Free Live Free

Baker’s Dozin’

“Come in,” Stubb said, and all three tried to crowd in together, Sandy Duck caught and crushed between Candy and Barnes.

“God, but I’m glad to see you,” Candy said. She sat on a bed, kicked off one of the galoshes the police had given her, and began to rub her plump, pink foot.

“What are you doing here?” Stubb asked Barnes.

Candy grunted, obstructed by her belly as she tussled with the other galosh. “I made him come, Jim. I was talking to him while you were up here, and he hasn’t anyplace to stay tonight. He just parked his sample cases and stuff in the bus station.”

Their hostess snorted like a small, well-bred horse. “Am I to have this mob domiciled with me?”

“Not me, Madame Serpentina,” Sandy Duck declared. “I only want to interview you—I told you over the phone.”

“And I told you that I do not grant such interviews. I am a witch, not a politician!”

There was a brief flash and the click of a shutter. Sandy lowered her little one-ten and looked at it with satisfaction. “That’s great, I think. With your head back like that. It looked like you were exorcising.”

“I would gladly ring my bell and light my candle, if they would make you go. Ozzie, I certainly did not invite you to my room, but now that you have come, please get this creature out.”

Barnes smiled. “I’ll be happy to, Madame Serpentina. But of course it might be better not to have a commotion. I think the best way might be to work out a compromise that would leave good feelings all around, and since you’ve laid it in my lap—if you’ll excuse the expression—here’s what I propose. Let Sandy ask three questions. I’ll see to it that she doesn’t pack them, doesn’t ask two questions as if they were one. You answer them fully and fairly, and when you’ve answered the third, Sandy will go out with no urging. Won’t both of you agree that’s reasonable?”

Stubb chuckled. “You should have been a diplomat, Ozzie.”

“She must also promise not to harass me in the future.”

Still clutching her camera, Sandy raised her hand. “I won’t harass. I may ask to see you, but if you say no I won’t push.”

“All right then, it is agreed—with the proviso that my answers need satisfy only my own sense of my own worth. I cannot promise they will be satisfactory to you.”

“Okay!” Barnes was beaming. “What’s the first one, Sandy?”

“Wait a minute.” The associate editor’s fingers fluttered as she jammed her camera into her purse. “I have to think … .”

“I have not got all night.”

Stubb added, “Hell no. There’s something I have to talk over with the rest of you when this girl’s gone.”

“Well, I have to think about it. I came up here with a list of about a hundred questions. Now I’m only going to get to ask three. The least you people can do is give me time to decide which three it’s going to be.”

“I said, I have not got all night!”

“Hey,” Stubb put in. “I’m hungry as hell—I don’t think I’ve eaten since breakfast. While she’s making up her mind, how about getting on that phone and asking room service to bring up a club sandwich and a cup of coffee?”

Candy laid a pink hand on the telephone. “Wait a minute, if anybody’s going to eat around here, I’m in. There’s probably a menu in this drawer.”

“What is the use!” The witch gave a theatrical gesture of despair. “Perhaps we should ask for stuffed pig, did we not have one already.”

“If you mean me, forget it. A pig, maybe. But stuffed? Forget it. I’m so empty I can feel my stomach folding up. Now listen to this.” Candy held up the room service menu. “‘Pompano Amandine—luscious filets of fresh pompano, flown up daily from Miami, broiled in a mixture of farm butter, fresh-squeezed lemon juice, and grated almonds.’ That’s for me.”

“Right,” Stubb said. He had taken a small notebook and a mechanical pencil from inside his coat. “What to drink?”

“Beer. Pie afterwards. Peach, if they’ve got it. Or apple. They’ve always got apple.”

“Right. What about you?” He looked toward the witch. “It’s your room, after all.”

“I am delighted you recall it. I had thought it forgotten that I will be paying for all this.”

“Sure. By the way, it’s about time you phoned the desk to ask about your seventy bucks. But wait till I get this order in. What’ll you have?”

“I do not eat flesh or dairy products. Is there anything there for me?”

Candy scanned the menu. “Large fresh fruit salad—includes pineapples and mangoes, other fruits in season.”

“That will do. I will have a glass of white wine also.”

Stubb glanced at the salesman. “Ozzie?”

“Filet mignon with mushroom caps. Scotch on the rocks.”

“Got it. Sandy?”

“Nothing. I don’t want anything.”

“We can’t just eat in front of you. How about a drink?”

“You’re going to have coffee, aren’t you? I’ll have that. A cup of coffee.”

“Got it.” Stubb took the telephone, rang room service, and began to read out the order.

“I can’t decide which questions.” Sandy was staring at a scuffed notebook as though the scrawled words there represented some indecipherable code.

“You must,” the witch said. “Or give them to me. I will decide.” She reached for the notebook.

“A minute. Can’t you give me just a minute?”

There was a knock at the door.

Stubb put a hand over the mouthpiece and looked significantly at the witch. “There’s a peep-hole in the door. Use it.”

“I need not,” she said, standing up. “Our visitor means no harm.” She opened the door, but stood in the doorway.

A little, gray-haired woman in a shabby coat waited on the other side of the threshold. “I know you,” she said as the door opened. “You’re Miz Garth.” She sighed as a traveler who has come to the end of a long journey. “You’re a sight for some eyes, being from Mr. Free’s house and all. Can I come in?”

“I have visitors, and though you say you know me, I do not know you. What is it you wish?”

“I know all of you,” the little woman said, peering around the witch’s shoulder. “Or anyways, most all, almost. A difference without a disinclination, is that what they call it? I just want to ask you about Mr. Free.”

“Let her come in,” Stubb said. “Come in, Mrs. Baker.”

The witch took a half step back, and Mrs. Baker slipped past her. “I know you,” she said. “You were in my parlor when that nice policeman was playing with Puff. I’ve seen you over at Mr. Free’s too. You’re Mr. Barnes.” She turned her vague, sweet smile toward Candy. “And you’re Miz Snake, the fortune teller. Oh, I do so love to have my fortune read! There’s truth in tea, I always say.”

Candy grinned at her. “I’m afraid you’ve made a Miz Snake, Mrs. Baker.”

The old woman did not appear to hear her. “But I don’t know … Well, where did she get off to? Where’s the other girl? I’m sure I saw three when the door opened.”

No one answered. Stubb stepped to the drapes and jerked them aside, but there was no one there.

The witch said, “Certainly she did not go out.”

Barnes called, “Sandy? Ms. Duck, where are you?”

A muffled voice replied, “In here.”

“Oh, hell.” Barnes sounded relieved. “She’s going to the bathroom. I must be getting jittery.”

“I’ll come out when I’ve got my questions!”

Candy sighed. “I was just about to go in there myself. Ozzie, you brought her, tell her to hurry up.”

“That’ll just fluster her worse,” Barnes said. “Leave her alone. She’ll be out in a minute.”

Mrs. Baker smiled at them. “Haste makes worst, I always say.”

“I’ll bet you do,” the fat girl said.

Stubb interposed. “While Sandy’s out of the way, we’ve got a chance to talk to Mrs. Baker here. Let’s make use of it. You said you wanted to find out something about Mr. Free, Mrs. Baker. What was it?”

“Where he’s at, of one thing. A bird in the hand’s worth two in the brush, they say.”

The witch, who had been watching the old woman expectantly, let her shoulders droop a trifle. “Then you know no more than we. I had hoped you did.”

“Because some ladies were asking around and about him. They’re from the Government, I think. And I’d like to know myself. It’s been prying on my mind.”

Stubb said, “These ladies from the Government, were they police? Like Sergeant Proudy, who played with your cat?”

“I don’t think so. They weren’t uniform. Besides, they drank my tea. It was my obsession, when those two nice policemen broke my door, that policemen bought and large won’t drink tea, only cooco. Tea and symphony is what they say, and policemen bought and large don’t care for music.”

“Can you tell us what they told you? Please think carefully. It might be important.”

“Only that they had seen Mr. Free broadcased, and they wanted to talk to him—”

“They saw him on television?”

“Yes, and I did too, clear as day sight on the TV pogrom. It was just after they showed that nice sergeant getting hit with the ax. They say fool’s names and fool’s cases are often aired in public paces, but I thought Mr. Free gave his case about as good as anybody could. He didn’t sound like a lawyer—he sounded like he was telling the truth.”

Barnes said, “That must have been while the rest of us were inside looking after that cop.”

The old woman shook her head. “It was the six P.M. Morning Report.”

Stubb grunted. “They had it taped, Mrs. Baker. Maybe even from before we moved in, when a lot of people were protesting the new ramp. What else did these ladies say?”

“Nothing match. Just that they had been looking for poor Mr. Free because he had crash coming, but when they got there he wasn’t here. Factually, the whole kitten caboose of you wasn’t. A missus as good as a mile, like they say, even if maybe they were married. They didn’t take their gloves off, either one.”

“They must have given you their names.”

Mrs. Baker hesitated, chin tucked in. She was sitting in the vanity chair, her back as straight as its own.

“First names? Last names? Anything?”

“I know they said them, but I was in a fluster. Then the little one saw Puff and asked what’s Puff’s name, and I told her Puff, and she run over and hid under the divan like she does, and I never thought to ask again. Do you think it’s a lot of crash?”

Stubb shook his head.

“Still, it might be a lot to him. The widow’s might, it’s called, I believe. You could call it the widower’s might nearly as good. Mr. Free was a widower, I expect.”

“But you don’t know?”

“He always seemed so widower-weedy, if you know what I mean. Not like a old bachelor—they’re always so crispy. The worst old women is the ones that wear pants in the family, they say. But I think old bachelors are worse even, and Mr. Free is so sweet. He casts his spelling over you.”

The witch asked quickly, “Just what do you mean by that?”

Mrs. Baker smiled her vague smile. “Why if I could say, it wouldn’t be spelling, would it? But Mr. Free used to come over and chew the rug now and then. The late Mr. Baker was a deer bomber in the war, and Mr. Free liked to hear about that and talk about his old company that he used to work for, Louise Clerk I think it was.” She sighed. “The closest I can put it is I never felt truffles was important when he was around. He had a beam in his eyes, like the Bible tells, and it lit up within.”

Barnes nodded and cleared his throat. “You know, I felt like that too. I felt like it wasn’t all that important whether I made the sale. I made some good ones too, just before we had to leave.”

“Yesterday I saw you go out my window,” the old woman said. “It wasn’t nosiness, it’s just that looking at the street’s more real-like, sometimes, than TV. I knew you were sailing because of those big valances you carried, and I thought someday you’d come to my door to sell me pans or bicyclopedias. You’d have thought I fell for your line hook and ladder, because I would have let you in and looked at everything. If you’d have told me about Mr. Free, I might have bought a new rooster too. I need one.”

Stubb was thumbing the telephone book. “No Louise Clerk & Company,” he said. “No Clerk, Louise in the residential section either.”

“I think they’re out of business,” Mrs. Baker told him. “They went backripped, I suppose. He said it was years black.”

Candy put in, “He would have retired at sixty-five, Jim, and I think he was over seventy.”

Stubb nodded. “I’m afraid we don’t know where Mr. Free is any more than you do, Mrs. Baker.” He slapped the telephone book shut. “But we’d like to find him. I’ll write down the hotel number and the number of this room for you. If you find him or hear where he is, I want you to call me. Don’t tell those women anything until you hear from me. I doubt that there’s any money. That’s something all investigators say when they want to find someone.”

“I was thinking—” Mrs. Baker took a handkerchief from her purse. “I was thinking if he’d crashed in he might have saved his house. Paid on somebody. I used to think how lucky all of you were to room in board there.” She blew her nose, a sound like Puff sneezing. “He told me all your names, but I think I’ve got them stirred up now and you aren’t who I thought. Just the same, I feel I know you from those years ago. The dark lady’s Miz Garth, because he said Miz Garth was an adventuress, and she’s so pretty. That makes the other lady—”

The bathroom door flew open. “I have my questions!” Sandy Duck waved her notebook triumphantly.