She withdrew her bright head with its bright, inquisitive eyes, and I thought how odd everyone becomes when anything sufficiently extraordinary happens. Because of what had happened last night to Beth, a call by a cop was suddenly something with all sorts of implications.
Cotton McBride must have been ten years older than I, but I had known him casually for a long time. He was thin and dry, with limp pale hair and round shoulders and a chronic expression of quiet despair, and he did not look much older than he had twenty years ago. This was not because he kept himself looking young, but because I couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t looked old. Even as a kid he had seemed dry and withered and a little tired, always wearing his expression of quiet despair. He wore it now with a wilted seersucker suit and a black string tie.
“Hello, Cotton,” I said. “Millie says I ought to call you lieutenant.”
“I heard her. That’s a neat redhead, Gid, but she doesn’t show much respect.”
“I wouldn’t take it personally if I were you.”
“You always had an eye for the lookers, Gid. I remember that about you.”
“Do you? Maybe so. It’s not an uncommon post-puberty trait among males.”
“What I’d like to know is how you get that little wife of yours to tolerate a redhead like that.”
“My wife’s vain. She simply can’t conceive of my looking twice at anyone but her.”
He sat down uninvited in a chair beside my desk, dropping his stained straw hat on the floor beside him. “I never had any luck with the girls myself. Guys like you had all the luck.”
“Some of it bad, Cotton. Girls have a way of being bad luck at times.”
“That’s true enough. I’ve seen more than one man in bad trouble because some woman got him there. On the other hand, I’ve seen women in the same condition because of some man. Like the one who got herself killed out in Dreamer’s Park last night. Beth Thatcher. You heard about it, I suppose.”
“I heard.”
“Seems to me you used to know her pretty well.”
“Pretty well.”
“That was a pretty dirty trick she played on you years back. Something like that can sometimes do peculiar things to a fellow. It sticks. Maybe he thinks he’s forgotten all about it, and then something brings it back, and it’s as bad as ever. Maybe worse.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Cotton. She got married and went away, and she was gone seven years. She quit being important quite a while back.”
“No, she didn’t, Gid. She was killed last night, and that makes her still important. Anyhow, it makes her important all over again. What I’ve been wondering is, why did she come back to town?”
“I can answer that. She had been living well in various places where living well is expensive, and she was broke. She needed some money, and she thought Wilson Thatcher might be willing to give her some for old times’ sake.”
“If you ask me, that’s a hell of a poor reason for giving away money.”
“If I know Wilson Thatcher, he would agree with you.”
“Maybe you don’t know him so well.”
“Is that so? Why?”
“Because she wasn’t broke when we checked her room at the hotel this morning. There was a purse of hers in the top drawer of a chest, and there was five grand in the purse.”
“You think she got it from Wilson?”
“Who else? Did you give it to her?”
“Oh, sure. I’ve been paying her five grand a month for years. She was blackmailing me.”
“You’re trying to be funny. I guess, but I’m always open to suggestions.”
“Blackmail? Don’t be a fool, Cotton.”
“I’ll try. It wasn’t you I had in mind, though. Hell, I know you don’t have the kind of money you need to pay blackmail. Wilson Thatcher’s different. Wilson has most of the money in the world. I talked with Wilson this morning, but I’ve got a notion I’d better talk with him again.”
“Did Wilson see her before she died?”
“He says not. He says she called him at the factory early yesterday afternoon and tried to make an appointment with him. but he told her to go to hell. He hadn’t heard about her being dead until I told him, but he didn’t seem particularly surprised. That could be because he already knew without being told, though. What do you think?”
“You’re the detective, Cotton. You do the thinking.”
“Seems to me that you might be willing to help. It might turn out to be in your own interest if you did.”
“Just what do you mean by that?”
“It’s plain enough. As far as anybody knows now, there’s as much reason for suspecting you as anyone else, and the quicker it turns out to be someone else, the better for you.”
“Is that what you came here to say? If it is, you’ve said it and I want to go home.”
“You needn’t get sore, Gid. Why I really came is because you probably knew her better than anyone left around here, except maybe Wilson, and I thought you might know something that happened in the past that might help us now. The way it looks to me, she was sure as hell killed, for whatever reason, by someone right here in town, and probably you and I both know whoever that person was.”
“Not necessarily. Someone could have followed her.”
“There aren’t any suspicious strangers in town that I know of.”
“He could have come and gone. Murderers don’t usually hang around after they’ve committed murder.”
“It could have happened that way, but I don’t believe it. What’s bothering me right now as much as anything else is why she was out there in that park alone, late at night.”
“She may have just walked out there for sentimental reasons. Dreamer’s Park has played a part in most of our lives.”
“I don’t believe that, either. It doesn’t explain why she was killed there.”
“Assume a nut. There she was in the dark park for sentimental reasons, and there at the same time, for reasons of his own, was a psycho. It was something that just happened.”
“No. The killing was too neat. Nuts are generally messy. Whoever did this just slipped a long, thin blade into her from behind, and that was all of it.”
I remembered her face in the light of a match, the fixed wonder that was almost an expression of serenity, and it was in that instant, for the first time since finding her dead in the old bandstand, that I realized fully that dying had not made her someone with nothing to do with anything that had happened, and that she was still, although dead, the same person I had known and loved and ached for and wanted once to marry. I had said that she had quit being important a long time ago, which was true in a way, but I suddenly hoped with all my heart, which was hurting, that a particular person turned out to be even sorrier than I that she had died in the particular way she had.
“What’s the matter?” Cotton said.
“Nothing,” I said. “Why?”
“You’re looking funny.”
“Am I? I don’t feel funny. I was wondering what you’ve done with her.”
“The body? It’s over in a back room of Paley’s Funeral Parlor. You might be able to see it if you’re interested.”
“Thanks. I might be interested.”
“You haven’t been much help, to tell the truth. If you get any better ideas, you let me know.”
“I’ll do that.”
He retrieved his stained hat and left, and after a minute or two, I went out and downstairs and east on the street three blocks and two blocks south to Charlie Paley’s Funeral Parlor. I found Charlie’s office, Charlie in it, and he said Beth was ready, and took me back to see her.
She was lying in this little room just off the alley, and it seemed to me a bleak and depressing room to lie in, even dead, but Beth didn’t seem to mind, her face serene and still fixed in wonder, although it was now apparently the wonder of a dream, for her eyes were closed. Charlie went away and left me with her, and I stood there and tried to say silently the proper good-by that we had never said, but it was simply something that couldn’t now be wrapped up neatly after being and ending in such disorder, and after a fair trial that came to nothing I went back to the drug store across from my office and called Sid.