Rex Stout - The Father Hunt

In the office Wolfe was pulling at his earlobe, his eyes, closed. I went to my desk and sat, and said, "If you want my opinion, we wasted not only Ms time but ours too. I don't buy his slant on the son, even if they hate each other's guts. His obligation was to the mother, not the father. Damn it, it's got to be the son. Who else?"

He grunted and his eyes opened. "What if our basic as-

sumption is false? What if the payments had no connection with the birth?"

"We're sunk. We bow out. But in that case there wasn't just one lie in Elinor's letter, the whole damn letter was a lie, and I don't believe it. If the payments had nothing to do with Amy, why did Elinor keep it, every century of it, for her?"

"Women are random clusters of vagaries."

"Who said that?"

"I did."

"Not that random."

His shoulders went up and down. "Have you time for a letter before you leave? To be mailed now?"

"No. But I might as well start making up for the boner I pulled." I got my office notebook from a drawer. "Miss Rowan will feed me no matter what time I come. She's the understanding type."

"Pfui." He would never forget the time she had called him Pete and he had had Houri de Perse perfume sprinkled on him. "Have you Eugene Jarrett's home address?"

I nodded. "I got it this morning. I thought Saul might need it."

"To him at his home, special delivery. Dear Mr. Jar- rett: On behalf of a client I need information regarding the activities and associates of Miss Carlotta Vaughn dur ing the years nineteen forty-three and nineteen forty-four, comma, when she was in your father's employ, comma, and I have been told that you may be able to supply some details. Period. I shall appreciate it if you will kindly call at my office, comma, at the above address, comma, on Monday, comma, at eleven in the morning, comma, or at either two-thirty or six in the afternoon. Period. I hope that one of those hours will be convenient for you. Sincerely yours."

"Why not offer him nine in the evening too?"

"As you know, I don't like to work after dinner. But I suppose… Very well. Add it."

I pulled the typewriter around and got out paper and carbon.

An hour later, as I headed north on the Henry Hudson Parkway, keeping to sixty, I wasn't on a perch either professionally or personally. Professionally, the client was

being neglected. I had phoned her Friday morning that it was very unlikely that Jarrett was her father, and told her why, and that was all. She deserved to know that she had been right about Denovo, that her mother's real name was Carlotta Vaughn; at least we could give her that for the eight days we had been on it. Personally, there I was bound for a swimming pool in a glade while Orrie was in Washington digging into army records and Saul and Fred were poking into holes that were probably empty. I should have been doing something brilliant, like finding a mattress somewhere with hairs from two human heads on it which a scientist would prove had been left there by Carlotta Vaughn, alias Elinor Denovo, and Eugene Jarrett.

I wasn't feeling any better as I drove back to town Sunday evening. The weekend had been messy. There is never more than one house guest besides me; it may be anybody from a female poet to a cowboy from the Montana ranch Lily owns; and that time it was Amy Denovo. She gave it a good start only an hour after I arrived. She called me Archie. We were on the terrace. I had finished off the steak Mimi had broiled-they had eaten-and was forking the blueberry pie when Amy got out a cigarette and I lit it, and she said, "Thank you, Archie." Of course Lily didn't bat an eye; she wouldn't. But as far as she knew Amy had seen me only three times for a total of about nine minutes, and she didn't have to be a cluster of vagaries to wonder what the score was. Was Amy just being flip, or had I decided to see more of her, not at the penthouse, and taken steps? I couldn't tell her what Miss Denovo had hired Wolfe to do, so I skipped it. But it was there in the air. Between Lily and me it was thoroughly understood that what I did was none of her business unless it touched her-and, naturally, vice versa-but the fact that I had met Miss Denovo at the penthouse put it on the borderline. So it didn't help the weekend.

A couple of other things didn't help either. One of the five guests for lunch Saturday was a woman with a green wig who had positive inside information that President Johnson and Dean Rusk had decided three years ago to kill everybody in China with hydrogen bombs, and that was the real reason for what they were doing in Vietnam.

Of course the only thing to do with such a clunk is to ignore him or her, but she kept it up so loud and long that I finally told her that I had positive inside information that Senator Fulbright had once had an affair with one of Ho Chi Minn's concubines, and that was the real reason he wanted the bombing stopped. That was a mistake. The idea appealed to her and she wanted all the details.

And Sunday afternoon some uninvited people dropped in-a couple I had met there before who had a place over beyond Bedford Village. They weren't so bad, but they had a guy with them who they said had talked them into coming because he wanted to meet me. His name was Floyd Vance and he said he was a public-relations counselor. Evidently he wanted to meet me because he wanted to meet Nero Wolfe. He was drumming up trade. He said that if anybody needed expert handling of his public image a private detective did, and he would like very much to create a presentation to propose to Nero Wolfe. He also said that if we were working on a case and I would tell him about it, he could use that as a basis for the presentation. When he said that I sharpened my eyes and ears a little, and my tongue, thinking he might be making a stab at detective work himself for somebody, for instance Cyrus M. Jarrett, but decided he was just another character who was so dedicated to improving other people's images that he had no time left for his own. I met one once who-no, that's enough for that weekend.

So as I said, I wasn't feeling any better as I drove back to town. Sometimes it's things that take the joy out of life, like a blowout when you're hitting sixty or a button coming off of a shirt when you're in a hurry, but usually it's people. Of course, of the three people who had made that weekend less than perfect Amy was the only one whose contribution would carry over. Lily would do some wondering for a week or so-who wouldn't?-but I certainly wasn't going to explain. When two people who want to get along start needing to have things explained, look out. I would tell the client about her mother's real name when I felt like it.

9

The trouble with putting a box number on an ad instead of your name and address and phone number, especially if it's in three papers, is getting the replies. Phoning at ten o'clock Monday morning and learning that there were some, I went for them, got two at the Times and four at the Gazette, opened them there, and found them so screwy that I bothered to take them home only because I always keep everything connected with a job until it's finished. One was from a man who said Carlotta Vaughn was his grandmother, and maybe a Carlotta Vaughn was, but he didn't mention Elinor Denovo.

When I got back a little after eleven Fritz said there had been no calls, but as I entered the office the phone rang and I crossed to my desk, nodding to Wolfe on the way, and got it.