Росс Макдональд - The Ivory Grin

“Was she a colored woman?”

“The one that was driving the station-wagon? Maybe she was. She was dark-complected. I didn’t get a good look at her. I was watching the blonde lady. Then I come back here, and Charlie Singleton druv in after a while. He went inside and come out with the blonde lady and then they druv away.”

“In his car?”

“Yessir. 1948 Buick sedan, two-tone green.”

“You’re very observant, Dewey.”

“Shucks, I often seen young Charlie riding around in his car. I know cars. Druv my first car back in 1911 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.”

“When they left here, which way did they go?”

“Sorry, chum, I can’t say. I didn’t see. That’s what I told the other lady when she asked me, and she got mad and didn’t give me no tip.”

“What other lady was that?”

His faded eyes surveyed me, blinking slow signals to the faded brain behind them. “I got to get back to those windshields. My time is valuable on a Saturday night.”

“I bet you can’t remember about the other lady.”

“How much you want to bet?”

“A dollar?”

“Double it?”

“Two dollars.”

“Taken. She come blowing in a few minutes after they left, driving that blue Plymouth station-wagon.”

“The dark-complected one?”

“Naw, this was another one, older. Wearing a leopardskin coat. I seen her around here before. She asked me about the blonde lady and young Charlie Singleton, which way they went. I said I didn’t see. She called me a iggoramus and left. She looked like she was hopping mad.”

“Was anybody with her?”

“Naw. I don’t remember.”

“The woman live around here?”

“I seen her before. I don’t know where she lives.”

I put two ones in his hand. “Thanks, Dewey. One more thing. When Charlie drove away with the blonde, did he seem to be happy about it?”

“I dunno. He tipped me a buck. Anybody would be happy, going off with that blonde lady.” A one-sided grin pulled at his wrinkled mouth. “Me, for instance. I ain’t had nothing to do with female flesh since I left my old lady in the depression. Twenty years is a long time, chum.”

“It certainly is. Good night.”

Sniffing lonesomely, Dewey pointed his nose toward the rank of cars and followed it out of sight.

I went back to the hotel and found a public telephone. According to the directory, the Denise Hat Shop was run by a Mrs. Denise Grinker whose residence was at 124 Jacaranda Lane. I called her home number, got an answer, and hung up.

The street twisted like a cowpath between the highway and the shore. Jacaranda and cypress trees darkened the road and obscured the houses along it. I drove slowly, in second gear, turning my flashlight on the house-fronts. It was a middle-class neighborhood subsiding into bohemian defeat. Weeds were rampant in the yards. Signs in dingy window corners advertised Handmade Pottery, Antiques, Typing: We Specialize in Manuscripts . The numerals 124 were painted in a vertical row, by hand, on the doorpost of a graying redwood bungalow.

I parked, and walked in under a shaggy eugenia arch. There was a rusty bicycle leaning against the wall on the front porch. The porch light came on when I knocked, and the door opened. A large woman wrapped in a flannel bathrobe appeared in the opening, one hip out. Because her hair was caught up in metal curlers, her face looked naked and very broad. In spite of that, it was a pleasant face. I could feel my frozen smile thaw into something more comfortable.

“Mrs. Grinker? My name is Archer.”

“Hello,” she said good-humoredly, looking me over with large brown eyes a little the worse for wear. “I didn’t leave the darn shop unlocked again, touch wood?”

“I hope not.”

“Aren’t you a policeman?”

“More or less. It shows when I’m tired.”

“Wait a minute.” She brought a leather case out of the pocket of her bathrobe and put on tortoise-shell spectacles. “I don’t know you, do I?”

“No. I’m investigating a murder that occurred in Bella City this afternoon.” I produced the rolled-up turban from my pocket and held it out to her. “This belonged to the victim. Did you make it?”

She peered at it. “It’s got my name inside. What if I did?”

“You should be able to identify the customer you sold it to, if it’s an original.”

She leaned closer under the light, her glance shifting from the hat to me. The dark-rimmed spectacles had gathered her face into a shrewd hard pattern. “Is it a question of identification? You said it belonged to the victim. So who was the victim?”

“Lucy Champion was her name. She was a colored woman in her early twenties.”

“And you want to know if I sold her this turban?”

“I didn’t say that exactly. The question is who you sold it to.”

“Do I have to answer that? Let me see your badge.”

“I’m a private detective,” I said, “working with the police.”

“Who are you working for?”

“My client doesn’t want her name used.”

“Exactly!” She blew me a whiff of beer. “Professional ethics. That’s how it is with me. I can’t deny I sold that hat, and I won’t deny it was an original. But how can I say who bought it from me? I made it away back last spring some time. I do know one thing for certain, though, it wasn’t a colored girl bought it. There’s never been one in my shop, except for a few brownskins from India and Persia and places like that. They’re different.”

“Born in different places, anyway.”

“Okay, we won’t argue. I have nothing against colored people. But they don’t buy hats from me. This girl must have found the hat, or stolen it, or had it given to her, or bought it in a rummage sale. So even if I could remember who bought it from me, it wouldn’t be fair to drag my client’s name into a murder case, would it?” Her voice contained a hint of phoniness, an echo of the daytime palaver in her shop.

“If you worked at it, Mrs. Grinker, I think you could remember.”

“Maybe I could and maybe I couldn’t.” She was troubled, and her voice grew shallower. “What if I did? It would be violating a professional confidence.”

“Do milliners take an oath?”

“We have our standards,” she said hollowly. “Oh hell, I don’t want to lose customers if I can help it. The ones who can pay my prices are getting as scarce as eligible men.”

I tried hard to look like an eligible man. “I can’t give you my client’s name. I will say that she’s connected with the Singleton family.”

“The Charles Singletons?” She pronounced the syllables slowly and distinctly, like a quotation from a poem she had always loved.

“Uh-huh.”

“How is Mrs. Singleton?”

“Not very well. She’s worried about her son–”

“Is this murder connected with him?”

“I’m trying to find that out, Mrs. Grinker. I never will find out unless I get some co-operation.”

“I’m sorry. Mrs. Singleton isn’t a customer of mine – I’m afraid she buys most of her hats in Paris – but of course I know of her. Come in.”

The front door opened directly into a redwood-paneled living-room. A gas heater burned low in a red-brick fireplace. The room was warm and shabby and smelled of cats.

She waved a hospitable hand towards a studio couch covered with an afghan. A glass of beer was bubbling its life away on a redwood coffee-table beside the couch. “I was just having a beer for a nightcap. Let me get you one.”

“I don’t mind if you do.”

She went into another room, closing the door behind her.

When I sat down on the studio couch, a fluffy gray cat came out from under it and jumped onto my knee. Its purring rose and fell like the sound of a distant plane. Somewhere in the house, I thought I heard a low voice talking. Denise was a long time coming back.