“Because you got me into this. I know how your brain works, how quickly and creatively you think. It’s hopeless, but if I’m going to be able to do anything for this man, I need you.”
She wasn’t cold and detached now. I told her she had me, then I finished reading the report. There wasn’t much to it.
We discussed ways of getting me in to talk to Dan. The first thing she decided to do was to have me placed under subpoena as a defense witness. Then she made a few phone calls. In a spare moment, she covered the receiver and told me to get lost because she’d have no time for lunch. I was to meet her at the jail, and we’d see how she’d done.
I got up, walked around the desk, took her hand, and mouthed, “Thank you.”
Eve smiled. It was a weary smile but a warm one, and her hand was warm; and, in spite of everything, I felt better than I had in days.
CHAPTER 15
“Son, never in the history of American Show Business has the U.S. Cavalry arrived too late!”
–Moe Howard, “The Three Stooges” (Syndicated)
THE FEELING DIDN’T LAST too long. Dan’s big news turned out to be that he had seen a car driving away just as he’d gone into the house. Now, the fact that somebody else was on the grounds that night was good news, and the fact that Dan was fairly certain the car was Grant Sewall’s Mercedes made it even better. But it didn’t do much, if anything, toward clearing Dan or even toward pointing a suspicious finger at Grant.
For one thing, Dan saw the car leaving as he went inside; by his own testimony, Debbie had been alive then. Dan’s whole problem was to get someone to believe she’d still been alive when he himself had left, about seven minutes later.
That was another problem. Sure, Grant may have come back yet again, but that would have meant he’d returned, gone inside, killed his fiancée, left, and gotten completely out of sight before Brenda returned. Not much time for that. Still, it was a crumb. I’d have to talk to both of them.
Dan had been glad to see the car. “I figured he came back to try to make up and failed. Debbie wouldn’t admit it, but she was agitated. I figured she was about ready to listen to reason. That’s why I was so upset on the way out and punched those posts out of the railing.” Then he started to cloud up again. His lawyer, probably used to this sort of thing, looked up into the corner of the cell as if her schedule for the rest of the day had been written up there.
I wasn’t used to seeing my best friend go to pieces, and I hated it. I was about ready to start crying with him. Dan must have noticed, because he shook it off—just closed his eyes tight and shook his head the way Spot does when he steps out of the water. Dan’s face folded into a sad-eyed smile.
“Okay, everybody. Get to work on this. I’d help you if I could. Honest.”
Eve called the guard, and we went to work. Or she did. I went to the Sewanka Inn to check out. I’d quit the Network; I couldn’t go on letting them pay for my lodging, not that they would. To make it easier for the accounting of all concerned, I moved into Dan’s apartment on the north side of town.
God, apparently, was paying close attention to the proceedings here, because a dark featureless overcast had rolled in while Eve and I were talking to Dan. Appropriate stage setting. I couldn’t help noticing it because Dan’s apartment was mostly windows. It was a garden apartment, second floor, in a development of several hundred units. Dan kept it neat. He had a bedroom, a long room that he had divided into an office (with his new Apple III computer), and a dojo, with a mat for his karate practice. It was as bare and Spartan as the inside of a refrigerator. Especially the inside of Dan’s refrigerator, which had some bean sprouts and some plain yogurt, along with two onions. I could eat that stuff, I suppose, but not frequently. There was nothing to give Spot, either.
Spot. He had to leave the Whittens’, that was obvious. It would give me a good reason to go out there and ask some questions, too. Still, I was having trouble working up enthusiasm for the project. It’s a conflict I frequently have with myself. My brain is constantly coming up with ideas I’d rather believe I’m too nice to think of.
That’s what was going on now. I’d been exercising some logic; it was enough to make me swear off logic. Eventually, I swore at the room and the world at large, picked up the phone, and dialed the Whitten residence. The maid answered. I gave a phony name and asked for Miss Brenda Whitten. When I was told Miss Whitten was not at home, I was happy.
For a few seconds. Then I realized they were screening the calls. Every newsman in the free world, and at least one from TASS, was probably trying to interview the Whittens. Not even a newspaper magnate’s family was going to put up with that.
There was no way around it. I was going to have to go out there in person and take my chances.
But not quite yet. I had to do some boning up first. I pulled down a book from the shelves in Dan’s bedroom. Karate: Body and Balance by Henry Norman, a good Japanese name if I ever heard one. The sky made it too dark to read without lights, and I was tired of looking at grayness anyway, so I pulled down the shades and sat in a basket chair under a lamp and began to read.
I’m a good reader (not always true of an English major, by the way), but the book was tough going for a while. It assumed a greater knowledge of the martial arts than I possessed, so I had to stop and visualize things frequently.
I’d gotten things fairly well worked out when the phone rang.
“Matt?” It was Brenda Whitten. She was putting a heartiness into her voice that she didn’t feel.
“Hello, Brenda,” I said quietly. “I tried to call you before.”
“So that was you. I thought it was. Daddy has forbidden me to speak to you or that lawyer, but to hell with him. I called her to find out where you were. Matt, I have to talk to you. Can you come out here?”
“Sure. But wouldn’t it be better to meet somewhere? What about your father?”
“I can’t leave here. Besides, you’ve got an excuse—you’ll be coming to pick up Spot.”
I smiled. “Great minds run in similar channels,” I said.
“What?” I told her never mind. “Okay, Matt,” she went on. “Anyway, don’t worry about my father. He’s such a wreck, the doctor’s given him a sleeping pill. He’ll be out for hours. Please come.”
I told her I would. I was about to hang up when Brenda spoke again. “Matt?”
“Yes, Punkin?” I was astonished to hear myself call her that—that was Dan’s pet name for her.
Brenda didn’t seem to notice. “It’s a mess, isn’t it, Matt?” I remember thinking it should be illegal for a little girl to sound that sad.
Spot has been known to punish me for ignoring him, and God knows I’d been ignoring him, but this time he showed nothing but gladness at the sight of me. Everybody who lives in close proximity to an animal tends to anthropomorphize. I knew Spot wasn’t making allowances because I was so depressed; I just wanted to believe he was because I felt better that way. I took some time and showed my appreciation, scratching him under the chin and behind the ears. Spot closed his eyes and enjoyed it.
Then I found out why he was in such a good mood. “I mated him to Vanilla today.”
Oh,” I said. So he’d had his little canine ashes hauled, had he? “What did your father say about that?”
“He doesn’t know. And I don’t care if he finds out, either. It—it was something Debbie wanted.” She was silent for a second. “So I took care of it. Let’s take a walk, Matt.”
“It’s going to rain.”
“We won’t go far. Just halfway around the house. Spot could use the exercise, and there are plenty of doors we can duck into if it starts to rain. Besides, I want to practice walking.” She grinned and held her hands out to her sides. “See? No crutches!”
“Wow, I have been preoccupied. That’s great, Junebug. How long have you been going without them?”
“Just since this morning, but I think it’s going to be easy.”
“Don’t overdo it, now.�
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“Piece of cake, Matt, honest. My hip is a little sore from dragging the thing”—she knocked on the artificial leg through her jeans—“but I’ve got to build up the muscles anyway. Come on, Matt. I’m bringing you along to carry me if anything goes wrong.”
I laughed. “Only a knave could resist the plea of a damsel in distress.”
We left the house. I had to help her down the front stoop, but once we hit the walkway, she was on her own. She had a decided limp, of course, and when she tried to go too fast, she had trouble keeping her balance, but other than that, she got along fine.
Spot was happy, too. He danced along, yipping, chasing odd bits of things that were blown along by the pre-shower breeze.
Brenda said, “I’m going to miss Dan, Matt. I hate this.”
“He’s not gone yet, Brenda.”
“Oh, but the evidence. I heard my father talking to the district attorney—”
“That figures.”
“—and it—well, it sounds like poor Dan doesn’t have a chance.”
“Poor Dan,” I thought. That was interesting. After all, to the best of her knowledge and belief, “Poor Dan” had killed her sister. I toned that down some and mentioned it to Brenda.
Brenda looked miserable. “Oh, God, Matt, I know. I’m all mixed up. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep—I hate it that this has happened, but sometimes ...
The wind picked up. The new leaves on the trees made a noise like fire.
“Look, Matt,” she went on. “Have you ever loved someone you didn’t like?”
The question stopped me in my tracks. Dan had said almost the same thing, that night at the House of Hans. I simply said yes.
“Okay, then,” Brenda said. She stood facing me. “Then you know how I felt about Debbie. She was beautiful and smart and basically a good person. Really ... but she wasted it. Dan was right about her, you know. She—she—”
“It doesn’t matter now, Junebug.” I shook my head. “That’s not right. I meant to say, whatever the case, she deserved better than she got.”
Brenda smiled through tears. “The Old Professor strikes again. You even correct your own grammar, don’t you?”
“We strive for precision,” I told her.
“Okay. But it’s hard to say precisely what I’m trying to say.” The wind pushed a strand of her hair across her face and held it there; she brushed it away. “I—well, I miss my sister, and I want her back—but sometimes I think about Dan and what he went through for her, and I think he should have killed her. He should have killed her! Sometimes, I want to just scream!”
I told her I knew the feeling.
She turned her pretty face to me. It was very serious, very earnest. “Matt, you have to get Dan out of this somehow. You have to. Whatever he did, he doesn’t deserve to rot in jail for it.”
I looked at her, into her round blue eyes, and had a thought, a thought I hated myself for. But of course I followed up on it; I’m not even surprised anymore at what I’m capable of.
“You can help, Brenda,” I said, “if you want to.”
“Name it, Matt. Bring me to that lady lawyer. Just tell me what to say.”
“That won’t be necessary,” I snapped. I was getting a little tired of people volunteering to perjure themselves if I would speak but the word.
“Okay, then, how can I help?” She put a hand on my arm. “I’m sorry, Matt.”
I let go some air and relaxed a little. “Me too. Like I said, I’ve been preoccupied.” I patted her hand, and she took it back. “There are two things you can do for me. First, I’ve got to talk to Grant.”
“Yeah?” Brenda said. Her tone said go on.
“Well, I hardly think he’s going to want to see me. He’s probably going right along with your father on that.”
“Okay, I’ll arrange it.”
“I’m going to say some things he’s not going to like,” I warned.
“I’ll take care of it,” she said. “The funeral is tomorrow; he’ll be with us all day. I’ll think of a place and see that he meets you there. Will you still be at Dan’s apartment?”
I told her I would, adding that she should leave a message at Eve Bowen’s office if for any reason I wasn’t home. I’d check in with Eve at frequent intervals.
Brenda nodded. “What’s the other thing?”
“It’s a little ghoulish.”
“I expect that from you. What is it?”
“I want you to hit me.” There it was.
“What?”
“I want you to hit me.” Brenda asked why; I made up some plausible-sounding he about getting the mechanics of the whole thing nailed down in my mind. Brenda said she thought it was a waste of time but agreed to go along with it.
“Okay,” she said, “how should I go about this?” I showed her, roughly, the two possible ways the medical examiner said the karate blow must have been delivered.
“Don’t hold back,” I told her. “I’m ready for you. If I don’t duck, it’s my own tough luck.”
She tried a few tentative swipes. “This is ridiculous, Matt I can’t shift my weight behind a blow like that, not on this leg.”
“Try anyway.” We moved off the walkway a few steps onto the soft grass, and she gave it a try. As she’d warned, standing square to me that way and swinging hard and not sideways, as she did to hit a baseball, she overbalanced and fell.
I blocked the blow by catching her arm. It was a powerful blow—Brenda was a strong girl through the arms and shoulders, remember—but nothing like the shot that had killed her sister. Still, it had enough momentum to knock me off my own feet, and we fell to the lawn with Brenda somewhat cushioned by my body.
Brenda began to laugh. “There, you big dummy, what did you learn from that?”
I laughed, too, with relief. “I learned I’m a big dummy, what else?” Spot, who had gotten bored with our conversation and wandered off somewhere, now came bounding back to us, yipping happily, eager to join the fun. He jumped on each of us in turn and started licking our faces.
I stopped laughing. I had a sudden flash of Spot licking Debbie Whitten’s dead face, and the fun was suddenly gone. I helped Brenda to her feet, and we ended our walk at the back door of the Whitten mansion.
“Made it,” she said. She looked proud.
“Well done,” I told her. I went into my Oral Roberts impersonation—“In the name of Jesus, throw your crutches away.”
Brenda smiled but didn’t laugh. “Soon, Matt. As soon as I can. I hate them so much. If you only knew ...
“Sure, Junebug,” I said. I kissed her good-bye. It was much more of a kiss than I’d expected. I smiled at her. “This little girl is growing up,” I said.
“Good of you to notice.”
The sky was darker, the wind was stronger, and there was a faint sound of distant thunder when I got back to the car, but I decided to press my luck. I knew from experience that the Sewanka skies could do this for hours before it actually rained. Or it might go on for days and never get around to raining. I still needed groceries, so I drove to a supermarket, locked Spot in the car, dashed inside, and bought three bags’ worth of stuff.
I almost made it. I had just pulled into Dan’s space in the parking lot when it started to pour. Spot gave me a dirty look as I let him out of the car, then dashed for the cover of the entranceway, leaving me to deal with the groceries.
I was soaked before I went ten steps, and worse than that, the bags were getting soaked. It was the kind of situation I hate, the kind that can ruin a whole day, and my days lately didn’t take a whole lot of ruining. All I could do was run blindly for the entrance and hope the bags wouldn’t give way, even though I could feel them going.
Suddenly, an umbrella was held over my head, and someone said, “Can I help you with that?” and one of the bags was taken from me, allowing me to regrasp the other two and support their soggy bottoms. I looked up to see who my benefactors were, and what to my wondering eyes should appear but Harris Brophy
and Shirley Arnstein.
Harris’s self-confident grin shone brightly even in the downpour. “Relax, Matt. The cavalry has arrived.”
CHAPTER 16
“Let’s check the scores at halftime and see where we stand.”
–Robert Earle, “G.E. College Bowl” (NBC)
AT SHIRLEY’S COMMAND, HARRIS would tell me nothing until I got out of those wet clothes and took a shower before I caught cold. Fair enough. I was already beginning to sneeze. Still, it was one of my quickest showers—three minutes, tops, and another two to dry off and dress.
I was still wiping my hair when I rejoined the gang. “Okay, now talk. What are you two doing up here?”
“Snatching a weekend of bliss at the Network’s expense,” Harris said.
Shirley blushed bright red. Shirley Arnstein was plain but pleasant-looking. She was very shy, except when it came to her job. She was a compulsive worker, the kind, frankly, that gets taken advantage of. People will leave things unfinished because someone like Shirley will come along and take care of them because they need to be done. Right now, for example, she was drying Spot. She was also very much in love with Harris Brophy, something he seemed to take for granted. It was uncertain how Harris felt about Shirley, because it was uncertain how he felt about anything.
“Ha, ha,” I said. “Come on, Harris. Who’s watching the Network?”
He raised his eyebrows. “What do you care? You’ve quit, remember?”
He was absolutely right, but I was not in the mood to be put down. I told him so, and said they might as well get back to the hotel and get on with the bliss.
“Relax, Matt,” Shirley said. She was rubbing vigorously at Spot’s neck. She finished with him, brought the towel to the hamper, then came back and looked around the room, as though planning to start dusting next. “Harris was only kidding,” she said.
“We came to get the Network car,” Harris said. “Didn’t it occur to you when you called me to resign that you no longer had the right to drive it?”
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