Beauty and the Beast
- Автор: Хантер Эван
- Серия: Matthew Hope #3
- Год: 1982
- Язык: английский
- Год: Holt, Rinehart and Winston
- ISBN: 978-0-03-062198-7
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Beauty and the Beast». Краткое содержание книги:
“I’m specifically interested in learning why his fingerprints weren’t on that can,” I said. “Harper thinks he wasn’t wearing gloves, and he can’t remember whether or not Loomis wiped off the can. Find out.”
“Okay,” Karl said. “Anything else?”
“I’ve given Cynthia a Puerto Vallarta number where I can be reached. That’s until Monday night. On Tuesday we’ll be in Mexico City, at the Camino Real — Cynthia has that number, too.”
“Okay,” Karl said.
“That’s it,” I said.
“Have a nice time,” Karl said, and went out.
I picked up the phone and called Kitty Reynolds at work, telling her I was representing a man accused of murder, and asking if I might see her sometime that afternoon. She told me to come right over, and I was in Lucy’s Circle not twenty minutes later. It took me another ten minutes to find a parking space, however, and it was not until four that I paused on the sidewalk outside Miss Reynolds’s boutique, and looked up at the sign over the brimming front window.
The Circle, as it is familiarly known to Calusa’s residents and visitors, was indeed that — a wheel, the hub of which was a fair-sized park, the rim of which was lined by restaurants, jewelry stores, souvenir shops, a photography shop, a florist, an optical shop, a post office, several shops selling antiques, three art galleries, a cheese shop, two shoe stores for men, five shoe stores for women, a half dozen women’s clothing stores, a barbershop, several luncheonettes, three men’s clothing stores, a chocolate shop, an ice-cream shop, a store selling modern furniture, a pharmacy, a five-and-dime, a greeting-card shop, a shop selling oranges and grapefruits you could ship home to less fortunate people in Minnesota or Toronto, a luggage shop, a store selling furniture fashioned from redwood trees, a shop selling only earrings, and a discothèque that on Wednesday nights featured an act called “The Body Machine” (the rage of Calusa at the moment), wherein several male dancers performed a mild striptease to which only women were admitted.
The sign over the front plate-glass window of the boutique read KITTY CORNER. I decided at once that it had been inappropriately named. It was, to begin with, not on a corner — although there were some corners in the Circle, being fed as it was by side streets funneling into it — but was instead in the middle of the block, sandwiched between a shoe store and an art gallery. It was, secondly, and judging from the array of sexy lingerie, minuscule bikinis, and slinky dresses in the front window, not the sort of place selling anything even remotely warranting the adjective “kittenish.” And lastly, the name Kitty Corner seemed to suggest what the owner of a cat might have called the place under a stove where nestled a box full of torn paper scraps or the packaged, deodorized litter one could buy in any supermarket.
There was only one person in the shop when I entered it and closed the door behind me. She was, to be sure, a blonde who appeared to be in her midthirties, five feet six or thereabouts, weighing a well-curved 120, and wearing one of the more spectacular creations displayed in her front window, a satiny concoction slit to the thigh on one leg, and cut low over resplendent breasts that threatened the skintight fabric. I felt for a moment as though I’d wandered into Calusa’s Club Alyce, where ladies in scanty costumes danced at any male patron’s table, thrusting aggressive crotches into willing faces, for the price of a few dollar bills stuffed into their G-strings.
“Miss Reynolds?” I said.
“Yes?”
“I’m Matthew Hope. I phoned a little while—”
“Yes, how do you do, Mr. Hope?” she said, and walked toward me, her hand extended, a smile on her face, every curve of her body insinuating itself against the sleek shiny fabric of the dress she was almost wearing.
The dress was a pastel blue, a shade lighter than the color of her eyes. She was wearing a smoky gray eye shadow and a string of baroque pearls that lustrously echoed it. Her lipstick was the color of a pomegranate’s skin, glossily spread on bee-stung lips still parted in a smile. She took my hand in a delicate clasp; her palm was slightly moist. There was about her the lingering scent of a musky perfume.
“You said on the phone...”
“Yes, that I’m representing a man accused of murder, and I would appreciate your assistance.”
“But how?” she said, and released my hand.
“The man’s name is George Harper.”
“Yes?”
“He’s a friend of Andrew Owen.”
“Yes?” she said again.
I had the distinct impression that neither of the names meant anything at all to her. I had not expected her to know Harper. But after what I’d read in Sally Owen’s file—
“Andrew Owen,” I said again.
“Am I supposed to know either of these people?” she said.
“I thought you might have known Mr. Owen.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t.”
“He’s a black man who runs a liquor store on Third and Vine.”
“I’m sorry, but—”
“Miss Reynolds, last year I handled a divorce case for a woman named Sally Owen. At the time, she was Mr. Owen’s wife.” I paused. Not the slightest flicker of recognition showed on her face. “Mrs. Owen named you as a witness in her action.”
“Me?” she said, her eyes opening wide.
“You are Kitty Reynolds, aren’t you?”
“I am.”
“And you do live in an apartment over this store, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t. I live on Flamingo Key.”
“Did you ever live in an apartment over this store?”
“Not for the past six months.”
“Did you live here a year ago?”
“I did.”
“That’s when the divorce action started, in October last year.”
“And you say I was named by Mrs. Owen as—”
“She said Mr. Owen had deserted her and was living here with you.”
“That’s absurd.”
“It’s what she told us.”
“Then why wasn’t I...? I mean, if there was a trial or a hearing or whatever you call it, then why wasn’t I called as a witness or whatever?”
“We reached a settlement before it ever got to court. There was no need to—”
“Well, anyway, this is absurd. Who is this woman? How could she say such things about me? Living with a black man? The only black man I know is my gardener!”
“I take it you’re single, Miss Reynolds? Were you—”
“Yes, I’ve been divorced for the past six years.”
“Then you were single last year, when Mrs. Owen alleged—”
“That doesn’t mean I knew her husband! I never even heard of him till you mentioned his name.”
“Then he wasn’t living here with you?”
“Of course not! Besides, what’s any of this got to do with me—”
She cut herself short.
The abruptness with which she’d interrupted her own question, the way she’d left the sentence dangling with only the word “me” at the end of it, was somehow jarring to the ear. Had she been about to add something more to the “me,” a person’s name, perhaps, making it “me and Andrew”? or “me and whoever”? And then it occurred to me that perhaps the “me” wasn’t a word at all, perhaps the “me” was only part of a word, part of a name, in fact — part of the name “Michelle.”