“I keep wanting to write a book where the lesbians end up happily together. You know I correspond with gay women who write soft-core. They’re very bright nice women. Fortunately for me, they understand the market and what you have to do, so they don’t hate me. But then, hell, their own books have to have the endings when one of the women goes off with a guy. Or gets hit by a train.” His laugh hadn’t changed in twenty-two years.
I got our Pepsis. I sat on the couch. Kenny turned his chair around so he could face me. “Time for me to pull out my deerstalker cap?”
“I really need some help. Linda Raines isn’t going to help me and neither is William Hughes. I need to know who really had it in for Bennett.”
“Plenty of people, from what I’ve always heard.”
“But I need to narrow the list down.”
“I can probably do that for you.”
Kenny knew as much about our little town as anybody in it. He started a novel set here when he was still in high school. In doing research, he learned not only our history but also who was who and why in our own time. Despite the books he writes, most people like Kenny. They’ll talk to him because his boyishness puts them at ease.
“Who’re you going to talk to next?”
“Lynn Shanlon. She knows a lot about the Bennett family. I know they never accepted Karen.”
“No surprise there, Sam. She came from the Hills and she had a limp. You sure wouldn’t want either of those things in the blood line.”
“Choate. West Point. Hyannis Port. Lou did all right for himself coming from here.”
“Yeah, but only because his old man inherited a fortune when Lou was eight years old.”
That was what I meant about Kenny knowing the town. “I’d forgotten that. Where’d the money come from?”
“Oil. The father’s brother was a wildcatter. He was also a convicted felon. Nearly killed a man in a bar fight in Waco. Served three years. But all was forgiven when his gushers came in. Full pardon from the governor.” He smiled. “You know how fast money can make you respectable. Surprised the Pope didn’t make him a saint.”
“What about Bennett’s business partner Roy Davenport?”
“Another felon. Lou liked to walk right up to the line legally. He had a number of businesses that probably involved outright crime, including cheap cigarettes in from Canada. He needed a fixer. Davenport was his fixer for the side businesses, but he was impressive enough to meet people at the country club.”
“Why’d Davenport leave Bennett?”
“A woman named Sally Crane. She was one of their secretaries. Lou hired good-looking married women who were willing to stay a little late if there were bonuses in their paychecks. Davenport started sleeping with the Crane woman on the side. Except Bennett didn’t want to share her and couldn’t believe that Davenport actually had feelings for her. They got into a fistfight one night and Davenport beat him up pretty badly. And that was that.”
“If you hear anything more about Davenport, let me know, huh? I already owe you a good meal for what you just told me.”
“I’ll keep calling people, seeing what I can find out.”
By the time I reached the door, Kenny had already turned back to his typewriter. By the time I reached the ground and was greeted by a hand-slurping Pepper, Kenny was punishing his typewriter at a rate poor Jamie could only dream of.
Lynn Shanlon wore a white T-shirt and red shorts. She probably caused more than one man to gawk at her as he passed by in his car. She was comely and cute as she shoved the hand mower across the sloping front yard of her small white clapboard house. If she noticed me pulling into her driveway, she didn’t let on. She thrust that mower with serious intent. A buccaneer of the blades.
I stood on the edge of her lawn and waited until she’d turned back in my direction. I waved when she saw me. She didn’t wave back. She mowed her way to me and then stopped, wiping sweat from her brow with the back of her arm. The displeasure in the brown eyes told me that she knew who I was and didn’t like me at all.
“Wondered if I could talk to you.”
Despite the wrinkles around eyes and mouth, her perfect little features would always keep an air of youth about her.
“I guess you’re forgetting what you did to me, Mr. McCain.”
“What are you talking about?”
“My neighbor down the block-Mrs. Hearne?-you represented her against me. She claimed that my boyfriend’s dog always tore up her garden?”
“She filed the complaint against him, right? Pekins or something like that?”
“Perkins. And it was one of the reasons we broke up. I got too good a deal on this house to move, and he wouldn’t live here with me without his dog.”
“But the dog was tearing up her garden. She had a pretty reasonable complaint.”
She sighed. Her thin arms were covered with blades of grass. She dug into the pocket of her shorts and brought out a pack of Chesterfields. She got one lighted and said, “Oh, hell, who am I kidding? We were going to break up anyway, I guess. Every time I’d bring up marriage, he’d change the subject. But that doesn’t make Mrs. Hearne any less of a bitch. She would have been right at home in Salem, burning witches.”
That made me laugh. “Other than that, you like her, huh?”
She had a quick girly smile. “Other than that, I’m crazy about her.”
A green DeSoto convertible drove past, the male driver downright enchanted by the sight of Lynn Shanlon in her shorts. “My exhusband was like that. Everywhere we’d go, I’d have to watch him watch every girl in the place. I thought Perkins might be different. But no. You men are all lechers.” She dragged on her cigarette. “So why’re you here?”
“I’d like to ask you some questions about your sister and when she was seeing Bryce Bennett.”
“Does this have anything to do with Lou being killed?”
“Could have. I’m representing Harrison Doran.”
She dropped her smoke to the grass, twisted it out with the sole of one of her red Keds. “You’ve got your hands full then. I heard Chief Sykes on the radio this morning. I’ll admit he’s an idiot sometimes, but Doran being out there at three in the morning-”
“Did your sister ever tell you about any of Lou Bennett’s enemies? She must have spent some time out there.”
“Not unless she had to. She was insecure enough with her leg, the way the poor kid limped. Her foot was run over by a car when she was four and it wasn’t fixed correctly. The way the Bennetts treated her didn’t exactly make her feel any better about herself.” Then: “Hey, good afternoon, Dave.” She trotted down the driveway to meet the mailman. “Are you ready for the weekend?” she said as he handed her the mail.
“Probably go to the parade.”
“You’re not going to burn any Beatles records?”
Dave laughed. “If I did, my daughters would burn me.”
It was an afternoon of heat and lawn work and little kids cooling off with moms aiming hoses at them and teenage girls in bikinis sunning themselves on towels and hoping to put a fair number of men in mental hospitals.
When she returned, she waved a handful of envelopes at me. “Bills. Between my job at the courthouse and my big alimony check, I can almost pay these.” Then: “My sister loved Bryce and Bryce loved her. His father forced him to break it off. Karen never got over it, and I don’t think Bryce did either.”
“Did he ever try to contact her after he was married?”
“I don’t know. I was living in Chicago with my ex-husband the banker. I came back here one week before the fire in her little bungalow. I think about that all the time. I was so upset over my husband divorcing me, I didn’t spend much time with her because I didn’t want to bring her down with all my whining. We’d planned on spending the whole day together sometime; drive into Cedar Rapids or Iowa City. But then she died.” The voice became despondent. “I loved her as much as she loved Bryce.”
“I’m trying to remember the fire. Was there anything strange about it?”
“Are you kidding? Everything about it was strange. First of all, she rarely smoked. Once in a while when she was really depressed or something, she’d puff on a few cigarettes. So that bothered me. And the fact that she didn’t wake up in time to get out. My sister was a very light sleeper. Very light.”