by Ed Gorman
"Maybe you used this yourself tonight."
"I didn't."
"You prove it?"
"Yes. Doc Novotny can give you a pretty good approximation of the time he was killed. I wasn't here at the time." Then I said, "And by the way, he wasn't an FBI agent."
"Bullshit. He showed me his ID."
"Fake." I explained who he'd really been. I told him about America First. "I bet I can tell you who introduced you to him, too."
"Who?"
"Jeff Cronin."
As we talked, new people kept coming into my apartment, front and back. Cliffie had called in some help from Cedar Rapids. A photographer, a man dusting for prints, a man making notes on where the body had been, a man matching two footprints to the soles of the dead man's shoes. A while back, Cliffie's incompetence had messed up an otherwise open-and-shut case for the local county attorney. The county attorney happened to be his first cousin. He went to Cliffie's old man and told him how everybody looked bad when Cliffie made mistakes like this and how if he wanted to leave Cliffie as police chief, for God's sake get him some good help when it was needed. So Cliffie Sr. called some friends of his, and Cedar Rapids agreed to lend a hand. They were pros and would save Cliffie from being Cliffie. Unless he got his hands on the evidence first, as he did with the bust of Pat Boone.
Cliffie looked unhappy. He was starting to put it together. I decided to make him unhappier.
"So he lied to you."
"Who lied to me?" Cliffie said.
"Your good friend Jeff Cronin. At least he did if he told you Rivers - and that wasn't his real name, by the way - was FBI. He got kicked out a year ago."
"Kicked out?"
"You better talk to your buddy Cronin."
"Wouldn't lie to me."
"No? Well, somebody did. Unless you were lying to me when you introduced him as FBI."
"You saw the badge."
"Yeah, for about a second and a half I saw the badge."
"Wouldn't bullshit me like that." He looked stunned, as if he'd just discovered that the world wasn't flat after all. "She alibi you on all this stuff?"
"Pamela?"
"Yeah."
"She would if she wasn't headed to Chicago."
"What's she going to Chicago for this time of night?"
"Start her new life there with Stu Grant."
He smirked. "Yeah, sure. Then next week she's gonna sing on Ed Sullivan."
"I'm serious. They've been seeing each other on the sly for a long time now."
"My ass, McCain. I'm the frigging law here. Anybody's having an affair, Cliff Sykes, Junior knows about it."
"Wait till morning," I said. "It'll be all over town by then."
"Stu Grant? He's gonna run for governor. He'd never do anything like that. Besides, he's a Methodist."
I wasn't quite sure what that last bit meant exactly, but as it turned out I didn't have time to find out.
A new man came in just then. Wore a suit, looked smart and official. Saw the blood all over the bust of Pat Boone that Deputies Weed and Regennitter were handing back and forth. "I actually like some of his songs," Regennitter was saying. "I mean, I don't know why people're always making fun of him."
The new man said, "Making fun of who?"
"Pat Boone."
"That, I take it, is blood," the new man said.
"Yeah," Weed said, "and that sticky shit is brain goop."
The new man said, "This is the murder weapon?"
"We're pretty sure it is," Regennitter said.
"And you're handling it like this?" the new man said, sounding a note of utter disbelief.
"Yeah," Weed said. "Why?"
The new man came over to Cliffie and introduced himself as a member of the State Bureau of Investigation. "Judge Whitney called my boss. He asked me to drive over here on her word."
"Judge Whitney?" Cliffie said, profoundly aggrieved. "She don't have no say who gets asked into a case like this."
The new man lowered his voice and nodded his head back toward Weed and Regennitter. "Those two men of yours."
"Yeah?" Cliffie said. "What about 'em?"
"I strongly suspect," the new man said, "that they're idiots."
EIGHT
I got to sleep around two-thirty. Mrs. Goldman was nice enough to let me use her guest room, while Cliffie was forced to establish my apartment as a crime scene. She was even nice enough to make breakfast for me when I woke up around nine. She said the Judge had called but said to let me sleep in. Then I was to head straight to her chambers.
Mrs. Mannering, a widow who usually works upstairs in the county clerk's office, was sitting in Pamela's chair when I got there. The reception area was otherwise empty.
"Could you cover me later for a half-hour lunch, McCain?" she said.
"Sure, if you'll show me how to use that phone contraption." The Judge had four lines.
I noticed a tiny tic in the corner of her eye socket.
"I'm going to need my nerve pills," she said. She was a sweet-faced woman with a fondness for pies - her photo was in the paper every year for winning first place at the county fair for her blueberry pie - and Barbara Cartland novels. Any time she had a free moment, her button nose was pushed deep into a paperback.
She leaned forward and whispered, "Do you know Judge Whitney yells?"
"I've heard rumors."
"And that she sips brandy all the time?"
"Another rumor."
"And smokes those terrible French cigarettes? I can't even pronounce the name."
I nodded. "We should just be thankful she doesn't chew tobacco."
She giggled at the image of Esme Anne Whitney biting off a chunk of Red Man.
"Well, wish me luck."
Her tic took a violent turn. "I just need to get some of my nerve pills; then I'll be all right. I just hope I don't get transferred down here permanently."
***
The designer attire today was rather simple, something Hepburn - in this case, Audrey - might have worn: simple but very feminine white blouse, fitted blue skirt, blue stockings, blue flats. The matching jacket was on the coat stand.
She had parked her prim well-bred can on the edge of her always-clean desk. She had a snifter of brandy, and a Gauloise burning in the ashtray.
"Mrs. Mannering fears for her life," I said.
"Good," she said. "Nothing motivates people like terror. My father was a colonel in the First World War and told me all about it."
"I'm assuming he fought on our side."
"Very funny, McCain." Then, lifting both brandy snifter and cigarette, she said, "So what, pray God, is going on in this town?"
I started to open my mouth but she stopped me.
"You probably aren't aware of it, but my birthday is coming up and several of my closest friends are flying out to celebrate it with me. I know you think I'm to the right of Hitler in my politics, but believe it or not I regard all this red-baiting stuff as very low-class. It's how the Nazis took over Germany; they toppled the elite by accusing them of treason. And that's what's going on here now. At tonight's school board meeting, someone is going to try and get a teacher removed. My God, it'll make national news! We'll look like a bunch of cretins!"
I didn't want to correct her history and explain that treason charges weren't exactly how the Nazis came to power, but she was close enough so I let it slide. I'd tried only once before to correct the Judge. It is a day not even electroshock therapy could help me forget.
"For the sake of the town - before we all look like a bunch of fanatics - please find out what's going on and stop it. Even my conservative friends will think we've lost our minds."
"That's what I've been trying to do ever since Richard Conners got killed. But things came - "
She held up her hand for silence. "I of course know what you mean by 'things.' My God, how could this have been going on without my knowing it?"
"That's what Cliffie said."
"You knew?"
"Of co
urse."
"And you didn't tell me? Stu Grant's wife and I are on the library board together. Do you know how it's going to look when I see her tomorrow? As if I've known all along what was going on but let Pamela work here anyway. My God, I didn't think you and she were - well, you know, McCain, nothing personal - on the same social plane. But I would've preferred her running off with you!"
"Thanks."
"Oh, don't go and get all sensitive on me. You know what I'm saying."
"Well," I said, "I'm not really all that thrilled about it either."
She looked at me, and for just an infinitesimal moment I saw a flash of sympathy in her gaze. "No, I don't suppose you are, are you?" Then: "If I was one of those hugging sorts of people, I'd probably give you a hug now and tell you to buck up or whatever the Brits say."
I stood up. "That's all right. I've had a lot of hugs lately and they haven't seemed to do me much good."
"Then you'll get right on it?"
"Right away."
When I reached the door, she said, "And from now on, if something's going on in my office that I should know about, McCain, I expect you to tell me."
"Well," I said, "in that case, I think there's something going on between Mrs. Mannering and the mailman."
"Very funny," she said, taking a deep drink of her brandy. "Very, very funny."
***
I stopped by the office to look at the mail and see if there were any checks. There weren't. The Judge paid me well enough that I never had to worry about making the rent or buying food, but it would have been nice to know that my legal clients thought enough of my services to pay me every now and then.
Mom called, just as I was leaving, to remind me of what day it was, and I instantly felt like hell for not remembering. So much had happened, the significance of this particular day had been lost to me.
***
I was actually being followed. I wanted to call somebody and tell them. You know how in detective movies, somebody is always following our guy in a car? Well, somebody's following me in a car right now. A blue 1954 Nash. Staying about a quarter block behind me. Pretty cool, huh?
The stuff you'd think they'd cover in instructing you how to get your private investigator's license, they never do. How to get rid of unwanted blondes who keep breaking into your office and stripping. How to store all those empty fifths of Jim Beam. And how to get the gum off your soles after tailing somebody all day. Never a word about any of that practical stuff. Or about how to lose a car that's following you.
***
There are a couple of ways you can get to the Connerses' manor house on the other side of the river. The most convenient and popular way is to drive across the Lyman bridge and then up into the hills on gravel roads. This time of year, the trip is spellbinding, the leaves and all. You even get a chance to see some of the Indian mounds constructed as grave sites four or five hundred years ago. When you're in seventh grade, they pile you into an old yellow school bus and take you on a tour of these hills. A lot of Indian lore here, and a lot of it sad. Still, there isn't a race on earth that can claim sainthood. Every tribe has its victims and victimizers. The same with people who think things only get worse. I remember arguing with somebody once about how only our age had stooped to biological warfare. I reminded him that in the mid-1300s the Tartars used to throw corpses of Black Death victims at their enemies. A jolly bunch, we humans.
The other way to reach the manor house is by water. Ernie Paul runs a combination grocery, bait, and boat rental place next to a small dock. Personally, I don't care to buy food while my nostrils are clogged with the stench of live bait, but Ernie does well for himself. The interior of his store is covered with photos of his two years in Korea, which is where he lost his right eye. The black eyepatch has a yellow University of Iowa football logo on it. It matches the yellow-and-black Hawkeye suspenders he always wears.
We went down to the river, where he keeps three wooden rowboats during the day. I carried the oars he'd handed me. We got the boat into the water and he said, "They know you're comin'?"
"Just thought I'd drop in."
He shook his angular graying head. "They don't like it when you surprise them. I took a birthday cake out to old Dorothy a couple of years ago. You know, a surprise for the old gal. I thought the bastards was gonna lynch me." Then he laughed. "But you sneak up real nice and quiet, you might get a gander of Chris Tomlin sunbathin' nude up on the bluff there."
"Chris Tomlin?" Though I found her sexual in a quiet way, there was something so earnestly grad school about her, I couldn't imagine her lying outside in the buff.
"She's a hot number, the way I hear it."
That's another thing about Ernie, he's a gossip. If the candy machine guy was reliable only 50 percent of the time, Ernie is reliable less than that. He once tried to tell me that our mayor - a Sykes-clan cousin of advanced age who has suffered two heart attacks and is known to have hemorrhoids so bad he'll start stamping his feet and jerking up and down in his chair right in the middle of a city council meeting - was having an affair with a "high yella" woman in Cedar Rapids. Sure, Ernie.
I got in the boat.
"Water's rough today, McCain. Be careful."
I nodded. He gave me a good shove.
I needed the fresh air. The water lapped blue and wide between the steep cliffs topped by birches and oaks and hardwoods, their leaves igniting in blazing yellows and umbers and mauve. Downriver you could see fishermen standing in their motorboats, casting. Rowing felt good; the Iowa air purified me. Even my hangover began to recede.
Steps had been built into the side of the clay-and-shale hillside. I tied the boat and climbed them.
The house resembled a movie set, one of those giant Tudors where Greer Garson and Ronald Coleman always lived, the exterior walls of brick and native stone acrawl with venerable tangles of vine, two soaring chimneys sending gray smoke into the autumnal blue sky to deflect the chill, mullioned windows and massive doors like the accoutrements of medieval castles. To the right of the Tudor, and set far back next to woods beyond the clearing, was a small house of the same brick and stone. A girl of four or five rode a red tricycle up and down the empty asphalt drive, ringing a handlebar bell as pure and clear as her thoughts.
I heard voices out back and walked around the massive house. Someday, I'd have one just like this. A wife and two kids and my red ragtop. And maybe write a mystery or two. And pose for photos in houndstooth jackets with briar pipes in my teeth and cats in my arms like Raymond Chandler.
Dana Conners was raking leaves into a wheelbarrow next to an old black Ford panel truck with the passenger door stove in. Near her, next to a garden shed, Dorothy was picking up handfuls of leaves from another wheelbarrow and putting them into a large open incinerator. She seemed to be taking no chances. She squirted some kind of fire starter on them, tossed in a match, and the whole thing went whoosh!, like an effect in a movie.
"She doesn't take any chances, does she?" I said.
"Dorothy? She loves to burn stuff. If I didn't know better, I'd say she was a pyromaniac."
Just then, the little girl on the tricycle rang her bell again. I smiled in her direction.
"She's sweet, isn't she?" Dana said. She wore a tan turtleneck and a Western belt, jeans, and cordovan Western boots. Lissome as always but still a bit dazed-seeming.
"She sure is. Hope I have one just like her someday."
She looked at me carefully. "You're a sentimental man."
"I suppose."
"Richard was, too. But he didn't want people to know. Thought it would damage his reputation as a negotiator." Her blue eyes shone abruptly with tears; her model's body bent oddly, as if wounded in some way. "I loved him, McCain. Probably more than I should have."
I wasn't sure what that meant, but it didn't seem appropriate to question her about it.
Dorothy came over, taking off her brown cotton work gloves. Man's blue work shirt, dark glasses, wrinkled pair of chinos with patches of
apple-green paint on them. Apple-green paint on the worn penny loafers, too. "Cliffie's been out here twice. He's a fool. He seems to think that either Dana or I killed Richard. He even asked us for alibis."
"And you had one?" I said.
"God," Dorothy said. "You too?"
"Of course we had one," Dana snapped. "We were together, in fact - shopping. We drove into town together."
"Why not ride with Richard?"
"Because," Dana said, "he didn't have an appointment till half an hour later."
"There," Dorothy snapped. "Are you satisfied?"
"Believe it or not, Dorothy," I said, "Cliffie had every right to ask you that question."
"He was my son."
"Murder among family members isn't unheard of."
"I thought you were smarter than that, McCain," she said.
She made a face, stepped away, and went back to the incinerator.
"The doctor gave her a sedative," Dana said. "I don't think it's working very well. She's agitated all the time." She paused. "It's ridiculous to think she did it."
"Yes," I said. "It probably is. But you have to ask."
"I've never heard you defend that moron before."
"Well, when he's right, he's right."
She knew I was studying her. "And it's just as ridiculous to think that I killed him."
"Had you been getting along?"
"Very well, for your information." Then: "Do you know what this feels like? Dorothy is mourning a son and I'm mourning a husband, and here you are asking if one of us killed him. We're trying to arrange things for his funeral and that's not fun at all."
"Somebody murdered him."
"So the Judge wants to beat Cliffie to the punch as usual, is that it? Show that her boy McCain is smarter than Sykes's boy Cliffie and can solve the murder faster. God, I wish she'd grow up!"
