“I came straightaway here and fell into bed. You wore me out.”
He abruptly took off his hat and drank his coffee fast enough to where it burned going down.
“You thought any more about how to get that debt paid?”
“Yeah, you can go back home to your daddy.”
“Any other way? Because that’s not an option.”
“Was it really that bad there?”
“What’s it to you?”
“I’m just trying to understand things.”
“No, you just want your crummy money.”
“Okay, that’s part of it. And I can understand why you want to be on your own. But your daddy seems nice, when he’s not pointing his Remington at you.”
“You met my father exactly once. How in the world could you possibly think you know him?”
“That’s fair enough. I know you loved your mother. Desiree told me that. Even showed me her picture.”
Archer thought this would please the woman, but by her flushed face and angry features, this had been a serious miscalculation on his part.
“I don’t like the fact that you’re snooping around my business, Archer.”
“See here, I didn’t ask the woman to tell me that or show me her picture. She just did. And your mom was beautiful. You take after her, not your dad.”
Jackie’s features softened. “I do take after my mom. And she was beautiful. On the inside, too.”
“I can see that. There was a lot of sweetness in the picture.”
“But she could get angry, and she never shrank from giving her opinion on anything.”
“Like mother, like daughter.”
She smiled at this and Archer, heartened by how the conversation was going now, followed that up with a question which he regretted as soon as it left his mouth.
“So how’d your mother die then?”
The flush came back to the face and in her anger Jackie stood and glared down at him.
“Why in the hell does that have anything to do with you? What right do you have to even ask it?”
“I’m…I’m sorry. I have no right at all to ask it. And I didn’t mean to—”
She cut him off. “I don’t want to talk about it, Archer. And if that’s the reason you came, then you can finish your coffee and get the hell out.”
“It’s not the reason I came.”
“What then?”
“Your daddy thinks Pittleman has defiled you.”
This did nothing to quell her anger at him. “He has defiled me. And it felt good. Why don’t you go back there and tell him that, you bastard?”
Archer, getting worked up himself, shook his head disapprovingly. “Look, what do you have against your father?”
“What I have or don’t have against him is my business. And only mine.”
“Do you love Hank Pittleman or what?”
“Why, do you want to propose?” she snapped.
When he looked stunned by her response, she suddenly laughed and clutched his arm. “Don’t go running off, Archer, I was just teasing. And I know you didn’t mean to upset me, but sometimes questions like that do.”
She sat back down and had another sip of coffee while Archer contemplated the mercurial nature of the so-called gentler sex.
“The fact is, I’m not ready to settle down. And no, I do not love Hank. Chattel does not typically love its patron. We just endure until something better comes along, if it ever does.”
“Well, that’s something I didn’t know till I met you.”
“Then I’m good for more than sex in a hotel room.”
“You left your flask behind.”
“I thought I might come back and get it some time. You mind that?”
Before finding a dead man, the answer would have been easy enough for Archer.
She looked at him peculiarly. “What is up with you? You look like you’ve seen a ghost or something.”
“Nice house you got here. But the furniture doesn’t seem to fit you.”
“All this was already here. I just brought my clothes.”
“You said Pittleman got you this place? So, who does this all belong to? The folks who lived here before?”
“That’s right, you don’t know. Hank and Marjorie used to live here. Until he built his place outside of town.”
“You mean his hotel of a house?”
She was about to reply when a knock came at the front door.
She got up. “Who the hell could that be at this hour?” She added crossly, “Hope you didn’t bring any friends.”
“Except for you, I don’t have any.”
She cinched her robe tight and padded to the front door, while Archer rushed to the window and looked out.
Chapter 14
THE PATROL CAR WAS PARKED in the gravel drive of the house. It was a wonder to Archer that they didn’t hear it drive up.