Nightlines

XVI

Nudger drove out to Westport, a modern business community five miles beyond the western city limits. Most of the buildings had been constructed ten or fifteen years ago-brick, squarish single- and multiple- story office buildings and warehouses, many of them still sitting vacant with FOR LEASE signs in front of them. There were also a high-priced pseudo-English Tudor-style shopping mall and apartments, on the western edge of Westport next to the interstate highway. The developers had wanted to attract all manner of businesses, and had. Westport was a profitable venture, with a number of thriving companies located here, not a few of which would thrive only briefly before being forced into liquidation or relocation by the fast-rising rents. Law of the three-piece-suit jungle.

Several of the streets in Westport were named after astronauts. Javers' Tire-O-Rama was on Grissom Drive, in a low tan building that was shared with an electronics distributor. Nudger parked in the freshly blacktopped parking lot and listened to the soft tar suck at the soles of his shoes as he walked to the east entrance.

He found that he'd opened the wrong door and was in the warehouse. A sign proclaimed that Javers' Tire-O-Rama made direct retail sales here at discount prices. An equally large sign read MOUNT YOUR OWN AND SAVE! Tires were piled high and leaning crookedly in hundreds of stacks, fitted into and on top of metal tier racks. Against one wall rose a mountain of used tires. The acrid, oily smell of all that rubber was overpowering.

A hefty little man with a clipboard and an air of authority came over and directed Nudger to the door of the office.

Nudger thanked him and shoved open a green swinging door. He found himself in a large room containing an even dozen desks in two rows of six. Behind each desk sat someone working diligently, either poring over papers or talking on the phone. The oily rubber smell was as strong here as in the warehouse. It had probably permeated the entire building.

At the far end of the room, near the entrance Nudger should have come in, sat a receptionist at a curved counter. Nudger walked over and smiled down at her. She was a star- tlingly pretty dark-haired girl with rimless glasses and a turned-up nose. There was a decal of a tire with arms and legs and a happy hubcap face on her IBM Selectric.

"How long does it take to get used to the smell?" Nudger asked.

"What smell?"

"Never mind. Is Mr. Javers in?"

"Do you have an appointment?"

"No. My name is Nudger."

She rang her boss's office with apparent trepidation.

"Tell him it concerns Grace Valpone," Nudger added.

The receptionist did, then hung up the phone.

"Mr. Javers says to come right in," she told him. She seemed relieved that Javers had agreed to see Nudger. "Through that door on the left."

As Nudger crossed the room he overheard some of the phone conversations. Most of the people behind the desks were salespeople, using WATS lines to coax orders from out- of-town retail tire outlets.

Javers stood up from behind his desk when Nudger entered. He wasn't a very tall man, though well proportioned inside an expensive gray suit. He was about fifty, balding, with jet-black wings of hair that were meant to disguise protruding ears. Though his complexion was swarthy, there was an underlying pastiness to it. A small, neatly trimmed mustache writhed in an attempted smile that evolved into more of a grimace. Grief had made inroads on his face, lending it a wise but helpless expression that might soon become permanent.

Nudger introduced himself and shook Javers' hand.

"I thought you were from the police," Javers said, sitting back down behind his desk.

"I used to be," Nudger said. "Right now I'm working for a woman whose twin sister was murdered in much the same way as your fiancee. I'm sorry to intrude on such short notice, but I thought it would be a good idea if I asked you a few questions."

The mention of Grace Valpone's murder brought a momentary look of deep anguish to Javers' face. Nudger wouldn't have blamed the man for asking him to leave. Misery didn't really love company.

But Javers had as much control over his grief as he had over his employees conducting business as usual in the next room. He leaned forward over his wide desk. There was nothing on the gleaming surface of the desk except a pen set, a small Lucite clock, and an ashtray; Javers hadn't been hard at work. "Do you think the same man committed both murders?" he asked.

"It's an odds-on possibility," Nudger told him. "There are parallels. There are also inconsistencies."

"If you think one case might have a bearing on the other," Javers said, "I'll be glad to tell you anything you want to know. I want more than anything to see Grace's killer…" He let the words fade away, then swallowed hard and bowed his head. Light glanced off his taut, bald crown between the black wings of hair.

"I understand," Nudger said. He felt like walking over and patting Javers on the shoulder. But he didn't. Sympathy from a stranger was sometimes more confusing than comforting. He wondered how he'd be able to ask Javers what he needed to know.

"I want the man caught and punished," Javers said in a level voice, sitting up straighter. He had himself back in check.

"Had Ms. Valpone recently mentioned anything that struck you as unusual?" Nudger asked. He knew the police had already asked Javers the same question, but sometimes people overlooked things. Sometimes people answered the same question differently.

"No, she said nothing at all unusual."

"Was her behavior in any way out of the ordinary?"

"Grace's behavior right up until… she was found, seemed perfectly normal. Of course, I hadn't seen her for almost a week. I was in Honolulu, at a convention."

"What did she think of you going off to Hawaii alone for two weeks?"

Javers smiled sadly. "She didn't mind. I asked her to go with me, but she refused. She wanted to wait until after the marriage for that sort of thing. Grace didn't mind being thought of as old-fashioned, Mr. Nudger. In fact, she didn't mind at all what other people thought about her, as long as she felt she was doing the right thing. It was one of the reasons I loved her."

"Then things were going well between the two of you."

"Very well. We were both in love for the second time in our lives, enjoying it more than the first time." The acute anguish gouged its way across Javers' face again. "Romance tempered by maturity has a sweeter, more lasting quality than youthful love."

"I guess it would." Nudger paced nearer to the desk and wiped his perspiring hands on his pants legs. "Did Ms. Valpone ever mention any late-night phone conversations?"

Javers appeared puzzled. "Conversations with whom?"

"Anyone." Nudger tried a smile, couldn't tell from his side of it how well it worked. "It's probably nothing, Mr. Javers, but it might tie in with something else."

Javers accepted that weak explanation for Nudger's question. "No," he said, "she wasn't one of those women who enjoy talking for long hours on the phone, either day or night."

Nudger asked a few more questions, none of them really pertinent, all of them polite. It wouldn't hurt to sow a little goodwill, in case the police objected to his talking to Javers. If the police ever learned of it. Besides, Nudger liked Javers, and talking about Grace Valpone seemed to provide some sort of relief for the man. People didn't lose fiancees the way they did socks in dryers.

When Javers had wound down somewhat, Nudger thanked him and shook hands again, offering his condolences and meaning it. Javers got up from behind the desk and saw him out, assuring Nudger he'd do anything possible to cooperate in the investigation, so please to call on him. Nudger thanked him again and left Javers' Tire-O- Rama, using the right door this time, nodding somberly to the pretty receptionist with the insensitive nose.

What Nudger had learned here was that Grace Valpone by all outward appearances simply wasn't a candidate for the nighttime lines. Her future had been in order, her nights of loneliness numbered.

Or maybe there was a side to her that Javers didn't know about. That no one knew about. A hidden, agonized side. Wasn't that true of most of the nightline people?

He hurried across the blacktop parking lot to his car, breathing deeply of air that didn't smell like new rubber. The humid summer day seemed to have gotten ten degrees hotter during the short time he'd been inside the building. A bead of perspiration zigzagged crazily, like a disoriented insect, down his rib cage.

As he drove from the lot, a size 13 wingtip shoe made a sharp smacking sound as it was lifted heavily from the heat- softened tar. Half a minute later, another car left the lot and turned onto Grissom Drive in the direction Nudger had taken.