Trip Wire_ A Cook County Mystery - Charlotte Carter [36]
Sim found a parking spot near the corner of the street. I got out of the Lincoln and walked to the moss-covered house where Wilton had grown up. I took a minute to prepare myself before I rang the doorbell. I’d be entering a house of mourning where emotions would be running high. I had managed to keep myself together this far, but there was a danger of falling apart once I was face-to-face with the grieving parents.
A small, plain woman in brown gabardine answered the door. Wilt must take after his dad, I thought at first. Then it registered: This is the maid. I gave her my name and asked if the Mobleys might have a few moments to see me.
Hope appeared a second later, before the first woman even had time to announce me. As expected, she was long and slim and handsomely coiffed. In fact, all my predictions about her seemed to be on the money. Just as I’d thought, she was dressed in costly black wool, and she looked devastated, emptied out.
But I hadn’t expected her to trip on the Persian carpet in the entryway. She went sprawling, and then just sat there. Her expression never changed.
Wilton said a fair amount of drinking had been going on in the house ever since he could remember. I figured his mother must be dulling her pain with alcohol. I ran to her, reached down to help the maid help the mistress. But there was no telltale liquor breath.
I heard the word no spoken simply and with absolute finality.
Oscar Mobley, who had thundered that word, was suddenly at the bottom of the staircase. He was considerably shorter than his wife, but in his severe dark suit he cast a long shadow. His voice carried the same kind of spooky authority that I sometimes heard in Uncle Woody’s. But if you met Woody’s eyes when he was riled, the fire there could scorch you. Not so with Mr. Mobley. His eyes were cold glass. The name of a film Owen once took me to popped into my head. Day of Wrath. Mr. Mobley had Day of Wrath eyes.
I backed away while he drew his wife to her feet and then led her off.
The woman in brown showed me into a wonderful room with a fireplace and burnt-orange leather seating. Across the room was a massive console with a Grundig hi-fi setup. Hundreds of LPs filled the built-in shelving at knee level. Leontyne Price, Beethoven, and Duke Ellington seemed to be more than fairly represented. No music in the room now, of course. But no other sounds either, not anywhere in the house. No sound, no lights burning, but a faint and dimly familiar odor. White tulips in a giant urn, but they had no scent. Oh, yes, now I had it. That faint smell was furniture polish—butcher’s wax.
Mr. Mobley had to be just as devastated and inconsolable as his wife. He had his own way of showing it. No clumsiness in him. Deliberate movements. A curt nod and a slight bow to me. Funny—the first time, he made his entrance with the word no. This time, he said “Yes?”
He had wasted no words. But when I told him who I was, his vocabulary expanded quickly enough. I said his eyes were cold. Make that glacial . . . arctic . . . polar.
“I see,” Oscar Mobley said. “You’re one of the doping morons he chose to throw his life away on.”
The loathing in his voice brought to mind an incident I hadn’t thought about in years. The first time I was allowed to ride the el all on my own, I promptly got lost, found myself way the hell out around Western Avenue. Two white girls were giving me filthy looks, laughing at me behind their hands. One of them kept glancing at me and then holding her nose as if she smelled something foul.
I guess I had about the same reaction to those bitches that I had now. Hurt, trembling humiliation turning bit by bit into impotent rage. Wanting to strike out but also wanting to crawl into a hole.
I cleared my throat. “Wilton didn’t throw his life anywhere, Mr. Mobley. His life was taken from him.”
“You have the audacity to be