Greco and I helped ourselves to the iced mint tea and sat at a cherrywood table by the window overlooking the farm pond while Dot finished up her conversation. 'Well, not at all. Thank you for your time,' she told whoever was at the other end of the line-a reporter, it sounded like and then collapsed in a chair across from us, where she began to fan her face with a Burpee seed catalog.
'Oh, what a day this has been!' she croaked. 'And this heat! Good heavens, the least these awful people could have done was wait until October to… to do whatever they're trying to do to us.
Speaking of which- I suppose you're Donald Strachey, aren't you? Mr. Johnny-on-the-spot from Millpond.' Her look was not friendly.
'Yes, ma'am. We met last year around this time. Under similarly depressing circumstances.'
'Mm-hmm.' She examined me coolly. 'Depressing is certainly the word for it. And confusing,' she added pointedly.
'I really think Don is going to be helpful,' Greco put in, grinning a little zanily. 'He cares a lot about you, Dot, and he can work twenty-four hours a day to find out what's going on and put a stop to it. I mean, you know, the police will go through the motions and all, but to have an experienced private investigator on your side, even if he's employed by- Well, it can't hurt, can it? If you're going to stay here and not give in-'
'What do you mean, if I'm going to stay and not give in?'
Greco shrugged, grinned tentatively. 'Naturally I meant since you're not going to give in.'
'You'd better mean it.'
I said, 'I'm glad to see how determined you are, Mrs. Fisher. Most people in your position would have locked up the house and booked passage on a three-month cruise through the Norwegian fjords. Or sold out to Millpond and headed for Fort Lauderdale. And I know you know how formidable an outfit Millpond can be. Treacherous even. You've got lot of guts.'
'You really needn't explain the obvious to me, young man,' she said evenly. 'And don't waste 13 your breath trying to flatter me either.' Her brown eyes had softened, though, and she looked as if something had suddenly struck her funny and she was trying hard not to smile. 'And I might add, you'd better not let Edith hear you say that word, Mr. Strachey-'
'Don.'
'Well, Don,' she said, 'however brief your visit on Moon Road might turn out to be, you're going to have to remember that Edith cannot stand that word.'
'Which word? Fjords? Fort Lauderdale?'
'Oh, no!' She found a way to laugh now, shakily, despite herself. 'No, no. Peter, you say it.'
'Guts,' Greco whispered. 'Edith hates the word 'guts.' She also, unfortunately, can't stand the word 'rot.''
'One time a whole lot of years ago,' Dot said, looking relieved to be distracted for the moment,
'Edie and I were at a teachers' convention in Buffalo, and I mentioned during dinner that I thought the wine tasted like rotgut. Well, Edie just stood right up and marched out of the room!
Oh what a brouhaha that was between us. I haven't said either word in front of her since that evening, and that's been twenty years ago if it's a day.'
Greco and I laughed, but Dot's mood had shifted abruptly back, and she was watching me levelly again, somberly. 'Now then,' she said. 'Let's do get to the point of all this, Mr. Strachey-Don.
You're not exactly in my home on a social call, are you? Crane Trefusis phoned earlier and told Peter that he was sending you over to help us out. That struck me as extremely peculiar. Is that correct? That you are working for Millpond?'
'It is. On this case, yes.'
'Mm-hmm. Well. You know, I'll bet, just what my opinion of Crane Trefusis is, don't you? That he's a… a crock of rotgut.' She shot a quick look down the hallway again.
'He mentioned it. Or words to that effect.'
'However,' she went on, watching me even more closely now, 'I called up a mutual friend of yours and mine this afternoon, Lew Morton, and Lew told me emphatically that I could trust you.
He said even if you were being paid by Millpond you'd be a good man to have helping us out, and that you would know what you were doing. I didn't like the sound of that, but I trust Lew's judgment about people. So, Mister-Private-Eye-with-the Morals-of-Rhett-Butler-and the mustache-tell me then. Do you know what you're doing?'
I said, 'No.'
Greco laughed and Dot looked startled.
'All right then,' she said, reassured slightly by Greco's good humor. 'Let me put it this way. Do you plan to figure out what you're doing?'
'That's the plan,' I said.
'And you're on our side in this great war with Millpond?'
'Absolutely. Trefusis is paying me to catch the vandals. We can both imagine what his motives are in hiring me instead of someone else, but forget that. I'll just do the job, and after that I bow out.'
She considered this carefully for a long moment, then said, 'And you understand that I am not selling this house under any circumstances?' Her face was set now, her dark eyes bright with emotion.
I said, 'That's clear by now.'
'Oh, all right then.' She sighed, the apprehension about me fading but the fear still in her eyes.
'In fact, thank you. Yes, thank you very much. I'm a tough old bird, any of my former students will tell you quick enough. Yes, I've always been a very strong person. But I'm frightened. Today 14
I'm just scared to death. And I just want you to… I just hope you can help get us out of this… this phantasmagoria!'
'That's what I want to do.'
'It has not been pleasant. Oh, no, not pleasant. First today it was those asinine words on the barn.
And then this infernal nonsense arrived.'
She picked up the Burpee seed catalog she'd used as a fan, slid an envelope from between the pages, and handed it to me. I opened it, lifted out the single sheet of paper by a corner, flipped it open, and read: 'You're next. You got three days. Saturday you die!'
It was hard to tell whether the printing had been done by the same hand responsible for the carriage house graffiti, which had been hurriedly and sloppily spray-painted. There were similarities in the way the Y's and G's slanted, but an expert would come up with a more reliable opinion than mine. Maybe the police would provide a graphologist and fingerprint person. I knew they did that sometimes.
I asked Dot to describe one more time the events of the past eighteen hours. She groaned, decided she'd better have a Schlitz, brought me and Greco each a can too, then sped through it.
Dot and Edith had gone to bed at eleven-thirty the night before, watched Nightline, then slept soundly with the air conditioner running. They were not awakened by any sounds during the night. At seven in the morning Dot went out to pick up the Times Union from the roadside box and saw the graffiti. She informed Edith, who promptly went back to bed with a headache. Dot phoned the police, who arrived around eight-thirty.
At eight-fifty the two patrolmen departed, having expressed sympathy and stated that a police detective would arrive later in the morning. None had. At nine-forty-five, Dot, frustrated and
'hopping mad,' phoned Crane Trefusis and told him what she thought of 'his cruel prank.'
Trefusis denied all. He sent a PR lackey out to the house to recoil in horror and further plead Millpond's innocence, and a photographer to record the crime on film. These were the pictures I'd seen.
McWhirter and Greco arrived from New York City around eleven in their car, the old green Fiat I'd seen in the driveway alongside Dot's Ford Fiesta. McWhirter went straight for the phone book and began calling newspapers and radio and TV stations. A Millpond paint crew showed up at noon. Dot would have let them do the job, but McWhirter explained that none of the television people had arrived yet-'You get more air time with a good visual,' he correctly pointed out-so the Millpond crew was sent away.
Trefusis called back in the early afternoon-probably just after he'd phoned me-and told Peter I might be showing up to help out. Dot refused to speak with Trefusis. At three, the threatening letter was discovered in the mailbox. Dot phoned the Albany Police Department once again and was promised assistance. As yet, none was forthcoming. A television news crew showed up an hour or so later, and soon after that I arrived.
