I didn’t dare go inside the Southern Club. I was parked down the block from the entrance, watching for Ella Borland to come out, at the same time ready to bolt if I saw sign of the cops. I’d already stiffed a call to the Southern to check she was there – hanging up before the man on the other end could ask any questions. Now all I could do was wait for her to show.
An hour in, my legs were aching and I had a headache. There was enough traffic around to keep me hidden in plain sight, but I was wondering if I should move on anyway. Then she appeared, hitting the street in a plain skirt and jacket, her face showing only touches of stage makeup. She turned and walked in the opposite direction from where I was parked, so I pulled out and drove after her. As I caught up to her, I slowed to fall in step, and drew up close. ‘Miss Borland.’
She stopped and I pulled over to do the same. She looked at me as if she’d been spooked by a wild animal, and I thought she was about to run. Then she came over, gazing at me through the open passenger window. ‘Mr Yates, what are you doing here?’
‘I need to talk to you. Would you allow me to give you a ride, please?’
‘You asked me where Clay Tucker’s brother lived. The last time I saw you—’
‘It’s not what you think. I didn’t kill him.’
She stared at me and I held her eyes with mine, willing her to believe me.
Before she could say anything more, a man appeared at her side. He had his hands in his pockets, was squinting at me through the window. William Tindall.
‘Everything all right here, Ella?’
She blanched, whipped around to look at him.
‘Everything’s fine,’ I said. ‘I’m just talking to the lady.’
‘That right? Would’ve thought you’d have manners enough to step out of your car at least, eh?’ He spoke with a mongrel accent, strains of Hell’s Kitchen Irish crossed with British – but not the kind you heard on the Pathé films; a regional dialect, coarser. He was wearing a baggy three-piece suit, and the same newsboy cap I’d seen before, pulled low over his left eye.
‘This doesn’t concern you, friend,’ I said. ‘Move on.’
He laid one hand on the roof of the car, leaning closer. ‘That’s where you’re wrong. You’re talking to one of my girls like you’re trawling for company, and that concerns me very much.’
‘Mr Tindall, please, it’s no trouble,’ Borland said. ‘This is an acquaintance of mine, he was offering to give me a ride home.’
He never took his eyes off me. ‘Isn’t that gallant.’
I held his look, feeling as though he was sizing me up. Despite his slight frame, he carried himself in a way that exuded power and control.
He reached down and opened the passenger door. I started to swivel in my seat, thinking he was about to come at me, but he pulled it wide and held it open for Borland. ‘My apologies, then. Don’t let me hold you up.’
Borland looked from me to him and back, then squeezed around him and folded herself into the passenger seat. Tindall shut the door gently, then crouched to look at me again. ‘Pay me no mind, pal. I’m protective where the fairer sex are concerned – I were raised by women, see.’ There was a twinkle in his eyes as he said it, and even though his tone had softened, I still heard menace in it.
Borland smiled nervously. ‘Thank you, Mr Tindall. I’ll see you this evening.’
He nodded and patted the roof. ‘See her to her door safe, now. You’ll answer to me if not.’ He winked and then watched as we drove away. Looking at him in the rearview, still staring, I couldn’t shake the feeling that he knew exactly who I was.
*
Ella Borland sat as far along from me as she could get. ‘You can let me out once we get around the corner. I couldn’t think what else to say back there.’
‘Thank you for not telling him who I was. I promise you, I didn’t have anything to do with Clay Tucker’s death.’
She looked at me out of the corner of her eye, then straight ahead again. ‘I believe you. I wouldn’t have got in the car if I didn’t.’
‘Where do you live? I’ll drive you.’
‘That won’t be necessary.’
‘It’s no trouble.’
She flattened her skirt, turning her head to me now. ‘Make a right after the next block.’
I nodded, switching lanes. ‘You work for Tindall?’
‘I work for the Southern.’
‘And he owns it?’
‘I don’t know, I just dance there.’ She turned a little towards me. ‘I was trying to reach you, before. The man at your motel said you’d disappeared. When I heard on the radio – the killing – I assumed—’
‘That I was on the lam?’
She cleared her throat and looked away again, said nothing.
‘I told you, I didn’t do it. I went there that morning, after I saw you, but someone else was there after me. I’m starting to think I was set up.’
‘By who?’
‘By whoever killed Jimmy.’
She reached into her purse, pulled out a compact. ‘You say that as though you’re sure now.’
‘I am.’
She held it in her fingertips but made no move to open it. ‘How?’
‘Clay Tucker was warned about the fire before it happened.’
‘What?’
‘I think that’s why he was killed – because he told me as much.’
‘Who warned him?’
‘Cole Barrett.’
The compact slipped from her grip. She moved swiftly to snatch it up from the footwell, fumbling it as she put it away again.
‘Is everything all right?’
She pointed up ahead. ‘You can leave me at the corner here. Thank you.’
‘I’ll gladly take you to your door, ma’am.’
‘No.’ By the look on her face, it came out firmer than she meant it to. She swallowed and when she spoke next, her voice was softer. ‘Thank you, this will be fine.’
I drew up to the kerb and stopped. We were at the intersection of Orange and Ouachita, a bank on one corner, a bar opposite, businesses along both streets – not a residential neighbourhood. She thanked me again and reached for her door handle.
‘Ma’am, why were you trying to call me?’
‘Pardon me?’
‘You said before you were trying to reach me. I was wondering why.’
She looked to the handle, then back at her lap. ‘I was curious as to how you were faring in your endeavours, that was all.’
‘I’m getting closer.’
She glanced up at me. ‘To finding who killed Jimmy?’
‘To the truth.’ I put my hand on the dash. ‘You’re not curious about Barrett? What I told you just now?’
She took a clipped breath. ‘I don’t see what it matters.’
‘A girl as smart as you? No sale. Now I think about it, anytime I’ve mentioned him, you’ve gone cold on me. If there’s something you’d like to talk to me about . . .’
‘There’s nothing.’
‘Doesn’t it throw a new light on what happened to Jeannie Runnels? Doesn’t it make you question what really happened with Barrett and Walter Glover?’
She turned her head away so she was facing the passenger window.
‘Either Barrett killed Jimmy, or he knows who did. I know Jimmy confronted him. What did he have?’
I could hear her breathing – shallow, rapid.
‘Miss Borland?’
‘I told you, I don’t know.’
I took Robinson’s pictures of her from the bag and dropped them on the seat between us. ‘Here.’
She turned around to look. She tried to keep her features expressionless, but her eyes widened enough to betray surprise. ‘Who took these?’
‘They were Jimmy’s.’
She picked up the image closest to her and examined it. Then a second, and a third.
‘You told me you weren’t close, but so far as I can tell, you’re the only person Jimmy passed any time with while he was here. From the looks of these, he was holding a candle for you. Are you telling me he never once confided in you?’
She stared at the picture of her with William Tindall, and I noticed her jaw muscles tense.
‘I think there’s something you want to tell me,’ I said. ‘I think that’s why you agreed to meet me in the first place, it’s why you were calling me, and it’s why you haven’t got out of this damn car yet, even though—’
She flung the picture down onto the seat. ‘Walter Glover didn’t kill Jeannie.’ She threw her hands to her face.
The sound of passing traffic filled the car.
I watched her, waiting, gave her some time to keep talking. My throat was tight.
Thirty seconds passed. I was about to try coaxing her when she lowered her hands. ‘Jimmy told me Glover didn’t kill her. Or Bess Prescott.’
I took my hands off the wheel, turned to her very slowly. ‘Who did?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think he knew.’ A tear came to her eye and she dabbed at it with her forefinger.
‘How did he come to that conclusion?’
She shook her head, then met my eyes, imploring me. ‘I swear to you, that’s all he said.’
I tried to give her a handkerchief but she refused it. ‘How long have you known?’
‘Jimmy told me last week, just before the fire. I’ve been so unsure, I— It didn’t make sense to me, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t think you’d believe me.’
I said nothing, thinking it through. Walter Glover was still incarcerated when Ginny Kolkhorst was pulled out of Lake Hamilton in April. If Robinson somehow knew her killer was the same man who went on to murder Runnels and Prescott, he would have known it couldn’t have been Glover.
‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ Her eyes were burning a hole in mine.
‘Don’t put words in my mouth. I believe you, all right. I’d just like to know how Jimmy put it together.’
She said nothing to that, started plucking at the hem of her skirt. In the mirror, I glimpsed a Hot Springs PD prowler cruise across the intersection behind us, heading away. I inched lower in my seat, checking the intersection in front and the streets around for any others.
‘Do you think Cole Barrett was behind Jeannie’s death?’ she asked.
I rubbed my face, thinking about all the evidence and all the dead ends, the stolen papers, everything that pointed back to him. I remembered his face when he ambushed me in my room, the speed with which he’d drawn his weapon and left me with no doubt he was capable of killing. But there was something else too, something I hadn’t understood until now – his eyes showed no hatred. Almost closer to regret. His insistence that he’d tried to warn Robinson. ‘I don’t know. I have to make a telephone call. Let me drop you somewhere.’
She opened the door, determined that she would walk the rest of the way. ‘What are you going to do now?’
I hadn’t set on the decision in my head, but a surge of fear welled in me. ‘Lay low a few days. If you don’t hear from me in seventy-two hours, go see Samuel Masters, tell him everything you know.’