Paper Doll

chapter seventeen

I WAS IN my room at the Alton Arms, lying on the bed with my shoes off and three pillows propped, talking to Susan on the phone. There was a bottle of scotch and some soda and a bucket of ice on the bureau. My shirt was hung in the closet on a hanger, which had been covered with pink quilted padding. My gun was on the bedside table, barrel pointed away for good range safety. I was sipping a drink from one of the squat glasses they had sent up with the scotch. It had a crest engraved on the side with an A worked into it. Padded coat hangers and monogrammed glasses. First class.

“How’s the baby?” I said.

“She’s fine,” Susan said. “I took her for a walk after work and got her a new bone and she’s on the bed now, looking at me and chewing it. And getting bone juice on the spread.”

“How adorable,” I said. “Does she miss me?”

“Do you miss Daddy, Pearl?” Susan said off the phone.

I waited.

“No,” Susan said into the phone, “apparently not. Maybe after her bone is gone.”

“How much crueler than the adder’s sting,” I said.

“I miss you,” Susan said.

“That helps,” I said. “But it’s not the same.”

“Why not?”

“You might just be driven by lust.”

“Whereas Pearl’s love is the stuff of Proveniзal poetry,” Susan said.

“Exactly,” I said.

She laughed. I always loved the sound of her laughter. And to have caused it was worth the west side of heaven.

“Are you having any fun down there?” Susan said.

“No. The local Sheriff’s Department attempting to frighten me to death.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I had a recent confrontation with a tough Sheriff’s detective who gets her hair done at Rosetta’s in Batesburg.”

“Tell me,” Susan said.

I did, starting with the part about the room being searched, including my conversation with Ferguson.

“So why would the Sheriff’s police do that?” Susan said.

“Someone asked them to, I would guess. I can’t see why the Alton County, South Carolina, Sheriff’s Department would otherwise know I existed.”

“Hard to imagine,” Susan said. “But probably true. So who might ask them to?”

“Somebody who doesn’t want me looking into Olivia Nelson’s past,” I said.

“I sort of figured that out myself,” Susan said. “The real question is who doesn’t want you to and why not.”

“Yes,” I said.

“And to that question you have no answer.”

“None,” I said.

“Another approach might be to think who has the clout to get the Sheriff’s office to do it,” Susan said.

“Good thought, Della,” I said.

“Della?”

“Della Street… Perry Mason? I guess I’m too subtle for you.”

“Subtlety is not usually the difficulty,” Susan said.

“Anyway,” I said, “there’s too much I don’t know to do too much guessing. The only name that’s come up, that might have the clout, is Senator Stratton.”

“Why would he want to discourage you?”

“Maybe he doesn’t,” I said. “He knows Tripp. I met him when Tripp and I had lunch at the Harvard Club. He’s inquired about me to the cops in Boston. But that may be, probably is, just a routine constituent service to a big campaign contributor, real or potential.”

“But he’s the only one you can think of.”

“Right.”

“I would think that a liberal Senator from Massachusetts wouldn’t have much clout in rural South Carolina,” Susan said.

“Politics make strange bedfellows,” I said.

“Maybe Olivia’s father who isn’t dead might have had something to do with it,” Susan said.

I drank some more of my scotch and soda.

“Possibly,” I said.

“What are you going to do next?”

“I’m going to have a couple or three drinks,” I said, “order up some sandwiches, go to bed, and sleep on it all. In the morning I’m going to the track kitchen for breakfast. Sedale, the bellhop, who is my closest personal South Carolina friend, says it’s a don’t-miss place where everyone eats. Authentic Southern cooking, he says.”

“And I’m missing it,” Susan said. “What happens after breakfast?”

“I’m going to go out and see if I can talk with Jumper Jack Nelson,” I said.

“That might be interesting,” Susan said.

“Not as interesting as you are,” I said.

“Of course not,” Susan said. “But maybe you’ll find out why the police were led to believe he was dead.”

“I wish you were going to be dining with me at the track kitchen tomorrow,” I said. “A cup of coffee, a plate of grits, some redeye gravy, and thou.”

“Assuming I could restrain my carnality,” she said.

“Assuming you couldn’t, we’d never be welcome at the track kitchen again.”

“Take care of yourself,” Susan said.

“Yes,” I said. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” she said, “and the baby probably misses you more than she knows.”

We hung up. I lay on the bed with my drink for a while looking at the little square-toothed dentil molding that went all the way around the ceiling of the room. Then I got up to freshen my drink and looked out the window. Aiton was dark and silent under a dark sky. There was no moon. And no stars were visible. The wind moved the trees some, and made enough of a sound for me to hear it through the closed window. Across the street, in the yellow glare of the street lamp, there was merely an empty stretch of grass-spattered gravel. No sign of the blue Buick. No car at all. Maybe they’d given up trying to scare me. Maybe they’d just decided on a different approach. I drank my drink thoughtfully, and shrugged the bunchy muscles in my back and shoulders, and looked at the Browning lying on the nightstand.

I raised my glass slightly toward the gun. “Here’s looking at you, kid,” I said.

Then I picked up the room service menu and began to consider my choices.