by Ed Gorman
Her tidy blue skirt allowed me a closer look at her comely legs with all their freckles. The white blouse draped her small sweet breasts. She watched me watch her for a moment and smiled. Before she went inside, she mussed my hair and said, “You men. That’s all you ever think about, isn’t it?” Then: “Well, at least you’re cute. You should see some of the mastodons that come after me.”
“Mastodons” kept me amused the whole time she was gone. And as she handed me my mug, she said, “So what’s so funny?”
“‘Mastodons.’”
“Oh, right.” She sat down next to me on the step. “Karen and I saw this movie when we were young called The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. It was supposed to be a horror movie, but we both felt sorry for the beast when they killed him at the end. I guess we sort of identified with him. We always considered ourselves sort of freaks. I had really terrible complexion problems, and poor Karen had her limp. But anyway, after we saw that movie we both got interested in dinosaurs. We were told it was very unladylike, but we didn’t care. We gobbled up everything we could find. So mastodons and creatures like that became part of our normal vocabulary.” She laughed. “God, did that sound dumb. Pretty interesting conversation to listen to, right?”
“Very interesting, actually. Two pretty young girls becoming fascinated with dinosaurs.”
“Oh, we weren’t pretty, believe me. Not to ourselves, anyway. We really thought we were homely. We didn’t even have a soda shop date until we were well into high school. My folks took me to Iowa City, where this doctor really helped me with my complexion. And by that time, Karen was so beautiful even she had to admit it to herself. I’m pretty enough, I suppose, but I’m plain compared to my sister.” Then: “God, I miss her. There isn’t a day goes by that I don’t think about her and kind of talk to her.”
“Did she ever mention a certain letter to you? It probably had something to do with Roy Davenport or David Raines.”
Over the picket fence in the back yard, a bald man called out Lynn’s name and waved. She waved back. The man dipped down and moments later a power mower roared to life. “That’s Mr. Nelson. He’s a very good neighbor. Unlike the old bitch down the street. You represented her, remember? Against me?”
“You ever forget that? This is the second time you brought it up.”
She smiled. “I’m just kidding you. But she really is an old bitch, and Mr. Nelson and his wife are really very nice people. And no, I don’t know anything about a letter. Why are you interested in it?”
“Because Roy Davenport was interested in it. And so is Raines.”
“All I know about Roy Davenport is that Karen and I were afraid of him. We’d heard all the rumors. I shouldn’t be speaking ill of the dead, but we were always told that he had a record and that Lou had hired him to do his dirty work. Lou didn’t want to spoil his image, you know. But it was fine with him if Davenport did things. Karen got a threatening phone call one night. About seeing Bryce. The man said that something bad would happen to her if she didn’t stop seeing him. She was convinced it was Davenport, that he’d just muffled his voice somehow.”
“Did you tell this to Cliffie?”
“Now, what do you think? Of course I did. But what good did it do me? He said it was probably a prank call. And he said that my information was hearsay since I hadn’t heard the call myself. So we just dropped the subject.”
“How long between the phone call and the fire?”
“That was another thing. Several months.”
“And that was the only call Karen told you about?”
“Yes.”
“And there weren’t any other threats?”
“Not threats like that. Just the usual from the family to Bryce, and then Bryce would tell Karen about them. And I shouldn’t say ‘threats’ as such. They were really warnings about how Bryce was screwing up his life. Which meant that he was screwing up Lou’s life. Lou wanted royal blood in the family line. Or what he considered royal blood, anyway. Which is funny when you think about it. How much royal blood is there in Black River Falls?”
“Well, there are a few people who think they’re royalty, so I suppose that could pass for the real thing.” I set my mug down and eased myself up. I could see the back yards of several houses. White houses and white garages against green grass and yellow and orange and pink lilies and various other flowers. A man in a straw hat and a pipe in his mouth leaned against a fence talking to a neighbor. It all looked like a Norman Rockwell painting for a Saturday Evening Post cover.
“I wish somebody had tried to warn me off my ex the way Lou tried to warn Bryce off Karen.”
She’d never explained the reason for her split with the Chicago banker, but it was clear she wasn’t over it. She was bound to him by love or hate, it was hard to tell. Maybe both.
“If you think of anything else, I’d appreciate a call.”
“I feel sorry for that poor dumb Pauline. She’s sweet, in a weird way. I wonder what’s going to happen to her.”
“Yeah,” I said as I started to leave. “I’ll bet she’s wondering the same thing.”
19
“SO YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT’S IN THIS LETTER?”
“No.”
“What do you think might be in it?”
“Since when are you interested in speculation?”
That earned me a rubber band fired from the slender hand of Judge Esme Anne Whitney. Perched on her desk in a light-gray linen suit with matching pumps, Her Honor was firing at an angle and she missed. Which was why I’d taken the chair farthest away from her.
“It’s hardly speculation. We have two people dead. And you’ve been doing research on the fire that killed Karen Shanlon. So unless you’re completely wasting your time and mine, you see a connection between the two.”
“Fair enough. But I still have no idea what’s in the letter.”
“But you’re thinking it bears on the fire.”
“Maybe. But then again, who knows. The more I find out about your esteemed friend Lou Bennett, the more I realize that he had a lot of questionable business interests. There’s always the possibility that the fire had nothing to do with these deaths. Bennett and Davenport were in business together. Maybe they made somebody very angry. One of the people I talked to told me that Davenport had been hired because he was muscle. If Bennett needed muscle, he could have been involved in just about anything.”
I was enjoying the courthouse air conditioning. Balmy electric breezes made me want to close my eyes and sleep. But then I felt selfish. Not only did I have to deal with this case, I also had to deal with my father. I was bitching about losing sleep; he was facing death. And my mother was facing a kind of death of her own.
“I have to admit I envy you the privilege of seeing David Raines afraid. He’s one of those people who always sweeps into a room and takes over. He was amusing the first few times I invited him to my parties. But between chasing after half the wives there and patting me on the behind, I got tired of him very quickly.”
I laughed. I knew I shouldn’t laugh. I tried not to laugh. But I couldn’t help myself. The image of anybody patting the Ice Maiden on her “behind” was hilarious. I’m surprised she didn’t pull out a gun (she has several) and kill him on the spot.
“Go ahead and laugh, McCain. That’s your sordid little world, not mine. All four of my husbands had their flaws, but they were all gentlemen and behaved accordingly. And you’d damned well better never share that story with anybody, do you understand?” For a striking woman of noble bones, she had the ability to suddenly turn into Joseph Stalin when she threatened you.
“DePaul interests me, too. He was the one who signed off on the fire. Said it was an accident.”
“And why would he do that?”
“Money, why else? I have a call in to a friend at the credit bureau. The bank won’t help me because I don’t have a badge. But this woman will because we’re old friends.”
“I’m sure you’re sleeping with her or h
ave slept with her or plan to sleep with her, and I don’t want to hear anything about it.”
“Believe it or not, we’re just friends. She’s happily married to a very nice guy. But I’ve known her since we went to grade school together.”
“Oh, yes. That Catholic school.”
As a good patrician, Judge Whitney is of the belief that papists, if they had any couth and courage, would be Episcopalians. A certain harshness comes into her voice when she pronounces the word “Catholic.”
“So it’s completely innocent. I do have women friends who are just that.”
She sighed and slid off the desk. She walked behind her desk and sat down and picked up the phone. She dialed without hesitation and then said, “John, it’s Esme. I’m about to ask you something that you can never share with anybody. I’d like copies of Ralph DePaul’s banking records for the past five years. Xerox copies. And at the moment I can’t explain why.”
No amenities; no small talk. John could only be John K. Bridges, president of First National.
Whatever he said took less than a minute. She said: “Thank you, John. If you would have somebody bring them to my chambers as soon as possible, I’d appreciate it. Will I see you on the links tomorrow?” Pause. “Good. I’ll be breaking in my new clubs. Thank you very much again, John.” She hung up.
“Wow. You must really have something good on him.”
“I wish you’d stop thinking like a criminal someday, McCain. We’re friends. Why wouldn’t he help me?”
“Well, let’s see. At the least, what he’s doing is unethical, and at the worst it’s criminal. A good lawyer could make a strong case against him.”
“Well, I’m safe there. I don’t know any good lawyers; do you?”
“Present company excepted, of course.”
“Call me early this afternoon. I’ll have the information for you then. And it’ll be a lot more useful than anything you’ll get from the credit bureau.”
Her phone rang. She brushed me away with her left hand as she lifted the receiver with her right.
I had been banished from the hothouse garden of Esme Anne Whitney.
As I came down the steps of the courthouse, I saw an attorney named Aaron Farmer talking to a man in a wheelchair. Farmer was just saying good-bye. His briefcase swinging, he ran up the steps I’d just descended. He was from the largest firm in town. They’d never forgiven me for winning three cases from them over the years. He didn’t have time to give me the full-tilt scowl—there was an official one that all the firm’s lawyers used—he just gave me an Elvis; you know, that curled lip. And then continued racing up the stairs.
By now, the man in the wheelchair had swung around and watched me walk toward him. His name was Mike Parnell. We’d gone through both Catholic and public schools together. We’d never been close friends, but we’d hung out together from time to time, the most notable moment we’d shared being when both our dates at a kegger spent most of the night throwing up. We’d ended up shooting craps by the campfire.
Mike had gone into the Army straight out of high school. In 1963, he found himself in a place called Vietnam. He stepped on a land mine the day of his twenty-sixth birthday. People here always told him God gave him the greatest gift of all, life. But his eyes said differently. In them you could see both the physical pain and the psychic pain that came from losing both his legs.
Today he wore a Superman T-shirt and an angry face. He’s never had much trouble with girls. He had one of those altar-boy faces that a certain kind of woman takes to immediately. There had been one exception, the girl he’d been engaged to. She deserted him after he came home. Or maybe I was being too judgmental. Mike had always had a temper—I could remember a couple of fistfights we’d had, neither of us tough or savvy, but mad enough to put on a show for our friends—so maybe it was Mike’s fault. Maybe he’d made it impossible for her to stay with him.
“Sorry I didn’t make it to your rally the other night, McCain.”
“You didn’t miss much.”
“That’s not what I heard. I heard you and all your friends and that faggot Doran were saying shit about the troops. And that would include me.”
“Nobody said anything bad about the troops, Mike. All we said is that we don’t want any more deaths because this war isn’t worth it. We’re on your side.”
“Bullshit, you son of a bitch, you and your faggot friends aren’t on my side.” He was loud enough to attract attention. “I lose my legs over there and you’re telling me I did it for nothing? That all my buddies who died over there died for nothing?” He was shouting at me now.
I was embarrassed; but even more I was ashamed, because I didn’t have the right words to say to him. Maybe there were no right words. I felt miserable for him and the life ahead of him. And the life he’d lost on some miserable goddamn jungle trail in some miserable shithole of a country named Vietnam. I wanted to tell him how sorry I was for him and how I’d do anything I could to help him and how I hoped he would some day understand why we’d had the rally, why we believed as we did. But there were no words, not the right words, anyway, so I stood there in the blazing sun as people slowed to listen to him screaming at me, terrible words from a lost scared man some Dr. Strangelove general and some bought-and-paid-for politician had decided to send to yet another war.
I wanted to move away, but I couldn’t. Maybe I felt I had this kind of abuse coming. It was small payment, considering the payment he’d had to make.
His words came with such violence and speed that I no longer heard them. I just stared at the sad enraged face they were coming from, remembering him when we were young and the night we shot craps by the campfire and how he was always cruising the night in his ’55 black Chevy. Only to end up like this for no reason at all.
And then somebody had my hand and was tugging me away and three or four other people started shouting at me, too, joining Mike. I was several long feet away from them before I said, “Thanks.” Then I slipped my hand from hers.
“No PDA, huh?”
“What’s PDA?”
“God, Sam, somebody’s got to sit you down and explain the facts of girl life. Public Displays of Affection.”
“Oh, yeah, right.”
“I don’t know who I felt sorrier for, Mike or you. Both of you, I guess.”
Wendy wore a starched mauve blouse and tan walking shorts. The sandals only emphasized how small her feet were, fine delicate bones beneath the ornate clutches of the sandals.
“I stopped by your office. Jamie—is that it, Jamie?—she told me you were at the courthouse. I thought I’d find you and let you buy me a cup of coffee.”
“That’s damned nice of you.”
“I thought so too. But that seems to be my nature. Nice.”
“Uh-huh. I remember that from high school.”
“I wasn’t that stuck up.”
“The hell you weren’t.”
“Well, but then I took a sacred vow of niceness and look at me now.”
“Major improvement, I’ll give you that.”
“Oh, look. Isn’t that that little street café everybody likes so much?”
“You must have taken a sacred vow of subtlety, too.”
“You rarely get what you don’t ask for. I grew up with two sisters who were both better-looking and a lot smarter than I was. I only got things when I badgered my mother for them. Subtlety gets you nowhere, Sam.”
I had iced coffee, she had regular. We sat at a small table on the sidewalk under an umbrella.
Between the heat and humidity, the crowds moved slowly, as if they were under water. I watched as a meter maid put a ticket under a windshield wiper. She jerked her hand away. The windshield had been damned hot.
“I actually wanted to see you for two reasons. First, I wanted to make sure that I was going to see you tonight.”
“I’m hoping so, Wendy. I had a good time last night.”
“And second, from the little you told me at dinner about Lou Be
nnett and the fire and everything, I had an idea. Do you remember Doris Crachett?”
“Vaguely. She was a year ahead of us, right?”
“Two years, actually. We knew each other from summers at the country club. If you think I was a snob, you should have hung around Doris. Anyway, her father was the assistant fire chief up until a year ago. He retired then. Doris always said that Chief DePaul did too many favors for people.”
“What kind of favors?”
“Well, I remember Doris said that one of the mayor’s friends had a business that burned down. Her father thought it was obviously arson, but the chief wrote the report and called it accidental.”
“Why didn’t her father say something?”
She shrugged. “I guess he was always careful about not wanting to come on too strong—you know, with his education and his money. A lot of people made fun of him because he was a member of the country club.”
“How can an assistant fire chief afford the country club?”
“Oh, they had inherited money from her father’s side. Her dad had a college degree and no interest in anything special. Doris always said that he became a fireman by default. Probably thought it was exciting. He’s a widower now, and he lives with Doris and her husband. The husband’s a neurosurgeon in Cedar Rapids.”
“That’s good to know about DePaul. That he took a dive for somebody before Karen died.”
“So you owe me a dinner.”
“That’s how this works, huh?”
“Damn right. That’s another thing you learn when you have two older sisters who are prettier and brighter than you are. You have to keep doing favors for people so they’ll do a few for you.”
I looked at the golden down on the slender arm and then at the curve of the long neck as she turned in profile to pick up her pack of Viceroys. Then I had a brief jolt of Jane. My first brief jolt of the day, and I’d been up for several hours. The patient seems to be doing better today, Doctor.
“So, what time are you picking me up tonight? Barring unforeseen problems of course.”
