The Wrong Quarry (Hard Case Crime)

by Collins, Max Allan

  The furnishings were modular and right out of a rich college kid’s apartment—tweed-covered cushions of either off-white or dark brown on chrome-plated steel frames. A group of white cushions formed a couch facing a big tan brick fireplace, two brown ones served as armchairs with matching ottomans. End tables and coffee tables were low-slung and glass-topped.

  The fireplace wall bore signs from the Stockwell family’s fortune-making but long-dead business—STOCKWELL BRAND BUGGY WHIPS — LIGHT, STURDY, DEPENDABLE—with silhouette of horse and buggy and a driver poised to flick the product; the most modern-looking advertisement (1920?) said STOCKWELL BUGGY WHIPS — TRUE HORSEPOWER. Over the fireplace, on nails, hung four vintage buggy whips. And off to one side, in an antique gilt frame, a Civil War-era funky-sideburned gent posed with a whip in his hands like a ringmaster getting ready to discourage some animal.

  “So you do have some family pride,” I said.

  “Or maybe I just like whips.” She gestured to the tweedcushion-and-chrome couch. “Get comfy. How about something stronger than Coke?”

  “Any kind of beer.”

  “Coors okay?”

  “Fine.”

  She brought me one and sat beside me. She appeared to have made herself a Jack and Ginger.

  “You’d be surprised,” she said, “how rarely I have a man out to my house.”

  “Would I?”

  “I’m strictly a parking lot and motel brand of slut.”

  “I don’t think you’re a slut.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  And I didn’t. I thought she was one fucked-up dangerous damn piece of ass. Slut didn’t quite cover it.

  “Well,” she said, “whatever I am, I value my privacy. You’re a rare guest out here.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  She got up and got a fire going. It was gas, so that didn’t take long; even so, watching her bend over was a pleasure, legs long and muscular in a sinewy way. Then she went over and turned off the track lighting, the room infused with a nice orange glow as she sat beside me.

  She played with my hair absently. “Why should I talk to you about Candy?”

  “Because you’re her aunt. It’s obvious you two were close. Do you think she’s still alive?”

  “I hope so.”

  “You don’t believe Vale was responsible for whatever happened to her?”

  She frowned, sighed, sipped her drink. “He might be, but not the way my father and brother think.”

  “Explain.”

  “I don’t know Roger Vale that well. I talked to him two or three times, at recitals where Candy was dancing. She was his star pupil. Wonderful dancer. Jazz, not ballet. Sexy child, I mean, my God. Your eyes would’ve popped out of your head, Jack. No flying shit.”

  “How could Vale be to blame for her disappearance?”

  A shrug. She looked beautiful in the firelight, the shadows doing interesting things to the sharp planes of her face. “I suppose it’s possible he had an affair with her. Candy was pretty wild. And I wasn’t convinced he was the queen he seemed to be. Might’ve been bi, might even’ve been straight, playing up to these hicks. So they’ll trust their daughters to him.”

  “So he can get close to them, you mean? And do what? Have his way with his budding pupils?”

  She shook her head; you could almost hear the gypsy thumb cymbals. “No, I don’t read it that way. I think he wanted to work closely with the girls, and he’s apparently really quite gifted—he had considerable success last year helping some of our girls do well on the pageant circuit.”

  “I heard. A lot of parents have stood by him.”

  She nodded. “I know Candy was crazy about him...not romantically, but because he had helped her improve, and was encouraging her to take dance and theater, in college. Even urged her to consider going professional someday. She could sing well, too, you know. And act. Real triple threat. Vale said she had the makings of another Liza Minnelli.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think he was right. This coming year, after working with Vale, Candy would have killed at the Miss Teen Missouri pageant.”

  “Then what makes you say he might be responsible for her going missing?”

  “He probably wasn’t. Not directly. Indirectly? Maybe.” She gathered her thoughts, sipping the Jack and Ginger to help her along. “Candy’s father...my brother, Lawrence...did not approve of Roger Vale encouraging these show business dreams of hers. Larry had told her that entering Miss Teen Missouri was out of the question. Not dignified enough for a Stockwell, and taking theater and dance at college as her major, that was not an option, either.”

  “Why not?”

  She sighed. “Well, we’re running out of Stockwells. There was Larry’s Candy and my David, and that was it for the next generation. You knew, didn’t you, that the heir apparent, Steven, died in Vietnam?”

  “No. First I heard.”

  She shook her head wearily. “In the final months of that fucking war. Nice guy, Steven, though very establishment, very conservative, like his folks and his grandparents.”

  “I don’t get it. A guy from a rich family didn’t have to go to Vietnam. That’s why God made college deferments.”

  A dark eyebrow arched. “Not after Uncle Sam trumped God with the draft lottery. Steven drew a low number, something like fourteen, and that put him on the fast track to the Ho Chi Minh Trail. My father tried to pull some strings, but before Dad had managed anything, Steven enlisted in the Marines. And for all their misgivings, our parents were proud of Steven. He won some medals. Made lieutenant.”

  Plus got his ass killed. Great goddamn war. Where would I be without it?

  She was saying, “Steven’s death accelerated a drinking problem my mother already had...she died ten years ago, liver failure. Shattered Daddy. Crushed David, living with his grandparents. And then, six, seven years ago? Larry lost Candy’s mother Karen to breast cancer, and Jesus, for a while there, it was just the Stockwell family apocalypse.”

  Rich people had their problems, too. Ask the Kennedys.

  “That,” she was saying, after a Jack and Ginger booster, “was when Larry started spoiling Candy. Letting her wrap him around her pretty pinkie, buying her everything and anything, fancy cars, expensive clothes. She stayed out to all hours, drugs, drinking, fucking. That’s what losing a mom can do to an impressionable young girl. I tried to do what I could—we were very close. But it just didn’t any good.”

  You don’t suppose having Aunt Jenny as a role model had anything to do with Candy’s wild behavior? I pose this question to you, because I sure as hell wasn’t going to bring it up with Aunt Jenny.

  Instead, I said, “Doesn’t sound like Daddy was ‘spoiling’ her where her Broadway dreams were concerned.”

  “No. He wanted her to pursue Steven’s dream—a new generation of Stockwell business! Somehow my brother deluded himself into imagining Candy with an MBA, taking over one of the family firms, maybe, or marrying somebody who could.”

  She let out a short, humorless laugh, then had another swig of Jack and Ginger.

  Her smile was bitterly ironic as she continued: “I can just see it—Larry forbidding her to enter the Miss Teen Missouri pageant, Candy flipping out and running off. That’s why I say she may still be alive.”

  “You really think so?”

  She nodded emphatically. “Candy could be a runaway, Jack. She may be living somewhere, under an assumed name, working as a waitress or something, and trying to break into show business. Hollywood, New York, Toronto, who knows?”

  Would a spoiled brat want to work that hard? Yet a girl as cute and talented as Candy could be working on some lower show biz rung. Or she might have found a sugar daddy. Possibilities, but they didn’t resonate for me.

  “So,” she said, sitting cozily closer, “how do you think writing an article about all this will do anybody any good?”

  “It’ll call attention to the case. If I do a good enough jo
b, the piece will get some national play, with Candy’s picture splashed around. And if she’s alive, somebody will let us know.”

  “And if she isn’t?”

  “Well, I intend to explore the possibility of Vale’s culpability. Look into why some Stockwell family members consider him a prime suspect in what they feel is Candy’s murder.”

  “And what good will that do?”

  “Attracting attention to an unsolved crime can have a very positive effect. It might spark the FBI to get involved. Or the Missouri state police, anyway.”

  She had started nodding halfway through that. She sipped more Jack and Ginger. “How can I help?”

  “I was hoping you could pave the way for me with your brother and your father. I need to interview them. But it sounds like you and they might not be on the best of terms.”

  “No, we’re okay. I’m not their favorite, but...I’m about all that’s left, except for my son. They know I’ve been pretty upset since Candy disappeared. They know how much I love her. And with my David coming of age, their heir apparent...especially since he and I are getting along marginally better now...they’re trying to take me back into the fold, a little. No, I can help you with that.”

  “Tomorrow maybe? During the day?”

  “Sure, Jack. Why not?” She sounded sleepy.

  “It’s getting late,” I said, taking the cue. “I should probably go. What time tomorrow, do you think?”

  She kissed me and stuck her tongue in my mouth; it tasted like Jack and Ginger, not surprisingly. And her breath smelled of tobacco. Should have been disgusting. It wasn’t.

  She slipped out of my arms and stood with her back to the fire, which outlined her in an orange glow, making a near silhouette of her as she undid and threw off the red belt and then pulled the black mini up over her head. She wore nothing beneath. The breasts were large, too perfect, clearly the work of some plastic surgeon, and I did not give a good goddamn, because they were mesmerizing as she swayed before me, dancing to some sensual tune in her head, her pubic thatch an echo of her gypsy hair.

  Her figure didn’t look bony at all, not in the semi-dark anyway, and when in her dance she turned toward the flames and swayed her dimpled rump at me, I pulled her down on my lap and she giggled and said, “I’ll sit on you, front ways. I like that better. Need me to get you a rubber?”

  She may have been promiscuous, but she wasn’t a fool.

  “I got one.” I was getting my billfold out.

  “Let me put it on for you.”

  She took the little package, opened it with her teeth. Knelt before me, undid my belt, pulled my shorts and pants down around my ankles, and then lubricated me with her mouth before her lips expertly rolled the condom down over me. Then she sat facing me on my lap with me up inside her and she moved so rhythmically, I started hearing the music, too. Her passion was contagious and made me drunk with her, and for that small piece of time I felt she loved me, her hands caressing my shoulders, my back, mouth hungrily descending on mine, then moving to my neck, to an ear, moaning, groaning, emanating not just heat but warmth. My hands were full of her rounded ass and my mouth was suckling the hard tip of a swollen breast and my nostrils twitched with the nasty sweet scent of her, and when I came, I jerked as helplessly as a cowboy on a bronc, even if I was the one being ridden.

  When we slowed to a stop, she put a hand in my hair and played there. She smiled at me so tenderly that all the barroom hardness disappeared. “Stay the night, Jack, why don’t you?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  SEVEN

  On either side of the double doors of the two-story brown-red brick building with green terra cotta trim, a bronze lion on a pedestal stood guard bearing a shield saying STOCKWELL BANK 1914. A plaque confirmed the year and gave the architect as Louis Sullivan, a very famous gent, Jenny Stockwell assured me. When a new modern bank came in ten years ago, her father—still president, currently chairman of the board—had shifted another of his businesses, Stockwell Insurance, into this space.

  Though the building wasn’t big (this was one of Sullivan’s famous “jewel box” banks, Jenny said), the twenty-foot ceiling gave a sense of vastness, with a skylight and vertical side windows of stained glass letting in plenty of sun. This grand area with its mosaic floor had, however, been subdivided into a dozen or so cubicles for insurance agents. The only real office space was in back, for the executives, which is of course where Lawrence J. Stockwell, President, had his.

  Jenny had accompanied me. She was something. If I ever married her, it would be for more than just her money, and not even for the part of her anatomy accurately described as a “snapper” by those who had come before me.

  We had slept (under one of her nude self-portraits in a big frame) between crisp clean sheets on a waterbed, a mode of sleep I usually avoid but this was comfortable and heated, and when thanks to her I both slept in and rose early (think about it), I damn near became a convert. Her breakfast of a veggie omelette with hash browns and spice muffins made me want to burn the local Denny’s down. And she had called her brother and gotten us this appointment, and left word for her father for an afternoon meet, as well.

  “I think I better go with you,” she’d said at breakfast. “I get along better with my brother these days, and if for some reason he gets a stick up his ass, I might be able to remove it.”

  “Better you than me.”

  I went on to the Holiday Inn to shower and shave and change for the meeting with Lawrence Stockwell. Gray blazer over a white shirt and dark tie with dark gray jeans seemed about right. Wouldn’t have applied to sell insurance in that, but I was a journalist, so this should cut it.

  Jenny met me in the motel lobby about eleven-forty-five and, other than the dark gypsy curls, the Pat Benatar look was M.I.A., replaced by a navy blue pantsuit with a lighter blue turtleneck.

  “Well,” I said, “look at you, Ms. Plastic Conservative Businesswoman.”

  She laughed and took my arm, walking me out. “I learned long ago, when entering the Stockwell family universe, to humor the management.”

  “Probably helps, if you want to stay in the Will.”

  “I already have a decent income, thank you, but I can’t touch my trust fund principal till I’m fifty-five. If I live that long.”

  “It’s nice to have a goal.”

  And maybe that explained why this free spirit had not moved away from stifling Stockwell. Always good to stay close to the money.

  We were at her black Firebird in the motel parking lot. “I’m glad you didn’t show up on a Harley,” I said. “It’s humiliating for a man, grabbing a woman from behind and holding on for dear life.”

  “Only if he has his clothes on,” she pointed out.

  She was something.

  We were shown immediately into a moderately spacious cream-walled office dominated by a formidable mahogany desk with phones, blotter and the usual accessories, though no sign of work. Dark-wood file cabinets went well with the desk, as did a round polished wood table with four chairs, for client talks and business conferences.

  The only thing really striking about the office were the side walls: one devoted to a dead son, the other to a missing daughter. Though this was the first I’d seen a picture of either, Lawrence Stockwell’s lost children were clearly the subjects of these shrines.

  Over by the table was the history of Steven Stockwell, from baby to toddler to grade schooler through junior high and high school, football, basketball, golf, prom, graduation, and at the center a studio portrait of a painfully young Marine lieutenant, with his medals (two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star) displayed in a separate frame nearby. We’d all been so goddamn young.

  The wall opposite Steven’s was a memorial to Candy Stockwell. Her life from pre-school to high school was charted, though her wall was even more extreme than her brother’s—a dozen color photos of various sizes, elaborately framed, charted the teenage years of a blonde who was so cute and sexy she made Barbara Eden look li
ke Miss Hathaway. Cheerleader, musical comedy star, prom queen, with another airbrushed studio portrait center-stage, as unreal as what you see in an open casket.

  Why the hell would a father put himself through the torture of surrounding himself with such raw-wound memories? Celebrating the very pursuits she so loved, and he had ultimately discouraged? The late Reed Farrell couldn’t have put the guy through worse.

  Taking all that in took a couple of seconds, during which Lawrence Stockwell—tall, slender, in a charcoal suit, black-and-gray striped tie—came quickly around the prop of his mahogany desk to greet his sister. He took both her hands and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

  She smiled at him, tugged at an elbow of his fashionably cut loose suit coat. “Very sharp, Larry. Hugo Boss?”

  He looked down at her, his smile an echo of hers. “Good eye, Sis,” he said in a warm second tenor. “I only deal with the top clients these days. Gotta look the part.”

  He did. He was tan and trim and had the same sharp features that made his sister so striking, including the green eyes. But the black hair had gone mostly white now, trimly cut, like Johnny Carson’s, with sideburns trying to keep up with the times. Though crowding fifty, he might have been sixty, making his youthful look seem a trifle desperate.

  “And this is your friend Mr. Quarry,” he said, turning with a smile that creased an already heavily lined face, extending a hand that I took and shook.

  His firm handshake had been perfected to just the right pressure and timing over years of doing business.

  “I’m pleased to get the chance to talk to you, Mr. Quarry. My sister seems to have a high opinion of you.”

  “We kind of hit it off,” I admitted.

  He gestured to the client table and we sat, with one of us on his either side. He asked if we’d like coffee or soft drinks and we declined. He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms, an ankle on a knee, so very casual. So very calculated.