In this chapter, Law and Bea look into Preston's gambling and find something they didn't expect to find. Law also finds out more about his unlikely companion.
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Wasted Life a Law Edwards Mystery by Sam Stefanik
20 The Real Bea
I didn't lead us back to the office. I had a half an idea and directed our steps back to Preston's original address at the rooming house. When we arrived on the sidewalk in front of it, I explained my idea to Bea.
"Whatever spooked him, came from this neighborhood." I said and waved my hand in the air to indicate the well-maintained blocks around us. "It had to come from here or he wouldn't have moved. Your brother was a conspicuous guy. We found that out from the waitress at the slum diner. All you had to do was start to describe him and she filled in the rest. The trouble is, because he stuck out like he did, if something threatened him, he'd have to get far away from it. Even if the threat was five or six blocks from here, that's still too close for a guy that stood out like he did.
"Let's ask around and see if we can get a handle on his movements or habits. I especially want to know where he was last Saturday. You ask here." I pointed up the walk at the front of the rooming house. "The manager will probably let you talk to the tenants before she'd let me. When you're done here, then check at the stores, diners, everywhere there's people that would notice him. I'm going to check the bars and any place that looks like they'd have a bookmaker. Let's do a block in every direction and meet back here in two hours."
Bea was excited to do some real detective work. I was happy she could talk to people who would either be intimidated by, or suspicious of me. I still had Preston's photo in my pocket and Bea had one in her wallet. We split up and started our search.
About an hour and a half later, I was getting discouraged. I never realized how many places had bookmakers in the back room. I felt like I'd talked to a dozen of them in the ninety minutes I'd been searching. In that time, I'd had four short beers, made several twenty-five cent bets, and had gotten nowhere. I wondered if Bea was having any better luck as I shouldered my way into another of the endless identical bars that I assumed would have a bookmaker.
This bar was named the Turnstiles Tavern, which seemed an original name in spite of the fact that the inside of the bar was as cookie-cutter as the outside was. Even the fat bartender was made from the same pattern as all the others I'd seen. He leaned on the barback and read the paper while he waited for a customer.
At the end of the bar was just what I expected to find, a small room with a small-time bookmaker in it. I expected that's what I would find because that's what I'd found it in every other tavern I'd been in. Since I seemed to be on a merry-go-round of taverns and bookmakers, I did what I'd done in every other bar. I ordered a short beer and made a quarter bet with the bookmaker. I tasted my short beer and showed Preston's photo to the bartender.
"That kid, sure." The fat man grunted around a dead cigar he had clamped in his teeth. He took the gnawed tobacco out of his face to speak the rest of his piece. "He's been in here every Saturday down at the end. He always had a few drinks and we're never full, so I let him alone.
"He'd be here all day cluttering up the bar with the racing form, a slide rule, and these little blue paperback books. I guess he was working on a system or something. Don't ask me how math helps pick horses. He'd make a quarter bet now and then. He won a little more than he lost, but not enough to make me think he had it figured out."
I had another sip of my short beer and pretended not to be interested in the man's information. "How about last Saturday?" I asked.
The bartender shook his head. "Come to think of it, he wasn't here. I wondered what happened to him."
That was all the bartender could tell me, so I finished my short beer and left. After that, I checked a few more places and struck out at each one. With very little to show for my efforts, and because my two hours was almost up, I directed my steps back to Preston's old rooming house. At the appointed time, I strolled up the front walk with my hands in my pockets and stood to wait for Bea. She came down the sidewalk at a breathless clip and stopped in front of me like a sprinter who'd just finished a race.
"How'd you do?" I asked.
Bea gave her report with precision, no extra words and no emotion in her voice. I felt like I was listening to a newsreader on the radio. The facts she relayed were general and mostly background information. It turned out that the women who Bea spoke to, especially the motherly types at the shops and stands, all remembered Preston as a well-mannered young man who spent carefully. Some said he seemed sad, maybe lonely, but always polite. The surprise came from his neighbor in the rooming house. "She said that Pres was home all-day Saturday listening to the radio." Bea announced.
That didn't make any sense. I got mad because nothing made any sense. Every time I thought we were getting close to something, fitting the puzzle pieces together, we found something else, some little fact that scattered the pieces across the room. "FUCK!" I shouted and threw my hands up in frustration.
Bea shrank away from my anger and my swearing. Her reaction made me regret the profanity. Since Bea and I had become real allies, I decided that I needed to stop subjecting her to my every verbal impulse. I strangled my anger and offered a path forward. "It's time to go back to the office and work this out."
I set off and pounded my feet on the pavement in frustration. Even if I didn't shout my anger, I still felt it. I also realized that I was hungry. It was after two o'clock, and Bea and I had just spent too much time getting exactly nowhere. Nothing made any fucking sense. I grumbled questions and venom to the air as we walked. "Why would he waste the day? If he did, why would he move? What scared him? Why leave that nice rooming house for a filthy slum? None of this makes any f...ahem, damn sense."
On the way to the office, I stopped at a bookmaker who I patronized from time to time. I asked for and borrowed the race results from Saturday the 13th. Bea and I also picked up some lunchmeat sandwiches and hard pretzels at a neighborhood deli.
We pushed into my office and set the food aside so I could check the racing form I'd just acquired against Preston's notebook. Preston's system predicted eighteen of the thirty-six 1, 2, 3 spots, and two trifectas. If he would have had the hundred bucks he'd been asking for, he could have won every penny he needed for his degree and a lot more.
Bea seemed as frustrated as I was. She gave vent to some strong emotion. "WHY DIDN'T HE TELEPHONE ME?" She demanded and shook the racing form in my face. "I would have helped him. I couldn't have gotten a hundred dollars, but maybe I could have gotten fifty. At least I had twenty-eight."
The sound of Bea's anger made me realize what mine had sounded like. I felt like I was blaming Preston for being dead. I tried to modulate my tone. "Don't be too hard on him." I offered what I hoped would be a gentle word to Bea. "He knew it was dangerous and didn't want to get you involved. I respect him for not calling you."
I changed the subject to get away from the anger. "We're missing something." I said to sum up the morning we'd spent. We knew more than we had at the outset, but the facts we'd uncovered were confusing. I spoke my thoughts aloud to organize them.
"Something changed his plans. He was following one path, and then something changed. What was it? Two Saturdays ago, the 6th, he was at the Turnstiles Tavern all day like he'd been every other Saturday. That week he contacted people looking for money and help and found none. Friday the 12th, he stole the blueprints, visited Simon, and gave him a black eye. The next day he wasted. On Sunday he moved, but if he wasn't afraid of the gamblers, he moved for no reason that I can see."
I wracked my brain some more, then I remembered I was hungry. I threw everything aside so we could eat. I cleared Preston's stuff off my desk to make room and Bea set the food out. I sat in my swivel chair, and Bea pulled the visitor's chair to the edge of the desk. We opened our sandwiches and divided up the pretzels.
Bea wanted to talk about the case between bites, but I stopped her. "Sometimes a topic can be too much discussed. Let's talk about something else. Tell me about you."
Bea frowned at the idea of talking about herself. "There's nothing to tell. Preston was the special one."
I pressed her for more information. I laid out what I already knew about her as a way to prompt Bea to fill in the blanks. "There's more to you than being Preston's sister." I insisted. "I know your mother died when you were five and you were raised by your architect father. You presumably went through primary and secondary school. You work in your father's office as a draftsman...draftsperson and an indentured servant.
"You're more comfortable in slacks than a skirt, and you're far from a shrinking timid woman. That's some interesting background, but that's all it is. There's got to be more to who you are. And, I apologize for the indentured servant comment, that was out of line."
Bea chuckled and leaned back in her chair to chew a mouthful before she answered. "Don't be sorry, you're not wrong. My father didn't so much raise us, as he molded us. When my mother died, he rearranged his office hours to match to our school hours and signed us both up for after school activities, so he could work a full day. In the summers, we were pawned-off on neighbors, relatives with children, or we came to the office with father. If we went to the office, and the weather was nice, father would leave us at a nearby park and tell us to behave."
She paused for another bite of sandwich and didn't continue until she'd chewed and swallowed. "When Preston was 12, father signed him up for track and field. His long stride made him a good cross-country runner. Pres was tall even then and getting taller every day. In middle school, Father enrolled Pres in advanced math and science classes. Pres did great in them.
"I idolized my brother. I was jealous of the attention my father gave him and not me. I did everything he did. I dressed like a boy, I tried to join the cross-country team, but girls aren't allowed. I trained on my own, ran myself silly. I took math and science classes and begged my father to let me help in the office. Eventually he did, but he never lets me do anything important. He never tries to teach me anything about his business, even when I ask him to. He always keeps me on menial tasks. I guess I'm just his little helper. All his hopes were pinned on Preston."
Bea stopped again for another bite and a sip of water. "You see, my father was good at math and science. He was on the cross-country team in high school and college. He has his own architecture firm. He thinks that we should want what he wants, and we did. We did except that my brother turned out to be a homosexual. When my father disowned Preston, I don't think he was as crushed about losing a son as much as that all his grand plans were ruined. Now my father's dream is gone, and my brother is dead."
"What about you?" I asked again through a mouthful of pretzels.
"What about me?" Bea parroted. "I'm a woman, but I hate this dress. I hate ironing a wave in my hair. I can't stand wearing make-up. I hate pretending to be a `little woman.'" She flipped her hair in a mocking gesture of an overly feminine woman. "I resent that my father raised me just like he raised Preston, but now he wants me to be a demure girl. I don't know how.
"I don't belong with men because I'm not one, and I don't belong with women, because I'm not one of them either. I'm eighteen years old and I don't know where I fit." She stamped her right foot, looked up, and flushed that she'd said as much as she did. She tried to apologize it away. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make a speech."
I shook my head at Bea to dismiss her worry. I also felt emboldened by her honesty and asked a question I wouldn't have otherwise. "Did your father teach you to swallow your emotions?"
Bea nodded a very shallow nod, barely a dip of her chin. "After my mother died, Father let me and Preston cry when he told us about it, and once more at the funeral. After that, we were forbidden to be sad. I haven't cried, not more than a few tears, since then." She explained.
`Christ, she's more like me than her brother is.' I thought with a shake of my head. My heart went out to the poor, frustrated girl. I tried to offer her some hope. "I don't know if this will make you feel better or worse, but I'm 43 years old, 44 in two months, and I don't know where I fit. Maybe nowhere. You're lucky, the world is getting better for women. This war did that. Women are working in factories, running things, wearing pants. This is just the beginning.
"You're very young. You have so much time to be who you want to be. You're attractive, direct, and you have more force of will than most men I know. Sometimes you will have to pretend. Everyone has to. Look at me, I've spent most of my life pretending to be straight. I don't know if you'll find what you're looking for, but you have a better chance than me. Time and the changing world are on your side."
Bea blushed at me, and I didn't know why. She looked at the floor and seemed a very bashful girl for just a second. "You think I'm attractive?" She asked.
I had to admit that I did. Bea Arlott had impressed me and that meant I was going to tell her the truth about what I thought of her. "Bea, you're tall, blonde, and well-built. You have clear skin, deep blue eyes, and good features. You carry yourself well. You're smart, kind, and have a highly developed sense of empathy. You can be tough as nails when you need to be. If I was twenty years younger and straight, you wouldn't be safe around me."
Bea's flush deepened from pink to deep red. "Thank you, Law. You're a sweet man." She said to the floor.
I wished that was true. We switched to small-talk and silence while we finished our meal.