Trouble in Rooster Paradise (32 page)

“
That’s correct,” said Blanche, her
voice full of bitter scorn. “It was a rather delicious plan. I had
to finally rid the earth of this vermin. And after him, it will be
his old buddy’s turn.” She glared at Darcy. Then her eyes shifted
to Britt and me. Blanche got up off the settee, and as she took a
step toward her intended victim, she pointed her gun at us in
warning.

Darcy was sobbing and barely managed to mutter,
“Please …” as Blanche grabbed him by the scruff of the neck as
if to put down a dog.

I had few options. I stood ten feet from them.
I watched and waited for her eyes to leave me a second so I could
leap at her to plow her over. As a plan it didn’t even qualify as a
long shot.

“
Put the gun down, Mrs.
Arnot.”

The command came from Walter Pangborn. He stood
in the doorway in his stocking feet holding his 8mm Lebel revolver.
It was leveled at Blanche.

“
No!
” Blanche screamed in
rage. Her automatic had been pointed at Darcy’s head, but Walter’s
intrusion caused her to aim it in his direction and
fire.

The crack of Blanche’s automatic was followed
almost immediately by the report from Walter’s Lebel so that the
two noises made a protracted sound like crackling thunder. For a
fraction of a second it looked as though they’d each missed, as
both posed in a kind of frozen showdown.

Nothing made sense. Then everything made
complete sense. The doorjamb next to Walter’s shoulder was shredded
and splintered by the slug from Blanche’s gun. I noticed it just as
Blanche crumpled to the floor.

Britt screamed.

Walter stood motionless, still holding his
revolver. It’s a peculiar thing about the Lebel. Its cartridges
were grievously underpowered. So much so that a Frenchman had to
hit a Boche in a critical part of his body to knock him
down.

I walked over to Blanche Arnot and felt for
vital signs. A futile gesture. The slug from the Lebel had taken
her in the chest.

I looked over at Walter. His twisted face told
me that he already knew what I went ahead and said anyway, “She’s
gone.”

I helped Darcy to his feet. “Help me with him,
will you, Britt?”

She was in a daze, her eyes fixed on Blanche. I
padded over to the settee and grabbed a folded afghan. I used it to
cover the body. Some people need a gesture like that as much as
they do a period at the end of a sentence. Britt’s daze
ended.

Britt attended to Darcy while Walter went to
check on Hildy. I went to a neighbor’s house to use the phone. I
reached Frank Milland at home.

A
t that point Kirsti’s face
was ice-pale. She certainly didn’t want me to suddenly break off
when I did, but I told her that at that moment my old bladder
trumped all the youthful curiosity she could muster. And then,
after I’d taken care of business and she’d wheeled me back from the
men’s room, I told her I was in desperate need of some of that
hardtack and pickled herring she’d brought me.

“
That Blanche Arnot was a real
sicko,” Kirsti said. Her face was its normal color again. “So what
happened next?”

I held a hand up palm forward to let her know I
needed to finish chewing and swallow. After doing so, I took a sip
from the water bottle she handed me and said, “The cops took our
statements separately. After the housekeeper Hildy was checked over
by the medical examiner and told what little she knew, she went off
to bed. We learned from her that Mrs. Darcy was away visiting
family in New Hampshire. She’d been forced to tie up her employer
and then Blanche knocked her out.”

“
How did Addison Darcy handle it
all?”

“
The last I saw of him, he was
taking a bottle from a liquor niche. Doctor’s orders be damned, he
had a more immediate ailment to reckon with and so he went and
buried himself in some remote corner to empty his mind.”

“
What about Britt and
Walter?”

“
After the cops quizzed them they
went to the kitchen to drink coffee while they waited for
me.”

I was questioned in Addison Darcy’s parlor.
Frank Milland sat where Darcy had the day I’d visited and I was
planted in the armchair across from him. Bernie Hanson joined us
seated on a muslin-covered ottoman he’d found in some far-off
corner.

“
Walter and the Anderson dame both
heard the Arnot woman confess to killing de Carter,” Milland said,
lighting a cigarette and cupping his hands to shelter the match
from a nonexistent breeze. “Darcy’s a mess. He won’t say a peep
without his lawyer present. He don’t seem to know shit from Shinola
right now, anyway.”

“
But you’ve got enough to let Dirk
Engstrom walk,” I said.

Milland sniffed the air and nodded. “And
between your client and Darcy, none of this is going to get in the
papers. No juicy details, anyway. You can bet on it.”

“
The rich have their own ideas about
the free press,” I said, but no one saw the humor.

“
So was this Arnot broad
whacky-brained or what?” Milland asked.

“
My guess is she’s always been a
little …
pixilated
.”

“
Yeah … ain’t we all,” said
Milland, laughing.

“
You might look into her medical
records, but chances are there aren’t any. Her husband was a
medical doctor. From what I’ve learned he was a stabling influence
on her. My guess is he was probably more than that. Maybe he kept
her medicated. Who knows? Something sure went haywire with her when
he died.”

I told them the stories of Sally Miller and
Britt’s Aunt Alexis and the tie-in to Addison Darcy.

“
So what you’re saying is that the
Arnot broad nursed a grudge that turned into a Frankenstein
monster,” said Hanson.

“
It looks that way. Alexis’ death
opened an old wound that had never really healed.”

“
And how. I’d say it opened and
festered,” Milland said. “So when her old man croaked, the Arnot
broad snapped. Is that the idea?”

“
Sure looks that way. I don’t know
how she ever got teamed up with Guy de Carter. She’d been a chorus
girl and had worked in Hollywood in her youth. So she’d been
around. She might have sized him up and saw his potential. It’s
hard to know. But together they hatched a pretty sordid shakedown
racket. De Carter was in it strictly for money and probably for the
kicks. But Blanche Arnot was hoping to parlay it into a diabolical
act of revenge.”

“
And it probably would have worked,
too,” Milland said before giving out with a triple
tsk
.
“Some people’s children.”

“
How’s Walter going to fare on the
shooting?” I asked.

“
He fares okay. By all accounts it
was self-defense,” said Milland. I could hear respect in his voice
when he added, “A dead shot, that Pangborn. And a cool customer to
boot.”

Hanson looked at his notebook. “The Anderson
gal told us that when the Arnot broad was about to shoot Darcy, she
muttered something about it being his old buddy’s turn next. Did
you catch that too?”

I nodded.

“
With Darcy all clammed up, we were
hoping it might make sense to you. The ‘old buddy’ part, I mean,”
said Hanson.

They’d found the pack of blackmail photos in
Blanche’s coat pocket. I’d also given them Christine’s diary. Both
items sat on the ottoman next to Hanson. I pointed over to
them.

“
You might find the answer in
those,” I said.

But I knew otherwise.

Walter asked Milland for a ride home. He’d
rightly sensed that I wanted some time alone with the dazed Britt
Anderson.

She wore a small, formal smile as she got in
the car. I popped a couple of cloves in my mouth to occupy my
tongue. Neither one of us spoke for at least five minutes. Finally
she did.

“
I never thought … I mean,
my
anger had passed. I no longer felt vengeful …. I
just naturally assumed ….” She stopped. She was struggling to
retain composure.

We all do it. Even when we know better, we
still do it. We impose our ego on others. It’s as though our
individuality is like a shoe that’s supposed to fit all feet, even
though we know damn well it’s as unique as a tailor-made boot
that’s been broken in and well-worn. So I sympathized with Britt,
but didn’t voice it.

After a few more minutes of silence I said, “I
want to apologize for suspecting you for even a moment.
I—”

She cut me off with a wave of her hand.
“There’s no need to explain, Gunnar. If I were in your position, I
probably would have concluded similarly, given how things
developed. You were only doing your job.”

She said it with a clinical detachment. She
looked very calm. The silence resumed until we were parked outside
her place on Queen Anne Avenue. I didn’t expect her to invite me
in, and she didn’t. But she didn’t leave right away either. She
wanted me close a little longer, but not too close.

“
I suppose I’ve been more than a
little naïve. It … it’s unsettling. Embarrassing even. It kind
of makes me doubt all my relationships. I guess I never really knew
Blanche Arnot.”

“
You knew what you knew. People are
polychrome. You were just ignorant of Blanche’s darker shades,
that’s all.”

“
It’s so
confusing ….”

“
She was a very sick
woman.”

Britt thought about that, took a deep breath
and let it out slowly.

“
Do you run into this kind of thing
often?” she asked, looking at me with gloomy
speculation.

“
At times. But it’s not the usual or
always this extreme.”

“
How can you stand it?”

I thought a moment before I answered. It
wouldn’t do to tell her I’d become inured. Too cavalier.

“
Maybe I fool myself into thinking
that I
can
stand it. Walter says I’m gifted with a little
spark of dogged idealism. He says it keeps me from going
crazy.”

She shuddered. “I couldn’t do what you
do.”

Suddenly the atmosphere was tinged with a
mixture of apprehension and sexual tension. For a time she even
became coy and mildly flirtatious. At one point I had the distinct
feeling that the least little glance or touch from me would squeeze
her out of halter-top and pedal pushers like toothpaste leaving a
new tube.

But there was to be no clinging together. No
putting red-blooded distance between ourselves and the earlier
nightmare. For just as suddenly, she changed the mood with a
barrage of friendly questions about trivial things. She talked
about a few old school chums. I told a humorous story from my army
days.

Finally Britt stifled a yawn with her
fingertips, giving me the signal as universal as a thumbs-down or
an index finger pulled across the neck. After a quick but gentle
kiss, we exchanged courteous goodnights and she got out of the
car.

It wasn’t déjà vu. I
had
experienced
something like this before.

I watched as she began her ascending walk up
the slope leading to her apartment. Britt’s unhurried strides
reminded me of the night I dropped Christine off and watched her
climb her aunt’s footpath. As I had then, I now stared in forlorn
fascination as Britt’s denim pedal pushers defined the back of each
shapely thigh as one leg darted out in front of the
other.

I watched until she disappeared inside her
place. Like Christine, she didn’t turn to wave. I didn’t expect her
to.

This time I didn’t feel like Fred Astaire as I
drove away from her. I felt a keen detachment from everyone and
everything. And I was pretty sure I’d later be turning
disappointment into virtue by means of a bone-chilling
shower.

But before I took that shower I checked in with
Walter Pangborn. He was busy painting toy soldiers at his workbench
and listening to
Music Till Midnight
on KRSC. The bottle of
Black & White and a half-empty shot glass were nearby as
well.

He offered me a drink. I declined, and kept
standing by the door.

“
French Imperial Guard,” he said,
holding up the soldier he was working on. “The grand saga
continues.”

He meant life in general or his project for
Perry. Probably both. I just smiled what had to be an
exhausted-looking smile. Walter put the toy man down and took a sip
from his shot glass.

“
My only hope, old socks, is that
she died immediately … that there was not even a split-second
comprehension that I’d killed her.”

“
I understand,” I said. I really
did.

I bid Walter goodnight and headed for that
long, cold shower.

I
dreamt I was at a burlesque
show with my old partner Lou Boyd. Several people in the audience
were smoking opium. Mrs. Berger was on stage keeping rhythm with
the music being played as she artfully hid her nakedness with
ostrich feathers. Just as she was about to show all, the scene
shifted and I was hugging trees in the Hurtgen with Guy de Carter.
He was outfitted for combat and between explosions was shouting,
“We gotta go, sport. We gotta go.” He took off running and I woke
up. It was one of those sleeps that leaves you more exhausted than
before you went to bed.