I had found most of my answers. I had my story. There were a few gaps, but I had a clear idea of who could fill them. I hailed a taxi and gave the driver a Park Avenue address. I told the driver to pull up across the street from Goodfellowe mansion and wait. I handed him a bill.
“Will that cover you for an hour?”
“Oh, yeah. It sure will.”
I didn’t have any more of that particular denomination, so I hoped we wouldn’t have to wait too long. It was already nine at night. Theoretically dinner was over and all domestic chores done.
Park Avenue is an elegant block. Even the shadows are elegant. Long dark cars moved up and down the street, pausing before doormen buildings to discharge gents in top hats and ladies in fur. I watched them for a while, but soon got bored. Park Avenue didn’t have the action I was used to. It was nice, but it wasn’t Lenox.
Minutes dragged by. The cabbie tried to gab, but after a few of my monosyllabic responses, he got the message and lapsed into silence. More minutes crawled by. It was getting close to the hour mark and I was beginning to wonder whether this was such a good idea, when the door to servants’ entrance opened and he come out, a tall thin man with a sense of natural grace. His gray hat was tilted to one side; his immaculate dark overcoat hung straight and true.
“Pick him up,” I said.
The driver started the engine, rolled across the street and drew alongside the curb. I lowered the window and called out, “Roland!”
He jumped back. “Who’s there?”
“It’s me.”
“Miss Lanie?” His relief was palpable.
“Get in, Roland. Let’s go someplace and have a coffee.”
“Well, I—I had plans for this evening.”
“This won’t take long. I’d really like to have a talk.”
“About Beth? Did you see her?”
I pushed opened the door and slid over. He hesitated, but then got in. We drove uptown to a blues bar near the Cotton Club. Outside, a billboard advertised Bessie Smith. The club was in a half-basement. It was a crowded, narrow room with a small podium at one end. It sounded like Bessie had the mike. We squeezed up to the bar, just inside the door.
“It’s a dive,” I said, “but a comfortable one.”
“Yeah,” he said, looking around, taking off his leather gloves. “Looks okay.”
The bartender appeared, a woman in her forties with a thick waist and tired expression. “What’ll it be?”
“Just coffee for me,” I said.
She raised an eyebrow, but then shrugged and turned to Roland.
“The same.”
“All right, then. Coffee it is,” she said, waddling away.
Somebody left, opening the door, and a blast of frigid December air came in. I repressed a shiver. Roland looked at me and smiled.
He was around sixty, old enough to be Beth’s father, but attractive. How did he feel about her? Had he given me her address so I could spy on her for him? Was he jealous of her and her relationship with her baby’s father? Could he have been the father himself?
“How long have you been with Mrs. Goodfellowe?”
“Nigh on forty years.”
“You like working for her?”
He shrugged. “It’s a job.”
“So you were there before Beth came?”
He nodded. “I helped train her. She … she was a good child.”
“Was?”
He put down his cup, encircled it with his hands. “Things changed after Mr. Eric arrived. You know, Miss Katherine’s second husband?”
“Changed how?”
“Well ... I think he gave Beth ideas, the kind that no colored girl should have.”
“Such as?”
He had such a hangdog expression that I felt a surge of pity. It seemed obvious what he was getting at. But experience had taught me the danger of making assumptions. So I asked him straight out:
“Did he make love to her?”
The hands on the cup tightened. “He talked to her and I’m sure he got her to meet with him. To go places with him, and yes, maybe even let him ... you know.”
I spoke gently. “Were you in love with her?”
He gave a bitter chuckle. “Now what would I be doing, a man of my age, in love with a little bitty girl like that?”
“Why not? You’re a good-looking man. Elegant. Well-mannered. A lot of young women I know would ...”
He shook his head. “You’re awful nice to tell an old man that. But I know better.”
“What a man knows, or thinks he knows, and what he feels are two different things. So, tell me, were you or aren’t you?”
He nodded. “Okay, yeah. I guess I was soft on her.” He smiled sheepishly. “Heck, I was crazy ‘bout her.”
After that, it was easy to get him to talk. He wanted to get it out.
Following the robbery, everyone was so preoccupied by the investigation that no one noticed the changes in Beth. One day it hit Roland that her waistline had expanded.
“It was like there was nothing there one day and she was showing the next. By the time I noticed, it was too late. I was gonna talk to her, but Miss Katherine sent for her that same day. It happened so fast. One minute she was on staff, the next she was out on the street. I tried to talk to her, but she shrugged me off, told me not to worry. ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘I’m gonna be well taken care of.’”
“What did you think she meant by that?”
“Well, I suppose I believed—or wanted to believe—that maybe her baby’s father hadn’t walked off after all. You know, that’s what we’d all supposed, but how were we to know?”
“Had you ever heard her mention anybody? Seen her with someone?” I had a specific person in mind, but I wanted him to be the one to mention him.
He reflected. “No ... I didn’t.”
“Did you think she was just talking to reassure you?”
“Yes—and no. I mean, I’d always sensed a certain steel in her, deep down beneath all that softness. I’d always suspected something tough as nails. But the way she talked to me when she left that day, there was something more, something that, well ... that bothered me.”
The bartender reappeared. “Want anything more?”
Roland and I both shook our heads, no. He tipped his cup up, looking into it, but seeing something else entirely.
“Weeks went by. I thought about her. I admit it. I couldn’t get her out of my mind. We didn’t have an address for her, but we knew nobody had hired her, nobody worth mentioning.”
“You mean nobody in Miss Katherine’s rank and file.”
“That’s right. We would’ve heard about it.”
He took a sip of his coffee and grimaced. I watched him set his cup back down and asked my next question.
“So how did you find out where she was living?”
“I followed her.”
He’d seen her on 125th Street. It was about a month after she’d been dismissed. He nearly went up to her, to ask her how she was doing, but something stopped him. At first he didn’t know what it was, but then it him that she looked incredibly slim. Her stomach was flat. She wasn’t pregnant.
Had she lost the child? Now he wasn’t sure what to do. What would he say? If she had lost the child, then would she be interested in getting her old job back? Maybe he could talk to her about that.
But even that idea failed to put him at ease. There was something about the quick smile she gave the vegetable dealer and something else in the snazzy way she was dressed. It was all wrong.
He was a widower. He and his wife had never been able to have children, but they had tried. His wife had endured three miscarriages before giving up. So he knew a little bit about how women reacted to losing a child, especially so late in the pregnancy. His wife had been torn up about it. He’d heard other men talking about their girlfriends and wives who’d miscarried, saying their women had gone through the same thing. He told himself that different women reacted differently, but couldn’t help wondering just how well he knew Beth after all.
He followed her home. He didn’t have the nerve to go up to her apartment and talk to her, so he took down the address and went away wondering. More than wondering. Worried.
And perplexed.
He took a deep breath, rubbed his face with his hands. “You must think I’m a sick, dirty old man, chasing after a child like that.”
“I don’t think that at all.”
“You’ll change your mind when you hear what else I’m thinking.”
“I don’t think so, but go ahead and tell me.”
He rested his elbows on the bar. “It’s this way. I told you that I never heard her talk about a man one way or another. And it drove me crazy. She got a bit sassy after Mr. Eric took an interest in her. Naturally, she got real quiet after he died.”
I could imagine.
“If it hadn’t been for the fact that Mr. Eric was dead,” Roland said, “I would’ve wondered whether he fathered her child. I’m ashamed to admit it, but it would be a lie to deny it.”
“No reason to deny it. Those things have been known to happen.”
“But she never said nothing about nobody else, and now I don’t know what to think.” He paused. “Well, I do know what I think, but it’s not pretty.”
“And what’s that?”
“I don’t think she was pregnant at all.” He bit his lower lip. I couldn’t tell whether he was trying to hold the words in or to force them out. “I think—it sounds crazy to say it—but I think she wanted to be fired.”
I frowned, genuinely surprised. It was a conclusion I hadn’t seen coming.
“Why would she want that?”
He scratched his head. “I don’t know.”
I was about to ask another question when the bartender appeared. She slapped her check on the bar. Roland reached for his wallet.
“It’s on me.” I picked up the bill, and then stared at it. “Seventy cents? For just two cups of coffee?”
“No, miss. It’s twenty cents. That’s a two, not a seven.”
“Oh,” I said, relieved. Then I had a thought. “Do you have a telephone?”
“In back. By the ladies’ room.”
I paid the bill and added a nice tip that sent her away with a smile. Then I pushed away from the bar.
“Roland, could you excuse me for a second?”
“Sure.” He looked bewildered.
It took two minutes to cut through the crowd. Once I at the telephone, I dug out Sophie Carter’s number.
“Mrs. Carter? It’s Lanie. Sorry to disturb you so late, but I need you to check on something.”
“What is it?”
“Tillman’s appointment book. Could you double-check when he was supposed to have met with Denver Sutton?”
“Is it important?”
“Could be.”
“Well, all right. Wait a second.”
She put down the receiver. I heard her moving about. The telephone was in the room Carter had used as an office. She was back within a minute.
“I found the appointment book,” she said. “Hold on.” The light sound of her ruffling pages came down the line. “Oh, here, yes. Here it is.” A pause. “It was for the second of August.”
My heart thumped. “I was sure it was for the seventh.”
“Tillman’s two has a short tail. Many people take it for a seven.”
“Thanks.” I hung up and just stood there for a second.
A seven. A seven. I had thought it was August seventh.
I remembered Roland. I had to get back to him. I pushed my way through the crowd and was relieved to see him still sitting there.
“Wow,” he said. “You look like you got good news.”
“Yeah. Sort of like an early Christmas present. Feels like it, anyway.”
“Is it about Beth?”
My smile faded and I shook my head. “No. It has nothing to do with her.”
“So, how is she?” he asked, his voice tentative.
“Doing well,” I said, thinking how he wouldn’t recognize his little friend in her anymore. “You know, it’s funny … how you said she might not have had a baby. When I was in her apartment, I didn’t see any sign of a child, so I asked her about it. She told me she’d sent him down South to stay with her mother.”
He frowned. “Her mother? But that can’t be.”
“Why not?”
“Her mother’s dead. Been dead. For more’n twenty years.”
Another shock. “Are you sure?”
“Sure I’m sure. Beth grew up in an orphanage. And she’s not from down South neither. The orphanage is up there on 125th Street. You know the one, St. Jude’s Orphan Asylum. It’s run by a convent.”
“Beth, in a convent orphanage?”
“I went up there with her one day. She wanted to visit ‘em, take a cake to the kids.”
“And the nuns knew her?”
“Oh, they knew her, all right. They sure did.”