The Wrong Quarry (Hard Case Crime)

by Collins, Max Allan

  “Make it Judy, please. And I’ll take the liberty of calling you, Jack...Jack. Any young beauty who tries as hard, works as hard as Candy, has self-esteem issues.”

  “Why the hell would she, Judy?”

  “You got me by the short-and-you-know-whats. Look at some of these pretty girls who won’t eat, or when they do, they puke, and wind up looking like concentration camp victims. Some of the prettiest, most talented girls have the lowest self-esteem, Jack. I think that’s probably why Candy...well, got around.”

  “People I’ve talked to have called her a slut.”

  “That’s of course cruel, and maybe an exaggeration.”

  Maybe.

  I said, “What’s it like, working with Roger Vale?”

  “He’s a dream. Strictly professional, and Mr. Roger has more talent in his little pinkie than me or anybody else on the HSSH staff.”

  “The Stockwells—Clarence and his son Lawrence, anyway— don’t share your high opinion of Vale. They think he murdered Candy.”

  Her cheerful persona vanished. She seemed genuinely sorrowful, shaking her head as she said, “It’s a shame, a damn shame. Town is so lucky to have that family. But the old man, old Clarence, he’s grasping at straws, trying to make sense out of a tragedy.”

  “You don’t think Candy might be a runaway?”

  “No. She was on a path to college. We talked about that, many times. No. I’m afraid something terrible did happen to her.”

  “But not at the hands of Roger Vale?”

  “That gentle soul? No. I would imagine it’s his sexual orientation that sends them down that dark path. He doesn’t flaunt it, you know. Oh, yes, he can be a little...effeminate.”

  “No worse than Paul Lynde.”

  That made her chuckle and shrug in a you-got-me-there fashion. “I mean, Roger keeps to himself. If he’s had any affairs here in town, he’s been awful discreet. He might go out of town for his social life, for all I know. But it’s a terrible, judgmental thing he’s suffering.”

  “You mean, he’d have been better off marrying a librarian.”

  She laughed out loud at that one. “You have a dry sense of humor, Jack. How long are you in town?”

  “Not long enough,” I said with a smile, and we passed like ships in the night, or anyway the gym.

  Mr. Brady—the fortyish Lincoln-esque history teacher who was the advisor on the school newspaper—echoed the comments of Mr. Dennis and Miss Hurlbutt, as we sat in student chairs in his classroom.

  But he added, “Candy was a very good writer. Extremely creative. You know, her aunt is talented, too—a painter, a musician, and she’s in my writing group.”

  “You’re a member?”

  “No, I’m sort of the...ringleader, or maybe ringmaster. But this notion of Mr. Vale being Candy’s murderer...and course, where is the body? ...is fueled by this diary that the elder Stockwell so cruelly allowed to be excerpted in the local press. Salacious material that had to be censored to some degree, but had Mr. Vale ever been brought to trial locally, think how poisoned the jury pool would be.”

  “I think those diary entries do play a big role.”

  “Without a doubt. And they were almost certainly fantasies of hers put to paper, and as I say, she was a very gifted young writer. The assumption of Mr. Vale’s guilt, of a crime that hasn’t been demonstrated to have occurred, is an outrageous miscarriage of justice.”

  “Well, Vale hasn’t been arrested. And he doesn’t even seem to have been convicted in the court of public opinion. Poisoned jury pool maybe, Mr. Brady, but a lot of parents who have girls taking dance lessons at his studio seem to have his back.”

  “I don’t know if that’s a good indicator,” he said. “Whether they stick a knife in that back may well depend on which and how many of our Stockwell girls place well in the coming beauty pageants. This town is so obsessed by that antique display that they would have a kind word for Caligula, if he was an effective dance coach.”

  The swing choir director, his heterosexuality clear after that lingering look at Sally’s skirt-swishing exit, continued with praise for Candy’s talent, and backed up the general high opinion of Roger Vale.

  Mr. Jacobs was a small pale dark-haired man in a dark suit and dark tie, sitting sideways at his desk with me seated directly across from him. Around us was auditorium-style seating, indicating a choir of healthy size.

  “Roger Vale has been so helpful to me,” Mr. Jacobs said, “I wouldn’t know where to start. Swing choir is relatively new at Stockwell High, Mr. Quarry, and I don’t know how much you know about it...?”

  “I know nothing about it.”

  “Well, it brings in elements of dance, and my college training did not include anything like that. Much more traditional, I’m afraid, and Mr. Vale has been a lifesaver. Very professional with the students—boys and girls, and I assure you his...lifestyle choice...did not manifest itself in the way he coached our young men. Who, as you might imagine, can be fairly shy about learning dance steps.”

  “You don’t put any stock in the accusations made against Vale, by Clarence Stockwell, as Candy’s possible murderer?”

  “I don’t. They can’t have it both ways—is ‘Mr. Roger’ some pervert because he’s gay? Or is he some mad sex fiend deflowering young girls? May I be frank, Mr. Quarry? Speak to you as one man to another. Frankly?”

  “Please.”

  “And you assure me I won’t be quoted?”

  “Yes.”

  He sighed, shook his head. “Candy was a stone fox. I was alone with her any number of times. Many times. I could have...well, I could have. I didn’t, I have a lovely young wife I’m madly in love with, but...my God, I would think about her at night, Candy... who wouldn’t want...”

  “A piece of Candy?” You knew I’d get there.

  He smiled humorlessly. “I’ve said too much. But she was the kind of beauty who could make a man crazy. Men kill over women who look like that. Who have that, that well of...passion.”

  Was he sure that he...hadn’t?

  “Anyway, I’m just saying that she gave a lot away to a host of stupid boys who didn’t deserve it. Somebody...some kid maybe, filled with hormonal lust and teenage angst...could have lost it, and killed her, over getting dumped.”

  Some kid.

  Or some married man.

  TEN

  Sally and I had agreed to meet by the front entrance at eight, but I was a little late. My appointment with Mr. Jacobs had been the last slotted, and ran over some. I found her just outside, smoking. The sky still promised rain and it was cold, but if a kid wanted a cigarette, a kid did that outside.

  “I hate to see you doing that,” I said.

  “What, smoking? Why?”

  “It’s a terrible thing to do to such a nice body.”

  “Aren’t you sweet? How did it go?”

  We walked arm-in-arm toward her Mustang. I filled her in, more or less, especially how both Candy and Roger got high marks from everyone I’d spoken to.

  We were at her car. She leaned against the driver’s-side door, blowing smoke at me impudently. I leaned on the vehicle behind me, a yellow Buick Turbo muscle car. Probably not a parent’s car. Somebody young and dumb who dug speed and bad mileage.

  Otherwise, few cars remained in the lot, two or three pulling out now, beams cutting the night. Parents, teachers, and kids had mostly gone home.

  “I listened to some of it,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your meetings. I stood outside and eavesdropped, you know?”

  “What did you do that for?”

  “Because I’m a bad girl.” She blew a smoke ring at me. “Didn’t you know I was a bad girl?”

  “I guessed.”

  “I heard you say you’ve been hanging around with Candy’s Aunt Jenny.”

  “She’s been helping.”

  She put an ugly smirk on her pretty face. “A Stockwell, helping clear Roger? Doubt it.”

  “Cl
arence and his boy Larry are the anti-Vale crowd. Jenny has an open mind.”

  “Jenny has an open everything. Did you fuck her?”

  “Hey.”

  Her chin went up. “I loved Candy, but her aunt’s a raging skank. What does she have that I don’t have?”

  “I didn’t know it was an issue.”

  She tossed her cigarette with an unnerving confidence and crossed the small distance between us, and took one of my hands and placed it on a pert breast and grabbed my package in a firm but gentle if overflowing handful.

  Her voice was a purr with claws behind it. “Who do you think taught Candy what’s what?”

  “Her aunt?”

  She sneered and squeezed my balls a little, and it almost hurt, but my dick was rising to the occasion. She pressed her mouth to mine and she tasted sweet and smoky. We played tonsil hockey for a while, and she was stroking me through my pants, a gifted girl who could do at least two things at once.

  This was ill-advised, but fun. I hadn’t necked in a high school parking lot in a long time.

  “Hey!”

  My God, had the principal caught us?

  A big guy in a yellow letter jacket with black sleeves came rushing at us, arms pumping like pistons. He’d been inside the school.

  Enter Rod Pettibone.

  Broad-shouldered, tiny-eyed Rod Pettibone, with short blond hair and a small nose and wide mouth over a shovel jaw. He looked like Moose in the Archie comics, but cartoonier.

  “That’s my friggin’ car!” he yelled.

  He was maybe ten yards from us.

  And then he was ten feet away, saying, “And that’s my friggin’ girl!”

  He came at me like he was rushing the line. I backed up and Sally plastered herself against her own car, taking herself out of the play, providing Rod the hole he needed to charge through and take his man down.

  Which he did, a good two-hundred-twenty-some pounds of him smashing me onto my back into the cement, knocking every ounce of wind out of me. He climbed off and picked me up like a bag of laundry and flung me against the tail of the Mustang, my lower back taking the brunt. Sally, eyes showing white all around, had her hands up like a pretty hold-up victim.

  Before I could recover, he hit me in the right side of the head, and my brain spun, then he gave me hard shots in the ribs, on either side, followed by a deep right fist in the pit of the stomach.

  I doubled over and puked, which made him back away, not wanting to get anything on the letter jacket apparently, and that’s when I kicked out and the heel of my shoe caught him in the right knee. Hard.

  Fucking hard.

  “My knee!” he screamed, going down on his other one. “Not my knee!”

  “Good luck with your scholarship, jackass,” I said gratuitously.

  And passed out, grinning.

  * * *

  Thunder woke me.

  We were moving through the night. I was in a car. Someone was driving. Sally. In the Mustang. Mustang Sally. High beams revealing a gravel road, walls of ghostly corn stalks at our sides. Sky a gray canopy of rolling, roiling clouds, shot through with sudden, brief veins of electricity.

  More thunder.

  She smiled over me, pretty little face in the midst of all that frizzy tawny-blonde hair, given an odd glow in the dashboard light. “You’re awake.”

  “Head’s swimming. What...what’s going on?”

  “I’m taking you home with me. You’re my lost puppy, you know? You need some TLC.”

  “Not necessary.”

  “Rod knocked you out. But you got him back. The way he hobbled away, crying, you might have cost us the season.”

  “Kicked him.”

  “You did. He has kind of a bad knee anyway.”

  I blinked. Headache, migraine level. Nauseated. Sky with those dark moving clouds and crackling veins of lightning and the gravel road and the towering black walls of corn stalks, felt like I was moving through a dream. I leaned back. Seat was comfortable. Bucket seat. Comfortable, but Jesus my fucking head.

  Somebody, not the girl, said, “I think it’s a concussion. Mild concussion.”

  Man’s voice.

  Me.

  “That’s what I thought. Try not to swallow your tongue, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m gonna watch you for a couple hours. I’ll be Nurse Sally, you know? You’ll be fine. Tender loving care. That’s what TLC stands for.”

  “Does it?”

  “Just relax. You need to rest. Nothing strenuous.” She peeked over the steering wheel toward the sky. “Is it gonna snow or rain, I wonder? What do you think?”

  “Not cold enough. Not snow. Rain.”

  And I either passed out again or fell asleep.

  * * *

  “Come on, big boy,” she said.

  She was helping me out of the car. I blinked myself awake, head still swimming but blurry vision gradually coming into focus. Girl had surprising strength, but then she was a dancer and a sort of athlete. She almost yanked me to my feet and slipped an arm around my waist, to guide me on my shaky legs up a sidewalk to a vague two-story structure where a short flight of wooden steps led to an open porch.

  We made it up them somehow, as the sky roared and lightning flashed and illuminated the world, including this structure. A farmhouse, white clapboard, older, indifferently maintained. With an arm still around my waist, she opened the screen and worked a key in the front door.

  Then we were inside. She did not turn on any lights, just walked me across a living room to a couch and deposited me there, putting two throw pillows behind my back. She unlaced my sneakers and removed them. Then she disappeared.

  I lay in darkness and breathed deep. My head throbbed with pain but it no longer swam. I fell asleep again for a few moments or maybe minutes, but then was wakened by the sensation of cold pressing against the right side of my head.

  “Ice,” she said. She was more a presence than anything I could actually see in the dark room. “In a washcloth. Can you hold it there?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m gonna get you something.”

  “Okay.”

  She came back maybe a minute later with a glass of water and two small round yellow pills.

  “Percodan,” she said, helping me sit up. “Good shit. Drink the water down.”

  I did as I was told.

  Thunder rumbled, lightning flashed, strobing through the edges around drawn curtains, making evident a very old-fashioned room around me.

  Still holding the cloth-wrapped ice to my head, I asked, “Is your aunt here?”

  “No,” she said.

  “She doesn’t have a very comfortable couch.”

  She giggled. “No, she doesn’t. It’s really old. Do you think you could make it up some stairs?”

  “Think so.”

  “We’ll get you into bed.”

  “Okay.”

  The vague outline of her drifted away, then a floor lamp snapped on and an under-furnished living room took shape. Very sparse, ’30s and ’40s crap, like an older person might have, or someone who shopped at Goodwill. Beyond was a dining room with a table but not much else, and an old kitchen past that.

  She got me to my feet, dispensed with the ice. I breathed deep some more, and allowed her to walk me around to where the stairs to the upstairs were opposite the front door. They were narrow and I told her I could make it on my own. She let me try, and with the help of the banister, I managed.

  A single dim light was on at the top. Again, it revealed very sparse furnishings, and old wallpaper, peeling a little. She walked me into a darkened room, but the meager light from the hall indicated a bed. Jesus, another fucking waterbed. Round. Black sheets. Did all the females in goddamn fucking Stockwell have waterbeds?

  Outside the sky rumbled an inconclusive answer.

  The rest of the bedroom seemed vague, but I could tell posters were on the walls, and judging by the waterbed, this was hardly the aunt’s room. And it was
not a small space, more a master bedroom than what a teenage girl, living with an older relative, might have. That was just my sense of it, though—she didn’t turn on a light.

  She asked, “You want help with your clothes?”

  “I can sleep in them.”

  “No, let’s get them off you. That heavy coat anyway.”

  She did that, then went ahead and tugged off my shirt and tie, and undid my pants, and I stepped out of them. She guided me in my shorts to the nearby bed and I got under the sheets. The waterbed was warm, heated, and the gentle movement of it was soothing. Maybe waterbeds were okay. Maybe they were the shit.

  I fell asleep.

  * * *

  The sky exploded in an artillery barrage that gave me just a brief Vietnam flashback as I sat up in bed, a little thrown by its waterlogged instability, and heard the rain finally break loose. There was a lot of it. Driving. Hammering. Machine-gunning.

  Somebody was in bed next to me.

  “You awake?” Sally asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Okay. Better. All right.”

  “It’s really coming down. You were right, Jack. Not snow. If it was, we’d be up to our butts in it, you know?”

  “Yeah. Uh, Sally. Thanks for helping me.”

  “No problem.”

  No thunder now. Just driving rain, pummeling the roof.

  “That kid hit me with a shovel, I swear.”

  “Rod’s really strong. I yelled at him for what he did to you. I told him we were through.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yeah. He’s not very smart. He’s a terrible fucking lay.”

  “Why go with him?”

  I sensed more than saw her shrug, and she said, “He was Candy’s guy. It’s a status thing, you know?”

  “Where’s your aunt?”

  “Not here.”

  “But where is she? Elderly aunt of yours?”

  Drumming rain filled the silence that followed.

  Then she said: “How are you at keeping secrets?”

  “Not bad. Pretty good.”

  “...My aunt doesn’t live here.”

  “Where does she live?”

  “She lives in California and she’s only in her thirties, and she doesn’t give a fucking shit about me.”