for Archer now to peel a few twenties off would not diminish it a jot. The man’s widow would have plenty left over. And Archer might have indeed done so, for he was no better than most when it came to levels of selfishness, but he made the mistake of looking at the man’s eyes.
They were wide open and seemed to be staring intensely up at him, carrying with them a look not of disapproval, but of betrayal. If a dead man’s eyes could really convey that emotion, they had just done so to Aloysius Archer.
He slowly put the wad back, with not a single twenty plucked from its hide, and then used his fingers to close the man’s flat, glassy eyes. Archer had done this very thing on battlefields more times than he ever cared to remember. It had been gospel among American soldiers that a dead comrade with open eyes could still see the violent carnage of his own death and would therefore never have a restful afterlife. Archer wasn’t particularly fond of Pittleman—he really didn’t know the man—and what he had learned about him was not especially heartwarming. Yet he could see no reason to deprive him an element of peace in death.
But then something occurred to him. He looked in the other pocket and pulled out the promissory note papers given by one Lucas Tuttle to, now, a dead man. He slipped these in his jacket pocket. They might come in handy down the road.
A moment later, and after fully realizing the peril of his current situation, Archer stepped away from the bed, backed to the door, and left the room of the murdered man, after giving another look up and down the hall.
Slightly dazed by what he’d seen, though he had viewed deaths far more horrible than Pittleman’s, and in far greater numbers, Archer hurried back to his room and had himself a nip from the flask. There was a difference between killing on the battlefield, where it was expected, and murder in a hotel room, where it wasn’t or at least shouldn’t be a common occurrence.
He took out the papers and studied the legal writing there. He looked at the amount owed and the signature of Lucas Tuttle. He flipped back to the page with the collateral listed and saw the Cadillac’s description. That collateral no longer existed, but that didn’t matter now. These papers were worth five thousand dollars plus interest to, he supposed, Pittleman’s widow, and at least sixty dollars to him. But Archer wasn’t sure what to do with them right now. He put the papers away in his jacket pocket.
His nerves steadied a bit, he walked down the stairs to the hotel lobby, sat in the same cane back chair Jackie had, stared at the empty fireplace, and thought about what to do.
There was one prime suspect, at least to his mind.
He knew that Jackie Tuttle was well aware of the dead man’s location last night, having helped transport him to that very spot. And Archer had no idea how early she had left his room, him being sound asleep after their lovemaking. And he had no clue as to how long Pittleman had been dead, though it was not a recent death, the blood having dried, and the body having cooled considerably. Archer knew that they had reached his room at just about the crack of eleven because a clock from somewhere outside had bonged the time. A few hours after that Jackie could have left Archer, done the deed, and departed to her home on Eldorado Street.
But why kill a man who had given her a house and money and all?
He walked over to the front desk, where a different clerk from the one who had signed him in was drinking a cup of coffee. He was small with thin cheeks and dark hair cut close to the scalp. His bowtie was green against a pale white shirt with a wool vest over it. His cheeks and nose carried the red sheen of a heavy drinker, and the heavy pouches under his eyes spoke of many nights with little or no sleep.
“Help you?” asked the man.
“Yeah. I was wondering if you saw a young lady leave early this morning?”
“And who are you?”
“Archer. I’m in Room 610.”
“And what young lady would that be?”
Archer described Jackie Tuttle but didn’t give her name.
The man looked back at him primly and said, “I didn’t see anyone.”