She looked happy. Two people were dead and she looked happy. This was one of those moments I resented being her minion. This had all become an elitist game to her. One could abide a suicide in one’s family if one had to. But murder was another matter. No matter how far back it was stuffed into the family closet, somebody was always dragging it out of the cold, damp shadows.
“Now what you need to do, McCain,” she said, “is prove it. Because you know what’s going to happen here. Sykes is going to say it was a murder-suicide and close the books on it.”
“You’re probably right.”
“Probably? Probably? My God,
McCain, you’ve known that moron as long as I h. He’ll have this whole thing wrapped up by sundown. If he hasn’t already. So get busy.”
I stood up. I’d been thinking about going to the tribute skating party for Buddy Holly tonight.
Didn’t sound as if I was going to have time.
“It was probably one of her lovers,” the judge said. “He probably snuck in there and shot her and Kenny was so drunk he couldn’t remember it.”
I got into my topcoat. “I have to warn you about something.”
“What?”
“I could be wrong.”
“You mean that Kenny might actually have killed her?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you sure as hell’d better not be wrong.”
“I figured you would probably say something like that.”
“Listen, McCain. You were the one who brought this up. Now hustle your ass out there and get to work.”
I nodded.
Then she raised her right hand and shot me.
Just once I didn’t want to jerk when the rubber band came at me. But for some reason, I always did.
“You flinched!” she said. She sounded like a kid, albeit a kid with a brandy-and
Gauloise-ravaged voice. She strung another rubber band across her thumb and forefinger.
“Care to try for two out of three?”
“Why don’t you let me try that once on you?” I said.
“Well, of course not. I’m a lady.”
“Ah.”
“And I’m also your boss. Now get going, McCain. My family’s honor is at stake here.”
Yes, I thought, I certainly wouldn’t want to besmirch the good name of a family that included Kenny and the judge’s great-grandfather, the land swindler.
I left the office.
Pamela was typing. “Poor Mr.
Frazier.”
“I hate to say this. But he’s a jerk. She deserved a lot better father and a lot better husband.” I leaned to her desk. “If I can get free tonight, how about going to the skating party with me?”
“I’m hoping to see Stu there, actually.”
“You have a date with him?”
“Not a date exactly but-”
I couldn’t help it. I had to say it. At this moment, I just plain felt sorry for her and needed to give her brotherly advice. “You’re just going to show up, huh, and hope he shows up, too, huh?”
She blushed. “Well…”
“How long are you going to chase after him, anyway?”
But she was ready for that one. “How long are you going to chase after me, McCain? If we were sensible, I’d be in love with you and you’d be in love with Mary. But here we are.”
“Yes,” I said. “Here we are.”
Ten
Our west side A and Will Root Beer stand is what you might call indomitable. It stays open year-round. In the summer you’re served by cute girls in black short-shorts and white blouses and great tanned legs. Some of them even skate your cheeseburger and fries out to you. There are a few mishaps, of course, not all the girls being championship roller skaters. My sister, Ruthie, was a carhop for two summers and set the record for falling in love, her two-month summer gig resulting in 4eacba infatuations and 3eaifd Real Things. And there’s always rock and roll on the speakers, much to the dismay of some of the older citizens, though you have to wonder what they’re doing here in the first place. Bill Haley, Eddie Cochran, Ricky Nelson, the Platters, Frankie Avalon, all the greats and sort-of greats help you digest the wonderfully greasy food. And day or night, there’s summer promise in the air, swimming and beer at the sandpits, drag racing and beer out on the highways, making out and beer in a myriad of backseats.
Winter is a different matter. The girls come out all bundled up in parkas and gloves and there’s no flirting, either. It’s too cold to flirt. They just hand you your order through the window and disappear back inside, their breath silver on the prairie winter air.
Today was no different.
The last food I’d had was a doughnut on my way back from Kenny Whitney’s. Now I sat at the AandWill listening to the Paul Anka sob “Lonely Boy.” Even the music was more subdued in the winter, Paul Anka being a long way from Fats Domino.
I was just finishing up when I saw Debbie Lundigan walking on the sidewalk past the AandW. She’d been a good friend of Susan Whitney. I stuffed the remains of my early dinner into the paper bag, backed up until I reached the large wire wastebasket, put it straight in the basket for two points and then backed up and wheeled around so I could reach the exit drive just as Debbie was about to cross it.
I rolled down my window and said, “Hi, Debbie. You like a ride?”
“Oh, hi, McCain. I’m just walking over to Randy’s.” Randy’s was the supermarket used by most people on this side of town, which was mostly a working-class neighborhood.
“Get in. I’m going right by there.”
When she got inside, I could see she’d been crying. She was a tall and somewhat awkward woman. We’d gone to school together since kindergarten. She had one of those wan faces that is pretty in an almost oppressive way. She always looks as if she might break into tears at any moment. She’d gotten married three weeks after we graduated from high school. It had always been a rocky marriage made even rockier by Susan Whitney. They’d gone to school together for years but had never paid much attention to each other.
Suddenly, they were fast friends, two married women with bad marriages. Debbie’s husband had taken to hitting her; Susan’s to ignoring her. There was a lot of town talk about them being easy lays after a few drinks but you couldn’t prove it by me.
I’ve never had any luck at all with women who are called easy. In fact, once I hear a woman described that way, I know I’ll never score, not even with a sub-machine gun and a bag of cash. Life is like that sometimes.
Debbie wore a pair of festive red earmuffs and a winter jacket with a fake-fur collar, jeans and loafers with bobby sox. Her nose was red from the cold and looked little-girl sweet. She took a pack of Winstons from her jacket pocket and tamped one out on her gloved hand. She pushed in my car lighter and when it popped out, got her weed going.
She said, after exhaling, “I just hope this town is sorry now for the way they treated her. You know, like she was some whore or something.”
I didn’t have to ask who she was talking about.
“She was the nicest girlfriend I ever had. You know how many clothes she bought me? Like this jacket for instance. You know how much she paid for it?
Thirty-nine dollars. And you know why? Because she said she was tired of seeing me freeze all the time. She knew I couldn’t afford one like this.
Thirty-nine dollars. So I hope all those bastards are happy now that she’s finally dead.”
“I don’t think he killed her.”
She looked stunned. Or stricken. I wasn’t sure which. “What? Chief Sykes is telling everybody he killed her.” That was the nice thing about a small town. You didn’t have to worry about your pronouns. We hadn’t mentioned any names but we knew exactly whom we were talking about.
“You really believe anything Chief Sykes has to say?”
“Then who killed her, McCain?”
“That’s what I need to find out. I thought maybe you could tell me who she was hanging around with lately. Guys, I mean.”
“Nobody in particular.”
The late-afn traffic was starting to pile up, our version of rush hour. The shadows were starting to kidnap the day, the sky layered salmon and gold and a kind of celestial puce. Kids were lobbing snowballs back and forth, yard to yard.