Breaking Up Is Hard to Do (The Sam McCain Mysteries Book 6) (19 page)

“That being?”

“That being that Ross did commit these murders and will be going to prison.”

“And you want to know if I think he’s guilty?”

“Exactly. We don’t always get along, McCain, but I do have some respect for your word.”

I smiled.

“Did I say something funny?”

“That ‘some respect’ crack. You could’ve just said, ‘I have respect for your word.’ You didn’t need to hedge your bet that way.”

“Shilly-shally. You’re just stalling because you don’t know how to
answer
my question.” Then she smiled. She had a mischievous smile that was almost girlish. “You’re getting slow, McCain.”

So like a dummy I followed her gaze to where the rubber band had been. I’m emphasizing the past tense here. Because the rubber band was no longer there. It was on its way to my—nose. She shot it with her usual callous skill and now it lay across the bridge of my nose.

“I imagine you feel triumphant,” I said.

“No more so than usual where you’re concerned.”

“This really is quite immature, you know, for someone of your age and stature.”

“Oh, McCain, let’s not talk about my age and stature. That’s so dry. Let’s talk about how ridiculous you look with a rubber band lying across your nose. That’s a lot more fun.”

“You came here just to shoot me with that rubber band, didn’t you?”

“My, aren’t we the paranoid one today? Yes, McCain, I’m psychic. I knew there’d be a rubber band sitting there on your desk, out in the open as it were. So I hurried over to take advantage of it.” Then: “Don’t be ridiculous. I came here because I’m concerned about Irene and Deirdre. They’ve been through so much with him and now this. He’s such a charmer that I always forgave him his indiscretions, too—he’s tried to get me into the sack upon occasion, too, difficult as it is for you to imagine, McCain—but I just put it down to the martinis. And now this. This—with that girl—is impossible to forgive. Irene will never recover. I’ll say it again, thank God for Deirdre. They’ve decided to put off going to the sanitarium until tomorrow, by the way. They’re both just too tired today.”

“I’ll put it this way. If I had to bet, I’d bet he was innocent.”

“Really? That’s interesting. Why?”

“People as smart as he is don’t leave bodies in their bomb shelters.”

“But maybe that’s the beauty of this whole thing.”

“What is?”

“He puts the body in there and everybody thinks just what you said—he’s too smart to put the body where somebody’s sure to find it. A jury would take his status, his history and his intelligence into account and find him not guilty.”

“I’m getting a headache.”

“Oh.”

“This is all getting pretty complicated.”

She smiled sweetly. “Perhaps for a tiny brain like yours.

“You really did look funny with that rubber band hanging off your nose like that. Been a long time since I did that to you,” she continued with a smirk as she stood up.

“Not long enough.”

“Oh, you crab,” she said as I walked her to the door. “You know you like it as much as I do. The little rubber band thing.”

“Love it,” I said. “Positively love it.”

It was just past one. That gave me an hour before Janice Wilson came to my office. I had a sandwich at Rexall. Mary was behind the counter but the place was still packed with late lunchers. Mary and I exchanged, in order, smiles, winks, smiles and melancholy looks because we wouldn’t have a chance to talk. I didn’t even see her at the cash register. Somebody else took my ticket.

I sat in the park and alternately read through my notebook and watched the squirrels stock away food for the winter. I wished I could be a part of nature the way all the little animals were, a true part of the cycle. Even living in a small town in the Midwest, you are cut off from nature. You get more of a chance to see it but you rarely have the time—or, face it, the inclination—to get into the woods or the prairies or the farm fields and learn about it firsthand. The irony was that the people who spent the most time with nature—excepting farmers, of course—were the hunters, whose pleasure it was to kill a part of it. Life, as my dad always says, is like that sometimes.

I stopped off at a store that sold used items and bought a copy of Budd Schulberg’s
Winds Across the Everglades.
Nobody had paid much attention to the book or the movie. But both were lyrical and bloody looks at the destruction of the Florida Everglades as far back as the turn of the century. Just the same way nobody paid much attention now to how Midwestern rivers were being used as toilets by manufacturing plants.

I figured I’d get in fifteen minutes of reading before Janice Wilson showed up.

But she was waiting for me. As soon as I pushed through the glass outer door, I saw that my office door was open about an inch. I’d left it that way in case she beat me here. Through the crack between door and frame, I saw the back of a blonde head with the collar of a blue suede jacket turned up.

I had to get all the way into my office before I realized that she wasn’t doing anything. Even when you’re sitting silently, you tend to move a bit, scratch your chin, run a hand against your hair, shift your position, unconscious, nervous mannerisms that everybody has.

She wasn’t moving.

I walked around her chair and looked down at her.

She was a very dignified-looking working-class girl. The white ruffled blouse and blue skirt and blue hose and blue one-inch heels were tasteful but cheap. The thigh-length suede coat was a notch up. The matching suede purse was stitched badly and the pieces hadn’t quite fitted together. But there was nothing cheap about the face. It was one of those long, earnest, solemn faces that bespeak hard work, honesty and intelligence. Well-scrubbed. Perfectly made up. Not quite beautiful but quietly sexual.

There was blood on the right side of her head. Fresh blood. Her breath came in little bursts, almost asthmatic-sounding.

I rushed to the john and soaked up half a dozen paper towels. I took a pint of bourbon from my desk drawer and poured three fingers into a glass. The booze is for clients. It’s in the private eye’s list of Things To Have In The Office. I have yet to get a fedora or a trench coat but I have no doubt they’ll be coming along soon.

“Somebody hit me.”

“They sure did.”

She’d come awake like Sleeping Beauty. Wide blue eyes trying to remember who and where she was. Dry, full lips parting to speak sleepily. Confusion, fear, and finally recognition all playing silently across her appealing womanly prairie face.

“You’re McCain.”

“I’m McCain.”

“It was dark in your doorway there. I think I caught somebody trying to get into your office. They really let me have it.”

“Apparently.”

She spidered long fingers across the area of the wound. “I don’t think I’ll need stitches.”

I handed her the glass with the bourbon and then tapped two aspirin out of a bottle. She took both gratefully. She shuddered once after ingesting the aspirin. Then she began sipping the bourbon.

“Should I call the police?”

“No. That’s why I came here. So I wouldn’t
have
to talk to the police. I just want to tell my little story and leave town.”

I went behind my desk, sat down, took out my notebook and grabbed a pencil.

“She hated him, you know.”

“I guess we need to back up a bit, Janice. Who hated who?”

“Who hated whom, actually. I got A’s in English in high school.”

“Good for you, Janice.”

She smiled for the first time and it was worth the wait. She was like right out of the box at Christmas time—shiny, fine, immaculate. “I always correct people’s grammar.”

“Endearing habit.”

This time the laugh was throatier. “You don’t hide your irritation very well.”

I smiled. “I’m sorry. You’re sitting here with a lump on your head and I’m being less than gentlemanly. My apologies. Now how about your story.”

“Well, let me try to organize it. I guess the simplest way to say it is that Karen Hastings used to come into the Embers in Cedar Rapids. I grew up on a farm near Cedar Rapids and started taking night classes to get a college degree. The tips were good at the Embers and I liked the people so I’ve been there for three years. I’ve got two years of college behind me now. Anyway, Karen always came in and ate. She was so beautiful I could see why she’d attract all her men. Then I started to see that she kind of rotated through four different men over and over. There was a pattern there. And they ran to a type. Twenty years older, obviously well-to-do, and very taken with her. Sort of courtly, in fact. She was like the pretty little girl that all the uncles wanted to shower with gifts. The funny thing is, she always looked lonely. I guess I picked up on that because I’m the same way myself. I have a lot of opportunity for dates but most of them just make me feel worse than better. The guy I was seeing is in the Marines. Last winter they sent him to Viet Nam. Have you ever heard of it?”

“I know we’re sending more and more troops over there is about all.”

“Anyway, so I’m lonely and she’s lonely and one of the nights she came in alone, she asked me if I wanted to have a drink after I got off. That’s how we got to be friends. The place she lived in—I’m a farm girl, I’d never seen any place like it. I’d never seen a sports car like hers, either. She didn’t ever say it—she wasn’t much for talking about herself at first—but I caught on that these men were keeping her somehow. I wasn’t sure of the arrangement right away but it got to be clear. And then they started getting jealous of each other.”

“Anyone in particular?”

“Carlson?”

“Peter Carlson?”

“Yes. I was in her apartment one night when he started banging on the door. She was terrified of him. We had all the lights off. But he was so drunk, he just kept pounding. I asked her why didn’t she call the police? Later that night she explained her arrangement with the men. I could see why she couldn’t call the police. Then she started hearing from her brother. The first time I met him I couldn’t believe they were even related. Quiet little guys like that I usually feel sorry for. But not him. He scared me. He was four years older than she was. She told me he used to force her to have sex with him all the time they were growing up. He wasn’t as meek and mild as he liked to seem. Anyway, what he wanted her to do was start shaking down these men. He knew that with Carlson acting the way he was, the whole thing was going to come apart very soon. But he saw the opportunity with Ross Murdoch running for governor to really collect one big blackmail payment. He said that since he’d set this whole thing up he was entitled to half of it.”

“Did he ever threaten her?”

“Oh, sure. A lot. She was afraid of him. She told me that she’d tried to hide from him several times—she lived in New York and Miami twice each—but that he’d found her both times.”

“Was she planning to run away this time?”

“I think so. But I’m not sure.” She paused. “She didn’t want me around any more. When I called, she’d get me off the phone as quickly as possible. And the same when I saw her on the street one day. She said she was busy. But I could tell that something else was going on.”

“But you didn’t know what?”

“No, I’m afraid I didn’t.”

“How long did this go on?”

“Oh, a month or so I’d say. Obviously something had happened.”

“Did she seem scared?”

“Not exactly. More like anxious, I guess. But not scared. I even asked her about that, if there was anything I could help her with. She just said no and then got off the phone right away.”

“And you have no idea what she was doing?”

“Afraid I don’t.”

From the center drawer of my desk, I took the restaurant receipt. Handed it over to her.

She smiled. “I’ve seen several thousand of these over the years.”

“Take a closer look at it, would you? Her brother put some significance on this that I haven’t been able to decipher.”

She studied it. “The date—I was in Chicago that whole week. I had a lot of vacation saved up.”

“So that isn’t your ticket?”

“No. The initials for the waitress are CG. That’d be Callie George. Very nice young woman. And there’s a 10 in the upper right hand corner.”

“I noticed that. What’s that signify?”

“What we call a ‘friend’ discount. If you wait on a relative or close friend, you’re allowed to give them a ten per cent courtesy discount.”

“You think there’s any way Callie might remember who this ticket was written for?”

“Well, it might be her friend or my friend. We switch stations a lot. I take hers on her nights off and she takes mine. So we pretty much know each other’s courtesy discounts. I can ask her when I see her today. I’m on my way to work now. I can call you from there if you want me to.”

“I’d sure appreciate that.” Then: “This has sure been helpful.”

“Well, I guess I was right to be worried, anyway. She always thought she was so—tough, I guess you’d say. That’s one of the reasons she was so interesting to be around. She always had all these little plans going. You know, ways she could take advantage of this person or cheat that person, things like that. Never big things. Never like robbing a bank or anything. And I was fascinated. I thought she was sort of cool. But then the more I got to know her—she started to scare me. I’d always assumed she was putting on the toughness to some degree. But she wasn’t. She really enjoyed tricking people. And that’s when I started pulling back.”

“But you kept calling her.”

“You’re going to laugh.”

“I could use a laugh.”

“I was trying to get her to go to this Bible class I take once a week. I got dumped by this guy—and this class saved my life. I’m not a real religious person but it gave me some perspective. I thought maybe it would help her, too. I planned to arrange it so we’d go on separate nights. I didn’t want to see her any more. But of course she wouldn’t go. She just thought the whole thing was a joke. She said, ‘God, you really
are
a farm girl.’ She’d always said that I wasn’t as unsophisticated as I thought.” She shrugged. “We didn’t end up very well. I still feel sorry for her, though. Having a brother like that—” She checked her watch. “Well, I need to get to work, I guess.” She stood up, offered a slim hand. We shook.