“Drag something out of your daily reports. It goes back aways.”
“Like to Alfred and that lady singer at the country club?”
“You nailed it,” I laughed.
“Not much to it. They were sitting down there in the car when I drove up. I threw a towrope around his axle and hauled them out. I followed them back into town in case they had busted something.”
“Al had scratches on his face, I understand.”
“From the bushes he said, three nice long even ones, spaced about as far apart as a woman’s fingers and nail deep. And there wasn’t even a shrub near that ditch.”
“How’d they do it?”
“Mr. Barrin said he lost control when he went onto the shoulder.”
“But what do you say?”
“I can guess.”
“So guess.”
“He tried a little grab-ass and the dame clouted him one. Those tire tracks S’ed all over the road before he went straight into the ditch.”
“Were they arguing?”
“Nope. All nice and neat. Real pals when I drove up. The dame wasn’t even mussed. It coulda happened like he said, especially if he’d been drinking, but I didn’t smell any booze on ’im and besides, I’d sooner think I had a dirty mind.”
“That’s all there was to it?”
“Got a case of booze the next day from an anonymous donor. Good Scotch. Seems like the Barrin butler bought it.
“Thought you weren’t supposed to take bribes?” I said through a laugh.
“Hell, I told you it was from an anonymous source. By the time I inquired, the booze was all gone. Couldn’t be sure anyway. Peggy over at the liquor store only hinted at it.”
“So Cousin Al is clean as a whistle.”
“No complaints lodged,” Bennie Sachs said. “But I bet ne sure wanted a piece of that. Pretty nice-looking dame. Only trouble was, she had two broken fingernails.”
“Observant, aren’t you?”
The big cop shrugged casually. “Cops are supposed to be.”
“How about Cross McMillan?”
“Heavy taxpayer. Minds his own business.”
“Not the other day he didn’t,” I reminded him.
Sach’s thoughts drifted back to the scene in front of the gates at Mondo Beach. He picked up a cigar, bit the end off and spat the piece out. “Mr. McMillan was planning on buying that place. He had money down on it already.”
“His deal went sour. That place has been bought up.” Without looking at me, he held a match to his cigar and nodded. “That’s what I heard. He ain’t very happy about it. He had big plans for that place.”
“Tough.”
“Not on McMillan. What he wants, he gets. ”
“I’ve heard that before too. The only thing he can t get is his own wife.”
Sachs shook the match out and flipped it in a comer. “I wouldn’t make noises like that if I was you. He’s pretty touchy on that subject. When he outsmarted Cubby Tillson on that land deal old Cubby mouthed off about the same thing and Cross knocked the shit outa him ... and Cubby’s a pretty big apple. Fleet title-holder in the Navy back in forty-five.” He pulled on the cigar and blew a smelly blue cloud of smoke my way. “Who got the beach property now?”
“Somebody in the family, I hear.”
“You hear pretty quick. The deed ain’t even been filed yet. Cross McMillan’s going to be pretty interested in seeing whose name is on that paper.”
“Public information, Mr. Sachs. Just the property is private.” I got up and put on my hat. “Thanks for the talk.”
“Anytime,” he said. He let me get as far as the door before he said, “By the way, Mr. Kelly, you got a permit for that gun you’re wearing?”
“You’re pretty good at guessing,” I said.
His eyes gave me a smile and he stuck the cigar back in his mouth.
Sharon was waiting for me in the car outside the door and moved over to let me under the wheel. I said, “How’d you make out?”
“Zilch. They’re as pure as a virginal bride, but if you could make a case out of subtle leers and vile thoughts, you’d be in. Louise even called a couple of her gossipy friends, but the general consensus of opinion is that neither of them ever strayed from the bed of bachelorhood.”
I said something nasty under my breath and pulled away from the curb. My mind kept going back to the gleeful look I saw on Alfred’s face just before he smashed me off my bicycle with his new roadster, and the shrill cursing of Dennie as he tried to piss through a gonorrhea-infected dong. Mice don’t generally sprout batwings and fly away to goodie land.
“There was one other thing Louise remembered,” Sharon added. “Right after your grandfather died there was an explosion and a fire in the laboratory building of the factory. One of the older engineers who was alone in the place at the time was hit in the head and knocked out. The investigation later reported that it was an accident since some experimental work was under way, but the engineer kept claiming he was hit before the explosion. He kept claiming it was a bungled robbery attempt and that he had seen Alfred Barrin’s car pull up just prior to the blast.”
“Robbery?”
Sharon made a vague motion with her hands. “Apparently nothing was stolen. Alfred said he was at home with his brother and the engineer never quite recovered from his injury. He retired right after that.”
“She mention the guy’s name.”
“In fact, she did. Stanley Cramer. He used to hang out at her Uncle Tod’s place. Nice old man and he’s still alive. Lives out in the Maple Hill section right near where our old house was.”
“Curious,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because any research the Barrin plant was working on then involved aluminum extrusion processes. The lab was just a highly refined mental shop.”
“Well, that’s what she said.”
“Let’s check on it.”
The library was open, nearly empty, and the little old lady who ran it very obliging. Her cross-indexes were neat rows of cards in spiderwebby handwriting and after a thirty-second perusal she selected one, consulted it, then brought out an old library copy of the Linton Herald.
Page one held the item, a three-column piece with a photo of the destroyed laboratory. The essence of the story was much the same as Sharon had given me, but with the further explanation that the suspected cause was the collapse of the bins holding the acid containers onto the chemical storage area below. From the photo, it seemed as though the explosion had released its force against the inside wall and the damage was more superficial than anything else. There was no mention at all about my cousin.
When we were back in the car I asked Sharon where Louise got the bit about Al. “Oh, she just heard her uncle and aunt talking about it, that’s all. Anything a Barrin does in this town is big news.”
“Think you could find Cramer’s place?”
“I guess so. Not many people live out there anyway.”
It wasn’t hard to do. Stanley Cramer was listed in the phone book and a light was on in the front room of the small cottage when we got there. Through the window, I saw him get up from in front of the television set when I rang the bell, a wizened old man with bowed legs and a shuffling walk. He had a full head of white hair and an old-fashioned handlebar moustache like the Polish papas wore when I was a kid.
The porch light flickered on and the door opened. Watery blue eyes blinked up at us and he said, “Well, well. Don’t usually get company out here. You people lost?”
“Nope. You Stanley Cramer?”
“All day long.”
“Then we came to see you.”
“Now, isn’t that nice.” He smiled toothlessly under the flowing whiskers and swung the door wide. “You come right on in.”
His place was a man’s house, tidy and orderly. A collection of odd lever and gear miniature contraptions decorated the mantel over the fireplace and several framed photographs were propped on the small tables. One of t
hem was a picture of him and my grandfather in front of the original Barrin building and must have been sixty years old.
He poured wine from a cut-glass decanter and offered it before he finally sat down opposite us and said, “It’s so nice to see somebody I even forgot the introductions. Who may you be?” He squinted at us closely. “Don’t know either one of you, do I?”
“You knew my grandfather,” I told him. “Cameron Barrin. I’m Dogeron Kelly, the family secret.”
Laughter flashed across his eyes and he shook a finger at me. “Ah, yes, I remember you, all right. Big stink about it when you came along. Old Cam was fit to be tied.”
“This is Sharon Cass. She used to live here. In fact, her father worked at Barrin.”
Cramer reached for a pair of glasses beside his chair and hooked them over his ears, then leaned forward to look at her. “You Larry Cass’s daughter?” Before she could answer he nodded vigorously. “Yes, ma’am, you sure are. Damned if you’re not your mother all over again. Same mouth, same eyes. You even got your hair like she had it. Lovely woman, your mother.”
“Thank you.”
“Sure is nice of you, coming all the way out here to see an old fossil like me.” He smiled again, sipped his wine and looked at me. “Kind of think there’s more on your mind though.”
“I thought you could help me.”
“Nothing much I’m very good at anymore, son.”
“Just a case of remembering.”
“Oh, I can do that. About all I can do.”
“Remember the explosion in the Barrin lab?”
The moustache twisted down when his smile faded. “Before and after, but not the explosion.” He took his glasses off and scratched his head. “But I guess explosions are the things you’re not supposed to remember.”
“Once you told somebody that it wasn’t the blast that got you.”
He held out the decanter, refilled our glasses and poured another one for himself. “Did I?”
“Good wine,” I said.
The watery quality had left his eyes and he watched me sharply. “You know, son, you got something of old Cam in you. He was a spooky character too. Sometimes he reminded me of a snake, other times he was all cat, smart and deadly as they come. The others, there’s no part of Cam in them at all.”
“I’m the only direct relative he had.” Then I added, “Or rather, indirect. Nobody rang bells when I was born.”
“Guess not,” Cramer chuckled. “Cam, he didn’t like to be bucked.”
“About the explosion.”
“See? Just like Cam. Wouldn’t leave a thing alone.” He tasted his wine again, rolling it around his tongue. “The explosion,” he mused finally. “Must have been a little after midnight. I was working on a heat problem we had with an aluminum alloy. I thought I heard a noise and went to turn around. That’s when I got cracked on the head. Next thing I know I was in the hospital.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t get killed.”
“Beats me how I dragged myself out of there. They found me near the front door later, but I sure don’t remember getting there.”
“You said you saw Al’s car around earlier.’
“Well now, it could have been or it couldn’t have been. About ten minutes earlier I went down to the supply.room to pick up some solder. I thought I heard a car pull up and when I looked out there was a two-tone sedan something like Al had. He’d come down once in a while to go over the books and I didn’t think anything about it. Hell, it was his place, wasn’t it?”
“In a sense.”
“So I got my solder and went back to work.”
“That’s all?”
Cramer just nodded, but his fingers pulled at his moustache thoughtfully.
“What could have blown up?”
“I was waiting for that,” he said. “Nothing, I’d say, but I’m not a chemical engineer. Maybe those acids could have caused it.”
“Somebody theorized about an attempted robbery.”
“That’s right. The explosion was against the wall where the safe was.”
“Anything worth stealing?”
He gave me another one of those vague shrugs. “Depends on how badly you need four hundred dollars in petty cash and a lot of old papers. Used to be that old safe was never even locked. For a while we used it for storage. The only reason it was there was because the lab was part of the original office before Cam built the new wing. Any cash or other valuables were in the vault over there.”
“And Cousin Al was in the clear again.”
“I take it you don’t like that boy.”
“He’s a meathead.”
“You can say that again,” Cramer agreed. “Yeah, he was clear. He was with Dennison all night. Anyway, I shouldn’t’ve shot my mouth off. That car could have belonged to anyone. It wasn’t like his big Caddie or that little foreign job he generally drove. Couple of guys at the plant even had one like it.”
“But you still think it was his,” I stated.
“Son, when an old man gets an idea stuck in his head it’s pretty hard to dislodge, even if it’s wrong. Age is funny that way.”
“Sure.”
“Incidentally, mind telling me why you’re so interested in ancient history?”
“Curiosity,” I said.
“It killed the cat.”
“If you were right, it could kill Alfred boy too.”
“And you’d like that?”
“Why not? He tried to kill me once.”
Sharon put her glass down and looked over at me. “You must be aging too. You won’t let ideas get away either.”
Stanley Cramer let out a big smile and scratched his head again. “If I were you, I’d get ideas about the pretty little lady here and let the past stay buried.”
“You may be right,” I told him. “Let’s go, pretty little lady.”
It was old and musty, animals from the field had left their litter around and nested in the stuffing from some of the chairs. Moonlight through the cracked windows ran down the silky strands of cobwebs, giving the place a fuzzy appearance.
She had asked to see it again, and this time she wanted to go in. A pair of old hurricane lamps she dug out of a cabinet were the only light, the glow soft and feeble, but enough to reflect the wetness under her eyes as she touched pieces of tattered furniture.
Her old house was too far away from town to have been vandalized by kids or used by tramps, too remote and weed hidden to be a sex pad for lovers. Twice a bat flapped past and little scratching noises came from the woodwork.
“We always had mice,” she said. “I wouldn’t let Dad trap them. He didn’t know it, but I used to leave scraps of food on the floor in the kitchen so they could eat.”
I let her talk, listening to her ramble on about days in pigtails and pinafores or her father pulling her along on a sled. Finally she stopped at the foot of the stairs, hesitated a moment, then started up. There were three rooms at the top. The door to the smallest one was open and a foot-treadle sewing machine and a spindleback chair were waiting for another seamstress.
Sharon opened the middle door, the lamp outstretched in her hand. “My father and mother’s room,” she said. I edged up close to her and looked inside. Wind and rain from a broken pane had discolored the mattress and blown the covers across the room. The veneer tops of both dressers had warped off, the mirrors discolored, barely reflecting our images.
She closed the door gently and went to the last one on the end. It didn’t open at first, then I twisted the knob, put my shoulder against the edge of it and leaned inward. It creaked open, then stuck halfway and we had to slip in one at a time.
The window was intact, and with the door wedged so tightly shut little dirt had had a chance to collect. A quilted spread still covered the bed, a few empty makeup jars and a stack of movie magazines were on one end of the bureau, a rocker leaned quietly in a corner next to an old rolltop desk and a pair of shoes were on the closet floor under a few items of outgrown clot
hing. She had pasted up all her hero pictures, snipped from papers and books, interspersing them with school photos and pennants stenciled with the trademarks of various vacation spots.
“And you lived here,” I stated.
Sharon walked over and put the lamp down on the dresser. “My own little sanctuary. I loved this room.”
“You never really closed down the house, did you?”
“I couldn’t. I just took what I needed and walked away. I never thought I’d come back here. Too many memories, Dog. I started out fresh.”
“You don’t wipe out memories, kid.”
That oddball look came back in her face and disappeared almost as fast. “Yes, I know.” She was looking at me in the dresser mirror, then her eyes went to one side and she picked a small photo out of the frame, smiled at it and dropped it in her pocket.
“Dog ...” Her fingers were doing things with the buttons of her jacket, popping them open one by one. “Can we stay here tonight? Together?”
“You’re mixing me up in your daydreams, kid.”
“I had a lot of them in that very bed.”
“Will you quit knocking me in the head? One night on the beach I could take. It was fun and it was funny. Another time and it won’t be like that at all. You’re no little girl anymore, doll. When you take off those clothes you’re all lovely soft flesh and woman curves. I don’t buy the frustration bit at all. It gets hard on the dingus. We used to call it lover’s nuts.”
She had the jacket off and threw it on the rocking chair. She started on the buttons of the blouse when I put my lamp down and grabbed her before she could get them open. Sharon smiled and shook her head. “The last time I wanted you and you wouldn’t take me. Now I want you not to take me.”
“You don’t make sense,” I damn near shouted.
“Please, Dog? Just this once? It won’t happen again.”
“Look, fantasies are fine, but ...”
“Sometimes you live with fantasies a long time. Please, Dog?” She pushed me away with small, gentle hands and walked back to the dresser. I watched her undress slowly, feeling my insides go tumbling all over again. She was more beautiful than ever in that pale yellow light, but a different kind, a beautiful, a young, unself-conscious kind of beautiful. When she was all naked she tossed the single cover back and writhed down under it.
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