Sinister Heights Page 3

  “Ah.”

  She folded her hands under her chin. Her fingers were unpainted as well, and on one of them she wore a blue diamond in a fussy old-fashioned setting. That would be her late husband’s taste. Everything else about her was ceramic and sleek. Hard-fired, she’d said. “I think I resent that ‘Ah.’ You think I’m pursuing this because I may still be on the hook into a third generation.”

  “That’s a lot to get out of one syllable.”

  “Never mind. Don’t judge me until you’ve heard me out. When Leland died and his safe deposit box in the National Bank of Detroit was opened, it contained eighteen years’ worth of canceled checks made out to Cecilia Willard against his personal account. He’d been sending her between one and five thousand dollars a month since just after her case was thrown out of court. In the light of that I don’t think there’s any reason to wonder why she didn’t bother to appeal the decision.”

  I rolled Scotch around my mouth and let it evaporate up my nasal passages. “It wouldn’t be looked on as any sort of admission once a good lawyer got through with it. He might just have felt sorry for her.”

  “My husband wasn’t a philanthropist, Mr. Walker. He built two hospitals, but that was when he was getting old and he refused to trust his health to the existing facilities. If he helped Cecilia out, it was because he felt responsible. It’s significant that he stopped writing checks after eighteen years. That’s as long as the law would have required him to provide child support. He paid what he thought he owed, no more and no less.”

  “Then he shouldn’t have contested the suit.”

  “Understand, he never said a word to me about the case, or anything else associated with his past life. He lived in the present. I think it’s possible he never knew about the child until he was asked to submit to a blood test. She might as well have waved a red flag in his face as a sheet of legal stationery. Leland was one of only two people who held out against the courts in 1903, when they said all the auto manufacturers had to pay to use George Selden’s patent. It took eight years of lawyers’ fees and appeals to win a ruling in their favor. The other holdout was Henry Ford. Leland wouldn’t eat lima beans if a judge ordered him to. And he loved lima beans.”

  I wrote down lima beans and underlined it. “He was probably only worth about a billion then. Twelve to sixty thousand a year was a bargain.”

  “He spent less raising his legitimate son. ‘Lavish’ is not a word you’d use to describe Leland. He only bought the place in Grosse Pointe for privacy. A cabin and an outhouse on some mountain would have suited him just as well.”

  “Uh-huh.” I didn’t write that down. I got up and splashed a little water from the pitcher into my glass. My head wasn’t used to good liquor. “What is it you want me to do, Mrs. Stutch?”

  “Rayellen, please. And you’re Amos, right? I mean, we’ve broken our fast together, so to speak.”

  “Uh-uh. Mrs. Campbell might get jealous.”

  She unfolded one of her hands in a flicking movement. “I want you to find Cecilia’s heirs. I want them to benefit from Leland’s will. They’re entitled to half of what went to Hector and his family, but if that’s contested I’ll cut them in on mine. No one needs thirteen million a year.”

  “Some chippie you are. You wouldn’t even make the semifinals.”

  “Bullshit.”

  I grinned. She held up her glass and I leveled it off from the Stoli bottle. “What’s the real reason?” I asked.

  “Good business. DNA testing is new since Leland. If the daughter and granddaughter—it’s a girl, I don’t think I said that; Constance is the name—if one or both of them decide to revive the suit, they stand to prove their case and take the estate to the cleaners. I don’t need an income of thirteen million, but after ten years one-point-three million would be an unnecessary hardship. Call it a pre-emptive strike.” She moved a shoulder and drank. “I learned a lot from Leland.”

  I returned to my seat and warmed my hands around my glass. “You mentioned two newspaper clippings. What’s the second?”

  This time she got up. She was one of the few wealthy people I’d met who didn’t seem to be hard-wired into the domestic help. The piano had a bench with a hinged seat upholstered in white satin. She lifted the seat, removed something from the recess beneath, and laid it in my lap.

  It was a blue eight-by-ten envelope, fastened with a string tie. I undid that and rummaged around inside. I ignored for the moment the photocopy of a Wayne County birth certificate, glanced briefly at Cecilia Willard’s obituary on yellowed newsprint, and turned to the other clipping. This one, larger, included a photograph of a smiling couple, a pretty assembly-line blonde and a young roughneck in a plaid sportcoat with an arm around the girl’s waist. The article reported the impending nuptials of Constance Witowski, daughter of Carla Willard Witowski of Melvindale and Fred Witowski of Grass Lake, and David Glendowning, parents deceased, of Toledo, Ohio.

  I squinted at the date penciled faintly in the margin. Mrs. Stutch helped me out.

  “I clipped it from the Free Press five years ago. Assuming the wedding came off and the marriage worked out and there were no medical problems or objections against children, the odds are my slice of the pie is already smaller. Naturally I’d like to get this worked out before another century is heard from.”

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  Mrs. Campbell brought a checkbook bound in red leather and a gold fountain pen and cleared away the tray. Since this one didn’t promise to go longer than a day I told Rayellen Stutch to make the check out for five hundred. She did that, blew on the ink, and handed it to me. I held it while it finished drying.

  “I’ll start with Carla,” I said. “It looks like she’s separated from this Witowski, and since she’s living in Melvindale, she doesn’t have a pile. She’ll know this isn’t about pin money. You’ll want to move fast, before she decides she needs her own private island.”

  “Just tell me when you’ve made contact. Then find Constance. I’ll deal with both of them together or not at all. This isn’t an auction.”

  I was still holding the check. The ink was dry by now, but I made no move to put it away. “Why wasn’t I on this job ten years ago, when you opened the safe deposit box and found the canceled checks? Or someone else if not me?”

  “Another heir might have kicked the will into probate for five years. As it was, I wasn’t sure Hector wouldn’t contest the will. It wouldn’t be his slice that disappeared when it all got untangled. When I read about Cecilia’s death three years later I thought about it, but I held my breath hoping I wouldn’t hear from the daughter, and I didn’t. The granddaughter’s engagement, though, made up my mind. You know that joke about the minister who died when his church flooded because he trusted in God instead of the men who came to rescue him in a Jeep, a boat, and then a helicopter? God said, ‘What more did you want? I sent a Jeep, a boat, and a helicopter.’ If I let three warnings go by without acting, I deserved whatever was going to happen to me.”

  “And five years later here I am.”

  “You’ll have to ask Connor Thorpe about that. That’s how long I’ve been after him to look into it. At first I thought he was putting me off because he was busy.”

  “He is busy.”

  “No argument. But I doubt he ever took five years getting around to doing anything Leland asked him to do. You wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t made myself unpleasant company of late in regard to this Willard business.”

  “Why would he drag his feet?”

  “I wish I hadn’t a clue. When you’re a woman dealing with men who deal generally with men, you have to subtract that dynamic and see if it makes sense.” She refolded her hands beneath her chin. “When you need doors opened, call Connor. When you have anything to report, come straight to me.”

  I nodded, but kept my seat. “Have you tried the telephone book? You could save the five hundred.”

  “I wouldn’t know how to break the ice. You impress me a
s a man who can bring himself to be charming when charm is in order. You handled that thing with the Hummel quite neatly.”

  “So did you. Bringing a gift was Thorpe’s idea. He said you were old-fashioned.”

  “Really. He has a lot to answer for.”

  “Except getting him to do it would run you a lot more than five hundred.” I thanked her for the drink, folded my check, and stole away. When I drew the door shut behind me she’d picked up the gold pen and was tapping it against her bottom teeth, looking at nothing that I could see.

  It was almost dark out now, with only the silhouette of the old plant showing on the hill, a shade blacker than the sky, and now and then the angry glow of the hot steel throbbing in the windows. I fired up the Cutlass and headed for the state highway. I didn’t get ten blocks before I picked up a cop.

  Red and blue lights pulsed in my rear window, a siren growled. I pulled onto the apron, killing the motor, and the prowl car drifted in behind and slammed on its spot. The thousand-candlepower shaft whited out shadows and blazed off my mirrors, bright enough to fry both retinas. The Wall of Light, they call it. Cops have a nickname for everything and it always sounds like an oak stick bouncing off bone.

  Some time went by, quite a lot of it, before the doors opened on the marked car, showing the Iroquois Heights seal decaled on them and the slogan “To Serve and Protect” broken in half, and two uniforms climbed out. The one on the passenger’s side paused behind my car and I heard and felt a couple of thumps before he straightened and moved on, sliding his two-foot skullbuster into its loop on his gun belt. The one who had been driving waited behind the window post on my side until he caught up. Then the driver stuck a big blur of face into my open window and shone a Malice Green flashlight around the inside of the car, making sure to finish up on my face and leave it there. His partner stood on the other side resting his thumb on the hammer of his sidearm. There was a shiny white spot on the back of his hand where an old tattoo had been burned off.

  “License and registration,” said the cop with the light. He had one of those shallow, callow voices that never seem to age, like a pro ballplayer’s. He’d been chewing Dentyne.

  I got my license out of my wallet and the registration out of the glove compartment and handed them over. I kept out the wallet. He moved the flashlight then and I chased purple spots while he read the information. “You’ve got a defective license plate light, sir. Were you aware of that?”

  “Was it defective before your partner banged on it?”

  This was not the right answer and there was a little silence before the partner spoke up. His voice was deep, with an oddly gentle Delta underlay, but filtered through a couple of generations of gritty urban black. Any high, hard ones that got past the ballplayer would stop with him. “You got a loose connection. It came back on when I tapped it.”

  “Thanks, Officer. What do I owe you?”

  “Step out of the car, please, sir.” Now the ballplayer was thumbing his sidearm.

  I laid my wallet on the passenger’s seat and put both hands on the wheel. “Sorry about the crack. I missed supper.”

  “Just step out of the car.”

  “Why the roust? You ran my plate.”

  He drew the weapon and rolled back the hammer. It was an army-issue .45 automatic, not a regulation piece in most police departments. In Iroquois Heights, crossbows were not frowned upon unless they spoiled the line of the uniform.

  There was no sound from the other side of the car, but without looking I knew I was sitting between stereo muzzles. I reached down and opened the door and stepped out.

  The rest was routine, fast, and only a little harder than it might have been in Detroit if I’d exposed myself to the chief’s daughter. The hood ornament scratched my cheek when my face struck the metal and an old shoulder dislocation I’d forgotten about yelped when the ballplayer yanked my arms behind me and hooked on the cuffs. A hand tore loose my inside breast pocket looking for weapons.

  “My wallet’s on the seat.” My breath fogged the hood’s finish.

  “Bribery, Russell, pipe that,” said the ballplayer. “The bar just keeps going up.” He was panting. He’d reported late for spring training.

  I said, “There’s a check inside. You might want to look.”

  “We don’t take checks. So sorry.”

  But the passenger door opened. Paper crackled: “So there’s a check, and it’s for five hundred bucks. What’s that make you, Ross Perot?” This was Russell.

  “Read the signature. If you can’t make out the handwriting, read what’s printed in the upper left-hand corner.”

  A foot hooked my ankle and jerked. I slipped, banged a knee against the bumper, and got a burn on my face from friction on the hood.

  “Jay, it’s Rayellen Stutch.”

  “Old Man Stutch’s widow?” It was almost a whine.

  “It don’t say on the check. But then I don’t guess it has to.”

  “What’s Old Man Stutch’s widow into you for?”

  I said, “I’m her dance instructor.”

  I felt a foot hook my ankle again. I braced myself.

  “He’s a private cop, Jay. Here’s his license.”

  “What’s that to us?” But he retrieved the foot.

  “Better take off the bracelets,” Russell said.

  “He resisted arrest.”

  “He didn’t resist nothing.”

  Crickets sang. “That’s how it is, is it?”

  “Hell, Jay. Depends what your definition of is is.” There was a grin in the deep voice. I couldn’t tell if it was a wary grin or just a grin.

  “Shit.” Keys tinkled.

  Thirty seconds later the cuffs were off and I was standing upright, rubbing my wrists. In the light from the spot, Jay was sandy and freckled and beginning to go to fat beneath his chin. Russell was a pair of eyes that shone like wet stones in a face as black and shining as his patent-leather visor. They were neither of them young, but still on the hazard side of a pension. Their guns were in their holsters.

  “Sorry we bounced you so hard.” Russell gave me back my wallet. “Fella stuck up a party store by the interstate a half hour ago. Your car didn’t exactly not match the description.”

  I made sure the check was inside and counted the bills. I felt the cops stiffen at that, but I finished counting and put the wallet back in my hip pocket. “Bullshit.”

  Russell said, “What.”

  “I’m quoting Rayellen Stutch. The car’s got some dings, and they don’t go with this neighborhood, so you fell in behind. Then you ran the plate and got a Detroit address. In this town that’s PC. Probable cause, not political correctness. Not that you’d know the term.”

  Jay said, “You’re not out of the woods yet, asshole. We can pop you for obstruction.”

  “See if you can get me Cell Eleven. It’s got a good mattress.”

  “Keep talking, asshole.”

  “Not that I’ll get the chance to sleep on it.”

  “That’s it.” He fumbled the handcuffs off his belt.

  “You never know when Mrs. Stutch will decide she needs a rhumba lesson.”

  “Son of a bitch.” He lunged for my wrist. I swiveled out of his way, his fist closed on air, and he had to do a quickstep to avoid sprawling over the fender of the Cutlass.

  “Better give him back his license and rej,” Russell said. “Don’t you think.”

  This gave Jay something to get his claws into. “Who the hell’s side you on?”

  The black cop took in some air and let it out. This was no new discussion. “The president’s. How’s he going to look come November if you and I fuck up full employment?”

  Jay called him something they don’t teach in sensitivity training, banged my license and registration down on the hood hard enough to dent it, and crunched back over the gravel apron to the prowler, where he sat down behind the wheel and cranked up the scanner loud enough to make the speakers buzz.

  “I won’t apologize for
Jay,” Russell said. “We’re married and that’s that.”

  “Don’t invite me to the anniversary.” I put the papers back in my wallet.

  “How’s Mrs. Stutch to work for?”

  “Forget it. She’s already got security.”

  He exchanged some more air. “That’s cold, mister.” He crunched away. He walked with a slight hitch in his right leg. There was an old injury there, and probably a story to go with it.

  To hell with him. When you start feeling sorry for a cop it’s time to move to the beach.

  I drove home through three jurisdictions without obstructing any of them and let myself in through the side door from the garage. The telephone was ringing in the living room. I let it ring while I fetched a carton of milk and half a can of tuna from the refrigerator, but it wouldn’t wear down. I folded a slice of bread to make a sandwich, picked up the receiver, and spoke my name through a mouthful. I remembered I wasn’t at the office and tacked a “Hello” on the end of it.

  “How’d it go with Mrs. Stutch?”

  It was Connor Thorpe. I swallowed. “What, you got someone watching my place?”

  “I’ve been calling all night. You take her out to the show or what?”

  “I could’ve got her in for half price. Why’d you tell me she’s old-fashioned?”

  “You had your mind made up she loaded Washington’s musket at Valley Forge. You’d have been disappointed otherwise.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t just want her to fire me before I was hired?”

  “What, did she say something?” The question came quickly.

  I juggled the sandwich into the hand holding the receiver and swigged milk from the carton. There was no reason not to tell him I knew she’d been after him for five years to find the daughter and granddaughter, except it was none of his business. “You did. You told me you hoped all I found was the bottom side of the rock.”

  “I meant it. Dead dogs ought to stay dead.” But he sounded relieved. I wondered why.

  “I’m turning over the rock. It’s okay if you’re not okay with that. I just need to know before I have another run-in with what’s pinned to a badge in Iroquois Heights.”