Blowing Smoke Page 9

  “Amy always was a loser.” Hillary drew the word out.

  “Do you still want to continue with this?”

  “More than ever.”

  “Fine.” I told her I’d drop by to talk with her later.

  “I can hardly wait.”

  I sat down on one of the deck chairs, smoked the rest of my cigarette, and watched a woodpecker working on the stump of an old elm. A little ways away, five sparrows were clustered on the branch of a honey locust, pecking at the berries. I had a feeling this was the only quiet moment I was going to have the whole day. Zsa Zsa came running up with a piece of paper in her mouth. I traded her a dog biscuit that was lying on the table for it and called Pat Humphrey. There were a few things I wanted to clarify before I went to see Hillary.

  “I knew who you were the minute you walked in the door,” she said to me before I’d even begun, a faint note of amusement in her voice.

  Her tone made me want to smack her. Instead, I stubbed out my cigarette and flicked the butt in the ashtray. “Because Amy told you.”

  “No one told me.”

  “If you knew who I was, why did you put on a show?”

  “I wanted to see if you’d buy it. How’d your tape turn out, by the way?”

  “Good. You’re running a low-level con.”

  Humphrey snorted. “What do you want me to say? That I am? Are you recording this by chance? Because you know that’s illegal in this state.”

  “Thanks for the lesson.”

  “Murphy said...”

  I cut her off before she could start in. “Don’t go there. I’m not buying it, so don’t even bother.”

  “What are you so afraid of?”

  “I’m not afraid of anything.” But as I said it, I wondered if she could hear my blood pounding in my veins. I focused my attention on the blue jay on the telephone wire.

  Humphrey laughed. “Yes, you are. You’re terrified. I can hear it in your voice.”

  “Don’t worry about me. Maybe you’d better start thinking about giving Rose Taylor’s money back.” I slammed the phone down harder than I’d intended. If Humphrey thought I was going to fall for her particular load of crap, she was very mistaken.

  The fact that the two vets I went to see were complimentary of Pat Humphrey did not improve my mood any.

  “No, she really was helpful with a cat we had,” the vet at the Wee Creature Clinic in Dewitt told me. “Of course, I was skeptical at first, but the owner insisted, and damned if the cat didn’t have a small growth in her kidneys we’d overlooked.”

  The second vet out in Fayetteville told pretty much the same story. “We had a German shepherd I’d operated on to repair a tear in a tendon in his knee. But he wasn’t healing right, and I couldn’t figure out what the hell was wrong. We even had him MRI’ed in Rochester, but nothing showed up. Then this woman the owner called, Humphrey, comes in and lays her hand on the dog. A few minutes later, she tells me the dog’s in pain because a small piece of cartilage is adhering to the socket joint so the ball of the bone can’t come all the way down.

  “I thought it was a load of crap, but the client insisted we go back in—we were going to take off the leg—and damned if it wasn’t what Humphrey said. I don’t know how she did it, but she did.”

  “So you believe she’s psychic?”

  “I don’t know if she’s psychic. But she’s a damned good diagnostician. That I will tell you.”

  Maybe she was, I thought as I walked out of the office, but she still hadn’t talked to Rose Taylor’s cat.

  Even though I tried, I couldn’t get my telephone conversation with Pat Humphrey out of my mind. I knew she was scamming me ... and yet. But that’s what people like her do—take advantage of everyone’s desire to believe. Which was why I decided to pay her a visit. Off the clock. I wanted to make her admit she was lying about Murphy.

  I arrived at her cottage a little after two-thirty the following afternoon. By that time, my T-shirt was sticking to my back, and the khaki skirt I’d put on that morning was a crumpled mess. I took my sunglasses off, wiped the sweat off the bridge of my nose, and redid my ponytail before heading for the house.

  It was just as well, I decided, as I rang the doorbell, that I’d left Zsa Zsa with Tim. Cocker spaniels—in fact, dogs in general—don’t do well when the temperature is in the nineties, and we were into triple digits. Of course, I don’t do well, either. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a nice owner who was willing to take care of me, not that Zsa Zsa was showing any signs of gratitude. But then, when you’re a princess, you don’t have to.

  She hadn’t even protested when I’d walked out the door. Usually she hates it when I go anywhere without her. But not now. She’d just opened one eye, then closed it again and gone back to her doggie dreams. Right now I wished I could join her. The one good thing about working these days was that the store was air-conditioned. I rang the bell again. No one answered.

  I was turning to go when I noticed Humphrey’s car was still in the garage. Which meant she was probably down the block, or maybe she was across the street visiting a neighbor. I rang the bell one more time just to make sure. When no one came to the door, I sat myself down on one of the porch chairs and reviewed the questions I had for her while I fanned myself with a pizza flyer that I’d found lying on the armrest.

  Everything was quiet. The surrounding houses were closed up against the sun, their curtains drawn. The birds were hiding in their nests. The cats were snoozing under bushes. The air shimmered in the heat. A faint breeze brought with it the smell of hot tar mixed with roses. I listened to the murmur of the traffic down below and dreamed of iced tea. Somewhere, far away, a dog barked. Finally, after about twenty minutes or so, I roused myself from my torpor and walked around the back.

  Pat Humphrey’s backyard had a Mediterranean feel to it. An ornamental shadberry tree, its branches heavy with fruit, sat in the middle of the yard. Toward the rear, hugging a white wooden fence, was a medium-size vegetable garden, while perennial and herb beds, their curved borders marked with different-colored rocks, ran around the rest of the perimeter.

  Three ceramic pigs of various sizes nestled in among the rosemary and lavender. Sunflowers grew along the back. A white wrought-iron table and two chairs sat on a small stone patio. A squirrel was sitting on the table eating the remains of a breakfast roll from a plate. When he saw me, he grabbed his bounty and ran away.

  As I walked to the table, my feet sank into the ground. I felt something wet and looked down. A stream of water was running out of the garden hose. It must have been running for a while, because it had formed a small channel in the ground. Somehow I couldn’t imagine Pat Humphrey leaving the water running like that. For that matter, I thought as I looked for the faucet handle, I couldn’t imagine her leaving her breakfast dishes on the table. From the way she kept her house, she was much too neat a person for that.

  After I shut off the water, I went over to the table. A line of ants was snaking its way over a half-eaten piece of toast and circling around the top of the capless jar of strawberry jam. Where the hell was the cap, I wondered as I looked at the almost-full cup of coffee sitting nearby. A drop of sweat working its way down my spine felt chilly as I contemplated the dead fly floating on top of the brown liquid.

  I bit one of my nails as I tried to visualize what had occurred. Pat Humphrey had made herself breakfast and taken it outside, at which point she’d probably begun watering her plants.

  And then she’d left.

  Without turning the water off. Or putting the top back on the jam.

  And she hadn’t returned.

  I pictured her standing here, garden hose in one hand, a piece of toast in the other, listening to the birds.

  What had happened?

  Had someone come along?

  Had there been a sudden emergency?

  Then another idea occurred to me. One I liked even less. Maybe Pat Humphrey was still here.

  Inside.

  And she ha
dn’t answered the door because she couldn’t. I was probably overdramatizing, I told myself. She was probably at a neighbor’s. Nevertheless, I hesitated for a few seconds before I walked over, grasped the door handle, and pulled. It swung open. Steeling myself for the body that I hoped I wouldn’t find sprawled on the floor—I can never get used to the look of surprise and indignation on the faces of homicide victims—I took a deep breath and stepped inside.

  “Pat? Pat Humphrey?” I called, walking toward the middle of the room. “It’s Robin Light.”

  Nothing.

  I tried again. All I heard was the humming of the refrigerator. I glanced around the kitchen. A coffeepot with a filter on top was sitting on the counter, a few cups and a knife and fork lay in the sink, but the cupboard doors were closed, the countertops were clean. A place for everything and everything in its place, my mind sang.

  I don’t know why, but I tiptoed through the living room and the dining room as if I were walking through rows of mourners at a funeral parlor. Since my last visit, Pat Humphrey had changed the flowers in the crystal vase on the mantel to orchids, just like the ones Rose Taylor grew.

  I opened the hall closet. It was filled with the usual stuff: coats, sneakers, golf clubs, a couple of tennis rackets—nice ones—a canoe paddle. There were no signs of violence, no signs of Pat Humphrey having been dragged away. I backtracked and walked down a narrow hallway and took a quick peek into her bedroom. It smelled of sandalwood, just like the rest of the house. The walls were painted lavender. The trim was white. The bed was made. The curtains were partially open. The dresser drawers were closed. The room was neat and clean and tidy.

  So was Pat Humphrey’s office. A hot breeze from the open window billowed the voile curtains hung over it. I gingerly stepped over to the window and looked outside. All I could see was a bird feeder hanging from a small magnolia tree. I turned back and considered the room. The walls were decorated with Mexican ceremonial masks. A large staghorn fern hung from the curtain rod.

  Seeing it reminded me of the one in Rose Taylor’s house. I wondered if it was a relative. The bookshelves were lined with volumes on animal behavior, psychology, myths, and anthropology. The computer on top of the desk was brand new. The box it had come in was on the floor below it. There was nothing to see in here, so I returned to the kitchen. I was just about to leave when I noticed the blinking light on Pat Humphrey’s answering machine. I hit the PLAY button.

  “Call me as soon as you can,” a voice I recognized as that of Rose’s nurse, Shana, commanded. It sounded, what? Concerned? Frightened?

  Bingo, I thought, playing the message again. Gotcha.

  Chapter Nine

  My meeting with Hillary took a little less than half an hour. I thought she looked even paler than she had the last time I’d seen her.

  “So let me get this straight,” she said to me when I told her about the message on Humphrey’s answering machine. “You think that my mother’s nurse is working with Pat Humphrey to defraud my mother.”

  “I think it’s a possibility.”

  She leaned even farther forward on the edge of the armchair she was sitting in. “But you don’t have proof.”

  “No,” I admitted. “I don’t.”

  Hillary clicked her tongue against her teeth and pulled her yellow cardigan closer to her, a gesture that accentuated the narrowness of her rib cage, and looked down at the papers I’d given her. “I wonder if my mother knows about Humphrey’s arrest record?”

  “I’d be surprised if she did.” I pointed to my description of my visit to the two veterinarians. “To be fair, on the other hand, these people gave Humphrey a good report.”

  Hillary balled my page of notes up and threw it in the trash. “It’s a fluke.”

  “All right.” I wasn’t about to argue the point. “You want me to find out about the nurse?” I asked, wiping a drop of sweat out of my eye.

  “It would be nice if Pat Humphrey didn’t come back, wouldn’t it?” she mused aloud instead of answering my question.

  I didn’t say anything.

  Hillary smiled unpleasantly. “Maybe we got lucky and she got hit by a truck on the way to her neighbor’s house. Maybe she’s sitting in the morgue waiting to be claimed. It would save us all a lot of trouble.”

  “Unfortunately, things don’t work out that neatly,” I said, thinking of Raul. I got up from the sofa. “Do you want me to see what I can find out about your mother’s nurse or not?” I repeated. Hillary’s tone was making me uncomfortable.

  “Not yet. Just send me a bill for your expenses so far.” She gathered up the musical score lying on the coffee table and rapped the pages into place with short, sharp gestures. “If you please. Out of curiosity, when you spoke to my mother, did she tell you I was irresponsible, that we all were?”

  I allowed as how she had.

  “Did she tell you we were after her money?”

  I nodded, regretting I’d answered Hillary’s first question truthfully. I needed to get going.

  “That we’d tried to have her committed?”

  “She mentioned it.”

  “Bet she didn’t tell you why, though?”

  I waited.

  “She was addicted to Valium. Valium and liquor. That’s how she got herself to sleep every night. She got her prescriptions from three different doctors. What’s the matter?” Hillary demanded. “Don’t you believe me?”

  “Sure. I just wondered, if that was the case, why you bothered intervening?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Figure it out.”

  Hillary glared at me. I glared back. She laughed and changed the subject. “I’ll give her the house, though. She does have good taste.”

  “It’s impressive.”

  “Not like this place.” The flash of anger in Hillary’s eyes as she looked around telegraphed what she’d lost. “Did you see the Japanese scroll in the hallway?” I nodded. “Isn’t it beautiful? It’s almost seven hundred years old.” She swallowed, as if her mouth had gone dry with desire. “It just came back from an exhibition at the Met. My father wanted me to have it, he told me, but she’s giving it to Geoff.” She hugged her music to her so tightly that the skin around her hands lost color and forced out a laugh. “Oh, well,” she said as she escorted me to the door, “if it’s meant to be, then it’ll happen, and if not, then so be it. By the way, I’m playing downtown this Wednesday. Come and see me if you have the time.”

  I promised her I would.

  As I stepped outside and took a great big burst of fresh air into my lungs, I realized Hillary’s house reminded me of a tomb. I was halfway to the store when my cell phone rang. Manuel was on the line.

  “Yo, vieja. I think I know where Bethany is,” he said.

  “Think or know?” I asked as I maneuvered around a group of kids playing ball in the middle of the street.

  “I’ve been talkin’ to T.” T was a friend of Manuel’s. “Remember that kid Karim you told me about? The friend of Bethany’s. Well, T knows Karim’s older brother.”

  “And?”

  “And Karim’s been paying him to transport this girl out and back to a shack right alongside the Erieville Country Club.”

  I slammed on my brakes as a squirrel ran in front of my car and ran back again. “Would that be Arrow View by any chance?”

  “Whatever. Anyway, I told my friend you’d pay him fifty bucks if she’s out there.”

  What Manuel was telling me made sense. When teens run away, most of them tend to remain in close proximity to their friends.

  “So what do you say?” Manuel asked. “Feel like going for a ride?”

  “I’ll be over in twenty.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  The Arrow View Country Club was the ritziest golf club in Syracuse. Located outside of Manlius, it was frequented by the well-to-do and the well-connected. I was willing to bet that Bethany’s parents played golf out there. I dialed up Mrs. Peterson to confirm my guess.

 
“We joined last year,” she said. “Why? Does this have something to do with Bethany?”

  “Possibly. I’ll call you if I have something to tell you.” And I turned my phone off.

  So Bethany had been out there before. She probably knew about this shack. Probably all of her friends did. As I honked for Manuel, I decided that if she were there, I’d send him in while I waited outside. Despite his performance at the cemetery, he was usually pretty good at talking to kids.

  Then, perhaps, when he was done, I could take a turn and convince her to talk to her mom and dad. Just talk. Or if that didn’t work, perhaps I could convince her to stay at a friend’s house until everyone was able to work things out. Turning her over to the courts was, of course, another option. But that wasn’t my decision to make, and from what I’d seen, that didn’t work too well.

  The Arrow View Country Club announced itself with a big white sign. The road leading up to the clubhouse measured a good three-quarters of a mile. The grass on either side of the road was the color of money, while the bushes and flowers looked as if someone had gone over them with a nail clipper and tweezers. The clubhouse itself was a quarried-stone-and-wood affair. A row of golf carts were lined up on the pavement in front of it.

  A few groups of people, looking as if they’d just come in from the course, were chatting with each other. As we approached, I saw Geoff walking inside. He had on his tennis whites and was carrying his racket under his arm. Engrossed in conversation with an attractive-looking older woman—not Rose Taylor—he didn’t see me. I was about to honk when Manuel tapped me on the shoulder.

  “We take the road that goes to the right.”

  It turned out to be the service road. We went by the clubhouse and veered around the kitchen. A group of Latinos and Asians in soiled whites, taking a break outside the kitchen door, fell silent when we drove by. They didn’t start talking again until we were almost out of sight. Coming around the garbage corral, I could see people playing off in the distance, and then the road turned again, and I was looking at trees. The road got more and more rutted until it gave out completely and we were driving on a dirt path.