“She said no.”
“Who said no?”
“Molly.”
“She told you that, Mr. Dwyer?”
“In so many words.”
“So you think that because she was taking some time to think it over—”
I sighed. “Meacham, listen to me. She wasn’t thinking it over. There was no way she was ever going to run off with you. Ever. But maybe deep down you really understood that. And maybe deep down that’s why you cut her face.”
“My God, you really think I could do that?”
“I think it’s possible. You’re so obsessive about her that—”
“ ‘Obsessive.’ That’s a word my wife would use. A clinical word. There’s nothing clinical in my feelings for Molly, believe me. They’re pure passion. And I emphasize pure and passion. There’s no way I could cut her up. She’s the woman I’ve waited for all my life.”
I wondered if I happened to be blushing at this point in the conversation. I thought again of all the women I’d stayed away from because they weren’t my ideal. Good women. There’s nothing like hearing your own sappy words put in the sappy mouth of someone else. Then you realize how inane your beliefs really are.
“Were you here the night it happened?”
“No, Mr. Dwyer, I wasn’t. I was walking, actually.”
“The entire night?”
“Most of it. You’re wanting an alibi?”
“That would help.”
“I don’t have one — other than the fact that I’m a creator, Mr. Dwyer, not a destroyer. I have created something with Molly that is too beautiful for anybody to destroy. Even I couldn’t destroy it if I wanted to.”
I had to agree with his wife. I don’t know why she stuck it out all these years, either.
“I’ll be going now, Mr. Meacham.”
A chill smile. “You don’t like me much, do you, Mr. Dwyer?”
“Not much,” I said.
“You’re like her,” he said, and nodded upwards to where his wife lay in her solitary bed. “Very middle-class and judgmental without understanding what you’re judging.”
“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “But I doubt it.”
I left.
6
Clarence started barking at me the minute I pulled into the drive. He was in the breezeway, where he spent a lot of time on these unseasonably warm autumn evenings. Linda came out and calmed him down and let me in.
“I guess we should be grateful he barks so much, as a watch dog and all, but sometimes he drives me crazy.” Then, apparently out of guilt for saying such a thing, she bent down and patted his head fondly, and said in baby talk, “You drive Mommy crazy, don’t you, Clarence?”
Susan was in the kitchen setting out placemats on the breakfast nook table.
“We’re doing Domino’s tonight,” Susan said. “Are you going to join us, Jack?”
I still couldn’t imagine either of them doing it, cutting her up that way, daughter to one, sister to the other.
“Pepperoni and green pepper,” Linda said.
“You convinced me.”
Susan got beers for her mother and me and a Diet Pepsi for herself. Just as we were sitting down in the nook, Clarence exploded into barks again. The Domino’s man had pulled into the drive.
“Maybe Clarence needs some tranquilizers,” Susan said.
“I put a twenty on the counter there, hon,” Linda said to her.
While Susan was out paying the pizza man, and calming Clarence, Linda said, “Did you talk to them?”
“Yes.”
“Any impressions?”
“They’re both good possibilities,” I said. “Especially Meacham. I’ve been learning some things about him. He’s a real creep. His wife has cancer and he’s still running around on her. He thinks he’s the last of the Romantic poets.”
“Good for him. He’s the one I’d bet on. For doing that to Molly, I mean.”
Susan came back with the pizza and we ate.
Halfway through the feast, Linda said, “Tell him about Mark.”
“Oh, Mom.”
“Go on. Tell him.”
Susan shot me a you-know-how-moms-are smile and said, “Mark Feldman asked me to the Homecoming dance.”
“Great,” I said.
“Honey, Dwyer doesn’t know who Mark Feldman is. Tell him.”
“He’s a football player.”
“Jeez, honey, you’re not helping Dwyer at all. Mark Feldman just happens to be the best quarterback who ever played in this state. He’s also a very nice looking boy. Much better looking than that creep Paul. And he’s really got the hots for my cute little daughter here.”
“God, Mom. The ‘hots.’ That sounds like something you’d get from a toilet seat.”
We all laughed.
“Congratulations,” I said.
“And she was worried that nobody’d want to ask her out anymore, Dwyer. Pretty crazy, huh?”
A knock on the breezeway door.
Susan went out to the breezeway to see who was there. She came back in carrying two pans.
“Bobbi brought your cake pans back, Mom. She said the upside down cake was great and thank you for the recipe, too.”
“Thank Gold Medal flour,” Linda said. “The recipe was on the back.”
I guess it was the silence from the breezeway I noticed. Clarence tended to bark at strangers when they came up to the door and when they were leaving. But he hadn’t barked at all with Bobbi.
“Why didn’t Clarence bark just now?” I said.
“Oh, you mean with Bobbi?” Linda said.
“Right.”
“He knows her real well. He doesn’t bark with our best friends.”
Then I remembered something that Susan had said to me back when I’d first met her.
I said, “He doesn’t bark when Paul comes up, either, does he?”
“No,” Susan said.
“The other night, when Molly was cut, you said you heard screams from the breezeway. But did you hear barking?”
Susan thought a moment. “No, I guess I didn’t.”
“Would Clarence have barked if Meacham had come up?”
“Absolutely,” Linda said.
I tried not to make a big thing of it but they could see what I was thinking. I finished my three slices of pizza and my beer and then said I needed to go and do some work.
7
He wasn’t too hard to find. I spent some time in the parking lot with some burglary tools I use on occasion, and then I went inside the mall looking for him.
He was hanging out with some other boys in front of a record store.
When he saw me, he started looking nervous. He whispered something to one of his friends.
Three good-sized boys stepped in front of him, like a shield, as I started approaching.
They were going to block me as he ran.
“Molly wants to see you,” I said over the shoulders of the boys.
He had just started to turn, ready to make his run, when he heard me and angled his face back toward mine.
“What?”
“She wants to see you. She sent me to get you.”
“Bullshit,” he said.
I shrugged. “All right. I’ll tell her you didn’t want to come.”
The boy in the middle, who went two-twenty easy, decided to have a little fun with the old man. He stepped right up to me and said, “You want to rumble, Pops?”
The other kids laughed. Nothing kids love more than bad dialogue from fifties movies.
“Like I said, Paul, I’ll tell her you didn’t want to see her.” I looked down at the tough one and said, “If that’s all right with you, Sonny.”
I hadn’t kicked the shit out of anybody for a long time but the tough one was giving me ideas.