Arnie was not listed in the telephone directory. The last time I’d been unfortunate enough to encounter him, he’d been living in a storage room at the city animal shelter He’d subsequently been fired-for just cause-and I had no idea where he currently lived. I could have spent the remainder of the afternoon turning over rocks in the woods or crawling under bridges in hopes of finding him, but even I had limits (although Peter Rosen would be the last to acknowledge it).
I made a pot of tea and sat down on the sofa to rely on deductive prowess rather than physical exertion, being a fan of the armchair-detective genre. Reading about the women private eyes with brass bras and testosterone for brains had always left my fingers gritty and my eyes dazed with images of violence. Tea and intuition were… my cup of tea.
Arnie was employed by a remodeling contractor, more specifically a painter whose name I’d heard and dismissed as unworthy of notice. If I asked Winkie for his name, Rebecca might hear about it and realize I’d seen her talking to him; I wanted to confront him before he could be waned. Under no circumstances would I ask a certain cop to track down Arnie’s address.
In the middle of the second pot of tea, it occurred to me that Eleanor Vanderson would know the painter’s name, if not the details of Arnie’s squalid personal life. There was only one Vanderson in the directory, and she herself answered on the third ring.
“This is Claire Malloy,” I said, “and I was hoping-”
“Did Debbie Anne call you again? Do you know where she’s hiding?”
“Sony, but no. This has nothing to do with the horrible accident in the alley. I’ve been thinking about having the interior of my apartment painted, and I wanted to know the name of your painter-if you’ve found him competent and reliable, of course.”
There was, as Caron would say, A Distinct Lull. “Why, I suppose I could give you his name, but thus far they haven’t started painting. I’m afraid Winkie overstepped her authority when she promised the job to him and his assistant. National requires that we take bids in order to choose the most competitive rates, and I’m waiting to hear from several other contractors before I can finalize anything. Based on my one conversation with that man who claimed to know you, I’m as reluctant as you were to offer a recommendation. He’s quite a character, isn’t he? He’s so”-she hesitated to find a phrase suitable for a dean’s wife-”earthy and uninhibited.”
Or dirty and crude, some of us might say. I instead said, “I might as well take bids, too. His name?”
“I’ll have to find the folder.” Papers shuffled in the background as she continued to talk. “My husband is forever complaining about the piles of paperwork and the amount of time I dedicate to the chapter, but now that my children have moved away and married, it helps to fill the void. Sometimes I wonder if it’s immature of me to engross myself in what’s basically a college activity, but it was so vital to me then and I want to do everything I can to ensure that the girls still have a memorable experience. And it is something for which I have a talent.”
Serial killers had talent, too. “As long as you enjoy it,” I murmured inanely, having agreed with her supposition that it was immature to devote one’s energy to something that was indeed a college activity. It wasn’t simply the response to a vacuum, I suspected, but a need for power. Her children grown, she’d replaced them with a group of girls who were depleted each spring but replenished each fall during rush.
“Here it is,” she said with a laugh. “I feel as if I’ve been scuba diving through the paperwork. The primary contractor is Ed Whitbred.” She spelled it for me, gave me a telephone number, then said, “Bear in mind I’ve not yet hired him, although his bid is the lowest I’ve received. Winkle has attested to his character, but as house corps president, it’s my obligation to interview him personally and assure myself that’s he’s reputable and honest.”
“I don’t suppose you have Arnie’s address?”
“I believe I do. I needed to send some bidding forms to Mr. Whitbred’s office, but Arnie didn’t know that address and gave me his.” Papers again began to rustle like dried leaves; it was easy to imagine towering stacks of folders, each emblazoned with Kappa Theta Eta and of a uniform color. She made little noises of exasperation for a long while, then congratulated herself and said, “It was in the wrong folder. He lives at the Airport Arms Motel, which one can only assume is in the vicinity of the airport.”
“One can only assume.” I thanked her for her time and wished her a pleasant afternoon. Mine was less likely to be that, especially if I spent it tracking down and interrogating Arnie. Then again, if I stayed where I was, Caron and Inez were apt to appear to share medical insights about my deteriorating body or regale me with the details of Mrs. Verbena’s analysis. Peter certainly wouldn’t come by to visit.
Anyone who could find the airport could find the Airport Arms Motel. I picked up my purse and went to look for Arnie.
8
The Airport Arms Motel sat far back from the highway, fronted by a gravel parking lot that was sparsely populated by squatty cars, pickup trucks with gun racks, and an enormous motorcycle with improbably high handlebars and enough chrome attachments to intrigue NASA. The building, weathered to gray and as bleak as a military barracks, was a two-story structure with six apartments on each level. As I pulled into the lot, an airplane came thundering over the treetops and continued its descent onto the runway across the highway. Several seconds passed before I was able to sit up, lick my suddenly parched lips, and park near a battered car that was similar in breadth to Debbie Anne’s lethal weapon.
Arnie’s green truck was not there, but I’d driven several miles on my mission and it would be silly-all right, cowardly-to leave without any attempt to find him. Hoping there was a parking lot behind the building, I climbed out of my car and went to the double row of rusty mailboxes. Although the numbers of the boxes had• been written in crude numerals, the few scrawled names were too faded to be legible.
It was, I decided uneasily, a bit like Russian roulette. Behind the splintery doors were twelve apartments; any one of them might be Arnie’s. The eleven others belonged to the owners of the vehicles in the lot. I looked back at the motorcycle, squared my shoulders, and knocked on the nearest door.
The woman who opened it was less than excited by my presence. She had a beer in one hand and a half-eaten sandwich in the other, and kept her eyes on the television blaring across the room and filling the room with flickery blue shadows. Only one side of her mouth moved as she said, “Whaddaya want?”
“I’m looking for Arnie Riggles, and I was told he lived at this address.”
‘Why you lookin’ for him?”
“I want to discuss a job,” I said semi-truthfully.
She cackled at something on the screen, drained the beer and crumpled the can in one fluid motion, and said, “Never heard of him.”
The door closed inches from my nose. No one was home in the next two apartments, and from within the fourth I heard sounds of marital discord heading for a crescendo that might drown out the next incoming airplane.
Surely no one would cohabit voluntarily with Arnie. I continued down the row, interrupting another woman who was watching the same television show and had never heard of Arnie, and a swarthy Middle Eastern male who trembled in response before he slammed his door.
I returned to the middle of the building and went up the creaky staircase to the balcony, where six more doors awaited me. I knocked on the end door perhaps with less vigor than previously, and backed into the railing when my worst nightmare opened the door