He was thinking. “So if whoever hired this is dead, then the contract goes away...?”
“Right. When we first talked, you said you could afford the fee. Despite you puking in the sink, Roger, I do think you have the stomach for this. Do I go home now, and leave you to take your chances...or do I take a swing at finding and removing your local problem?”
He nodded, once. No hesitation. “Do it.”
I smiled. “Okay, then. Got that five grand handy?”
More nods as he got up and went over to his rolltop and retrieved a fat envelope from a cubbyhole. He brought it over and handed it to me, sat again. I didn’t insult him by counting it, just stuffed it away in my sport jacket.
“Any other questions?” I asked.
He shook his head. He sank back into the chair. He wasn’t small but he wasn’t big, either, and seemed to be swallowed up in it. He looked like a guy in the midst of a bad bout of flu.
“You all right, Roger?”
“I don’t know. I’m hoping I will be, when this is over. For months now, I’ve been a prisoner in my own castle. You have any idea what that’s like?”
I did. I’d been holed up before with people out there looking to kill me. That happened sometimes.
But I said, “No. Must be rough.”
He swallowed. His voice had a quaver. “I’m just trying to stand up for my reputation, in the face of one of the most powerful, ruthless families in the Midwest. I mean, they tried to get the police to put me away, and they slandered me, and now they are trying to kill me.”
“It’s a bitch,” I said.
He leaned forward. The dark eyes were moist. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to be a gay man in a backward community like this? Before this Candy Stockwell debacle, I could maintain a relationship in a nearby community. Discreetly, but I could have somebody in my life. Since this...this siege began, I’ve been trapped here. The person I was seeing dropped me like a hot potato. Do you know what it’s like not to be in a serious relationship? To be alone?”
Actually, I did, and I didn’t mind. Not as long as there were waitresses in Geneva, Wisconsin, who liked to spend the occasional evening on Paradise Lake.
“I...I know I doubted you. And I’m sorry, Quarry. Genuinely sorry. You came here to help me and I appreciate that. I really do. To a man bouncing off the walls, you’re a goddamn savior!”
“It’s what I do.”
He leaned forward and put a hand on my knee. “I really appreciate it. Believe me. I hope you understand that—”
I lifted his hand off my leg like a leaf that had drifted there from an autumn tree.
“Roger, I got nothing against homosexuals,” I said. “Who sticks what in whose what’s-it is none of my concern. I worked side-by-side with a gay guy for years, no problem. He was a good man. But if you put your hand my leg again, we’re gonna have a problem.”
“Understood,” he said, and sat back. “Apologies.”
“None needed.”
“A man gets lonely.”
“I hear you.”
Somebody was coming in the front door. I reached for the little automatic in my jacket pocket—I had helped myself to Farrell’s .22 Mag—but Roger patted the air with a palm.
“That will be Sally,” he said. “She always gets here at least half an hour before my first lesson. She assists me in everything.”
I nodded. “She’s got a huge crush on you, you know.”
He waved that off as he stood. “No, it’s more a dad-anddaughter thing...she lost both her folks in an automobile accident, several years ago, lives with her aunt. ...Wait here a sec.”
He went out and I put the .22 away.
Soon Sally—in her white fur coat—strode in with Roger right behind her, her big head of frizzy tawny-blonde hair like a halo gotten out of hand.
She draped the fur coat over the rolltop’s chair; her curvy little body was decked out in an off-the-shoulders violet minidress with white bunnies running around the wide collarless collar, with a white belt and purple tights and matching violet leg warmers above lighter violet lace-up shoes.
Roger asked, “You want something to drink, sweetie?”
“I’ll get myself a Diet Coke,” she said. Looking my way, she asked, “Anybody else?”
“No thanks,” I said.
Roger came over and leaned before me with his hands on his knees and said, sotto voce, “You and Sally are going to be great friends.”
Really?
Roger stage-directed her over to the couch, where she nestled beside me. Not close, but not far—I could easily smell her Charlie perfume from here. She sat sipping Diet Coke with her violet knees primly together. She was very cute, if you liked jailbait. And what man doesn’t, really?
Roger sat on the edge of the chair. He was going just a little bit into his swishy mode. “Sweetie, this is Jack. Jack Quarry, a good friend of mine from St. Louis.”
“Hi, Jack,” she said noncommittally, not looking at me.
“Hi,” I said.
“Honey, Jack is helping me with this terrible fix I’m in. He’s writing a story for a newspaper all about how I’ve been persecuted over your friend’s disappearance. ...Jack, Sally was Candy’s best friend.”
“Really,” I said.
“I was,” she said. “I am.” Suddenly she was gazing guilelessly at me with big baby-blue eyes, the color of her Mustang. Nothing wary there now. “If there’s anything you want to know about Candy, I’m your girl.”
Roger said, “Sally, there may be some people Jack wants to talk to, needs to talk to, who you could pave the way with. Teachers, for example. Some of her other friends, perhaps.”
Sally frowned in thought. Looking at her closely, I could see she was an older teen all right, but her features were a child’s. A pretty child’s.
“There’s a parent-teacher night tomorrow,” she said. “I don’t have anybody to go with me, and maybe Mr. Quarry could take me. I could say he was my uncle or something.”
Roger turned to me brightly. “How does that sound, Jack?”
“Sounds pretty good.”
She asked, “Would you like my phone number?”
Was she kidding?
SIX
So now I had two phone numbers from two attractive females here in the Little Vacationland of Missouri (off-season). One was a petite tawny-blonde cheerleader who was maybe legal— Sally’s last name was Meadows, by the way, with all its running-barefoot-through connotations—but I didn’t need to call her, because we already had a date for the Parent-Teacher Night at the high school tomorrow. Next stop, Junior/Senior Prom.
The other was the black sheep (or was that ewe?) of the Stockwell family. Like a ’77 Camaro, Jenny had some miles on her, but plenty of pick-up. Her phone number remained faintly visible on my left wrist despite efforts to wash it off.
From my Holiday Inn room, I gave her a call—it was a quarter to seven.
“Hello,” the husky voice answered.
“Sounds like Jenny.”
“It is Jenny. Do I know you?”
“Jack from the Spike last night. Remember me?”
“Remember you? Hell, I can still taste you.”
That made me laugh and my dick gave a little nod at my good sense to call this woman. “I was wondering if you might like to go out for a drink.”
“I haven’t eaten yet, Jack. You want to do something about that?”
“Sure. But I don’t know my way around this vacation wonderland. What would you suggest?”
Tony’s Italiano was downtown, a block over from Antiques Row, a long narrow affair with pine booths on one side and tables everywhere else, kitchen in back. No bar, and nothing fancy— the wall mural of Italian gardens with marble statues was as cheesy as anything on the menu, and the red-and-white checkered tablecloths were plastic. But the garlic-tinged fragrance of marinara was inviting enough.
Jenny Stockwell was sitting in the farthest back booth and I had to walk damn near the l
ength of the place to find her. I almost didn’t recognize her. Not that the basic biker girl look was entirely gone, just amped up into Pat Benatar territory. Her silver-streaked black gypsy curls went fine with the black vinyl shoulder-pads-and-zipper jacket worn over a black mini and dark nylons, set off by red cuffs and a wide red belt.
I was still in the sport jacket ensemble I’d worn to Vale’s, if you’re interested. Nicer than last night, but outclassed by Jenny Stockwell, whose money was showing.
I slid in across from her. “Hope you haven’t been waiting long.”
“Just long enough to order us a bottle of Chablis. I know you’re supposed to drink red wine with Italian food, but that shit gives me a headache.”
I said white wine was fine with me, told her she looked fantastic, and made small talk waiting for, and during, the meal.
She did not work, she said—she was living off family money, not a bit ashamed of it, and was trying to be a novelist. She was in a local writers’ group consisting of other women in their thirties and forties hoping to break into the romance market. “Isn’t just hearts and flowers, Jack, not anymore—it’s steamy as hell. Porn for chicks.”
It occurred to me that maybe her bar crawling was research for sex scenes, but I didn’t express the thought. She’d not sold anything yet, though had come close, and even had an agent interested.
Jenny had been married and divorced three times. She had a child, a boy, by the first husband, a truck driver who had tried to get alimony and custody, and got neither. Her son, David, was a freshman at the University of Missouri now, a good kid making his grandfather proud, though she and her son always had “a strained relationship.”
“David never liked my lifestyle,” she said, with a shrug. “He was ashamed of me. If I didn’t love the little bastard....” She sighed. “He divorced me, like the other men in my life.”
“What do you mean?”
“In junior high, he divorced me. Kids can do that, you know, and his grandfather gave him the legal help to do it. I was a ‘bad influence,’ and an alcoholic. I may be a free spirit, Jack, but I’m no goddamn fucking alcoholic.”
She was on her third glass of Chablis.
“We have a sort of truce these days,” she said. “I think as he gets older, David may come to accept me on my own terms. You know, he broke my heart when he divorced me, and moved in with his grandparents. They turned him into another Mr. Plastic Conservative Businessman like the other Stockwell men.”
“How old was David when he left you?”
“Twelve.”
I sipped my Coke. “No other kids?”
No. Some “mishap” in her second pregnancy had left her unable to conceive, and the other two husbands were apparently after her money but didn’t get anywhere (“a punk and a drunk,” respectively). She’d lived with a couple of guys since, but these days men were mostly just a “recreational pursuit” to her, “a hobby, not a job.”
The above isn’t meant to suggest she was so self-centered as to not inquire about my background. She did. I gave her a truncated version of my real life story—Midwestern boy, Vietnam, cheating wife—but substituted journalism for killing.
We had tiramisu, one plate, two spoons, very intimate for a first date, although last night’s blow job perhaps qualified this as the second date.
We were having coffee when I said, “You know, kind of surprises me to learn you’re a writer.”
“Why’s that, Jack? Don’t you think I’ve had enough stimulating life experiences to draw upon?”
“I would think you have. But when I mentioned I was in town to write about the local arts scene, you didn’t seem at all interested.”
“The local art scene bores the shit out of me.”
“Ah.”
“But I’ve always been involved in the arts. Lit major in college, wanted to be a poet, figured I was the female Rod McKuen. Lived with a guitar player for a while and we used to play some coffee houses and clubs around Missouri and Illinois—my Carole King singer-songwriter phase. Painted for a while. A gallery in town was selling some of my stuff, but I got frustrated.”
“Why’s that?”
“The only thing people were buying was the self-portrait nudes. That’s flattering in a way, but also insulting. A girl likes to think she’s more than just tits and ass.”
Jenny, attractive though she was, had not been a “girl” for some time. She was clearly zeroing in on forty, and that reading was based on flattering low lighting.
Still, she was a striking woman whatever her age, that wide red mouth with the lipstick less extreme tonight, the same for the mascara aiding those green translucent eyes that needed no help at all.
“The story I gave you last night,” I said, “about the local arts— that was actually bullshit.”
Her eyebrows went up but she was not astonished. It was just possible she’d been lied to by a man in a bar before. “So you’re not a reporter?”
“I am a freelance journalist, and I’m doing a story, but the arts aspect of it is tangential.”
She grinned. “‘Tangential’? You are a writer, aren’t you, Jack?”
“Well, you are too, so I figured you could keep up.”
She lighted a Camel, eyeing me appraisingly. “So what are you writing about? Doing an exposé on the activities of middle-aged women who pick up strange men in dives?”
“The Spike is kind of a dive, but I’m not that strange, and I wouldn’t call you middle-aged.”
She blew out a blue cloud. “Most of the tail I’m up against in those meat markets is around half my age. You know what they say, Jack—when you’re number two, you gotta try harder.”
I sipped my coffee. “You consider these young single girls your competition?”
“Damn straight.”
“What are you competing for? Aren’t three sour marriages enough? You still looking for Prince Charming? Look what happened to Diane Keaton when she went looking for Mr. Right.”
“That was Mr. Goodbar, wasn’t it?” She shivered. “Depressing damn movie. So...what’s your article about, Jack? Poor little rich girls who refuse to grow up?”
“You’re under the false impression that this song is about you. You may be part of it, but that’s a coincidence. I honestly didn’t know you were a Stockwell.”
Her eyes narrowed, and as she listened to what I next had to say, her flip manner faded.
“What I’m really writing about is the disappearance of your niece—Candy. My understanding is that certain members of your family believe this local dance instructor, Roger Vale, is responsible somehow. They made public accusations that he may have kidnapped and murdered your niece, and yet Vale has never sued.”
“All right.” Her voice had changed. Husky as ever, but all the humor was out. No anger, though, and the eyes had a new alert hardness. “Let’s back this up. You need to convince me you didn’t come looking for me. That this really is a coincidence.”
“Okay...”
“I don’t like being used. I may be easy...but I do not fucking like being used.”
“Last night? I was sitting at the bar. You came up and sat next to me.”
“Okay. And you were sitting at the bar when I came in. Could you have known I’d be there?” Who was she asking, herself or me?
I said, “Is the Golden Spike the only bar in Stockwell you frequent?”
“What do you think?”
“I’m gonna say no. Do you regularly go to the Spike on Sunday night? And is that something I could know?”
She thought about that through a few drags on the Camel. Finally she shook her head, gypsy curls bouncing, then asked, “Nobody pointed me out to you?”
“When you went to the little girl’s room, that barmaid told me who you were. But you and I, we’d already struck up a conversation. In fact, you spoke first. Said I had a nice face, remember?”
She smiled. Nodded. “It’s still pretty nice.”
“Well, you have had three glas
ses of wine. How about it? Will you help me?”
“How?”
“For starters, tell me about Candy.”
She glanced around. No one seemed to be paying any attention to us, but the place was fairly full. She said, “Not here. Let’s go to my place.”
I said fine, and paid the bill, even if Jenny Stockwell was richer than hell. Call it an investment. This might be my first step on the road to marrying an heiress....
She drove a flashy black Firebird that looked like Robin the Boy Wonder should’ve been in the seat next to her. I followed her through town in my pathetic Pinto as she routinely did forty, seemingly unconcerned about cops or that I might lose her. But the moon was full and helped me stay with her, even when—in a wooded area barely within city limits—she took a sudden turn off onto an ungated lane marked PRIVATE — NO TRESPASSING.
The strip of asphalt cut through half a mile of dense trees and brush. At the end, on a stone-and-pebble hillock, sat a ranch-style house of stained-amber wood siding, an L-shape, like two boxcars had jackknifed off the tracks. A one-and-a-half story tower joined the two wings; the roofs were black and pitched, but for the backward slant of the tower, creating a geometric effect. Door-sized vertical windows were frequent, adding to the feeling of nature meeting modernity.
A cement drive led to a two-car garage at the left tip of the L. She put the Firebird away next to a couple of Harleys and the door closed automatically. I left the Pinto in the drive and, a kid crossing a pond, hopped the irregular stone slabs that served as a sidewalk. Pots for plants were placed here and there, emptied in anticipation of winter.
The front door opened and she motioned me into a high-ceilinged entryway, where she took my coat to deposit in a sliding-door closet, saying, “Let’s go into the living room.” Her black vinyl jacket had disappeared—she was just in the black mini with red belt. She turned on some subdued track lighting, and I got a look at a big room that filled most of this wing, though I’d noticed a modern kitchen coming in, behind me now.
She did have money.
So said the vaulted ceiling and the endless expanse of oak paneling; the walls were off-white plaster spotted with unframed canvases signed JS, primitive paintings Mateski might dig, only these had a real flair—landscapes based on the woodsy view out a wall of windows, marked by a striking, startling use of color, like the inside of a maniac’s brain, only better organized.
The Wrong Quarry (Hard Case Crime) Page 8