Little Black Dress (Peter Macklin Novels)

by Loren D. Estleman

  “All? You don’t appreciate your mother’s ingenuity. His publisher has him on a sixteen-city tour to promote the new one, Serpent in Eden. He was scheduled to sign at the Little Professor in Toledo, but he had some kind of fight with the chain over the way his book’s being displayed. His publicist canceled. As soon as I heard, I got on the phone to our regional manager. He agreed this is our chance to cut in on the competition. He spoke to the publicist. We’ve got Spain for the twentieth. You must come, and bring Peter.”

  Laurie looked at the dates on the TV Guide on the nightstand. “That’s next Saturday.”

  “Don’t I know it. I’ve placed quarter-page ads in the Blade and took out a page in the Millennium.”

  “What’s the Millennium?”

  “That’s right, you remember it as the Grange. It’s the weekly rag here in town. Advertising’s only one of a million things I have to do before next Saturday. I have to find a caterer and party decorations and a banner to hang outside the store. I don’t know what the others are doing, but I’m going to have hors d’oeuvres and sparkling wine—no, champagne. No crummy cookies and cider getting stale on a paper tablecloth. I may need to apply for a permit from the village, just in case someone gets run over in the street waiting at the end of the line.”

  “You think that many people will show up?”

  “I guess you’ve never been to an autograph party for an A-list author. When John Grisham signs, they hire a masseuse to prevent writer’s cramp. Hell, I forgot about the masseuse. There’s an Asian place on the end of town, but it looks sinister. I doubt it would be appropriate to hire one from there.”

  “I suppose it depends on the author. I don’t know, Mother. Peter doesn’t like crowds.”

  “Oh, that’s just the signing. I’m talking about the reception before the signing. Just a couple of dozen people, including the president of the village council and some society. It’s a chance for you and Peter to make valuable connections.”

  “What for? Peter’s retired and I’m a nurse. Would I get to lance a better class of boil?”

  “Fine. Don’t come. I just thought it would be nice to have my family present at an affair that means a lot to me. Good-bye, dear.”

  “Wait, Mother. I’m sorry. If you’d put it that way at the start, I wouldn’t have given you such a hard time. Of course we’ll be there.”

  “No, don’t put yourself out. It promises to be boring. Writers are dull company when they’re not talking about their writing, and when they are, there’s no shutting them up.”

  Laurie made a fist so tight her nails cut into her palm. She wondered if she’d ever be immune to her mother’s manipulation. She forced a smile into her voice. “Well, you know me; any chance to dress up. What should I wear?”

  “Do you have a cocktail dress?”

  Macklin let himself into the hotel room at dusk. Laurie ran at him, threw her arms around his neck, and kissed him as if they’d been separated for a week. His muscles tensed; he’d warned her about surprising him, but his reflexes had slowed since L.A. and he didn’t chop her in the throat. She smelled fresh. He was aware that he didn’t, and that his beard was scratching her. “Did you leave any hot water?”

  “It’s a hotel, silly. They never run out.”

  “Obviously you’ve never stayed in a hotel in Mexico.”

  “What happened with Dorfman?”

  “I didn’t come back to pack my toothbrush. Can it wait till I’ve had a shower?”

  “Should I order room service? A cake with a file in it?”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “I had dinner downstairs a little while ago. I meant you.”

  “I just want to scrub up and make love to my wife.”

  “So this is a conjugal visit?”

  He leaned away from her. “You’re going to keep doing this until I tell you everything, aren’t you?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He told her what Dorfman had said. She studied his face, looking for cracks in his account.

  “Does he really think Texas is going to give up that easily?”

  “Apparently there’s a bright side to foreign terrorism.”

  She shuddered. “What about the other thing?”

  “Dorfman’s making some calls. If I don’t hear from him before checkout, I’ll call him.”

  “You said you never discussed business over the phone.”

  “I’ll just ask if he has anything for me. It might mean another quick trip to Detroit. I’m not sure what form it’ll take. He’s a tough old hide.”

  “So are you. Take your shower.”

  He was shaving under the warm spray when the bathroom door opened. He unscrewed his razor and removed the blade, but the shower curtain was transparent and he saw it was Laurie. He put the blade back and laid the razor in the soap receptacle. She pulled aside the curtain and stepped into his embrace. She was naked.

  In bed, she fell asleep with her head on his chest. He closed his eyes, but he didn’t join her. He kept seeing the house in Southfield, not as it was, but as it had been when he’d lived there, test-firing revolvers in the basement or studying surveillance reports behind the locked door of his study while Roger watched television and Donna nursed her fourth boilermaker of the evening in the living room. It had been a mistake to drive past the old place.

  He decided he was less concerned with his legal case than he was with the Grinnell matter. It had been a long time since he’d had to act on anyone’s behalf but his own, and now his mother-in-law had entered the circle. Then there was the possibility Grinnell knew who and what he was and had been put in place to stalk him. Macklin hoped to close out that case fast.

  He looked forward to buying and moving into the farmhouse. He couldn’t see himself wearing overalls or piloting a tractor; that picture was as ridiculous as a farmer holding a Glock. But nothing about the house or the acreage belonged to the world he’d known. Since their honeymoon, Macklin and Laurie had been staying in hotels and rented houses, living like vagabonds. He yearned for a foundation, if only to prevent himself from drifting back the way he’d come. He wouldn’t know how to begin to give directions to there from a place like Myrtle.

  Laurie was having a disturbing dream. The woman who owned the shop in North Towne Square was a real gargoyle, her jewel-clawed toes curled over the edge of a cornice. The mouth opened beneath the oversize eyeglasses and rusty water spilled out, inexplicably along with her mother’s voice: I knew you’d be back for it, honey. If you buy it, it will come.

  The image jiggled and broke up. She woke. Peter had stirred, almost dislodging her head from his chest. He was holding the paperback novel she’d left on the nightstand, staring at the garish cover. The title, Love Song, skirled against the wavy lines of a musical score. Francis Spain’s name was as large as the title and blocked in boldly above it.

  She smiled sleepily. “I see you’ve found out my guilty secret. I love crap.”

  “That doesn’t say much for me.” He turned to the first page. After a moment he raised an eyebrow at her.

  “It gets worse,” she said. “He dangles participles, splits infinitives, and uses phrases like ‘off of’ and ‘different than.’ There’s a lulu on page eighteen. You’ll know it when you see it.”

  He flipped to that page, read. He paused, then read aloud. “‘Unable to breast-feed the baby herself, Fred had to hire a wet nurse.’ That almost makes sense.”

  “Not the kind he intended, I’m sure. I’ve read four chapters and there’s at least one of those every couple of pages. On the plus side, he’s managed to corral more clichés in the first twenty-five pages than most writers do their whole careers.”

  “I thought writers had editors.”

  “That’s the scary part. What do you suppose this book was like before editing?” She kissed his chest, patted it, and laid her cheek back down. “I haven’t mentioned the plot, which is even cornier than the language. I can tell you right now the heroine dies, of some beautiful po
etic wasting disease, and the hero is left alone to remember her into bittersweet old age.”

  He read the last page. “You peeked.”

  “Didn’t have to. Emily Brontë did it worlds better, and she died at thirty. That didn’t stop a thousand others from cranking out the same story for the next hundred and fifty years. You’d think Erich Segal had emptied the well, but no.”

  He looked again at the cover. “Says there are over eight million copies in print. What’s Spain’s secret?”

  “That’s just the paperback. The hardcover sold another million.” She sat up, pulling the sheet over her breasts, and took the book from him. She found the author’s biography on the back cover. “‘Francis Spain formerly worked for a restaurant-supply dealership in Hartford, Connecticut. This is his first book.’ That’s his secret.”

  “What’s selling restaurant supplies got to do with writing?”

  “Exactly. What restaurant-supply salesman wouldn’t give up his pension to become a best-selling author? It’s a Cinderella story. Also he’s cute.” She showed him the boyish face in the picture next to the biography. Spain was a weak-chinned version of Tom Cruise.

  “You call that cute?”

  “Relax. Your face has character.”

  “No, it doesn’t. If it did, I’d be dead.”

  “Well, I’d remember it.” She waggled the book. “This is what they call a package: pretty face, heartwarming backstory. My father was a publisher’s sales rep for a while. The business was beginning to look like Hollywood even then. The book itself is the smallest part of the package. Two or three patient editors can turn any frog into a prince. Or enough of one anyway not to interfere with the marketing. There’s a whole section in the hotel gift shop set aside for copies of just this book. That’s where I bought it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I wanted to know a little about the author before we meet him.” She told him about the reception.

  “I guess we’re going,” he said after a short silence.

  “Mother guilt-tripped me into it. By the way, don’t tell her I bought this downstairs. She’d never forgive me for patronizing the competition.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Please don’t be glum. Who knows? We may have a good time. And it gave me an excuse to make a purchase.”

  He took back the book and looked at the spine. “Five ninety-nine. I remember when they were twenty-five cents.”

  “Now you sound like someone’s grandfather. I didn’t mean the book. Wait here.”

  She hopped out of bed naked, unhooked the plastic bag and hanger from the closet, and took it into the bathroom. She brushed her hair, put on light makeup, slipped the dress on over her head, made the necessary adjustments, and went back into the bedroom.

  Peter was still sitting up in bed, reading Love Song. “You know, once you get past the fact it’s crap, this isn’t half—” He looked up.

  She rose on the balls of her bare feet and twirled. “Do you think this will draw attention away from the guest of honor?”

  “You don’t need the dress for that.” But she could tell by his tone he was awestruck.

  “I don’t have shoes for it.” She looked down at her painted toes. “Do you think we can go shopping in the morning before we leave town? I doubt I’ll find what I need in Myrtle.”

  “My aunt had a black dress. I never saw her in it until her funeral.”

  “That was just a black dress. This is a little black dress. There’s a difference.”

  “How much difference?”

  She told him. She was watching herself in the full-length mirror on the closet door, turning this way and that to make the skirt flip.

  “Take it off.” He sounded hoarse.

  She looked at him, startled. Then she looked down at the sheet covering his lap. She grinned and took off the dress.

  NINE

  Wild Bill sat on the back deck of his family home near Drip Rock, Kentucky, contemplating the unearthly deep green of the Daniel Boone National Forest and spinning his great-uncle Jakey’s imitation Colt forward and backward on his trigger finger.

  He’d seen Uncle Jakey only once, when Wild Bill’s mother had hauled him by hand into a bright room where a rubber bellows wheezed and pumped air into the old man’s lungs, blackened like the tin ceilings of the saloons where he’d spent his life. Jakob Berman had broken with the family in 1890, gone west in pursuit of adventure and fortune, found the first, and as to the last settled for the fake Colt, which according to family legend he’d either won playing poker or stolen off the legitimate winner after going bust. He’d spent the final six years of his very long life in a VA hospital in Lexington, his reward for service in the Spanish-American War.

  The .44 revolver’s counterfeit status was confirmed by the missing T in the marking on the barrel, which identified it as a COL’S. It had likely been manufactured in Spain and entered the United States through Mexico sometime during the 1870s. Surface oxidation had browned the metal and turned the bone handle a tobacco-stain yellow. It was Wild Bill’s only legacy, not counting the house and lot, whose back taxes he was still paying, and he’d had to commit theft in order to claim the gun.

  No evidence existed to indicate that Jake Berman had been some kind of desperado, but there was enough suspicion about how he’d made his way in the West to shame Wild Bill’s father, the pastor of a Lutheran church in Berea, Kentucky. The Colt knockoff had been left to Wild Bill as Jakey’s youngest blood relative in a letter of intent. Samuel Berman had locked it away, not because of any danger represented by a weapon whose firing pin had rusted off, but as a protest against the outlaw taint Jakey had brought to the family. For that reason, he’d refused to allow his son to have any contact with his great-uncle when he first fell ill. Only in the shadow of death did he relent and give grudging permission to his wife to take his son for a farewell visit. He himself had stayed home, drafting a sermon on the Eighth Commandment, with veiled references to certain flaws in the parable of the Prodigal Son. Jakey had died within hours of the visit, without having regained consciousness throughout. His great-nephew had never heard his voice.

  Wild Bill might have respected his father’s principles if he’d simply thrown away the gun, but the thought that it had some antique value had prevented that. That strain of personal gain, so deeply seated in the descendants of pragmatic Bavarian immigrants, seemed to justify Jakey’s actions while casting Samuel’s into doubt. In fact, it occurred to Wild Bill that there was more honesty in robbing a bank or a train, openly and in broad daylight, than in squirreling away a wicked gift against the value it might bring with no risk involved. When Wild Bill ran away from home at age sixteen, the revolver went with him.

  He’d worked his way west, washing dishes, painting houses, and burglarizing vacation homes closed for the season for anything that might be sold for quick cash. Nothing could persuade him to part with the gun. He had a childhood fascination with Western movies and the novels of Luke Short and Louis L’Amour, and it pleased him to think he was following in Uncle Jakey’s footsteps, shrugging off the chains of civilization for the freedom of the frontier. He’d hunted elk in Wyoming, worked two seasons as a fishing guide in Montana, and spent a delirious six weeks in gunfighter costume, reenacting the gunfight at the O.K. Corral for the entertainment of tourists in Tombstone, Arizona. He might have been contented to make that sort of thing a career if he hadn’t received a letter from his mother’s lawyer, announcing her death and calling him back to reclaim the family home in Drip Rock, along with all its debts outstanding. His father had died six years earlier of a brain aneurysm suffered while officiating at a parishioner’s graveside service. The Rapture had blown out a vein.

  In between legitimate occupations, Wild Bill had served a year in the Montana State Penitentiary for the armed robbery of a convenience store in Livingston and tried his hand at sticking up a train in Idaho; an enterprise abandoned when sheriff’s deputies arrested him in the act of cutt
ing down a telephone pole for the purpose of blocking the tracks. He was convicted of vandalism, served ninety days in the Madison County Jail, and upon his release was returned to Montana for six months for violation of parole. He often wondered if Uncle Jakey had encountered similar difficulties riding the outlaw trail.

  His setbacks had convinced him that the law-enforcement community west of the Divide was too efficient, and too well-versed in the bandit tradition, to make that line of work profitable. Still, he loved the West, and longed to return, with a stake that would support him without running afoul of the local constabulary. Ironically, he’d been far more successful in Ohio. Video stores were easier to rob than 7-Elevens, with their gun-toting foreigners behind the counters, and the take was far better. He anticipated the same from bookstores. When the climate got too hot, as it had after that cold fish Grinnell had overlooked the renegade manager in the dirty-movie section, he had the house in Drip Rock to run to for cover.

  You couldn’t live in the past. He’d learned that the hard way. Things weren’t the same in the twenty-first century as they had been in the nineteenth, and less so in the Midwest than in the golden West. An independent needed protection.

  The organized tradition was not so well established in Kentucky, and so he’d gone north. He’d made connections in prison that got him an introduction in Cleveland, only to find the aging organization there in a paralyzed state, rocked by a string of successful prosecutions on the federal level and disinclined to form partnerships with unpredictable outsiders. He’d been unable to secure a referral to anyone higher than the local loan sharks. Toledo was friendlier, and when he’d made his case for video stores he’d been met by one of the young Turks aligned with Tommy Vulpo, a fair nonethnic type with an earring, who laid out the ground rules: