“What’ll Cliffie make of this?”
“He won’t like it.”
He grinned. “That’d sure be too bad, wouldn’t it?” Anybody who’d served in the military resented Cliffie because his two uncles on the draft board had managed to keep him from serving. He stared at the car we stood in front of. “This was a hell of a rod. He told me one night that if he took half as good care of all his girlfriends as he did the Merc, he’d probably have a lot happier life.”
I nodded to the phone booth. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
I should’ve been happy about giving Cliffie the bad news, spoiling his neatly resolved case.
But I was thinking about Egan. He hadn’t exactly been my favorite client, but he’d earned a good share of his anger and bitterness.
He’d wanted to improve his lot by using the daughters of the local gentry to prove that he was just as good as everybody else. He’d wanted respect and dignity but he got neither in his death.
It was the sort of trashy story-drunken girl-stealing, good-looking kid is murdered in a hick town where he lived with two maiden aunts -t the more lurid of the true detective magazines would buy. Not much respect or dignity there.
When Cliffie came on the line, I said, “You need to get over to the Dx station right away.”
“What the hell for, Counselor? I’m busy. I can’t sit around all day like you.”
“Just get the hell over here.”
A pause. “You’re gonna pay for that, you know. Talkin’ to me like that.”
“Yeah, well, there’re a lot of things I’m gonna have to pay for someday. Just get over here.”
The drive got busy. Norbert even had to call one of his mechanics away from his bay to help scrub windows and pump gas. A mechanic can make a station a lot more money than a gas jockey can.
Cliffie made a point of not showing up for half an hour. I sat in the station and listened to tire irons clank on the concrete floor of the service bays and tinny juvenile rock and roll. Frankie Avalon was just never going to replace Chuck Berry on anyplace but Dick Clark’s show.
Cliffie came in and said, “Maybe you haven’t heard, Counselor, but the little matter with Egan is all wrapped up.” He was all khakied up as usual. “He killed Sara and feeling guilty about it killed himself. And if you didn’t work for our dear, sweet Judge Whitney, you’d be able to admit I’m right.
What’d she put you up to now?”
“Let’s go look at the car.”
He looked shocked by what he saw. “Crazy sonofabitch. He mst’ve really wanted to die.”
“Come over here.”
“What for?”
“Look at something.”
He sighed and came over. I made the same case Norbert had made to me.
“Oh, no,” Cliffie said.
“Oh, no, what? Somebody obviously cut that connection.”
“You think I’m gonna fall for this shit?”
“What shit?”
“Somebody cut this, all right. But after the wreck.”
“After? Why would somebody do that?”
“Mischief. Some butthole buddies of his decided to have a little fun with me so they cut the line to make it look good.”
I saw Norbert and waved him over.
“Morning, Chief,” he said when he reached us.
“I’m kinda busy, Sam. What can I do for you?”
“He thinks the brake fluid line was cut while the car was sitting here on your drive. I just thought maybe you could clue him in.”
“The hell of it is, Sam, I can’t.”
“What?”
“I can’t say exactly when it was cut. You could get the state crime lab to check it out for you, I suppose. If I had to bet that the line was cut before the wreck, that’s how I’d bet. But I can’t prove it. Sorry.”
“The state crime lab,” Cliffie said, “couldn’t find their ass with both hands.”
“I’m requesting that you call them in.”
Cliffie smirked at Norbert. “See how free he is with taxpayers’ money? Good ole McCain, the taxpayers’ friend.” He smiled at me. “I’ll take it under consideration, as you legal types like to say, Counselor. But I wouldn’t hold my breath. I’m a busy man and those fancy-pants crime-lab boys don’t like drivin’ over here for something like this.”
“This is very important,” I said.
“Sez you. Me, I say this case is wrapped up. Them two old ladies who raised him don’t want people to think he killed himself, so they put a bee in your bonnet about proving it was murder. And that judge of yours figures this is another way to try and humiliate me. All of which adds up to exactly jack shit as far as I’m concerned.” He nodded to the gas station. “Norbert, I need to use your crapper.”
And that, as far as the khaki-clad, crapper-needing chief of police was concerned, was that.
Sixteen
Just before noon, I stopped by the courthouse to talk to the judge. She was in a conference. As I was walking out the back door to where I’d parked my ragtop, I fell into step next to Jack Coyle. He never looked nattier than when he was in his hand-tailored blue suit.
He carried a briefcase and a scowl. “Your friend Judge Whitney gave me one hell of a headache this morning. I’m handling a property matter for a Des Moines firm and need a little more time to prepare myself. She denied it.”
“You should never go up against her on Monday mornings. Or Tuesday mornings, come to think of it. Or-” But I stopped joking because he wasn’t smiling.
“Now, Jean wants to move, too.”
“Move?” I said.
“Build a new house. And in the meantime rent one. She’s into a lot of supernatural things.
I think it’s all crazy but of course I don’t want to hurt her feelings.”
“Sara Griffin haunting your place, you mean?”
“Not haunting precisely. But something like that.
I mean, I’m kind of uneasy being there myself.
My God, a dead girl-”
“I still don’t understand that part of it.”
“What part of it?”
We were now outside in the parking lot. A mix of people came and went as we stood there talking.
Dotted everywhere were pairs of other lawyers talking.
“If Egan did kill Sara, why did he leave her in your gazebo? I don’t get the connection.”
“I don’t, either. But he mst’ve been psychotic. He killed her, after all. Maybe he was driving around with the body in his car and-”
I said, “Did you know her?”
“Sure. She was a damned sweet kid. She had her troubles but she was sweet.”
He made a point of meeting my eye when he said it, a courtroom trick. You can’t tell a lie when you’re looking somebody in the eye, can you?
Sure. Good liars can, and do, all the time.
“Your daughter knew her, I understand.”
“They were friends.”
“Sara spend much time around your house?”
This time when he stared at me, there was a suggestion of anger in his All-American blue eyes. “Are you trying to get at something here, Sam?”
“Just trying to understand why the killer would put the body in your gazebo.”
He set his briefcase down, pulled out a package of Viceroys from his suit jacket pocket and lit up with a nice, small, silver Ronson lighter. He didn’t offer me a smoke.
“So you’ve heard the stories.”
“Not plural. Singular. Story.”
“I gave her some tennis lessons. Her psychiatrist told her that exercise would help her with her mood. Exercise, that whole bit.
She didn’t have any special interest in tennis.” He smiled. “She just thought the women in their tennis whites looked very nice. She was a nice-looking girl. And I’m not exactly an old fart. I’ve been known to get an erection once in a while. All the guys at the country club followed her around like horny dogs. I suppose I felt some manly pride in spending so much time with her. But nothing happened. The stories are bullshit.”
“Meaning you’d have no idea why somebody would put her body in your gazebo?”
This smile was malicious. “I swear to God, Sam, working for the judge is starting to poison your mind. You were a nice, clean-cut, sensible young man when you hung out your shingle. I’m sorry to see you’re becoming such a paranoid. I love Esme-she’s a good friend of ours-but for once I think Cliffie’s right. David Egan killed Sara and then felt so guilty about it he killed himself.”