“I don’t know,” Dallas said. “You don’t have a PI firm to work out of anymore, do you?”
“You always did ask tough questions, Dal.”
“Maybe you should phone Libby and find out.”
Technically, according to Dale, ownership of Carson & Rudd had passed into Libby’s hands. I didn’t see how she was going to be able to keep it going. It occurred to me—for the first time, which was revealing—that I still hadn’t phoned Libby about Greg. Okay, not all that revealing. Simply put, I’d never cared for Elizabeth Capehart Rudd. We’d never bonded, not even close. At times I wondered if she and Greg had, since they were childless and had never shown the slightest bit of affection in public, though that might’ve been a trait of the Rudds, part of their DNA. I didn’t want to phone her now, but decided I had no choice.
The grieving widow answered on the fifth ring. “Hello?”
“Libby?” Music in the background. It wasn’t a dirge, either. I recognized Roger Miller’s “Chug-A-Lug,” of all the lunatic songs.
“Mort? That you?”
“Yeah.”
A muted voice, Libby’s, then the music clicked off. “Uh, Mort. It’s so nice of you to call.”
“I’m real sorry, Libby. About Greg.”
“Yes, well, thank you.”
She didn’t sound devastated. If she had, I might’ve had an idea where to go with the conversation. As it was, I didn’t have a clue. An awkward silence dragged out. Should I plunge into the subject of the future of Carson & Rudd or console her in a time of deep emotional crisis?
“Was there anything else, Mort?” Impatiently.
Wait around long enough, all your questions will be answered.
“Well, yeah, come to think of it. I was wondering about Greg’s business, what you’re thinking of doing with it.” Dallas and Jeri were watching me, ears perked.
“I haven’t given it much thought.” More whispery voices in the background, then, “Maybe you should know I had the account frozen. This morning.”
“What account?”
“Greg’s. You know, with the bank.”
“Carson & Rudd’s business account?”
“That’s right.”
Blood in the water, that’s what does it. Drives ’em nuts. They’ll snap at anything, even eat their own tails. In fact, my sister had hated Libby, the way Libby had slid in and taken over during Greg’s second year of college. Libby was a looker, but her body temperature, I’d always felt, derived from her immediate surroundings.
“Why’d you do that?” I asked.
“Just…security, a precaution. Until everything can be sorted out. You know.”
I did know. “How much was in the account?” I asked, feeling a hollowness in my gut.
More voices. Then, “I have no idea why that would be any of your business, Mortimer.” Her voice was calculated sweetness.
“Okay. Your call, Lib.”
“You caught me at a bad time. I wonder if we might talk about this later?”
“Sure, kid. Why don’t you call me?”
She hung up. I figured there were moving vans in front of her house that very moment. Roger Miller would segue into “King of the Road” and Libby, and whoever she was with, would be off in a cloud of champagne bubbles.
“Call your bank,” I said to Dallas, handing her the phone. “Stop payment on that check.”
“She wasn’t sobbing in your ear?”
“Hard to tell. I couldn’t hear over all the tap dancing.”
Dallas got through. The check hadn’t cleared yet. She stopped payment. Once Libby found out, she would be the very essence of fury. I wished I could be a fly on the wall.
I got a four-dollar can of Coke from the room’s refrigerator and sat on the couch with it. “Carson & Rudd is gone. It’s been deboned and eaten.”
“It was gone regardless,” Jeri said. “With your nephew and Dale gone and you without an investigator’s license.”
“Which means what, exactly?” Dallas asked her.
“No access, for one.” Jeri turned to me. “A license gives you certain privileges. Without it, you either do a quasi-legal maverick thing with desperate quasi-clients, or go into another line of business.”
Dallas lifted an eyebrow at me.
“I’m through with the IRS,” I said. “No way I’m going back to that god-awful scutwork mill again, grubbing for pennies.”
Dallas shrugged. “Well, maybe you could work for Jeri.”
Some bombshells explode in slow motion. This was one of those. Shrapnel tore through the room at a snail’s pace, ignoring gravity and logic.
Jeri stared at me. Then Dallas stared at me. I quit breathing. Then I quit smiling. I saw problems piling up like nuclear waste. I saw Jeri start to grin.
“No way,” I said.
Dallas tossed that day’s newspaper in my lap. “Then you’re in luck. Casino workers are in demand. You can deal blackjack, stand over a crap table, run the chuck-a-luck.”
I would kill myself first. I looked at Jeri.
“You might do,” she said thoughtfully. “You kept us out of jail today. That’s a marketable skill.”
I wanted to say something. Words scrambled around in my head like drunken rats. Trouble was, I didn’t have the slightest idea which ones of them to use or how to string them together. While I was doing that, Dallas took out her checkbook. “I’ve got to pay somebody. I imagine that would be you.” She was looking at Jeri, not me.
“Mmm,” Jeri said.
“Three thousand okay for now? Expenses and all that? You can let me know when it’s used up.”
“That’d be fine.”
Dallas wrote out the check and handed it to her. “What about Mr. Angel here?” she said.
Jeri gave me a slow, contemplative look. “I’ll have to think about that. Could you drop by my office tomorrow, Mort? Say, ten-ish? I’ll let you know.”
Throwing my words back at me.
The day had started out okay. Best I’ve had since Monday. I’d managed to cause two well-deserved fender benders and hadn’t come across more heads. Now, suddenly, I was Jeri’s employee, or might be. She had her own
