When Manheim had gone I headed off to bed, leaving Max in the sitting room with a bottle of Lotty’s cognac. Lotty came in for a minute after I’d brushed my teeth to tell me Caroline had phoned while I was with the police.
“She wants you to call her. But as she was angry and became rather rude, I thought it wouldn’t hurt her to wait.”
I grinned. “That’s my Caroline. She say anything about Louisa?”
“I gather since she slept through her ordeal she’s none the worse for it. Sleep well, my dear.”
She was gone when I got up in the morning. I puttered aimlessly around the kitchen, drinking coffee. I started to make toast, then remembered my promise to eat breakfast with Mr. Contreras. I slowly packed my overnight bag. The longer I stayed at Lotty’s the less interested I seemed to be in looking after myself It was time to go before I slipped into unconquerable lassitude.
In deference to Lotty’s tidy spirit, I took the sheets from the guest bed and bundled them up with the towels I’d used. I wrote a note telling her I’d taken them home with me to launder. I straightened up the other signs of my presence as best I could and headed over to Racine.
Mr. Contreras’s delight at seeing me was equaled only by the dog’s. Peppy jumped up to lick my face, her golden tail thumping the door hard enough to swing it shut. My neighbor took the laundry from me.
“These Dr. Lotty’s things? I’ll wash ’em for you, doll. After breakfast you’ll want to unwind, look at your mail, do whatever. So the case is over? Everything locked up with those two villains in the hospital? I mighta known you’d take care of those guys, doll. I shouldn’t of worried so much about you. No wonder you got teed off.”
I put an arm around him. “Yeah, it all looks swell now that the battle’s nearly over. But shooting someone in that kind of situation is just luck—you can’t aim. I could be in intensive care instead of Dresberg if the luck had gone the other way.”
“Nearly over?” His faded brown eyes showed concern. “You mean those guys still have someone gunning for you?”
“Other way around. There’s a big old white shark thrashing around in the water. Dresberg and Jurshak were his allies. Who knows what else he’s got stashed in his cove.” I tried to keep my tone light. “Anyway, I came back here for French toast. Got any?”
“Sure, doll, sure. Everything’s ready—just waiting for you before I turn on the griddle.” He rubbed his hands together and bustled me inside.
Somewhere from the recesses of his life he’d dug up a white linen tablecloth. He’d cleared the dining-room table of the magazines and bric-a-brac that usually cluttered it and covered it with the cloth. A vase in the middle held red carnations. I was touched.
He swelled with pride at my compliments. “These were Clara’s things. They never meant so much to me but I couldn’t bring myself to give them to Ruthie when she died; Clara kind of treasured them and I just couldn’t quite see Ruthie prizing them like she should.”
He hurried off to the kitchen and came back with a glass of fresh orange juice. “Now, you sit here, doll, and I’ll have breakfast out to you in two shakes.”
He fried up tall mounds of bacon and gargantuan stacks of French toast. I ate what I could and repaid him by telling the tale of my midnight trip up the Calumet. He was caught between awe at the exploit and jealousy that I hadn’t picked him to go with me, pipe wrench and all.
I gallantly suppressed a shudder at the idea. “I didn’t think it would be fair to Peppy,” I explained. “If we both got killed or laid up, who would look after her?”
He accepted that grudgingly—and a bit suspiciously—and asked me to tell him again how I’d shot Dresberg. Finally, around noon, I felt I’d stayed long enough and made my escape upstairs. The old man had stacked my mail neatly inside my apartment door, letters in one pile, newspapers in another. I flipped through the letters quickly—nothing personal. Not one thing. Just bills and solicitations. In irritation I tossed the lot, including my home phone bill. The papers would keep—I’d go through them later and see how they’d covered Xerxes.
My rooms had that strange appearance of a place you haven’t visited for a while—they seemed somehow unfamiliar, as though I’d heard them described but hadn’t ever actually seen them. I moved around restlessly, trying to reestablish myself in my own existence. And trying not to wonder what Humboldt might next attempt. I wasn’t entirely successful. At two when the doorbell rang I jumped a little. This has got to stop, Victoria, I admonished myself I walked purposefully to the intercom and pressed it.
Caroline’s voice came tinnily through. If anything were needed to restore my self-confidence, it would be a little roughhousing with her. I prepared myself for battle and buzzed her in.
I could hear her moving up the stairs with a slow, heavy tread most unlike her usual canter. When she made the last turning and came into view, I could see that she looked somber. My heart contracted. Louisa. Tuesday night’s escapade had been too much for her weak system and she’d died.