Now that I’ve got that out of my system, I ought to be fair and tell some good stuff about her. Even though she could stop the average heavy construction job dead in its tracks, she knew she wasn’t pretty. You could see it in her eyes and the way she held herself when she thought nobody was looking, and as far as I was concerned that was ten points in her favor. The teasing and all that hair spray were just her dim-bulb way of trying to get pretty, so you had to feel sorry for her. And she tried to be nice to Megan and me, so who cared if she was really too old to be buddybuddy? Also, she did her best to sit on her accent. She didn’t succeed very well, but you could tell she was trying, and I’ve got to give her more points for that; I’m not going to spell out the way she really talked, or at least not very often. Megan said that Larry had met Molly while he was stationed down south after his second tour. It was getting married, she said, that made him decide to chuck the army.
“Well,” (“Wa-al”) “hello, Holly. Haven’t seen your smil-in’ face ’round here for many a day.”
“Gosh,” I said, “I can’t make everybody happy all at once.”
Molly and Megan both laughed.
Back then Megan was about my best friend—if not really the best, awfully close to it. Her father owned the Corner Cobbler, which wasn’t a shoe-repair shop like it sounds but a shoe store; but the Liefs weren’t rich, and when you are (or think that you are) it’s hard to get to be best friends with anybody who isn’t. I’ve already described Molly, so I might as well describe Megan, too. She’s really pretty, with page-boy blond hair and a perky baby-face that goes just fine with it. I’d have paid a yard at least for those big, brightblue, dirty-flirty eyes of hers, and nobody’s ever called me stone ugly. Her worst feature was her hips, I’d say; Megan’s a little wide across the pockets.
“Holly, can’t you tell us—just us, we won’t tell anybody—what’s in that box? Is it gold?”
“Stop hissing,” I told Megan. “You sound like the radiator on Kris’s Mustang.”
“I’m playing pirate.” Her voice went into a parrot squawk. “Pieces o’ eight! Pieces o’ eight!”
“Well,” (“Wa-al”) “it could be gold, couldn’t it, Holly? I believe I’m goin’ to go. Maybe they’ll pick my name.”
“They’re going to draw by number,” I told Molly. “And for all I know it could be chock-full of diamonds—it’s plenty heavy enough. It could also be full of rocks. Elaine got it at some junk shop. She says they didn’t have a key and didn’t want to bust it open.”
“Whatever ’tis, it’s mine. That sign in the bank’s got me purely fascinated.”
“You birds busy now?”
“I am. I got to watch out for things here. But you and Megan can go traipsin’ off if you want to.”
“I’m learning the business,” Megan explained. “Larry says if I do he might put me on the payroll.”
So Larry had come up without me even having to do it. When you’re hot, you’re hot. Naturally I asked, “Where’s Larry now, anyhow?”
Did you ever make some innocent little remark that laid the festivities stone cold? You know, “My, my, what’s that doing in the punch bowl?” And nobody says, “Looks like the backstroke,” because there really is something in the punch that ought to be in the zoo. Sure you have, so you know just how I felt. Megan quit smiling, and for a second there I thought Molly was going to cry. Her face had a sort of spasm.
Megan said, “He’s in South Barton someplace. Changing the locks to keep sombody’s ex-wife out.”
“Something’s the matter, huh?” (Subtle’s my middle name.)
“Oh, someone’s been phoning for him, and Molly’s a little scared about it.”
“I don’t believe it amounts to cow flop,” Molly said, and the way she said it you could tell she was worried stiff.
“Who is this someone?”
“They won’t give no name.”
Megan said, “He only calls when Larry’s gone. Or if he calls when Larry’s here Larry won’t admit he talked to him.”
“What’s he say?”
“Nothin’.” That was Molly.
“He just says, ‘Let me speak to Sergeant Lief.’ When we say Larry’s not here, he hangs up.”
“Sergeant Lief? I thought Larry was a lieutenant.”
Molly stood up and smoothed her dress, looking proud for a minute. “He was a sergeant first, Holly. It was what they call a battlefield commission.”
“It’s not what this guy says,” Megan put in. “It’s the way he sounds. Sometimes when I hear him, I wonder whether Larry’s coming back at all.” She looked at Molly. “I guess I shouldn’t have said that.”
I didn’t think she should have either. Molly wasn’t strong on lips at the best of times, and when Megan came out with that beauty her mouth looked like the cut a can opener makes. She reached down under the counter by the cash register and came up with a .38 snub-nose, not pointing it at us but just laying it there on the glass and turning it around and around with one long bright-red fingernail. “Maybe I never went to no college, but I witness that I learned to shoot from my brothers, and it was a hard school. You might want to pass it around town that the day Larry don’t come home somebody else won’t eat no supper either.”
“You put that away before you get us all busted,” I said. The Barton cops are damn near afraid to touch their own guns.
Molly picked up the revolver again and held it, weighing it in her hand. “You tell them what will happen if sometime Larry don’t come home,” she said; but after a second or two she stuck it back under the register.
“How long have you been learning the business?” I asked Megan, trying to pretend that nothing had happened.
“Two hours, maybe.”
“Then come on before you suffer terminal brain-strain. I need you to help me pass judgment on a new blow-drier.”
It must have sounded retarded as hell, but Molly wasn’t the type to notice; hair was serious business for her, and it let me pull Megan out of the shop.
When she was up behind me on Sidi she whispered, “He names guys sometimes, and then he gives a year. Corporal Raglan, nineteen seventy-two. Like that. It isn’t just that, either. I think he’s told Molly that Larry’s got another girl someplace.”
I guess my face must have looked about like Molly’s had in the shop; it’s a damned good thing Megan couldn’t see it. “She know who it is?”
Megan said no, and reeled off a list of suspects, none of them Elaine. By the time she got to the end I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention. Across from the Redman Lounge a black sedan was pulling away from the curb, and I hadn’t seen anybody get into it.
How Uncle De Witte Sinclair Played Postman
Maybe this is where I should write a transition. You know, “The big yellow summer sun grew brighter each new day. Me and Leslie and Megan, and Kris and Adam and John lolled around our pool and Les’s pool and the pool in the park. Locusts buzzed in the elms like spaced-out doorbells, and the hamburger smell from the fast-food joints up on the highway came drifting through the shadows like smoke.”
There—I knew I could do it. What I’m really trying to say is that summer dragged along about like it usually does. On TV, reruns of utterly ghastly shows got pushed aside by first runs of the most utterly god-awful summer tryouts the world has ever seen. I went on strike about Elaine wanting me to drop karate. Everybody was sick to death of movies, but it wasn’t nearly time to think about the homecoming dance yet.