Westlake, Donald E - Sara and Jack 01 (11 page)

 
          
Surprised,
Jack said, “You touched it? The back of his skull?”

           
“I’m a reporter,” she said, trying
to toss off the remark as though she were being merely matter- of-fact, and not
arch at all.

 
          
He
let that go. “Okay. What else?”

           
“The car was a dark blue Buick
Riviera, Dade county plate. A rented or leased car.”

 
          
“How
do you know that? You looked in the glove compartment?”

 
          
“No,
it had a Z plate.”

 
          
“Ah.”
He hadn’t known a Z plate meant a rented or leased car, but if this ace
reporter said so, he was prepared to accept it. “But did you look in the glove
compartment?”

 
          
“No.
Also, the radio was on, playing salsa music.”

 
          
“Did
the dead man look Hispanic?”

 
          
“Not
particularly,” she said. “Just tough.”

 
          
“As
though he might be somebody who’d get himself shot in the course of drug business?”

 
          
“I
suppose so,” she said, but reluctantly. Clearly, she wanted a more interesting
mystery out of this.

 
          
“But
you think,” Jack said, “he had something to do with somebody at the
Galaxy ”

 
          
“I
know
he did.”

 
          
“Because
he was on that road? They took him there because it’s empty. At night, kids do
drag races on that road.”

 
          
“No,”
she said, pretending patience. “Because he was on that road
at that time”

 
          
“A
quarter
to ten
in the
morning.”

 
          
“That’s
right.” The waiter brought their salads, poured more wine, went away. Sara
said, “The body couldn’t have been there during the morning rush, with
everybody going to work.
Somebody
would
have seen it, would have stopped.”

 
          
“I
suppose so,” he admitted.

           
“And when would the last person have
gone by? Around
quarter after nine
?”

           
“Probably so. Something like that.”

           
“And I got there at
quarter to ten
.”

           
He shrugged. “So?”

           
“There’s no exit off that road, from
one end to the other.” Intensity vibrated in her voice, glittered in her eyes.
“I didn’t see one single car coming the other way the whole time I was on it
that morning. There wasn’t time for someone to come out there
after
the morning rush hour but
before
I got there, kill that man, and
either drive back to town in another car or walk back.”

           
“Maybe he walked off into the
fields.”

 
          
“I’d
have seen him,” she said, and gestured, indicating a large open space. “You can
see for miles there.”

 
          
“True
enough. So you’re saying the killer didn’t go back to town, and he didn’t
wander away across the moors, so he must have gone on to the
Galaxy
.”

 
          
“Of
course. Where else could he have gone?”

           
“It’s your story,” he reminded her.
“But he could have been just visiting, you know.”

           
“Mine was the only car in the
visitors’ parking lot that day.”

           
He remembered then his first sight
of Sara, getting out of the little maroon Chevette in the visitors’ parking
lot. The view of her walking was what had inspired him to the
sex-cures-gallstones story; and then Sara had been the one to pull that same
story out of the fire.

 
          
She
frowned at him, saying, “What are you smiling about?”

 
          
“Nothing,”
he said. “An irrelevancy. So tell me your conclusion, Chief Inspector.”

 
          
“It’s
obvious,” she said. “The killer had to be driving a car with a
Galaxy
sticker. He shot that man, then
drove on to work, parked wherever he usually parks, acted as though nothing
happened.”

           
“Possible,” Jack said slowly,
reluctant to permit her to bring potential trouble home to the
Galaxy.
“But there must be other
possible explanations as well.”

           
“Name three.”

 
          
“I’m
trying to think of just one,” Jack told her, grinning, as the busboy cleared
their salad plates, and the waiter, with a hopelessly muffled flourish,
presented their main course. “Let me think about it,” he said, “while we eat.”

 
          
“Take
all the time you need.”

 
          
The
food, though better than the wine, was probably not doing much good for
anybody’s arteries. Jack ate methodically, smiling at Sara from time to time,
thinking idly about the murder mystery she’d presented him, and keeping one eye
on the couple beyond the vulgar flowers. But say she was right; say someone
connected with the
Galaxy
shot a
tough-looking fellow out on the highway on the way to work Monday morning; say
the police hadn’t yet found the guilty party, and possibly didn’t even know as
much about the story as Sara did. Say all that, and the response was still the
same as when she’d given him the capsule version of the story on Monday
morning: So what?

 
          
In
no way did this unimportant anonymous murder impinge on the life and concerns
of Jack Ingersoll; no, nor on those of Sara Joslyn, either. She’d found the
body, she’d reported it to the guard on duty at the
Galaxy
's gate, and that was the end of it. Presumably, the guard
would have passed the information to his immediate boss, rather than directly
to the cops, so by the time the report was made the identity of the original
person who’d found the body might have been lost; which would be why nobody had
come around to take evidence from Sara. Or possibly the crime had immediately
been solved, and no investigation needed. A small and unimportant murder, in
either case, too common and minor even to make the pages of the
County.

 
          
In
any event, the murder had certainly been reported at some time and by some
method on Monday, because both car and body had been removed by that afternoon.
So, unless Sara started making unnecessary fusses, this was no more than a kind
of game they were playing, an intellectual exercise, a fooling with what-if.
And all Jack had to do was see it didn’t get out of hand.

 
          
Neither
of them raised the subject of the murder again until the steak and shrimp and
side dishes had been dealt with and the plates removed, and they’d said yes to
the waiter’s offer of coffee, no to his suggestion of dessert. Then Sara said,
“Well? Did you think of some other explanation, somewhere else the killer could
have gone?”

 
          
“No,
I must admit I didn’t,” he told her, “but the idea that the
Galaxy
. . He shook his head.

 
          
“There’ve
been a couple of other things,” she said, “since then, right there at the
Galaxy ”

 
          
“What
things?”

 
          
“I
don’t really want to tell you,” she said. “They’re too silly. A note that
disappeared, a different guard ever since. Nothing important, and there’s a
different simple explanation for everything.”

 
          
“Of
course there is,” he said. “And for all you know, by now the whole case has
been— Wait a minute. What’s that?”

 
          
Following
the direction of his gaze, Sara twisted around to look at the couple Jack had
been watching. The girl was now making small blub- bery sounds over there, one
shaking hand to her face, while the man leaned across the table toward her,
looking both angry and embarrassed, whispering fiercely; no doubt urging her to
shut up, get control of herself, something helpful like that.

 
          
Sara
spun back, wide-eyed. “That’s John Michael Mercer!”

 
          
“Ssshhh,
yeah, it is.” Jack kept both eyes on the television star,
Massa
’s favorite person, to see what would happen
next.

 
          
Abruptly,
the girl with Mercer was on her feet. A blonde, she was dressed just a little
too obviously, just enough to emphasize the ripeness of her figure. Turning
away from Mercer, one hand still to her face, she stumbled blindly past Jack
and Sara’s table, and on. Not toward the exit, that would have been the other
way. So, toward the ladies’ room.

 
          
Jack
leaned forward, quick and intense. “Follow her! Console her. Get her story!”

 
          
Sara
blinked. “Do
what?”

 
          
“It’s
been dumped in our laps! Go! Quick!
Massa
will love us for weeks!”

 
          
At
last she got the idea. Looking nervous but determined, she rose and hurried off
after the blonde. Jack sat quiedy for a minute or two, watching Mercer pour
himself a glass of champagne, manner and expression stem but calm, that of a
man who has not shrunk from an unpleasant duty. When he decided he’d given Sara
long enough to make contact, Jack got to his feet, adjusted his lapels and
sleeves, patted the camera in his left side jacket pocket, and walked past the
garish flowers to the John Michael Mercer table, where he smiled gendy,
reassuringly, and said, “Excuse me.”

 
          
Mercer
gave him a dangerous look; the kind of look he gave lowlifes on
Breakpoint.
Clearly, he was not of a
mood to suffer fans gladly. Saying not a word, he let his hostile expression
speak for him, and waited with barely leashed rage for Jack to go away.

 
          
Instead
of which, Jack bent slightly toward him, his voice and manner confidenual as he
said, “I don’t know if it matters, but there’s a
Weekly Galaxy
reporter in the ladies’ room with your girl.”

 
          
Mercer’s
response was entirely satisfactory. His head came up like an Indian brave
hearing a twig snap in the forest at night, like a well-antlered stag when the
hunter cocks his gun, like a margin buyer hearing the fall of an interest rate.
“That—” he said, and rose like a thundercloud.

 
          
“Just
went in there a minute ago.”

 
          
Mercer
left without even saying thank you.

 
          
The
main question Sara had always wanted to ask girls who looked like this blonde
had nothing to do with the
Weekly Galaxy
or John Michael Mercer (except indirectly) or her job at all. The main question
Sara had always wanted to ask girls who looked like this blonde—busty, hippy,
pouty, pneumatically soft—was if they enjoyed sex more than she did.

 
          
Oh,
Sara
enjoyed
sex, that wasn’t the
problem, so long as the guy was someone she cared for and who cared for her and
who was reasonably aware of her while the exercise was under way, but was there
better
sex somewhere, more
electric,
more
throbbing,
more exhaustingly
fulfilling?
And if there was, would these inflatable dolls know about it? And would they be
able to describe it, to pass the secret along to a worthwhile sister?

 
          
Well,
the question was ridiculous, wasn’t it? There was no way even to phrase it
without sounding silly. So, once again, Sara did not ask the truly burning
question of the age—did blondes like
this
have more fun like
that
?—but
instead approached the weeping girl with nothing but sympathy and concern. They
were alone in the ladies’ room, an intensely decorated small space with glossy
wallpaper featuring orchids on a deep black background, parts of this covered
by large, dark, ornately framed full-length portraits of Spanish grandes dames
peering imperiously over fans. The blonde, fetchingly crumpled against the wall
between the beige sink and the coral paper-towel dispenser, smeerped and
gulped, little round fists pressed to her eyes. Sara took a couple of Kleenex
from her bag and extended them to the girl, saying,“Oh, you poor thing. Is it
really that bad?”