In the Heat of the Night (7 page)

An hour later, Sam drove to the police station to pick up the news. It was also payday. To his amazement he found Bill Gillespie in the lobby talking to Virgil Tibbs.

Sam picked up his pay check at the desk, signed for it, and then turned to find Bill Gillespie waiting for him. “Wood, I know you’re off duty, but we need some help around here. Can you drive Virgil up to the Endicotts’; he wants to interview Mantoli’s daughter.” It was not a question, but a moderately put order. Sam did not understand the sudden toleration of the California detective, but discretion told him not to pick that time and place to ask. He was glad to go; he didn’t want to miss anything.

“Certainly, Chief, if you want me to.”

Gillespie drew an exasperated breath. “If I didn’t want you to, Wood, I wouldn’t have asked you. Virgil has a car, but you know the way.”

Why was it, Sam asked himself, that every time he tried to be courteous to Gillespie, his new chief took it the wrong way. He nodded to Tibbs and wondered for an instant if he should drive his personal car up the mountain or use his regular patrol car, which was parked in the yard. He was not in uniform. The solution leaped into his mind: he was for a moment a plainclothesman; as such he would drive the official car. He led the way, Tibbs followed. When Sam climbed into the driver’s seat, Tibbs opened the opposite door and sat beside him. After a moment’s hesitation, Sam accepted the arrangement and pressed the starter.

When they were out of traffic and moving through the outskirts toward the road that led up to the Endicott aerie, Sam yielded to his curiosity. “You seem to have gotten on the good side of the chief,” he remarked, then wondered immediately if he had been too friendly, too overt, or both.

“I know you must have been wondering,” Tibbs responded. “My presence here embarrassed Chief Gillespie and I had the bad judgment to intrude myself into an interview he was conducting.”

“I know,” Sam said.

Tibbs took no offense. “Without going into details, Chief Gillespie has assigned me to help on the Mantoli case for a few days. This is with the approval and permission of my superiors at home.”

“What’s your status, then?” Sam asked curiously.

“None, except that I’m going to be allowed to try my hand. I may hang myself in the process.”

The car reached the end of the pavement and hit the gravel.

“Think you can do any good?” Sam asked.

“I can give you some references,” Tibbs answered.

“They can’t do you much good here if they’re in California,” Sam pointed out.

“They’re in California,” Tibbs acknowledged. “San Quentin.”

Sam decided to shut up and drive.

When the door of the Endicott house swung open to him for the second time that day, Mrs. Endicott was there as before. She had changed into a simple black dress. Although she did not smile, she made him feel welcome. “I’m glad to see you, Officer,” she said. “I’m sorry I don’t know your name.”

“It’s Sam Wood, ma’am.”

She offered him her hand briefly. “And this gentleman I’m sure is Mr. Tibbs.” She gave the Negro her hand for a moment. “Please come in, gentlemen,” she invited.

Sam followed his hostess into the big, spectacular living room; as he entered he saw not only Endicott, but also a younger man and a girl. They were holding hands and Sam sensed at once that it was his idea, not hers. The men stood up for introductions.

“Duena, may I present Mr. Tibbs and Mr. Wood; Miss Mantoli. And Mr. Eric Kaufmann, Maestro Mantoli’s associate and manager.”

The men shook hands. Sam immediately did not care much for Kaufmann. He was a youngish man who looked as if he was trying to be older, taller, and more important than he was.

The girl was different. As she sat, quietly composed, Sam took a quick, careful look and revised drastically his estimate of Italian women. This one was not fat and did not look as though she ever would be. She was dark, he noted, with the type of short-cropped hair which had always appealed to him. He reminded himself that this girl had learned only that morning that her father had been brutally murdered. He felt an impulse to sit beside her, to put his arm gently across her shoulders and tell her that somehow everything was going to be all right.

But it couldn’t possibly be all right for her—not for a long time to come. He was still thinking about her when Virgil Tibbs calmly took command.

“Miss Mantoli,” Tibbs said, “we have only one excuse for disturbing you at a time like this: we need your help to find and punish the person responsible. Do you feel able to answer some questions?”

The girl looked at him for a moment with eyes that were red-rimmed and liquid, then she shut them and nodded silently toward chairs. Sam sat down with a strong sense of relief; he wanted very much to fade into the background and let Tibbs handle things.

“Perhaps it would be easiest if I began with you,” Tibbs said as he turned toward Eric Kaufmann. “Were you here last night?”

“Yes, I was, for the first part of the evening, that is. I had to leave at ten in order to drive to Atlanta. It’s a long way from here and I had to be there early in the morning.”

“Did you drive all night?” Tibbs asked.

“Oh, no; I got in about two-thirty in the morning. I checked into my hotel there to get some sleep, at least. I was up and shaving when … when the call came through,” he finished.

Tibbs turned to the girl, who sat with her head down, her hands held tightly together in front of her knees. When he spoke, his voice changed a little in timbre. It was quiet and matter-of-fact, but it showed an undercurrent of sympathy for the unhappy girl who sat before him.

“Were there any unsuccessful candidates for the position your father held who might have been … greatly upset by his success?” he asked.

The girl looked up. “None at all,” she answered. She spoke softly, but her words were clear, distinct, and unafraid. She had no accent whatever. “I mean really none at all. The festival here was his idea and there was never anyone else …” She let her voice trail off and did not attempt to finish the sentence.

“Did your father normally carry considerable sums of money with him—say, over two hundred dollars?”

“Sometimes, for traveling expenses. I tried to get him to use traveler’s checks, but he found them too much bother.” She looked up and asked a question of her own. “Was that what he was killed for—a few dollars?” she asked. There was bitterness in her voice and her lips seemed to quiver as she spoke. Her eyes grew wet again.

“I very much doubt it, Miss Mantoli,” Tibbs answered her. “There are three other strong possibilities, at least, that will have to be investigated. But I don’t think it was that.”

Grace Endicott interrupted. “Mr. Tibbs, I appreciate what you are doing for us, but may I make a suggestion: perhaps we can answer most of your questions between us and spare Duena. The shock has been a terrible thing for her; I know you understand that.”

“Of course I do,” Tibbs acknowledged. “After Miss Mantoli has had a chance to recover somewhat, I can talk to her—if I need to.”

Grace Endicott held out her hand to the girl. “Come on in and lie down,” she invited.

The girl stood up, but shook her head. “I’d rather go outside for a little while,” she said. “I know it’s hot, but I want to go outside. Please.”

The older woman understood. “I’ll get you a hat,” she suggested, “something to protect your head from the sun. You’ll need that.” As the two women left the room, George Endicott said, “I don’t like her out there alone. We’re well isolated up here, but until this thing is cleared up, I don’t want to take any chances—none whatsoever. Eric, would you please …” Then he stopped.

Sam Wood felt something pulse through him that he had never experienced before. Quietly he got to his feet. “Let me go with her,” he volunteered. He was almost twice Kaufmann’s size and he was an officer of the law, in uniform or not. The responsibility was his.

“I’m perfectly capable—” Kaufmann began.

“You will probably be needed here,” George Endicott reminded him. Sam took this to mean his offer had been accepted. He nodded to Endicott and walked toward the front door. He knew there would be no danger outside in the bright light of day, and he almost regretted it. He would have preferred to have been in uniform so that his weapon would be conspicuously in sight to give the girl confidence. As it was, he was simply a good-size man in a business suit. Grace Endicott reappeared with Duena Mantoli. The girl had on a large-brimmed summer hat in which, despite her evident grief, she looked almost improperly attractive. Sam drew in his breath.

“I’ll escort Miss Mantoli,” he announced firmly.

“Thank you,” Grace Endicott replied. Sam held the door open so that the girl could walk outside.

Without speaking, Duena Mantoli led the way around the house and to the beginning of a little footpath on the opposite side from the entrance drive. It led down the hillside at a gentle angle for two or three hundred feet and ended at a littie roofed lookout platform which Sam had not known was there. It was set in an indentation in the hillside so that it was screened from above and both sides, with a bench seat built at its rear so that anyone who wished to could sit there unobserved and look out over the Great Smokies.

Duena seated herself quietly and pulled her skirt over to indicate that Sam was permitted to sit beside her. Sam sat down, folded his hands, and looked out at the miles of country before him. He knew why the girl had come here: because this place seemed to be perched on the edge of the infinite; it was impossible to look out over the marching mountains and not feel that beyond the horizon they went on forever.

They sat quietly together for some moments; then, without preamble, the girl asked a question. “You found my father’s body, didn’t you?”

“Are you sure you want to talk about it?” Sam asked.

“I want to know,” the girl answered him. “Did you find his body?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Where was it?”

Sam hesitated before he answered. “In the middle of the highway.”

“Could he have been struck by a car?”

“No.” Sam paused, wondering how much more he should add. “He had been struck from behind with a blunt instrument. His stick was beside him—his cane, I mean. That might have been it.”

“Was it”—the girl hesitated and chose her words carefully—”instantaneous?” For the first time she turned her head and looked at him.

Sam nodded. “Not only that, but he had no knowledge, I’m sure, no pain.”

The girl gripped the edge of the bench with long, slender fingers and looked out once more at the mountain panorama before her. “He wasn’t a big man, or important,” she said half to the silent hills. “All his life he hoped and worked for the big break. This would have been it, his chance to be somebody in music. It’s a hard world and it’s almost impossible to get anywhere unless you somehow manage to belong to just the right group. Whoever killed my father killed all of his hopes and dreams—just before they were all to have come true.” She stopped speaking, but she continued to stare straight ahead. Sam looked at her carefully and was angry with himself for, at a time like this, deciding she was beautiful. He wanted desperately to offer her his protection, to let her cry on his ample shoulder if she wanted to, to hold her hand in a reassuring grip.

What he could not do physically, he tried to do with words. “Miss Mantoli, I want to tell you something that may help, just a little. All of us in the police department are going to do our best, no matter how hard we have to work, to find and punish the person responsible. That isn’t much comfort for you, but it might help a little.”

“You’re very kind, Mr. Wood,” she said, as though she was really thinking of something else. “Is Mr. Tibbs’s being here going to cause you any trouble?” she asked abruptly.

Sam wrinkled his brow for a moment. “Truthfully, that’s hard to answer. I honestly don’t know.”

“Because he’s a Negro.”

“Yes, because he’s black. You know how we feel about things like that down here.”

When the girl looked at him steadily and evenly, Sam felt a sudden emotion he could not analyze. “I know,” she said. “Some people don’t like Italians; they think we’re different, you know. Oh, they’ll make an exception for a Toscanini or a Sophia Loren, but the rest of us are supposed to be vegetable peddlers or else gangsters.” She pushed back her hair carelessly with one hand, looked away from him out over the mountains.

“Perhaps we ought to go back,” Sam suggested, acutely uncomfortable.

The girl rose to her feet. “I suppose so. Thank you for coming with me,” she said. “It helped.”

As they reached the door of the house, it opened and Eric Kaufmann appeared. He held it open for Virgil Tibbs, who followed him, and then made a particular point of carefully shaking hands. Even Sam realized it was formal patronizing. “Mr. Tibbs,” Kaufmann said in a voice loud enough for Sam and the girl to hear, “I don’t care what it costs or what you have to do. I’m not a rich man, but I’ll stop at nothing to see that the murder—that the person who did what he did to the maestro is captured and made to pay.” His voice broke. “To strike him down like that, a man like him! Not even to give him a chance. Please, do your very best!”

Sam wondered how much of the speech was sincere and how much was calculated to impress the girl. He must know her well, Sam thought, and perhaps … He did not let himself finish the thought. Unreasonably he wished that the girl had somehow risen out of the ground that day so that he might be the first to know her and to take care of her.

He decided he was losing his grip and it was time to toughen up.

Virgil Tibbs excused himself and they climbed into the car. Sam started the engine and turned down the road that led back to the city. When they were safely out of range of the house, he spoke. “Did you make any progress?”

“Yes, I did,” Tibbs answered him.

Sam waited for a fuller explanation, then found he had to ask for one. “Such as what, Virgil?”

“Mostly background on Mantoli and the music festival. The Endicotts are strong local sponsors. What they had set up here was what they hoped would develop into another Tangle wood or the Bethlehem Bach Festival. Some projects of that kind have been highly successful.”