by AR Simmons
“That’s military. Mission oriented. She knows what she’s looking for, and knows how to find it.”
The admiration in his voice irked her.
“No, she does not. That woman would not be wasting her time following you if she knew how to find what she wants. She’s the professional. That she hopes you may find something for her tells me that she can no more prove Mrs. Peele’s infidelity than you can find out what happened to Molly’s little girl.”
“I never thought of it that way,” he admitted.
She turned around. “You can’t go back to that house, Richard. Promise me that you won’t.”
That she knew what he was thinking stunned him. “What makes you think I would go back?”
“You asked if anything was written on the music disk. I noticed and she probably did too. You picked it up by mistake, didn’t you?”
“I turned over the damned computer and stuff went everywhere. I think maybe he recorded one of the disks and forgot to mark it. I assumed all the unlabeled ones were blank. So, one of the ones I recorded may still be at the house, but this could be the one I recorded. I just don’t know.”
Jill quickly went to the computer and slipped the disk into the drive.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Finding out if you wrote to this today,” she said. “There. See. The disk was last written to a week and a half ago.”
“Do you think Rafferty knows that?”
“Of course.”
“Then why didn’t she say something?”
“Because, like Lyla, she’s a taker, not a giver. She’s going back to get the one you left.”
“I don’t think she would do that without telling me.”
“She’s paid to find information, Richard. She’s the professional investigator. If she is charming or helpful, it is because that is the best way to get what she wants. She doesn’t consider you a colleague anymore than Mr. Adams does.”
Jill was right, of course. Now he felt foolish because he had begun to think that both Adams and Rafferty had accepted him as an unofficial partner in their investigations.
“Well, don’t I feel like an idiot?” he said.
“You’re not an idiot, just an enthusiast. Just play her game, Richard. Get whatever you can from her, and give her whatever you want her to have.”
“You think that’s ethical?”
“I think what she is doing isn’t really all that important.”
“No,” he said with a laugh. “It’s just millions of dollars.”
“A rich couple fighting over more money than either of them needs is the essence of pettiness. What you are trying to do is … It’s noble.”
“You really feel that way?”
“Discovering what happened to that little girl is much more important than what she is doing.”
•••
The photo file Rafferty had flipped through so quickly was labeled “h-Days.” Richard wondered if the “H” stood for “Happy,” “Halcyon,” or simply “Honeybunch” since all were photos of Lyla. Unlike McComb’s wallpaper, these were amateur shots taken when she was just past the cusp of adolescence. With sensible hair and minimal makeup, she had been more attractive back then to Richard’s mind. Though certainly alluring, Lyla lacked the startling beauty he associated with stage presence. However, her beauty was sufficient to ensnare both McComb and Peele. He thought a moment about the possibility that Lyla and McComb had cooked up a plot to get their hands on Peele’s money from the start. Probable, since McComb would have learned from his brother that Peele had a habit of collecting ex-wives. It was useless speculation. That was Rafferty’s business.
He closed out the picture file and opened the spreadsheet, scanning it at his speed to see if anything would pop out. Nothing did. The business seemed to be in the black, just barely. McComb paid himself four hundred each week, hardly excessive. No suspicious expenditures were apparent, but a bar is primarily a cash business, and a lot of stuff could be kept off the books. He thought wistfully about the accounting degree that had been part of his master plan to get into the FBI.
Don’t go there, he told himself. Nothing deader than a dried-up dream.
He needed McComb’s e-mail files, but if they existed, they were on the disk left at the house. Rafferty was probably reading through them right now. Despite what Jill had said about her, he doubted that she would withhold information about Mancie if she found it. He’d sound her out the next time he saw her.
“Richard. Are you coming to bed?” Jill called from the bedroom doorway.
He turned to see her dressed for comfort rather than enticement, and felt relief rather than disappointment. Then came the inevitable pang of guilt.
“I’ll be there as soon as I close this out and hit the shower.”
“Good. You need some sleep. By the way, you had a call from a lady wanting some carpentry work done. I told her you’d be by tomorrow. I hope that was all right.”
He found no enthusiasm for the prospect.
“Did she say what she wanted done?”
“Something about a door. She was not very precise. I think she is quite elderly.”
“I hope the job isn’t too expensive for her,” he said. “Old folks lose track of what things cost.”
•••
Sleep eluded him as usual, so as soon as Jill’s breathing settled into her sleeping rhythm, he got up and went back to the computer. Worried that the light from the monitor might awaken her, he went back and softly closed the bedroom door. An hour’s examination told him only what he knew already: the first disk contained nothing useful. He ejected it and popped in the second, which immediately demanded the Tunesmith disk. He tried using QuickTime, Acrobat Reader, and a couple of utilities in a fruitless attempt to open the files. Then he went to Wal-Mart and bought the Tunesmith program, rationalizing the expense by figuring that the job he had lined up for tomorrow would offset the forty-dollar price.
When he got back home, he was relieved to find Jill still asleep. He put the disk in the top drive. Immediately, the Tunesmith logo lit the screen, thankfully without a cheesy tune blaring forth. After going through the rigmarole of installing and registering, he inadvertently closed the program. It said “Goodbye,” a smiley face appeared, and a moment later the drawer slid open. He pushed it closed and recalled the program. A new screen asked him if he wanted to continue the previous session, start a new one, or review earlier compositions.
Richard put the disk he had recorded at McComb’s into the other drive, and chose the last option. A whir produced a list of song folders. He selected the “lyrics only” option. Scanning the first of what he judged poorly-written poetry, he noted the requisite themes of country music: love gone wrong, old-time virtue, go-to-hell defiance, patriotism, reverse snobbery, telling off the boss, doing your own thing, and loving grandparents. There were six other “songs” folders, but he’d had about all he could stomach for a while.
He idly clicked ‘Continue’ from the main menu, and then called up McComb’s last song-writing session hoping for a clue as to why the man had killed himself. When the new screen informed him of the date, he calculated that it had been written the night before McComb listed his house. His pulse quickened. He didn’t expect a suicide note in iambic pentameter, but the lyrics might hint at the man’s state of mind. The session had a curious title: “Breakthrough.” Richard quickly scanned the incomplete lyrics.
•••
Left to lie alone
With all my aching fears
Forever searching for my angel
With cold, cold tears
The icy grip that took her
Only laughs and jeers
Oh the cold, cold water
Oh my cold, cold tears.
•••
“Break through what?” he murmured. “The floor?”
“Oh, I see you got it to work,” said Jill from the bedroom doorway, startling him.
“Yeah,” he sai
d. “Come here and look at this. Tell me what you think.”
She leaned over his shoulder. “It needs work,” she said. “That’s only the chorus. Is there more?”
“Not in this session. Maybe another folder has an earlier version,” he said. “What do you think of the mood? Could this have been like a metaphor for his losing Lyla?”
“‘Searching for my angel’ … ‘the icy grip that took her?’ I don’t think so.”
“Just a morose song then?”
“Probably. Is there music to go with it?”
“Maybe. I don’t know how to run the program. Besides, I’m not a talent scout.”
Jill shook her head. “Perhaps an unsophisticated audience would like it, but ‘cold tears’ strikes me as antithetical to grief. I suppose it’s parallelism: ‘cold, cold water’ … ‘cold, cold tears.’ It just doesn’t work for me.”
“In a way, it kind of suggests that McComb killed himself because Lyla was leaving him,” he said. “The cold tears thing could be his way of expressing despair. A good number of the rest of his work is of the love gone wrong genre.”
Jill yawned. “Richard, it’s three o’clock. You need some sleep. Come back to bed.”
“You go on. I’ll be there in a minute.”
•••
An hour later he was still at the computer. McComb hadn’t been much of a poet. The lyrics had a semblance of emotion, but didn’t ring true. Maybe a good tune could save them. Nothing in any of his songs seemed genuine. Worse, they were transparently derivative, some even plagiarized.
What happened? Did you write this for Lyla? Was that what “breakthrough” was about? Did she not only reject it, but finally write you off as well? With the money coming in, she decided to get a professional. How many years did you put into her? Five or six? And then she decides that you’re just excess baggage?
It seemed a reasonable motive for suicide.
For a moment, he contemplated the possibility that the “angel” in the breakthrough lyrics referred to Mancie. Could whatever happened to the baby be what caused McComb to kill himself? It didn’t wash. People hitting rock bottom grief didn’t boot up the old computer to write a song about it before offing themselves. McComb had written the song for Lyla’s breakthrough. That had to be it, and that was Rafferty’s concern, not his.
He tried on the idea of the two of them taking Mancie for financial gain. It would have to involve shaking down the grandparents because Molly had no money, and no way of getting any. Moreover, McComb and Lyla were involved in a much bigger scheme. Next to half of Rennie Peele’s net worth, any ransom the Allsops could come up with was chicken feed.
Disgusted, he turned off the computer. On the way to the bedroom, he wondered if the store would take back the Tunepro disk. Since the cellophane was gone, he doubted it.
•••
November 16
It took longer to return the music program than he anticipated. Because the cellophane had been removed, he got store credit rather than a cash refund. At ten-thirty, he finally got to the clapboard house in the county where he met Mrs. Crawford, a tiny widow who reminded him of his grandmother. True to the custom of her generation, she offered him coffee before showing him to her “door problem.”
Except for a loose knob, the door itself was sound, but a combination of poor initial construction, dry rot, and termites had rendered the entire entrance in need of replacing. His estimate brought silent tears, but no protest. In the end, he spent the entire cold day cobbling together a fix from seasoned barn wood, eating most of the price of the jamb kit he bought at discount building supply store. At the end of the day, his pay came to a princely two dollars an hour for the six hours it took to finish.
He left with a free lunch, effusive thanks, and twelve dollars taken from the widow Crawford’s cookie jar. He arrived home after dark feeling tired and virtuous. Before he turned off the headlights, he saw Molly’s door open and shut quickly. She came across the yard in a rush, obviously intent on intercepting him before he could get into the house. He had been avoiding her for the last few days, which was understandable, if not laudable, because he had nothing to tell her. Her importunity was as poignant and painful as ever.
“Can I talk to you, Mr. Carter?” she asked.
“You can always talk to me, Molly. Want to meet at the café tomorrow?”
“It’s been over a week, Mr. Carter. Can’t we talk a little bit before you go inside? I’m sorry to be such a bother, but … I don’t know … it’s just that if I know something about what you’ve been doing, it … it helps, you know?”
“Get in the truck,” he said. “We’ll drive around a bit, and I’ll fill you in on what I’ve been doing, although it’s not much.”
They were near the end of the block before either spoke.
“I heard about Bobby,” she said. “I never thought he was the kind of person who would do that, but if anyone could make a person kill himself, I guess it would be Lyla.”
“So you think they were having an affair, and she wanted to end it?”
“It wasn’t no secret,” Molly said, bitterly. “I just don’t know what someone as nice as him ever saw in a woman like her. Maybe what women see ain’t so plain to men.”
“Maybe she didn’t treat him like she treated other people,” he suggested.
“Maybe. She was always good at playing guys.”
“Always? How long have you known her?”
“Since high school.”
Without looking at her, Richard made the confession he had dreaded making.
“Molly, Bobby was our best shot at finding out who may have put something into your drink that night, and I didn’t get around to asking him in time. Now I don’t know what else to do. Everything has just dried up.”
“You’ll find her,” she said stubbornly. “You’ll think of something. I know you will.”
“Molly, you may never know what happened to Mancie. I tried. I’ll continue to try, but maybe you just put your trust in the wrong guy.”
She turned to him. “You care, don’t you?”
“Of course I care Molly. I just don’t know what else I can do, and to be honest with you, the longer this goes on without anything turning up … then—”
“The more likely it is that she’s dead,” she finished. “I know that’s the theory, Mr. Carter. But I also know that whatever chance she has will be gone if we quit.”
•••
“Where did you go?” asked Jill when he got home.
“To Wal-Mart,” he replied as he hung his jacket by the door. “And then out to that job in the county. I didn’t make much on it, though.”
He fished out his wallet. “Here. They gave me credit for something I returned.”
She took the credit slip, but her eyes remained fixed on his. “Where did you go after you got home?”
“Molly came out. I hadn’t talked with her for a while, so I drove around and filled her in on everything. Are you upset that I was talking with her?”
“She is claiming you. You know how I feel about that.”
“What else can do, Jill? It’s not in me to tell her to get lost. I won’t do that.”
“I know. I’m not asking you to. It’s just that I had something important to discuss with you, and then you drove away again.”
“Okay. What about?”
She shook her head. “Dinner is reheating. Let’s go to the kitchen. We can talk while we eat.”
•••
He waited patiently for her to tell him whatever it was, but they were nearly through with dinner before she finally said, “I’m going to take a job—a position.”
“You mean the doctoral thing?”
“No. A teaching position. I’m tired of being just the amanuensis for another professor. I want to teach on my own.”
He studied her a moment. “And it would bring in more money for us, right?”
“That’s not the reason I’m doing it.”
�
�Where can you teach with just a master’s degree?”
“Many places.”
“High schools maybe,” he said sharply. “You’re not doing that.”
“Since when do you tell me what I can and cannot do?”
“Since I know that you have a promising career and want to be a real historian. You can land a full professorship in a few years if you stay on track.”
“People change, Richard. Allow me that right. I’ve decided that I don’t want to be a perpetual student.”
“It’s the money,” he said. “Or do you just want to get me away from Molly.”
She turned to stare at him. “Give me credit for being more honest than that. If that were my motive, I would find a job farther from here than Blue Creek.”
“Blue Creek! You can’t mean that Podunk junior college?”
She returned a stubborn look. “I already signed a contract. Are you coming with me or not?”
“You already signed a contract?” he spluttered. “Then what the hell is there to discuss?”
She shifted uncomfortably. “There’s sort of something else.”
It wasn’t like her. She should be angry and adamant, not apologetic.
“What else is going on?” he asked.
“I sort of … arranged a job interview for you,” she said with a wince.
“A job interview?”
“With the sheriff’s department there.”
He laughed grimly. “They’ll be thrilled to learn about my felony charge.”
“Mr. Shively knows about it already. He still wants you in for an interview tomorrow.”
“Mr. Shively! Who’s that?”
“He is the Hawthorn County sheriff.”
“You talked to him about me already? What possessed you to do that? It won’t work, Jill. You know it won’t.”
“It won’t work unless you try it. Please go to the interview, Richard. It’s what you want to do. I know it is.”
“No. I’m through with all that. I’ve accepted it, and I’m moving on with my life. You shouldn’t have interfered.”
“I had to ‘interfere’ as you put it,” she said, finally giving vent to her frustration. “I’m sick of seeing you lose one job after another because they don’t interest you. This is the sort of job you want to do. Why don’t you try for it if you have a chance?”
