Herb Gorton intercepted me and placed both hands on my shoulders, in a fatherly fashion, while he chokingly explained, “Miller, after you said how Dorothy always wanted a weeping willow, your neighbors decided to chip in and buy one. It’s sort of a token of our feelings for you and Dorothy, wherever she is, while you are both going through this trying time. We don’t mind a bit if it hangs over into our yard. What do you say, we go over and watch those nurserymen dig? At the rate they’re going, fella, won’t be able to watch them long...”
Some Suggested Homicide
by Richard Hardwick
Never listen to a barber or a bartender — except for the former’s “next” and the latter’s “what’ll it be?”. As they expound on life and death, politics, certain migratory practices of the tree swallow, etcetera and etcetera, I suggest you doze off.
Greg MacNeel nursed his drink along, wanting to pick it up and swallow it and order another, but knowing that would accomplish nothing at all toward solving the problem. Actually, it would in all probability have an adverse effect because in addition to soothing his jangled nerves it would give him a false outlook and that was one thing he could not afford. Not now.
Simply stated, the problem was a matter of choosing between two alternatives. On the one hand he could chuck Clarissa, break off with her — completely and with finality. He was very good at that. Or, he could kill Harry Melton. Clarissa would then be free to marry him and she would have all Harry Melton’s money.
Eenie, meenie, minie, mo...
He took another sip of his drink and looked around the dim-lit bar. It had started right here less than three months ago. Clarissa had been watching him in the mirror behind the bar. He knew she was watching him, that wasn’t an unusual thing to happen to Greg MacNeel. A glance at him explained it, cleft chin, straight nose tipped up just a bit at the end, wide-set gray eyes, wavy black hair, white even teeth. The sum total of his features was an aristocratic handsomeness that fostered an intuitive dislike in most men and a hopeful distrust in women.
He waited, over-eagerness being the mark of the amateur. After awhile he lifted his glass to his lips and as he did so he crooked a finger and the bartender came and stopped before him. The contrast between the two men was complete, Adonis confronted by a gargoyle.
“Refill, Mr. MacNeel?”
“Not just yet. Who is she, Barney? The one there at the end, that’s been giving me the once-over.”
Barney flourished his rag over the spotless bartop and cut his eyes down the bar. “The blonde doll with the earrings and brooch? The one that spells dough with a capital D?”
MacNeel suppressed a smile. “That’s the one.” Barney had become a great deal more observant of the finer things these past months, as a result of watching MacNeel in action.
“Search me. Never laid eyes on her before. Not bad, though.”
“Not bad at all. What’s she drinking?”
“She’s had a pair of champagne cocktails. Acts a little like something’s bugging her.”
MacNeel finished his drink and pushed the glass across the bar. “I’ll have that refill now, Barney, and a champagne cocktail for the lady, with my compliments.”
The bartender grinned his admiration, screwing his homely face into a caricature of itself. “You’re a pleasure to observe, Mr. MacNeel! None of these young punks can hold a candle to you, not a candle! The old master himself!”
Greg MacNeel took the words in the sense they were offered, as a statement of fact rather than as flattery. A man does not succumb to blandishments concerning a business he has been successfully engaged in for more than twenty years. He did wish, however, that Barney had not put quite so much emphasis on the word “old”. MacNeel was barely thirty-nine, but he was a realist and therefore aware of the beginning sag beneath his chin, of the incipient paunch when not wearing his girdle, and of the alarming quantity of black hair that turned up in his brush each morning. Barney, by using that word, had reminded him that the time was drawing near when he should consider some permanent alliance, and the time to find just the right one was while the cards were still stacked in his favor.
So he had met Clarissa there in Barney’s place and after he had gotten a few more cocktails into her, he learned from her that she was married to a man named Harry Melton and that Harry Melton was twice her age and had a great deal of money.
“I’m the little bird in the gilded cage, Greg,” she said later as they danced at a road house in Jersey.
“How’d you manage to fly the coop tonight? It can’t be much of a cage.”
“Harry’s in Chicago on business. He doesn’t go away often and when he does I feel that if I don’t get out of that house and have a little fun I’ll go stark raving mad.” She shook her head as she looked up at him. “You wouldn’t know what that feels like, would you?”
He grinned. “I suspect you weren’t forced at gunpoint to marry the man.”
Clarissa laughed, bitterly. “Everybody can be bought. I was bought.” She touched a finger to MacNeel’s lips. “Let’s have a fling. I’m Cinderella and it’s not midnight yet.”
“I hope this will be more than a fling with us.”
She laughed again, but gaily this time. “That smacks of a line, Mr. MacNeel. But I like it.”
It was a line. And of course they both knew that it was. But Harry Melton’s trips away from the city grew more frequent and every time Harry was away Clarissa went directly to Greg. They met in out of the way places, and never twice in the same place. Clarissa insisted on this. “I don’t love him, but I do love his money,” she said to Greg.
And that was another thing that bothered MacNeel. Clarissa never picked up the tab, even though he told her frankly that he was broke. She explained that expenses incurred while her husband was out of town would be hard to explain.
About a month later, Greg stopped off at Barney’s place one afternoon.
“Well, hello there, Mr. MacNeel! Ain’t seen you in awhile!”
“All play and no work, you know, Barney.”
Barney winked knowingly. “The doll with the earrings and brooch?” he said, and his hands got busy mixing a martini.
MacNeel shrugged and the bartender’s face split in a wide grin. “Magnifico! Like putting the little leaguers against the Yanks I Yes sir, these young squirts just ain’t got the touch of the old master!”
There it was again, that unpleasant pang when the word “old” came up. “You make it sound too easy,” MacNeel said, “We’ve all got our problems.”
Barney frowned. “You got problems?” He put the martini on the bar, in front of MacNeel. “I should have a half a dozen of the problems you handsome guys got, two blondes, two redheads, and a pair of brunettes. If you ever get married and settle down, Mr. MacNeel, the world is goin’ to lose one of the great ones!”
Barney moved down the bar to wait on a customer and Greg MacNeel sat staring into his drink. He picked it up occasionally and sipped at it. He was thinking about marriage. He’d marry Clarissa if he could. In a way, he really liked her. Maybe if she got a divorce, it could be framed so that she would get a hefty settlement from the old man.
The bartender came back and picked up MacNeel’s empty glass. MacNeel nodded and Barney set about preparing a fresh martini. “Like I was saying, Mr. MacNeel, I should have the problems you good-lookin’ guys have. Now you take me, for instance, ninety-nine percent of the time a dame’ll laugh right in my face.”
MacNeel smiled. It was a switch, the customer listening to the troubles of the bartender. “You probably make out better than any guy in town.”