“Don’t scrape the bottom of your jaw on my desk,” he said, trying to sound gruff. “It’s an honest offer, take ’er if you like, or not.”
He lived upstairs, the whole upper floor was his living quarters, the nicest apartment with bars on the windows in town; I’d been there many times, when I was a high school kid, hanging out with his son John. Whose picture was on the desk facing Brennan right this minute.
“I may take you up on that,” I said. “I sure do appreciate the offer anyway.”
He shrugged, and somebody knocked on his door.
“Come on in,” Brennan said.
The silver-mirrored shades of Detective Evans of the Iowa City P.D. peeked in. “Mind if I join the party, gents? Just happened to be in the neighborhood...”
Brennan waved him in. Evans whipped off the sunglasses, stuck them behind the black beeper in the pocket of his white shirt, the sleeves of which were rolled to the elbow. He was again in jeans with the big turquoise belt buckle, and he pulled up a chair, flashed me his dazzler of a smile, looking blindingly white in that dark, mustached face of his, sat with one ankle on the opposite knee, showing off his new tooled leather cowboy boots, and said, “You’re in a heap of trouble, boy.”
I sighed. “Very funny.”
“Not really,” Evans admitted. “I never met a Chicago hitman. What’s it like?”
“The Vietcong, only taller.”
Evans considered that, smiling again, but keeping his teeth to himself. “My guess is this one’s tied in with Sturms.”
“Safe guess,” I said.
Brennan said, “Why don’t you fill us both in, Mallory, on the people you been talkin’ to. Then we’ll fill you in, some.”
“Well,” I said. “I can start off by saying there’s no shortage of suspects, where building a case for Ginnie being murdered is concerned. She was a wonderful person in many respects — and a not so wonderful person in a lot of others.”
And I told them most of what I’d found out.
That ex-Yippie propaganda minister, current flack-for-hire Dave Flater, had broken up bitterly with Ginnie, that Ginnie owed him ten grand, that they’d argued violently in front of his receptionist.
That Caroline Westin, Ginnie’s partner in ETC.’s, had also been at one time her lesbian lover (Brennan almost swallowed his tongue on that one) and their business dealings of late had been bitter indeed.
That Ginnie’s blubbery brother Roger had hardly been blubbering over his sister’s death at the funeral home, in fact couldn’t have been colder, and admitted having had “words” with Ginnie hours before her death, when she refused to finance his latest computer pipe dream.
That Ginnie had recently revealed to Brad Faulkner, her already emotionally distraught, straight-laced former boyfriend, that she had, back in high school days, aborted his child without even telling him she was pregnant.
“Classy lady,” Evans said.
“In many ways she was,” I said. “But I can’t defend her every act. I can only say she was a complex, intelligent, flawed human being.”
“Have you left anything out?” Brennan asked, trying to look eagle-eyed, coming off bug-eyed.
“Isn’t that enough?” I said.
Actually, I had left out one item: that Ginnie and Jill Forest had argued at the reunion. But that seemed minor, and Jill had no apparent motive, so I kept it to myself.
“What about this guy Sturms?” Brennan wanted to know.
“She was his mule. That came as no real surprise to me — I knew she’d been that at one time, and it was looking like she’d been smuggling dope for him right along—” I glanced at Evans. “—despite her assurances to the Iowa City Chamber of Commerce to the contrary.”
“Sturms is the Chicago connection,” Evans said, “obviously.”
“Right,” I said. “But that doesn’t make him anything special as a possible murder suspect. My snooping around in this thing — poking into Ginnie’s drug connections — that’s enough right there to get the likes of Novack set loose on me.”
Both men nodded.
Evans was stroking his mustache thoughtfully. “You don’t see Sturms as a prime suspect, then? Assuming Ginnie Mullens was murdered.”
I held my palms up. “Where’s the motive? Everybody and his dog’s got a motive. Everybody else but Sturms, that is. Why would Sturms kill his loyal mule?”
“Mules, dogs,” Brennan said, scowling, “forget that crap: it’s the human animal we’re concerned with here.”
“That sounds real profound, Brennan,” I said, “but I’ll be damned if it makes any sense to me.”
He shook his finger at me, not in anger. “Sturms is the key. Tell him, Ev.”
I looked at Evans and Evans looked at me.
He said, “I got a call this morning from the A-1 Detective Agency in Chicago.”
Brennan was nodding. “So did I,” he said, gravely.
“Never heard of ’em,” I said.
“It’s a major firm,” Evans said. “Anyway, they’re representing Life-Investors Mutual. They’ll be sending a man in to investigate, probably tomorrow.”
“Life-Investors Mutual?” I said, puzzled. “What’s their interest in this?”
Ev smiled on one side of his face. “Your friend Ginnie Mullens bought some insurance from them. Life insurance. Half a million worth. Of course, that’s double indemnity, in case of accidental death — which includes murder. Meaning...”
“If somebody did murder Ginnie,” I said, “Life-Investors Mutual has to cough up... good God.”
Brennan was nodding.
“A million dollars,” he said.
16
That afternoon I found myself driving along Highway 22, careful not to get picked up in West Liberty’s fabled speed trap, gliding through Grant Wood country, turning off onto the blacktop that led to Ginnie’s farmhouse. The green rolling hills conspired with the pavement to reflect the bright July sun back at me; once I reached for my sunglasses, only to realize I was already wearing them. Corn was growing. Cattle grazed. All was life. Even the sight of the farmhouse where Ginnie died couldn’t dim this day.
Brennan had given me a key — the place wasn’t sealed off as a crime scene, but the sheriff had retained a key until at least after the inquest — but the door was unlocked. The air-conditioning hit me full blast, and at once I saw, in the high-ceilinged living room with its earth tones and antiques and plants, Ginnie’s mother — wearing a pink and blue floral housedress, her hair in curlers under a red scarf — on her knees boxing things up. At the moment the lava lamp, which she looked at uncomprehendingly, was joining several art deco statues in a cardboard home.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Mullens,” I said. “I didn’t see your car...”
“Mal!” she said. She rose, put the box down, and crossed the living room, a pudgy little woman navigating around half a dozen already packed boxes, to greet me. “What a pleasant surprise. You just missed Roger.”
“That’s a shame.”
“He just took the car into West Liberty to get some groceries,” she said, pointing in the general direction of the little town. No liquor on her breath today. “We’re going to be here awhile, packing up Ginnie’s things.”
“I see.”
She sighed, took off her wire glasses and rubbed her eyes. “It’s been a long day.”
She did look weary.
I said, “Have you been at this long?”
“Just a few hours, actually. We’ll be selling the house, but first we have to sort through personal items and dispose of the furnishings and such.”
“You’re planning a yard sale, then?”
Another sigh. “Eventually. We haven’t had the reading of the will yet, but Mr. Cross told me confidentially that Ginnie had left everything to us. Roger and me.”