by Ed Gorman
They were all good friends at one time.”
“That’s why Molly hated her so much, I think,” Amy said. “She felt betrayed, I guess. She used to bring Rita along when they were in ninth grade. Then David and Rita started sneaking off together. I felt so sorry for Molly.”
“I did, too,” Emma said, “up until she smashed all the windows out in their cars.”
“Molly smashed out windows?”
“Isn’t that something?” Amy said. “You’d never think anybody like her could do something like that. But she was heartbroken.” She spent a moment gazing at the past. “A long, long time ago, and I’m sure Emma will remember this, I went out with this Nabisco salesman from Davenport. He’d come to town once a week. I had a head full of silly notions. The silliest being that he would marry me someday. I eventually found out he was married.”
“You wonder why we ended up old maids, Sam? That’s why. I had a similar experience.
Mine wasn’t married. But he wasn’t true blue, either. Hers was 1939 and mine was 1941.
We decided then to stay with our parents and work at our little jobs-we both worked in dime stores back then-and never be hurt again.”
“So I could see why Molly did what she did, Sam,” Amy said.
“So could I,” Emma said and smiled at her sister. “And I’m supposed to be the “sensible” one. Molly probably didn’t think she was being very sensible but I’m sure she was having a good time smashing in those windows.”
Amy grinned. “Why, look at his face, sister. He’s shocked. First, he finds out that his favorite two old maids smoke marijuana. And now he has to listen to us condoning smashing in car windows.”
“I’ll never recover,” I said. And I half wondered if I would. People become fixed points in your life, like stars. But sometimes you find out that they aren’t as fixed as you thought. “You don’t chop up people and keep them in the basement, do you?”
“We’ll invite you over for a delicious “meat” dish some night,” Emma said deadpan.
“Emma!”
“I’d keep an eye on that sister of yours, Amy,” I said as I was leaving.
“Don’t worry, Sam, I do.”
“Don’t forget that special meat dinner of ours,” Emma said. Amy slapped playfully at her arm.
Twenty-one
Andrea Prescott’s mother didn’t sound so happy to hear from me this time. Apparently her daughter had been helping her bone up on how to be snotty on the phone. “I’m not sure I want her to talk to you.”
“It’s really important.”
“To you, maybe, Mr. McCain. But we’re respectable people and we don’t want to get dragged into anything having to do with that terrible David Egan.”
“I may not be respectable, Mrs.
Prescott, but I am trying to find the proof.”
“That was an awfully stuffy thing to say, don’t you think?”
I laughed. I sort of liked her again.
“Yeah, come to think of it it was. I mst’ve heard that in a movie or something.”
She sounded much friendlier. “A very bad movie, Mr. McCain.” Then, “You may speak to her for two minutes and no longer.”
“You going to run an egg timer?”
“I have a watch and believe it or not, I know how to tell time.” Then, “Here, honey.”
“I wish you’d quit bugging me,” the girl said to me.
“Nice to speak with you again, too, Andrea.”
“I told you what I know and Mom and Dad wish I hadn’t even told you that much.”
“Jack Coyle was seeing her again, wasn’t he? He broke it off for a long time but then he started seeing her again, didn’t he?”
“I’m going to hang up now.”
“And the baby wasn’t David’s, it was Coyle’s, wasn’t it.”
“Good-bye, McCain.”
“Where did they meet? They couldn’t go to a motel. That’d be too dangerous. But they had some rendezvous spot, didn’t they?”
She hesitated. Then whispered. “Mom just went into the kitchen. She really doesn’t want me to get involved. But I’ll tell you this.
There’s a hunting cabin out by Scarecrow Rock.
Sara mentioned it once to me.” Hesitation.
“That’s what they were fighting about the night before she got killed. She was still in love with Coyle and it was driving David crazy.”
I heard footsteps and then her mother say, “Tell Mr. McCain that my egg timer just went off.”
“Thanks for the help, Andrea. I appreciate it.”
I guess if you lie flat on your back and look straight up at it and the moonlight behind it is just right and the night is cloudless and if you really use your imagination, you can kinda sorta perhaps see how this tall, slender piece of red limestone came to be called Scarecrow Rock. One night in high school when I was particularly brokenhearted over the beautiful Pamela Forrest, I lay on the ground and did exactly that. And in my drunken state of poetic heartbreak, lying right at the base of the damned thing, I could indeed kinda sorta see how it did, if you closed one eye, more or less look vaguely like a scarecrow. I have spent my time in this vale of tears wisely, wasting not a moment.
It didn’t look at all like a scarecrow tonight. A small forest. A moonlit mesa. A five-foot-tall piece of limestone jutting up from a limestone base almost blood-red in this light. A buck deer heard me, pausing momentarily on the mesa and then fleeing with the fragile grace of its kind.
The mesa came at the end of what locals called the Comanche Trail. If you read much about the Comanches, it’s hard to believe they ever got as far east as Iowa. But somehow the narrow, winding dirt trail got itself named that and the locals liked it enough to keep it, accurate history be damned.
In true pioneer spirit, I stopped to take a pee a couple of times, stoke up a Lucky, and get whipped hard enough by sharp-edged pine branches to draw a little blood on my forehead.
I also kept stumbling. I wondered if the pioneers had worn penny loafers.
Probably, wouldn’t you think?
River smell. A lone motorboat somewhere in the darkness. The trail would soon swing northwest, away from the river where, as I recalled, I’d find the hunting cabin.
I had to make a trail of my own, straight down through the loamed and leafy undergrowth you find in any deep woods, the mixed scent of mint and mud and a million feces samples from the little ones-foxes and rabbits and possums and raccoons, among them-^wh gleaming eyes followed me as I tripped and stumbled downslope toward another trail that would take me to the cabin. I hoped I was giving them enough entertainment to last them for a while. That I know of, they don’t have Tv.
I ended my downslope travels with an homage to Buster Keaton. My foot got lodged in a massive claw root extending from a tree. Yanking it free, I stumbled the edge of the slope and fell headfirst to the trail three feet below.
I banged my head hard enough against the earth of the trail to knock myself out momentarily. I also embarrassed the hell out of myself. I could hear the owls laughing now.
I got up, lit a Lucky, and started walking again. Low-hanging pine branches slapping me from either side. The trail angled upward abruptly. At the top of the rise I stood looking down on the cabin I was looking for.
I’ve never figured out why they call these things cabins. It’s really a summer house. Two stories, screened-in front porch, one-car garage. The pioneers, the people who really did live in cabins and soddies, would have called this a mansion.
When I got up close, standing on the beach in front of the place, I found that the garage was empty and the front door locked. No lights inside. All I could hear was the river rushing past thirty yards away. A half-moon had risen above a tiny, nearby island, tall ragged pines silhouetted against its glow.
I stayed on the front porch for a time, squinting inside through the large windows on either side of the door. A nicely furnished place, from what I could see. Large, native stone fireplace, leather furn
ishings, and a spectacular display of animal heads on the wall, everything from moose to bobcat, spectacular if you weren’t one of those displayed, anyway.
It was time for drastic measures. I took out my Swiss Army knife, which at last count had something like 2eacdgeajjj uses and cost only $2.99 if you also included the coupon the pulp magazine provided.
I started walking around the house, carrying an empty wooden Pepsi case to stand on, looking for a window I could pry open. Two baby raccoons watched me from a tree limb, their bottoms hanging below the limb, their tails twitching kittenlike.
As it turned out, I didn’t need to use my Swiss Army knife. One of the back windows had been left unlocked. I set the Pepsi case up. It was wobbly but it stayed upright long enough for me to grab the window ledge and pull myself inside.
Tobacco. Whiskey. Coldness. These were the things I smelled immediately. The deeper I went into the shadowy house, the more the odors shifted. A recent meal, fried meat, probably beef.
Then-coffee percolating in the dark kitchen.
Somebody here. Shampoo in the downstairs bathroom. A scent of perfume on the stairway leading to the second floor.
I stood on the landing, not sure where to start. The downstairs hadn’t given me anything. I was self-conscious. My breathing sounded too loud.
And wherever I stepped, the flooring squeaked. Then the dust of the place made me sneeze. A cat burglar I was not.
There were four doors, two on each side of the hall. The first door opened on a dormitory-like bedroom. Two pairs of bunkbeds, a bureau with a clock radio on top, a closet where various hunters over the years had left odds and ends of their pleasure, a couple of duck calls, a camouflage jacket, a rain hat, a pair of waders that I associated more with fishing than hunting. In other words, nothing.
Same setup in the next room, the pair of bunkbeds, the bureau, the dormlike configurations. Maybe these middle-aged men missed college life and these cramped little rooms brought back all kinds of remembered pleasures.
I was just leaving this room when Jean Coyle appeared in the moonlit doorway and said, “You shouldn’t be here, Sam. You’re trespassing.”
The moonlight gave her an ethereal presence.
But the black steel gun in her hand kept her very real. Even though I’ve carried a gun sometimes, being around them still spooks me. At least she wasn’t pointing it at me.
“You shouldn’t be here, Sam.” Her voice was dulled. Exhaustion, maybe; alcohol.
“Are you all right?”
“Do I look all right, Sam?”
“I wish you didn’t have that gun, Jean.”
“I heard somebody breaking in. I knew where Jack keeps it in the bedroom down the hall.”
“I’m just doing my job.”
The way she half slumped against the doorframe, I decided it was exhaustion not liquor that had sapped her energy. In her sporty suburban jacket, blouse, and slacks, she still looked vivacious in her languid way. But it was the vivacity of a mannequin.
“You’re trying to blame Jack, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know who I’m trying to blame, Jean.”
“How much do you know?”
“He used to bring Sara Griffin here. I know that much.” I hesitated to tell her that the child Sara had been carrying was perhaps Jack’s. I wasn’t sure she could handle it right now.
She pitched forward. I reached her in time to keep her upright. I lifted her up in my arms and carried her down the stairs. She probably weighed around one hundred fifteen. I had to keep redoubling my arm strength. I was pretty wobbly getting her down the steps.
The leather couch near the fireplace was big enough to work as a daybed. There was even a red woolen football-game blanket at one end of it. I got her arranged and went for some of the coffee I’d smelled earlier.
I found the liquor while I was in the kitchen.
I grabbed a fifth of Wild Turkey on my way back to the living room. After I got her sitting up high enough to drink the Irish coffee without choking, I got the lights on and found the thermostat. Deep in the metal bowels of a furnace came the promise of heat.
I lighted a cigarette and poured myself a thumb of whiskey. I sat in a chair across from the couch. I felt like her inquisitor. I didn’t have any choice.
“Was he in love with her?”
“Thanks for taking care of me.”
“We’re friends, Jean. What the hell else would I do?”
She sipped. “This tastes very good.” She huddled her hands around the cup as if she were very cold. “That was the first part of the explanation. That he was in love with her. But that was the first time.”
“The first time?”
“When she was younger. Worked part-time in his office.
And they had an affair. He knew it would destroy both of them so he broke it off. That’s when she had her breakdown and went into the mental hospital. She would never tell her parents who she’d had the affair with. And they never figured it out. They might have suspected but they didn’t have any proof.”
“And you took him back?”
She smiled sadly. “I’m a forgiving person, Sam. It’s my nature. I can’t help it. He made a mistake and asked me if I could forgive him. I did.”
“Wasn’t it difficult?”
“Difficult?” The sad smile again. “Two or three times a day I’d have these little breakdowns. I’d be furious or I’d be so depressed I was paralyzed. I don’t think I let him touch me for a year. And I mean not even a friendly kiss. I just kept thinking how old I must look to him after Sara. She was so beautiful.
I even tried a psychologist in Cedar Rapids. The most vain man I’ve ever met.
He thought it would be good for me if I went to bed with him. He sat down next to me once and tried to kiss me. I walked out and never went back.
He had nerve enough to send me a bill. Which I didn’t pay, of course.”
She drank more coffee. Held the empty cup up. “Do you suppose I could get a refill?”
“Get your own damned coffee.”
For just an instant she believed me and looked shocked. Then she laughed. Or tried to. “I forgot about your sense of humor, Sam. How deadpan you can be.”
After I brought her a second cup, and after I was sitting down again, she said, “About four or five months ago-I can’t say for sure exactly when-Sara started calling Jack again.
I actually felt sorry for her. She was obsessed with him. All that time in the mental hospital-she hadn’t improved any at all.
She’d just managed to stay away from him, but once she gave in to the urge again, she started following him. Calling him. Sending him love letters. And then waiting for him in his car at his office. He couldn’t get away from her. And then-” Her hands huddled around her coffee cup again. Her gaze was fixed on the past. She said. “He gave in to her one night. She convinced him to come out here to the cabin. And she managed to get herself pregnant.”
In other circumstances, her last line would’ve been funny, one of those lines that deflect responsibility. She managed to get herself pregnant. Jack, of course, had had nothing to do with it. A poor passive figure and no more.
“That’s why I’m here tonight.”
“I guess I don’t understand, Jean.”
“He’s been afraid to come out here since the last time they were together. And especially since she was killed.”
“I guess I can understand that.”
“Then after your confrontation with him… he thinks you’ll try to blame him for Sara’s death. And for Egan’s.”
“Why would he have killed Egan?”
“Because Sara might have told him that she was pregnant with Jack’s child.”
“You did it again, huh?” I made it as soft as I could, as if I were talking to my kid sister.
“Did it again?”
“Forgave him.”
“Oh. Yes. I see. Yes, I guess
I did, didn’t I?” Her gaze grew old and sad. “But i
t really wasn’t his fault. She talked him in! coming out here-he only did it because he was afraid she might have another one of her breakdowns-and when they got here, she seduced him. It really wasn’t his fault, Sam.”
We believe what we choose to believe, what we need to believe, however ludicrous that might be. If we couldn’t lie to ourselves, we couldn’t survive. But Jean’s belief was extraordinary.
“He didn’t kill them, Sam.”
“All right.”
“Do you believe me?”
“I’ll try to.”
“It’s the truth, Sam.”
“Where’s your car?”
“My car? Why?”
“I thought I’d give you a ride to it.”
She sipped some coffee. “I’ve still got things to do out here.”
“Like what?”
“Making sure that she didn’t leave anything behind out here. She was a true child, Sam.
Beautiful, seductive, but a true child. Jack told me that she was always spilling her food on herself. He said he had to clean her up as if she were a three-year-old. He said that sometimes he had to clean her up the way he did our own daughter.” She smiled. “I can hear all those Freudian red flags going up in your head, Sam. But it wasn’t like that at all. She fooled people into thinking she was this little angel. Sweet and innocent, you know how teenage girls can fool people. And she seduced him. I’m sure she let him think he was seducing her. But it was really the other way around.”
Hopeless. I couldn’t take any more. I pitied her in a way I never wanted to pity anybody, in a condescending way, as if she were my house pet or a primate.
I stood up. “I need to go.”
“Please don’t get Jack involved in this.”
“I’ll try not to.”
She flung off the cover and eased off the couch.
She came to me and slid her arms around me.
“Please, Sam. You two have never liked each other. But he’d never kill anybody. It just isn’t in him. It really isn’t. He’s not perfect but none of us are, Sam. And Cliffie hates him. If you make Cliffie think that Jack’s involved-”
I kissed her on the forehead. “‘ationight, Jean. I’ll help you all I can.”
