Archie in the Crosshairs

Chapter 20

That left one more Hutchinson offspring to meet: the divorced Kathleen Willis up in New England, plus Marlene Peters, who, according to Doug, lived east of the Village. I had their telephone numbers, and it would have been far easier to try Miss Peters first, in the hopes I might find her at home or at her place of work — either of the locations being far closer to my present location than Westport, Connecticut.

But it was a beautiful day, and I was in the mood to commune with nature. End of internal discussion. I found a phone booth along Bleecker, pumped the necessary coins into it, got Kathleen right away, and identified myself.

“Oh yes, Daddy told me I would be hearing from you,” she said in a tone somewhere between indifferent and icy. “Something to do with a problem Cordelia is having, I believe.”

“Yes, and I was hoping to—”

“There is really nothing I can think of that would help with whatever happens to be going on, Mr. Goodwin. I doubt if I have seen Cordelia more than three times in the last two years or so, and then we exchanged only a few words. It’s not that I don’t like her — after all, she is a sister — but we have next to nothing in common, other than the same parents. When we do see each other, we have almost nothing to say except ‘my, you’re looking good,’ or ‘I just love your new hairstyle.’”

“Nevertheless, I would like to come up to Westport and talk to you. I promise not to waste your time.”

“You want to come here today?” She sounded surprised, and definitely not happy.

“I vow to be brief. Scout’s honor, Mrs. Willis.”

That brought the hint of a chuckle. “‘Scout’s honor.’ I haven’t heard that term in years. Were you really a Boy Scout, Mr. Goodwin?”

“For a spell, yes. Then I discovered girls, and all of a sudden, Scouts didn’t seem quite so much fun.”

“I’ll bet you are a stitch at parties with your snappy patter.”

“I would be delighted to give you a chance to find out firsthand.”

This time, the chuckle was full-blown and pleasant to hear. “All right, come ahead. I assume you are driving and will need some directions.”

“Yes to both,” I told her, and was given the directions to her place in Westport.

I like driving but don’t get to do a lot of it in and around Manhattan, which is a good walking town and has armies of taxis and buses, as well as what the city claims to be the world’s greatest subway system, never mind what London says. It was a pleasure to ease the roadster — Wolfe’s “other” car — out of Curran’s Motors.

Steering north and then east, I left New York City in my rearview mirror and passed signs announcing exits for Mount Vernon, New Rochelle, and White Plains before entering Connecticut on the tree-lined Merritt Parkway, called “the most beautiful road in America” by some. I hadn’t seen enough of the country to evaluate that claim, but without question, the parkway is scenic and forested, pleasantly absent of billboards or anything that seems remotely urban.

I got off at Westport and followed Kathleen Willis’s detailed directions, winding through a town that could have been designed as Hollywood’s idea of an ideal New England village. The Willis house was three blocks from the small business district. Perched on a small rise above the street, the two-story red brick Georgian mansion with white shutters and columns flanking the front door seemed to be saying “approach with caution.”

I parked in front and walked up the five-step stone stairway cut into the grassy rise. Before I could rap on the brass knocker, the paneled front door swung open, revealing a tall, svelte woman with long, wavy, ash-blond hair that covered one eye. Shades of Veronica Lake.

“Are you the former Boy Scout?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. I gave her the Scout salute as I remembered it.

“Nicely done, come in,” she said, gracefully stepping aside. “You made good time — that is, unless you were calling me from Higgins Drug Store two minutes from here.”

“No, I really did telephone from the big, bad city one state over. Your directions were so good that I made all the correct turns and hardly ever broke the speed limit. Scout’s honor.”

“I’m proud of you,” she said, looking back over her shoulder and smiling as she led me through a chandeliered entry hall big enough to hold an eight-piece dance band. She had a good figure and knew how to show it off without flaunting it. “We can sit in the sun room and talk, if that is all right with you, Mr. Goodwin.”

“It’s jake with me. And I answer to Archie.”

“All right, Archie,” she replied, directing me to a white wicker chair that looked out on a terraced backyard where two grade-school-age girls were playing in a sandbox. “My kids, Laura and Meg,” their mother said. “Can I get you something to drink, coffee perhaps, or lemonade?”

“Coffee would be fine — black.”

Kathleen left and returned no more than two minutes later with two cups and a silver pot. She poured java into the cups, handed one to me, and took a chair at a right angle to mine, crossing one nylon-sheathed leg over the other. They were fine legs.

“Now, tell me just what is going on with Cordelia,” she said.

“That is what we are trying to find out,” I recited. “We know she’s being blackmailed, but she is very close-mouthed about the reason. Your father has tried without success to get her to open up. Mr. Wolfe and I are hoping one of her siblings might have some thoughts.”

“Have you talked to the others?”

I nodded. “Yes, all of them.”

“Was anyone able to shed any light on the situation?”

“No, not really.”

“Then I am puzzled as to why you think I can help. Of all of us, I am probably the one least close to Cordelia, not that any of our generation is what you would term really close to her. She came along much later, as I am sure you know, being a keen-eyed detective.”

“Keen-eyed?” I laughed. “I would like to think so, of course. But so far, we haven’t been able to figure out who might be applying the screws to your younger sister.”

“Clearly someone who knows she has money,” Kathleen said, shifting and tucking one leg under her. “Of all of us, she’s the one who’s the best off financially, and by far.”

“These digs of yours certainly don’t look bad,” I observed, looking around.

“No, they are not bad at all, but do not let appearances fool you, Mr. Archie Goodwin. I paid dearly to hold on to this house. I made a bad marriage, as you are probably aware.”

“I have heard something to that effect.”

She sniffed. “I’ll just bet you have, and you don’t have to bother being diplomatic with me. I know very well the kinds of things being said by members of my family. When I met Lawrence Willis, I thought I had found the right person to spend my life with.” Another sniff. “Was I ever wrong about that!”

I drank the coffee — which was quite good — and nodded. She clearly wanted to talk, and I was not about to get in her way.

“Lawrence — he never wanted to be called Larry, said that was too middle class — gave a great first impression. He was damned good-looking. Still is, although he’s getting a little frayed around the edges, you might say, and a bit on the paunchy side. When we met, he had recently graduated from Brown, although I later learned he barely staggered through to get his degree. He claimed his parents came from old-line Boston money, but it turned out that money had been lost years before, in the Depression, along with the grand family home on Louisburg Square.”

She paused to refill our cups. “Please don’t get me wrong, Archie. I am not a fortune hunter, and I did not marry Lawrence because of any money I thought he had. I felt I had been given enough myself. But as I learned, he was the one looking for a rich spouse. His so-called “big job” on Wall Street turned out to be low-level, and he ended up losing even that. Then there was the drinking, and the... well, you really don’t want to listen to me going on with this litany of my woes — I’ve bored enough others with that over the years.

“I’ll just leave it that I was so anxious to get out of the marriage that I gave Lawrence everything he asked for except this house. My father thought I caved in too quickly and that I should have fought him much more vigorously, but I honestly didn’t have the stomach for it.”

“Where is he now?” I asked.

“In an apartment over in downtown Stamford, a very nice set-up, my daughters tell me. I have never been there. He sees them on weekends, comes here to pick them up.”

“Is he employed now?”

“Yes, in a brokerage house near where he lives. I don’t think he’s making all that much money, but then he does not have to, given the amount that he’s gotten out of me.”

“Quite a story.”

“Isn’t it, though? Sorry to bore you.”

“You haven’t, not at all. Given your knowledge of Cordelia, which I can understand is limited, do you have any thoughts at all as to why someone would be blackmailing her?”

“No, none whatever. She is a somewhat naive girl, as I’m sure you have figured out, but I should think that along with naïveté would come caution.”

“Good point. I understand she has a special friend.”

“Yes, the Mercer boy. I can’t say I know him, although I’ve met him once or twice. He seems very reserved, or maybe just shy. You can’t think that he’d be a blackmailer, can you?”

“I haven’t met him, and even if I had, I don’t do the thinking in our operation. I leave that to Mr. Wolfe.”

“You are very modest,” Kathleen said. “I suspect you do a great deal of thinking. I’m interested in what you think about my brothers and older sister.”

“They are all interesting people.”

“That is a non-answer, Archie Goodwin. You must have some opinions.”

“So now you’re the one doing the questioning,” I said with a grin. “All right, here’s a quick rundown: I found Tom to be likable and friendly; Annie to be bright, inquisitive, and somewhat aggressive; and Doug to be on the defensive side.”

“I’m not surprised at any of your observations. Of the three, I am most concerned about Doug. Tom will survive divorce and will ultimately be the better for it; Annie will move up the advertising ladder and maybe even find a man in the process; but Doug...”

“Go on after the but,” I prompted.

She shifted in her chair. “Doug doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. You probably know about his failed business venture. He is in much worse financial shape than me, and he and my father are barely on speaking terms. Dad advised against his getting into that deal with a college classmate, but Doug thought he knew it all, and he lost just about everything he had.”

“And from what he told me, he doesn’t sell much of his art.”

“I’ve heard the same thing from him,” Kathleen said. “I am not knowledgeable enough about art to be a good judge of his work, but I like it. There’s an example that he gave me,” she said, turning and pointing at a framed oil painting on the wall that looked like a bunch of children’s blocks jumbled together, but without any letters or numbers on them. The predominant colors were brown and yellow. “That is what’s called cubism,” she said.

“At least I can tell how it got its name,” I remarked.

She laughed. “Not everybody likes cubism, which has been around for at least half a century. Why my brother is tackling a genre that has gone out of style, I really can’t say. But then, Doug always has had a contrary streak. Maybe it has to do with the so-called ‘artistic temperament.’”

“What is his social life like?”

“I really don’t know,” Kathleen said. “He’s living in his own very private world down there in the Village, and he seems to like it that way. I think he went out a few times with a friend of Cordelia’s, whose name I forgot if I ever even knew it. But I gather that relationship didn’t lead anywhere, maybe because he was quite a bit older than she.”

“Well, I’ve taken enough of your time,” I told her as I rose to leave. “I appreciate your having seen me on such short notice.”

“I know I haven’t been much help, for which I am truly sorry. I hate to see Cordelia in some sort of trouble, whatever it is. She is really a decent kid, although at her age, she’s hardly a kid anymore, right? But to me she seems so much younger than she really is.”

“And to me as well,” I said, shaking her hand and stepping out into Connecticut’s balmy summer afternoon.