of the rooms. Border the drive with two raised flower-beds and at the outer ends of the front lawns set solid masses of bamboo. That should grow here, and grow fast. Light the bamboo from below with colored spotlights—chi-chi and a little on the overdone side, perhaps, but it would be spectacular, and that was what we wanted. Children’s playground here, at this end of the lawn.
I was breaking it down into square yards of lawn, square yards of blacktop and concrete deck, lineal feet of underground conduit and water pipe and numbers of sprinkler heads, when there was a knock on the door. I looked at my watch and was startled to see it was after eleven. I’d really been wrapped up in it.
“Come in,” I called.
It was Georgia Langston. She was wearing a crisp white skirt and a short-sleeved blouse the color of cinnamon, and looked refreshed and very easy on the eyes. She smiled. “I’m not interrupting, am I?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “Come on in. I want you to see this.” I stood up. She came over and stood by my shoulder as I explained the drawing to her.
“What do you think?” I asked.
I think it would be absolutely wonderful,” she said quietly. “But are you sure you want to do it?”
“Yes. The more I look at it, the more it appeals to me. Then it’s a deal?”
She nodded. Then all at once she smiled warmly and held out her hand.
“I’ll start the transfer of the money to an account here in the local bank,” I said. “It’ll take several days. In the meantime you can get your lawyer to draw up the partnership agreement.”
“All right,” she said. Then she shook her head wearily. “But, Bill, how can we even reopen the place? We don’t know what they’ll do next.”
I took hold of her arms. “I’m still working on it. There are a couple of small leads and I’m trying to get hold of Redfield now.”
“Do you think he’ll ever do anything?”
“He has to,” I said. “We’ve just got to keep trying.”
When she went back to the office I stripped off the sweaty clothes, showered, and changed the dressing on my arm. I put on a fresh sports shirt and some new trousers and made up a bundle of laundry to drop off in town. It was a quarter to twelve when I got out to Redfield’s again, and this time I had better luck. Just as I was stopping I caught a glimpse of him along the right side of the house. He was working in the backyard. I started rather hesitantly along the brick walk, but when he saw me coming and made no move to head me off I gathered it was all right. She had gone inside.
He was shirtless, kneeling as he worked at the low brick wall. Beside him, in the shade of the large oak, was the steel wheelbarrow containing a small heap of mortar. He glanced up.
“Hello,” I said.
He nodded curtly, but made no reply. I wondered if he thought I’d come to start trouble. He’d roughed me up in the office when he lost his temper, I outweighed him by at least thirty pounds, and he was a long way from his gun. But if the thought had even occurred to him it obviously wasn’t worrying him.
I lit a cigarette and squatted then on my heels, watching him. He was a good cop, but he’d never give Churchill any competition as an amateur bricklayer. “Something I wanted to tell you,” I said. “I went back out there this morning. And I found the place he parked his car.”
He didn’t even look up. I don’t bring the job home with me.”
He was awkward with the trowel, and kept poking and patting more mortar between the bricks with his fingers. “You’re not going to have any fingertips left,” I said. “That stuff’s abrasive.”
“I know,” he replied. “After half an hour of it they feel like they’d been sandpapered.”
“You mind if I show you something?” I asked.
“You a bricklayer?”
“Not union. But I used to do a lot of this patio stuff. Walks, borders, things like that.”
He said nothing, and for a moment I thought he was going to refuse. Then he handed me the trowel and moved back a little. I showed him how to slap down the mortar, spread it with the tip of the trowel to push it towards the edge of the bricks, and how to butter the