The Wrong Quarry (Hard Case Crime)

by Collins, Max Allan

  “That’s not her furniture downstairs.”

  “No, that’s...that’s just junk I picked up. For if somebody from the school comes around. Actually, it’s a pretense I don’t need to keep up anymore. I’m eighteen. You can be on your own at eighteen.”

  “But when you moved here, you weren’t eighteen.”

  “No. Sixteen. My parents died in a small plane crash outside San Francisco. They had some money that went to his brother and her sister, my aunt. But they had a decent insurance policy, and it went right to me. The courts gave my aunt responsibility for me, and we lived in Santa Barbara. But my aunt’s husband —husband number three, I think—he had the hots for me. She kind of kicked me out.”

  “That was harsh.”

  “Not really. I kind of...fucked him, you know? Not fucked him over, I mean...you know, actually fucked him one afternoon.”

  “Ah.”

  “I inherited a couple of other things from my folks, including this farmhouse. Actually, there’s a farm that goes with it, but I rent it out. Or my aunt does.”

  “Is this an imaginary aunt?”

  “No, the real one out in California. She was all for me getting my ass out of there, and fine with my plan to live by myself. Any help I needed to fool the school in Stockwell, she was up for. Better them than her.”

  “You mean, the administrators at Stockwell High think you live out here with your aunt? An elderly aunt, based on the way you furnished the downstairs.”

  “Right. That’s why this was my first parent-teacher night, you know? Pretty slick for a kid, huh? Pretty cool? Now I guess maybe I’m keeping up the false front more out of habit than anything else. And maybe I’d still get in trouble, even though I am, like, eighteen.”

  Was the rain letting up, just a little?

  “Sally, you’re a girl of great initiative.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Is this why you didn’t go out for the pageants, like all the other Stockwell girls?”

  “Yeah. Really, I’d love to. They’re stupid, pageants, but I could pull that off. I could ace it.”

  “I know you could. Who all knows your secret?”

  “Well, Roger does. He’s my best friend. Or is now that Candy’s gone. She knew all about it. She knew everything. She used to come out here and we would have such a blast. Getting high. Getting wasted.”

  “Big parties out here?”

  “Oh no. Just Candy and me. If I had a big blow-out out here, you think my secret would be safe for long? Not fuckin’ hardly!”

  “Sally...did you ever consider that Candy saw how you’d remade your life, and maybe she tried to do the same thing with hers? She and her father had really bottomed out, after all, and—”

  She turned, moving closer to me. The scent of Charlie perfume tickled my nostrils.

  Hope in her voice, she asked, “So you think Candy might be out there somewhere? Alive? Maybe tearing it up in some dinner theater or somewhere? Some little club? Wouldn’t it be a hoot if she were stripping or something! She had the body for it. Has the body for it. Gotta stay positive.”

  “You really think she might be, Sally? Out there somewhere?”

  The rain was just pattering now, but you could hear the thunder complaining again, only distant.

  “No What I really think is, she would never run away. And if she did? She’d tell me. We were tight. Really, really tight.”

  “Then what did happen to her?”

  “Some perv did it. Maybe even Rod.”

  “You said he was a pussycat.”

  “Yeah, but...really, cats are pretty mean, when you get right down to it. He’s got a temper.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  “You tell me—are you feeling better? How bad are you hurting?”

  “I’m okay. My ribs hurt. I hope he didn’t crack them.”

  “Let me get something.”

  The waterbed sloshed as she climbed down and opened the door and, before she scurried into the hall where the light was still on, gave me a glimpse of her mostly naked shape, small, curvy, her dimpled, high-cheeked bottom barely hidden by pink lacy panties.

  When she returned, she clicked on a little lamp on a boxy modern nightstand. She’d brought a tube of Metholatum ointment. She sat cross-legged on the unstable bed and rubbed the stuff into the areas around my sore ribs; the burning sensation helped, maybe because it was a distraction. Her bare, pert breasts definitely were. You will be proud of me: I did not stare.

  Instead, I took stock of my surroundings. This did appear to be a master bedroom, at least the farmhouse variety, though it was definitely Sally’s bedroom. Only the downstairs carried the pretense of some older person living here. This looked like a coed’s dream dorm room.

  The rectangular space bore old-fashioned wallpaper that was mostly obscured—opposite the waterbed, for example, was a massive projection television. Down at left stood a pair of tall, narrow white bookcases, joined above by a long single shelf with sideways-stacked speaker cabinets. The shelves bore no books but plenty of LPs, audio cassettes, and prerecorded VHS tapes, plus a top-end sound system with turntable.

  Between the bookcases, underneath the shelf that joined them, a trio of black light posters (Jimi Hendrix, Vanilla Fudge, Janis Joplin) floated over a black leather sofa. A low-lying glass coffee table in front of the sofa perched on a multi-colored throw rug on the polished wood floor. A wall of mirrored closet doors was at my right.

  “Better?” she asked, returning the cap to the tube.

  “Better.”

  “I should wash my hands.”

  She ran off to do that and I sat up straighter in bed, propping a black pillowcased pillow behind me. My headache had been knocked back by the Percodan, and I really did feel pretty good, suddenly wide awake. A little round metal nightstand clock said 11:30 P.M. I should get back to my Holiday Inn bed.

  When the bare-breasted pixie returned, I said, “I hate to impose, but maybe you should run me home. This is a school night.”

  “Why, since when do you go to Stockwell High?”

  “You know what I mean, Sally.”

  “You’re feeling better?”

  “Quite a bit, thanks.”

  She sat on the edge of the bed and it bounced in its sloshing way. Her grin was cute and a little feral, the babyish upper lip pulled back over small white teeth. “You up for some fun?”

  “Maybe not. Probably not up to it.”

  “Come on, couldn’t we have some fun?” She hopped off the bed. “What if I just dance for you, and see if you’re ...up to it?”

  “Dance.”

  “Yeah. Wait here. I want to put on some special makeup.”

  But before she left, she shimmied out of the pink panties. And I’ll be damned if she wasn’t bare down there, shaved or I don’t what—it was startling. I’d never seen a female so Barbie Doll hairless, disturbing, too, because she was so petite and young. It was enough to make my dick sit up and shake its head, like it couldn’t believe what it was seeing.

  And what the fuck kind of makeup, I thought, requires a girl taking off her panties?

  When she returned, four or five minutes later, she didn’t seem to have any more makeup on than before. She was still naked, as she walked over to the shelves with the sound system and picked out a homemade cassette tape and inserted it into the machine. “Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple burst out of the speakers like the thunder had returned.

  Then she cranked it some more.

  She asked, almost shouting, “Could you switch off the bedside lamp?”

  I said I could, and did.

  “Can you watch me from there?” she yelled sweetly. “Does it hurt? I’m gonna work it over here.”

  I swung my body around, ribs complaining just a little, but the hell with them. Though darkness had returned, I could tell she was moving the coffee table to one side and making a little performance area out of the throw rug.

  Then she went over to a nearby wall switch
and a click announced overhead black-light tubing coming on to make Jimi and the Fudge and Janis glow. Also her lips and her finger- and toenails and the tips of her breasts and the petals of flesh between her legs—all glowing red as she did a swaying dance to the thumping music, arms waving, feet shifting weight from leg to leg, the mirrored wall behind me echoing and multiplying her. Then she began to twist and grind in rhythm with the pounding guitar riff, bamp bamp BAH, bamp bamp BAH bah, a native dance that grew in intensity, lifting right fist and left knee, then left fist and right knee, swinging her arms, her torso, awkward, graceful, until finally she tossed herself on the couch on her back and spread her legs and her pussy glowed red and so did the tips of her little bobbling breasts, and the red fingertips of her upturned palms, tickled the air, summoned me.

  I climbed out of bed like a starving man to a meal and there was no thought of protection, no thought of anything rational, just the center of her sex demanding my attention. I climbed on top of her, where she nestled in the V of the sofa, falling between her splayed legs, plunging into her, and she writhed and did her savage bump-and-grind as my head throbbed from concussion and my dick throbbed from the hot tight wetness of her teenage snatch, and there was no love in it, no emotion, no passion, just lust, and she laughed while I pounded her, driving myself into her, like I wanted to kill her with it, but finally she won, laughing in savage orgasm, as it bled seed into that red gaping wound.

  ELEVEN

  The late morning was sunny and clear, probably seventy degrees, last night’s heavy rain a shimmering mild memory of scattered puddles around Stockwell Park. Plump green pines lorded it over trees largely bereft of leaves, spectators on the periphery of the rough terrain that rose through rock outcroppings to a cliff-like bluff.

  Jenny, seated across the picnic table from me, a Colonel Sanders thigh in her hands, said, “If this Indian summer weather keeps up, it’ll get crazy out here this weekend.”

  “Even during the off-season?”

  She nodded, rolled the light-green eyes. “The locals love having the park to themselves, and with one last gasp of not shitty weather? Crazy, I tell ya.”

  I glanced around at the aberrational paradise in the midst of Missouri mediocrity. “Surprised it’s not a state park.”

  “It belonged to the Stockwell family, you will not be surprised to learn. My ancestors very generously gave it to the city in 1905. Maybe they’d have held onto it, if they knew buggy whips would be going belly up.”

  We had walked here from a graveled parking lot, through a wooded area, fallen leaves crackling underfoot, and across an antiquated but sturdy wooden bridge, of width enough for a buggy maybe but not a car, over a clear, sand-bottomed stream.

  Now we were seated at one of half a dozen picnic tables in the flat area at the foot of rising rocky terrain with various rustic signs pointing to this foot trail or that, with advice attached: “Great for Beginners,” “Seasoned Hikers Only,” and so on. Brick outdoor grills were here and there, and a covered shelter.

  “Big family spot in the summer, huh?” I observed pointlessly. No jacket today, just sweatshirt and jeans.

  She nodded, chewed, then said, “Sure, but the real draw is college kids—this is a big spring break area for campers and hikers. Quiet trails, incredible views. Birds to watch, quiet places to just get away and enjoy nature.”

  I was bird-watching, too—a full-breasted thrush called Jenny Stockwell, who despite gold hoop earrings in the nest of black curls looked less gypsy today and more earth mother. She looked pleasantly funky in rust-color sweater and acid-wash jeans, with almost no makeup, just a hint of pink lipstick. The sun revealed lines in her face, like cracks in fine china.

  Just this morning I’d been shaken awake by a barely legal Lolita urging me to hurry up (“Come on, come on, move your ass—don’t make me late to fucking home room!”). I’d moved my ass, and fortunately Sally had passed right by the Holiday Inn on her way to school, making dropping me off “no biggie.”

  Miss Meadows was the compliant, sexually voracious teenage vixen that every man thought he wanted. But somehow I came away from that exhausting “trippy” night grateful for the fun ride but with a new appreciation for Jenny Stockwell’s mature charms.

  Of course, since Jenny’s mature charms included blow jobs between garbage cans behind dives, I should perhaps not be lauded for my Alan Alda-like sensitivity.

  I’d called and said I wanted to take her out for lunch, and Jenny suggested “a sort of a picnic,” since maybe I’d like a glimpse at the part of Stockwell that made it Missouri’s Little Vacationland. So I’d picked her up at home, thinking she had plenty of woods right around there to satisfy any rustic urge I might have, but I was just too damn polite to say so. We went through the Kentucky Fried Chicken drive-through and were ready to rough it.

  The translucent green eyes studied me like something on a slide. “This isn’t just a luncheon date, is it?”

  “Sometimes a chicken breast is just a chicken breast, Ms. Freud.”

  “Not with you. Never with you, Jack. Always something brewing upstairs. What were you up to last night?”

  I chewed chicken breast. “I went to parent-teacher night with Sally Meadows.”

  “Ha! That little slut. Well, she was Candy’s best friend, so that makes sense. Did you get laid?”

  “Of course I didn’t get laid. She’s just a high school kid. What kind of animal do you take me for?”

  “You really want me to answer?”

  I dropped the breast onto crackling paper and looked right at her. “All right, then. She took me back to her teenage pad and stripped down and turned on the black light and danced for me, with her privates all aglow.”

  “Shut-up, you goof.”

  “There’s more. She put on Deep Purple. ‘Smoke on the Water.’ Pranced like a cross between a stripteaser and a Zulu mating dance. You should’ve seen it. Might’ve given you some ideas for a painting.”

  She was laughing now, at my zany display of wit. “Will you stop it? What did you really do?”

  I shrugged. “Well, Sally is Mr. Roger’s favorite little protégée. I approached her, said I wanted to clear his name in my article, and she helped me talk to some teachers.”

  “Teachers who told you what?”

  I shrugged again. “They all whitewashed him.”

  “That doesn’t make him innocent.”

  “No. But what I learned convinces me there are plenty of other candidates for Candy’s murderer out there, besides a gay dance instructor. That Pettibone kid, for example. I had a little dust-up with him.”

  She looked mildly alarmed. “What happened?”

  “I was just standing talking to Sally in the school parking lot, when he took a run at me like I’d been making out with her or something.” I told her the rest of it fairly straight, even showed her my bruised sides.

  “You’re lucky he didn’t kill you,” she said, with a shudder, as I tugged down my sweatshirt.

  “Which makes my point. And God knows how many other boys and men got a taste of Candy, and didn’t like being denied later on.”

  She was eating her coleslaw, lackadaisically. “I suppose that’s true. But I don’t think you’ll ever convince Daddy. Or Larry, either. All they can see is Roger Vale.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  Then she dropped her spork and leaned in excitedly, green eyes urgent. “But maybe you could find out. Maybe you can keep at this, stay at it—I could underwrite your effort, if need be.”

  “What?”

  She shrugged and gypsy curls danced and the hoop earrings swung. “I know you probably can’t afford to keep working on this story forever, not on spec. But what if you had the freedom to really stay and dig in? I could hire you to do that.”

  “And...do what exactly?”

  “Really explore these suspects. The Pettibone boy, for instance. You said it yesterday, to Larry—if the spurned boyfriend killed Candy in a jealous rage, his father
may have helped him cover up.”

  She didn’t understand that I didn’t really give a damn who killed Candy. I wasn’t looking for a murderer, not really. My job was to kill whoever it was that wanted Vale dead. The person or persons who had wrongly targeted the dance instructor.

  In addition to which, I was coming to the end here in Stockwell. I really liked Jenny. We may have met in less than storybook fashion, but a part of me wished I really could marry her and settle down here in Norman Rockwell-ville. She was rich. She looked great. She was smart. And she was hot in the sack. What was not to love?

  But that scenario would only have played out if I were really a journalist researching a story for the St. Louis Sun. And if I wasn’t a semi-retired hitman who had in the last several days smothered one killer with a pillow and slit another one’s throat before stuffing him in his car trunk.

  Somebody, somewhere, would be learning soon, if they hadn’t already, that the team sent to kill Roger Vale had failed before they started. And more than just that, had been taken rudely out of the game.

  So I played a different card.

  “Jenny,” I said, nodding, “that’s a real possibility, me staying here...of course, I could never accept your money.”

  Sure I could.

  “You’re sweet, Jack, but I insist—”

  I raised a palm. Somewhere an owl hooted, its “who?” indicating that somebody around here, anyway, had doubts about me.

  “While I was out sniffing around,” I said, “and not just at that parent-teacher conference...I picked up on a nasty rumor.”

  She sat up. “Really? What?”

  “I can only share it with you if you promise not to repeat it— not to anyone.”

  “Well, Jack, of course.”

  “You’ll be tempted.”

  She showed me that beautiful, just slightly tobacco-stained smile. “I hope by now you know you can trust me.”

  It was way too early in our relationship, if that’s what this was, for that to be true.

  But I said, “Of course. Only there’s also a second condition.”

  “All right. Go on.”

  I leaned in conspiratorially. “You can’t ask me where or how I heard this. Promise?”