Sam McCain - 04 - Save the Last Dance for Me (16 page)

“Info?”

Even on a boiling day like today Kenny was decked out in black. He wasn’t in mourning.

He was just honoring his place in the ranks of the Beat Generation. “I told you I’d play detective and I did. I’m going to write this private-eye novel.” Then: “Guess who was caught breaking into Courtney’s rectory last night?”

“Who?”

“Dierdre Hall.”

“How’d you find that out?”

“I have my ways.”

“C’mon, Kenny, how’d you find out?”

“My aunt is their cleaning woman.”

“Ah.”

“She stopped by my mom’s place and I was there.”

“Cliffie know this?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think. He didn’t know as of earlier this morning, anyway.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because my aunt hadn’t told him yet.”

“Why?”

“She doesn’t like Cliffie. She goes to the Lutheran church and he stopped them from playing Bingo one day.”

“Didn’t Mrs. Courtney turn her in?”

“Mrs. Courtney doesn’t know.”

“Wasn’t she home last night?”

“Oh, she was home, all right. With her bottle. Aunt Am was in the basement.

Courtney’s lawyer had asked her to start taking an inventory of everything that belonged to the church and everything that belonged to the Courtneys. Mrs.

Courtney says she plans to move back east very soon.”

“What’d your aunt do with Dierdre?”

“Just told her to go back home. She said the kid was pretty bad off. Crying and stuff.”

“She didn’t say why she was breaking in?”

“Just said she was looking for something. But wouldn’t say what.”

A sad, not-unfamiliar scenario was starting to take shape. B-movie, maybe. Or one of Kenny’s paperbacks.

“You told anybody this?”

“Only you, counselor. I’m working for you, remember. I figure it’s a trade-off.”

“Oh?”

“I’ll need to ask you a lot of questions about law while I’m writing. I try to make my books as authentic as possible.”

“Authentic? I thought you’d never met a lesbian?”

“Well, authentic except for the lesbian parts, I guess.”

“But aren’t most of the parts about lesbian stuff?”

“What are you, a critic? You want

me to keep working or not?”

“You’re right, Kenny. Sorry. And this is very useful information. Thanks.” Then I said, “Lost Lesbians.”

“Lost? Where’re they lost?”

“Africa? Some desert somewhere?”

“It just doesn’t ring right, McCain.

Sorry.”

“Lesbian Locksmiths?”

He shook his head in pity. “Sorry, McCain.”

There was no answer at the Halls’. I tried front and back doors, I peeked in windows.

I checked backyard, garage, nearby alley.

Why would Dierdre have broken into the rectory last night? Looking for what, exactly?

Kenny Thibodeau’s aunt was a nice-looking sixty-year-old woman who lived in a friendly-looking little white house on a nice shady corner of a dead-end street. She was on her haunches gardening when I pulled up. Her graying hair was pulled back into a ponytail and her white U of Iowa T-shirt and jean cutoffs made her seem much younger than she was.

Her son had gotten into some speeding trouble several times during the past few years and I’d represented him in court. She greeted me with a raised trowel. “Morning, McCain.”

“Morning, Am.”

“Plug your ears.”

“My ears?”

“These old bones make a lot of noise when I have to stand up.”

“You’re a doll and you know it.”

“I used to be a doll. A long, long time ago I was a doll. Here we go.”

Her bones did sort of crackle

arthritically.

She wiped the back of a hand across her forehead.

“I bet Kenny told you about Dierdre.”

“Yeah.”

“If you want to know what she was looking for, I don’t know.”

“You’ve seen her there before?”

“Oh, sure. She was one of the Reverend’s regulars.”

“Regulars?”

“He counseled people. I know you

didn’t care for him but he did a lot of good.

I mean, he was sort of stuck-up and a snob and everything. But he saved half a dozen marriages I know of and he got four or five men to quit drinking. Got them into Aa.”

Every time you try to hate somebody, they go and do something honorable. The inconsiderate bastards.

“And he counseled young people, too, huh?”

“Five or six of them on a regular

basis. The Beaumont boy? All the trouble he used to get in? He’s been walking the straight and narrow for the past eleven months. Every time I see his mom, she breaks into tears over the Reverend. Says he walks on water and can do no wrong.”

“You ever hear any scuttlebutt about his counseling sessions?”

“What kind of scuttlebutt?”

She was about to answer when the mailman appeared in his pith helmet and blue uniform walking shorts and shirt. “There’s a nice cold glass of lemonade in the refrigerator for you, Deke.

I guess you know where to find it.”

“Thanks, Am,” Deke said. “You’re a lifesaver. As usual.” He nodded and left.

“They’ve got a lot tougher job than most people think. When my husband got laid off at the plant back in ‘ec, he started being a substitute carrier. You never saw so much leg trouble and back trouble and arm trouble. It looks a lot easier than it is. So when it gets real hot, I leave lemonade for Deke in the fridge. He just goes inside and gets it.

Even if I’m not here. And I have hot cocoa for him in the winter months.”

“You’re the one who walks on water.”

“Oh, yes,” she laughed. “I’m one holy person. That’s why Fred and I sit up in bed some nights reading Playboy and giggling over the cartoons.”

Deke had just set a record for

lemonade-guzzling. He was back outside, waving good-bye, going on to the next house.

“What were we talking about?” she said. “Oh, yes, scuttlebutt. No, not really.”

“Anybody ever get mad at him about his counseling?”

“A couple of husbands who thought he was taking their wives’ side.” She smiled. “You know how men are, McCain. You have the misfortune

of being one yourself. Here they were happily running around on their wives, and getting stinko in the process, and they deeply resented this minister telling them that they were at fault for their unhappy marriages. Why, the nerve of that man!”

“Were they mad enough to kill him?”

“Of the two I’m thinking of, one got a divorce and moved up to the Twin Cities. And the other one finally saw the error of his ways. He’s one of the ones who went to Aa. And he still goes, too. Things’ve worked out pretty well for him, in fact.”

“You ever hear any scuttlebutt about Dierdre Hall?”

“Well, I don’t know if this is

scuttlebutt or not but there was a pretty angry argument there one night.”

“Between Dierdre and the Reverend?”

“No. Between Sara and the Reverend.”

“What happened?”

The phone rang. “Wouldn’t you know? I’ll be right back, McCain.”

She went inside. I watched butterflies, bees, horseflies, robins, dogs, cats … that parade of beings we share the planet with even though we’ve convinced ourselves that we’re the only ones who matter to the history of this nowhere little world.

She came back bearing lemonade. Handed it over.

“Boy, this is good,” I said.

She was the picture of the perfect housewife.

Except her lemonade was so sour I felt my cheeks puckering inward and my sinus passages starting to drain. No wonder Deke had made it out of there so fast. He knew what was waiting for him. He poured it out in the sink and fled.

“Homemade,” she said.

“Mmmm,” I said.

“Extra lemons and no sugar,” she said.

“Mmmm,” I said.

But intrepid detective that I am, I carried on with my questions. “You were telling me about the argument between the Reverend and Sara.”

“Oh, right. Well, she just burst in the rectory door one night and ran down the hall and burst into the study where he has his counseling sessions. And started screaming at the Reverend.”

“Was Mrs. Courtney home at the time?”

“No. She was out somewhere. She’s in a

lot of clubs and groups. You know how it is for a minister’s wife like that.”

“So what happened inside?”

“Well, the first thing Sara did was to send Dierdre home.”

“Did Dierdre want to go?”

“No. She was yelling at her mother pretty loudly.”

“Could you figure out what they were arguing about?”

“Not really. The Reverend got very angry and told them to keep their voices down. He knew I was somewhere in the house.”

“Did Dierdre leave?”

“Uh-huh. She slammed the front door very hard.”

“How long did Sara stay?”

“Probably another twenty minutes.”

Her phone rang again.

“You’re a popular lady.”

“Oh, yes, I’m thinking of running for president next time.”

“I’d vote for you.”

She glanced at my glass. “You hardly touched your lemonade.”

“Oh. Sorry. I’ll finish it now.”

“I’ll get the phone.”

“I need to leave, anyway. Thanks for talking.”

“My pleasure, McCain.”

I made sure she didn’t see me dump the glass on the far side of the front porch. I set it on the steps and walked to my car.

You always think of burglary as a nighttime occupation.

But I didn’t want to wait for night. Things were starting to come clear to me, at least as far as the relationship between Dierdre and Reverend Courtney were concerned. I wondered what Dierdre must have been looking for when she broke in. I also wondered what else there was to learn about Courtney. The most promising place to look was his office in the rectory.

Church and rectory were built into the side of a piney hill. A tranquil, natural setting.

Anybody who pulled up in a car could be seen, however, from the street that fronted it.

The first thing to do was to walk up to the front door and ring the bell and see if anybody was inside.

I rang. Chimes echoed inside. No

response. I knocked. A tabby cat with one injured eye viewed me skeptically from his perch on a low-hanging branch. No response.

I checked the adjacent garage. Empty.

I drove up on top of the hill. A small grocery store sat there. One of the few left, now that the supermarket chains had discovered our little burg. I parked way over on the edge of the gravel drive so the store folks couldn’t see me, went inside and bought a pack of Luckies and a pack of Black Jack gum, and then went back outdoors.

Three pairs of tandem-bike riders went past. I figured them all to be about twelve or thirteen. They were at that group-dating stage when you got to hide the crush you had on a girl by going out with a mixed assortment of equally terrified boys and girls. They went inside the store and got soda pop, the girls much more in control of themselves and the situation than the boys, the boys all seeming younger and more callow than the girls in fact, and then they were on their tandem bikes again and rolling down the hill.

Nobody in the parking lot. Nobody driving by to see me.

I started my hike down the hill. The great thing about pine is the smell. The bad thing about pine is the way it stabs you. There was a vague path that wove its way down to the valley. The trees were thick enough here to cool the temperature by several degrees. I used to play Indian in places like these. I always wanted to be the Indian, never the cowboy, never the cavalry. Indians, at least in movies made by white guys, always knew neat stuff, all about caves and how to track mountain lions and how to communicate with smoke signals and pieces of stone smoothed to shine like mirrors.

Who wouldn’t want to be an Indian?

I was sweaty, piney as a porcupine, and irritable by the time I reached the backyard of the church. At least the grass had been mowed recently and smelled good.

I had my trusty burglary picks with me-taken in trade from a thief I’d managed to keep out of prison—anda good thing, too. This place was locked up tighter than Jimmy Hoffa’s secret bank records. It took me longer to get inside than I’d hoped, thus increasing my chances of being seen. A raccoon sat at the tree line observing me with the kind

of wry look only raccoons, of all God’s animals, can summon. He seemed to be under the completely mistaken impression that I was some kind of idiot.

Air-conditioning. I just stood in it and let it cool me, balm me, dry me. All I needed was a glass of Aunt Am’s lemonade.

Courtney had a lot of the Great Books on his shelves. I suspected he’d actually read them. His den was English manor house with fireplace, leather wingback chairs, antiques, and a really first-rate collection of smoking pipes. Not a corncob among them.

Since Cliffie had no doubt searched this office, I felt sure that it was worth searching again. Cliffie could overlook a corpse sprawled across a desk.

I spent a good twenty minutes looking. I went through the desk; I went through the books, making sure they weren’t false fronts hiding a safe or slot behind them; I got down on my hands and knees and made sure the floor was flat, no trap doors, no insets, no safes.

As I was getting up, I realized that I hadn’t checked the in-out tray on his desk. An oversight worthy of Cliffie. I had some luck.

There were four envelopes hand-addressed in a forceful male script. Blue ink. I read them. Letters from Courtney thanking various members of his flock for favors they’d done the church.

There was a letter folded in half, too. I opened it. It wasn’t a letter, though. It was a crude layout for a leaflet.

Why The Jews Favor Kennedy

It was the same creed as always. The Jews wanted to be on the Supreme Court so they could outlaw all the good Christian principles this country was founded on—including letting colored people marry white people (i.e., big black hands soiling virginal white female flesh)—and Kennedy would happily appoint Jews because they would see to it that he was able to serve not just two terms but three or four. The way Fdr did.

There was something else folded into the flyer. A check written on the personal account of Reverend Courtney and made out personally to Parnell, the printer. No businesses were named.