of blue through a screen of scrubby pine trees. I stopped, backed up, and pulled in behind him. Again we sat.
There was a blue jay flying around from scrub pine to scrub pine, looking at us, and looking, also, at everything else. He would sit for a moment, his head moving, looking in all directions, then, precipitously, for no reason that I could see, he would fly to another tree, or sometimes merely flutter to another branch, and look in all directions again. Semper paratus.
Ahead of us the gravel road wound up toward some power lines that ran at right angles to the highway through a cut in the woods. Behind us, and above, the highway traffic swooshed by, unaware that a little ways ahead was a slow-moving roadblock.
Shortstop on my all-time team had to be Ozzie Smith. I’d seen Marty Marion, but he didn’t hit like Ozzie. Pee Wee Reese, on the other hand, was one of the greatest clutch players I’d ever seen. That was the qualifying rule. This was an all-seen, all-time, all-star team. And Ozzie did things I’d never seen anyone do on a ball field. It had to be Ozzie.
The driver of the Buick came to a decision. The door opened and he got out and started back toward me. He had on a light beige suit and a maroon blouse with a bow at the neck, and medium high heels. He carried a black shoulder bag and he was female. Maybe forty, well built, with a firm jaw and a wide mouth. Her eyes were oval and set wide apart. Her eye makeup emphasized both the ovalness and the spacing in ways I didn’t fully understand. I rolled down my window. Her heels crunched forcefully into the gravel as she walked toward me. She seemed angry.
As she came alongside the car I said, “You ever see Ozzie Smith play?”
“Okay, pal,” she said, “what’s your problem?”
“Well, I’m trying to decide between Ozzie Smith and Pee Wee Reese for my all-time, all-seen team…”
“Never mind the bullshit,” she said. “I asked you a question, I want an answer.”
I smiled at her. She saw the smile, and ignored it. She did not disrobe.
“You wouldn’t want to go dancing or anything, would you?” I said.
She frowned, reached in her pocket, and pulled out a leather folder. She flipped it open.
“Police officer,” she said.
The shield was blue and gold and had Alton County Sheriff on it, around the outside.
“That probably means no dancing, huh?”
She shook her head angrily.
“Look, Buster,” she said. “I am not going to fuck around with you. You answer my questions right now, or we go in.”
“For what, following an officer?”
“Why you following me?”
“Because you were following me. And your license plate was classified. And I figured that if I stuck behind you, either you’d have to confront me, or I’d follow you home.”
She stared at me. It was a standard cop hard look.
“You decided to confront me,” I said. “Now I know you’re with the Sheriff’s Department. Who put you on me?”
“I’ll ask the questions, Bud.”
“No you won’t. You don’t know what to ask.”
“Whether I do or not,” she said, “I can tell you something. I can tell you that you are in over your head, and you’d be smart to go home and find another case before this thing gets pulled up over your ears.”
“You were showing me an open tail,” I said. “Somebody tossed my room, and let me know it. I figured that I was being scared off. What I want to know is, why? Who wants to discourage me? What can you tell me about Olivia Nelson? Who does your hair?” I smiled at her again.
She gave me her hard cop look again, which was surprisingly effective, considering that she looked sort of like Audrey Hepburn. Then she shook her head once, sharply. And her eyes glinted oddly.
“Rosetta’s,” she said, “in Batesburg.”
Then she turned on her medium high heels and walked back to her car, got in, U-turned, and drove past me out onto the Eureka Road.
chapter seventeen
I WAS IN my room at the Alton Arms, lying on the bed with my shoes off and three pillows propped, talking to Susan on the phone. There was a bottle of scotch and some soda and a bucket of ice on the bureau. My shirt was hung in the closet on a hanger, which had been covered with pink quilted padding. My gun was on the bedside table, barrel pointed away for good range safety. I was sipping a drink from one of the squat glasses they had sent up with the scotch. It had a crest engraved on the side with an A worked into it. Padded coat hangers and monogrammed glasses. First class.
“How’s the baby?” I said.
“She’s fine,” Susan said. “I took her for a walk after work and got her a new bone and she’s on the bed now, looking at me and chewing it. And getting bone juice on the spread.”
“How adorable,” I said. “Does she miss me?”
“Do you miss Daddy, Pearl?” Susan said off the phone.
I waited.
