“Our esteemed counselor?”
“Our esteemed counselor.”
“Anything else I should know about?”
She angled herself over so that she could lay back against the window. “I love the feeling of a cold car window on your skin. If I had a blanket I could probably go to sleep right here.”
“It’s my company. I have that effect on people. I once put an entire stadium asleep by telling them my life story. And I only got up to age two before they all nodded off.”
She smiled. “I’ll bet a lot of girls have told you how cute you are.”
“I’ll bet a lot of guys have told you how beautiful you are.”
“‘Pretty,’ I’ll go along with. Beautiful—no.”
“You never did finish telling me about our esteemed counselor Hardin.”
“I know. I just feel kind of funny—you know. Talking about private family things.”
I didn’t want to push her. Make her any more suspicious about what was going on all around her. I just said, “Well—and please don’t tell anybody else this—the same thing happened to me.”
“What same thing?”
“With Hardin. He got me drunk one night and felt me up, too. But then he dropped me when he found out I couldn’t mambo.”
She laughed. “You must’ve been crushed.”
“Well, not really. His breath is pretty bad.”
She leaned over and kissed me. “You really are an idiot, you know.”
“So give me some dirt on Hardin. He’s a competitor of mine in a way. I just enjoy hearing things about competitors.”
She shrugged and then leaned back against the window.
“Well, it’s not anything hot or sexy. It’s just this housing development in Des Moines. Wheeler and Dad went ahead and invested in it and made a lot of money. They didn’t invite Hardin or Carlson in. Hardin and Dad actually got into a fist fight in the den over it. Hardin was adamant about it for months. He seems to believe that they made some kind of agreement to always act as a group. And that any time there’s an investment opportunity, they should all be told about it. You know, have the right to turn it down at least.”
“So he gets along with Wheeler?”
“Oh, God,” she said and put her head back against the seat. “I really shouldn’t say this. But I had two drinks and that always turns me into a snitch. You know how in the big war they always said ‘Loose lips sink ships’?”
“There were posters everywhere that said that.”
“Well, after two or three drinks, I sink a lot of ships.”
“Meaning?”
She couldn’t decide if she wanted to sink any more ships. While she was deciding, I saw a car pull up at the distant entrance to the place and cut its lights. I recognized the car immediately. A white and blue 1955 Chevrolet. The car that changed automobile styles around the world. Probably my all-time favorite design. There were still a number of them around. But I had the feeling I knew whose car it was.
“My father once accused Wheeler of cheating him in a land deal. They patched things up but they’ve never been very close since. I think the only reason they see each other at all is because they have so many investments together.” She tamped out another cigarette. “So now it’s your turn.”
“My turn?”
“You have to tell me what’s going on with my father. And why you keep looking in your rearview mirror.”
“There’s a car parked near the entrance to your drive.”
“A burglar?” she said lightly.
“A reporter.”
“Not the intrepid Don Arbogast.”
I laughed. “Yes, indeed. The intrepid Don Arbogast, the man who gave narcolepsy a bad name.”
Don was, depending on whom you believed, in his seventies or eighties. It was believed that he had something naughty on his employer. How else could he keep his job? He hobbled around on a walker half the time. And the other half—as when he was covering trials—he sat in the back and snored. He was a decent guy and had once been a first-rate reporter. These days he’d get lucky once in a while and stumble into a story that really mattered.
“Well, at least we don’t have to worry about him coming up here and bothering us. He can’t walk that far.”
“I think I’ll check him out,” I said.
“Hey,” she said. “You’re supposed to tell me what’s going on with my father.”
“C’mon now, I need to talk to Arbogast before he leaves.”
“Leaves? He’s probably asleep.”
And he probably was.
I leaned across her and opened the door. “I need to hurry.”
“This isn’t fair.” She was still keeping the tone light, a kind of mock petulance. But her eyes were anxious. She rightly suspected that something was badly wrong.
She got out of the Ford and said, “I hope I’ll see you tomorrow. By then maybe I’ll know what’s going on around here.”
I drove away.
The intrepid Don Arbogast was just getting out of his nifty mobile when I pulled up alongside him on the road in front of the Murdoch place.
I always felt sorry for him. Couldn’t help it. His wife had died ten years ago, his kids were grown and dispersed throughout the galaxy, and he had no life but his reporting job. The paper had two young reporters to do the heavy work. The publisher just sort of let Don do whatever he wanted to.
I wished he hadn’t dyed his hair black. I wished he didn’t wear drape-style sports coats of the kind most often seen on Elvis Presley. I wished he didn’t wear bow ties, pinkie rings and a snap-brim fedora. He didn’t seem to understand that all this was lost in the old-man shuffle and the old-man drool.
I rolled down my window and said, “Kinda nippy tonight, Don.”
“Yeah, but I dig cold weather.”
Which was another thing. He used a lot of “cool” slang. Oh, Don Don Don.
“You having engine trouble?” I said, nodding to that enviably cherry vehicle of his.
“Huh?” He cupped his hand to his ear like a hearing horn.
“YOU HAVING ENGINE TROUBLE?” I guess I forgot to mention the hard-of-hearing thing.
“No, man, I’m just checkin’ out a tip.”
“What kind of tip?” My stomach started to feel funny, tense and vaguely sick.
“Somebody called and said there was a dead body in the Murdoch place. He’s runnin’ for senator, you know.”
“Governor, actually.”
“Huh?” Again with the hand to the ear.
I decided to let this one pass. “You remember who called you with the tip, Don?”
This one he heard. His face broke into a smile that made him look twenty years younger. “You think I’d fink on a source of mine?” And then those old sad-dog brown eyes got a lot brighter. He was like a boxer who is flat on his back at the count of nine but who suddenly springs to his feet and starts throwing killer punches. That was why you couldn’t ever dismiss him. Just when you thought he could never put a story together, he’d give you a tale that would rock you. “And by the way, McCain, what’re you doing out here?”
“Just visiting Deirdre.”
“She’s got some caboose on her, don’t she?”
“She sure does.” And she did.
“The wife, she had a caboose like that. Kept it, too, right up to the end.”
I smiled. “She was a good woman, Don.” A little woman, quick and attractive, her well-known sorrow being that she’d never been able to have kids. Out of a Hamlin Garland or Willa Cather story, in her way.
I thought of driving back to the house and warning them about Don. But what was the point? Cliffie would be out here soon enough and Don would have his story. What I was more interested in was who had called him and tipped him.