by Milk;Honey
“This is my only break.” He was on his second Quarter-Pounder with Cheese. Besides the burgers were two salads, two helpings of fries, and a chocolate shake. “Let’s get this over and done with.”
“Get what over and done with?” Decker said.
Grains regarded Decker and sighed. He ran his hand over his face. “You’re a real cop, right? Not some snoop from a private agency?”
Decker took out his badge and showed it to him. Grains seemed to relax a little. Decker said, “Why did you think I’m a private investigator?”
“I thought maybe my wife found out.” Grains chomped on his sandwich. “Maybe I’m still a little paranoid. A lot paranoid. After all, I haven’t seen Linda for over six months.”
“How’d the affair start?” Decker asked.
“Linda had been having her car fixed at the station for six, seven, eight years, who the hell remembers. About a year ago, she started acting different toward me, real friendly.” He popped a half-dozen french fries in his mouth. “My wife and I…we were going through some bad times. I fell for it, and I fell for her. Actually thought I loved the broad until she up and left me. I not only lost her, but I lost her business as well. Teach me to mix business and pleasure. I’m just lucky my wife never caught on. That’s all I’d need. My wife’s Mexican and comes from an old-fashioned Mexican family. Know what her brothers would do to me if they found out I was messin’ around on her? God knows, if they didn’t finish me off, a divorce would. Alimony and child support. I’ve got six kids. My wife is also a Catholic. I had to get dispensation to marry her. Jesus, don’t ever mess around on a Mexican woman.”
He spoke as if only Mexican women grew irate at their adulterous husbands. Decker said, “Let’s go back to Linda Darcy.” He pulled out his notebook. “What exactly did you mean by ‘she started acting friendly’?”
“Well, for years she’s all business. Lube the car, change the belts, flush out the radiator. Sometimes she drove the pickup, sometimes she drove the Dodge. That was a honey of a car. A two-tone job—”
“Jim, how did she act friendly?” Decker said.
“Well, she just changed. Smiled when she spoke to me, touched my shoulder as we looked inside the hood together. Then, out of the blue, she said she had a little time and suggested grabbing a cup of coffee at this very McDonald’s. One thing led to another, next thing I know, we’re in bed together.” Grains paused. “But that’s all in the past. What’s this all about, anyway?”
“Linda Darcy’s been murdered,” Decker said.
Grain’s eyes bugged out even farther, then he began to choke. Decker stood up and gave him a sharp rap between his shoulder blades. Grains coughed, spit out a mouthful of food into a napkin. Decker waited for him to settle down, but Grains kept uttering “goldam” over and over.
Decker finally said, “How long did you and Linda have the affair?”
“Goldam,” Grains said. “Murdered? How?”
“Shot,” Decker said. “How long did you and Linda—”
“You don’t suspect I had anything to do with it!”
“Please answer the question, Jim,” Decker said.
“You aren’t going to tell my wife, are you?”
“How about we start with me asking the questions, and you answering them. How long had you and Linda had your affair?”
“Goldam,” Grains said. “Six months.”
“When did it start?”
“A year ago.”
“And it lasted for six months?”
“Yes, sir, it did. Only saw her six times, actually. But man was she a tiger.”
Decker thought, Six receipts from the motel. Six times. Made sense. He said, “And you haven’t seen Linda since?”
“No, sir,” Grains said. “Like I told you, lost her and her business when the affair ended.”
“She give you any explanation why the affair ended?”
“Nope,” Grains said. “That was the hardest thing to get over. She just said it was time to move on. Like I was nothing but a piece of cattle. Pissed me off. I asked her what she meant by that, and she didn’t answer me. Just left the motel and I never saw her again.”
“Did you try to contact her?”
“Hell, no,” Grains said. “She paid for the motel room and for her gas, but I was giving her a ton of freebies—tires, oil, transmission and steering fluid, spare parts, belts that I think her husband was using on his machinery. A free spare gas tank filled with super unleaded gas. Man, she was costing me plenty. I guess at the time I thought it was worth it. I don’t think so anymore today…like that matters now that she’s…goldam, that’s bad. Good goldam!”
Decker flipped his notebook closed and placed it in his suit pocket. He stood up. “Thank you, Mr. Grains.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“You ain’t gonna tell my wife, are you?”
“Don’t see why I should have to,” Decker said. “Unless, of course, you had something to do with Linda Darcy’s demise.”
“Shit no!” Grains said. “I don’t know a goldam thing about it.”
Decker said, “Just stick around for a while.”
“I’ll do anything you say,” Grains said. “Just keep it from my wife.”
Decker said he’d do the best he could.
“The good news is you got an envelope from Manfred,” Hollander said to Decker as he entered the squad room.
“What’s the bad news?” Decker asked.
“Your ex is on line two,” Hollander said.
Decker scanned the room for a private corner. Nothing. He depressed the blinking light and said to Jan, “Can I call you back? I want to find a private phone.”
“Private phone?” Jan answered. “This sounds ominous.”
“Are you at home?”
“Yes.”
Decker hung up. “Be back in a minute.”
“Where’re you going?” asked Marge.
“Upstairs,” Decker said. “I need some space.”
He was in luck. The locker-room phone was vacant, the place practically empty. The change of shift was still three hours away. Two uniforms—Hunter and Bailey—were bitching to each other, quieting when they saw Decker.
“Just came to use the phone,” Decker said.
Hunter smiled widely. He was a strapping man of 6'2" with thick, swollen lips. His grin was conspiratorial.
Decker felt defensive. “Calling my ex, okay?”
“Whatever you say, Sergeant,” Hunter said.
“Can I have a little privacy?” Decker said.
“A little?” Bailey said. “No problem.”
Decker glared at them. They moved to the next aisle. He quickly dialed, waited for Jan to answer.
“What is it?” she asked.
“First, why’d you call?”
“I’ll show you, if you show me?”
“Please, Jan.”
She said, “Cindy called. She’s in Paris. She’s coming back to the States in two weeks. She said she’ll probably stop off in New York for another couple of weeks. I thought Allen and I could meet her there. You’re not planning a trip back East, are you?”
“I’m not planning one, no.”
“Good,” Jan said. “I know…I know you have business back there. I think it would be awkward if we were all there at the same time.”
“No problem,” Decker said. “Have fun.”
“Okay,” Jan said. “Now what’s up with you?”
Decker said, “It’s about that business you were referring to. I wanted you to hear it from me. Rina and I are getting married. I don’t know exactly when, probably within the next couple of months. I just thought you should know.”
Without missing a beat, Jan said, “Nothing like a young filly for breeding.”
Decker felt his face go hot. “Well, thanks so much for your good wishes, Janet. I really appreciate them.”
There was a rare silence on the other line. Finally, she managed to say, “Y
ou’re right. That was awful.”
Decker was aware of his heart beating. “Forget it,” he said. Knowing the reason behind the barb, he meant it.
“No,” Jan said. “I’m sorry. I hope you do have kids. Cindy could use another sib.”
“Cindy is basically an adult,” Decker said. “I think a sib would have little impact on her.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Jan argued.
“Fine,” Decker said. “We’ll see…if it even happens—”
“What do you mean?”
Decker cursed his loose tongue. Then he thought, What the hell? Maybe it would soften Jan’s opinion of Rina if she knew they had this sore point in common. He said, “We don’t talk about it, but I know Rina has had several miscarriages.”
A second of silence. Then Jan said, “But she’s so young.”
“You were young, too,” Decker commented.
Another silence over the phone. This one full of palpable tension.
Cindy’s conception. At that time, it had been a low point in his life. Four months past twenty-one, his mind still agog with bad memories, a rookie on the force. His first assignment had been the riot squad. In 1970, Nixon had sent U.S. forces into Cambodia. The protests had been hard and furious, had influenced even traditional party schools like the University of Florida at Gainesville.
Jan had been one of his first arrests.
The pregnancy had been a terrible accident.
Shit, she had said as she paced. To be knocked up by a pig. I’m not going to keep it, that’s for sure. I’ve already made an appointment with the doctor. I think you should pay for half, Pete.
He had simply said, You do anything to my kid, and I’ll kill you. His intensity had scared her into listening to him. Maybe he had reacted that way because he had been adopted. If his mother’s pregnancy had occurred later in the century, he might have ended up a pickled fetus in someone’s laboratory.
Four months after Jan’s announcement, they were married, to everyone’s displeasure.
Five more tries for children. One ended in a tubal pregnancy, three had been spontaneous miscarriages.
And one stillborn.
Seeing Jan being prepped for an emergency C-section. Him being whisked out of the labor room. An hour later, he stood there, listening impassively while a ghoul in a white coat told him the baby had died during birth. But the mother was fine, thank God.
Thank God, Decker had repeated. Then, his only words: What was it?
It was a boy, Mr. Decker.
Jan had again retreated into her shell. When she finally did speak, the first thing she stated was a willingness to start again.
Decker had blurted out, Jan, give it a rest.
She didn’t speak to him for six months.
Now, her voice escorted him back into the present. “I was young, wasn’t I?”
“Yeah,” Decker said. “Look, I’ve got to get back—”
“I’ve often thought, Pete,” Jan interrupted, “not to get too metaphysical, but I really think that the purpose of our marriage must have been Cindy.”
“Probably was,” Decker said.
“You know,” Jan said, “your stoic, goyish manner used to really aggravate me—”
“Really now?”
Jan laughed. “But I’ll say one nice thing for you. During all our most horrible, heated fights, you never threw my wanting to…my wanting to abort in my face.”
“I could start now, if you want,” Decker said.
“Schmuck,” she said. “Never could take a compliment.”
She hung up the phone.
Give it a rest. Linda Darcy’s doctor had told her the same thing. Was that relevant to anything? If she had been anything like Jan, the need to have a child would have overpowered her, her husband, and their marriage.
He reentered the squad room, picked up the envelope from Manfred that was lying on his desk.
Marge stared at him and said, “Ex give you a rough time?”
“No,” Decker said.
“I’ll bet,” Marge said. “What did you ask Manfred for?”
“Information file on the Darcy land.” Decker took off his coat, slung it over his desk chair, and ripped open the glued-down flap. “Of course, I’m sure they deleted all the relevant facts and figures…but you never know what they might have left behind accidentally.”
“What’d you find out from Mister Mechanic Jim Grains?”
Decker sat down and put his feet up. “He and Linda were definitely screwing.”
“What’s he like?” Marge asked.
“Nothing to write home about. Scared of his wife, just your average stiff. I punched him in the computer this morning, brought up his ten-forty and five-forty for last year. He’s forty-two, and netted $34,862.38. Livable for his large family, but no room for leftover.”
“So Linda wasn’t after his money,” Marge said.
“It doesn’t seem so.” Decker sipped cold morning coffee he’d left on his desk and scanned the Darcy papers for ten minutes. When he was done, he said, “Creighton Donaldson was consistent. Manfred had appraised the Darcy land at four hundred eighty-four thou, seven hundred for one hundred acres used for livestock grazing and bee farming.”
“And?” Marge asked.
“And…that’s all she wrote.” Decker closed the file. “But reading between the lines, I’d say that maybe Manfred intended to use the land for things other than livestock and bee acreage.”
“Such as?” Hollander asked.
“Developments?” Marge said.
“Oil and minerals,” Decker said. “The file mentions several geologic evaluations done in conjunction with Eagle Petroleum with reference numbers and everything. But it neglects to include any of those evaluations. I’m going to have to ask old Creighton about that.”
“Thar’s oil in them thar hills,” Marge said.
“I don’t know if there’s oil, but I have a hunch someone was doing some digging,” Decker said.
“So what does that and the price of eggs have to do with the crime scene at the Darcy farm?” Hollander asked.
“Maybe nothing,” Decker said. “But maybe Linda was pressing Luke to sell because the bucks suddenly swelled to mammoth proportions.”
“Maybe someone felt she was pressing him a little too hard,” Marge said.
Decker shrugged.
Marge said, “I called Sue Beth Litton, asked her about Katie. She didn’t take the kid in to see the shrink.”
“Big surprise,” Decker said. “They think that kind of stuff is voodoo.”
“But it wasn’t a total loss,” Marge said. “I arranged to interview her parents. They’re back at the honey farm, trying to pick up the pieces. She was not happy about it. Said her parents had already been grilled by Ozzie Crandal and the Fall Springs crew. Pappy and Granny D had gone through enough. But I persisted. We’ve set something up day after tomorrow. Sue Beth says Granny’s still a wreck. But her father will probably talk to us.”
“You know, Margie, I’ve been thinking a lot about those two. I reread Crandal’s initial interview with them, thought about what he said. Then I went over your notes….”
“Yeah?”
“When you questioned Sue Beth Litton about her family being at the convention before she was, you marked a pause by her response.”
“Yeah, I remember that.”
“Why?”
“Without looking, I think I asked Sue Beth if she was sure they arrived before she did,” Marge said. “And she hesitated and said she was sure.”
Decker said, “Everyone I talked to at the beekeepers’ convention remembers seeing Pappy D before the Littons showed up,” Decker said. “But no one mentioned Granny D or Earl.”
Marge thought a moment. “That’s consistent with what Sue Beth said. She saw her dad but didn’t mention her mom or brother.”
“Maybe that’s why she paused when you asked if the whole family was up there when she arrived.”
“Pretty sh
arp, Sergeant,” Marge said.
“Only Crandal’s notes say that Pappy, Granny, and Earl came up at the same time. I don’t know if he assumed it or they actually claimed to come up at the same time.”
Marge said, “I’ll call up Sue Beth and check it out. She may tell me that she meant her whole family, but I’ll listen for a hinky tone of voice.”
“You’re good at hinky tones,” Decker said.
Hollander said to Decker, “You make a profile on all the guys Linda was balling? See if they have anything in common?”
“I did,” Decker said. “They don’t.”
“Give it to me,” Hollander said.
“Why not?” Decker tugged the Darcy file out of his drawer, pulled out the profile sheet, made a paper airplane out of it, and flew it to Hollander. “There’re only three on the ‘for sure’ list—Byron Howard, Rolland Mason, and now this Jim Grains. Creighton Donaldson is a maybe. I don’t have any proof on him.”
Marge said to Decker, “I’ve been going over your interview with Linda’s OB-GYN.”
“And?”
“Is it possible that Linda and Byron had an ongoing affair and Katie is Byron’s daughter?”
“I don’t think she’s Byron’s, but I don’t think she’s Luke’s, either,” Decker said. “I think Linda’s affair with Byron was discovered and stopped by Darlene before Linda could have become pregnant by him.”
“So we’ve got a missing link somewhere,” Marge said.
“Well, I don’t know who the link is,” Hollander said. “But I’ll tell you something about him.”
“What’s that?” Decker asked.
“He’s got a lot of kids,” Hollander said.
Decker and Marge looked at each other.
Hollander said, “Rolland had five, Byron has five, Grains has six—”
“Oh Christ, talk about being right in front of my face!” Decker was disgusted with himself. “Of course! Linda stopped artificial insemination four years ago. Too much pain, too much cost…She never gave up! She was trying to impregnate herself using men with good track records!”
“It worked,” Hollander said.
“You did good, Mike,” Decker said. “I screwed up, but you did real good.”