Martha Grimes - The Blue Last

“Zilch, zero-nothing until her lawyer shows up. What? No, I told you”-Mickey had turned away from the phone-“come on, don’t ‘But, Dad’ me. Go ask your mother.” Mickey laughed, returned to Jury. “That’s discipline, right? ‘Ask your mother’?” Voices rose again in the background. “Listen: I stopped by the Croft house earlier and-” He was cut off again by a child’s screaming demands. “Rich, this place is an effing madhouse. I want to talk to you; I want to show you something at the Croft house. Whenever you’re done with whatever monster celebration you’ve got going, do you think you could meet me there?”

“It’s pretty much wound down, except for dessert, which I don’t think I could eat anyway. I could meet you there, sure. I could do it now, if you like.”

“Say, a half hour or forty-five minutes?”

“Right.” Jury hung up, checked the answering machine again and would happily have thrown it out of the window, except he’d never hear the end of it from Carole-anne.

Melrose sat in one of Boring’s soft leather armchairs as if he’d been painted there. His hand was not so much holding a glass of whiskey as it was wedded to it. He had hoped the drink would unstick his mind, but it didn’t seem to be helping.

Snow Hill! That was it; that was the name of DCI Haggerty’s station. The Snow Hill station. The telephone was sitting on a table at his elbow and he put in a call. He asked if Superintendent Jury happened to be there or if they knew where he was. Jury hadn’t been seen since that morning, the sergeant said and, no, DCI Haggerty was at home. It was Christmas, after all. Melrose wished people would stop saying that. He asked for Haggerty’s home phone and was refused it. Melrose inveighed against this refusal, insisting it was an emergency and the sergeant said, yes, sir, it always is.

Damn! He decided to try Jury again. What he got was the same sandblast tone that went on and on and-stopped! He was permitted now to leave a message at least. He got through the first bit of what he wanted to say and then click click click click. The damned machine cut him off. He dialed the number again and heard the endless tone.

Melrose slammed down the receiver. Even if Jury hadn’t the foggiest notion as to what the truncated message meant, he would at least know that Melrose was trying to get in touch with him and that it was important. Maybe he’d call Ardry End. Yes, he probably would. Ruthven could tell him-wait! Ruthven didn’t know he was at Boring’s. Melrose dialed again and when Ruthven answered (thank the lord a person on the other end) , Melrose told him he was at Boring’s and that if Superintendent Jury called to tell him not to speak to anybody until Melrose had had a chance to talk to him.

There. Not much, but something was better than nothing. Catching Young Higgins’s eye, Melrose made a circle over the rim of his glass, signaling for a refill. Then he continued to think. Who else, who, who, who did he and Jury know in common? The Crippses. Not bloody likely Jury would be checking in there. Melrose ran the cold glass across his forehead, glad of the ice cube, even though it diluted (slightly) the effect of the whiskey, and slid down in his chair. He felt he should be actively finding Jury-

Keeler! Was he in town? Was it possible that club was open on Christmas Day? Melrose motioned Higgins to come over, which the old porter did, if slowly. “Higgins, would you please get a number for a club called the Nine-One-Nine, ring it and see if it’s open and ask if a Mr. Keeler is doing his gig there? Thanks.”

Young Higgins frowned. “Gig, sir?”

“Ah… never mind, Higgins, just ask if the club is open tonight.”

The old porter shuffled off, leaving Melrose to drum his fingers on the arm of his chair. Young Higgins was back in record time telling Melrose that yes, the club was open.

“Get me a cab, now !”

The Nine-One-Nine was a place he’d never have found unless he’d known exactly where it was, a half dozen steps down and bearing no identification except for its street number. He had been here years before, after that rock concert and just before seeing Vivian off on the Orient Express.

There was an air of smoke and languor about the club that put Melrose in mind of those 1930s prewar Berlin clubs that exist only in films and imagination. He stood at the bar and ordered another whiskey (his fourth tonight? fifth?). As he glanced at the other patrons, he thought he detected a few approving glances from the women and put this down to his black clothes. He was still wearing them.

When the group (what was its name?) broke, Melrose immediately pushed his way up to the small stage area and cut in front of the two girls hanging on Stan’s leather jacket and every word. “Mr. Keeler? You don’t remember me, but-”

“Hey! Your earlship, sure I remember. What’s up?”

“I’ve got to find Richard Jury and don’t even know his address and as you live in the same house-”

“Haven’t seen him today, but I know he was having Christms dinner with Carole-anne and Mrs. Wasserman.”

(Wasserman, of course!)

“What’s going on? Is something wrong?… Later,” he said to a girl with a helmet of slick black hair who was trying to engage his attention.

“I can’t get him on the phone.”

“That’s probably from Carole-anne messing with that answering machine. You got a car? I’d drive you, man, except I’m locked in here for another couple hours.” Stan was writing the address on a paper napkin. “Here.”

“Thanks.”

“Listen, come back and let me know if anything’s wrong. Please.” Stan looked worried.

For an icon, thought Melrose, he was way cool. Melrose sketched a salute and left.

Outside, Jury had stopped on his way to his car to thank Mrs. Wasserman again for the dinner, when he heard the phone ring, thought it was his again, but knew it would stop before he could get up there to answer. Let the answering machine do what it’s paid for, for once.

“I’ll come back for that in a while,” he said to Mrs. Wasserman, with a nod at the dessert.

She was holding a green glass plate on which was a portion of pudding. “I’ll keep it for you and when you come back-” Suddenly, she stopped, as if the words had stuck in her throat.

“Mrs. Wasserman?” Jury put his hands on her shoulders. “Mrs. Wasserman ?” He tilted his head, trying to see her face. It was bent over the plate of pudding. Then she raised her face and her look was so sorrowful, Jury was alarmed. “What is it?”

“Nothing, nothing. It was just for a moment I had this-”

“Yes?” Jury’s tone was encouraging. When she didn’t go on, he said, “You look so awfully worried.”

“It was-” She shook her head. “Where are you going?”

Jury was so surprised by her questioning him he took a step back. Mrs. Wasserman never asked questions that might be construed as prying. So scrupulous was she and with so strong a sense of privacy that a question like this one would be considered an invasion of it.

He said, “Just to meet someone. The case we’re working on.”

She kept looking at him, hard, when upstairs a window flew up and Carole-anne leaned out of it. It was Jury’s window, not Carole-anne’s. “Super! There’s a message on your machine!” She seemed proud that the machine was functioning.

“Who?” The light in the flat behind her flooded her hair and made her dress glisten. What a sight.

“Well, I don’t know, do I? He never said his name. What I think was he got cut off in the middle of talking. It was a peculiar message anyway.”

Jury was looking up, waiting. Carole-anne seemed to be thinking, if one could judge thought from down here on the pavement. “What did he say?”