnin' rubber on a bright red, brand new MG roadster.'
She smiled at my raised eyebrow. 'Yes. I was curious enough about it myself to make it my business to find out that Blaze had paid for it, in cash. That's not the way the title reads, but that's the way it happened. So either Blaze found himself another golden goose, or I figure Lucille is into the till. She sure looks like she's waitin' for her pants to be dropped an' the paddle to burn her up.'
'Blaze probably saved up for it out of his green stamps,' I said, but I was doing a lot of thinking.
'Lucille was all over town in the MG for ten days or so, champagne-bubbly,' Hazel continued. 'Then the blight set in. I don't know how he managed it, but the reins are definitely in Deputy Franklin's hands these days. Lucille looks like a lamp with the flame blown out. It must be that jealous men are hard on the nerves. She certainly looks like something is grinding her down. Maybe a man wouldn't notice it, but it's there for a woman to see.'
There was a lot that interested me in the story. A whole hell of a lot. Had I been knocking my brains out for nothing on the west coast of Florida's brush-overgrown back roads, when the pair of them had been practically under my thumb all the time? Franklin's persistent interest in my supposed timber-cruising, and then the direct connection to the post office. . . .
I gave it some more thought when the bar became active and Hazel went back to work.
I thought about it still more on the way back to the motel.
I was already in bed when something that had come to mind previously occurred to me. I got up, slipped on a robe, and went outside. I unlocked the back deck of the Ford and opened my small toolchest. I found what I was looking for: a miniature Italian automatic that fired
three .17 cartridges. It had its own little holster that strapped on a man's shin under his sock. It was no bulkier than an ankle bandage.
1 went back inside the motel room and strapped it on my shin. I didn't know yet whether Manny Sebastian knew where to find me. When I found out, it could be on goddamn short notice. I might need a little something extra going for me—like a hidden shin holster.
But right now there was Blaze Franklin.
And Lucille Grimes.
I was in the post office lobby at nine o'clock the next morning. The outer doors were opened earlier to allow boxholders to get their mail, but the windows didn't open until nine. Right on the dot Lucille raised the general delivery window. I could see two clerks, but they were busy in the back of the long room. I stepped up to the window, in a hurry to get my piece spoken before we were interrupted by someone walking in. 'Morning, Lucille,' I said.
She looked surprised to see me. 'Good morning,' she said almost as an afterthought. The dark circles beneath her eyes were still in evidence, and her blonde hair looked stringy. A trace of blotchiness marred her otherwise velvety pallor. 'May I help you?' She recalled herself to business from whatever she was thinking.
'How about having dinner with me one of these nights, Lucille?'
Her original surprise was obviously redoubled. 'I don't believe I should,' she answered. She stood there testing the sound of it. 'I really don't think—'
'You're not wearing his ring,' I interrupted her. 'Or his collar, I hope.'
Her chin lifted 'If you're implying—' 'I'm implying I'd like to have dinner with you. Say Wednesday night?' 'I'll think about it.' She appeared confused. A woman came in the door and walked up to the window. I had to step aside. 'Wednesday night?' I pressed the blonde.
'I'll have to—call me tonight,' she said hurriedly, then smiled at the woman. 'Yes, Mrs. Newman?'
I backed away under Mrs. Newman's bright-eyed inspection. No need to put an ad in the paper saying that I'd invited the postmistress out to dinner. The Mrs. Newmans of Hudson would eventually get the word back to Blaze Franklin. And if Hazel was right about who was calling the shots for the loving pair, an acceptance from Lucille would mean that Blaze had okayed it. That would be an interesting situation in itself.
I drove out east on Main Street, and for six hours I beat my way up and back two dozen monstrously tangled dirt roads, old logging trails, and footpaths, a few of them no more than twenty yards apart. I sweat gallons. I lost my temper. And I found nothing.
I went back to the Lazy Susan and showered, then stretched out on the bed for a couple of hours. I couldn't sleep, although I was tired. The continual frustration was beginning to do things to the hair-trigger of my temper. If it continued much longer, a little shove from one direction or another might send me careening off on a course not necessarily the correct one, just because action itself would be a release.
I was still in a bad mood when I whistled up Kaiser and headed for the Dixie Pig and dinner. The first three minutes there compounded it. I walked in to find Jed Raymond in the corner booth wearing the khaki shirt and red- piped uniform trousers I'd come to associate with Blaze Franklin. It jarred me. 'Where's the masquerade?' I asked Jed. He looked at me curiously. I didn't like the sound of my voice myself.
'I told you I was a jackleg deputy in an emergency,' he said in his usual cheerful manner.
'So what's the emergency?'
His grin was sheepish. 'Opening of a new supermarket. I'm on traffic.'
I '..it down in the booth. 'You must be younger than I thought, playing cops and robbers.'
'Cut it out, will you? Around here a guy's expected to do this or go into politics. This takes less time and money.'
'Suppose you had to arrest a real estate prospect, Jed?'
'Now you know no prospect of mine could ever be involved in anything requirin' me to arrest him.'
'But suppose?'
'If I didn't have the deposit, he just might have a little runnin' room,' Jed grinned.
Kaiser padded over to Jed's side of the booth and rested his muzzle on Jed's thigh. Jed reached down and scratched him between the ears. Kaiser took Jed's arm in his mouth. Jed growled at the dog, and Kaiser growled back. I could tell the dog wanted to play, and Jed reached the same conclusion.
'You want a little roughhouse, boy?' he asked. He slid out of the booth and got down on his knees. In seconds
