As I watched, she stooped, picked up the bar — which had at least a hundred pounds hung on it — and pushed it from her chest to as far above her head as she could reach. She did this fifteen times, then dropped the weight on the floor and did a series of stretches.
I walked over, gave her my friendliest smile, and hollered, “Hello, my name is Harry Neal, could I talk with you for a moment?”
She gazed at me with placid, judging eyes, shrugged, and pointed to a small back door. I followed her out the door into a blissfully silent field of dead weeds and rocks.
Actually I walked, C. C. Dorfman strutted, her highly muscled hips undulating with a primitive sensuality that brought a silly, bemused smile to my face.
As she turned around, I whipped the smile off and said, “I’m a friend of Annie Kokar, and I’m trying to trace Bob’s movements on the day he had his stroke. I was talking to Philip Kinch and his daughter, and she said you were working at Kokar and Kinch that day.”
She gazed at me, gave Cat a long searching look, and nodded. “Whew, that brings back some memories. You saw Kinch? How is the old bastard? Sometimes when I have five or six dollars to spare I pay him a visit, but I haven’t been there in weeks. Frankly, he makes my ass tired.”
“I’m not sure how he is. He sits in the basement and seems fixated on something called The Maury Show. It cost me five dollars to talk to him. He says he has Parkinson’s. Do you remember the day Bob Kokar had his stroke?”
With long callused fingers she slid Cat out of the sling and ran her other hand over Cat’s body. “Car get her?”
I nodded. “Yes, it was touch and go for a bit, but Annie pulled her through. She’s pretty gimpy but manages.”
C. C. Dorfman nodded thoughtfully, squatted down, and laid Cat on her back in the weeds. She held Cat’s body with one hand, grasped her bad front leg with the other, and, as she slowly, gently pulled it forward, asked, “So what’s the interest in Bob’s last normal day?”
“He was carrying some keys with him. Before he died, he hinted to Annie that they might lead to something of value. And he was driving another person’s car, a 1976 Plymouth station wagon. Listen, what are you doing to Cat?”
Cat’s eyes had suddenly bulged and her purring turned to a drawn-out yowl. C. C. Dorfman now took both front legs and very slowly pulled them forward.
“She’s extremely stiff. She needs to be stretched out daily. It’ll reduce the scarring of the deep muscle tissue and increase her mobility. With increased mobility she’ll be able to build up the atrophied muscle, reduce her discomfort and pain, and lead a better life. So stop screwing around, she’s your responsibility, and you’re not doing the work. Once a day minimum, stretch her out. If you’re too damn lazy, give her to someone who will.”
She laced the fingers of both hands in Cat’s front and back legs and pulled. Cat yowled and looked at me with what I assumed to be pleading eyes. I put a hand on C. C. Dorfman’s extremely muscular back and said, “I want you to stop, you’re hurting her.”
She stopped, flowed to a standing position, and looked at me with eyes gone fierce. “Listen, turkey, I know what I’m doing. I did three years of vet school at UNH and two summers with a vet in Hanover before I quit. I quit because every time I had to put an animal down, I cried and got drunk. My liver and wallet couldn’t take it anymore. So don’t give me any crap, all right? I know what I’m doing.” And she squatted down and put Cat on her digital rack again.
I pulled a dollar out of my pocket and let it float down to the grass. “Do you remember that ’76 Plymouth wagon?”
She stopped torturing Cat, smiled, and tucked the dollar in her halter. Her chest was so muscular that the inside edges of her breasts were striated. “I put a big trunk into that car for Bob. He’d sold it to somebody, and when a tire on his Buick went flat, they lent him the station wagon. I was going to follow him to the person’s house and give him a ride back. But then his face melted along with a lot of good stuff in his head, and that was that.”
“So what happened to the car?”
She pressed her right thumb deep into Cat’s neck muscles. I stood above her, my eyes wandering over her amazing body, and waited. Finally she said, “You know, this is the first time I’ve thought about it. And I’ve got a dollar that says Philip never remembered it either, until now I mean. So the answer to your question is, ‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’ ”
She put Cat on her left side and dug her fingers into Cat’s scarred right shoulder. Cat was making noises that would break an executioner’s heart; to distract her I threw another dollar down. “What does C. C. stand for?”
She rolled Cat over and started torturing her other shoulder. “It’s not C. C., it’s CeeCee, that’s C-e-e, C-e-e, CeeCee.” She lifted Cat, placed her in the sling, and gently rubbed the top of her head with a knuckle. “Remember, Neal, once a day minimum. If you don’t, I’ll find out about it and hunt you down and turn you into a gelding.” And she not so gently rubbed the top of my head with several knuckles.
Gretchen’s Restaurant is located at the gloomy, litter-strewn end of an alley off Main Street. A bowl of her buck-a-bowl soup weighs about two pounds and keeps financially desperate senior citizens going until the green check comes. I spend a lot of time in Gretchen’s, usually sitting alone in a booth that seats six, drinking wine or coffee and on occasion actually buying something to eat.
Gretchen is my age, has never ventured farther than Concord, thirty miles to the south, and could not care less about the human comedy outside the town limits. She does, however, know just about everything about the never-ending comedy outside her door.
I pushed open the heavy, peeling door with the front tire and rolled my bike down the narrow room to the back wall. It was fairly cold out, and the big potbellied stove was spewing out heat and wisps of birch-scented smoke that mixed with the aromas of chicken curry and good coffee.
I leaned the bike against the wall, put Cat in her sling, and, instead of taking the rear booth, walked to the counter and sat down next to the only person who knows more about the townspeople than Gretchen.
Betty Worthen, all hundred and sixty-some-odd pounds of her, is the only policewoman in town. She started out as, and still is, a meter maid; any arrests she makes are on foot and are the result of her own private investigations or an occasional push from a local. Betty and I owe each other some fairly significant favors and generally tolerate each other’s numerous flaws.
Cat struggled out of the sling onto the counter and poked her nose in Betty’s cup. After a few tentative sniffs she bent her head and lapped up coffee spiked with five or six teaspoons of sugar. Then she licked her nose and limped down the counter to check out what the other patrons had in front of them.
I stirred Betty’s coffee with my finger just to watch her round face break into a grin, ordered my own coffee from one of Gretchen’s geriatric waitresses, and said, “Were you around the day Bob Kokar had his stroke?”
Betty stared at her coffee a moment, then drank. “I was fresh out of the police academy, had just kicked my husband and son out of the house, and generally thought I was a hot ticket because I was single again and running around with a revolver on my hip and putting parking tickets on people’s windshields. It was Kokar’s stroke that brought me back to earth. I was the first official type to get to the store. I heard crying and ran into the back and there’s old Philip Kinch and CeeCee Dorfman on the floor holding Kokar. His face had sagged like warm taffy, and he stared up at me with the eyes of a gutshot doe. I was about as helpful as Philip and generally stood around with my thumb up my butt watching him drool.”