I parked a few doors down from her apartment and got out my binoculars. I slouched, focusing on her patio, and then sat up. “Well I’ll be damned,” I breathed.
In place of the nasty brown withered fern was a hanging plant of mammoth proportions, which must have weighed twenty pounds. Now how had she lifted that up to attach to a hook high above her head? A neighbor? A boyfriend? Had she done it herself perchance? I could even see the price tag stuck to one side of the pot. She’d bought it at a Gateway supermarket for $29.95, which was quite a price considering that it was probably full of fruit flies.
“Shit,” I said. Where was I when she hoisted that mama up? Twenty pounds of glossy plant and moist soil on a chain at shoulder height. Had she stood on a chair? I drove straight over to the nearby Gateway supermarket and headed back to the produce department. There were five or six such plants-Dumbo ears or elephant tongues, whatever the damn things are called. I lifted one. Oh my God. It was worse than I had thought. Awkward and heavy, impossible to manage without help. I picked up some film in the Ten Items or Less, No Checks line and loaded my camera. “Marcia, you little sweetheart,” I cooed, “I’m gonna nail your ass.”
I drove back to her apartment and got out my binoculars again. I’d no more than settled down on my spine, glasses trained on her patio, than Ms. Threadgill herself appeared, trailing one of those long plastic hoses, which must have been attached to her faucet inside. She misted and sprayed and watered and carried on, poking a finger down into the dirt, plucking a yellowing leaf from another potted plant on the patio rail. A real obsessive type by the look of it, inspecting the underside of leaves for God knows what pests. I studied her face. She looked like she’d spent about forty-five dollars having a free makeup demonstration in some department store. Mocha and caramel on her eyelids. Raspberry on her cheekbones. Lipstick the color of chocolate. Her fingernails were long and painted the approximate shade of cherry syrup in the sort of boxed candies you wish you hadn’t bitten into so eagerly.
An old woman in a nylon jersey dress came out onto the patio above Marcia’s and the two had a conversation. I guessed that it was some kind of complaint because neither looked happy and Marcia eventually flounced away. The old lady yelled something after her that looked dirty even in pantomime. I got out of the car and locked it, taking a clipboard and legal pad.
Marcia’s apartment was listed on the register as 2-C. The apartment above hers was listed under the name Augusta White. I bypassed the elevator and took the stairs, pausing first outside Marcia’s door. She was playing a Barry Manilow album full-blast, and even as I listened she cranked up the volume a notch or two. I went up another flight and tapped on Augusta’s door. She was there in a flash, her face thrust forward through the crack like a Pekingese, complete with bulging eyes, pug nose, and chin whiskers. “Yes?” she snapped. She was eighty years old if a day.
“I’m in the building next door,” I said. “We’ve had some complaints about the noise and the manager asked me to look into it. Could I talk to you?” I held up my official-looking clipboard.
“Hold on.”
She moved away from the door and stomped back into her kitchen to get her broom. I heard her bang on the kitchen floor a few times. From below, there was a mighty thump, as though Marcia Threadgill had whacked on the ceiling with a combat boot.
Augusta White stomped back, squinting at me through the crack. “You look like a real-estate agent to me,” she said suspiciously.
“Well, I’m not. Honest.”
“You look like one anyway so just go on off with your papers. I know all the people next door and you aren’t one.” She slammed the door -shut and shot the bolt into place.
So much for that. I shrugged and made my way back down the stairs. Outside again, I made an eyeball assessment of the terraces. The patios were staggered in a pyramid effect and I had a quick flash of myself climbing up the outside of the building like a second-story man to spy on Marcia Threadgill at close range. I had really hoped I could enlist someone’s aid in getting a firsthand report of Ms. Threadgill, but I was going to have to let it slide for a moment. I took some pictures of the hanging plant from the vantage point of my car, hoping it would soon wither and perish from a bad case of root rot. I wanted to be there when she hung a new one into place.
I went back to my apartment and jotted down some notes
It was 4:45 and I changed into my jogging clothes: a pair of shorts and an old cotton turtleneck. I’m really not a physical fitness advocate. I’ve been in shape maybe once in my life, when I qualified for the police academy, but there’s something about running that satisfies a masochistic streak. It hurts and I’m slow but I have good shoes and I like the smell of my own sweat. I run on the mile and a half of sidewalk that tracks the beach, and the air is usually slightly damp and very clean. Palm trees line the wide grassy area between the sidewalk and the sand and there are always other joggers, most of them looking lots better than I.
I did two miles and then called it quits. My calves hurt. My chest was burning. I buffed and puffed, bending from the waist, imagining all kinds of toxic wastes pumping out through my pores and lungs, a regular purge. I walked for half a block and then I heard a car horn toot. I glanced over. Charlie Scorsoni had pulled in at the curb in a pale blue 450 SL that looked very good on him. I wiped the sweat trickling down my face on an upraised shirt sleeve and crossed to his car.
“Your cheeks are bright pink,” he said.
“I always look like I’m having an attack. You should see the looks I get. What are you doing down here?”
“I felt guilty. Because I cut you short yesterday. Hop in.”
“Oh no.” I laughed, still trying to catch my breath. “I don’t want to get sweat all over your seats.”
“Can I follow you back to your place?”
“Are you serious?”
“Sure,” he said. “I thought I’d be especially winsome so you wouldn’t put me on your ‘possibly guilty’ list.”
“Won’t help. I’m suspicious of everyone.”
When I came out of the shower and stuck my head around the bathroom door, Scorsoni was looking at the books stacked up on my desk. “Did you have time to search through the drawers?” I asked.
He smiled benignly. “They were locked.”
I smiled and closed the bathroom door again, getting dressed. I noticed that I was pleased to see him and that didn’t sit well with me. I’m a real hard-ass when it comes to men. I don’t often think of a fortyeight-year-old man as “cute” but that’s how he struck me. He was big and his hair had a nice curl to it, his rimless glasses making his blue eyes look almost luminous. The dimple in his chin didn’t hurt either.
I left the bathroom, moving toward the kitchenette in my bare, feet. “Want a beer?”
He was sitting on the couch by then, leafing through a book about auto theft. “Very literate taste,” he said. “Why don’t you let me buy you a drink?”
“I have to be somewhere at six,” I said.
“Beer’s fine then.”
I uncapped it and handed it to him, sitting down at the other end of the couch with my feet tucked up under me. “You must have left the office early. I’m flattered.”
“I’ll go back tonight. I have to go out of town for a couple of days and I’ll have to get my briefcase packed, tidy up some loose ends for Ruth.”
“Why take time out for me?”
Scorsoni gave me a quizzical smile with the barest hint of irritation. “God, so defensive. Why not take time out for you? If Nikki didn’t kill Laurence, I’m as interested as anyone in finding out who did it, that’s all.”
“You don’t believe she’s innocent for a minute,” I said.
“I believe you believe it,” he said.
I looked at him carefully. “I can’t give you information. I hope you understand that. I could use any help you’ve got and if you have a brainstorm, I’d love to hear it, but it can’t be a twoway street.”
“You want to lecture an attorney about client privilege, is that it? Jesus Christ, Millhone. Give me a break.”