are at this festival, he and his men burn their homes. These workers, they watch the flames and all they own' - he spiraled a finger skyward - 'gone.
' `Too bad,' says this man. 'Too, too bad. But I have land for you. Very cheap. Across the Flagler bridge. I will take you there.' '
'Australian?' Meg said.
'The same. These workers, if they are black, if they are African-American, the sons and grandsons of slaves? They must carry a pass to get over the bridge. A worker's pass. And they are not allowed anywhere on this island except for the boss's home.'
'Johnson's Civil Rights act took care of that,' Meg said.
'Since nineteen sixty-five, it has not been true. Before that, it was true. I found out by browsing the Net.' Luis backed away from the Mercedes. 'So you are warned.'
'Not to go down Australian because it's a ghetto?'
Meg said. 'It's the middle of the day. And I've never heard of the Australian A venue ghetto in all the stuff I read and heard about Palm Beach. Phooey.'
Meg directed Quill off the Flagler Bridge, down Broadway to Blue Heron Boulevard and then to Australian. The transition from monied homes with beautifully treed lots was abrupt. Not, Quill realized, because the residential districts were poor and ill-kept, but because the zoning boards had clearly fallen prey to business interests. Broadway was filled with decaying, boarded-up buildings with signs faded from the Florida heat and humidity. Earl's Gas Station and Fran's Upholstery and similarly named small businesses would run for entire city blocks. Then the homes, smaller and smaller, but neatly kept, with fenced yards and late model cars in the driveway, would appear for a short stretch, to be replaced by dead and dying commercial property, then reappear again.
The faces of the people on the street were like those of the people in Hemlock Falls - working people, middle-class people. The only difference was the color of their skin.
Traffic in this area was modest, and Quill relaxed behind the wheel. Whoever had laid out West Palm Beach had done a neat, sensible job. It was a grid pattern, with numbered streets running east-west and avenues and boulevards running north-south. The Longstreets lived within a few blocks of one another. Meg, who was navigating, directed Quill to Linda's house first.
The house, like the others around it, was neat and clean. The small yard was enclosed by a chain-link fence. The house itself was concrete blocks covered with stucco and a red tile roof, architecture ubiquitous to south Florida. Next door, outside a small stucco house painted aquamarine blue, an elderly black man hoed his garden. He stopped and leaned on his hoe when the Mercedes came to a halt at the curb.
A nondescript tan dog lay under the shade of an orange tree in Linda's yard, and when Meg and Quill approached the gate, got up, tongue lolling in the heat, head down, tail wagging. Quill reached over the fence and patted its head.
'It doesn't look like anyone's home,' Quill said.
'You lookin' for Miz Longstreet?' the elderly man called. 'She'd be at her brother's today. Two blocks over.'
'Thanks,' Quill said. Longstreet Catering was housed in a small, cheap Morton building with aluminum sides and a low pitched roof. A house trailer sat in front. Children's toys were scattered around the steps. Two plastic, webbed lounge chairs had been placed near a small, inflatable pool. One was occupied by a large, bare-chested man in his early thirties. He had a beer can in one hand, a cigarette in the other. A small, tow-headed boy played in the plastic pool. He was naked, probably about three years old, and he splashed merrily in the sunshine.
The occupant of the second lawn chair was Linda Longstreet.
'You have any idea at all how to approach this with her?' Meg asked in a low voice. 'Do you suppose that's her husband? Or her boyfriend? How do we talk about her affair with Taylor in front of him?'
'It wasn't an affair,' Quill said. 'He - um - encountered her twice, once in the patisserie kitchen and once in the bread closet.'
Meg sighed. Quill pulled the car up to the curb. Linda jumped up from the chair, raised her hand, shading her eyes. She was wearing a blue-checked, short-sleeved shirt and a pair of cutoffs. Her feet were bare. She was visibly relaxed when Meg and Quill got out of the car.
'Welcome,' she said as they walked up. 'Isn't that Mrs. Taylor's car? For a moment, I thought it was her, but it's you come to call. Isn't it awful about Mr. Taylor? We heard about it on the news. We saw you on the news, too. All about how you both are really detectives from New York? And not cooks at all.'
'I'm a cook,' Meg said indignantly.
'I'm an innkeeper.' Quill added. 'We're not genuine detectives, you know. Amateurs.'
'It's just a thrill to meet you,' Linda said. 'Just a thrill.'
Quill, who wanted to point out that she had met them before, said, 'May we talk to you a moment?'
'Me? Sure. This man here? My brother, Curtis. Curtis. This is Margaret and Sarah Quilliam. You both want to sit down?' She turned to her brother. 'Curtis, you bring folding chairs from the back. And can I get you ice tea? A Coke?'
Quill was forcibly reminded that if you peeled away the resort and vacation atmosphere, Florida was a Southern state, and this was Southern-style hospitality. Curtis brought two rusting lawn chairs from behind the trailer and opened them onto the lawn with a grunt. Quill pulled her chair a little closer to Meg's and sat down. Meg went over to the plastic pool and knelt down in front of the little boy, who stopped splashing and regarded her with an unsmiling, direct blue gaze.
'You sure I can't get you ice tea?'
It was hot. Quill was thirsty. Southern ice tea was always heavily sugared. Besides, Nero Wolfe had a strict rule about breaking bread (and, Quill assumed by extension, drinking tea iced or otherwise) with potential murderers. Quill reflected that here, on home ground, Linda was more relaxed, less jittery. If she had something to drink with her, she might relax even more. Even the way she spoke - while as rushed and disconnected as her speech at her offices - was less defensive. Less servile. And she certainly didn't appear to be guilty of anything -
