by Ed Gorman
“Uh, just a minute, okay?” Jamie answered.
This is one I hadn’t heard before. I’d heard “It’s your nickel,” I’d heard “Uh, Mr.
C’s office.”
Now she said: “Damn, I just spilled my nail polish all over the desk.”
There was no sense being angry. God was punishing me for all my sins.
“Okay, I’m back,” she said.
“It’s me.”
“Oh, gosh Mr. C, I’ve been trying to find you.”
“You have?”
“Well, I was about to try and find you I guess I should say. Turk brought me a sandwich and we’re just sort of eating it.”
A lurid picture of them humping on my desk filled the drive-in screen of my mind.
“Ah, lunch.”
“She tried to kill herself, Mr. C.”
“Who did?”
“Molly.”
“Molly Blessing?”
“Yeah. Molly Blessing. Her mom called and said Molly wants to talk to you.”
“Where is she now?”
“The hospital. Not the Catholic one.”
That was how she always referred to things. The Catholic one or not the Catholic one. The dime store that’s not Woolworth’s. The pizza joint that’s not out on Highway 6.
“I’m going over there now. were there any other messages?”
She cupped the phone. “Didn’t somebody else call, Turk?”
A muffled male voice.
“Turk says no other calls. I was in the ladies room for a while, Mr. C. He was watching the phone.”
Watching I wouldn’t mind. Talking into it I would. If her phone mannerisms were bad, imagine Turk’s. He’s Irish by the way.
God only knows where the name Turk came from.
I drove straight to the hospital. Not the Catholic one.
I wasn’t surprised by a suicide attempt, not after the way she’d acted the other night.
When I got to her room, the nurse said, “Her parents are downstairs talking to the doctor. You can have five minutes or so. She’s weak.” Betty Byrnes read her name tag.
“What happened?”
“She got into her mother’s tranquilizers.
Took a dozen or so. Fortunately, they’re not especially strong dosage-wise. She’ll be fine.”
She didn’t look fine. The only vibrant color in the room was her coppery hair.
Everything else was white, including her face.
She looked like a dying angel. She seemed to be sleeping. I didn’t want to wake her up. I started to turn and walk away.
“Hi, Sam.”
I turned back to her. “Hi, Molly.”
“Pretty stupid thing to do, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said, walking over to her.
“Pretty stupid.”
Deep sigh. There was a table on wheels next to her bed. A silver metal water pitcher was beaded with sweat. An abridged version of the King James Bible. A movie magazine with Rock Hudson on it.
She said, “I just couldn’t deal with it.
It really hit me. You know, that he was dead and not coming back. I had a couple of drinks from my father’s bar in the basement and then I found my mom’s tranquilizers. I don’t remember much after that.”
“You in any pain?”
“Not really. Just kind of groggy. This was so dumb. It’s embarrassing.”
“Anything I can get you?”
She tried to smile. “A phone call from David would be nice.” Then, “I wish I were as strong as Rita.”
“She’s pretty tough.”
“She wouldn’t pull a stunt like this one.” She laid her head back. Closed her eyes. “You think I’ll ever get over it, Sam?”
“I don’t know about getting over it. But you’ll be able to deal with it.”
“I wish I were an adult.”
“We all wish we were adults.”
She opened one eye and smiled at me.
“You’ve got a great sense of humor.” Then, “David did, too. He was never boring to be with. Never. You could just sit somewhere and he could keep you entertained for hours. I’d never known anybody like that before.” Then, “My folks told me Cliffie’s mad at you because you’ve been asking people a lot of questions.”
“Just trying to make sure that Egan’s death was accidental.”
“You didn’t like him much, did you, Sam?”
“Sometimes I did. Sometimes he was pretty hard to take. The way he felt sorry for himself and everything.”
“He had good reasons to feel sorry for himself, Sam.”
This wasn’t the time for a debate. “His aunts will see to it that he gets a nice funeral.”
“I may still be in here.”
The nurse came in. “Her folks’ll be back in a few minutes.” She had a kind, middle-aged face. She gazed down at Molly. “She conned me into phoning your office and inviting you up here. But I’d just as soon the doctor doesn’t know I did it.”
“I really appreciate you coming here, Sam.”
“I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”
The nurse beamed. “She’ll be fine. All her vitals are good and she’s in much better spirits this morning than she was last night.”
“What I am mostly is embarrassed,” said Molly. ““Poor, pathetic Molly crying out for help again.” I can just hear people saying that now.”
I leaned over and kissed her on the forehead.
She took my hand and squeezed it.
In the hall, Betty said, “She’s a nice kid. But unlucky.”
“Unlucky how?”
“David Egan. My oldest daughter went out with him a few times. I know you were his lawyer, Mr. McCain. And maybe he was your friend. But mothers aren’t thrilled when their daughter takes up with somebody like him. They’re like professional heartbreakers, boys like him. They want to wound the girl in some way and walk away. Fortunately for my daughter, she recognized this in him pretty early. She made sure he didn’t hurt her. She finally met a nice kid and told David good-bye. I was on my knees a whole lot of nights praying that Doris wouldn’t fall in love with him.” She nodded to the room.
“Poor little Molly wasn’t so lucky.”
The elevator doors started to open.
“I think I’ll take the stairs,” I said.
“I don’t blame you,” Betty said. “Her parents are in a mood to tear into somebody. And I’d hate to see it be you.”
Seventeen
I had to pass the Kelly house on my way out of town so I decided to see if they were home and if they would let me spend a little time in David’s room. I doubted if Cliffie had even bothered checking it out. Since he was convinced he knew what had happened, why would he? I’d have to check the lumberyard again to make sure Mike was there. Might as well get this done first.
I parked in the drive and heard them talking in the backyard. They were hanging white sheets on the clothesline. A wind was filling the dried sheets at the far end of the line and flapping them in the wind like the sails of pirate ships. Newly mown grass smelled fresh and crisp; and on a small stone cookout grill-one I suspected that David had made-a couple of burgers were cooking. On the edge of a picnic table you could see catsup, mustard, relish, and a stack of paper plates.
Amy had just stuck a wooden clothespin in her mouth when I approached. I heard Emma but I couldn’t see her. “I’m washing our special tablecloth. Emma’s birthday’s coming up.”
“She’s a year and a half older than I am, Sam,” Emma said, working her way out from behind a sheet.
“Year and a quarter,” Amy said.
It was the easy jocularity of two women who had literally spent their entire lives together.
I’d read an article about how close companions could virtually become one person after so many years. I believed it.
“I wondered if I could look around
David’s room.”
The look that passed between them surprised me.
Good old Sam suddenly became good old Sam the intruder.
“Now why on earth would you want to do that, Sam?” Amy said.
Now I was more than surprised. I was suspicious myself. Pretty harmless request.
“Well, you hired me to find out what happened to him. I just thought that maybe I’d turn up something in his room.”
The look again.
“Well,” Emma said. “Wish you would’ve given us a little warning is all.”
“Yes,” Amy said, “we did the best we could but it wasn’t easy to keep things picked up.”
“We just don’t want you thinking we’re bad housekeepers, Sam.”
I wondered what they didn’t want me to find. What was there to be so secretive about?
Especially in light of the fact that I was working for them. Supposedly, anyway.
“Maybe you could stop back later this afternoon, Sam,” Emma said. “Give us a chance to pick things up first.”
I glanced from one to the other. Such sweet old ladies. Such a sweet old day. Scent of laundry and fresh cut grass. And even a monarch butterfly perched on one end of the clothesline.
And yet there was something a little sinister about these two old ladies now. Norman Rockwell’s first drive-in movie poster-two sweet-faced little old ladies who were actually in the vanguard of an alien race about to take over planet earth. I half expected to see killer rays shooting from their eyes.
“You know,” I said, “if I didn’t know better, I’d say you two had something to hide.”
Amy was the blusher of the two. Her cheeks hued crimson at my words and her gaze fell to the grass.
Emma burst out with a rich but fake laugh.
“Well, he’s found us out, Amy. About our criminal past.”
Amy wasn’t as good at faking. She managed to stammer through, “Uh, oh yes, our past-criminal-past.”
“How about around suppertime?” I said.
“Now that would be fine, Sam,” Emma said, keeping her fake enthusiasm up. We really aren’t trying to hide anything. We just want to pick things up a little.”
They stood there smiling at me. Amy had her hands behind her back. Maybe she was holding a blood-dripping ax-Another drive-in movie poster.
I decided to try the office again. This time Jamie answered right away and in English.
“Law office.”
“Any calls?”
All this came out in a gush: “Gosh, you know who called you, Mr. C? Andrea Prescott.
Just about the most stuck-up girl who ever went to our high school. She was a good friend of Sara Griffin’s. She said she has to talk to you right away. She called from Iowa City. She’s going to school there. She said she’ll be back here in about half an hour and wants you to meet her at the Indian mounds.”
“She say why she wants to talk to me?”
“No. She was her usual snotty self.”
Jamie was never sweeter than when she felt snubbed. She was little-kid hurt, right up front, all naked pain. She didn’t try to hide it for the sake of saving face.
“I’m sorry, Jamie.”
“Oh, it’s all right, Mr. C. I didn’t cry or nothin’.”
“Good. I’ll talk to you in a while, all right?”
Once again, I had to postpone my trip to see Brenda Carlyle.
In ninth grade I had to write a paper on the mound builders. These Indians were descended in some way we still don’t understand from tribes that thousands of years earlier killed huge bison by running them over cliffs or running them into bogs, where they were trapped. The Indians then speared them to death. Bows and arrows hadn’t been invented yet. Spears alone wouldn’t kill the animals but cunning would. And the forbears of the mound builders seemed to have plenty of that. Running twelve-hundred-pound animals off a cliff is a pretty bright idea.
Except for certain stone artifacts, we don’t really know much about these ancient hunters except that they practiced communal living.
Bison of the size they hunted meant a thousand pounds of meat and that would presumably have fed everybody in the tribe for some time.
We know a lot more about the mound builders who came after them, though these people, too, remain mysterious. The mounds are large, above-ground tombs of maybe one hundred and fifty feet in length and maybe three feet in height. When they were opened, scientists found evidence of a people who were far more sophisticated than any who came before and many who came after. It was as if this certain people took a quantum leap up the ladder of knowledge. But then a strange quirk occurs. The native peoples that European explorers first met do not seem to have descended from the mysterious mound builders. The later people did not have the skills or scientific understanding of the builders of the mounds.
So who were the mound builders and what were they all about? I’m waiting for God to tell me.
Apparently He’s the only one who knows for sure.
Or maybe Andrea Prescott knew. She was a cold blond, who was not quite as good-looking as she thought, all done up in several hundred dollars of good clothes-blue suede car coat, dark blue sweater, light blue slacks-anda pair of sunglasses that gave her the faint air of a starlet. She had set her very nice bottom on the edge of a picnic table and was in the process of lighting a cigarette when I walked up to her.
“God, you really are short.”
“Why, thank you.”
“I suppose that came off a little shitty.”
She put out a limp slender hand. I half expected she half expected me to kiss it. I gave it a good shaking. “You can do better than that, McCain. Put a little hurt into it.”
She smiled. She apparently found this all terribly, terribly amusing. Dear, dear Noel. She said, “Did anybody warn you about me?”
“Just that pest control company.”
“My mother says I’m a bitch on wheels.
But I really don’t mean to be.”
“My faith in humanity has been restored at last.”
I wanted a peek at her eyes. The shades made that impossible. “You’re a sarcastic little shit.”
“Thank you again.”
She took a terminal drag on her smoke, exhaled, and said, “I’m the one who called you the other night.”
““It wasn’t an accident”-t thing?”
“Yes. I thought I was pretty good.”
“Not bad.”
“Because it wasn’t, you know.” She reached into the pocket of her car coat and withdrew one of those tiny bottles of liquor they serve on airliners. She had herself a pop then returned bottle to pocket. “Sara was my cousin.”
“Lucky girl.”
“She said somebody was after her.”
“Did she say who?”
“She wasn’t sure. She just had this sense.
She was sort of a goody-two-shoes. She had no imagination at all. I used to put her on all the time and she always took everything I said seriously. A total square. That’s why I believed her. If my little cousin thought somebody was after her, then they were.” She walked over to the mounds. “You know anything about these things?”
“Not much except that the people who built them were way ahead of their time.”
She sighed. “I decided to go to Iowa instead of Northwestern so I could be closer to this boy I’m kind of in love with, who pledged Greek at the university. God, I wonder if it was worth it. I wanted to study real things. Not a bunch of Indians, for God’s sake.”
“The university’s a good school.”
“You went there, I suppose?”
“Yeah, after a couple of years Oxford started to get boring so I came back here.”
“Did I ever tell you how much I hate patter? Don, that’s my fianc@e, people think he’s stupid because he can’t small-talk.
I think it’s a sign of intelligence, not being a smart mouth all the time.”
“Like certain short private investigators you could name?”
She took off her glasses. She had wondrous beautiful blue eyes. “Exact
ly.”
Then, “You wouldn’t know anything about these Indians would you?”
“They’re dead.”
“Patter.”
“Actually, they’re very interesting. There’s a book on them at the library downtown.”
“Did they ever have to fight dinosaurs?”
“Different time period.”
“Oh.” She was disappointed but then most people are disappointed when they find out dinosaurs weren’t involved.
“I’m in a hurry, Andrea. What did you want to tell me?”
She smoked her cigarette right down to the nub.
“The time she had her breakdown? It was because she was seeing an older man.”
“I kind of figured that.”
“She was a sophomore.”
“I know.”
“In high school.”
“I know.”
“Seeing this forty-five-year-old.”
“Are you going to tell me his name?”
“I’ll bet you already know his name.”
“I’m betting Jack Coyle.”
She smiled. “You’re not half as dumb as you look.”
I laughed. “You know, if you were a real bitch you wouldn’t have to work so hard at it. You work up a sweat about it and that’s never any good. Instead of bitchy, you just come off sort of sad. Maybe even a little pathetic. Maybe you didn’t get the Christmas present you wanted one year. Or maybe your daddy would never kiss you. Or maybe you weren’t potty trained properly.”
“Try walking in on my mom screwing my uncle’s brains out.”
“Oh. I guess I was wrong. Sorry.”
It was a pretty dramatic moment. A thing like that could turn anybody into a bitch. “When did it happen?”
“It didn’t really happen. I just wanted to see if I could get you to feel sorry for me for a half a minute. You should’ve seen your face when I told you the bit about my uncle.”
“So your mom didn’t sleep with him?”
“His own wife won’t sleep with him.
He’s got this skin condition all over his body.”
“Ah.”
She smirked. “You should’ve seen your face, McCain.”
I knew my face was red. She was some piece of work. “So had she heard from Jack Coyle lately?”