The street light showed the comfortable bulk of Bill Dean’s silhouette. When the door was opened he stepped inside and gripped my hands. “In heaven’s name, why did he do it, Sylvia?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “That’s what makes it so awful. I don’t know!”
He asked the same questions of Corby Collins, and the doctor said, “It wasn’t his health. You can rule that out. He had a physical every six months. So did Laura Lee. I checked them in July before they went on their vacation and they were in excellent shape.”
There was a peremptory rattling of the big front doors and I went through to admit Mayor Tuttle. “Where’s Corby?” he demanded. “What in hell is this all about? Why’d he call me away from—”
“Andrew Wyatt has committed suicide,” I cut in coldly. “Come into his office, please.” Addison Tuttle is ruthless and ambitious, qualities that make him a man to be reckoned with, but certainly endear him to no one.
Bill sat with his face in his hands, unashamedly weeping. By contrast, Ad Tuttle walked around Andy, apparently needing to assure himself that Wyattsville’s favorite son was no longer a threat to his political future. Satisfied, he turned his long, thin-lipped face toward Corby Collins. “Incurably ill?” he asked.
“No. Nothing so convenient. I just told Bill and Mrs. Sommers that I had given him a complete physical in July and his health was fine.”
The mayor’s small, pale eyes swiveled around to me. “Anything here at the bank that could be considered — irregular?”
“Nothing,” I said positively.
“Another woman?” he asked. “Anything like that?”
All of them looked toward me hopefully. “Of course not,” I said. “I’m surprised you would even ask.”
“But if there had been,” he persisted, “you would have known, wouldn’t you?”
“I suppose so. I was responsible for his deposits and withdrawals, and there was never a transaction which couldn’t have been reported in the Sentinel.”
“An extramarital relationship doesn’t have to involve money,” Mayor Tuttle pointed out. “It could be someone we all know.”
“In Wyattsville?” Dr. Collins’ laugh was a short, derisive bark. “It would have been common gossip.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Ad Tuttle conceded. He dragged at the lobe of his ear, then said, “See if there’s a bottle in the desk drawer, Mrs. Sommers. All of us could use a drink.”
Andy never would have a bar in his office, but he kept a fifth available. The bottle was about two thirds full. I got four paper cups from the dispenser beside the bottled water, and the mayor poured two or three ounces into each. There was an awkward pause after we picked them up, and then Bill Dean cleared his throat loudly and said. “To Andy. A really great guy.”
“The greatest.” Ad Tuttle took his whisky in one long swallow and dropped the empty cup into the wastebasket. “But dead. Why did he have to pick the first week in September?” He began to pace up and down the office, his long chin thrust out and up. “What we have to watch now is how this story breaks,” he said. “If we can keep it under wraps for a few hours the Rodeo Ball will go off as scheduled. Then if it is in the morning papers, our final day should be terrific! I’ll go to the Lambertsons’ and talk to Drew,” he decided. Drew owns the Sentinel. “Good thinking?” He tapped his temple and grinned at us.
“Very good,” Corby Collins said. “We’ve been long on that tonight, if somewhat short on sentiment. I’m going to talk to Laura Lee.”
“Do that,” Ad urged. “And work out some plausible explanation for them missing the ball.” He did not see the withering glance the doctor gave him because he had turned to Bill. “Ev Grant can be trusted, can’t he?” he asked. “Call the mortuary and tell him to pick up the body after ten — after ten, mind — when everybody will be in the auditorium.”
When I came back from letting Mayor Tuttle out of the building I was grateful to see that Bill had brought the bottle into my office. “You mustn’t blame Ad,” he said, filling two paper cups. “It’s that kind of clear thinking that has made him what he is in Wyattsville. Here,” he handed me my drink, “let’s you and me drink to the Andy we knew. We can include the high school class of ’42 and our first year at Cal, or we can just say the hell with it and drink to get drunk.”
Bill and I had gone through school together from kindergarten on, just as Andy and Laura Lee had. The difference was that the two schools were on different sides of the track, so to speak, and we had to go to Wyattsville High before the four of us could rub elbows. Maybe we wouldn’t have even then, except that Andy and Bill were outstanding football players and Laura Lee and I were pompom girls. Quite often we doubled after a game and went to a sock hop in the gym or had a hamburger and a malt somewhere. We became a regular foursome when we went to the University. All of us knew plenty of people on campus, but not as well as we knew each other.
Bill and I sat and talked about those days while we waited for ten o’clock and Ev Grant. “That first semester at Berkeley was really great,” he recalled. “I guess I was the one that broke us up when I took the night job at the Dixie Diner. It was nice eating regularly, but it sure cut into our dating. And to this day,” he added, “I can’t stand ham or yams or combread.”
“Your working evenings was only part of it,” I said. “Remember that Laura Lee spent Christmas vacation with that Tri-Delt from Piedmont and came back sure that she was in love with the girl’s brother. How long did that last? Two months? Three?”
“I’ve forgotten. Long enough for Andy to get into the habit of coming around and crying on your shoulder.” Bill finished his drink and stared into the empty cup. “I was jealous as hell. Did you know that? It took a lot of growing up before I could realize that you had been Andy’s salvation.”
“In what way?”
“If Andy hadn’t had a real friend to turn to,” Bill said slowly, “he could have dropped out of school, or he could have been snapped up by some smart girl who saw a chance to catch a rich rube on the rebound. You tided him over until Laura Lee came to her senses.”
It was while I was consoling Andy that Bill had started dating Rosalie, who also worked the late shift at the diner. Rosie was the daughter of a Fresno farmer and had never been out of the San Joaquin Valley until she received a scholarship to the university. Unsophisticated she may have been, but she knew a good man when she saw one, and by June she was wearing a little garnet ring that had belonged to Bill’s grandmother. By then, too, Andy and Laura Lee were pinned, and I had Sam Sommers’ two-carat diamond and a wedding band.
Sam was the finest man I ever knew. We never met on campus because he was in his last year of law when I was a freshman. It took an afternoon during Easter Week at Carmel to bring us together. Neither of us cared much for jazz or the dates who had brought us there, so we got to talking and then took off on our own. We found a little coffee house in Monterey and, after that, a seafood place. Then we drove for hours through the Carmel Valley, each telling the other all there was to tell. It was dawn before we got back to the apartment where I was staying with five other girls from Cal. Standing beside his car he took my hands in his and asked me to marry him and I said I would and he kissed me for the first time. It was a wonderful marriage, but it didn’t last long because Sam was one of the earlier casualties of the war. I stayed with his parents in San Francisco until 1948 when Father Sommers died. Mamma Sommers sold their wholesale grocery business then and went to live with a daughter in Santa Rosa. Having nothing to keep me in the city, I went back to Wyattsville on an exceptionally cold and foggy morning in February. Bill and Andy both had fine Navy records, both had been married for some years, and both had children. That was how things stood when I went to the bank and applied for a job. Luckily, the secretary Andy had inherited from his father was retiring and I took her place.