The woman folded her arms for a moment. "Principles are worth nothing unless they are arbitrary," she said. "If it’s flexible, it’s not a principle, it’s a sometime rule. But if you’re going to be the last of the pests, I don’t mind talking to you. At least you’re honest and you’re not smiling all the time like the last insipid cretin they sent to see me. Can I get you a drink?"
"I thought you’d never ask. I always get thirsty in train stations. Vodka."
"Soda? Tonic? Ice?"
"Ice. Hold the adulterants."
"Okay. And thank you for the compliment about the wrinkles."
She lifted the section of track that had been separating them, much like a bartender getting out from behind the bar. He noticed that all the sections of track were hinged and could be opened the same way. Louise Gillette closed the track behind her and walked to a small walnut side-bar built into the base of the bookshelves. She poured his drink, but instead of handing it to him, she put it atop a railroad car and hit a switch. He watched his drink make a slow run around the room before coming to a stop on the section of track in front of him.
"Do you really think that’s cute?" Digger asked as he picked up his drink and sipped it.
She did not turn until she had finished making her own drink, a Bloody Mary.
"Just a habit," she said.
"How does a woman get to be a model-train nut, if you’ll pardon the turn of phrase?"
"Your maiden name is Louise Randisi. Your father’s name was Louis and he wanted a boy. When you were born, he names you Louise and treats you like a boy. You get your first set of trains when you’re four years old. You’re a genius but your immigrant Italian family doesn’t understand from geniuses. You study on your own and learn what you can but you play with trains. You get good enough to design them for toy manufacturers. Answer your question?"
"And you play with them in your spare moments?"
"I get paid for playing with them, as you put it, Mr. Burroughs. I’ve got a half-dozen patents on new computerized controls, new tracking mix systems. I’ve designed electronic computer games that can be played with model railroads. This subway design should be one of the big hits of next season. And besides, I’m from New York and I miss the subways. I miss everything, being up here in Belton."
"Go back to New York. You can afford it."
"I intend to," she said. She walked back, slid under a section of track and stood behind it as if it were a wall, sipping her red drink. "I’m going back, but I’m waiting till the end of the school year. It’s important that Ardath not be uprooted unnecessarily. Her friends are here. She’ll be better able to handle separation during the summer vacation than right now. She’s already had quite enough shocks this year."
Digger resisted saying, so did your electrocuted husband. He merely nodded.
"I still don’t understand why your company sent an investigator here," she said.
"I was all they had left," Digger said. "I’m the burned rice on the bottom of the pot."
"So I’m reduced to dealing with scrapings, all because I refuse to take their extra half million."
"Something like that. Tell me, don’t you need the money? Would you mind taking off that railroad cap? I feel like I’m on the Wabash Cannonball and you’re going to ask me for my ticket."
She took off the hat with a small smile. Piles of black curls tumbled about her face. She had been pretty before. Now she was beautiful, Digger thought.
"Better?" she asked.
"Immeasurably."
"You asked me if I don’t need your company’s money. No, I don’t. I make a great deal more as a designer than my husband did in electronics."
"Why don’t you think he died in an accident?" Digger asked.
"Because it’s impossible. Vern was a genius of the highest order, an absolute whiz in his field. His dying in an electrical accident makes him sound like a fool. He was no fool. I can only believe that he died of a heart attack or some medical reason."
"Was his health poor?" Digger asked.
"Of course not. When I decided to marry, I carefully picked a man who was the picture of health. Vern was tall, perfectly formed. He had been an athlete in college. He kept himself in the best of shape. That’s his photograph over there."
She pointed to a section of the bookcase where a photo stood inside a simple gold frame. Digger walked over to look at it. Vernon Gillette was handsome, all right. The picture had been taken in college, because Digger recognized the distinctive football uniform of the UCLA Bruins. Gillette was tall and lean and his face was open and honest, with handsome, regular features. He would not have been out of place playing lifeguard on a Malibu beach.
"Then how a heart attack? It’s not logical."
"Believe me, it’s a great deal more likely and logical than an accident," she said stubbornly. "Refill that drink?"
"No," Digger said. "Stay there. I’ll do it myself. Are you ready for another?"
"No. I have one drink every two days. This is it until the day after tomorrow. Help yourself."
"That’s my rule too," Digger said. "This drink is for Wednesday, March sixteenth, in the year 2654."
As Digger poured his drink, she said, "My husband couldn’t have died in the type of accident your company has determined."
"My company didn’t make that determination, Mrs. Gillette. The police did." He looked through the sparse liquor supply for Finlandia but settled instead for cheap American vodka with a pseudo-Russian name.
"Nevertheless, your company is attempting to pay on the basis of that assumption, and I cannot allow it."
"Why not?" Digger asked. "Take the goddamn money and run. What difference does it make?"
"First of all, I don’t need the money. Secondly, it involves Vern’s reputation. I think it is important for Ardath not to grow up believing her father was a fool."
"Do you think it matters to her?" Digger asked. He turned with his drink in his hand, leaned on the bar and looked at the woman who was diddling one of the small model subway cars with her finger, as if she had found a speck of real dirt hidden under the carefully designed graffiti.
"She would probably say no, but I have to be the best judge of that. I think someday it might. Do you have children, Mr. Burroughs?"
"Yes."
"Then I’m surprised you don’t understand."
"You wouldn’t be if you saw What’s-his-name and the girl," Digger said. "But why a heart attack?"
"Why not?" she said.
"Maybe it was something else," he said.
"He was in perfect health," she said.
"That ought to preclude heart attacks too."
"Mr. Burroughs, all I want from your company is my five hundred thousand dollars. Not some ill-formed medical judgment."
"All right, I’ll tell them that," Digger said. And, he thought, I’ll play the tape recording, certifying that you are a full-blown, dyed-in-the-wool crazy. "Will you sign a document to that effect, freeing the company from any future legal liability?"
"Yes. I tried to tell the other one that. The one who kept smiling."
"Okay." Digger drained his vodka. "I can find my own way out."
"Thank you," she said. Digger replaced his glass on the bar. When he turned back, she had already put her railroad cap back on and was hunched over the control panel. As he opened the room’s double doors, he heard the whooping of train whistles as the model railroad started up behind him.
Walking down the hallway, he passed an open door and glanced inside. Ardath was sitting in an armchair, a leg flung casually over the chair’s arm, reading from a book. Digger leaned into the doorway.
"So long, Ardath."
She looked up. "Oh, so long," she said. She stood up and said soberly, "Couldn’t convince her, could you?"
"No."
"She’s really quite truculent about some things."
"Yes, she is. What are you reading?"
"Just a book," she said. She stuck it into her pocket and
walked with Digger toward the front door.
"Do you think your father died of a heart attack?" Digger asked. He put his big hand on her thin little shoulder.
"Do you really want to know?" she asked.
"Yes."
"No, I don’t," Ardath said.
"You agree with the police? An accident, right?"
"No. Daddy was too smart to have an accident," she said.
"What, then?"
"You don’t really want to know," Ardath said. "I’m going to tell you and you’re going to say, what do you know, you’re just a kid, and you’ll dismiss it all."
"Honest, I won’t say that," Digger said.
"Promise?"
"Yes. And an insurance man’s promise is as eternal as the sands of the desert," Digger said.
"I think he was murdered," she said.
"What?"
"There you go," she said. "You’re starting. Next thing, you’re going to say, ‘You’re just a kid, what do you know?’"
"No, I’m not. Why do you think he was murdered?"
"I think a lot of people are murdered and no one ever knows its murder," she said.
"I heard there was a lot of it going around," Digger said. Ardath held the door open for him, but before going through it, Digger reached behind the little girl and plucked the book from her jeans.
It had a garish red-and-white cover, the white serving as a backdrop for the big globs of blood that spelled out the title: The Palindrome Murders by a writer Digger had never heard of.
"You read a lot of these?" Digger said, giving her back the book and feeling guilty about intruding on her life, almost as if he had been caught peeking into her bedroom.
"Yes, Mr. Burroughs," she said, solemn and hurt. "I read a lot of mysteries because they are always tidy. Murders are always known to be murders and murderers are always captured or done away with. But that has nothing to do with my feeling about my father’s death."
"All right. If he was murdered, who murdered him?"
"I was hoping you might find out." She smiled sheepishly. "I listened for a while at the door. I know you’re an investigator."
"I’ll be seeing you around, Ardath," he said as he left.
Chapter Three
Digger aimed his car down toward Belton’s bowl. It was very simple. He had driven straight up on the main street until he had found Gillette’s house. All he had to do to get back was to turn around and go straight down in the direction he had come from.
He got lost.
Since he always got lost driving around in a car, this didn’t bother him. Nor did the fact that somehow he wound up on a back highway which seemed not to be a part of Belton at all, because it was level and flat, not sloping the way it should have been if he were still anywhere inside the bowl.
What did bother him was that it was past lunchtime and he had not yet seen a tavern on this road.
And another thing that bothered him was that he was being followed.
He had spotted the red pickup truck about ten minutes into his confused rambling and had slowed down to let it pass, but it slowed down too. Then he speeded up to get away from it and it speeded up too. At first he had thought it was some idiot driver who wanted his truck to be friends with a car with New York license plates, but when he made a couple of left and right turns, trying desperately to find a cocktail lounge or a bar, the truck stayed with him and Digger knew he was being tailed.
The truck was still following him when he saw a tavern up ahead on the left side of the main road. Carefully, because he did not want his car to be buggered by some klutzy pickup truck, he put on his left directional, slowed down and pulled into the tavern’s parking lot.
His was the only car but there were four other vehicles, all pickup trucks. As he pulled into a parking spot, he saw the red truck drive past and keep going. For a moment he thought that maybe he had been wrong; maybe he wasn’t being followed. Yes, of course. And maybe he didn’t drink too much either.
He whistled softly to himself as he walked toward the entrance. A garish neon sign proclaimed it as Eddie’s. Bars like that, he thought, were always named by their owner after their owner. Every man wanted to be immortalized. Twenty years from now, when Eddie was dead from erysipelas, the scientists would come by and cart Eddie’s away, termite-infested board by termite-infested board, and reassemble it in the Smithsonian Institute as a particularly grisly example of Roadhouse Americanus, and Eddie would live forever in the hearts and minds of his fellow countrymen.
He glanced at the parking lot again and began to sing, "I’ll be down to get you in my pickup, honey. Better be ready when the big hand’s on six and the little hand’s between eight and nine."
The owners of the pickup fleet outside were all sitting at the bar when Digger entered. All four of them turned to look at him, staring at him with the rudeness commonly practiced on strangers by people who are in their hometowns. Digger could have walked into a roadhouse in Alabama and gotten exactly the same looks from four Alabama chain-saw mechanics as he did from these four Pennsylvania gorillas. The look was a curious mixture of: Who Are You? What Are You Doing Here? If You’re Looking for Trouble, Sucker, You Found It. Are You Some Communist Come to Steal Our Homes and Land? And, No, I Gave at the Office.
Digger glanced at the four men impassively and wished that he was wearing a Nehru outfit, complete with pantaloons and silken leg wraps, because that would really have made their day.
As soon as he had sat down at a table near the large front window of Eddie’s, a waitress swooped down on him.
Behind her, Digger could see the four men, identical in their plaid shirts and jeans, turn back to the television, which was roaring a baseball game at the world. They looked, he thought, like a gang bang waiting to happen.
And the waitress looked like the object of their affections.
She was stuffed into a white uniform whose three top buttons were opened, showing rounded mounds of cleavage that looked curiously to Digger like a pair of buttocks. The face above the chest was pretty but vacant. The woman’s blue eyes had been outlined with pencil in a cobalt blue color. Her hair was platinumed and piled up around her head. There seemed to be so much hair spray on it that it didn’t even shiver when she walked or when she leaned over Digger’s table, inviting him to get lost in her chest, as she slapped a knife, fork and paper napkin on the formica table in front of him.
"Afternoon," she said. "Want a menu?"
"No thanks, Dolly. I’ll just have a vodka on the rocks."
"How’d you know my name was Dolly?"
"Gee, I don’t know. You just kind of reminded me of somebody named Dolly, I guess."
She smiled warmly. "Dolly Parton," she said.
"That’s right."
"Everybody says I look like Dolly Parton. I don’t know. It must be the blond hair or something."
"A lot of people have blond hair," Digger said. "I think it’s the ‘something.’"
"You’re not from around here, are you?" she said, and Digger thought, obviously not, because I’ve been talking to you for twenty seconds already and I haven’t once mentioned my pickup truck or my new hand-tooled leather boots.
"No," he said. "Just passing through."
"Too bad. You might like Belton."
"The only thing I like about Belton is standing right in front of me," Digger said.
"Well, thank you, sir," she said. "I love all you smooth-talking travelers who wander in here and try to turn a girl’s head."
"You been living in Belton long?" Digger asked.
"Long enough."
"You like living in a town without air?" he asked.
"The smoke? It’s not that bad," she said. "You kinda get used to it."
"If you don’t, you’d better, right?" Digger said. "The Beltons are pretty important people, I guess."
"You said it. Old Lucius, he’s like the town daddy, and we’re his children."
It sounded to Digger as if she were describing God.
"What’s he like?"
"Who?"
"Town daddy Lucius."
"I ain’t never met him," she said, as if the question were absurd. "But he’s gotta be all right. I mean, he’s over seventy if he’s a day and he’s got a wife who probably ain’t even thirty yet. That takes a man, doesn’t it?"
"Or a lot of money," Digger said.
"I guess you’re right," she said with a laugh that seemed surprisingly sincere. "What’s your name anyway, stranger?"
"Clem," said Digger. "Clem Barff. That’s with two f’s. Fas in fellatio."
"I’ll be sure to remember that. Vodka rocks, you said?"
"Make it a double," Digger said.
There was a hawk-nosed man behind the bar who engaged Dolly in rapid conversation when she came back behind the bar. The four customers leaned forward on their stools to listen. Digger couldn’t hear what they were saying over the roar of the television, but he knew they were talking about him and he didn’t care.
He glanced through the window and saw the red pickup truck backing into a parking spot that faced the door of Eddie’s. The afternoon sun kicked up a glare from the windshield and Digger could not see the driver’s face.
Dolly returned with his drink, a regular-sized beer glass filled with ice cubes and vodka.
"Sorry," she said. "No rocks glasses. All we do here is shots and beers usually."
"No problem. As long as it doesn’t leak. You see that red pickup out there?"
He nodded toward the parking lot and Dolly leaned over him to look, threatening to engulf him in her chest. He thought if her bra straps ever broke, she might just plunge through the floor and into the cellar.
"Yeah," she said.
"You know who it is?" Digger said.
"No. He ain’t one of our regulars ’cause I know all their trucks."
"I bet you do. Would you do me a favor?"
"I’ll try," she said.
"Bring me back a bottle of beer."
"Something wrong with your vodka?"
"No, no, it’s fine. Please. A bottle of beer."
"Okay."
Lucifer's Weekend (Digger) Page 4