by Clark Howard
“Are you sure you want to put yourself on the line, Joe?” Gloria asked. “Right now your job and pension aren’t at risk. I think Cassidy’s a good chief too, but he could go the other way and put both of us out on the street.”
“If that’s the way it turns out, fine,” Kiley told her. “Either we both stay or we both go. I’m going to shoot the works with Cassidy. I just wanted to let you know so you wouldn’t sweat it over the weekend. Listen, I’ve got to go—I was up all night last night—I’m falling asleep holding the phone—”
Sometime around midnight, he woke up, turned off the television, undressed, and went to bed, in bed. In all, he slept once around the clock, not waking up again until nine Saturday morning.
After a luxuriously hot shower and a slow, close shave—for which he got out his father’s old shaving brush, soap cup, and straight razor, something he did once in a while, he didn’t know why—but after the shower and shave, he felt good enough to prepare what he called a “killer breakfast”—eggs, bacon, buttered white bread with sugar sprinkled on it, and strong, black coffee: everything medical science preached would shorten one’s life. But it was delicious, and he sat in his underwear eating it while he watched the morning sports news.
It was when a weather report came on, predicting a clear, balmy spring day for northern to central Illinois and Indiana, that Kiley got the notion to drive down and see Alma Lynn. She was, he thought, probably giving herself an ulcer over the photographs of Ronnie that Touhy had taken. Kiley knew her kind: Once she got her mental teeth into something, she never let go; she wouldn’t draw a peaceful breath until the matter of Ronnie’s pornographic photos was resolved. Calling her would have been the simplest way of doing it, but not the most satisfactory. Merely telling Alma that he had found and destroyed the photos would forever leave a spark of doubt in her mind, a nagging hint of suspicion that he was only telling her that to relieve her mind. He knew too that he could have mailed them to her: probably the best plan; but for some reason he was inclined to drive down and hand them to her in person.
It had been the prospect of the drive, as much as anything, that had decided him. A nice, long, leisurely drive, away from everything and everybody, to give his mind a few hours of R-and-R. There was no way he would not think about the case, of course; cases, really, because Harold Paul Winston was in his thoughts also. No way he could avoid reflecting on everything he knew so far, both about Nick’s killing and Winston’s lies and crimes, but at least he could contemplate in a new, more neutral environment than his apartment or the Shop.
He had dressed in a fairly new pair of khaki trousers and one of the plain white polo shirts he usually selected when shopping, and then he had done an odd thing: He had unzipped the garment bag Stella had given him and picked out one of Nick’s expensive sport coats. It was a muted plaid number in subtle earth tones, single-breasted, American cut although it had an Italian designer label on the inside pocket. The fit was not perfect but it was good enough, and Kiley decided to wear it.
And, as he had done the previous day, he put Nick’s badge in his pocket again too.
When Kiley arrived in Ripley, Indiana, shortly after three that afternoon, he found, instead of the sleepy little place he had originally pictured, a town square bustling with men, women, kids, cars, pickup trucks, and traffic moving so slowly that it took him fifteen minutes of circumnavigating the courthouse before he found a place to park. The other little towns he had gone through on the way down had been crowded the same way, but going through them had not been as bad as stopping in one. It took another ten minutes of walking around to locate a pay phone. The directory showed Alma Lynn living at 420 Elm Street. When Kiley dialed her number, it rang long enough to make him wonder if she too were up at the town square, until finally she answered.
“Hello—”
“Ms. Lynn?”
“Yes—”
“This is Joe Kiley—”
“Oh, hello. Sorry I took so long to answer; I was doing my yard work. How are you?”
“Okay. You?”
“Well—you know—” It was like there was a shrug in her voice.
“I’m here in town,” Kiley said. “Would it be okay if I dropped by?”
“You’re in town? Here in Ripley?”
“Yeah. I just drove in. This little town is really jumping.”
“Saturday,” Alma explained. “All the farm families come to town to shop. Believe me, it doesn’t jump any other time. Well, this is a surprise—where are you?”
“At a pay phone in some drugstore; I don’t know the name of it—”
“Brown’s,” she told him. “City Drug doesn’t have a public phone.” She seemed to hesitate. “I wish you’d called before you got here; I’m really a mess—the yard work—”
“I really don’t have to stay but a minute,” Kiley told her. “I have something to give you.”
“Oh.” It took her a moment. “Oh! Really? Is it what I hope it is?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, listen, drive around the square until you get to the corner where the bank is, then turn right. That’s Elm Street. It’s four blocks down, number four-twenty. I’ll be outside waiting.”
“Okay,” Kiley said.
When he got away from the anthill of the town square, Kiley found Elm Street to be a wide, straight thoroughfare with sidewalks fronting deep, maturely landscaped front yards shaded by enormous old oak trees with only a sprinkling of elms after which the street was named. The lawns were backed by large, brick-foundationed, wooden-sided, shingle-roofed, dormered, shuttered, and porched, two-story, 1940s vintage homes, all of them looking solid and stately. Flower-edged walks led from the streets to the porches, and no-nonsense driveways ran in a straight line back to rear detached garages, connected to the houses by covered breezeways. To Kiley, it was like a street Norman Rockwell might paint, missing only a little boy playing with a ball and his dog.
Alma Lynn, a red bandanna on her head emphasizing her own red hair and freckles—another Rockwell image, small-town picture-of-America woman—was waiting as she said, standing by the drive in shorts and a worn man’s shirt not tucked in, her feet in deck shoes without socks, a pair of gardening gloves holding the shirt up in back where they stuck out of a hip pocket. Kiley pulled into the drive, saw a blue Chevrolet two-door parked back near the garage, and stopped where Alma was standing.
“Well, hello,” she said as he got out. She pulled a mock pose. “I told you I was a mess—”
“Hello,” Kiley said, feeling a little embarrassed. “I’m sorry I didn’t think to call ahead before I got to town—”
“Oh, that’s all right,” she waved away his apology. She tilted her head slightly. “You look different somehow; maybe it’s the sport coat—I’ve only seen you in gray suits and ties; it’s a very nice coat.”
“Thanks. I don’t wear it much—” He had no idea why he said that.
“Come on in,” Alma invited. “Have something cold to drink—do you like limeade? This is real limeade, homemade.”
“I’ve never tried it, but it sounds good.”
She led him onto the porch and inside to a large, comfortable living room furnished with older but substantial pieces arranged around a floor-to-ceiling used-brick fireplace and hearth. “Make yourself comfortable,” she said. “I’ll get the limeade.”
Instead of sitting, Kiley ranged: moving, pausing, studying things in the room. There were three club chairs and a couch, lamps at all of them, no television in the room; a reading family, Kiley thought. Magazines on a coffee table: National Geographic, American Heritage, something called Persimmon Hill. No ashtrays anywhere. Open drapes on the windows, sheers closed under them. A game table against one wall; a shelf above it holding boxed games: Parcheesi, Monopoly, Chinese Checkers, others. A grand piano, its top laden with family pictures: a lot of them with freckle-faced twin girls in various stages of growth—the twins in leotards and ballet shoes, the twins in Brownie uniforms, the
twins on a parade float, the twins in graduation gowns. And there were pictures of a man with a pleasant face but weary shoulders; a woman with tight lips, trying to look pretty. One picture of a sad-faced dog—
“Here we go,” Alma said behind him, and Kiley turned to see her brushing aside the magazines and placing on the coffee table a tray with two glasses, a pitcher of limeade with ice cubes and fresh lime peel floating in it, spoons, sugar, napkins. “Those are my parents,” she said of the photographs. “And the family dog, Oscar. My father named him that because he said the dog looked like somebody named Oscar Levant, whoever that was. Did you ever hear of him?”
“No,” Kiley said.
“He used to be in movies, Daddy said. He said they both had sad faces.” She paused briefly, looking over at the photographs. “Those others are Ronnie and me—” She shook her head at the pointlessness of the remark. “I’m sure you’d figured that out.” Holding out a glass, she said, “Here, try this for taste; then sweeten it if you like.”
Kiley sat and sipped the limeade, then reached for a spoon. “Is this all the sugar you have?”
“Is it that bad?” She looked genuinely pained.
“Just kidding,” Kiley said. “Actually, it only needs a little—” Not easy to joke with, he thought. Although it could be the recent circumstances. “You live here with your parents?” he tried to move away from his lame humor.
“No, my parents are—I thought I mentioned to you on the phone that they were dead. I left a message on your machine—”
“Yes, you did. I’m sorry, I forgot.”
Alma glanced at the piano. “I’m the only one over there still alive. Even Oscar is gone.”
Stirring two spoonfuls of sugar into his glass, Kiley moved away from the subject of death. “This looks like quite a house.”
“It is.” Alma rose. “Come on, I’ll show you the rest of it. Bring your glass.”
She led Kiley first into a formal dining room with deHavilland china and Waterford crystal displayed behind the glass doors of a mahogany cabinet that matched a gleamingly polished table and eight chairs; then to a smaller room with a television and some easy chairs in it—“This was originally a sun room when Dad first had the place built,” she said. They went on into a large country-style kitchen, light and airy, its appliances not new, their age made all the more obvious by a modern microwave in their midst. From there to a wide, screened-in back porch with wicker rockers, a swing, a portable TV, and bamboo sun shades that unrolled down. The backyard, Kiley could see, was as deep as the front, with wooden lawn furniture under two mammoth oaks the foliage of which reached out to each other, forming a natural canopy. There was a brick barbecue nearby. Old automobile tires hung from each tree. Twins.
“Why don’t we sit out here,” Alma said when they were on the screened porch. “I’ll get the limeade.”
When she returned, Kiley was in one of the rockers but not rocking; he saw no point to it. As Alma sat in the swing, he said again, “Quite a house.”
Alma smiled a melancholy smile. “Ronnie and I were born in this house—literally: in the front bedroom. Mother’s water broke one morning while she was fixing breakfast in her nightgown and robe. She went upstairs to change clothes while Daddy called the doctor. But before Mother could even change, she went into shock labor and Ronnie started coming. Dad called the doctor again and the doctor called for a nurse, and they came over here. By the time they got here, Ronnie was out and I was coming right behind her.” Her smile brightened. “We made such a mess, Daddy had to throw the mattress out and get a new one. An ambulance took Mother and us to the hospital for a couple of days, mainly so Mother could rest.” Now she sighed quietly. “Daddy wanted to try for a son, but Mother refused to have any more children. Her two ‘little missies’—that’s what she called us—were plenty, she said.”
“How long have your folks been gone?” Kiley asked, trying to keep the question conversational rather than inquisitive.
“Let’s see,” Alma said, turning in the swing, working out of her shoes and putting her feet up, leaning back against a big pillow. Her legs, Kiley noticed, were tanned, firm, the thighs slightly too large in proportion to the calves. “Daddy’s been gone almost five years now. He was a two-pack-a-day man: Camels, no filter, no menthol, just cancer. It got him in the lungs first, then threw a clot into his brain. It took him a long, rough year to go. And Mother—” Alma took a quick swallow of her limeade “—Mother went a few years before Dad. She was a closet drinker in her later years; used to stretch out on a chaise in her sitting room upstairs and while away the afternoons sipping Jack Daniels and looking at photo albums of her pictures when she was young and pretty. By the time Ronnie and I got home from school, she’d be swacked and we’d have to put her to bed and fix Daddy’s supper. Cirrhosis finally got her. Our family doctor put kidney failure on the death certificate so nobody would know.”
Alma stared into space for several moments, and Kiley, not wishing to intrude on whatever private memories had seized her, maintained a silence, himself staring also, out at the big backyard, trying to imagine how it would have been growing up in a place like this. Probably dull as hell, he decided. How could growing up be any fun without alleys to duck through, rooftops to run across, outdoor ballparks and indoor stadiums and big downtown movie houses to find ways to sneak into, El trains to ride—there was probably no place in a little town to prowl.
Alma abruptly sat back up on the swing and asked directly, “Did you find those pictures of Ronnie?”
Kiley nodded. From his inside coat pocket, he took an envelope and handed it over to her. Putting aside her glass, Alma took out the Polaroids and looked at them one by one. There were eight. Two fellatio, two cunnilingus, two doggie-style, and two tit-fucking. Alma’s expression did not change as she went through them. When she was finished, she put the pictures back in the envelope and reached over to place it on a wicker table that also held the portable TV.
“Well,” she spoke resignedly, “Ronnie said they were really hot.” She sighed quietly. “Where did you find them?”
“Where I thought I would,” Kiley told her. “The ex-boyfriend’s apartment.”
Alma’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, you got your search warrant then?”
Kiley shook his head. “No.”
“But how did you—I mean—? ”
“You don’t want to know any details,” he said. “If you know details and I give you the pictures, you become an accessory after the fact to a felony.”
“Oh. I see. All right.”
Alma rose, collected the tray and limeade glasses, and walked to the kitchen door.
“I’ll be right back—”
Kiley heard her in the kitchen—rinsing glasses, opening a dishwasher, opening the refrigerator. Keeps a clean kitchen, he thought. The clink of more glasses. A cabinet door closing. Then the screen door to the kitchen opening and Alma was back, standing in front of him with the same tray, but now it held a bottle of Tanqueray, two glasses, a small pewter bucket of ice, and a dish of olives.
“Gin, right?” she asked. “I also have vodka, bourbon—”
Kiley shook his head. “It’s a long drive back to Chicago.”
“Detective,” Alma said, putting the tray on a wicker table, “you look to me like a man who enjoys a good steak. Am I right?”
“Who doesn’t?” Kiley admitted.
“I buy New York cuts, USDA Prime, sixteen dollars a pound. I barbecue them on that grill out there with mesquite chips in the coals. You never tasted steak so good.” She put her hands on her hips. “How about salad—you like salad?” Before he could answer, she pointed to a back corner of the yard and said, “See that string running between those four poles? That’s my garden. Tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, celery. No pesticides, no packing, no boxed ice, no exposure to exhaust fumes being transported. Just exquisitely good fresh vegetables lovingly washed in pure Indiana well water—”
“Are you inviting me to dinner, Ms. Ly
nn?” he interrupted.
“How quick!” she marveled. “No wonder you’re a detective!” She sat down on her heels in front of him, expression turning very serious. “How about it? I could really use some company that I don’t have to put on a front for.”
Kiley pursed his lips, as if in deep contemplation. “Did you say no pesticides?”
Alma stood back up, slapping his knee on the way. “Pour yourself a drink while I go shower off my yard work smell. Then I’ll have one with you.”
When twilight came, Kiley and Alma were sitting on the lawn furniture, feet up on individual little tables, with a table between them for the gin and ice. In the barbecue, coals had lost their leaping blue flames, and the intense, invisible heat over which Alma had cooked the steaks was now turning to gray ash around the edges. On a brick ledge next to the pit were dishes, bowls, utensils that Alma and Joe had used to eat their steaks and salads. Alma had been right: Kiley had never tasted steak so good; a far cry from Sizzler’s, even from the steaks Nick had cooked on the Bianco barbecue. “You’ve got to buy USDA Prime,” Alma insisted. “That’s the only way you get that flavor. My dad taught me that.”
“Sounds like your dad knew his steaks,” Kiley said.
“Sometimes I think my father was the smartest man I ever knew. He was a teacher also; taught history for more than thirty years at the same school where I teach. But it wasn’t just that he was intelligent—you know, book smart; he had common sense too. You’d be surprised how few intellectuals really have that.”
Kiley didn’t know if it was the gin, the food, the ambience, or what—but he was feeling very good, very relaxed, and thoroughly enjoying the company and conversation of Alma Lynn. After she had earlier left him on the screened porch and gone upstairs, he had taken off Nick’s sport coat, draped it over the back of another rocker, and poured himself a drink. Presently he had heard the sound of Alma’s shower, seeming like it was right above him. He imagined her under that spray of water: naked, suntanned, freckled, body toned, firm. The photographs of Ronnie were still on the TV table where she had put them; Kiley went over, looked at them again. Now that he knew Alma better, and had not known Ronnie at all, it was strangely like looking at pictures of Alma. He found himself studying Ronnie’s—Alma’s—breasts, buttocks, mouth—
