Westlake, Donald E - Sara and Jack 01

by Trust Me on This (v1. 1)

  “A quarter to ten in the morning.”

  “That’s right.” The waiter brought their salads, poured more wine, went away. Sara said, “The body couldn’t have been there during the morning rush, with everybody going to work. Somebody would have seen it, would have stopped.”

  “I suppose so,” he admitted.

  “And when would the last person have gone by? Around quarter after nine?”

  “Probably so. Something like that.”

  “And I got there at quarter to ten.”

  He shrugged. “So?”

  “There’s no exit off that road, from one end to the other.” Intensity vibrated in her voice, glittered in her eyes. “I didn’t see one single car coming the other way the whole time I was on it that morning. There wasn’t time for someone to come out there after the morning rush hour but before I got there, kill that man, and either drive back to town in another car or walk back.”

  “Maybe he walked off into the fields.”

  “I’d have seen him,” she said, and gestured, indicating a large open space. “You can see for miles there.”

  “True enough. So you’re saying the killer didn’t go back to town, and he didn’t wander away across the moors, so he must have gone on to the Galaxy.”

  “Of course. Where else could he have gone?”

  “It’s your story,” he reminded her. “But he could have been just visiting, you know.”

  “Mine was the only car in the visitors’ parking lot that day.”

  He remembered then his first sight of Sara, getting out of the little maroon Chevette in the visitors’ parking lot. The view of her walking was what had inspired him to the sex-cures-gallstones story; and then Sara had been the one to pull that same story out of the fire.

  She frowned at him, saying, “What are you smiling about?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “An irrelevancy. So tell me your conclusion, Chief Inspector.”

  “It’s obvious,” she said. “The killer had to be driving a car with a Galaxy sticker. He shot that man, then drove on to work, parked wherever he usually parks, acted as though nothing happened.”

  “Possible,” Jack said slowly, reluctant to permit her to bring potential trouble home to the Galaxy. “But there must be other possible explanations as well.”

  “Name three.”

  “I’m trying to think of just one,” Jack told her, grinning, as the busboy cleared their salad plates, and the waiter, with a hopelessly muffled flourish, presented their main course. “Let me think about it,” he said, “while we eat.”

  “Take all the time you need.”

  The food, though better than the wine, was probably not doing much good for anybody’s arteries. Jack ate methodically, smiling at Sara from time to time, thinking idly about the murder mystery she’d presented him, and keeping one eye on the couple beyond the vulgar flowers. But say she was right; say someone connected with the Galaxy shot a tough-looking fellow out on the highway on the way to work Monday morning; say the police hadn’t yet found the guilty party, and possibly didn’t even know as much about the story as Sara did. Say all that, and the response was still the same as when she’d given him the capsule version of the story on Monday morning: So what?

  In no way did this unimportant anonymous murder impinge on the life and concerns of Jack Ingersoll; no, nor on those of Sara Joslyn, either. She’d found the body, she’d reported it to the guard on duty at the Galaxy's gate, and that was the end of it. Presumably, the guard would have passed the information to his immediate boss, rather than directly to the cops, so by the time the report was made the identity of the original person who’d found the body might have been lost; which would be why nobody had come around to take evidence from Sara. Or possibly the crime had immediately been solved, and no investigation needed. A small and unimportant murder, in either case, too common and minor even to make the pages of the County.

  In any event, the murder had certainly been reported at some time and by some method on Monday, because both car and body had been removed by that afternoon. So, unless Sara started making unnecessary fusses, this was no more than a kind of game they were playing, an intellectual exercise, a fooling with what-if. And all Jack had to do was see it didn’t get out of hand.

  Neither of them raised the subject of the murder again until the steak and shrimp and side dishes had been dealt with and the plates removed, and they’d said yes to the waiter’s offer of coffee, no to his suggestion of dessert. Then Sara said, “Well? Did you think of some other explanation, somewhere else the killer could have gone?”

  “No, I must admit I didn’t,” he told her, “but the idea that the Galaxy . . He shook his head.

  “There’ve been a couple of other things,” she said, “since then, right there at the Galaxy ”

  “What things?”

  “I don’t really want to tell you,” she said. “They’re too silly. A note that disappeared, a different guard ever since. Nothing important, and there’s a different simple explanation for everything.”

  “Of course there is,” he said. “And for all you know, by now the whole case has been— Wait a minute. What’s that?”

  Following the direction of his gaze, Sara twisted around to look at the couple Jack had been watching. The girl was now making small blub- bery sounds over there, one shaking hand to her face, while the man leaned across the table toward her, looking both angry and embarrassed, whispering fiercely; no doubt urging her to shut up, get control of herself, something helpful like that.

  Sara spun back, wide-eyed. “That’s John Michael Mercer!”

  “Ssshhh, yeah, it is.” Jack kept both eyes on the television star, Massa’s favorite person, to see what would happen next.

  Abruptly, the girl with Mercer was on her feet. A blonde, she was dressed just a little too obviously, just enough to emphasize the ripeness of her figure. Turning away from Mercer, one hand still to her face, she stumbled blindly past Jack and Sara’s table, and on. Not toward the exit, that would have been the other way. So, toward the ladies’ room.

  Jack leaned forward, quick and intense. “Follow her! Console her. Get her story!”

  Sara blinked. “Do what?”

  “It’s been dumped in our laps! Go! Quick! Massa will love us for weeks!”

  At last she got the idea. Looking nervous but determined, she rose and hurried off after the blonde. Jack sat quiedy for a minute or two, watching Mercer pour himself a glass of champagne, manner and expression stem but calm, that of a man who has not shrunk from an unpleasant duty. When he decided he’d given Sara long enough to make contact, Jack got to his feet, adjusted his lapels and sleeves, patted the camera in his left side jacket pocket, and walked past the garish flowers to the John Michael Mercer table, where he smiled gendy, reassuringly, and said, “Excuse me.”

  Mercer gave him a dangerous look; the kind of look he gave lowlifes on Breakpoint. Clearly, he was not of a mood to suffer fans gladly. Saying not a word, he let his hostile expression speak for him, and waited with barely leashed rage for Jack to go away.

  Instead of which, Jack bent slightly toward him, his voice and manner confidenual as he said, “I don’t know if it matters, but there’s a Weekly Galaxy reporter in the ladies’ room with your girl.”

  Mercer’s response was entirely satisfactory. His head came up like an Indian brave hearing a twig snap in the forest at night, like a well-antlered stag when the hunter cocks his gun, like a margin buyer hearing the fall of an interest rate. “That—” he said, and rose like a thundercloud.

  “Just went in there a minute ago.”

  Mercer left without even saying thank you.

  The main question Sara had always wanted to ask girls who looked like this blonde had nothing to do with the Weekly Galaxy or John Michael Mercer (except indirectly) or her job at all. The main question Sara had always wanted to ask girls who looked like this blonde—busty, hippy, pouty, pneumatically soft—was if they enjoyed sex more than she did.
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br />   Oh, Sara enjoyed sex, that wasn’t the problem, so long as the guy was someone she cared for and who cared for her and who was reasonably aware of her while the exercise was under way, but was there better sex somewhere, more electric, more throbbing, more exhaustingly fulfilling? And if there was, would these inflatable dolls know about it? And would they be able to describe it, to pass the secret along to a worthwhile sister?

  Well, the question was ridiculous, wasn’t it? There was no way even to phrase it without sounding silly. So, once again, Sara did not ask the truly burning question of the age—did blondes like this have more fun like that?—but instead approached the weeping girl with nothing but sympathy and concern. They were alone in the ladies’ room, an intensely decorated small space with glossy wallpaper featuring orchids on a deep black background, parts of this covered by large, dark, ornately framed full-length portraits of Spanish grandes dames peering imperiously over fans. The blonde, fetchingly crumpled against the wall between the beige sink and the coral paper-towel dispenser, smeerped and gulped, little round fists pressed to her eyes. Sara took a couple of Kleenex from her bag and extended them to the girl, saying,“Oh, you poor thing. Is it really that bad?”

  “He—” The girl gulped, unable to cry and talk at the same time. Fists firmly to eyes, she shook her head back and forth. “He doesn’t want me,” she managed to say, in a broken half whisper.

  “Whoever he is,” Sara told her, “he isn’t worth it. No man is worth it.”

  Now the girl sighed, a long shuddering sound that shook her frame and made Sara truly sympathize, truly feel for this poor baby, the victim of her own lush looks and the short attention span of men. She patted the poor baby’s shoulder, the tissues remaining crumpled in her other hand, and the girl turned her head slightly, right eye peering woundedly past her knuckles at Sara as she whispered, “He’s worth it. I love him!”

  “Oh, poor baby, and he’s no good, is he? He doesn’t love you the way you love him.”

  “He says it’s oooover!”

  “Oh, poor girl, poor girl. Go ahead and cry. Get it all out.”

  Accepting the wad of Kleenex at last, the girl also accepted Sara’s willing shoulder. The head she bent there seemed terribly hot and feverish, the delicate earlobe rosy with infused blood. Sara patted her quivering back, and the girl mumbled against her clavicle, “I gave him the best weeks of my life.”

  “Of course you did, I know you did.”

  “If he wants that Felicia,” she wailed, her cry of defiance belied by copious tears and broken gasps, “he can have her!”

  “Felicia, did you say?” Sara asked, listening with all her ears. “Tell me about her.”

  “Out!” bellowed a male voice, trembling with rage.

  Sara and the girl both jumped, separating, and turned to stare at the doorway, filled now with the menacing infuriated form of John Michael Mercer. “Johnny!” squealed the girl. “You can’t come in here!”

  “Out, you idiot!” Mercer yelled, advancing into the room. “That’s a reporter from the Galaxy!”

  The girl stared at Sara in shock and betrayal, then at Mercer in shock and fear. “Johnny! I didn’t—”

  With one last wide-eyed wet-eyed panicky stare at Sara, the girl fled. Sara stood her ground, trembling slightly, as Mercer turned his attention her way, looming over her, raising one knobble-knuckled fist, shaking it in her face. “I’ve warned you people,” he breathed, low-voiced and savage, controlling himself with obvious difficulty. “I said, if you ever bothered me again—”

  “Sara!” cried Jack’s voice. “Flinch!”

  She flinched, an automatic reaction, then looked over to see Jack in the doorway, a tiny camera to his face. Click-whirr, click-whirr, click-whirr, the high-speed shutter hit and hit, as Mercer swiveled, roaring in his fury. Then Jack was gone, the door slapping closed after him, and Mercer swung back to Sara, fists clenched, face distorted with rage, and this time Sara flinched for real.

  But then, as he must have suddenly realized his former girlfriend was out and about on her own in a world newly full of reporters from the Weekly Galaxy, Mercer spun away again, toward the door, blundering through it, hitting one shoulder against the frame on the way by, bellowing, “Fluffy!” And the door swung shut behind him, leaving Sara limp and shaken.

  And what a first date this turned out to be! Of all the restaurants in the world, they’d have to pick just the one where John Michael Mercer was breaking up with a girlfriend. And what was happening to Jack right now, in the outside world? Sara supposed she should go out and see, offer support or a witness or a calming influence or whatever seemed best, but somehow she was just in no hurry to leave this room. So she spent another three or four minutes there, soothing her own shattered nerves, fussing with her hair and makeup, half expecting the door to burst open and almost anybody come in: Mercer to pulverize her, Fluffy (Fluffy? Was that possible?) to give her another look of heartbroken betrayal, or even Jack to tell her the coast was clear.

  But nobody came in at all, not even an innocent bystander. When at last boredom overcame tension, and when the face looking back at her in the mirror had finally lost its expression of just having heard a major explosion very nearby, Sara cautiously pulled open the ladies’ room door, looked both ways, saw nothing that seemed to threaten, and made her way back to the table, where the red-boleroed waiter was seated in her chair, talking to Jack and a small cassette tape recorder.

  Astonished—she’d never had her seat taken by a waiter before—Sara just stood there beside the table, not knowing what else to do, while the waiter continued to speak slowly and ploddingly to Jack in heavily accented English. After a minute, Jack looked up, acknowledged her presence, and said, “There you are. Pull up a chair.”

  Pull up a chair; now there's the benchmark of the gentleman for you. Of course Jack was deeply involved in this unexpected interview with the waiter, but still. Oh, well; Sara looked around, saw that both John Michael Mercer and his Fluffy had left the restaurant and the busboy was clearing that table, and so she pulled over the chair Fluffy had been seated in and settled herself at the side of the table as Jack said to the waiter, “As a family man yourself, would you say— Hold it a second.” To Sara he said, “Write down everything that happened, so you don’t forget it.”

  “I won’t forget it. Believe me.”

  “Write.” To the waiter, as Sara shrugged and dragged out of her bag her memo pad and pen, Jack said, “Again. As a family man yourself, would you say it shocked you when John Michael Mercer made that girl cry?”

  “Oh, yeah,” the waiter said.

  Sara wrote a quick and simple narrative of events while Jack continued to question the waiter: “As you were serving the meal, did you observe the conversation that took place between John Michael Mercer and that young lady?”

  “Oh, sure, I did.”

  “Was the young lady happy at the beginning of the meal?”

  “Oh, yeah, sure.”

  “Would you say that she was very noticeably in love with John Michael Mercer?”

  “Oh, sure,” the waiter said, with a dirty little grin. “She was all over him.”

  “You would say she was making no effort to conceal her happiness, is that right?”

  “She wasn’t concealing nothing, man.”

  Crinkle, crinkle; greenbacks rusded in Jack’s left hand, in the waiter’s sight but not within his reach. Calmly Jack said, “Would you say she was making no effort to conceal her happiness?”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s right. Very happy girl.”

  “So would you say it was a shock to her when—”

  “Say!” Sara, having in her narrative reached the point where Mercer had come barging into the ladies’ room, looked up frowning and said, “Wait a minute. How’d he know I was from the Galaxy?”

  “I told him,” Jack said, and returned his attention to the waiter. “Would you say it was a shock—”

  “You told him!”

  “All par
t of the story,” he said. “Now, hush, we’ll talk later. I want to get Pedro’s story here, while it’s fresh in his mind.”

  Sara looked at the little tape recorder in the middle of the table. And Jack had brought a camera along, too. They’d just happened to sit one table away! “You knew about this!” she cried. “That’s when— When Ida called! At Binx’s house! You knew then!”

  “Sara, I’m working Jack snapped at her, with a look of real anger.

  “When aren’t you working?” she asked, understanding him at last.

  “We’ll talk later, all right?”

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” she assured him, and got to her feet, and dragged the chair back to the former Mercer table, and sat there to finish the narrative in her memo pad, while behind her the drone of Jack’s and the waiter’s voices continued, Jack leading the man inch by inch through the version of tonight’s events he needed for the story in the paper.

  It was herself Sara was mad at, mostly, for having thought in the first place that there could be anything on a personal level between herself and Jack. Hadn’t he made it clear he would have no personal entanglements? Hadn’t he made it abundantly clear that his job was all that mattered to him? Hadn’t she already realized—and thought she’d accommodated herself to the idea—that the only way to get along with Jack Ingersoll was to be a very efficient and very faceless little reporter, and not to take personally his bouts of bad humor and bad manners? So how had she allowed him to sucker her into thinking—

  No. How had she allowed herself to sucker herself into thinking there might be anything at all other than business in his asking her to the barbecue, asking her out to dinner? True, Jack Ingersoll was a lout and a boor, but she’d already known that, hadn’t she? So if she was going to get mad, if she was going to decide she’d been used, if she was going to make a fuss because the only reason he’d brought her along tonight was as protective coloration and as someone to throw at John Michael Mercer’s head to make the story better, if all of that was going to upset her, the only person she could possibly blame—and this made her grit her teeth in embarrassment and anger and frustration—was, goddamn it to hell and back and hell again and back again, herself.