The Witchfinder Page 4

  I paused. “I guess AA was just a lark.”

  “No, I’m back with the program to stay. I’ve got sponsors to ply. Be glad I’m not with one of the networks. There it’s kilos.”

  “Two pints.”

  “Fifths.”

  “One fifth,” I said.

  “That’s less than two pints.”

  “I flunked Weights and Measures.”

  “Two pints,” he said. “And the story.”

  “I repeat, if it jumps that way. You know this drill, Barry.”

  “Randy Quarrels is your man.”

  I wrote down the name. “Photographer for the News, right?”

  “He ran the staff until he snuck a picture of the chief of police snoozing on his office sofa on Law Enforcement Day. The chief pulled a string at the paper and hung Randy on the end of it. These days he’s holding down a portrait studio in Birmingham.”

  “Ritzy.”

  “If you call Jonas Salk working a counter in a drugstore ritzy. Randy’s eye is wasted on rich little spit-ups who won’t smile at the clownie. If anyone can track your picture to its source it’s him.” He gave me a telephone number. Barry’s head is a directory; he’d be an idiot savant if he didn’t have an IQ of 180.

  I thanked him. We traded vile comments on our respective lineages and I worked the riser and dialed.

  “Cassandra Photo.”

  It was a relief for once to get a male voice first thing. This one was an interesting combination of shallow youth and the flat bone-weariness of disillusioned age. You hear it in cops who are no longer rookies and reporters with no hope of ever mounting to the editorial staff. I asked if I was speaking to Randy Quarrels.

  “Well, I’m not Cassandra.”

  There was no humor in the reply. I introduced myself, said I’d gotten his name and number from Barry Stackpole, and told him what I needed.

  “Positive or negative?” he asked.

  “Positive.”

  “Depends on the quality of the print. Bring it around. The best guys have their own style. If it’s one I know it won’t take long.”

  “How long if it isn’t?”

  “Not much longer if it’s as good as you say. There aren’t that many aces in this deck.”

  “How late are you open?”

  “I close at five sharp.”

  “Can you spot me an extra half hour? I have to be in Farmington Hills at four.”

  “I’ll have to charge you double the usual sitting.”

  “That’s okay. I wasn’t planning on retiring this year.”

  Pause. “Yeah, you know Barry, all right.” The connection went away.

  Karen Furlong’s house was a half-timber job with gables and shake shingles, six thousand square feet if it was a cabana, overlooking the rest of Oakland County from the top of a shared private drive winding up from Orchard Lake Road. It wouldn’t have made much of an impression on the dozen or so half-million-dollar structures it was tucked in with. I parked in front of a horseshoe-shaped front porch, straightened my tie, and rang the bell. Poppies and impatiens spilled over the sides of a two-wheeled carriage with red spoke wheels encamped on the pampered lawn.

  The door opened between the ding and the dong. I identified myself to a golden-olive face above a maid’s black uniform trimmed with white lace and she let me in. The entrance hall was a vertical shaft rearing straight up for thirty feet to a leaded-glass skylight that divided the sun into colored slices on the ebonized wood at our feet. She curtsied in that fluid way of societies where the women wear veils and went off to find the mistress of the house. It didn’t seem like enough for her to do given the setting. For the first time in years I was sorry I’d stopped wearing a hat.

  I killed time trying to make eye contact with a fierce old buzzard in a frame crusted over with gilt Cupids, the room’s only decoration. He wore a wing collar, iron-gray handlebars, and the general air of a man who preferred to mess around with moustache wax and studs. He was clutching a rolled document as if it contained directions to the Lost Dutchman.

  “Fascinating old gargoyle, isn’t he?”

  The man who had appeared at my side was my height but forty pounds heavier, most of it around his waistband. He had on a cream-colored knitted polo shirt with an animal embroidered above the pocket, loose tan cotton slacks with pleats, and cordovan loafers, artfully scuffed. Underclassmen’s clothes, with a butch cut to match; but there was plenty of gray in it, and salt and pepper in the whiskers his razor had missed between chins. He was late forties, maybe fifty, but his eyes hadn’t gotten the news. They were as bright as uncirculated dimes.

  “Mother commissioned the painting last year. They mixed dirt in with the varnish to make it look old. I forget just which one of my ancestors it’s supposed to represent, but I understand he stole a railroad. They named a bridge after him in New York. All Jesse James got was a bullet in the head. John Furlong.” He turned and extended a hand the size of a flipper. “Are you the detective? I’m sure you’re not the decorator.”

  I told him my name and gave him back his hand. Like his face it was as pink and soft as salmon flesh. I searched the face for signs of his famous father and came up empty. There was nothing more to connect him to the ferocious party in the painting. Chromosomes will do that sometimes.

  “You move quietly, Mr. Furlong. I never heard you coming up on me.”

  “Mother’s hearing is preternatural. You learn to sneak around if you’re going to have any sort of freedom.”

  There was a pause that needed filling. “I’m sorry about your father.”

  “Thank you. I rang him up just last month to cut him in on a little syndicate I’m putting together. Naturally I wouldn’t have disturbed him if I’d suspected he was in poor health. I imagine that’s why he decided to pass up the opportunity.” The dimes brightened. “You wouldn’t happen to have some capital lying around you don’t know what to do with, by any chance?”

  “I wouldn’t call it capital. More like lower case.”

  “Oh. A shame. It’s a crackerjack idea, and all mine. I borrowed against my trust fund to buy a stable of racehorses, but they all turned out to be related and there was something wrong with the bloodline. They faint when they get excited. The least little shock and they drop like laundry.”

  “Tough break.”

  “I thought so, too. Then I rented this old movie starring Gary Cooper. The Bengal Lancer Something.”

  “Lives of a Bengal Lancer.”

  “Have you seen it?” The dimes glowed.

  “I like old movies.”

  “Well, then, you know there are a lot of battle scenes with cannons bursting and horses falling and things. The studios were terribly irresponsible about how they made horses fall back then. They used tripwires. Dozens of animals broke their legs and had to be destroyed. It was barbaric.”

  “Now they just dump helicopters on the underage actors.”

  “Yes.” He wasn’t listening. “These days they hire trainers to teach the horses to fall on command. I started thinking about that, how I could rent these fainting horses of mine to Hollywood productions and make a fortune. I don’t even remember how the movie ended, I was so full of this wonderful idea.”

  “At least.”

  “That’s the definition of true genius, you know: the ability to identify a liability, analyze it, and convert it into an asset.”

  “I thought it was an infinite capacity for taking pains.”

  “That’s another. There are several. The trouble is I don’t have any contacts in the industry. That’s why I hoped Father could help, I mean being out there and known by everyone. If I’m going to make any sort of impression there I have to check into the most expensive hotel in town and throw money around. Also the horses are stabled in New Jersey and transporting them across the country will be complicated, especially since—”

  “They’ll be falling down in ten states.”

  “Right. So any way you look at it I need more money than I’v
e ever had to make more money than I’ve ever dreamed.”

  “Ain’t that the way, though?”

  “Ain’t it indeed.” He looked glum as roadkill.

  “Ever have this problem before?”

  “Almost constantly. But not to this degree.”

  “Know anything about photography?”

  He thought about that one. Thinking about things would always be a problem for him unless they appeared in the flare of the spastic lightbulb that lived inside his skull, like a cartoon character’s. It would be pretty dim in there between flashes. If it was an act, he’d had it down cold a long time before I came.

  He was still struggling when Karen Furlong joined us from the next room. At a glance I could see that here was someone who was related to the predatory-looking gent in the oil painting.

  Five

  SHE STOPPED JUST INSIDE pistol range, hands locked together under her bosom. She was either performing the Heimlich maneuver upon herself or getting set to pounce on high C. Whichever she chose you had to look at her.

  She wasn’t tall—the first planet in the Furlong galaxy I had met that wasn’t—but the elevation of her chin, the rise of the lacquered blue-gray hair above her widow’s peak, and the sweep of her floor-length dress, deep green and frogged with gold at the shoulders, all conspired to create the impression of height. Her eyes were as gray and as hard as whetstones. She had a broad, brainy forehead, but below the heavily rouged cheeks her face narrowed sharply like an old-fashioned keyhole. She was a well-curved seventy.

  “Mr. Walker? I see you’ve met John.” It was the contralto of the telephone, smooth, ageless, with every hint of regional origin lathed away.

  “We’ve been discussing investments.”

  “Yes. It’s how he breaks the ice.”

  The maid appeared behind her. Mrs. Furlong knew she was there without turning. It wasn’t prescience. The maid would always be there.

  “We’ll have coffee in the garden.” Hands locked, she walked right past both of us and through an arch on the opposite side of the room. The maid followed. John and I fell in behind.

  Two rooms, a grand piano on a marble floor, and several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of antiques later, we stepped through French doors onto a terrace done in terra cotta tile with flagged paths radiating out between topiary and banks of flowers. The colors were as bright as construction paper and the mingled scents were inebriating, like boiled perfume. Bees hummed ecstatically among the blossoms. A plane tree many years older than the house, but which hadn’t necessarily grown in that spot, cast black shade over the area where the coffee things were laid out on a glass table surrounded by ice cream chairs. There were white bell-shaped cups upside-down on saucers, a silver decanter, and pressed linen napkins in silver rings. The maid upended the cups and poured.

  “I’ll do the rest, Khalida.”

  The maid dipped one knee and went inside.

  John held a chair for his mother, who unlocked her hands and sat. “Black, Mr. Walker? You don’t impress me as the cream and sugar type.” She balanced a cup on its saucer. It was brim full.

  I said black was fine and accepted the offering. Men who didn’t monkey with their coffee were men you could trust. I could see I was going to disappoint her.

  John took one of the cups and tipped in four cubes of sugar and a third of the container of cream and stirred until the liquid matched the color of his shirt. I couldn’t believe they were family.

  “This is a pretty garden, Mrs. Furlong. Do you do the work yourself?” No picture formed of her on her knees weeding the geranium bed.

  “Just the dahlias. I allow no one else to touch them. They’ve taken first prize the last two years at the Detroit Flower Show. Dahlias are difficult to raise, like John.”

  John gave no indication of having heard the last part. “If Mother wins again this year she gets to keep the trophy.”

  “I prefer to keep things.” She sipped coffee. It was a bitter blend that appeared to have no effect on her. “I don’t suppose you have any news of Jay’s condition since you and I spoke.”

  “No, he’s still dying.”

  She exhaled. “Impossible man.”

  “I know there’s not much affection between you and your ex-husband,” I said. “Still, you must have mixed feelings about this. There’s an inheritance for John, but when Mr. Furlong dies the alimony checks stop coming.”

  “I’ve done all right with my money, mostly by never investing it with my son. I’m not suffering. I intend to see that John gets what’s coming to him.” She set her cup in its saucer with a click. “You’re very blunt, Mr. Walker. I am too. What is this nonsense about interviewing the heirs?”

  “I’ve got to get a better story. So far this one isn’t fooling anybody.” I took the picture out of my pocket and put it on the table.

  She glanced at it, then turned it over quickly while John was still attempting to focus. She actually colored. That was a surprise.

  “I heard about this filth at the time it happened,” she said. “What do you hope to accomplish by showing it around?”

  “The picture never happened,” I said. “It’s a composite. Someone fixed it up to get Furlong to break his engagement to Lily Talbot. Stuart Lund retained me to find out which heir is responsible.”

  “So naturally you came here first.”

  “Actually it’s my second stop. I’m working my way down a long list.”

  She was watching me closely. In that place of many colors her eyes reflected only granite. “Ridiculous. No one does anything purely at random. I’ll guess your first stop. Oswald Belder.”

  “He’s on the list too,” I noncommitted.

  “He told you to come see me.”

  I sipped coffee.

  “I despised him from the start,” she said. “That’s why Jay arranged things so I’d have to go to him for my payments. He knew I didn’t want to wait for the mails. It amused him to think of me being forced to look at that miserable hound dog face once a month for the rest of my life. I outsmarted him, though. He didn’t count on my sending John in my place.”

  “I like Uncle Oz,” John said.

  She didn’t look at him. “Ozzie Belder was worse than any mistress any wife ever had to compete with for her husband’s affections. He stole Jay from me, he and the business; stole him as surely as some office tramp with black panties and her brains in her vagina.”

  This time her son colored, stoplight red from his polo collar to the roots of his crewcut. “Honestly, Mother.”

  “Be quiet. This doesn’t concern you. I loved Jay when he couldn’t get his designs past the office boy at the shoddiest contracting company in town. I packed his lunchpail when he went to work as a hod carrier and helped him out of his clothes when he came home covered with white dust and too tired to take off his boots. I sank every penny my parents left me into a year’s lease on his first office and all its furniture, including the drafting board. It was the two of us all the way to the top, that’s how we planned it. Well, we never discussed what was to happen afterward.”

  “Ozzie,” I said.

  “Ozzie. Everything changed the day he came on board. From then on I was the toy wife Jay took down off the shelf at the end of the day and wound up to cook his dinner and share his bed. At the office—the office I paid for—they treated me like a visitor. When Furlong, Belder, and Associates threw a party at the old Book Cadillac to celebrate its first overseas contract and it came time for Jay to toast the person most responsible for the firm’s success, it was Ozzie he raised his glass to. I knew then it was over. I was six weeks’ pregnant with John at the time. Ask Ozzie what it’s like to carry a baby you know will be the child of divorced parents. If I framed anyone with a smutty picture it would be him, not Jay. That’s if I thought anyone would believe he could ever get it up without a balloon frame to keep it there.”

  “Please, Mother.” There were greenish streaks in the red of John’s face. He was upstaging the daffodi
ls.

  “Framing Belder wouldn’t guarantee your son’s inheritance,” I said.

  She gave me the granite stare. After a moment she turned over the picture, took a second look, and skated it back my way. “I never met her. I only knew her face from the newspapers. Photographers can’t resist a rich old goat with a sleek young thing. I didn’t care by then, of course, but I never believed they’d ever marry. If it wasn’t a picture it would be something else.”

  I looked at it again before putting it away. “What was wrong with her?”

  “Nothing would be. Nothing less than perfection would do for the great Jay Bell Furlong, at least in public. It’s what was wrong with Jay. He wore those flashy yellow suits on the street, but at home it was old sweaters and tennis shoes with holes in the toes. Oh, he enjoyed parading around with a pretty girl one third his age when people were watching. Artists are like that, never mind what they say about the quest for inner truth. In his case it was a different story after the last flashbulb faded. Look at the other two women he married. I was dowdy enough in those days, overweight and with no idea of how to dress, but they were worse. You don’t have to put on airs with a homely unfashionable woman. That’s what he looked for in a spouse: the opportunity to stop being Jay Bell Furlong for eight hours at a stretch. He wouldn’t have gotten that from this Lily person.”

  “Maybe he changed.”

  “People don’t change. You know that at least as well as I, Mr. Detective. They just become more like they were at the start.”

  I drank some coffee. It tasted less bitter now. “I was asking John if he knew anything about photography when you came in.”

  “He doesn’t.”

  “I can answer the question myself, Mother.”

  I gave him the sympathetic face.

  “I invested some money once with a fellow from a film lab who claimed he’d invented an affordable holographic camera,” he said. “You know, so people on vacation could take three-dimensional pictures of Aunt Edna standing in front of the Eiffel Tower. He spent a couple of days showing me around the lab. I still remember some of what I learned.”