Cobalt (18 page)

Clarisse looked up, took one short breath, and hastily explained, “My baby brother had this terrible accident—he's twenty-one but I still call him ‘baby brother'—and I had to give blood.”

“I was walking by and I saw the shop wasn't open,” said Beatrice. “I looked at my watch, and I said, ‘Oh, my, it's already a quarter past ten and where is Clarisse?' I hope your brother is going to be all right. Did he have an accident?”

“Run down by a fiend on a skateboard, right in front of the Massachusetts Statehouse.”

Beatrice shook her head in sympathy. “But you know,” she said, as Clarisse swept past her into the shop, “if you're going to be late like this, you should give me a call. I don't mind opening up when there's a real emergency.”

“I'm sure it won't happen again,” Clarisse smiled. She settled herself behind the counter, and plugged in the register.

“Shall I flip the sign?” said Beatrice. Clarisse sighed and nodded.

No sooner had the placard been changed from CLOSED to OPEN, than three pre-teenaged girls entered and demanded use of the bathroom.

“I'm afraid our facilities are not for the use of the public,” smiled Clarisse, and glanced at Beatrice.

“I
got
to go,” wailed the smallest of the girls.

“Then don't stand near my display cases!” cried Beatrice, and hustled the girls out. She came back in and said, “Clarisse, I'm expecting a shipment from Chicago this morning. Five dozen throw pillows in the shape of oysters. See if you can find a barrel or something in the back we can display them in. Don't you think that would be cute—a barrelful of cloth oysters?”

“Darling!” cried Clarisse vehemently. “Precious! They'll probably all be sold the first day!”

Beatrice hesitated in the door of the shop, then turned and came close to the counter. “Let me ask you something—as long as there's nobody else around.”

“Yes?”

“How do you like working here?”

Clarisse glanced around the shop. “I'm overwhelmed,” she said after a moment.

“Good,” said Beatrice. “I wasn't sure at first. There was so much breakage, I thought that perhaps you were subconsciously expressing your unhappiness by destroying my merchandise. I remember when I used to work on my grandmother's chicken farm every summer, I'd break half the eggs getting them out of the nests.”

“I'm more used to the place now,” said Clarisse.

“That's good,” said Beatrice vaguely. “Now, the reason I ask is this: I've been offered the opportunity to open a branch store in Boston, down near the Waterfront–Quincy Market area, and I just wanted to know if you'd like to manage it for me.”

Clarisse stammered, “I…I'm not sure I know what to say.”

“Well, I think you could handle it—you're doing just fine with this place. I'd do all the buying, so you wouldn't have to worry about that. You'd just have to take care of hiring, and making sure the employees show up on time and so forth. I keep this place open all year—I wouldn't miss a Provincetown winter for anything—so I don't want to have to spend two months setting the place up in Boston. Since you're going back in September anyway, I thought you might as well…” Beatrice paused significantly.

“Let me talk it over with Val,” said Clarisse at last.

“I've already spoken to him,” said Beatrice.

“You have?”

“This morning. I ran into him at the Portuguese bakery. He said he thought it was a great idea. He said he had overheard you on the telephone talking to your mother, telling her that this was the best job you had ever had in your entire life and you just wish you could keep it for always.”

“I see,” said Clarisse.

“Well,” said Beatrice with a wide smile, “here's your chance.”

A pair of middle-aged female twins in identical yellow pantsuits walked through the door, and Beatrice took her leave.

Clarisse dialed the number at home, and the telephone rang fifteen times—Valentine wasn't there. She called the Throne and Scepter, and the day manager took a message that Valentine was to call as soon as he got in.

A
S SOON AS SHE saw the doors of the Throne and Scepter open for business that day, Clarisse exclaimed loudly to the half dozen customers she had in the shop that she thought she smelled smoke. When they had hurried out, fearful of their safety, Clarisse turned the OPEN sign to CLOSED and ran across the way. Valentine was just plugging in his cash register.

“I could kill you for what you told Beatrice,” she said evenly.

“I had to tell her something.”

“Now she wants me to manage a branch store in Boston. Can you imagine? The Boston Guardians of Taste will throw bricks through the window.”

“Then turn down the offer. Politely. Tell her you're going to be too busy with your first year at Portia Law.”

“I
will
be busy.”

“The perfect excuse, see? So now why are you so upset? You get to keep the job for the summer, and after Labor Day you can tell Beatrice what you think of her merchandise.”

“I'd never do that,” whispered Clarisse. “Anyway, I'm upset about something else.”

“What?”

Clarisse told him what she had discovered that morning in Noah's desk.

“So,” said Valentine, “you're an heiress now.”

“That's not the point,” replied Clarisse.

“What am I missing? There's something else to Noah's changing the will then?” He shoved a congratulatory drink at her across the bar.

“Haven't you made the obvious connection yet?”

“What obvious connection?” asked Valentine.

“Remember the story Angel Smith told us about Jeff King, and the man who lived below her?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that was Noah.”

“How do you figure
that
?”

“Remember? Angel said that Jeff King stole six place settings of Rosenthal china from the man who lived downstairs from her.”

“It was eight. But so what?”

“So that struck a bell. The Lovelaces have never bought anything but Rosenthal.”

“So do a few others.”

“But Angel was hedgy about telling us the man's name.”

“She figured we didn't know him anyway, so what was the point of giving his name—or maybe she had forgotten it,” argued Valentine.

Clarisse ignored him. “So then I called my brother, and asked him where Noah was living eight years ago. He was living on Queensbury Street,” she concluded triumphantly.

“So why didn't Angel just
say
that she used to live upstairs from Noah and Jeff King?”

“Angel and Noah are partners. She wouldn't gossip about him.”

“All right,” said Valentine. “I'm convinced. And it fills in a few gaps.”

“But what worries me,” said Clarisse, “is
when
Noah changed the will. He went to Boston the morning that Jeff King was killed—and he left even before I got back from the police station. Word wasn't out yet. And Cal's letter says that that was the day that Noah made the changes.”

Valentine shrugged. “So talk to him. That's all it takes to clear everything up.”

“I can't say anything about that, Val. I'm not supposed to know about the will.”

“You don't really think Noah killed Jeff King, do you?”

“No,” said Clarisse. “But I'll bet he knows something about it we don't know. There was something else in the will too.”

“What?”

“A special bequest of ten thousand dollars for Victor Leach.”

“Who's Victor Leach?”

“The White Prince, of course,” said Clarisse. “Is it any wonder now we never heard his last name?”

“Ten thousand dollars,” Valentine mused.

“That's right,” said Clarisse. “Considering the extent of Noah's fortune, ten thousand dollars is nothing more than a polite nod of recognition. It shows us where they stand, doesn't it?”

“I wonder…”

“Wonder what?” demanded Clarisse.

“Why Noah waited so long to change beneficiaries. If that will included Jeff King, it had to be at least seven or eight years old. If Noah had died, Jeff King would have gotten everything, and you and the Prince would have been out in the cold. Clarisse, I really think you ought to talk to Noah. There's something strange about all this, and I think you're right. He does know something we don't.”

“Who's curious now?”

“It's a slow day, and I need something to keep my mind off my sunburn. Come back when you get off work, and I'll tell you who did it.”

“You're impossible. For weeks you've been trying to get me to forget poor little Jeff King, and poor old Ann Richardson, and now that I'm closing in for the kill, you want to share in the credit. Well, Ducky-Lucky, I'm going to do this one all on my own!”

As the afternoon waned business picked up at the Throne and Scepter. Rain had begun to fall only a few minutes after Clarisse returned to the Provincetown Crafts Boutique. It showed no sign of letting up. On Commercial Street Valentine glimpsed a parade of bobbing multicolored umbrellas and flashes of glistening orange and yellow rain slickers. Inside the bar no one had bothered to drop quarters in the jukebox and Valentine had not yet turned on the tape machine. The patter of the rain, the buzz of conversation, and the hum of the ice machine provided a soothing backdrop of noise. The room smelled of wet clothing.

A little after four o'clock, Angel Smith, swathed in a full-length lime green poncho, surged into the Throne and Scepter like a Lake Superior barge. She threw back her hood and swung her arms about inside the poncho, again drenching half a dozen young women who had come in mostly for the purpose of drying themselves off. Angel's hair was braided and she was in full Swiss Miss war paint. Valentine could hear her clogs on the wooden floor.

Lifting up the tent of green canvas she dropped it over a few stools, and hoisted herself up to the bar. The hem of the poncho hovered above the floor, and soon formed a perfect circle of water beneath her.

“What'll you have?” Valentine asked.

“I have to be at work in a little while, so nothing strong. Just give me a vodka on the rocks—in a small glass.”

While Valentine was fixing the drink, Angel began to rummage beneath the poncho for money, but this action unleashed so much water that Valentine said: “Don't bother—on the house. You'll owe me one sometime.”

Angel took a sip with contentment. “You mix a good drink, Daniel.”

“Vodka and ice can be tricky—unless you know exactly what you're doing.”

She swallowed the remainder of the drink in one gulp. “Well, no more pussyfooting,” she said in a stern voice. “I have come here today as a recruiter.”

“For what?” Valentine asked uneasily.

“Next week's show at the Plymouth House cabaret. The man they had hired to MC it got hepatitis from one of the boys in the chorus, and I leapt into the breach.”

Valentine paused a moment to consider this image, then said: “Are you going to MC it, or are you taking the place of the chorus boy?”

“I'm going to MC.”

“And you want me for the chorus—no?”

“You won't have to say any lines. But it's a great part. Great costume too—made me hungry just to look at it.” She took a breath and closed her eyes in ecstasy. Valentine poured more vodka.

“Get the White Prince.”

“He's already signed up. He'll probably want to do that weary Salome number again—coked to the falsies, of course. Unless the cartilage in his nose collapses between now and then, which would be a blessing to us all. I mean,” she went on, snatching up a few maraschino cherries from Valentine's side of the bar and popping them into her mouth, “everybody likes cocaine, but not everybody uses it as a substitute for literature, red meat, and love.”

“As addictions go,” said Valentine, “it's cheaper than swallowing semiprecious stones.”

“Be in the show,” Angel begged, clasping her hands on the bar between them. “You'd only be on stage for fifteen seconds. No lines—you don't even have to move. You'd just be a mannequin for the costume. No one will recognize you, I promise. I'll do your makeup myself.”

“No,” he said. “But just out of curiosity—I'm very curious today—what's the role?”

“It's a tableau vivant—Madame Du Barry mounting the scaffold. Oh, Daniel, you should see the dress! Lace at the bosom, and panniers so wide that they're having to stick the executioner down in the orchestra pit.”

“What is the show, Angel?” asked Valentine suspiciously.

Angel tipped the ice from her first drink into her mouth, and bit down loudly. “We're calling it
Prostitution through the Ages
.”

Only with two more vodkas did Valentine at last convince Angel that he had no intention of taking the role of Madame Du Barry in the series of tableaux vivants being prepared for the following week. As she was leaving she made the identical proposition to a stranger who was madly drying his recently permed hair with a stack of paper napkins from the bar. Though bewildered, the young man accepted. When Angel had gone, he whispered in awe to Valentine, “I'm from the Midwest. Is Provincetown always like this?”

The rain had grown even heavier and the sky was now quite gray. The bar was crowded with wet customers and the plants that had been brought in from the patio. Valentine gave a stack of quarters to the waiter, and told him to choose something quiet on the jukebox.

The first selection was Tammy Wynette's “Stand by Your Man.”

Valentine wiped up the bar, and rubbed specially hard at the rings left by Angel's several glasses.

“Hey,” said the man who had taken her place, “this stool is loose, you ought to have the screws tightened up.”