Walk a Black Wind (7 page)

“Francesca wrote? I see. You think something in a letter?” she said. “But Felicia would have told us—now.”

“Maybe not. Felicia said that Francesca felt neglected, different, not loved. Felicia could be keeping faith.”

Katje Crawford winced. She was a dynamic woman, and her thoughts were mirrored in her face, her active body. An energetic, sinuous body younger than her age, and I felt her as a woman. An attraction. That doesn't happen often to me on a case. But I was aware of Katje Crawford, of her strength. Maybe there had been more of her in her daughter than Francesca had realized. Too much, maybe.

“Yes, it's true,” she said. “My fault, but not all mine. Francesca was combative, what Tony Sasser calls a ‘hardhead.' But I wasn't the mother to the twins I've tried to be to the younger ones. A young matron with her own interests and a rising husband makes a bad mother sometimes. Then, we just weren't close, not alike. A streak of isolation in the girls, even Felicia. Still, you can't blame the child. My guilt. What do I do now, Mr. Fortune? For Francesca, nothing. To catch who killed her won't give me any sense of achievement. But what do I do for Felicia? Where is she?”

“Help me find Francesca's murderer fast.” I said.

She nodded. “Yes. What can I tell you?”

“What you know about Abram Zaremba and the Black Mountain Lake project.”

“The project is a needed housing development. We're growing too fast. What else should I know?”

“Francesca worked against it?”

“She had strong ideas on ecology. Is it important?”

“What about Abram Zaremba?”

“I don't know him personally. My husband does, I think. Has all this some connection to Francesca?”

“Mark Leland had,” I said. “You know about him?”

“Of course I do,” she said, moved her lean hand in a sharp gesture. “We thought of that at once, Mr. Fortune, but Mark Leland was killed over three months ago. Francesca couldn't describe the man she saw running from Leland's car. Lieutenant Oster tried everything with her, she simply didn't see enough. Some hired killer, anonymous, the Lieutenant thinks. Far away by now. What danger was Francesca to him?”

“Maybe none, but Mark Leland was investigating the Black Mountain Lake project when he was killed.”

She sat silent. Then, she got up and went to an inlaid side table, a beautiful piece of work by some eighteenth-century English craftsman. She took a cigarette from a jade box, and lighted it without waiting for me to fumble for my lighter.

“You think Francesca was killed because of that development? A few thousand acres of swamp land!”

“She was involved with Mark Leland in more than just seeing a man run from killing him. They'd met, talked.”

“Talked? Then tell Martin! Tell my husband, he knows about that project. Find out, Mr. Fortune!”

She came back to her chair, and her legs seemed to give way as she sat. “We have all we want or need, we hurt no one by it, but she had to be militant. Look for battles she was no part of. Man is a scheming animal, that's what marks us, Mr. Fortune—we strive for ourselves. Perhaps it's wrong, and perhaps it will kill us all, but it can't be changed.”

The life in her face was animated even in despair and anger. I could feel her presence all the way down my back.

“There's another possibility in Dresden,” I said.

“More?” She half-smiled. “You know your work, don't you? Strange, one wouldn't guess it to look at you.”

“A one-armed roustabout?” I said.

She shook her head. “The one arm is incidental. It gives you a piratical look, nothing more. No, it's your dress and manner. You seem inconsequential, uneducated, but you're not at all, are you? You know that my side table is eighteenth-century English, and good. I saw it in your eyes. People underestimate you, don't they? They confuse a missing arm with a missing intelligence, and I think you foster that image.”

“It's just me, Mrs. Crawford.”

“Perhaps,” she smiled. “What is the other possibility?”

“Frank Keefer.”

She nodded. “I know, but it was never serious. Francesca toyed with him, found him physically interesting. I expect he had other thoughts, but he's a fool with grandiose ideas.”

“She dumped him just before she left.”

“Did she? I didn't know, but would that make him kill her? She was the golden girl he wanted. Why kill his dream?”

“Maybe because he couldn't have her?”

“Frank Keefer?” At another time she would have laughed. Now she only smiled. “He's the stupid, dull type who never gives up. To admit that a woman was beyond his grasp, would never have him, would lower his self-esteem so much I doubt if he could consider that possible.”

“Would he kill to keep her?”

She hesitated. “I would say no, he hasn't the necessary moral strength, but I suppose you never can be sure. Anyway, it's Francesca who's dead, Mr. Fortune. How would that mean—”

“Maybe Keefer made a mistake,” I said.

She was silent again. I stood up.

“If Felicia comes home, sit on her and call me, okay?”

The “if” seemed to weigh down the porch, but she nodded.

“Where can I find your husband now?” I asked.

“At a meeting of civic leaders at City Hall. He has to go to these meetings, but it's a terrible bore for me.”

There was an annoyance on her face as I left, as if thinking of a lot of things that bored her.

9.

City Hall was in an old, downtown section of Dresden. An ugly graystone building in late Victorian style. Floodlights bathed it in a glare, and the lawn was manicured in an attempt at some dignity.

The chill night, the big building in its square, and the dark, narrow streets leading off into a silent, deserted black made me think of London. I could almost feel the fog, hear the mellow musical sound of a London police whistle.

A night guard at a desk inside called up to the Mayor's office for me. Two silent black women mopped the lobby floors. It was dim and cold in the lobby, bare, as if designed to prove that the city fathers did not spend taxpayers' money on frivolous decoration. (We seem to insist that city employees work with none of the shine and comfort of private companies, but happily swallow the plush homes and privilege city leaders have in private life.)

I found the Mayor's office on the second floor where he waited for me alone now. It was a big, austere office, and Martin Crawford seemed smaller behind his desk. He also seemed tired. Maybe it was too much civic-minded meeting.

“You have some news, Mr. Fortune?” he asked.

He was the first one in Dresden who'd asked that, who hadn't been more concerned with who my client was.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “We don't have much to work with.”

He nodded. “The New York police sent a man here. But where do you look for what killed a girl out in a jungle?”

“She'd left home before. Four years in college, even the summers away. She knew how to be alone on her own.”

“College, even a big California farm, is a lot different from New York, Fortune.”

“It is,” I agreed. “Have you heard from Felicia?”

“Felicia?” he said, exactly as his wife had. They say people grow like each other in a long marriage. “What should I have heard from her? She's not mixed in this!”

I told him what I'd told Mrs. Crawford. “Whatever it is she knows, or thinks she does, she's scared enough to carry a gun and trust no one.”

“But what? Something about Francesca?”

“I'd say so,” I said. “Something Francesca told Felicia she wouldn't tell you or your wife. Your wife admits she was apart from the twins. Were you apart from them too?”

His blue eyes seemed to lose light, and his polished public face wentloose like a man who is unsure. There was something about the way it happened that said it had happened before, often. A private face now that hinted at confusion, weakness, ineffectuality. As if his public manner was a façade, a front of confidence, and under it he was hollow and accustomed to having someone else make the real decisions that he carried out with his public smile and lawyer's eyes.

“I was busy, up in Albany so much,” he said. “I left them to Katje. Then, later, it seemed too late. At least for Francesca. I leaned over backwards to get to know her. She never helped. Yet I think I loved the older girls best, in a way.”

“Felicia could be in danger,” I said bluntly. “Francesca was killed for a reason, and the killer won't take a chance on Felicia whether she knows anything or not as long as she's running around acting as if she does.”

“What can I tell you?” Crawford said. “What do I know?”

“About Abram Zaremba and the Black Mountain Lake development,” I said.

His manner changed as if a steel rod had gone up his spine. The impression of softness, indecision, vanished. Whatever gave him that aura of ineffectuality wasn't in his official work. The lawyer faced me now.

“What concern is that to you?” he snapped.

“It concerned Francesca, right? She fought it?”

“Conservationists! A bunch of juveniles and old women who don't have any idea of reality. A mayor has many things to consider, Fortune. It was my opinion that the benefits to the city, the desperate need for housing, out-weighed the ecological factors. That was my decision, and it stands unless the people throw me out, which is their right.”

Before he finished his speech, a door to the left opened, and Anthony Sasser stepped quietly into the room. The businessman got around. I wondered if he'd been listening all along in an adjacent office? He moved with ease, a man in his own backyard. He sat down to my left, silent and alert. I ignored him, faced Crawford.

“Who else objected to the project besides conservationists?” I said. “Maybe the taxpayers? Or maybe they would object if they knew how the deal was arranged? You built a dike at public expense, maybe paid Zaremba even for the land you built the dike on? You put a nice road into Zaremba's lodge. You created a drainage district so the taxpayers can buy bonds, the taxpayer foot the whole drainage bill? Drainage that will make useless land a goldmine?”

“It's a proper arrangement under our conditions,” Crawford said. “Land is limited here. Zaremba's land, when reclaimed, will benefit the whole community.”

“But first it benefits Abram Zaremba—a lot,” I said.

Anthony Sasser spoke from my left. “Abram Zaremba is a businessman, he made a smart investment. It's all legal.”

“You in on the project?” I asked Sasser.

“I wish I was,” Sasser said. “It's a good deal for everyone. Marty there is right.”

“Mark Leland didn't think it was a good deal for everyone, did he?” I said.

Sasser tilted his chair back and rocked in the quiet office. I had a feeling that I had just started walking on eggshells. Mayor Crawford's voice was low and smooth. The lawyer addressing a jury he wanted to impress with his gravity, but firmly set straight at the same time.

“How do you know that, Fortune?” the big Mayor said. “The police here don't know what Leland was doing in Dresden. We found no documents, and his lone partner doesn't even know what Leland was really doing. If you have information about Leland, you should tell our police and Crime Commission.”

“You don't know he was investigating the Black Mountain Lake project?” I said.

“No,” Crawford said, “we don't. Why would he, there's nothing to investigate. How do you think you know?”

“Leland talked to Francesca about it. Didn't she tell you?”

“No, she didn't,” Crawford said, “not a word.”

“She told Felicia.”

Sasser said, “Hearsay. Maybe Felicia got it wrong. My Crime Commission found no evidence of what Leland was doing, and nothing wrong with the project. I'm not in the project, but I've worked a lot with Commissioner Zaremba, and I'd be careful about accusing him or the city government.”

His voice was matter-of-fact, but I heard the warning in it. So did Martin Crawford. His lawyer manner slipped into a smile, man-to-man, smoothing the ruffled waters.

“There are always nuts who think every public deal has to be crooked, Fortune,” he said, friendly. “They smell a shady deal when there isn't one. It's a way to get a reputation with the public. You get used to that in government.”

“This nut was dangerous enough to someone to be killed,” I said. “Someone thought there was trouble around.”

Anthony Sasser said, “No one knows why Leland got killed. Maybe he got in trouble someplace else.”

“A coincidence he was killed here, and that Francesca saw the killer, and now she's dead?”

Crawford said, “The police, and Tony there, questioned her carefully, showed her every mug book. All she saw was a man running, her identification was useless.”

“Maybe she saw more than she said, or someone thought she had,” I said. “You seem pretty anxious to think Francesca wasn't mixed up in the project.”

Crawford let a silence stretch for a time as if he were thinking about Francesca and the project—a daughter and an important political situation.

“I back the project, Fortune,” he said slowly. “We need the housing, that land is the best we can get. I must follow my judgment. It's a normal, legal business arrangement.”

“Maybe that's what's wrong with it—it's legal, but not exactly ethical or moral,” I said.

“If you can find anything legally unethical,” Crawford snapped, “I'll kill the project myself.”

“You're a good lawyer, and Abram Zaremba probably has better lawyers,” I said. “It'll be legal as hell, but there are legal deals that aren't so moral. Favors, collusion, private arrangements that never show, little tricks of dealing. I've known legal deals that sent citizens for their guns when they figured out how they were getting fleeced. That drainage district, for instance. I'll bet the only land in it is that swamp of Zaremba's. A neat way of making the public foot the bill for draining one man's land.”