John Ball - The Cool Cottontail

Virgil Tibbs drove smoothly through the S turn and parked the police car in a corner of the big lot nearest the house. As he got out and stood for a moment in thought, he heard the bright optimism of the unseen birds in the trees and, from the direction of the pool area, the laughing, splashing sounds of children in the water.

He began to walk toward the converted farmhouse and encountered Carole; he had to look twice to recognize her in clothes.

“Hello, Virgil,” she said, and rushed up to make him welcome.

“Hello, Carole.” He held out his hand. The soft pressure of her fingers did not reopen the pain of his raw knuckles and he suddenly felt peaceful and very much at home.

“I made Linda promise I could meet you,” Carole confided. She walked close beside him to the door of the big kitchen. Forrest Nunn met them at the steps and greeted him warmly.

“Thank you,” he said simply, “for what you did for my son.” Perhaps it was the intonation of “my son” that made his few words eloquent.

“I’m glad I was there,” Virgil answered. Between the two men there was no need for more explanation.

Emily was just inside the door and to Tibbs’ surprise there were tears in her eyes. She took his scarred hands in her own. “Virgil, what can I say to you?” she asked.

“George did fine,” he said casually. “I came along in time to finish up the job, that’s all.”

Emily shook her head from side to side and pressed her lips together. “Do come in,” she murmured. It was all she could say.

There was quite a group in the kitchen. Ellen Boardman was there, sitting next to George at the table; apart from the bandage on his forehead and the strap of adhesive tape across his nose, he looked quite normal.

William Holt-Rymers sat, clad in sandals and the briefest of swim trunks, before a littered ash tray and a cup of coffee.

Only Linda was missing, but in a sense she was there, too. In the corner of the room, easel-mounted, there was an un-framed canvas that had captured in oils and brush strokes such glowing and brilliant light that it seemed to be radiant. In the painted greens, yellows, and browns of the grove of trees near the pool there was beauty and serene power, but they were eclipsed by the radiant likeness of the head and shoulders of Linda. She seemed to be transformed into some exalted symbol of all young womanhood, from her clear-blue unafraid eyes to her firm, beautifully formed breasts. It was a wonderful picture.

Virgil turned to Holt-Rymers. “It’s magnificent,” he said.

The artist shrugged. “You catch murderers,” he said. “I paint.”

“Linda is down at the pool teaching the junior swim class,” Carole said. “She’ll be up any time now.”

Virgil looked once more at the picture in admiration. He would have given everything he possessed to be able to create a thing of beauty like it. No photograph could do what the portrait did; no film could create the things that Holt-Rymers had put in the painting.

“We’ll be ready as soon as Linda is through and dressed,” Emily said. “It won’t take her long. Please have some coffee.”

Virgil sat down and accepted the hospitality. “How are you feeling, Miss Boardman?” he asked.

Ellen reached out and laid her slim hand on his. She took pride in remembering what the heavier, stronger, now badly bruised hands had done for her.

The door opened and Linda came in, walking briskly and rubbing a towel behind her ears. Virgil glanced at Ellen to see how she would take Linda’s nudity, and read no reaction at all.

“Virgil!” Linda stopped and looked at him, and he was afraid of what she might say. “Why can’t all men be like you?”

In his whole lifetime no one had ever said such a thing to him before. He dropped his head as his throat went tight and dry. He forgot the attractive girl who stood nude before him; he forgot the others who were there, and remembered only that in one fleeting fragment of time he had been judged as a man and had not been found wanting.

He was for those few seconds no longer a Negro: he was not of any race; he was simply a human being who had managed to do something well.

It was one of the greatest moments of his life. He looked at his sore hands, relaxed, and then came back to earth.

“Thank you,” he said, and hoped she would understand.

Emily did. “Why don’t you get dressed,” she said to her daughter, “so we won’t keep Virgil waiting too long?”

Linda shook her blond head. “I can be ready in two minutes,” she exaggerated. “But if Virgil is going to tell us how he found out, and how he learned what he knew, I don’t want to miss a word.”

“Please,” Ellen said.

Carole arrived at the table with a cup of coffee and one of Emily’s home-baked sweet rolls. “Would you rather have iced tea?” she asked.

Virgil wanted very much to say yes, but remembered that the coffee was already poured and that he was a guest. He hesitated for only a moment, and Carole, with the perception of an adult, ran for the refrigerator. Linda hurried from the room.

“I’m sorry we don’t have any cold beer to offer you,” Forrest apologized. “Unfortunately it’s taboo in nudist parks.”

“Iced tea would be wonderful,” Tibbs answered.

The iced tea was provided. Virgil added lemon and sugar, stirred, and drank deeply. He was content just to sit with these agreeable people and enjoy one of the few periods of true relaxation he had known in many days.

In a short time Linda was back, dressed and with a hairbrush in her hand. “O.K.,” she said, and sat down to listen.

Virgil found that everyone was looking at him.

“I promised you an explanation because you are entitled to one,” he began, “but I’m afraid it won’t be very dramatic.”

Forrest spoke to his younger daughter. “Carole, this won’t be very interesting for you, so you can go down to the playground if you would like.”

“Must I?” Carole asked.

“I think it would be a good idea.”

Clearly disappointed, Carole slid off her chair and exited through the doorway to the big lawn. When she was gone, Forrest looked at Tibbs once more and indicated that he should go on.

“You all know the start,” Virgil said. “The body of the late Dr. Roussel was found in your pool entirely stripped except for a set of contact lenses. That looked like a promising clue, but when I ran the lenses down, they led straight up a blind alley. After Miss Boardman mentioned her uncle’s absence, an alert police officer picked it up and we had our first break.”

“Please call me Ellen.”

“Good, I’d like to. To continue, as soon as the identification was positive, several things became apparent, or appeared to do so. One of them was the fact that the death of Dr. Roussel-if you will forgive me, Ellen-seemed to be directly connected with the affairs of his holding company, as indeed it was. This focused our attention on the four surviving stockholders; normally murder takes a pretty strong motive, and a large sum of money comes under that heading.”

“Not to everyone,” Linda interjected.

“True, but of course everyone doesn’t commit murder. All we had to go on at this point, other than what I’ve already told you, was the fact that the body was placed here in the pool to attract attention-in other words, so that it would be widely reported in the papers. That was a guess, but it was the only thing we could think of that fitted the facts.”

“Was that actually so?” Forrest asked.

“Only in part. Right from the beginning there was a major problem and it stopped us for a long time. In this section of the country it would have been much safer to get rid of the body down one of the wild canyons in the mountains; putting it into your pool was far more dangerous, so there had to be a reason. And then where were the clothes and other personal effects?”