Murder on the Rocks. Talmage Powell

      Her eyes narrowed and she looked apprehensively at the bedroom. When she looked back at me she said, “Thank you. No one else ever noticed. How does it happen that you did?”

      “I was brought up around here. It’s been twenty years since the last minstrels.”

      “They die hard,” she said. “Some employers wouldn’t like knowing I graduated from Howard University with a degree in education, but teaching pay isn’t enough to support my son and myself. Mrs. Sewall isn’t the kind who would care, but all her friends aren’t like her. You won’t say anything, will you?”

      “Why should I?”

      She brushed past me and went into the bedroom. After a while she came out, carried the shopping bag into the kitchen and came back. “I hung up her clothing,” she told me. “I’ll give her a neck and shoulder massage to bring her around. It shouldn’t take long, Mr.—”

      “Bentley.”

      “Mr. Bentley. I’ve never seen you with her before.”

      “We just met.”

      The Siamese cat stood up and stretched.

      “Ava!” the woman called.

      The Siamese cat arched her back and sneered.

      “Siamese cats,” the maid said. “The smartest domesticated felines alive. And don’t think they don’t know it. I don’t feed her now, she’ll sink her teeth in my ankle and laugh like a fiend. Excuse me.”

      Ava followed her into the kitchen. I heard the refrigerator door swing open, the splash of milk in a saucer. When the maid came out she crossed into the bedroom.

      I walked into the. kitchen, opened another bottle, and watched the domesticated feline lapping milk noisily. From there I turned on the hi-fi unit. Sound swelled through the room and I lowered the volume a little. The music was unfamiliar but I liked it. It soothed me and brought back a sense of reality that had started leaving me when I walked out of Hogan’s with Iris Sewall.

      At four-fifteen the Siamese cat drifted out of the kitchen, found a comfortable spot on the rug, and began cleaning her chops. The bedroom door opened and Iris appeared. There was color in her cheeks, her skin looked freshly showered, and she had on brocade lounging pajamas and velvet ballerina slippers.

      “Sorry,” she said. “Terribly sorry, and all that, but the drinks were obviously too many. That or the sun. Or possibly both. In any case, thanks for staying around.” She lighted a cigarette and glanced at the hi-fi set. “Like my music?”

      “Anyone would.”

      She came to the sofa and sat on the far end. Her hands moved nervously. She was drawing herself together, getting ready to say what she had to say.

      “Someone called,” I told her, “but when I answered the line went dead. Sorry if I’ve compromised you. Then again, it might have been only Sara.”

      “My sister? How did you—?” She turned toward the photograph and her face relaxed. “Of course. No, Sara will still be sleeping. She gave last night’s brawl. Her husband is Wayne Cutler. Perhaps you know him?”

      I shook my head. “I’m not part of the mallet-and-horse-show crowd.”

      “A worker who scorns the drones.”

      “If we have to put it that particular way, that would be a way to put it. Is your sister involved in this problem of yours?” I thought I’d help her get to the point.

      “No—no, it isn’t Sara. Not this time. And what made you ask? Do you know about those other times?”

      “What kind of times?”

      “Oh, when she was at Fentriss after me. Running away from school. The first time she made the papers she’d been gone a whole week. When the police found her she was in a Richmond hotel room with two sailors and a truck driver. Drunk. The next time it was a policeman in Alexandria, and so on.” She blew a feather of smoke at the kakemono. “Sara’s married now, so she’s Wayne’s problem, not mine or Father’s.”

      The thread had given out. I gave it another tug. “An hour and a half ago you couldn’t wait to tell me your troubles. You even gave me a bundle of earnest money. If you’ve changed your mind, I can still salvage something from the week-end. If not, why stall?”

      She glanced at me, ground out her cigarette, and clasped her hands around her knees. Her ankles were slim and what I could see of her legs was tanned. In the room’s semi-darkness her eyes seemed to glow.

      Huskily she said, “It’s a man. A man from Father’s Embassy. One of the diplomatic couriers. His name is Silvio Contreras.” She spelled it for me. “Tuesday night he brought a diplomatic pouch to the Embassy and the next morning he was supposed to leave with a pouch to Ottawa. But he never came back to the Embassy. Father is very upset. He wants Silvio found right away, and without any publicity. Silvio checked out of the Mayflower Wednesday morning and no one knows where he’s gone to.”

      I took her money out of my pockets, laid it on the cushion beside her, and stood up. “It’s a case for Missing Persons,” I told her. “That, or the Department’s Special Detail if your father feels it’s something particularly delicate.” I looked down at her. “Me—I think it’s about as delicate as a blacksmith’s appetite. He didn’t run off with the Embassy pouch, did he?”

      She shook her head. “Please—”

      “—Or there’s this one other thought: there’s more than you’ve told me. A lot more. And I make it a point to pull out of anything that smells of flim-flam. Your story smells worse than a dead rat in a steamer trunk. I’d guess Silvio has something your father wants. Information, perhaps, or a letter or cash money. If you just wanted to find Silvio you wouldn’t have taken the trouble of looking me up and handing me a thousand dollars; a PI could do it for fifty and show forty profit. Still with me?”

      She nodded.

      “Let’s take it a step further. If Silvio’s got something he should have given the Ambassador or taken something he shouldn’t have, you’d want to get hold of it and you’d want it done quietly and discreetly—those are the words you used. Whatever it happens to be, you want it back. Before Silvio has time to pass it on or cash it in, or whatever else you’re afraid he might do with whatever he has. Is imagination running away with me?” I asked.

      Her tongue passed over her lips. Suddenly she stood up, went to the tansu, and opened the cabinet door. She took out a glass and a cognac bottle. She poured cognac into the glass, looked at it, and tossed it off. No cough, no choking spasm. Sauce was an old friend to this lady. As if I didn’t know.

      She refilled the glass, lifted it by the stem, and turned to me. “The effect was rather startling,” she said in an off-key voice. “I don’t believe in mind-reading, so you’re as clever as Jean promised you were. And probably better.” She lifted the glass to her lips, wet them delicately, and walked toward the sofa. Picking up the money, she brought it to me and put it in my hand. “I should have told you everything from the first. I shouldn’t have tried to trick you.”

      “That sounds like a come-on for more flim-flam.”

      “No.” She shook her head and the hair brushed across her throat. “Honestly it isn’t. Sit down and I’ll start at the beginning.”

      Bending over, she took a cigarette and lighted it, all with one hand. Then she sat on the edge of the sofa and looked up at me. “Please sit down.”

      I sat down beside her.

      She blew smoke across the chow table. The room was so quiet the air-conditioner sounded louder than Niagara Falls. Gazing at the end of her cigarette, she said, “You’d have no way of knowing it but my father’s government has told him there’s trouble down there. Agitation. Political trouble. You know how those things start.”

      “And