To Perish in Penzance (19 page)

The man at the mike, a tough-looking customer with a broken nose, a five-o'clock shadow, and muscles bulging under his shirt, busied himself with some sort of adjustment and paid no attention to us until Alan tapped his shoulder. Then he glanced at us, and did a double take. “Don't know where you two think you are,” he screamed over the noise, “but you're not allowed on the stage.”

“We need to talk to you,” Alan screamed back. “Do you have an office, somewhere quiet?” He had another banknote in his hand, a twenty this time. He allowed the manager to see it for a moment before putting it back in his pocket.

The man nodded and pointed. We followed him off the stage and into a small room at the back of the hall. With the door shut, the sound level was almost bearable.

The manager threw himself into a chair behind a metal desk. He did not invite us to sit. “Look, I'm busy. You two refugees from the rest home have something to say, say it and get out of here.”

I bit off an angry reply. Alan, veteran of a career in which he'd had to get used to rudeness, was better able to deal with it.

“Take that tone with me, young man, and you'll be the one who's out of there!”

“Hey, you're not the Bill, are you?”

The old problem: Alan looks and sometimes sounds like a policeman. “Not anymore,” he said with perfect honesty, “though I have a fair number of friends who are. I'm not here to look into your operation, though, not this time. I want a few civil answers to civil questions, and I'm prepared to pay for your time.”

“Right.” It could not have been said more insolently, but the man leaned back in his chair, apparently ready to listen.

“We came in hoping to ask about employment.”

“You?” His astonishment would have struck me funny if I hadn't been so nervous.

“Of course not, don't be an ass. Our godson is a drummer. We'd heard about this club—”

“How was that? We don't exactly advertise.”

“Never mind how. We may, in your opinion, be old, but we're not stupid. I can see, however, that your music is recorded, so I suppose we're wasting our time.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute. Don't be in such a hurry.” He could see that twenty pounds vanishing. “It's too early for the band. Not enough people. But later on …” He spread his hands. “The kid any good?”

“He plays in London.”

“What's he want to come down here for, then?”

I opened my mouth. No use letting Alan carry the whole burden. “We've persuaded him to look after us in our declining years,” I said in a syrupy voice. “And he's just lost his girlfriend. She ran away with the lead guitarist. We thought there might be a better chance for him to find someone suitable in a smaller place, like Penzance.”

The manager lit a cigarette. At least this one contained tobacco, but I couldn't help coughing. He ignored me. “The loving grannies. Touching. Well, we get plenty of birds in here. He can take his pick.
If
we take him on. He have a band? We don't need solo drummers.”

“He knows people here. He can put one together,” I said, still sweetly. “As for girls—someone told me there was a very pretty girl who came here a lot. Named Pamela something?”

The manager stood so suddenly his chair fell over. “Okay, out!”

“But what—?” I began, bewildered.

“I don't know what you're up to, but I'm not having more trouble over Pamela Boleigh! After that shindy the other night, she's been barred from this club. We've already had the police here. I didn't care for that, I can tell you, and I don't care much for you, either, so get out!”

He opened the door and pointed.

He didn't even take Alan's money.

We found a back door and made our escape with more haste than grace. In the back alley, among the dustbins (which smell just as bad under that polite English name as do American garbage cans), we reconnoitered.

“Boleigh,” I said.

Alan sighed. “His granddaughter, one assumes. It's not a common name in Penzance.”

“Neither Tre, Pol, nor Pen.”

“No. Cornish, all the same. His family have been here, or up north at least, for generations.”

I ignored that. “So this is the granddaughter who's missing. I'd been imagining a child, a little girl.”

“So had I. But coincidence can stretch only so far. The manager assumed at once that the Pamela we mentioned was Pamela Boleigh.”

I clenched my hands into fists of frustration. “This makes the whole thing more complicated than ever. Pamela missing, Lexa dead—Alan, this could be much, much worse than we thought.”

“And it was quite bad enough already.”

I made a face that Alan probably couldn't see in the dark. “I said I preferred Dickens's obvious evil. I was wrong. That, in there, is unspeakable. I don't think I've ever in my life wanted so badly to get out of a situation. The whole place reeked of corruption and decadence. Did you spot any drugs? Except for the marijuana, I mean? I didn't see any, but then I don't know how to look.”

“Nothing obvious. They're probably there, but the dealing won't start until later in the evening when the crowds arrive.”

“Well, even without that, it was horrible.”

“But we learned something.”

“Nothing good.”

“No.” Alan sighed. “Let's get to the car, love.”

The streets were dark and quiet. I couldn't hear the sea. We were near the harbor, where the waves were reduced to mere ripples by the protective walls and the boats within. I tried to take deep breaths of pure, clean air, but what I inhaled smelled of diesel fuel and, as we passed a dark, forbidding pub, of stale beer. The charm of Penzance had taken the night off.

“Alan, I'm not enjoying any of this at all.”

“Neither am I, but enjoyment is not often a factor in this kind of work. Sometimes, at the end, there's a kind of righteous satisfaction. Sometimes not even that, when the villain gets off scot-free.”

“But you kept at it, for forty years. And we have to keep at it this time, don't we?”

It wasn't a real question, and Alan didn't bother to answer. We climbed in the car.

“What now? Do you want to talk to Boleigh?”

“Not unless you think we must, Alan. It's late, and I've got a terrible headache from the noise and the smoke. Can't we let it wait until tomorrow?”

Alan sat. He didn't start the car. He didn't fasten his seat belt. He sat, pounding the steering wheel lightly with the heel of his hand.

“What?”

He stopped pounding and turned the key in the ignition. “Sorry. Didn't know I was fidgeting.”

“Yes, but what were you fidgeting
about
?”

“Frustration. Dorothy, do you know how much I want to raid that pestilential club?”

“I have an idea. I also suspect you wouldn't be heartbroken if the manager just happened to trip during the proceedings and fall flat on his unlovely face. Because I feel the same way.”

Alan pulled out of the parking lot onto Wharf Road and shook his head. “For a pair of law-abiding citizens …”

“We're perfectly normal,” I said firmly. “What's more, if we can prove that Lexa died of illegal drugs from the rave club, we'll have a legitimate way to smash that man's face in. Figuratively, at least.”

“It is,” he said, “a considerable extra incentive.”

By the time I'd taken a lengthy shower to rid myself of the smell of the club, Alan was asleep, but tired as I was, it took me quite a while to settle down. When I slept, I dreamed of Lexa and a shadowy Pamela being led off screaming to some terrible, unknown fate. I tried to run after them, but my legs were heavy and slow, after the manner of dreams.

I must have cried out in my sleep, for Alan touched me and I woke for a moment. As I moved nearer to him, I realized my pillow was wet with tears.

M
ORNING
dawned, another gorgeous day in beautiful Cornwall. The breeze coming in the open window carried with it the murmur of a placid sea and the crying of the gulls, as well as the scents of flowers and salt water.

The beauty was, I thought sourly, a bright screen hiding darker corners. Today, the way I felt, the brightness was more than inappropriate; it was a personal affront. I sat up and pressed my fingertips to my throbbing temples. Alan, coming back from the bathroom, wordlessly handed me a washcloth wrung out in cold water. I collapsed back onto the pillow, the cloth over my eyes.

“I've ordered coffee,” he said softly. “And orange juice. You need some sugar in your system.”

“What I need is some peace of mind,” I muttered. “And some aspirin.”

“I can supply the aspirin, at least, but don't take too many on an empty stomach.”

In due time, all the remedies beginning to work, I felt human enough to get dressed and think about facing the day.

“Mr. Boleigh first, I suppose,” I said with little enthusiasm. “We have to go talk to him about his granddaughter.”

“And perhaps you'd best look in on Mrs. Crosby?”

“Lord, yes. I don't know how I'm going to tell her that the missing girl was with Lexa the night she died. She'll take it hard. She'll see as clearly as we do that it makes our job harder. Oh, and then I've promised her I'd help sort through Lexa's clothes and things, the stuff the police gave back and all. And we've said we wanted to look at her room, and of course there's the funeral this afternoon.” I pressed my fingers to my head again. “There's too much. I'll never be able to keep it all straight.”

“We need some organization. The day-to-day grind of police work consists almost entirely of writing up reports, you know, and we haven't kept ours up-to-date.”

“Ah, list making, yes. My favorite way of pretending I'm accomplishing something.” I picked up the room-service menu and turned to the telephone.

While we were waiting for our breakfast to arrive, we dug out all our earlier lists and notes. They were meager in the extreme, but as we started in on our bacon and eggs we began to organize what little we had.

“Okay,” I said with my mouth not quite full, fork in one hand and notebook in the other. “We've checked off some of it. We found out why Lexa wanted to visit Cornwall, and what she did while she was here, at least in part. I think we need to follow up on that.” I put down my fork and made a note.

Alan swallowed some toast. “Yes, especially what she did all day Thursday. We know where she went in the evening, but what did she do before that?”

“The police probably know.”

“Almost certainly, but Colin is far too busy for me to pop in and bother him. Eleanor will tell us if she knows, and she might possibly remember something new.”

I added to the note. “And I want to go back to the library, ask them what she looked up.”

“If they remember.”

“Remember Lexa? Are you kidding? If there was even one male librarian on duty that day, he'll be able to tell us where she sat, what she was wearing, and how many times she crossed her legs.”

“You're feeling better.”

“I guess I am,” I said with a grin.

“And I agree with you. What they may not be able to tell us is what materials she consulted.”

“True, but I'm betting.” I added the word “library” to the notation. “Now, let's see. Oh, the cave. Remember, we want to go take another look at the cave.” I took a deep breath, decided not to think about the cave until I actually had to face it, and continued. “And Lexa's room.” I wrote busily.

“We can do that when we help Eleanor with Lexa's clothing. Does she want it packed up?”

“I don't know. I hope so. It's definitely a bad idea to keep it around. Eleanor's sensible; she'll probably want to give most of it away.” I stopped, suddenly unable to speak. Tears began to trickle down my cheeks.

Alan waited until I'd sniffed and blown my nose before he quirked an interrogative eyebrow.

“I suddenly remembered the dress,” I quavered. “That gorgeous dress I talked her into. She looked so beautiful in it, and she only got to wear it once. …” More tears.

Alan is that rare male who knows how to deal with tears, at least with mine. He knows when sympathy is helpful and when it will only prolong the agony. In this case he cleared his throat and looked pointedly at the notebook. I pulled myself together.

“Very well, that seems to deal with the old list. Shall we add to it? We must talk to Boleigh about Pamela.”

“Poor man.”

“Indeed.” Alan made no further comment, perhaps for fear of setting me going again. “And perhaps we should speak again, more formally, to Mr. Polwhistle and Mr. Pendeen.”

“You can do the mayor by yourself. He gives me the creeps.”

Alan smiled. “I rather think he likes to dramatize himself a bit.”

I studied the list, trying to think. “Would there be any point in talking again to the young men Lexa captivated the night of the party? Barnet and the rest?”

“You might get something out of them. I wasn't very popular with young Barnet, and I barely spoke to the rest.”

“Okay, I'll put myself down for that, and you for Mr. Pendeen. Is there anybody else?”

We had been eating our breakfast in between remarks. Alan now pushed his plate away and took my notebook from me. “I think we've enough to do for now, don't you? For several days, in fact. We'll need to establish a schedule, but before we do, we'd better file a report.”

“What
do
you mean? With the police?”

“No, with ourselves. We need to write down, systematically, what we know and what we need to know.”

I groaned.

“The detective's unfailing response to paperwork,” said Alan. “Here.” He tore off a few pages. “We'll each write it out and then compare notes.”