“Please, McCain. You’re vulgar enough just standing there. You don’t need to enhance it.”
“With child. In a maternal way. Preggers, as our British friends say.” She was something of an Anglophile. I thought maybe she’d go for it.
“Poor Sara,” she said.
“Poor Dierdre.”
“And no idea who the father is?”
“Not so far.”
“Probably some greasy-haired high-school boy who drives around with his car radio turned all the way up. Like you, in fact, McCain.”
“Thank you for the third time today.”
“No wonder she doesn’t want to talk to me.” Then: “Are you any closer to figuring this thing out than you were before?”
“Not so’s you’d notice.”
“Then what do I pay you for, McCain?
You’re my investigator-investigate, for God’s sake. Don’t sit here soaking up my brandy and wasting my time.”
“You haven’t offered me any brandy.”
“Oh.”
“And as far as wasting your time goes, I thought you’d appreciate being brought up to date.”
She went to the window and swept a graceful arm toward the grounds.
“You maybe have noticed all the activity out there.”
“I did indeed.”
“Dick will be here very soon.”
“I’m trying to hide my enthusiasm so as not to embarrass myself.”
“I want him to be comfortable here and to think well of us. I don’t want him to think that we’re a bunch of hill people who throw snakes around in our religious ceremonies. And murder each other.”
“You’ll have your killer.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
A knock at the door.
“Yes?”
Max, the butler. “There seems to be some trouble with the lilies, Judge.”
“The lilies?”
“They’re lagging.”
“The lilies are lagging?”
“That’s what the floral man says, Your Honor.”
“Florist, not floral man, Max.”
“The florist says the lilies are lagging, Judge. He’d like you to join him in the tent.”
After Max was gone, the Judge, obviously unhappy, said, “Did you hear that, McCain?”
“I certainly did. Your lilies are lagging.”
“I pay this kind of money and they lag.”
“I don’t want to live in a world like this anymore.”
“You’re more sarcastic than usual today, McCain. And since you don’t seem to have any sensitivity toward my lilies, I may as well be honest with you.”
“Honest? About what?”
“That ridiculous story you made up about tying two rattlesnakes together.”
“You didn’t believe it?”
“Not for a second.”
“Well,” I said as I left, “it’s a hell of a lot more interesting than lagging lilies, I’ll tell you that much.”
Fourteen
On Main Street, sitting primly on a bench in front of the Dairy Queen, I saw Kylie Burke and I almost pulled in and talked to her. But she looked so happy just then and I imagined her head was filled with all sorts of hopes and blissful fantasies about her life ahead with Chad. It’s funny how love can do that to you like nothing else. You put your hand on fire just once and you know enough never to do it again. But you listen to the same person make the same empty promises again and again, and you still come back. And back. And back. And there’s always the friend who knows the couple (they always live in Des Moines or Cleveland or somewhere like that) that went through exactly the same thing you’re going through-all the bunco and pain and humiliation and degradation-and you know what?
It was worth it because today these two are The Happiest Couple In The World. They have seventy-three children and eighteen dogs and eleven cats and they live on love. They don’t need groceries, they don’t need cars, they don’t need baths. Who needs that stuff when you’ve got Love, and we’re talking capital-letter
Love here, of course. So maybe if you can just hang in there just a little longer you’ll be exactly like this couple-maybe just like Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher who look, I have to say, as if they’re living on Love for sure-and then all this suffering and shame and emotional sucker-punching will be well worth it. She was probably thinking stuff like that. Because that’s the sort of thing I used to think about the beautiful Pamela Forrest when she’d give me just enough hope to hang on for another couple weeks. But in the end it’s us, isn’t it?
We could walk away anytime if we had the pride or common sense we should have. And yet we cling and hope. And have those happy-scared moments like the one Kylie was probably having now when the object of our affection throws us another sunny bit of hoke and hope.
A visitor waited for me in my client’s chair.
When he turned around, I said, “Lesbo Lummoxes. About really lazy lesbians.”
“Not bad,” he said.
“I was kidding.”
“Gee, McCain, so was I. I suggest a title like Lesbo Lummoxes, the editor probably wouldn’t ever give me any more work.”
As I walked around the desk to my chair, I said, “How about Lesbo Laundromat?”
“Lesbo Laundromat?”
“It’s where all these lesbians go to wash their clothes.”
“See, McCain,” Kenny Thibodeau said patiently, “this stuff isn’t as easy as it looks.”
“I guess not.”
“Are you by any chance a frustrated writer, McCain?”
“Yeah. Sort of, anyway.”
“I thought so.” Then, quickly: “Not to change the subject but I have some info for you.”
“Info?”
Even on a boiling day like today Kenny was decked out in black. He wasn’t in mourning.
He was just honoring his place in the ranks of the Beat Generation. “I told you I’d play detective and I did. I’m going to write this private-eye novel.” Then: “Guess who was caught breaking into Courtney’s rectory last night?”
“Who?”
“Dierdre Hall.”
“How’d you find that out?”
“I have my ways.”
“C’mon, Kenny, how’d you find out?”
“My aunt is their cleaning woman.”
“Ah.”
“She stopped by my mom’s place and I was there.”
“Cliffie know this?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think. He didn’t know as of earlier this morning, anyway.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because my aunt hadn’t told him yet.”
“Why?”
“She doesn’t like Cliffie. She goes to the Lutheran church and he stopped them from playing Bingo one day.”
“Didn’t Mrs. Courtney turn her in?”
“Mrs. Courtney doesn’t know.”
“Wasn’t she home last night?”
“Oh, she was home, all right. With her bottle. Aunt Am was in the basement.
Courtney’s lawyer had asked her to start taking an inventory of everything that belonged to the church and everything that belonged to the Courtneys. Mrs.
Courtney says she plans to move back east very soon.”
“What’d your aunt do with Dierdre?”
“Just told her to go back home. She said the kid was pretty bad off. Crying and stuff.”
“She didn’t say why she was breaking in?”
“Just said she was looking for something. But wouldn’t say what.”
A sad, not-unfamiliar scenario was starting to take shape. B-movie, maybe. Or one of Kenny’s paperbacks.
“You told anybody this?”
“Only you, counselor. I’m working for you, remember. I figure it’s a trade-off.”
“Oh?”
“I’ll need to ask you a lot of questions about law while I’m writing. I try to make my books as authentic as possible.”
“Authentic? I thought you’d never met a lesbian?”
“Well, authentic except for the lesbian parts, I guess.”
“But aren’t most of the parts about lesbian stuff?”
“What are you, a critic? You want me to keep working or not?”
“You’re right, Kenny. Sorry. And this is very useful information. Thanks.” Then I said, “Lost Lesbians.”
“Lost? Where’re they lost?”
“Africa? Some desert somewhere?”
“It just doesn’t ring right, McCain.
Sorry.”
“Lesbian Locksmiths?”