Ticket to Ride

by Ed Gorman

  “I was looking for Lynn. Wondered if you’d seen her.”

  “Earlier I did. Around breakfast time. I was getting the paper and she was pulling out in her car. She waved and said she was going to do some early shopping. Everything all right? You seem a little tense.”

  “Everything’s fine. I’m tense because of something that happened a little while ago. Nothing to do with Lynn.”

  Chauncey barked basso profundo. I was surprised the front window didn’t shatter.

  “Ol’ Chauncey’s hungry. It’s lunchtime for both of us, I guess. The summer’s going by too fast. Pretty soon I’ll be eating the cafeteria food at the high school. That’s one way I keep my weight down. I can’t eat very much of it. I don’t know what the hell they do to it, but whatever it is, the Reds could use it for torture.” He grinned. “I like the gals in the cafeteria. I always feel a little guilty knocking them like that.”

  For me, the pitiless sun precluded any more small talk. “You know Lynn pretty well. Does she talk about Karen’s fire a lot?”

  He watched as Chauncey nuzzled his leg. “She was pretty mad at herself after the fire. But these days, she talks about her ex more than she talks about the fire. The three of us were all pretty good friends. It’s that kind of neighborhood. I think the whole block pitched in to help her with Karen dying. But it’s different with her ex. Not much we can do about that except sit and listen to her. The guy sounds like a jerk.”

  “Does she go out much at night?” I wanted to keep him talking. He’d started blinking a lot and licking his lips. I wanted to know what he was afraid of.

  He started to speak, then stopped. He gave me one of those looks that he hoped would take him into the deep dark recesses of my mind. “What’re you trying to find out here?”

  “Just trying to get to know Lynn better.”

  “Why?”

  “Thought I might ask her out.”

  He was silent for a time. “You didn’t bother to ask if Lynn and I might be seeing each other.”

  “No, I didn’t. And I apologize.”

  “Well, we’re not. But you picked a strange way to ask her out. All these questions, I mean.” The smile surprised me but seemed real. “Sorry if I snapped at you there. I’m very protective of her, same as I was with Karen. We all helped each other through a lot of bad times. My wife left me shortly after we moved here. I thought I would end up in a mental hospital. I lost twenty pounds in less than two months. The only thing that held me together was spending evenings with the girls here. They nursed me back to wanting to live again. And then one day I woke up and got interested in somebody else, and I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t care about my ex any more. That’s the point I want to get Lynn to. Where she doesn’t hate him any more. Because that’s the grip he has on her. How much she hates him.”

  I put out my hand. “I appreciate all this, Jimmy. Next time I’ll be more careful about my bird-dogging.”

  He laughed. “Well, I hate to admit it, but I’ve done a little of that myself over the years. And I’m not proud of it. Ended up in bed with my best friend’s girl at this drunken party one night. She blamed me for it all, and neither one of them has had anything to do with me since.”

  “It’s a dangerous game.”

  “That’s why all this talking we’re doing makes me nervous, McCain. I had some trouble with the bottle back then, and sometimes when we talk about those days I kind of get the shakes. Lots of bad memories.”

  For the first time, I saw why the sisters had befriended him. There was a sadness beneath the swagger that gave him a kind of teenaged vulnerability.

  “The bottle’s destroyed a lot of lives. I see it every day in my line of work.”

  “I’m just about two years dry. I finally did something I’m proud of, besides throwing a football.” Chauncey’s bark rumbled across the grass. “I guess he’s hungry. See you, McCain.”

  By the time I sat behind the wheel of my ragtop, Adair and Chauncey had disappeared into their house. I sat there, looking straight ahead at the garage, then at the house, and then back at the garage again. A momentary desolate silence ensued. Something wasn’t right. Maybe she’d left town. Packed a small bag and fled. She had the best reason for killing Bennett and Davenport. Maybe she had found out about the real cause of the fire and the men behind it and had started killing them. But if she’d left town, she’d done so leaving Raines and DePaul alive. That wouldn’t fit the pattern of an obsessed killer.

  Her car being in the garage bothered me more than anything else. There was always the chance that she’d given in to panic and had taken a bus to the Cedar Rapids airport. Get far away before there was even a hint of anything being wrong.

  But there was another person I needed to talk to as well. William Hughes had been a friend of the Shanlon family. He would also have had a good sense of just abut everything that had gone on in the mansion. What if he cared more about his relationship with the Shanlon women than his relationship with Lou Bennett? He wasn’t a young man, but I had no doubt he was a capable one.

  I took the ragtop out of gear and let it start to roll down the driveway. I popped the clutch and the V8 stirred into life. I had one chance of seeing Hughes. That consisted of getting to the mansion before Linda Raines learned that her husband was going to prison and would refuse to let me come inside.

  I pointed my Ford eastward and set about violating some speed laws.

  A middle-aged maid in a gray uniform dress and a white apron greeted me at the door. When I asked to see William Hughes she said, “I’m sorry, he’s not here.”

  “Is he in today?”

  The blue eyes showed confusion. “Well—”

  “It’s all right, Marilyn. I’ll talk to him.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.” She backed out of the doorway, nodded to Linda Raines, and went back into the house.

  “I’ll have to get me one of those.”

  “I’m sure she offends your sense of justice for the poor.”

  “Not any more than a lot of other things.”

  This morning she’d gone cowgirl—a white silk blouse tucked into tailored jeans and cordovan Western boots.

  Obviously Cliffie hadn’t called her yet to tell her that her husband was in custody and just might not be wheeling up the old driveway in his expensive sports car any time soon. If he had, Linda Raines would not be so collected and poised.

  Her dark hair was gathered at the back, emphasizing the chic bones of her face. Even though the mark of beauty changed over the centuries, it was difficult to believe that her face would ever go out of style.

  “You were asking about William?”

  “I need to talk to him.”

  “You can’t; he isn’t here.” Irritation in her words.

  “You don’t sound happy about that.”

  “To be honest, Mr. McCain, I don’t understand any of this. I’m sorry I was cold a bit ago. I swing back and forth between being mad and being afraid. You caught me when I was mad.”

  “Have you seen William today?”

  “No, and that’s just it. We usually know where he is. But he wasn’t here this morning. I can’t even find my husband.” Then: “Oh, I’m sorry. Would you like to come in and have a cup of coffee?” She wasn’t faking her muddled thinking. She was going to be even more muddled and more fearful when she heard where David Raines was at the moment. But somebody else would give her that news, not me.

  “No, I need to be going. I just thought I could see William.”

  From her jeans she extracted a package of cigarettes. Next came a long, narrow silver lighter. After she got her cigarette going, she said, “Something was wrong yesterday. I asked him several times if there was anything I could do for him. When I was a little girl, William was my best friend and confidant. I told him everything. And every once in a while he’d tell me about himself, what he’d done with his life. He was the same with Karen Shanlon, but even more so. He spent as much time with her as he could wh
en he was here. He was very protective of her. One of the few times I’d ever seen him stand up to my father was when Dad was telling me that Karen just wasn’t right for our family. William spoke right up. He didn’t attack Dad, but he made his case and didn’t back down. Dad was surprised. And so was I. And that was when I realized it.”

  “Realized what?”

  “About William being in love with Karen. I’d just assumed it was all very paternal, the way he hovered around her. But that day when he took on Dad, I heard it in his voice. He was really smitten. And I didn’t blame him. Most people liked her. I think her damaged foot had given her a different perspective on life. She was good. Not phony good. But actually good. She was so kind and patient and loving. I liked to see her play with our cats and dogs. They took to her in ways they’d never taken to us.” Then: “I feel guilty saying this, because for a long time I was a real bitch to her. I wish I could take it all back.”

  I remembered Wendy telling me about how rough Lou and Linda had made it for Karen. At least Linda had eventually come around.

  Then I thought about what she’d just told me.

  William had loved Karen. So when Karen was murdered, did William start killing the people who had taken Karen’s life? Maybe I could make a case for it. The same kind of case that had Lynn Shanlon avenging her sister’s death.

  “Are you sure you won’t come in?”

  “No, thanks. I need to be going.”

  She angled her head so that it pointed west. “I’m going riding. It’s hot, but my horse needs a good run and it’ll get me out of this house. I just can’t stop thinking about Dad being gone. I hated him but I loved him too. Have you ever felt anything like that, Mr. McCain?”

  “All the time.”

  The smile was gentle. “I just hope life gets simpler the older I get.”

  I felt like a coward for not telling her about her husband’s trouble, because her life was about to get more complicated than it had ever been.

  Two minutes later, I was winding the ragtop around the circle drive in front of the mansion and heading out to see my good friend Ralph DePaul.

  23

  NINA DEPAUL WAS WASHING THE FAMILY CHRYSLER. SHE’D splashed herself with the hose. Water gleamed on her thin legs. She had the radio turned to an Iowa City station that played classical music. I sure did like her, but I imagined that that book Pat Boone wrote about dating would call her taste “square.” Kenny and I and our various dates had had a lot of fun passing the book around and laughing at all his bullshit advice. I strongly suspected that even now Pat was virginal. His music sure was.

  “Hi, Mr. McCain.”

  “You must be dangerous with a hose.” Her glasses were spackled with water, too.

  “I just sprayed my legs to cool off. I have a lot of great ideas like that.” The grin was quick and pretty.

  “Is Ralph around?”

  She took the soapy rag she was using and pointed to the garage. “He’s been in there for about an hour. He got a phone call and then I heard my mom start crying and then he went to the garage. She’s in her room. She doesn’t want me to come in. I don’t know what’s going on. And I don’t know why he’s in the garage. There’s nothing in there. I mean he doesn’t have a little shop area like some men do. I was going to peek in, but since my mom’s so upset, I don’t want to make things worse by getting him mad at me.”

  “You say the phone call was an hour ago?”

  “Maybe forty-five or fifty minutes, now that I think about it. They always rerun Maverick in the afternoon, and that was on when the call came.”

  “You like Maverick?”

  “Yeah, but I like it better when it’s James Garner and not Jack Kelly. What’s so funny?”

  “You. Funny and sweet.” I stared down the drive to the garage. It would hold only one car. Even if DePaul had wanted a shop with a workbench and some tools, there wouldn’t have been room enough for it. “There’s a window on the side closest to the back yard?”

  “Uh-huh. That’s where I was going to peek in.”

  “I’ll give it a try.”

  “Whatever it is, he was so upset he wasn’t even yelling. That’s the real bad sign with him. If he’s not yelling. He was like that when our cocker spaniel got run over last year. We’ve got another TV set in the basement. He basically stayed down there alone for three or four days. My mom would take him his meals down there. I felt sorry for him. It made him seem more human to me. The funny thing was, he’d never paid much attention to Reggie when he was alive. It’s like he was afraid to show how much he cared about him or something. He wants everybody to know how tough he is.”

  “Thanks, Nina.”

  A crow sat on the crest of the garage roof watching me, shiny in the sunlight. The humidity was so bad, I felt as if I was plodding through glue.

  I opened the wooden gate carefully, trying to minimize the noise. I left it open. I took long cautious steps along the side of the garage until I reached the small window. I wanted to check him out before I let him know I was here. He might have hidden something in the garage—the mysterious letter came to mind—and maybe I’d get lucky and catch him with it in his hand. I realized how stupid the thought was. The heat was obviously deep-frying my brain.

  He sat on a wooden stool, the heel of one shoe caught on the crossbar beneath the seat. Instead of street clothes, he wore the shirt, belt, and trousers of the Army. The leather holster at his side was empty. The .45 resided in his hand.

  I always wondered if I’d get there someday. It had all gotten away from DePaul, and maybe it would someday all get away from me too. I suppose a good many of us have thought of how we’d do it if it came to that. A bullet was probably the most sensible way. Hard to miss with a bullet. The river, tall buildings, poison, I wasn’t sure why, but they didn’t seem right for me.

  I walked to the door near the wooden gate. I knew I could get killed for my trouble but there was no way to sneak in. I opened the door. It made a scraping sound. He heard me. He slowly raised his head and studied me for a moment. I went inside.

  I’d seen a number of my clients in jail suffering from clinical depression. Their responses were always lugubrious, like those of an engine that didn’t want to fire. You sometimes wondered if they were awake in any real sense.

  The garage smelled of heat, oil, dust, dirt. Garages had been neat places to play in my boyhood days. You could close the door and feel that you were in command of your own little world, a cowboy world or an outer space world or a Superman world.

  But we were way beyond play worlds now. His despondence was as palpable and oppressive as the heat.

  “Did Sykes send you? He called me.”

  “No. I came on my own.”

  “So you know?”

  “Some of it, not all of it.”

  He raised the gun and pointed it at me. “This’d be something in the morning paper, wouldn’t it? If I shot you and then took my own life?”

  “Why don’t you put the gun away?”

  “You’re scared, aren’t you?”

  “Sure. And you’re scared, too, even with the gun.”

  He kept the gun in his hand, but he bent his head and went back to looking at the floor. His bitterness broke his gloom. “My old man screwed up at the end too. Had a good life but got hooked up with some Florida people pulling a land scam. Colonel DePaul. Perfect record until then. Died by hitting an embankment at ninety miles an hour. Everybody knew he’d done it on purpose, but nobody would say it out loud.”

  “What made you get involved with the fire?”

  His anguished blue eyes were focused on me again. “For years I’ve been driving over to the Quad Cities to do a little gambling. Usually took my wife and made a weekend of it. We had some good times. And then I just got hooked. I’d drive over there two or three times a week. And it wasn’t fun any more. It was serious. If I’d lose, I’d go over to win some of my money back. If I’d win, I’d go because I figured I was on a roll.”

>   “How much have you lost?” But given what the judge had learned from the bank, I thought I already knew.

  “Most of our retirement. A pretty good share of our savings.”

  “So your wife knows?”

  “She knows about the money. She doesn’t know that I let Lou pay me off.” His heel came off the stool. In a single swift movement, he dropped his gun arm and jammed the .45 into his holster. “I never did have my old man’s guts.”

  “If you cooperate, they’ll go easier on you.”

  “Nina’ll be happy. She never liked me.”

  “She won’t be happy. She may not like you much, but she doesn’t hate you. Mostly, she’ll be worried about her mother.”

  A snort. “Her mother. I’ve been a piss-poor husband this time, too. Swore I’d really be different on the second go-round, and for a few years I was. But I slipped back into my old ways. My mother always called my old man a tyrant, and that’s what I am too. And Nina’s got every right not to like me. I wasn’t much of a stepfather, either.”

  “You could be out in a few years.”

  “I’d never make it. I’d die in there.”

  “Not if you were careful.”

  His head sank again. He’d shut me out.

  “Listen to me, DePaul. I need to get some things clear. Then I’ll help you with Sykes. I promise.”

  “What a way to end up. I take a bribe and then I fink on everybody.”

  “They killed a woman. You’re doing what you should.” I paused. “You want a smoke?”

  “Yeah. That’d be good. I guess I left mine inside.”

  I walked my pack over to him. Handed it over. He drew one out. I put my Zippo to work. In the dusty sunlight through the window in back, the smoke had a hallucinatory tumbling richness to it. I took one for myself. I needed him to give me the two names out loud.