With all the talk about the French café that Pete and Betty would be opening at the harbor, I tended to forget they were already the proprietors of a couple of franchise taco stands, which must have been the collateral Jack Fenton had mentioned. Or, maybe it was the food they served that gave me amnesia: watery tacos, doughy burritos, tough enchiladas, all slathered with sour cream. That was the dead giveaway; the quality of the food at a Mexican restaurant is always in inverse ration to the amount of sour cream used. The Towers must have owned a dairy; maybe that was one of Pete’s little investments on the side. My stomach recoiled at the thought of their imminent ethnic leap from Tex-Mex to French. But who was I to argue with the wisdom of the commercial loan department of the First City Bank? Although I did wonder if the bank had relied too much on economic and not enough on culinary advice.
“May I help you?” asked the youth behind the counter at the first of the two restaurants. She wore a yellow peaked cap that proclaimed, “El Biggo Taco.”
“I’m looking for Pete or Betty.”
“May I help you?” inquired the youth behind the counter at the second restaurant. His peaked cap was orange and it said, “Head Honcho.” I gathered he was the manager.
“Betty or Pete around today?”
“Try their other place.”
I finally found them at home. Neither of them was wearing a peaked cap, either yellow or orange. Either color would have clashed with the basically flamingo pink decor. Even the robe in which Betty answered the door was flaming pink, and ruffled to within an inch of its life.
“Jennifer?” She looked about as pleased as if I were collecting for a charity. It was early afternoon and she was wearing pink mules—those backless high heel slippers—with pink feathery stuff around the toes. I resolved, if she let me in, to look around the house for the Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog. She said, with evident regret, “Well, don’t just stand there, Jenny, come on in.” She left the front door open. Subtle.
I got as far as the entryway. She draped an arm across the doorway to the living room, effectively blocking my access to the rest of her home. I was rapidly losing the desire to be tactful.
“Jenny,” she said, “I hope you haven’t come here to enlist our help in support for your father. As Webster said, it’s nothing personal, you understand, but we have to think of the good of this town, and your father is not good for this town.”
Out the window with tact went my additional original intention to be kind.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, smiling gently. “I thought you’d be just the person to give us the benefit of your experience with the law.”
She stiffened, so that with her arm still propped against the doorsill, she looked like a store mannequin that somebody had stashed and forgotten.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said aggressively, but I noticed that she lowered her voice when she said it, and her eyes registered a fear she wasn’t able to hide.
I kept my voice silky, my smile on straight. “After all, Betty, it’s a matter of public record. I just thought you might be able to give us some good ideas about lawyers and dealing with the police.” Ruthlessly, I added an insinuating, “You know.” Then on a hunch, I added, “Pete around?”
“For God’s sake,” she hissed. “Be quiet.” The arm came down from the doorsill and her lacquered nails landed on my arm. She brought her face so close I could smell her breath. She’d recently used a mouthwash that was about eighty proof.
“Doesn’t Pete know?” I said, forcing myself to keep my eyes fastened on hers. “It was in the paper, Betty. How could he not know?”
“Pete knows what I tell him,” she said, and I didn’t doubt it. “For Christ’s sake, Jenny, I even read the papers to him every day! I got myself home that night, I paid the fine, I called the lawyer, Pete never knew one damn thing about it, and you’re not going to tell him now.”
Was that a threat? I wondered. Had she made a similar threat to Lobster McGee, and then carried it out?
“Nobody told him?” I said. “Nobody mentioned seeing it in the paper? Come on, Betty, you don’t believe that, do you?”
Suddenly there were tears in those eyes that were already red-rimmed from secret drinking. “Yes! I believe it! I do!”
I loosened her fingers from my arm.
“Why don’t you tell him, Betty? What could he do? If he loves you, he’ll stay with you; if he doesn’t, you can make it on your own.”
“Can I?” she said bitterly. “What do you know? Did it ever occur to you that maybe I love him?”
“No,” I said truthfully, “it never did.”
“Don’t say anything to him,” she begged, suddenly pathetic. “Swear to me you won’t tell him.”
“You need help, Betty.”
“Mind your own goddamned business!” she flared then. “Get out!”
I walked back out through the front door that she had never closed behind me, though it slammed hard enough behind me now. A rustling noise drew my eyes to the right. Pete Tower was on his knees, clipping shrubs.
“Hello, Pete.”
His head turned toward me as if it were being dragged that way. His round, bland face was suffused with an emotion that looked like hurt, but might have been hate.
I made it to my car without a misstep, but I was breathing hard when I got there. Without pausing, I started the engine and drove around the corner. I parked, switched off the ignition and leaned my head back against the seat.
Was this how detectives felt when they dipped into the dirty corners of people’s lives? Was I causing pain to innocent people—innocent, at least, of murder—in the name of saving my own family’s skin? I felt like a loose cannon on the deck of this investigation, but I started the car again, arming myself for the next skirmish.