Bad Moon Rising (11 page)

Without turning to look at me, she said: “My friends at the club very smugly told me that Cliffie has the Mainwaring murder solved and ready for the county attorney. It's even worse this morning. By the time I got to my chambers, four different people told me that they'd read the local rag, and apparently there's a quote from Cliffie—more or less in English—that he won't be ‘outguessed' on this one. He also said that your friends, those dreadful ‘hippies' as you call them, should be forced to leave town.” Now she glared at me. “I don't want that illiterate fool outsmarting us on this one, McCain.”

“He hasn't yet.”

“Dummies have dumb luck. Maybe he's right for once.”

She crossed the room with finishing school aplomb and set her quite fine bottom on the edge of her desk, Gauloise in one hand, her glass of Perrier in the other. “If this Cameron boy didn't kill her, why did he commit suicide?”

“I don't think it was suicide. And I'm hoping the doc agrees with me.”

“The ‘doc,'” she scoffed. “Somebody brought him as a guest to the club one night and he got three sheets to the wind and started talking about how stupid Republicans are. At the club, if you can imagine.”

“I wish I could've been there.”

“You'll never set foot in our club if I have anything to do with it. You'd be worse than he was. You'd probably start giving your Saul Alinsky speech.”

Saul Alinsky was the Chicago professor famous for teaching groups that were powerless how to organize and become powerful. These groups were always the outsiders, ethnic and political ones looking for justice. “He's one of my heroes.”

“What's wrong with William F. Buckley?”

“Too prissy and too smug.”

“I'll mention that to Bill when I see him next month.”

“I have several other things you could tell him, but you wouldn't want those words to come from your mouth.”

A dramatic drag on the Gauloise: “So if he didn't kill her, who did?”

“Right now there are several possibilities. I wanted to ask you if you'd ever heard anything at your club about Eve Mainwaring.”

She stretched her legs out, inspected them. Long and slender, perfectly turned. She had good wheels and knew it. “Personally, I like her. She's a bit standoffish, but that's only because when she first started coming there all the usual sex fiends started chasing her.”

“Paul didn't object?”

“Paul wasn't around. God, that man travels more than LBJ. She usually came with one of the other club women.”

“So you haven't heard anything about her?”

“That she sleeps around? Of course. I've heard it. But I don't believe it. I've talked to her a number of times. It turns out she loves Lenny's music.”

“Ah.”

“Don't think I don't know what's behind that ‘Ah.' When I told her that Lenny was a friend of mine, she was fascinated and wanted to hear all about him. I consider that a sign of intelligence and sophistication.”

“So you don't think any of the scuttlebutt about her is true?”

“I most certainly don't.”

“I don't suppose she's a fan of Dick Nixon, too.”

Another momentary indulgence on her cigarette: “I wouldn't be crude enough to ask, McCain. That's something people like you would do. She did say, however—and I had absolutely nothing to do with this—that she didn't think much of Hubert Humphrey. I'll let you make up your own mind on that.”

“She's supporting George Wallace?”

She slipped off the desk. “I've had enough of you for today. Now get busy. I want to put a stop to all this nonsense about Cliffie having solved the case.”

“If I pull it off will you invite me to your club?”

She couldn't help it. She smiled. “They'd eat you alive, McCain. And they wouldn't laugh at even one of your stupid jokes. Now get going.”

The main floor of the courthouse held what was called a luncheonette. For employees of the courthouse it was perfect for quick breakfasts, quick lunches, and twenty-minute coffee breaks. Next to it stood a small stand run by a blind man named Phil Lynott. He'd gone to the Vinton School for the Blind back in the mid-'40s and had been running the stand ever since. He sold newspapers, cigarettes, cigars, and pipe tobacco. He was a rangy, balding man who wore dark glasses. He could tell you where every single item was. He could retrieve said item in seconds. Just about everybody liked him. One time a smart-ass, on a bet, tried to steal a newspaper. A big defense lawyer who'd played tackle for the U of Iowa got the culprit around the neck and damn near choked him to death. Phil had had no such trouble since.

“Hi, Phil. Did Cartwright finally convert you?”

Phil laughed. “You know he's on in the afternoon now, too.” He nodded to his small black plastic radio.

“Oh, goody.”

“Whatever else you can say about him, he's great entertainment.”

“…
and so tonight in the park my flock will be presenting a one-act play called
Jesus Meets a Hippie.
This is something the entire family will want to see, especially if you've got boys or girls who think they might want to grow their hair long and take drugs and fornicate before marriage. As I said to my wife just the other night, when I think of all that fornicating I just can't get to sleep
.”

Phil's laughter rang off the sculpted halls of the courthouse. “‘Don't bother me now, honey, I'm thinking of all that fornication.'” He was still laughing when I pushed through the heavy glass doors and stepped into the ninety-six-degree afternoon.

“She's in the bathroom.”

Jamie was whispering. And pointing. As if I didn't know where the down-the-hall bathroom was.

“Who are we talking about?”

“Shh. Not so loud, Mr. C. She'll hear you.”

I seated myself at my desk.

“She came in real mad and then she just sat there and started crying. I don't blame her. If my brother committed suicide I'd be half crazy, too. I feel sorry for her.” She was still whispering.

Sarah Powers walked in then. “Jamie said it would be all right if we talked.” She stood in front of my desk. The anger Jamie said she'd come in with had probably depleted her momentarily. “I want to thank you for getting me out of jail. I probably owe you some bail money.”

“No bail, Sarah. I told them I wouldn't press charges against you for hitting me with that steel rod. And I convinced them you weren't being an uncooperative witness—that you didn't know any more than you were telling them.”

“Well, I really appreciate it, Mr. McCain.”

“I'm Sam. You're Sarah.”

No smile, just a nod.

Jamie held up her bottle of Wite-Out, her lifeline to secretarial success. “I'm all out, Mr. C, I need to go get some more.”

I knew she kept half a dozen emergency bottles in her desk. I was impressed that she'd devised such a clever way of excusing herself so I could talk with Sarah. Someday when I'm a little more successful I'll have an office with two rooms. I will stop people on the street to tell them about this and eventually two men in white will cart me off to the mental institution one town away while I'm babbling, “Two rooms, I tell ya! Two rooms!”

“Good idea, Jamie.”

“You want me to bring you anything, Mr. C?”

“No, I'm fine. Thanks, though.”

Jamie stood up, that wonderful dichotomy of
Teenage Babylon
body and Donna Reed face. In her pink summer dress—something Wendy and I had bought for her on her birthday—she was a sweet young mother. Married, unfortunately, to a little rat bastard who considered Iowa a surfing state. Have you ever seen a cow surf? Neither have I.

When we were alone, Sarah said, “He didn't kill himself.”

“Why don't you sit down, Sarah? You look exhausted.”

“I know my brother. He wouldn't kill himself.”

“You said you were worried he'd kill himself when he got strung out on that one girl.”

She was still standing up. “I shouldn't have said that. Deep down I didn't believe he would have. And I don't believe it now.”

I pointed to the chair. She finally walked back to the most comfortable chair in the place, the one I'd bought when the largest law firm in the city redid their offices and sold off most of their old furniture.

“He didn't commit suicide and he didn't kill her.”

“I believe he didn't kill her. I'm not as sure about him committing suicide, though for some reason I tend to agree with you. I think he was murdered.”

“You mean that?” She looked younger then, still and always the tomboy, but there was a childlike frailty in the dark gaze now as if she'd finally found a true friend. I could abide her usual anger because I could understand it but it was pleasant to see her almost winsome.

“There's something I got from one of the girls at the commune. Emma Ewing. She said that just before dusk she saw Bobby Randall's Thunderbird parked down by the barn. He was talking to Donovan. She was in the house for maybe twenty minutes, and when she came out again his Thunderbird was still there but she didn't see him anywhere.”

“He comes there a lot?”

The eyes got shrewd. “Nobody told you?”

“Told me what?”

“A lot of us think he's got a deal with Donovan.”

“What kind of deal?”

“Donovan says that we should only buy drugs from Randall. He said that right after we moved in. He says Randall's the only one we know isn't a narc.”

“So he gets a cut from Randall?”

“We can't prove it but that's what we think. And you know Donovan went after Vanessa before my brother did. He was way hung up on her. He didn't go crazy like Neil but he started trying to sleep with every chick in the commune. He even hit on me a couple of times. I mean, guys don't hit on me unless they're really hard up.”

“You've got to stop that. I do all right with women and look at me.”

“There's nothing wrong with you.”

“Oh, no? I'm short and I'm not exactly handsome. It's attitude. I just pretend I'm this cool guy and sometimes it works. And that's what you've got to do.”

“I'm scared of guys.”

“Well, I'm scared of women.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely. They're like this alien species. Just when you think you've figured them out a little bit they do something completely unexpected. And you're standing there looking like a fool.”

She must have been restraining herself to a painful degree because suddenly she was sobbing, her face in her hands. I walked around the desk and stood in back of her chair. I put my hands gently on her shoulders and started muttering all the stupid things people mutter at times like these, a reminder of how difficult it is to really comfort anyone.

I reached over and snatched Jamie's Kleenex box from her desk. I handed it to Sarah. She plucked one free. It resembled a fluttering white bird in her fingers. She blew her nose but kept on sobbing.

When the phone rang, I took it on Jamie's desk. Paul Mainwaring didn't say hello. “I've sent you a check for a thousand dollars, Sam. That should be enough for your services.”

“Way
too
much, actually.”

“It's done. We have our answers. Now we can get on with our grieving. I appreciate your work on this, Sam.”

“Shouldn't we wait for the autopsy?”

He wasn't angry; peeved was the word here. “Autopsy? We already have it. Vanessa was stabbed to death.”

“I mean Neil Cameron's autopsy.”

“What's that got to do with anything? Now I'm in a hurry here, Sam. As I said, I've sent you a check for a thousand dollars and I've thanked you for your work and I'm hanging up now.”

“What if Neil didn't commit suicide?” I rushed my words, had to because he was about to put his phone down.

Peevishness was now anger. “He did commit suicide, Sam. That's obvious to everyone except you, apparently. I talked to Mike Potter. His opinion is that Cameron felt guilty about killing my daughter and that he knew he'd spend the rest of his life in prison so he killed himself. Even you should be able to understand that, Sam.”

Yes, even you, Sam. Now quit picking bugs off yourself and begging for bananas and get off the damn phone!

“Potter hasn't seen the autopsy yet, either. Maybe he'll change his mind.”

“Good-bye, Sam. I wanted this to be a pleasant little call because right now I'm losing my mind over my daughter's death and I need a lot of little pleasant moments. But thanks to you I'm all worked up again. Good-bye.”

Sarah was dabbing her eyes with the Kleenex. The sobs had given way to frantic sighs. I got myself a cup of coffee and said, “Where're you planning to stay?”

“At the commune, why?”

“Everything be cool there for you?”

“Yeah, except for Richard. He's pissed because all this is likely to get the commune shut down. That's the only thing he talked about. He didn't say anything about Neil being dead. I think he still hated him because of Vanessa.”

“But Vanessa ended up doing the same thing to Neil that she did to Donovan, right?”

“The same thing she did to all her boyfriends. They'd get close and then she'd dump them. But Richard couldn't see it that way. When he'd drink he'd talk about how he'd still be with her if it wasn't for Neil.”

“So it doesn't bother you to go back there?”

“The people there are more my friends than Richard's. They're tired of him. This Emma I told you about?” A fleeting smile. “She calls him The Overlord.”

Jamie was back with two sacks. One was from the office supply store, the other from the deli. She placed the former on her desk and the latter in Sarah's lap. “They were having a special on ham and cheese on rye so I thought I'd get you one. I'll get you some Pepsi from the machine down the hall.”