by Ed McBain
Considering the size of the Calusa PD, the police gym was spacious and well equipped. Cops—I assumed they were cops—swarmed all over the place, lifting weights, working out on the ropes and the parallel bars, shadowboxing, generally getting themselves in shape for their day-to-day combat with the bad guys. Bloom and I came out onto the polished wood floor, hauled a pair of mats to a relatively clear area, and squared off facing each other.
“You ready?” he asked. He was wearing a gray sweat suit that looked a bit baggy on him, the result of his recent bout with hepatitis and his subsequent weight loss.
“Ready,” I said, and Bloom jackknifed a flat-footed kick at my groin, aborting the attack an instant before what would have been an excruciatingly painful collision.
In the next hour or so, I learned a great deal from Detective Morris Bloom.
6
* * *
MY PHONE was ringing when I let myself into the kitchen. The clock on the wall read ten minutes to seven. I hadn’t heard from Joanna before I’d left the office, and I was hoping it might be her now. It was Veronica.
“Hi,” she said, “I’ve got a problem.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Sunny took the car this morning, and she isn’t back yet. I’ve been trying you at the office—”
“I was with Bloom.”
“Oh?” she said. “Anyway, the Jeep’s gone too, Rafe took it to Ananburg with him. And the hand is out somewhere in the pickup truck. I just don’t have any transportation.”
“I’ll come there,” I said.
“Are you sure you want to? It’s a long way, Matthew.”
“I’m sure I want to.”
“I’ll get some steaks ready,” she said. “Hurry.”
I showered and changed my clothes and was on the road by a quarter to eight. The Ghia ran like a Rolls-Royce, through flat pastureland flecked with grazing cows. Behind the car, the sun was beginning to drop slowly below the rim of the horizon, tinting the sky a fiery orange-red that spilled over into the countryside as a lush purple. In the palmettos and cabbage plants, the birds chirped their incessant sunset songs. As I drove eastward through the lingering dusk, I thought of Veronica waiting for me, and I remembered her brief excursionary flight on the verbs to see and to watch. I wanted to see her. I also wanted to watch her. I thought with pleasure of my new battery and my new fan belt, and of how reassuring it was to be driving along on such a glorious night, secure in the knowledge that my battery wasn’t dead and my fan belt wasn’t shot. My mind soared imaginatively, the way Veronica’s had last night.
To a mechanic, a “shot” fan belt was a worn one. To a bartender, a “shot” was a one-ounce glass of whiskey. To a decathlon champion, a “shot” was an iron ball to be thrown as far as he could throw it. To a tennis player, a “shot” was what he stroked over a net. To a junkie or a physician, a “shot” was an injection by hypodermic syringe. To a motion-picture director, a “shot” was any given camera setup. And to Morris Bloom, who discussed sibling spanking with all the aplomb of Krafft-Ebbing, a “shot” was something fired from a gun you could buy off a shelf like a ripe banana. I was very happy I wasn’t learning English as a foreign language; I was far too old to be taking a shot at such a formidable task.
Grinning, I drove through the open gate of the M.K. Ranch and onto the dirt road that led to the big white house. The sky had gradually shaded from purple to deep blue and then to the blackest of blacks, with only a few faint stars timidly glowing. Out on the pasture, I heard the lowing of a solitary cow, and then there was silence except for the chatter of the insects in the grass on either side of the road. The compound was empty and still, not a vehicle in sight anywhere. The mobile trailer home and the manager’s house were both dark, but the main house was aglow with light. I parked the car near the rusting gas tanks and went up the steps to the front entrance. I opened the screen door and knocked on the closed inner door.
“I’m out back!” Veronica called.
Following her voice, I went around the side of the house to a small patio that began where the greenhouse ended. Veronica was standing over a barbecue grill, looking at the glowing red coals under the grate. Amber light from inside the house spilled onto the patio. She was wearing white again—white shorts and sandals, a white T-shirt. A white plastic apron covered her to her thighs. The red lettering on it read, DON’T KISS ME, I’M COOKING.
I kissed her.
I kissed her hungrily.
She said, “Wow.”
I kissed her again.
“I missed you,” she said.
“Me too.”
“I’ll put the steaks on,” she said. “We’ll eat here, if that’s all right, and then we can go to your place later. Will that be all right?”
“Sure,” I said.
She was still in my arms. She looked up into my face.
“It’s just...Sunny may be home later, I don’t like to—”
“I understand.”
“Are you sure? I hate to sound so damn Puritan.”
“You don’t sound Puritan.”
“Especially when the wandering child in question...well, never mind. I’d just feel more comfortable at your place.”
“So would I.”
I kissed her again.
“You have to stop doing that,” she said. “Until later. Otherwise, I’ll lose all my maternal resolve.”
“Okay,” I said, and kissed her again.
“Oh, wowwwww,” she said, and fell limply against me. “Is this how Jesus felt in the wilderness?” She kissed me on the chin. “Let me get the steaks,” she said. “What would you like to drink? I made a pitcherful of martinis, but I can mix anything you—”
“A martini would be lovely.”
“I’ll bring the pitcher out,” she said.
As she started around the house, a phone began ringing inside. She looked up, listened, nodded, and then said, “That’s Sunny’s, upstairs. I never answer it.” She blew me a kiss and disappeared into the night. I sat near the grill and looked up at the sky. There were more stars now. I could even make out some of the constellations. It would be a beautiful day tomorrow—in the morning, anyhow. The telephone upstairs stopped ringing. I thought suddenly of Sunny’s visit to my office. I did not relish the thought of telling Veronica about it, but I knew I would have to. I sat there thinking it was sad when a man of thirty-eight could remember most clearly only the mistakes he’d made in his life. I wondered if Veronica was a mistake. Fifty-seven years old, I thought. And then she came into view around the corner of the house again, juggling a martini pitcher and a platter of meat and three ears of corn wrapped in foil and a pair of short glasses, and she looked so utterly, adolescently helpless in that moment that all I wanted to do was hold her close again and reassure her that fifty-seven didn’t mean a damn and this definitely wasn’t a mistake. I rushed to unburden her.
“Just in the nick,” she said, and the telephone upstairs began ringing again. “Never rings when she’s here,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Only when she’s out. The most maddening thing in the world. Pour us some martinis, okay? How do you like your steaks? Did I tell you how handsome you look? Satan, get thee behind me.”
The martinis were cold and crisp and very, very dry. As Veronica put the steaks on, she mentioned idly that beef sometimes made a big circle out of Florida to the feeding pens out West and then back again to Florida, where it ended up on the dinner table. “For all I know,” she said, “these steaks may once have been calves on the M.K.”
I thought about her eating her own cows. “Do you ever get attached to any of them?” I asked. “The cows?”
“Never. It’s a business, Matthew.”
I thought of Sunny telling me those weren’t pets out there.
I sighed.
“What is it?” she asked at once.
“Sunny came to see me this afternoon,” I said.
“Oh? what about?”
I told her she’d been there
to tell me about something that was obviously troubling her. I told her I’d blown it by bearing down too hard on her, asking a lot of questions, generally behaving like a benevolent bully. I told her I felt guilty as hell about scaring off a girl who was already scared.
“But of what?” Veronica asked, and I realized all at once that I’d never told her about Sunny’s speculation that her brother had been rustling cows right here on the M.K.
I hesitated.
“Matthew,” she said, “never keep anything from me, okay? I was married to a man who was as secretive as a rock. What happened with Ham might never have happened if Drew had ever dared to reveal himself to me. Whatever it is, you can tell me.”
I told her.
She listened intently. The steaks sizzled and popped on the grill. Occasionally she nodded. Once she said, “I didn’t think Sunny knew that much about cows.” I kept talking. When I got to the end of it, she was silent for several moments. Then she said, “I feel like running out there right this minute to count all my damn cows.” She shook her head. “It’s hard to believe...but it’s equally hard to disbelieve. He could have done it, Matthew. I wouldn’t put it past him.” She was silent again. “That’s why you were asking me about people with Spanish accents, right?” she said, and nodded. “Is that who Sunny’s afraid of? The man she heard on the phone?”
“Well, that’s what seemed so far-fetched to me. That’s when I began asking all my questions. She seemed genuinely convinced that the man might have known she was on the line, but...I just don’t know. I had the feeling there was something else she wanted to tell me. She seemed so damn scared, Veronica...”
“Well, I’d be scared too. If I thought a murderer—”
“Yes, but why all of a sudden? Last Friday night, she didn’t seem at all—”
I cut myself off.
“Oops,” Veronica said.
I looked at her.
“What about last Friday night?” she asked. “You saw her? My daughter? Last Friday night?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“She came to my house.”
“Oh?”
“That’s when she told me about Jack.”
“At your house?”
“Yes.”
“How long was she there?”
“An hour or so.”
“Did you go to bed with her, too, Matthew?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’d remember,” I said, and smiled.
Veronica smiled back.
“I’d better check those steaks,” she said.
I wasn’t sure I trusted that smile. She stood at the grill silently, her back to me, cutting into the steaks to test them, forking them onto separate plates, clasping the corn with tongs, and finally carrying the plates over to a picnic table and bench already set with utensils, glasses, and napkins. She took two bottles of beer from a cooler, and plunked them down beside each plate.
“Eat,” she said. “Before it gets cold.”
We began eating in silence.
The steak was very good, but the silence was foreboding.
“If I thought for a minute,” she said at last, “that you went to bed with Sunny...”
“I didn’t.”
“I’m glad,” she said. “Because I’d stick this steak knife right in your heart.”
I believed her.
She smiled radiantly. Lowering her voice confidentially, she said, “Of course, Sunny can be very flirtatious, I know that, outrageously so.” She looked across the table at me. The smile was still on her face. “Provocative, too,” she said, “a maddening child, really.” Her eyes met mine. “Did she flirt with you, Matthew?”
“Yes.”
“Was she...provocative?”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t touch her.”
She was watching me expectantly. The smile on her mouth encouraged complete honesty. The smile was telling me she was my friend as well as my lover. The smile was assuring me that if indeed I had been intimate with her daughter, she would be understanding and sympathetic because she knew full well how outrageously flirtatious and maddeningly provocative Sunny could be. But the smile never quite reached her pale eyes, and a moment ago she had told me she would stick a steak knife in my heart. I was very glad I was able to tell her the truth.
“I didn’t touch her,” I said.
She nodded.
“Why not?” she asked.
I told her why not. I told her about my attempted seven-dollar rape in Chicago. I told her about breaking up with Dale. I told her about Charlie and Jeff using me for a beanbag. I told her there were some things a person just didn’t do if he expected to live with himself ever again. She listened the way she’d been listening when I’d told her about her son stealing cows. When I finished, she said, “I think I love you, do you know that?”
We both turned at the sudden sound of an automobile out front.
“There’s Sunny,” she said. “If you so much as look at her, Matthew...”
“Do you realize what you just said?”
“Can’t remember a word of it,” she said airily, and got up and called, “We’re out back!” She came around to my side of the table. She cupped my chin in her hand. She kissed me so fiercely that I almost fell off the bench. She squeezed my chin hard, said, “Mm, you!” and then released it and went to sit on the other side of the table again, the prim and proper mother awaiting the arrival of her prodigal daughter.
Jackie Crowell came into view around the corner of the house. He was wearing blue jeans, boots, and a striped T-shirt. He stood awkwardly at the far end of the patio, looking very much like a shit-kicking bumpkin. “Hello, Mrs. McKinney,” he said. “Mr. Hope.” His dark eyes looked very somber and concerned. He was not smiling.
“Where’s Sunny?” Veronica said, glancing into the shadows beyond the house.
“She’s not here, huh?” Crowell said.
“No, she isn’t.”
“I was hoping she might be. I been calling, but I got no answer. I figured she might be downstairs, didn’t want to run up to answer the phone. When I drove her here this morning...”
He hesitated. He looked at me. He looked at Veronica.
“She...uh...was at my place last night,” he said apologetically, and shrugged his massive shoulders. “Anyway...uh...before I went to work this morning, I drove her back here. She said she wanted to pick up the Porsche, go do some shopping. She said she’d be back at the apartment sometime this afternoon. But when I got back from work—”
“What time was that?” I asked. Sunny McKinney had come to my office at about one-thirty. She’d left about twenty minutes later. Assuming she’d already done her shopping...
“When I got back from work, you mean? Around five-thirty,” he said. “She wasn’t home yet.”
I could see that Veronica took mild offense at his use of the word home to define Sunny’s residence, much the same as I did whenever Susan referred to her house as Joanna’s home. But she said nothing.
“I’m a little worried about her,” Crowell said. “She’s usually either home or here, so...I mean, where can she be?”
Veronica looked at her watch. I looked at mine. It was close to nine-thirty. In Calusa, the department stores in the malls were open till nine. There was no conceivable way that Sunny could still be out there shopping. The knowledge was on Veronica’s face. It was on Crowell’s as well.
“Her clothes are gone, too,” he said. He looked at Veronica, apologetically again. “The clothes she kept at my place. Only thing she left was a bathing suit.”
“What was she wearing the last time you saw her?” I asked.
“Purple shorts. A purple T-shirt.”
“What time was that?”
“When I dropped her off here? Must’ve been about eight-thirty this morning.”
“And she said she planned to do some shopping?”
“Yeah. Downtown.”
&n
bsp; “Did she say anything about wanting to see me?”
“What do you mean?”
“Coming to my office?”
“No. Did she come there?”
“At about one-thirty.”
“No, she didn’t mention that,” Crowell said. “Just that she was going shopping.”
The silence was almost palpable. The intrusive chatter of the insects in the grass sounded like a sudden musical sting in a horror movie, presaging dire events to come.
“Well,” I said, “it’s only nine-thirty...”
My voice trailed off. The insects kept up their ominous chatter, intensifying the silence on the patio.
“Maybe I ought to check around town,” Crowell said. “Places we hang out in.”
“That might be a good idea,” I said. “But really, I don’t think there’s any cause for alarm.”
I looked at him. His eyes told me he thought there was cause for alarm.
“Well, sorry to’ve bothered you,” he said. “I’ll look around, let you know if I find her.”
“Matthew, give him your number,” Veronica said. Apparently her own concern was not great enough to keep her glued here to the ranch all night. I fished in my wallet for a card, and wrote my home phone number on the back of it. “You can call us there when you find her,” Veronica said. “Meanwhile, I’ll keep trying here. I’ll let you know when she gets home.” She stressed the word home. Whatever else Crowell may have thought, home to Veronica was not a dinky little apartment in New Town. She had also used the word when. Veronica was obviously less concerned about her daughter’s meandering than I’d thought; “when she gets home” was a far cry from “if she gets home.”
“Do you have my number?” Crowell asked.
“You’d better give it to me,” I said.
I wrote it down on the back of another card, and stuck the card in my wallet.
“Well,” he said, and stood shuffling his feet for another moment. “Sorry to’ve interrupted your supper.” He turned awkwardly and walked off the patio into the darkness. Moments later, we heard his car starting. We listened to the sound of its engine fading on the road to the main gate. The insects took over again.