The Recycled Citizen (12 page)

“Feel better?”

“If you only knew!”

Theonia leaned back against the soft upholstery, shut her eyes and sipped at her drink in blissful silence. The other three waited, respecting her need to rest. At last she began the tale they so much wanted to hear.

“I think that man Ashe is a spy.”

“A what?” Sarah exclaimed.

“I don’t mean the kind of spy who comes in from the cold. I mean”—Theonia ate some cheese, trying to define what she did mean—“you know what I mean. Those people who get jobs in rival companies to steal the formula for the piccalilli or bribe the chairman of the board so they can buy up all the stock. That sort of thing.”

“You mean Ashe is there to find out something,” Max explained for her.

“Exactly, though don’t ask me what, why or for whom. I can’t think why else he’d be going through this charade. He’s certainly not the roughneck he’s making himself up to be. Aside from the shaving, he simply doesn’t smell gamy enough. Believe me, that’s something I couldn’t miss. I made a point of getting close to him, and there’s nothing wrong with my nose. Wherever he spends his nights, I’m sure it’s not on a park bench. My guess would be that he has a place somewhere not far off where he goes and cleans himself up for the evening. In the morning he doesn’t shave or shower but smears a mixture of olive oil and soot, or some such thing, on his face and hands before he puts on those dirty old clothes. I’m sure this doesn’t surprise you, Max.”

“No, but it doesn’t make me happy. Would you say he might be an undercover narcotics agent?”

“If he is, he must be from the FBI,” said Brooks. “Our Boston cops would have sense enough to get genuinely dirty.”

“I doubt whether he’s any sort of law officer.” Theonia took some more cheese. “He doesn’t feel like a policeman. Though perhaps my extrasensory perception in that area has been somewhat dulled of late.”

“At least we know he needs checking out,” said Max. “Brooks and I will follow up on him. Er, speaking of smells”—Theonia did not only waft but positively gust of Arpège—“you don’t suppose anybody, er …”

Theonia was amused. “No fear, my dear. I took the precaution of tying an old Gypsy charm in the tail of that head scarf I was wearing. You start with a clove of garlic and a pinch of asafetida and rather go on from there. That’s why I had to douse myself with perfume when I changed back just now. We must allow time for a thorough scrubbing before dinner, Brooks dearest.”

“Certainly, my love. Feel free to call on me for any required assistance. What else did your talented nose sniff out?”

“There’s that woman Annie who signed the will.”

“Surely not Annie,” cried Sarah. “She’s one of Mary’s props and mainstays.”

“Then Mary had better prop her handbag someplace where Annie can’t get her fingers into it. I’ve met her sort often enough. Do you know anything about Annie’s background, Sarah?”

“Only that she used to be a cocktail waitress. She worked at the Broken Zipper for over twenty years, she told me, so she must have given satisfaction.”

“I’m sure she did,” said Theonia dryly. One still did have to make allowances for Sarah’s sheltered upbringing. “But I doubt whether they ever let her operate the cash register. I’m not saying Annie’s a bad person, merely what one might call temptation-prone. She’d be friendly and efficient serving her customers, but if they got back their right change, it wouldn’t be her fault. She’s good-natured and generous; only when she gives you the shirt off her back, it turns out she’s been wearing somebody else’s shirt.”

“Then what about her sidekick, Joan?”

“Joan’s all right. My impression was that she’s one of those motherly souls who knows Annie’s little quirks and worries about her a good deal. You must remember that I’m only going by instinct and what little observation I could manage without making myself conspicuous. As you know, though, I’m a highly experienced sizer-up.”

“And a damned good one,” said Max. “What did you think of Osmond Loveday?”

“I stayed well clear of Mr. Loveday. I don’t see how I’m going to avoid meeting him Saturday night at the auction, and I wasn’t at all sure my histrionic ability would stand up to those beady little eyes of his. He looks like a sharp one to me. Fortunately he didn’t come out himself to check on me but sent a representative.”

“Who was that? Joan or Annie?”

“Neither. It was Apollonia Kelling.”

S
ARAH CHOKED ON HER
milk. “Aunt Appie? Whatever was she doing there?”

“Throwing the place into utter confusion, as far as I could gather,” Theonia replied with uncharacteristic waspishness. “I felt like the Lady of Shalott when she came bounding toward me. Doom staring me in the face, you know. I just stood there feeling idiotic. Fortunately Appie took me at face value and thought I was. She started asking me inane questions in that briskly sympathetic voice she puts on when she’s being helpful. I kept croaking ‘Huh?’ as if I were either too deaf or too stupid to understand, and holding out my bag of rubbish. Finally Joan came over and led me into that back room where they take the salvage and pay you. I made a dollar and eighty-five cents! Aren’t you proud of me, Brooks dearest?”

“I am indeed, more proud than I can say. You’ve done a phenomenal job today, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stand for your staging a repeat performance. I don’t often play the heavy husband, Theonia”—understandably not, since his wife outweighed him by at least twenty-five pounds—“but you’re worth something more than a dollar and eighty-five cents to me. What if whoever killed Chet Arthur happened to be there when you went in? What if Appie had recognized you and spilled the beans, as she surely would have? Sarah, didn’t it dawn on you that Appie might take it into her head to do good works? Couldn’t you have kept her away?”

“No it didn’t, and why me, anyway? Appie’s more your relative than mine.”

“I dispute that! Appie was merely the daughter of my father’s second cousin Byram.”

“Which makes her your third cousin in the direct line. She was Alexander’s third cousin, but Alexander was only my fifth cousin once removed, which puts Byram so far from our particular branch of the family tree that he doesn’t even count. The only real connection I have with Aunt Appie is that she married Uncle Samuel, who was, I grant you, first cousin to my own grandfather.”

“Makes sense to me,” said Max. “Brooks, I don’t blame you for not wanting Theonia to take such a risk again and I certainly wouldn’t ask her myself, but she did handle herself like a pro, and she did get back safe and sound.”

Theonia waggled her abused toes. “I’m not so sure about the sound, but I knew I was never in any real danger with my stalwart bodyguard around me. I say we were all magnificent. But as far as Appie goes, you know she’s such a dear, muzzy-headed soul that she doesn’t know whom she’s talking to half the time, anyway. The chances of her blowing my cover, as I believe it’s called, probably were not great in any case. If she had, I’d simply have said ‘Huh?’ again and faced her down. Now shall I get on with my report, because I really do have to go and bathe pretty soon.”

“First, let me just say I did try to call Aunt Appie, not to put her off going to the center, because that never entered my mind; but to get Tigger’s address as I said I would,” Sarah put in. “However, she wasn’t there and the housekeeper couldn’t tell me where she’d gone. I’m wondering if Mr. Loveday coaxed Tigger into getting her to volunteer, or if he approached her himself. Anyway, I’ll track her down this evening, if I can. Do go on, Theonia.”

“Yes, tell us about that little fracas down by the corner of Blackstone Street,” said Max. “I thought you were in real trouble there for a second.”

“So did I. What happened,” Theonia explained to the others, “was that I’d spied a soft drink can in the gutter and stooped to pick it up. Just as I was about to put my hand on the can, some young fellow dressed all in purple rushed over and kicked it away, almost kicking me in the process. So naturally I got up and scooted away from him as fast as I could. I didn’t know whether he was planning to rough me up or what. Did he start to come after me, Max?”

“No, he did something I thought was pretty damned strange. He paid no further attention to you but very carefully kicked the can back to the exact same spot where it had been before. A few seconds later a woman carrying an SCRC bag and wearing a purple sweater came along, picked up the can and stuck it in her bag. The guy stood right there watching her and never moved a muscle. I had to hurry along after you, so I couldn’t follow up on her but I’d have liked to. What kind of can was it, Theonia? Did you happen to notice?”

“I did, partly because the can was purple, like the fellow’s clothes. It was some kind of grape soda with a name that wasn’t familiar to me. Graperoola, something like that. It was a longish name, I know. The lettering went all around the can.”

Brooks, who still took a youthful pleasure in carbonated beverages, shook his head. “That’s a new one on me, as the monkey said when he scratched his back. I must find out who sells it.”

“Purple suit, purple sweater, purple can—wait a second!” Max shot out of this chair, whipped into the tiny spare room he used for an office and came back with the torn collecting bag that had been Chet Arthur’s. “Take a look at this.”

He spread the remnant out on the floor in front of Theonia’s hassock. The bag was no different from the one she’d acquired at the center, except that it was in far worse condition and had somehow got splashed with purple paint from some graffiti artist’s spray can.

“I’ll bet if you’d been carrying this bag instead of your own, Theonia, you’d have got to keep the Graperoola can.”

“But it won’t even hold anything. Max dear, I don’t understand.”

“I think what you and probably Chet Arthur, too, stumbled into was a drug transfer. As we all know, the police are really cracking down on drug dealers these days. They’ve tightened up everywhere, yet the dealing goes on. It looks to me as if some pusher may be cracking the blockade by using SCRC people as caddies.”

“You said I’d have been allowed to keep that can. Surely you can’t think I’d smuggle dope?”

“You wouldn’t know. Assuming that by some chance I’ve guessed right, the mechanics go something like this: First they choose a type of soft drink can that won’t attract any particular notice if it’s thrown down in the street but is in fact not a common brand in this area. The organizers may even have gone to the bother of designing their own and having a bunch of them made.”

“Wouldn’t that be terribly expensive?” Theonia objected.

“Not in proportion to the kind of money involved in narcotics. And it would make the operation more nearly foolproof.”

“Packing heroin in soft drink cans and tossing them around the streets?” said Brooks. “You call that foolproof?”

“They don’t just toss them around the streets. They pick their spots, and they watch to make sure the wrong person doesn’t get the can, as Theonia found out. The guy in purple was one of the scouts, of course. He’d probably spotted the woman with the purple sweater and the SCRC bag coming along and had laid his bait especially for her. I expect a good many of the SCRC collectors have more or less regular routes. Those would be the ones who are watched and used. If he hadn’t been able to find somebody wearing the purple code color, he’d have contrived to mark the bag in purple, as Chefs was marked.”

“So that the peddler making his pickup will know whom to mug,” said Sarah. “Max, we must find that woman with the purple sweater before she gets hurt.”

“If you say so, little mother.”

Max stepped over to the telephone, looked up a number in Sarah’s book and dialed. “Hello, Dolph. Glad I caught you. Look, do you have a heavyset woman wearing a black skirt and a thick purple sweater in the center? That’s right, the one who got her bag snatched this afternoon. What do you mean how did I know? My spies are everywhere. Is she okay? Well of course, naturally she’d be upset. Wouldn’t you? No, just give her a pat on the back and another cup of tea. I’ll talk to you later. Regards to Mary.”

He hung up and came back to Sarah. “Want another slug of milk to calm your nerves?”

“Oh, don’t be so infuriating! How did you know she’d be at the center?”

“Simple logic, sweetie-pumpkin. It stood to reason she wouldn’t be allowed to keep the can in her possession for long. There’d be hell to pay if she gave their contact the slip and got back to the recycling center with it. I’d guess she got ripped off not more than ten or fifteen minutes after she made the pickup, and naturally she’d go straight back to the center with her tale of woe. Where else would she find a sympathetic ear a free meal, and a new collecting bag so she can go out and play sitting duck again? Damn, I hope we can convince Dolph that his bright idea is getting the center in big trouble.”

“Try offering him a different lot of free bags,” Brooks suggested. “Theonia my dear, if you want that bath before the thundering herds descend upon us, we’d better get cracking.”

S
ARAH WAS BETTER PREPARED
for dinner tonight. “Tomato soup and
boeuf bourguignon,”
she announced. “I made enough for us while I was about it.”

“Good thinking,” said Max. “Good soup too. Not canned, I take it.”

“Perish the thought. These are the last of our own tomatoes from the garden at Ireson’s Landing. Well, not the last because Miriam and I put up scads of them for the winter, but the last fresh off the vines. Oh, darn that phone! Go on with your soup, dear. I’ll answer it.”

She should have known better. Apollonia Kelling was on the line.

“Sarah dear, I’m so glad I caught you. Now, what we have to do—”

“What I have to do is serve Max his dinner,” Sarah interrupted. “We were just sitting down.”

“But this will only take a teeny, tiny minute. I have everything organized and written down. Somewhere. Oh dear, I thought—just hold the line a second while I see—”

“I’ll call you back.” Sarah broke the connection and went back to her soup, leaving the receiver off the hook.