may not have enough clients and potential clients that he can afford to insult any of them.” But Lestrade’s mind was only half on Sydney Naismith even as she answered Dave’s comment.
* * * *
The area nowadays called Vadnais Estates had been built in the Gilded Age as the neighborhood of the rich elite. After going through various hard times and slummy generations, it had been reborn, remodeled, redeveloped, repainted in the flower garden of colors they now called the true Victorian fashion, and once again occupied by the richest local elite. “Sheboy!” Dave remarked as they drove through. “Anybody hurting here, they sure don’t show it!”
“They might not, Dave. Could be people living in quiet despair here, like anywhere else. Every spare tridol going into keeping up appearances, none into the pantry.”
“And if they lose weight, they pass if off as fancy spa treatment they’re not really getting?” Dave shrugged. “What price economy? Not all of them, though. Plenty of these have got to be rich in fact. Let’s see…” He read the names above the addresses, usually displayed in custom-brass signs. “Lang…Van Geldman…Imani…Fletcher-Symthe… Ah, here they are! Dupont and O’Toole.”
One more fenced estate of half a dozen treeful acres. The husband and wife team’s tasteful plaque, mounted on their glazed blue brick gatepost, read: “Dupont & O’Toole: Fine Body Art. By appointment only.”
“Guess these floaters aren’t hurting for tridols, anyway,” Dave remarked.
Lestrade replied. “One of them could have inherited wealth, maybe both.”
“And they just tattoo for the same reason Narjinski paints and Lulabelle dances?”
“Art is where you find it, Detective.” On the gatepost opposite the one with the plaque, Lestrade located an unobtrusive black doorbell button. She tabbed it. If the power line to the front door was still in operation, fine. Otherwise, they’d give it five minutes before walking up unannounced. There was a dog the size of a seeing-eye pony just lying there beneath the birdbath, looking at them lazily. A mixed breed, like ninety-five plus percent of the population, canine and human alike. Lestrade guessed this one was predominantly Labrador and Saint Bernard, spiced with almost everything else in the Big Dog genetic line-up. It looked friendly and, if it wasn’t, Dupont and O’Toole were due a crippling fine for leaving their front gate latched instead of key-locked.
“Speaking of body art,” she went on to her junior, “when and where did you get yours, Dave?”
“Yosemite Pete to mark my high-school graduation back in Rensselaer, Gargoyle Gertie to celebrate getting out of the Navy. Did you know I’ve also got a third one, Sarge?”
Hearing a ‘bet you can’t guess where’ implied in his tone of voice, she said, “Ivy vines circling round and round your navel?”
It was pure irony on her part, but he stared openmouthed. “Wow! Sergeant Lestrade, you scare me sometimes.”
The dog got up, shook itself, and came over to the gate to lick Lestrade’s hand through the wrought-iron grille.
“It isn’t ivy,” Dave went on. “But it does circle round and round my navel. Actually, it’s a dragon spread over my chest with his tail circling around my belly button. Nobody could mistake it for ivy, so I know you didn’t sneak my shirt up and spy on me when I was napping. But…sheboy, you guess good!”
“Maybe I just know you better than either one of us was aware, Dave.”
Three minutes after Lestrade rang the bell, a mid-age blond woman in brown culottes and a green jacket-blouse with big pockets came strolling down the path and called out to them, “Eet ees by zee appointment onlee.”
“We don’t need an appointment, M.,” Lestrade told her. “We’re police detectives on official business.”
The dog looked back and forth between them, and whined a little. The blond sped up so fast her phony French accent dropped off. “Good boy, Pango. Officers?” She swung the gate open. “Whatever have we done?”
“Police business includes soliciting expert opinions, M.—Dupont, you’d be?”
She nodded. “Actually, it’s Hilga Strudelmeyer. ‘Fleur Dupont’ is my professional name.”
“What about your husband?” Clayton asked. “How many names does he have?”
“Just the one. He really is Lyman O’Toole, all the way through. I’m afraid he’s in Indianapolis today, getting supplies.”
“We may come back,” Lestrade told her, “if we find we need to. Meanwhile…” She tossed a pointed look at the mansion among the trees. Like pretty well every residence in Vadnais Estates, that place had lots of room inside.
“Oh!” said M. Dupont-Strudelmeyer. “May I ask you in? Offer you coffee or…or tea?”
“Coffee will be very welcome, M.,” Clayton replied, probably hoping for a sandwich or something else it could wash down.
Pango padded up to the house after them, probably hoping pretty much the same.
Indoors, they sat around coffee and cookies on the table in a breakfast nook big enough for zoning and bright enough for the Fourth of July, looking into a kitchen where every square centimeter that could be stone was marble or highly polished granite, and the rest was stainless steel rubbed down to a soft gleam. Probably kept up by housecleaners coming in at least every other day. Like Clayton had said, big tridols at work here. And Lestrade guessed more of those tridols came from inheritance or shrewd investments or both than from body art, no matter how exclusive and expensive.
Pango lay under the table obviously waiting for crumbs. Very biblical. What was that passage Christians liked to quote? Something about the dogs eating the scraps that fell beneath the table… “All right, Detective Clayton,” she said, “we might as well start with our missing person.”
M. Dupont-Strudelmeyer gave the photos a polite scrutiny and shook her head, more in helplessness than negation. “I think I’ve seen someone who might have been him, going into one of the houses where gamers meet. Mostly rolegamers, though the Cartiers host weekly bridge parties and the Orlovskies hold a chess tournament every couple of months. This boy…looks more like one of the rolegamers. One we’ve seen from time to time during the summer. They have a big rolegaming party at M. Imani’s every Sunday, very orderly and well-behaved young people, some oldsters as well. The Langs, and the Forester-Joneses, over on the other side of Vadnais Park, also hold rolegame parties sometimes. But this boy…he just looks like so many other young men his age, doesn’t he? You say he’s missing? How long?”
“Not long at all, M. Dupont,” said Lestrade. “Just long enough to make us ask everyone. Routine. How about clearing our lost and found item out of the way next, Detective Clayton?”
He put the catalog down on the table. The body artist examined it and shook her head. “Not ours. Very neatly done, though. I’d guess M. Hammer’s, though it could be M. Naismith’s. I’m afraid I don’t make as thorough a study of our fellow artists’ styles as I probably should. Or it could belong to somebody from out of town.”
“Thank you, M. Dupont.” Lestrade kept her voice carefully neutral. “Detective Clayton, our last item?”
Again
