Sam McCain - 02 - Wake Up Little Susie (12 page)

I probably should have laughed about this in a superior older-brother way, but the truth was, the more I was out in the world, the better my high school days looked to me. I hadn’t been especially popular but I had my ‘ch Ford and my collection of science-fiction magazines with Ray Bradbury stories in them. And I had that greatest luxury of all, time to call my own. I could hang around garages and watch mechanics work on cars; I could take in a double feature, a Randolph Scott and a Robert Ryan if I were lucky; and I could sit in a booth at Rexall’s and feast on a burger and fries while I read all the magazines I didn’t plan on buying. When they make you grow up—or at least make you pretend to grow up—all that changes. Take my word for it.

“Kids today,” Dad said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Kids today.”

“That Dick Clark is a con man if

I’ve ever seen one.”

My dad has a bullshit meter that is impeccable. I’d been thinking the same thing myself about Clark. Alan Freed goes to prison and his life is destroyed for a pittance in payola money. But somehow Clark remains untainted by the whole thing. It didn’t make a lot of sense.

Mom said, “He looks like a very decent man to me. I was reading about him in Tv Guide and they said he’s a real family man.”

That was all my mom needed to hear.

I spent another half hour at my parents’

house. Mom cut me a big slice of

pineapple upside-down cake, and while Ruthie was in the bathroom Debbie peeked her head in the kitchen and asked who I thought was a better singer, Tab Hunter or Sal Mineo, and then Dad said he was going to take a nap, and Mom joked that he’d need all his strength to chew through that Tv dinner, and then I gave them both a kiss and left. I give Dad a kiss because I like to see him blush.

Family members.

Those are generally your first suspects in a homicide.

I learned that in my criminology courses, and it’s stood me in good stead as an investigator.

Family members frequently kill other family members, as the guys who wrote the Bible will tell you.

I’d already questioned David Squires, sort of, so now I needed to question his ex-wife, Amy.

I called and she told me to come out only if I brought her a bottle of Chablis. She was having a small dinner party tonight and didn’t feel like running into town and standing in line at the state liquor store.

I guess we’re lucky. Some states are still dry. Iowa at least has liquor stores. Every time you buy a bottle of booze, they write your purchase down in a book. This serves two purposes: it allows the state to keep track of how much you’re drinking, and it forces you to face your alcohol problem, if you’ve got one. Cotton Mather, I think, came up with this particular system.

The liquor store is usually busy,

especially when a holiday’s coming up.

I got the Chablis in record time and drove out to the east edge of town.

You had to give Squires credit. He’d dumped his ex-wife, true, but he left her in good financial shape. The house was a split-level, a part stone, part wood, Southern California-style place with large stretches of sunlight-sparkling windows. Hard to sit around the living room in your underwear in this house, with or without your frosty can of Falstaff for company.

There were two cars in the sweeping driveway, a little red brand-new T-Bird and a dowdy green Chevrolet sedan.

The chimes were lengthy and pretentious, sounding vaguely like Gershwin. Bob Gershwin.

Amy’d put on a few pounds since I’d seen her last but they were not at all unbecoming.

She’d been three years ahead of me in school.

She’d always been beautiful, stylish. She had the sensuous mouth, the erotic overbite, the perfect classical nose, the brown-alm-ebon eyes that could be merry and sad at the same time. If her body was slightly overmuch, it was slightly overmuch in all the right ways. Dressed in a man’s white shirt worn outside and a pair of jeans, she displayed two surprisingly small and very naked feet. She looked like the heroine of every Harry Whittington Adults Only

paperback I’d ever read.

“Thanks,” she said, and plucked the brown paper bag from my grasp. “You want some coffee?”

“I’d appreciate it.”

As she led me through an impeccably modern and impeccably impersonal house, she said, “God, I think it’s great.”

“What’s great?”

“That you think I killed that bitch.”

“Yeah, there’s nothing more fun than being accused of murder.”

“Where that bitch is concerned, it’s an honor.”

We sat in a tiled kitchen, open and sunny, right out of a magazine. A huge island, shiny pots and pans suspended from above. White appliances—vast upright refrigerator-freezer, even vaster stove—andthe pleasant scent of floor wax.

The coffee was made. We sat in the breakfast nook.

“How’s the coffee?”

“Good.”

“You don’t have to lie, McCain. I know I make terrible coffee.”

“Ok, it stinks.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I mean, I’m sorry but it does.”

“You want some sugar?”

“No, thanks. I’ll just kind of sip at it.”

“He always bitched about that too.”

“Squires?”

“Uh-huh. Said I couldn’t cook, said I weighed too much, and said I always made a fool of myself after two drinks.”

“Sounds like a pretty good marriage to me.”

“She was a conniver.”

“That wasn’t my impression.”

“She took my husband, didn’t she?”

“From the way you described your marriage, maybe he just handed himself over.”

She sipped her coffee from a mug with a Republican Party cartoon elephant on it.

“Maybe it’s just because I’m used to it. But I think this stuff tastes pretty good.”

I looked at her. “Happen to remember where you were Friday night between eight and twelve?”

She cackled. “God, you’re serious, aren’t you, McCain?”

“I’m afraid I am.”

“I was right here. With my two little daughters, who never see their father because that bitch wouldn’t let him come over here.”

“How old’re your daughters?”

“Nine and six.”

“You talk to anybody on the phone?”

She thought a moment. “No.”

“Anybody drop by?”

“No.” Then: “I didn’t kill her,

McCain. Besides, they found her in a car trunk, right?”

“Right.”

“I couldn’t lift a person and throw her in a car trunk.”

“She probably didn’t weigh a hundred pounds.”

“Oh, I see. I’m such a moose I

could’ve done it, huh?”

“Just about anybody could’ve done it, Amy.”

“You know what’s funny?”

“What?”

“I was the one who got her on the cheerleading squad. I mean, she was nobody. And I just thought it’d be neat if I, you know, sort of extended my hand. I was the captain of the squad so I figured I should set the example. The other girls didn’t want her. They called her “Jane” because she was always reading those Jane Austen novels. My mom said Jane Austen was a lesbian.”

“Well, if anybody would know about Jane Austen’s sex life, it’d be your mom.”

“But I felt sorry for her. So I insisted.

And seven years later, she steals my husband.

Small world, huh?”

I tried the coffee again.

“Any better?”

“I’d just as soon keep my opinion to myself.”

Then: “People tell me you got into it with her in public a few times.”

She shrugged. “It wasn’t any big deal.

I’d had a couple of drinks a couple of times.

I mean she did after all steal my husband.

Thanks to her my two little girls have no father.”

“He left you pretty well provided for.”

“Guilt. You run off with some little flat-chested Jane Austen type, the only way you can live with yourself is to lavish a lot of money on your ex and your daughters.”

I waited a beat and then said, “He ever hit you?”

She waited several beats. “How’d you find out about that? That was one of the things I agreed to keep quiet about. In return for the house and the cars and everything.”

“So he did hit you?”

“He wants to be governor, you know.”

“So I hear.”

“But first he needs to be state attorney general. The party fathers in Des Moines think he needs to be known better statewide before shooting for governor. So he’ll run for Ag first.”

“And it’d look bad if the Ag was an accused wife beater?”

She nodded. “The funny thing is, it was kind of sexy when it started out. I mean, he’d rough me up when we were making love, and at first I didn’t mind it. He didn’t really hurt me.

Then he started losing interest in the sex and went right to the hitting. He knew just where to do it

so it didn’t show.”

“He ever get carried away?”

“You mean like lose control?”

“Yeah.”

“Once. Gave me a black eye and a

split lip. I was really scared. I was going to talk to a shrink in Iowa City about it, but he begged me not to. Promised he’d never do it again. Right after that, he started seeing the slut—”my calculation, anyway.”

“You ever hear about him hitting Susan?”

“No.” She smiled impishly. “But I

would’ve been happy to do it for him.”

I looked at my Timex and I thought about whipping out my notebook. But then I decided Amy wasn’t the sort of person you gave an edge to. She’d be gossiping about Captain Video for weeks. “I guess that’s about it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“You know the crazy part?”

“What?”

“To make him jealous I started sleeping with a lot of his lawyer friends from Iowa City. And I made sure the word got back to him.”

“And?”

She looked suddenly miserable, giving me a glimpse of the hard but fake exterior she’d constructed for herself. “I still love him, McCain.”

“I’m sorry, Amy.”

“This’ll be our fourth Christmas without him.”

She walked me to the front door. “I saw you at Rexall’s the other day. Talking to Mary.

When’re you going to come to your senses and marry that girl?”

“I wish I knew,” I said.

The half-hour drive to Cedar Rapids was pleasant. Fall is my season. The

melancholy scent and the delicate beauty of the land, made all the more delicate by its brevity.

The office was on the west side of the river, above a corner grocery store that stank of rotting meat. The owner pointed me to the side of the stucco building and a flight of stairs that led to a door beyond which you could hear babies crying and adults coughing.

The nurse was pretty, much like Susan had been. Young Dr. Jensen’s taste in

women seemed to run to type. She said she was sorry but that since I hadn’t phoned ahead for an appointment, I’d just have to wait my turn.

Babies always cry when they see me. I set three or four of them exploding just by sitting down.

Mothers scowled at me for existing. What sort of telepathy or voodoo had I performed on their sweet little dears?

The people in the waiting room looked poor, that class below the working class that not even the war was able to help economically. I suspected that Jensen dealt with them because they were the only clientele he could get. But I had to give him his due for bringing help and comfort to people that most of society despises. In America, being poor is a sin if not a perversion.

Coughers coughed and sneezers sneezed, and a couple of old men hawked up enough phlegm to make me swear off eating for months. It was a swell way to spend seventy-three minutes.

I killed time by taking out my notebook and reading over what I’d written about the case so far. A couple of the mothers made faces when they saw Captain Video staring at them. One infant kept pointing at me and sobbing. I gave his mother my best “I’m sorry” look but she wasn’t mollified.

I started looking my way through the magazines.

The room was long and narrow, much like a boxcar, the cracked walls painted a mustard yellow. There were a lot of framed bromides about staying healthy, but they looked so old and decrepit they mocked their own wisdom. The chairs were mismatched, and so were the three tables upon which magazines were heaped. There were so many magazines, I got the impression that people were using this office as a dumping spot for periodicals they wanted to dispose of. Magazines of every kind: family, how-to, adventure, knitting, horseback riding, grain importing. And not a single one displaying cleavage. I found a Collier’s with a John D. MacDonald novelette in it and read that.

He wore physician whites and a black serpentine stethoscope. His wild curly red hair was a lot longer than it should have been, and too many midnights had painted gray swaths beneath his green eyes. The equipment was sorely out of date, an examining room and two slender glass-fronted cabinets holding

medicine.

He was busy with a clipboard when I walked in. He glanced up and said, “Just sit on the table. I’ll be with you in a sec.”

It was a couple hundred secs actually. Then he looked up at me and did a double-take Red Skelton would have considered hammy.

“You,” he said, pure accusation.

“The one and only.”

“You were at the dance the other night.”

“Right.”

“What the hell’re you doing here?”

I took my notebook out from inside my sport jacket and held it up.

He gawked and looked as if he wanted to giggle. I’d forgotten to flap the cover back.

“Never mind the cover,” I said. “This is where I keep my list of suspects.”

“Oh, great,” he said. “A cop with a Captain Video notebook—”

“I’m not a cop. I work for Judge

Whitney of the District Court.”

“That snooty bitch. What the hell’s she got to do with any of this?”

“She wants to see justice done.” I sounded like Broderick Crawford on Highway

Patrol.

“I’ll bet.”

He walked over to the door and put a giant hand on the knob. “Get out.”

“I have a witness who saw you arguing with Susan a few weeks ago. The witness says you gave her a very hard shove.”

He didn’t sound quite so sure of himself suddenly. “A shove is a long way from murder.”