“God, that was terrible about Brenda.”
“She saw something or she knew something.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
I took some coffee. “There’s a possibility that one of her boyfriends killed her.
Jealousy, something like that.”
“She coached our softball team one summer.
She was a nice woman. I didn’t like to think of her sleeping around like that.”
I smiled. “I hope you can always stay that forgiving and sweet, Molly. I really mean that, too.” More coffee. “I wasn’t running her down. I was just stating a fact. She did sleep around.”
“Yeah, I guess she did,” she said. “A little bit, anyway.”
I liked that “a little bit, anyway.” A last effort to save her friend’s reputation.
“So, one of the men she slept with could have killed her, in which case her murder doesn’t having any bearing on what I’m doing.”
“Do you really think it was one of her men friends?” she said.
“Maybe-but I’m going to assume it was because of the timing. Sara dies, David dies, she dies. All in a very short period of time.
There’s some connection. It sure feels that way, anyway.”
“David was in a pretty bad way the last time I saw him. He told me he was starting to steal money just so he could keep taking Sara out.
It was funny-I really hated him for telling me something like that. But I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him, either.”
I’d been sitting back in my chair, the heel of my oxford on the edge of the desk. I sat up straight. “Stealing money? He told you that?”
“Yes. And I was scared for him. I told him he could go to jail. Maybe even prison if he kept doing it. But he said he couldn’t stop himself.”
“Did he say where he was stealing it from?”
“No. And I really didn’t want to know anyway, Sam. I didn’t want to get dragged into it.”
“He was getting wilder and wilder.”
“Yes, and drinking more and more. The last month or so, I rarely saw him sober.”
“Do you have any sense of where he might have been getting his money?”
“No, I’m sorry, Sam, I really don’t.” Then, “I shouldn’t say this but Sara wasn’t a very nice girl, Sam. I know she had her troubles. But she shouldn’t have led him on that way. She’d tell him she was still in love with this older man and could never love him, but then when he wouldn’t call her for a few days, she’d call him. She’d always draw him back in. And he’d come running every time.”
She daubed a tear with a fingertip. “I’ve got a whole day ahead of me? I didn’t run my eye makeup, did I?”
“Nope. Beautiful as always.”
“Oh, sure.”
“You don’t think you’re beautiful?”
“I’m too gawky to be beautiful. I don’t have any grace. But thanks for saying so.”
She gathered coat and purse and stood up and said, “I didn’t know if that would help you or not. About him stealing money.”
“It’s sure worth following up.”
I spent the rest of the morning working the telephone. I called the Dx station, several clothing stores, and a custom car shop in Cedar Rapids that David always talked about. The money angle was something new. Maybe it wouldn’t lead anywhere but it gave me a purpose and energy I hadn’t been able to tune into this morning.
He owed nearly $10 at the Dx station, nearly $250 at three different clothing shops, and had several small items on order from the custom car shop. The guy I spoke to said that David would have to pay cash before they’d give him the items. He said they’d given David credit once but that he’d been months overdue in paying it back.
Stolen money was my first surprise that morning.
The second surprise was on the way as I was checking out David Egan’s financial troubles.
I was on the phone with a client who’d been accused of stealing chickens from his neighbor. Though he wouldn’t admit he’d done it, he did say that he was sure his neighbor had been stealing chickens from him. I wondered if Oliver Wendell Holmes had ever handled a chicken-stealing case. I was just hanging up when my office door opened and Jean Coyle came in.
Tear-reddened eyes. A trembling left hand.
A cigarette in the right hand. A forlorn elegance as she sat in the chair and listened to me wind things up with my client. All of a sudden I didn’t have much interest in chicken rustling, not that I had all that much in the beginning.
She took many, many drags on her cigarette, not inhaling a one of them.
As soon as I hung up, she waved her cigarette in the air and said, “This is for dramatic effect. I don’t even know how to smoke these things.”
“The red eyes are all you need for dramatic effect. Why don’t you put it out?”
I pushed the ashtray across the desk. She was, as always, the compleat suburban house mistress. A long gray coat of suede and leather patches, a starched white collar on her blouse, and an impeccable hairstyle.
After punishing her cigarette several times over, she finally got every tiny piece of flame out.
“You want to know how much I hated her?” Her voice wavered, went weak, came back strong in the same short question. “He-what’s the phrase the kids use-knocked her up.”
“He being-” his-my husband, Jack.”
“And she being-”
“The recently deceased Sara Griffin.”
Then, “Is that bitchy enough for you? Talking about a poor dead girl like that?”
“Yeah. I heard.”
I reached into my bottom drawer and hauled out a pint of Old Grandad. I shoved it across to her. She knew just what to do. Uncapped it, wiped off the neck with her palm, and took a swig a farmhand would have a hard time getting down.
“Mind if I keep this for a while?” she said.
“Be my guest.”
“If I get drunk and try to seduce you, please say no.”
“It just so happens I’m wearing my chastity belt.” Then, “Could we go over this he-she business a little bit more?”
“He knocked her up.”
“And you know this for sure?”
She snorted. “Are you kidding? The sonofabitch told me himself. He said when they make the autopsy public today, they’ll announce she was pregnant.” Then, “Will you handle my divorce for me?”
“Of course. If you’re sure that’s what you want.”
“If I’m sure that’s what I want? My God, Sam, how could I live with a man like that?
He promised that first time they had an affair that it was all over. Then-and he told me this, too-he started seeing her again three months ago. And he got her pregnant. It just all came down on me when she was killed. That I’m all tied up in this somehow.” She leaned over toward the bottle. “Do I want another drink?”
“Probably not.”
“You’re always so damned sensible.”
“Me? Are you kidding?”
“Well, you’re a lot more sensible than I’m being at the moment, anyway.”
I said, “I’m going to ask you a question and you’re probably going to hate me for it.”
“You’re going to ask me if he killed her.”
“Yes.”
“I’ve thought about it ever since last night.
He says he didn’t, of course.” She was starting to be her usual proper self.
The self I liked because she was so elegant to watch. Proper doesn’t have to be stuffy. “He made a good case for himself.”
“That being?”
“That being, say he did kill Sara Griffin.
Why would he kill Egan and Brenda?”
I took a swig myself. “That’s where I’m hung up, too. I’m trying to figure out what connects them.”
“That’s where I keep ending up, too. He wouldn’t have any reason to kill them, too. But I hear Cliffie is promoting the idea that one of Brenda’s lovers killed her and that Egan killed himself.”
“Good old Cliffie.”
She said, “Maybe I’d just have one more small drink.” I pushed the pint back over to her. She took a mincing little drink. “I’m terrible.”
“Yes, Jean, you are terrible. Right up there with Hitler and Rasputin.”
“I mean wanting my own husband to be charged with murder. I didn’t know I had that kind of spite in me. It’s not the sort of thing you want to know about yourself. I mean, it’s so selfish to even think about. My Lord, think of our girls. It would destroy their lives.” Then, “But I am going to divorce him.”