He usually looked at her with the great avaricious eyes of the richest man in the valley. You could see him hope he would someday add her pelt to his belt. She’d only started here a couple of months ago. He’d probably dry-runned various approaches already. There would be outright bribery, but that would probably offend her; there would be offering her a job in one of his businesses, but that could mean trouble after he’d sucked her youth dry and she was still there; and there would be the emotional approach, the I’m-lonely approach, though the indignity of such a posture would be impossible for such a proud man to endure. He was, I assumed, still contemplating his line of attack.
But not today.
Today, he paid hardly any attention to her. She took his order and walked away. He didn’t even watch her voodoo hips sway magically.
I let him eat his breakfast. For a big man, and especially one so surly, he ate with surprising delicacy. It was like watching a heavyweight fighter with a broken nose and a flattened ear knit doilies.
When I walked over and he raised his head to see who dared to interrupt his after-breakfast cigar, he said, “I don’t have any time to talk, McCain.”
“You made me do a lot of extra work, Mr.
Frazier.”
“Work? What the hell’re you talking about?”
He looked like a cartoon war profiteer, the big Roman senator head with the deep scowl on the wide mean lips, the fat cigar stuck with great disdain in the corner of the mouth.
“My floor. Those shoes of yours left tracks all over the floor. I had to scrub them up.”
“I still don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do, Mr. Frazier. Sure you d.”
We stared at each other a long moment and then he said, “Sit down.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m going to tell the judge about this, of course. You harassing me like this.”
“She’ll probably ground me and won’t let me have any caramel corn for a week.”
“Did I ever tell you how much I dislike you, McCain?”
“No. But I kind of got that message a long time ago.”
I sat down. I lit up a Pall Mall.
I sat back in the booth and looked at him. And said nothing. It was good cop technique, which I learned at the police academy. Silence frequently makes people more nervous than pointed questions.
“I loved her.”
“I’m sure you did, Mr. Frazier.”
“And I could see this coming, the way he got when he drank and everything.”
“He got pretty bad, no doubt about it.”
“So why the hell are you bothering me, McCain?”
I said, calmly, “I wasn’t kidding about wiping up those footprints. Do you know how much I hate doing housework?”
Juanita started over toward us, raising her pad for action. Frazier waved her angrily away.
“What is it you want from me?”
“I want to know what you were looking for in my apartment.”
“I wasn’t in your apartment.”
“Sure you were.”
He put his cigar in the ashtray and then put his head back against the booth and closed his eyes.
He stayed that way for at least a minute. I became aware of all the sounds around me.
Caf@es are noisy places when you actually sit down and listen to them. Waitresses should wear earplugs, like flight crews.
He raised his head and opened his eyes. He looked at me and said, “I wanted to see if you were the one blackmailing him.”
“Blackmailing Kenny?”
“The son of a bitch, whoever it is, has already cost me a lot of money.”
“Anybody else know about this?”
“If you mean the judge or that clown Sykes, no. As for anybody else, Susan knew about it. And the blackmailer.”
“I take it you know why he was being blackmailed.”
“You may not believe this, McCain, but I don’t.”
“He asked you for money?”
“Yes.”
“And you gave it to him?”
“Yes.”
“But he didn’t tell you anything more?”
He looked at me some more. “He didn’t ask for money. Susan did.”
“And she didn’t say why?”
“All she said was that it was something that would devastate our family.”
“Did you ask her if she had any idea who was blackmailing them?”
“I did. But she said she didn’t have any idea at all.”
“Do you know how the blackmailer got the money, by mail, or was it dropped off somewhere?” The private investigator’s license I kept up to date was finally getting some real use. It had cost $45 and I was using the hell out of it this morning.
“I don’t know any of the details. Not any more than I told you.”
“When was the last time she asked you for money?”
“Three days ago.”
“And you gave it to her?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
He hesitated. “Do you really need to know that?”
“I may not need to know it but Cliffie will want to know it after I tell him how you broke into my apartment.”
He sighed. “You don’t have much respect for people’s feelings, do you?”
That line, coming from the last remaining robber baron in the valley, seemed more than a little unctuous.
But I let it pass.
“How much?”
“Three thousand dollars.”
“Making a grand total of what?”
“Eighteen thousand.”
“In how long?”
“Fourteen months.”
I whistled. “That’s serious business,” I said.
“I’m wondering if that’s what drove Kenny to it. To killing Susan and himself.”
“If he did it.”
“You don’t really think otherwise, do you?
Esme is just trying to save her family’s name.
But, hell yes, Kenny killed her. Who else would have killed her?”
“Maybe the blackmailer,” I said. “Or somebody else.”
“Like who, for instance?”
I knew I was about to jump into waters far more dangerous than the ones I’d slipped into last night. “A lover.”
“You bastard. We’re talking about my daughter.”
“I realize that, Mr. Frazier. But we’re all vulnerable and susceptible to all sorts of things. Especially when we’re in the kind of position Susan was in.”
“She loved him. Don’t ask me why.”
“She loved him, true. But she was also miserable.” I paused. “If anybody would have been justified in looking for solace somewhere else-“
“I raised her better than that.”
No point in continuing on with my questions about Susan. In his mind, she was the eternal virgin.
He looked at his watch. “I have to get over to the funeral home.”
“I appreciate the time, Mr. Frazier.”
He signed his breakfast tab with a flourish and then glanced at me. “I still don’t like you, McCain.”
“Well, I’m not thinking of asking you to go dancing either.”
“And if I catch you trying to sully my daughter’s name in any way, you’ll be finished in this town. I absolutely guarantee it.”
He moved very well for a big man, getting up fast and angry from the booth without even nudging the table, sweeping his coat and homburg along with him. And then he was gone.
I sat there and listened to some more restaurant noises and smoked my Pall Mall.
Juanita came over. “He looked mad.”
“Yeah.”
“What’d you say to him, McCain?”
“Just asked him a couple of questions was all.”
“Gee, his daughter just died, McCain. You got to learn to go easier on people. Like that time you accused Bobby of siphoning gas from Tom Potter’s tractor. You were really mean to him.”
“He was guilty, Juanita.”
“I know he was. But he’s my boyfriend, McCain, and I love him. And he wasn’t necessarily responsible for goin’ to prison those two times, either.”
“He wasn’t?”
“No, it was them punks he was hangin’ out with.
Now he just hangs out with Merle Wylie.”
“Merle Wylie? He served five years for attempted murder.”
“It was the same with Merle, McCain. He just got in with the wrong crowd, too.”
“Yeah,” I said, “that mst’ve been it.”