The car, which had come around the corner behind us, stopped. Ames kept his eyes on Welles, who looked beyond us at the person getting out of the car. I turned and saw Richard McClory, jaw tight, hurrying toward the path where Ames and I stood.
“You,” he shouted, pointing at Welles. “You called me?”
“Yes,” Welles said.
“You killed Kyle?”
“Yes,” Welles said again.
“Why, you bastard, why?” McClory shouted, moving past us, almost to the porch where Welles stood.
“You know who Jerzy Kosinski was?” asked Welles, aiming the gun at McClory.
Ames had his shotgun out now, ready.
McClory hesitated, confused, and said, “Who?”
“Polish writer,” said Welles. “Wrote Being There. In his suicide note, he wrote: ‘I am going to put myself to sleep now for a bit longer than usual. Call the time Eternity.’”
He looked at me and said, “Don’t let Janie see me.”
With that Welles stood and lobbed the gun to McClory, who caught it in two hands, gripped it with his right and began firing, once, twice, three times. Welles staggered forward and tumbled over the railing onto the lawn.
Ames knocked the gun out of McClory’s hands with the butt of his shotgun and I ran forward, flung open the screen door and rushed inside. I found Janie Welles in a tiny room past the living room whose walls were lined with books. She was sitting in a worn brown chair that might have been leather. Her eyes were fixed on a tennis match. She was eating an apple.
“There was noise,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Is my dad crying again?” she asked, without taking her eyes from the screen.
“No,” I said.
“Good,” she said. “He hasn’t been happy since that boy spit on me. I told him it was okay, but he loves me.”
“Yes,” I said. “He loves you.”
It was too soon to use the past tense.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes. You sit right there.”
“And watch SpongeBob?”
“Yes,” I said.
I found the phone and dialed 911. Then I went back outside. Three people were coming out of a house across the street, but they weren’t about to get too close to the scene.
“He’s dead,” said Ames, kneeling at Welles’s body.
McClory was shaking as if he had Parkinson’s or was coming down from a week-long drunk. I looked at Ames’s shotgun.
“I called 911,” I said.
He got up, nodded and moved slowly past Welles’s body and around the house. While he was gone, I stood close enough to McClory to keep him from deciding to go for the gun that lay on the grass, the gun he had dropped, the gun with which he had just killed Welles.
“He’s dead,” McClory said flatly.
“He’s dead,” I confirmed.
“What time is it?” he asked.
I checked my watch and told him the time.
“I’ve got a patient I’m supposed to see at the hospital,” he said, dazed. “I’ve got to call, tell them I can’t make it.”
“They’ll understand,” I said.
“I really killed him,” he said, looking at Welles’s body.
“Yes,” I said.
“He gave me the gun,” McClory said. “Why?”
I was sure he would figure it out later. It wasn’t that hard.
Ames came back around the house minus the shotgun. I went back in the house and called Sally. I used her cell phone number and told her what had happened. I gave her the address.
“I’ve got a friend in Children’s Protection in Manatee County,” she said. “I’ll call her.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Lew? Are you all right?”
People were always asking me that question. The real answer was almost always no but I said, “Yes.”
I was sure Sally didn’t believe me.
“I’ll be right there,” she said.
Ames and I spent two hours with the Bradenton police, mostly talking to a detective named Charles St. Arthur, about forty, bulky, thick weight-lifter’s neck, blue eyes behind his glasses. I wondered if he was taking steroids. He wore a white shirt with the cuffs rolled back.
Ames’s explanation was simple. We came to see Welles on business. Before we got inside the house, McClory came, started shooting. He stuck to that. So did I except that I said the business we had come for was part of some queries I had been making on behalf of Nancy Root about her dead son. I said I had tracked down Welles, that he had called McClory, told him he had killed McClory’s son, threw the gun to McClory and McClory had killed him before we could talk.
The answer didn’t come close to pleasing Charles St. Arthur, but he had his shooter, two witnesses, and McClory’s lawyer on the way. Ames and I were just paperwork he wanted to keep brief.
“We found a copy of Welles’s will, insurance papers and a list of relatives in Nevada on the kitchen table,” St. Arthur said, rolling his pen in his thick fingers. “Almost as if he wanted us to find them. He say anything about this?”
“No,” I said.
“Know what it looks like to me?” St. Arthur said. “Our Professor Welles found a legal way to commit suicide and leave his daughter a pile of money.”
It looked that way to me too. I suggested that he might want to talk to a Detective Michael Ransom in Sarasota, that the death of Kyle McClory was his case. St. James said he would.
Ames shook his head.
Sally and her friend had taken charge of Jane Welles. I called Sally on her cell phone when St. Arthur let us go.
“How is she?” I asked.
“We’re keeping her busy,” said Sally. “We reached Welles’s cousin in Reno. She’s coming. Should be here tomorrow to handle the funeral arrangements. We’ll start the paperwork to get Jane placed in her custody. Lew, you want to come by the apartment tonight?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Maybe.”
“Basil’s roasted chicken,” she said.
“I’ll let you know. You might want to let Andrew Goines know what happened.”
“I’ll call his mother,” Sally said.
I drove Ames back to the Texas. We didn’t talk. We had nothing to say. I knew he would take his scooter the next day to retrieve his shotgun from wherever he had stowed it behind Welles’s house.
“Beer?” he asked, getting out of the car.
“No,” I said. “Not now. I might come back later.”
He looked at me for several beats and shook his head no to let me know that I wouldn’t be coming back, at least not that night.
I picked up two burgers and a large banana Blizzard at the DQ and went to my office, closing the door behind me, not turning on the lights. There was still light filtering through the blinds. I flicked on the air conditioner and sat at my desk. I had finished one burger when the phone rang. I considered not answering it. I considered it for sixteen rings.
It couldn’t be Welles. He was dead. I realized that I would miss his calls, at least for a while. I wasn’t sure why.
“Fonesca,” I said, picking up the phone.
“This is Darrell’s mother.”
“Yes.”
“I want to thank you,” she said. “Darrell’s been talking about what-all you did. I know he’s making up more than half of it but whatever you did, he’s looking forward to doing more of it. And he said something about a Dixie and computers. Wants me to go with him to see her. She really mean it?”
“She means it,” I said.
“And you’re gonna keep seeing Darrell?”
“I like Darrell,” I said.
“Most don’t,” she said. “Next Saturday?”
“I’ll be waiting,” I said.
“Thank you again,” she said. “Wait. He wants to talk to you.”
I took another bite of burger and Darrell came on. “You catch that guy?”
“Yes.”
“And? What happened?”
“We’ll talk about it next Saturday,” I said.
“Old Ames, he shot him, right?”