The Devil's Cook (5 page)

“It's damn funny, that's all I can say. Here, Jay, you'd better read this.”

Jay Miles opened his eyes. Farley, rising again, walked over and handed him the newspaper, indicating with his index finger an item. Jay stared at the item for a long time. Then he sighed, twisted the paper into a tight roll, and slapped a bony knee with it. Leaning back, he closed his eyes again.

“Damn it, what is it?” Fanny said. “Am I allowed to know, or not?”

Farley took the paper from Jay's hand and read aloud: “‘T. M. Friday at three. Stacks. Level C. O.'”

Fanny jumped up, snatched the paper, and read it for herself. Then, as if to dispose of it once and for all, she dropped the paper back into the wooden bucket.

“That's that,” she said. “T. M. is Terry Miles. Today is Friday. Three is when she said she had an appointment. Stacks and level clearly refer to a library, probably the one at the university. But who in hell is O?”

“That,” Farley said, “is none of your goddam business.”

Jay stirred. His face was strangely untroubled. The Personal, rather than increasing his anxiety, seemed actually to have relieved it.

“It's just a coincidence,” he said.

“Are you serious?” Fanny stared at him. “Some coincidence, if you ask me!”

“No.” Jay rose and jammed his hands into his pockets, shaking his head with a kind of dogged stubbornness. “Think. Terry is devious and inclined to do weird things, but why not a note in the mail? Why not a telephone call? For that matter, why not direct contact at the apartment? Terry's alone here almost every day, and there wouldn't have been any problems. Then why a Personal? There's simply no sense to it.”

“There may be no sense on the face of it,” said Fanny, “but there may be more to it than the face.”

“I don't think so.” Jay removed his glasses, polished the lenses on his handkerchief, and replaced them. “Believe me, I know Terry. Anyway, no one has anything to worry about except me, and I've developed a kind of immunity. Thanks for your concern, but I'm rather tired. Do you mind?”

“He means,” said Farley, “will we get the hell out.”

“I know what he means,” Fanny said. “I must say, however, that he is kicking, us out like a perfect gentleman.”

5

Farley veered off toward his own door.

“Farley,” said Fanny, “get your topcoat on. I'll be down in a minute.”

“Topcoat?” Judging by the astonishment in Farley's voice, he might have been ordered to remove his pants. “Why in hell should I put on my topcoat?”

“Because it's cold outside, that's why.”

“It may be cold outside, little sister, but I'm inside. And inside is where I'm going to stay.”

“Please don't drag your heels, Farley. You and Jay may feel inclined to leave things as they are, but I feel differently.”

“Oh, butt out, Fan. Can't you see the poor guy just doesn't want to make a display of his embarrassment?”

“Yes, but it has also occurred to me that Jay's embarrassment may not be the only consideration in this matter. Or even the primary one.”

“Nuts. I admit I was worried at first, but now I'm not. At this moment Terry is loitering at the first corner of the current triangle. Jay's occupying the second corner; and if you ask me, he knows the occupant of the third corner, if he cared to go there and make a fool of himself.”

They had been talking in low voices outside Farley's door. Farley, after making this statement, which he meant to be conclusive, opened his door with the obvious intention of shutting it again between him and Fanny. But Fanny, with other intentions, slipped quickly past him into the room and turned to face him as he shut it in defeat on the space she had been occupying.

“The first corner is what's bothering me,” Fanny said. “There are some very suspicious circumstances here, if you ask me.”

“You mean the Personal?”

“Partly that. Mostly, however, I'm thinking how Ben, the ugly little devil, just happened to go off somewhere a little while before Terry went. They could have met outside. It wouldn't surprise me a bit if they did.”

“Ben and Terry? Little sister, you're getting brain-fag, or you've had too much gin.”

“I'm not, and I haven't. It's easy to underestimate Ben. As I know from experience, he can be extremely fascinating when he wants to be. He appeals to the mother instinct.”

“In that case, you have nothing to worry about. Terry doesn't have a mother instinct. Look, Terry and Ben were here with me this afternoon. If they had anything cooked up between them, they were the best actors that ever lived.”

“I'm hardly convinced by that. To be honest, brother, you're not as smart about such things as a lawyer ought to be. Almost anyone could deceive you.”

“Do you agree that the Personal was directed to Terry?”

“In spite of Jay's pretense that it was a coincidence, I agree that it probably was.”

“There you are, then. Why the hell should old Ben resort to such a stratagem when all he had to do was step across the hall almost any time he chose?”

“Did I say the Personal was put in the paper by Ben? I don't recall that I did.”

“You implied it. Surely the Personal was Terry's reason for going wherever she went.”

“I implied no such thing. I merely said it was suspicious that Ben and Terry went off so close together. Perhaps he waited somewhere nearby and
took
her to keep the appointment. Perhaps he met her somewhere
after
the appointment.”

“Well, if you don't have a mind like a scatter gun! It's impossible to tell what you'll think of next. As Jay pointed out, why should
anyone
publish the Personal? Why not write or phone? Do you have an answer to that, little sister?”

“It could have been placed by someone who didn't
know
Terry's address or phone number. She must have talked to this person, whoever he is—she wouldn't have known otherwise to look out for the Personal. But she refused to tell him how to write or call her.”

“That narrows it down a lot. We now know that we are looking for an illiterate. Someone, for example, who can't read names in a telephone directory.”

“No such thing. It so happens that the Miles telephone is unlisted.”

“The hell you say! How do you know?”

“Because I wanted to call Terry from the office one day, and I couldn't find the number in the telephone book. Later she told me it was unlisted and gave me the number in case I ever wanted to call again.”

“I must say you have a way of finding out things.”

“I am merely observant and intelligent.”

“As well as sexy.”

“That's true. And a little curious. My curiosity has been aroused, and I intend to satisfy it. There is something ominous, if you ask me, about that Personal. It is not at all the way to conduct a love affair. In my opinion, it involves something else entirely. And whatever it involves, I suspect that Ben is in it somehow, on Terry's side or the other.”

“You're getting worse and worse. First you suspect old Ben of simple fornication, and then of mysterious involvements. Maybe he's a kind of poor man's James Bond or something. He just likes to combine business with pleasure.”

“Don't be silly. I've already told you what he is. He's an idiot. I confess that I've become too damn fond of him, however, and I wouldn't want him to get into trouble.”

“If you want to keep him out of trouble, why don't you keep him home? Apparently you haven't been making things interesting enough for him.”

“I'm afraid you're right. Perhaps I should allow him more privileges. Anyhow, we have deduced that Terry went off to meet someone at the university library, and I'm going right over there to see if I can learn anything. Are you coming with me or not?”

“Not. And you're not going without me. Damn it, you can't be wandering around alone at this hour of the night!”

“Can't I? Try and stop me.”

“Be reasonable, Fan. It's almost ten o'clock; the library will close in another hour. It's been seven hours since Terry was there, if she ever was. What can you hope to learn now?”

“That remains to be seen. It's better to be doing something than nothing, especially if circumstances have made it impossible to sleep or anything trivial like that.”

“Since when has sleeping become trivial?”

“Oh, go to sleep, then! I don't care. I might have known you'd fail me the first time I asked you to help.”

“All right, all
right.”
Farley slapped his thigh in a gesture of disgusted concession. “I suppose I'll have to go along. If you want my opinion, though, I think it's no better than invasion of privacy.”

“That's just like you, Farley. You ask if I want your opinion, which I don't, and then go right ahead and give it to me anyhow. I'll run up and get my coat.”

She hurried upstairs. In her bedroom she donned a lined trench coat, which seemed appropriate to detection. Since she did not like to return to a dark apartment at night, she turned on the bed lamp before switching off the ceiling light. Then she went into the kitchen and turned on a small light above the range. While there she briefly considered the advisability of having a quick nip against the cold, but rejected it. Back in the living room she switched off the ceiling light, pausing only long enough to note with relief how light splashed into the darkness from the bedroom on one side and the kitchen on the other. Downstairs she found Farley, in his topcoat, sulkily waiting in the hall.

They went out the alley door to Farley's old Ford on the apron. It was cold outside, near freezing, but the sky was clear, with lofty stars and a slice of moon. Farley was sullen at having to go, and they drove in stiff silence to the Handclasp campus, which was not far away, and across to the library, the only building on the campus left with a blaze of lights.

Parking was no problem at this hour. They parked at the curb and went up a long walk to the building, passing reference rooms to right and left, and upstairs to the charging desk. The girl at the desk was trying to sustain the illusion of efficiency, but her eyes were heavy behind her thick glasses. She answered Fan's questions dully. She had not been on duty at three o'clock, so she could not tell if Mrs. Miles had been in the library or not. She did not know Mrs. Miles, moreover, and could not have told in any event, unless Mrs. Miles had presented her stack permit.

“Say!” said Fanny, “I didn't think of that. How could Terry have met someone in the stacks if she didn't have a permit? Farley, do you happen to know if she has one?”

“I'm sure she has,” Farley said, “as the wife of a faculty member. It's a courtesy.”

“That's so,” said the heavy-eyed girl.

“Well,” Fanny said, “Farley is only a student, and I am only a sister, which is not so grand as being a wife, but I'd like to be admitted to the stacks, anyway.”

“Do you have a permit?” the girl said to Farley.

“Certainly.”

“Go ahead,” she said.

“I guess I'll have to,” Farley said. “Although I can't see any sense to it.”

They passed through into the stacks, which were erected on low-ceilinged levels from basement up. Level C was below them, and so they descended narrow steel steps and turned down an aisle between shelves of books. At the far end, beyond a cross-aisle, ranged a row of carrels, each furnished with a desk and chair. All the carrels were dark, except one in which a late bookworm toiled over a tome.

“I am thinking,” said Fanny, “that one of these alcoves would make a dandy place to meet somebody.”

“That depends,” Farley said, “on the purpose of the meeting. For private conversation, yes. For private frolic, no.”

“What other purpose can you think of, where Terry is concerned?”

“None at the moment. Incidentally, whoever she met had to be someone with a permit.”

“Logical. It also narrows the suspects down to about ten thousand people.”

“Fewer than that, I think. I'm sure we can eliminate the freshmen.”

“With Terry how can you be sure of anything? But I'll concede on other grounds. Freshmen are not admitted to the stacks.”

“In any event, it is clearly impossible now to tell if Terry was here at three o'clock or not. We had better leave.”

“We had much better,” said Farley, “never have come at all.”

They left the library. At the curb beside the Ford, Fanny stopped and stared for a moment at a cast-iron VIP posed on a marble pedestal across the street.

“You're thinking again,” Farley groaned. “What now?”

“I'm thinking that a library is not, after all, an ideal place for a tryst. Especially if something more than conversation is contemplated.”

“If there
was
a tryst, remember? If Terry was ever here at all.”

“That's understood. It isn't necessary to qualify every statement, Farley.”

“It isn't necessary to prolong this foolishness, either. Let's go home.”

“Well, I can't think of any place else to go, except the Student Union. We could ask there if anyone saw Terry with anyone.”

“The Student Union! I've got news for you, sister. The Student Union is not an ideal place for a tryst, either, if something more than conversation is contemplated. All you can contemplate there is billiards or watching television or something like that.”

“It wouldn't do any harm to ask.”

“It wouldn't do any good, either. Chances are a hundred to one against finding anyone who even knows Terry, let alone who saw her there this afternoon and remembers it. I'm going home, Fan, and that's that.”

“I dare say you're right.” Fanny, for a wonder, was submissive. “We may as well. Perhaps Terry will return before morning, if she hasn't already.”