Kenny, wants simple sexual relationships.
And lots of them. A woman like Susan, who feels wronged in her marriage, wants an emotional relationship as well as a sexual one.”
She picked up another rubber band. This time, she missed me. She did another quick one and hit me.
“We’re tied, McCain.”
“The tension is on.”
“Find her lover and you’ll find her killer.
I’m convinced of that.”
“Somebody was blackmailing her.”
“What?”
I told her what Frazier had told me this morning. I also told her about him visiting my apartment.
“What was he looking for?”
“Something to tie me to the blackmail, I guess.”
“He thought you were the blackmailer?”
“He seemed to think that was a strong possibility, anyway. He figures the way I nose around this town for you, I picked up something to blackmail Susan with.”
“What if her blackmailer and her lover were the same person?”
“I’ve thought about that, too,” I said.
“Then I’d say it’s time for you to get your ass in gear,” she said. “Wouldn’t you?”
“Is that a hint?”
“No, that’s an order.”
She glared at the newspaper on her desk.
“I can’t wait until they have to retract that headline.”
“You going to sue them?”
“Oh, no. It’s not the money. I’ve got plenty of that, McCain. I’d much rather have them grovel.”
Anybody else, the line might have been ironic. She was perfectly serious.
I stood up. She brought her hand up from below the desk. Sneak attack. She got me perfectly. Right on the nose. “I win, McCain. Three to two.”
What can I tell you? A sixty-one-year-old woman with four ex-husbands and several fortunes in her past, gloating over an inane rubber band contest.
I turned and started to leave her office. “By the way, I heard Pamela warn you that I was on the warpath. I thought I’d surprise you and be nice.”
“I appreciate that.”
“But now, I really do want to see some results. And I mean fast, McCain.” She smiled sweetly with that elegantly cold face of hers. “Fast.”
I started to leave again but she stopped me. “And that girl you found in the canoe last night?”
“What about her?”
“She has something to do with this.”
“She does?”
Judge Whitney nodded. For all her foibles and excesses, she had good instincts. “Don’t ask me what the connection is yet. But I sense one.”
“She’s a teenage girl.”
“I know she’s a teenager, McCain. But she ties into this somehow. Trust me.”
“The doc’s probably done with his autopsy by now. Maybe I’ll stop over there.”
“Good idea.” Then, “You really think I’m cute?”
I smiled. “Yeah,” I said, “yeah, I d.”
Her grin made her ten years old again, little Esme Whitney sitting in her manse being doted on by Daddy’s manservants.
I went out and picked up my galoshes from the hallway where all the other boys and girls had stashed theirs for the day.
Seventeen
I didn’t have far to go to find the morgue; it’s in the basement of the courthouse.
They try to disguise it as much as possible.
There’s a nice-looking middle-aged receptionist. There’s a waiting area with a plump, comfortable wine-colored couch; a table filled with current issues of magazines; and a coffeepot that’s always percolating.
Doc Novotony is a distant relative of Cliffie, Sr., and as such his credentials have been questioned a few times. Exactly what is the Cincinnati Citadel of Medinomics, anyway? And exactly where is the Thayer Medinomics Hospital where he interned? The state medical board wouldn’t give
Novotony his license until he battled them all the way to our state supreme court, which decided, begrudgingly, that Novotony was more or less qualified to practice medicine here. But it was a split decision, with the minority report being pretty scathing.
Cliffie, Sr., installed Novotony as the county medical examiner. Novotony then proceeded to shock everybody by being a pretty decent M.E. with but two failings-anytime Cliffie, Sr., wanted results to come out a certain way, that was exactly how those results came out.
And then there’s the matter of how he dresses.
Iowa isn’t the equal of Texas in its football fervor but for some folks around here, it comes damned close. Doc Novotony, all 260 pounds and five-foot-six of him, is a good example. No matter what the occasion, and I include funerals here, you almost always see him in his black-and-gold Iowa Hawkeye football jersey and his black-and-gold cap and his black slacks with the thin gold piping down the side. He gets kidded a lot, but apparently not enough to change his clothes.
He came out to greet me after Rita, his secretary, had walked back to tell him I was here. He has psoriasis on one side of his face. It has spread over his hands. He has obligingly dispensed with handshaking. He smelled of death, or those morgue chemicals that I associated with death. They smell the same in the places where they put animals to sleep. I took a cat in once and followed the vet back to his special death room. I wished I hadn’t.
“Hear you had a little trouble last night, McCain,” he said. Then smiled. “Little skinny-dipping with that pretty Mary Travers, huh?”
Rita shook her head and rolled her eyes.
She always looked embarrassed by her boss.
“Too bad you got the eye for Pamela Forrest, McCain,” Doc Novotony said.
“That Mary’s a good-lookin’ gal. Plus she’s got some nice wheels on her, if you know what I mean.”
Rita did some more eye-rolling.
“I just said that to get Rita’s goat,” he laughed. “Got to liven this place up a little bit.” He picked up Rita’s package of Chesterfield’s and lit one. “I owe you one.”
“You owe me a carton,” Rita said. This time she shook her head, but I sensed genuine amusement with her boorish boss. He wore you down and won you over. Like professional wrestling: you watched despite all your best judgment.
“I’m here about the girl in the canoe.”
“You want to see her?”
“Not especially.”
“Oh, that’s right, I forgot you’ve got a queasy stomach.” He looked over at Rita.
“He shoulda been here to see that guy that fell into that corn grinder last week. Now, there was a mess for you.”
“Maybe you could let me borrow some photos sometime,” I said.
He grinned. “I don’t know why Cliff hates you so much. I think you’re pretty funny, McCain. And Rita’s always tellin’ me how cute you are.”
“I’ve never said that in my life, McCain,”
Rita said.
“I was just teasin’ her again. Hard as hell to get her goat, you ever noticed that, McCain?”
Then, he nodded to the back and said, “C’mon.”
“I actually do think you’re cute,
McCain,” Rita said as we were leaving. “It’s just that I’ve never said it to the doc here. I like short guys.”
“Does that include me?” the esteemed graduate of the Cincinnati Citadel of Medinomics said.
“Oh, yeah,” she said, “you just get me all hot and bothered.”
“I should fire her someday, don’t you think, McCain?”
“Actually,” Rita said, “there are two guys in this town I can count on, the Doc here being one of them. And the other one being my cousin. He’s never let me down.”
The morgue wasn’t big. There were six body drawers and two tables. There was a new tile floor and a desk and two military-green filing cabinets. The shades were drawn. Everything was shadowy. Only one of the tables had a body on it, concealed beneath a sheet. I thought of that great scene in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, my favorite movie, where the man sees his duplicate laid out on a pool table – and suddenly pulling the sheet back. Ever since then, Kevin McCarthy has been my favorite actor. And Dana Wynter, his costar, became my favorite actress, gorgeous and elegant beyond compare.