"Sugar?"
"Okay."
"How many teaspoons?"
"Half of one."
Oscar"s immense eyebrows rose like two bales of black hay giving way to a great subterranean upheaval.
"Don"t have much of a sweet tooth," I apologized.
Oscar gave a slight shrug.
"And you?" he asked Miss Fine.
"The usual."
"It"s rather early, don"t you think?"
"The usual," she repeated.
Oscar shrugged again, turned, and went back behind the bookcase. For all I knew there was a closet back there where he lived with a maid, a chauffeur, and a cook.
"Now, Miss Fine," I said.
"He"s not a very good servant, is he?" she asked.
"I wouldn"t know," I said. "Never had a butler and never been one."
"Are you here on business?"
"I"m working for Milo Sweet, like Oscar said."
"Oh, Mr. Sweet. You know I like that name. Sweet. I love sweets, and so I liked his name right away."
"You asked Mr. Sweet to look for Bartholomew Perry."
"Bartholomew? I did?"
"That"s what he told me."
"He did? Well then he must be right."
By that time I was completely lost. Either Winifred Fine was senile or so wily that there was no way for me to understand her motives.
"Why do you think you might have wanted him to find BB?" I asked.
"What did Mr. Sweet say I wanted?"
"He said that you wanted to have a secret talk with Bartholomew."
Miss Fine grinned and ducked her head as if we were exchanging confidences.
"Your tea," Oscar said.
He had come in from behind the bookcase with a silver tray supported by his left hand. The tray held a slender tumbler of milky ice tea and a squat gla.s.s filled with amber liquid. I took my gla.s.s. Oscar then proffered the tray to his mistress. She took the liquor with eagerness.
"Miss Fine will see you now," Oscar said to me.
"What?" I said.
"She"s waiting for you in her sitting room."
"Isn"t this Miss Fine?"
"Rose Fine," Oscar said. "Miss Winifred is waiting for you in her sitting room."
"But he"s my guest," Rose Fine whined. "I"m all dressed up."
"I"ll be back in just a little bit," I said.
I took the old woman"s hand and kissed it.
She gasped and yanked the hand away.
10.
"I AM WINIFRED FINE," the woman standing in the doorway said. the woman standing in the doorway said.
She was almost my height (which is five foot eight) and slender, the color of twilight after a storm. She had been beautiful as a young woman. She was handsome today.
"Paris Minton," I said.
I extended my hand and she turned her back on me, gliding into the large sitting room that Oscar had led me to.
This room was immaculate. The custard-colored walls, edged in dark wood, were twenty feet high. From the ceiling there hung a crystal-and-amber chandelier the like of which I"d never seen before or since. The light through the different crystals was both brilliant and warm. It seemed like a fireplace blazing from the ceiling.
"Have a seat, Mr. Minton."
Along the walls there were several framed landscape paintings, hung all in a line. At the end of the room were full-length purple curtains. There was a large desk before them and then four red-and-blue-striped sofas that formed a square. I took a seat at the corner of one of the sofas. At the edge of the couch opposite me was a toy gyroscope, the kind that had a slender pump at the top with a bright red handle made from wood.
"A child?" I asked the lady.
"Yes," she said with a happy smile that bordered on being a grin. "My grandson had been staying with me for a while. He"s away for a few nights with some friends on holiday."
I wondered what kind of friends millionaire black women had.
Oscar took up a post at my side. I got the feeling that if I made any quick movements he would shoot me before I could be of any threat to the lady.
Winifred did not sit.
"Why are you here, Mr. Minton?"
"To get information."
"But I thought you worked for Mr. Sweet? Certainly he told you all you need to know."
"I like to do my own investigations," I said.
"I don"t understand." She inclined her head.
Winifred Fine was wearing a two-piece suit that was deep blue in color. When I had first seen her I thought that she was in her late forties. But seeing her figure under that thin material I figured that she was closer to sixty.
"I got questions," I said.
"What questions?" Oscar asked me.
"Like for instance. Do you know a friend of BB"s called Hercules Wexler?"
The lady seemed unperturbed but Oscar straightened up a bit. His boss noticed this too.
"Who is he?" Oscar asked.
"Big white dude that BB"s been doin" business with." I figured they might have worked together, seeing that they were both in the used car business.
"Why do you bring this information to me?" Winifred asked. "Why not tell the man who employed you?"
"Milo is the excitable type, Miss Fine. When things get rough he goes all to pieces. He asked me to look for BB because I"m a little more levelheaded."
"What do you mean, "when things get rough"?"
"Why are you looking for Bartholomew?"
"That is none of your business."
"You"re right about that, ma"am. But I was sleepin" in my bed this morning and suddenly I found myself all involved in your business. People started knockin" on my door and talkin" to me about your troubles. Some of them lied, others were just confused. One man even said that someone could get killed if he looked too deep into the whereabouts of BB or his friends. Two men have already disappeared."
"What men?" Winifred asked.
"Kit Mitch.e.l.l, for instance."
That got the spinster"s attention.
"What about him?"
"That"s what I wanted to know from you. Seems like Kit and BB"s two peas in a pod."
"What have you found out, Mr. Minton?" Winifred asked.
"I already told you just about everything I know," I said. "Now it"s your turn."
Winifred stole a glance at Oscar and then strode toward the great curtains. She went to a corner and pulled on a braided golden rope. The rope must have been connected to a weighted pulley, because the heavy drapes opened effortlessly. The twenty-foot windows revealed a sun-soaked garden I would never have suspected after seeing the desolate front yard.
Great pines and eucalyptus trees made the walls of Winifred"s private Eden, protecting pomegranate and loquat trees that bore fruit in the midst of golden and scarlet flowers. Birds flitted from bough to bough as a huge tiger-striped cat watched motionlessly from the base of a marble fountain. The fountain gave off a continual spray upon the nude figure carved from an onyxlike stone. The sculpture was of an obviously Negro woman. She had small b.r.e.a.s.t.s and a largish b.u.t.t. With one hand she attempted to maintain her modesty and with the other she was reaching for some unknown goal far above.
I could feel myself become s.e.xually aroused, but I wasn"t sure if it was because of the woman depicted or the wealth the garden represented.
"You like my garden, Mr. Minton?" Winifred asked me.
I realized that I had gotten to my feet and approached the window. Oscar was standing at my elbow.
"It"s beautiful," I said.
"That woman was me," she said proudly.
I could see it, mainly in the shape of the face.
"It"s surprising," I said.
"That I was once young and beautiful?"
"That the front yard is in such a mess but back here is like a paradise."
"The front of the house is my sister"s responsibility," Winifred Fine said, rather petulantly for a woman of such power.
"About BB Perry," I prodded.
"I saw you looking at the paintings along my walls," she said instead of answering. "They are all by Edward Mitch.e.l.l Bannister. Do you know his work?"
"I"m not really up on my painting," I said. "I mean, I"ve seen a lot of them in art books but I don"t know the artists" names as a rule, except the Postimpressionists. They"re so wild it"s easy to tell the difference in styles."
"Bannister was a great landscape artist of the nineteenth century. He was a black man. The first truly great landscape artist that this country ever had."
I"m a well-read individual. It"s unusual that I meet a man or woman who has gone through more books than I have. I"ve met English teachers who didn"t know as much about literature. But for all my stores of knowledge I"d never heard of Bannister before that day.
Winifred Fine saw that knowledge and wealth impressed me.
"Bartholomew is my nephew by blood," she said. "His father, Esau, was my sister"s husband."
"Uh-huh."
"Esau is a fool, and his son takes after him."