Authors: Lisa Sandlin
PHELAN WAS NOT invited to sit. He stood near the door to the white room like a private without an army while the woman scoured his face and mode of dress. He wasn't any hippie or hobo, had his suit on, and he'd had the Magic Weavers mend the rip in his pants. Maybe the suit had accumulated some wear he hadn't noticed, maybe his tie had a butter drip. She was hardly dolled up for a galaânot a lick of makeup, half-glasses balanced on her nose, uncombed dark hair clipped up in a rooster-tail. As she leaned forward, her cherry-blossom kimono gapped, revealing packed cleavage.
“My housekeeper tells me you are asking about these”âshe raised the papers in her left handâ“for the legal heir. You want information about their value, I assume. Do you know the first thing about stock certificates?”
Phelan Investigations might not know a lot while Phelan Investigations learned on the job, but lack of knowledge ran counter to the image Phelan Investigations cared to project. “Just that you own a little bit of the company,” he said. “That paper tells you how much. I'm guessing it's the number up in the right-hand corner.”
“Who is the owner of these certificates? Let me see some authorization.”
Phelan unfolded Miss Blanchard's note from his inner jacket pocket and handed it over to Mrs. Elliott. “Not a formal
contract, but you can see it says she's asking me to find out for her. They're burying her aunt today.”
Neva Elliott pushed the glasses up to read the note. “Today. Your heir certainly is wasting no time.”
“As Miss Blanchard's aunt was a hundred years old, her death didn't surprise anybody. And Miss Blanchard's sole living is a downtown hotel. I'm betting its value shrinks every year about the same amount its maintenance costs rise.”
“Well. What was the aunt's name?”
“Jessie Speir.”
“Speir.” Mrs. Elliott let the glasses drop on their chain. The furrows between her eyebrows drew tighter. “Speir, Speir. Hardin Speir. Haven't heard that name in many a day, and he had a partner in his brokerage. Wexler, something like that. Saul. Why aren't these certificates with the attorney?”
“This is aâ¦special bequest to her niece. Made orally, in front of witnesses. Her granddaughter inherited the rest of the estate and has disposed of a lot of it, I understand, uhâ¦premortem.”
“I see.”
Neva Elliot tucked her little feet into low-heeled slippers, rose and toddled over to her white file cabinets. If only she'd been standing the first time, he'd have known in an instant that his client was not in front of himâthis woman was five feet tall. She pulled out a slim folder and turned pages in it. Her fingernail speared a line. She laid down the stock certificates and leaned over to get a pen on the desk, jotted a while on a pad.
“All right,” she said, turning. “Your Tiffany is a hundred shares purchased in 1910. It's worth around twenty thousand dollars, plus sixty years of dividends, which will be considerable. The niece should take it to her broker who'll tell her its precise value.”
She put down the Tiffany and picked up the second paper. “This one, I don't need to look up. Even you, as long as you brush your teeth and wash your hands”âone eyebrow loftedâ“will know Colgate-Palmolive.”
“Even me.”
“You may tell the niece it's worth a nice little bit. But it's ten shares. Ten. Her uncle would have done far better to have purchased a hundred of Colgate-Palmolive, and ten of Tiffany. It never ceases to amaze me, the foolish choices intelligent people make. Hardin Speir had his own firm. Presumably he knew markets and values. He's handling business in the time of the titansâ
my god
, J.P. Morgan, Astor, Carnegie. Off he goes to New York City and ignores Standard Oil and U.S. Steel, gives short shrift to Colgate-Palmolive, and instead invests his money in arty French trinkets.”
“I understand the stock was an anniversary present for his wife.”
“A hundred shares of soap and toothpaste, now
that
would have had true love printed all over it.”
Mrs. Lloyd Elliott laughed without smiling.
There must have been thirty people in the lobby, whose thumping heart was a table laden with platters, cut glass dishes, bowls, and coffee urns. The strong scent of lilies mingled with coffee and ham. The middle-aged were on their feet chatting to other middle-aged, with the exception of a blond woman who appeared dazed, planted in a blue chair knees apart, both hands clinging to a glass. The elderly fetched food or ate from plates balanced dangerously on their laps.
Phelan passed an old guy in a cap who was working on half a plateful of cocktail onions and big square piece of cake. Delpha's slender back disappeared into the kitchen. Feeling
some intensity directed his way, he surveyed the room until he caught sight of the gray proprietor, honed in on him like a searchlight.
She shook his hand and guided him to armchairs on the lobby's periphery, set down her coffee on a table in between, and listened with a pleasant expression. Phelan offered condolences and reported on his initial consultation. For a more accurate accounting of the Tiffany and the Colgate-Palmolive stock, she would need to choose a financial expertâhe handed her a block-printed list of legitimate stockbrokers in town he'd interviewed (called on the phone), who were prepared (drooling) to examine and discuss Miss Blanchard's certificates at her convenience.
“Twenty thousand for the Tiffany?”
“Yes, ma'am, plus dividends. Sixty-three years' worth.”
“At
my
convenience, you said.”
“Any of these gentlemen would be glad to get your call.”
Miss Blanchard rose with the ease of a young woman and nudged a cabbage-rose footrest closer to her cabbage-rose armchair, sat back down, and put her feet up. Her searchlight aspect was extinguished. She settled herself into the chair, crossed her ankles, reached for her coffee and sipped it.
“Fast work, Tom Phelan. Get the girls to cut you some ham and fix you a plate. There's plenty.”
Phelan accepted a cup of coffee from Delpha, dressed in her white blouse and navy blue skirt. Her hair was swept up and folded around somehow, the scar on the back of her neck covered by trailing tendrils. He reached out to trace a light brown strand, but caught himself as Delpha turned. She'd poured herself a cup, and they clinked.
TWO FULL WEEKS. The phone was suffering a siege of drought, except for several parties who inquired about Mr. Phelan's rates and lied that they'd call back. The bank account was withering.
Delpha's Gatesville business course had included a chapter on marketing. She set herself the job of writing a letter advertising their services and, in the library, compiled a long list of likely companies. Whir of activity in the secretary part of the office. Sometimes she hummed. She'd call to identify the head of Personnel or some other manager figure at each company on her list, type up a letter, add Phelan's business card, lick an envelope and a stamp.
Phelan signed letters. He worried. He stepped out for lunch, leaving his secretary to her campaign. Noon, faint church bells tolling mass, sun like a full steam iron on the top of his head. Bought a shrimp sandwich to go and a Coke from a lunch wagon and parked down by the port. Jacket in the car, sleeves rolled, baseball cap pulled down, he seated himself on a new bench, conveniently situated for river-watchers like himself.
Black-hulled tankers were anchored in the port, white topsides, striped flags riffling against the drift of summer clouds. The big ships rose like courthouses from the river, not a sailor in sight. Only things moving were the flags and
the sunlit currents of the Neches, its water infinite sparkles. There would never be diamonds the like.
He ate his sandwich.
Mmm
, they'd buttered and fried the roll before they packed the saucy shrimp in. Chefs. He smacked, mopped off the mayonnaisey sauce and sucked his fingers. Privy to the food/bird network, a pigeon appeared expectantly. Phelan sacrificed the last of his bun, tossed out a handful of crumbs to the guest. Soon the rest of its party arrived, a second pigeon with a raveling nether region, and something small and nondescript, maybe a sparrow, with a startling, jack-hammer-like hop that propelled it to Phelan's toes.
OK, one more go-round and he'd file this case away. Phelan leaned back, one foot on the other knee, and filled in columns of a score-sheet written on the air. Daughtry. The formula developed in his R&D belonged to him. That Enroco ended up with it was industrial sabotage. John Daughtry must have been ready to rain fiery toads on the stealers. Instead, in keeping with these progressive times, he'd sic'd Lloyd Elliott on them.
Phelan moved to the Enroco column. This particular formula was stellar. Someone tiptoed it over. Big E hooked it and cooked it. So Daughtry and Enroco squared off over the formula. Which Daughtry legitimately owned. Suppose some people would say a decent employer might ante up some compensation, a bonus for a formula like this one. Especially since, according to Margaret in the proper black suit, the lead chemist Roberts or Robertsonâ¦no, Robbins had been in the process of dying.
Phelan pictured those bosses from company headquarters, the ones who'd tour the rig every so often, starched white shirts rolled to the elbows, borrowed hard hats sitting up high. Those execs, they'd have said that sentence in a different
tone of voice: Hey, the chemist is
dying
. S.O.L. shrug, crinkle at their eye corners. They were the kings who'd paid marine geologists to locate the site, have the rig towed there, hired the workers on it, financed its dollar-devouring operations to the tune of six zeros and ticking. Righteous, straightforward gaze out at their ownânobody else'sâladen ships, sailing into safe harbor.
The spruce pigeon beat out the raggedy one for the biggest piece of bun. Phelan found a lettuce shred in the sack and lobbed it toward the loser.
OK. Back to the Daughtry column. Say Daughtry leaked the formula himself. Why didn't he just sell it? Phelan didn't get that part. Then he did. He did. MargaretâMargaret had said John Daughtry missed his business more than his wife. Man like that wouldn't sell off a product that stood to make his company talked about, envied. He'd keep it and himself in the bosom of the petrochemical world. But he would have had to scramble for such an expansion while Enroco could easily handle nationwide production, distribution, exports.
Lloyd Elliott column. Like Miles had said, the lawyer would have known the whole deal.
Last column: Wallace Daughtry. A sick John Daughtry retires suddenly, conveniently for Wallace. Wallace and his brand new office/nouveau antique house designed for him to sit behind a tennis-court-sized desk and accept calls from his investment counselor. No oil drips on his cuff, no mud on his boots.
These kinds of things happened all the time. Case was done. Didn't matter anymore.
The pigeons and the sparrow, having cleaned Phelan out, took to the sky. Breeze off the sunlit water played on his sweating face. Finally he wadded sandwich wrapper into the
paper bag, tossed in the Coke can. Had to get back to the office so he could sit around.
Funny. Used to think it was the ships, but all along it had been the river that drew him. It stretched him until his blood streamed with it. The river remained itself, its wholeness a power beyond any of the puny daily forces in Tom Phelan's little life. He could drive down here and study it, gray in the days, black at night, white gleams of moon, port light carried on the rippling skin of its wide back. After a while he wouldn't bother with understanding anything.
“Phelan Investigations. How may we help you?” A couple beats of quiet then “Colored man,” Delpha whispered, covering the mouthpiece. “Nervous-sounding.” She transferred the call to Phelan.
The voice told Phelan Dennis Deeterman was around again.
He'd never heard the clear voice before, but it had to be him. Phelan said, “How do you know, Marvin? You see him?”
Silence. Then “Yeah.”
“OK. When and where?”
“Las Saturday. Comin' out of a 7-11 on Pine Street. I 'as bout to get outa the car, and once I seen him I didn't.”
“Sure it's him?”
“Yeah, he so tall. And he got this funny walk, butt scoot around sideways. Iss him. Got a mustache now.”
“You didn't see what he was driving, did you?”
“Old maroon pickup.”
“License number?”
“Mud on it.”
“You tell the police this?”
“You can tell em. Bye.”
“Wait a sec. You and your mom stay at the same place you used to?”
“Naw, we at another place.”
“Good. You talk to Ricky Toups?”
“That fool. Hell no.”
“Fool. Wait, why's he a fool?”
Clunk. Dial tone.
Phelan called E.E. and reported this information. “I've been driving by Deeterman's house ever so often, you know, just checking. Hadn't seen any sign. Y'all heard anything about him?”
E.E. dodged the question. Muttered that awhile back they'd got a call on a teenage boy. Fifteen years old. Mother on the line insisting he was a missing person, stepfather on the extension butting in with the theory that the boy took off. “Call us you see anything make you think Deeterman's haunting that house on Concord. Don't be traipsing in there after him, you.” Click.
Phelan put down the phone, ambled into Delpha's office, and repeated the news about the boy.
“Missing. Mmh, mmh.” The envelope at Delpha's lips lowered. Her shoulders pulled forward as her forehead creased. “Hate to hear that. I hate it.”
“Guys like Deeterman are born with their wires crossed. Or else somebody crossed 'em when they were too little to know the difference.”
She laid the envelope on the desk, sealed the seam with her fist. “And they wanna do what they do.”
“Pretty simple view, Miss Librarian.”
“Yeah. It is.”
She placed the envelope into a cardboard box holding its sisters and brothers, rolled more letterhead into the Selectric.
Four hours later, Phelan cruised by the Toups', marking the solitary living room light.
He drove by the white ranch. The house was a pile of night. Just enough moon to see the yard standing in weeds, strip of cement driveway, no pickup parked on it. Couldn't make out the track to the backside of the house.
In the next minute, Phelan's heart beat fifty-nine times instead of sixty.
The street light nearest the old white ranch was dark. Streetlights burned out. But they could also be smashed.