Breaking Up Is Hard to Do (The Sam McCain Mysteries Book 6)

by Ed Gorman

  SEVENTEEN

  THIRTY MINUTES LATER, I started making my rounds. Janice Wilson hadn’t been in so I decided to get the real scut work over with. I called Mike Hardin in the hospital. He sounded strong and sure on the phone. “The afternoon before Ross found her in the bomb shelter? I’d have to think about it.”

  I heard a nurse squeak into the room.

  “She doesn’t think I should talk to you, McCain,” he said. “She claims I’m too weak. How do you like that? She’s standing at the end of my bed with her hands on her hips. She’s got very nice hips.” Then: “I just remembered. Hunting. I was hunting. You can check with my secretary, if you’d like.”

  “Who’d you go with?”

  “Go with? I only hunt alone if I can help it. Hunting’s something I take very seriously. I hate to spoil it by turning it into a social event. A bunch of middle-aged drunks wandering around in the boonies, that’s not my style.”

  “So you don’t have an alibi.”

  “I don’t like the tone of that. If I tell you I was hunting, I was hunting. My secretary knows.”

  “She knows what you told her.”

  “You know what? I think this pretty nurse standing at the end of my bed has a real good idea. I’m not going to talk to you any more.”

  He slammed the phone.

  Peter Carlson took my call. “I should tell you, I have a lawyer now.” He spoke as if from a great height, the way he did to all humanity.

  “You tell your lawyer that you fell in love with Karen Hastings?”

  “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, McCain.”

  “Don’t I? And if I’m not mistaken, you roughed her up some, too. I guess that’s one way of expressing your love.”

  “This is all bullshit and if you start spreading it around, I’ll sue you for libel.”

  “Slander. Common mistake. Libel is the written word.”

  “What is it you want, anyway?”

  “Where were you the afternoon before Karen Hastings’s body was found?”

  “Right here in my office.”

  “You have witnesses?”

  “Several, in fact. We had a staff meeting that afternoon.”

  “All afternoon?”

  “Most of it. We didn’t get started till one-thirty. I think I’ve said all I’m going to now, McCain.”

  He hung up, too.

  He had what seemed to be an alibi but it was one of those that could be taken apart and found wanting, I was sure. If the meeting at the Murdoch mansion was prearranged, the killer could have met her there—or picked her up and driven her there himself—killed her and left, all within an hour or so.

  When you study trials in law school, you see how many juries are swayed by small lies, particularly alibis. While it sounds reasonable for a man to forget what he’d been doing for two or three hours a month or two previous, it presents a great opportunity for the prosecutor. If the DA can prove that the man did a couple of things he’d almost certainly remember—made a substantial purchase, spent a substantial amount of time with somebody, was involved in a substantial traffic accident—the prosecutor can then say that he finds it odd that the man on trial would forget that. He can also say that the traffic accident incident took no more than forty-five minutes according to the other driver and the cops on the scene—leaving the man on trial with two hours he still can’t account for. Where were you the other two hours? You’re not going to get a conviction on the basis of these questions but you are going to make the jury wonder if the man is honest and forthright. And he has left the two unaccounted-for hours dangling out there. Trials are mosaics. They rarely have the kind of aha! moments you see on TV.

  My final call was to Gavin Wheeler. He was a mite drunk, especially considering that it was barely eleven a.m. “I walk down the street and they stare at me like I’m some kind of monster. Or they snicker. People who always used to speak to me, say hello to me, smile at me. It’s like they’re embarrassed to see me. All my life I’ve tried to build up my reputation. I’m not some nobody from the Hills any more. I’ve got a name, I’ve got money, I’ve got some power. Or I had ’em, anyway, McCain. I don’t know why the hell I ever got into this thing. My poor wife won’t leave the house. She went to the grocery store nine o’clock last night when it was just about closing time. There weren’t any customers but everybody who worked in the store stood there whispering about her. A couple of them even made a couple of smart remarks. I did that. Me. All the years she’s stayed married with me—and I ain’t no prince to live with, believe me—and look what I do to her. We should be thinking of retiring now. But we’re gonna have to get clear the hell away from here.”

  I’d waited him out. “The afternoon before Karen Hastings’s body was found in Murdoch’s house. You happen to remember what you were doing?”

  He had an answer right away. “Driving back from Davenport. Had to look at some property over there.”

  “Alone.”

  “Yes, alone.”

  I could sense that he would be most unhappy if I pushed beyond this point. I didn’t feel up to arguing with an eleven a.m. drunk. I said thank you and hung up.

  I was just going through my notebook, transferring some of the notations to a larger sheet of paper, when the phone rang.

  “I’d like to speak to Mr. McCain.”

  “I’m Mr. McCain.”

  “My name’s Janice Wilson. Scotty told me you were looking for me. I need to drive into town, anyway. Why don’t I stop by your office in two hours or so?”

  “That’d be fine. I appreciate the call.”

  That’s the best way of all, when they come to you.

  The Judge has paid exactly two visits to my office. Today was the second one. In her tailored gray suit with the long leather and very dramatic gray gloves, she had the imperious elegance of a fading movie queen. Every move was straight from finishing school, every utterance straight from her upper-class New England education. I’m pretty sure she once gave lessons to Katherine Hepburn in haughtiness.

  “You really do need to get better digs, McCain.”

  “So I hear.”

  I said this as I walked around my desk, brushed off the better of the two client chairs, and held one out for her. She looked at it as if I’d just bought it at a leper colony garage sale. But she put her important ass in my unimportant chair, lighted a Parliament and dramatically exhaled smoke. She saw the rubber band before I did. A lone rubber band sitting near the edge of my desk. How could she resist picking it up, using her thumb and forefinger as a bow, and firing it at me the way she usually did? But we were both getting crafty. She pretended not to see it and I pretended not to see her pretending not to see it. She went so far in trying to fake me out that she sat all the way back in her chair and raised her eyes to meet mine.

  “I’m here because Deirdre Murdoch asked me to be.”

  “Deirdre? Why doesn’t she call me herself?”

  “She’s in a panic now since she found out there’ll be no bail.”

  “No bail?”

  “The judge—me—has decided there’ll be no bail.”

  “But why?”

  “I’m recusing myself from this whole matter. But until a new judge is selected, I’m not going along with bail. I’m too good a friend of the family.”

  “So meanwhile he sits in jail.”

  She paused a moment. I wondered if she was thinking about the rubber band. She loved playing Pearl-Harbor-sneak-attack.

  “I came here, McCain, to ask a simple question. I wanted to see your face when you answered it. Irene Murdoch is an old friend of mine. I’m afraid she’ll have to go back into the sanitarium.”

  “I know. Deirdre told me.”

  “Thank God for Deirdre. Ross was gone so much—the only lasting friendships Irene has had were with me and Deirdre.”

  “I guess I don’t know what your question is.”

  “It’s a very simple question, McCain. Because if I don’t get the
answer I want, I’ll have to start preparing Irene and Deirdre for the worst.”

  “That being?”

  “That being that Ross did commit these murders and will be going to prison.”

  “And you want to know if I think he’s guilty?”

  “Exactly. We don’t always get along, McCain, but I do have some respect for your word.”

  I smiled.

  “Did I say something funny?”

  “That ‘some respect’ crack. You could’ve just said, ‘I have respect for your word.’ You didn’t need to hedge your bet that way.”

  “Shilly-shally. You’re just stalling because you don’t know how to answer my question.” Then she smiled. She had a mischievous smile that was almost girlish. “You’re getting slow, McCain.”

  So like a dummy I followed her gaze to where the rubber band had been. I’m emphasizing the past tense here. Because the rubber band was no longer there. It was on its way to my—nose. She shot it with her usual callous skill and now it lay across the bridge of my nose.

  “I imagine you feel triumphant,” I said.

  “No more so than usual where you’re concerned.”

  “This really is quite immature, you know, for someone of your age and stature.”

  “Oh, McCain, let’s not talk about my age and stature. That’s so dry. Let’s talk about how ridiculous you look with a rubber band lying across your nose. That’s a lot more fun.”

  “You came here just to shoot me with that rubber band, didn’t you?”

  “My, aren’t we the paranoid one today? Yes, McCain, I’m psychic. I knew there’d be a rubber band sitting there on your desk, out in the open as it were. So I hurried over to take advantage of it.” Then: “Don’t be ridiculous. I came here because I’m concerned about Irene and Deirdre. They’ve been through so much with him and now this. He’s such a charmer that I always forgave him his indiscretions, too—he’s tried to get me into the sack upon occasion, too, difficult as it is for you to imagine, McCain—but I just put it down to the martinis. And now this. This—with that girl—is impossible to forgive. Irene will never recover. I’ll say it again, thank God for Deirdre. They’ve decided to put off going to the sanitarium until tomorrow, by the way. They’re both just too tired today.”

  “I’ll put it this way. If I had to bet, I’d bet he was innocent.”

  “Really? That’s interesting. Why?”

  “People as smart as he is don’t leave bodies in their bomb shelters.”

  “But maybe that’s the beauty of this whole thing.”

  “What is?”

  “He puts the body in there and everybody thinks just what you said—he’s too smart to put the body where somebody’s sure to find it. A jury would take his status, his history and his intelligence into account and find him not guilty.”

  “I’m getting a headache.”

  “Oh.”

  “This is all getting pretty complicated.”

  She smiled sweetly. “Perhaps for a tiny brain like yours.

  “You really did look funny with that rubber band hanging off your nose like that. Been a long time since I did that to you,” she continued with a smirk as she stood up.

  “Not long enough.”

  “Oh, you crab,” she said as I walked her to the door. “You know you like it as much as I do. The little rubber band thing.”

  “Love it,” I said. “Positively love it.”

  It was just past one. That gave me an hour before Janice Wilson came to my office. I had a sandwich at Rexall. Mary was behind the counter but the place was still packed with late lunchers. Mary and I exchanged, in order, smiles, winks, smiles and melancholy looks because we wouldn’t have a chance to talk. I didn’t even see her at the cash register. Somebody else took my ticket.

  I sat in the park and alternately read through my notebook and watched the squirrels stock away food for the winter. I wished I could be a part of nature the way all the little animals were, a true part of the cycle. Even living in a small town in the Midwest, you are cut off from nature. You get more of a chance to see it but you rarely have the time—or, face it, the inclination—to get into the woods or the prairies or the farm fields and learn about it firsthand. The irony was that the people who spent the most time with nature—excepting farmers, of course—were the hunters, whose pleasure it was to kill a part of it. Life, as my dad always says, is like that sometimes.

  I stopped off at a store that sold used items and bought a copy of Budd Schulberg’s Winds Across the Everglades. Nobody had paid much attention to the book or the movie. But both were lyrical and bloody looks at the destruction of the Florida Everglades as far back as the turn of the century. Just the same way nobody paid much attention now to how Midwestern rivers were being used as toilets by manufacturing plants.

  I figured I’d get in fifteen minutes of reading before Janice Wilson showed up.

  But she was waiting for me. As soon as I pushed through the glass outer door, I saw that my office door was open about an inch. I’d left it that way in case she beat me here. Through the crack between door and frame, I saw the back of a blonde head with the collar of a blue suede jacket turned up.

  I had to get all the way into my office before I realized that she wasn’t doing anything. Even when you’re sitting silently, you tend to move a bit, scratch your chin, run a hand against your hair, shift your position, unconscious, nervous mannerisms that everybody has.

  She wasn’t moving.

  I walked around her chair and looked down at her.

  She was a very dignified-looking working-class girl. The white ruffled blouse and blue skirt and blue hose and blue one-inch heels were tasteful but cheap. The thigh-length suede coat was a notch up. The matching suede purse was stitched badly and the pieces hadn’t quite fitted together. But there was nothing cheap about the face. It was one of those long, earnest, solemn faces that bespeak hard work, honesty and intelligence. Well-scrubbed. Perfectly made up. Not quite beautiful but quietly sexual.

  There was blood on the right side of her head. Fresh blood. Her breath came in little bursts, almost asthmatic-sounding.

  I rushed to the john and soaked up half a dozen paper towels. I took a pint of bourbon from my desk drawer and poured three fingers into a glass. The booze is for clients. It’s in the private eye’s list of Things To Have In The Office. I have yet to get a fedora or a trench coat but I have no doubt they’ll be coming along soon.

  “Somebody hit me.”

  “They sure did.”

  She’d come awake like Sleeping Beauty. Wide blue eyes trying to remember who and where she was. Dry, full lips parting to speak sleepily. Confusion, fear, and finally recognition all playing silently across her appealing womanly prairie face.

  “You’re McCain.”

  “I’m McCain.”

  “It was dark in your doorway there. I think I caught somebody trying to get into your office. They really let me have it.”

  “Apparently.”

  She spidered long fingers across the area of the wound. “I don’t think I’ll need stitches.”

  I handed her the glass with the bourbon and then tapped two aspirin out of a bottle. She took both gratefully. She shuddered once after ingesting the aspirin. Then she began sipping the bourbon.

  “Should I call the police?”

  “No. That’s why I came here. So I wouldn’t have to talk to the police. I just want to tell my little story and leave town.”

  I went behind my desk, sat down, took out my notebook and grabbed a pencil.

  “She hated him, you know.”

  “I guess we need to back up a bit, Janice. Who hated who?”

  “Who hated whom, actually. I got A’s in English in high school.”

  “Good for you, Janice.”

  She smiled for the first time and it was worth the wait. She was like right out of the box at Christmas time—shiny, fine, immaculate. “I always correct people’s grammar.”

  “Endearing habit.”


  This time the laugh was throatier. “You don’t hide your irritation very well.”

  I smiled. “I’m sorry. You’re sitting here with a lump on your head and I’m being less than gentlemanly. My apologies. Now how about your story.”

  “Well, let me try to organize it. I guess the simplest way to say it is that Karen Hastings used to come into the Embers in Cedar Rapids. I grew up on a farm near Cedar Rapids and started taking night classes to get a college degree. The tips were good at the Embers and I liked the people so I’ve been there for three years. I’ve got two years of college behind me now. Anyway, Karen always came in and ate. She was so beautiful I could see why she’d attract all her men. Then I started to see that she kind of rotated through four different men over and over. There was a pattern there. And they ran to a type. Twenty years older, obviously well-to-do, and very taken with her. Sort of courtly, in fact. She was like the pretty little girl that all the uncles wanted to shower with gifts. The funny thing is, she always looked lonely. I guess I picked up on that because I’m the same way myself. I have a lot of opportunity for dates but most of them just make me feel worse than better. The guy I was seeing is in the Marines. Last winter they sent him to Viet Nam. Have you ever heard of it?”

  “I know we’re sending more and more troops over there is about all.”

  “Anyway, so I’m lonely and she’s lonely and one of the nights she came in alone, she asked me if I wanted to have a drink after I got off. That’s how we got to be friends. The place she lived in—I’m a farm girl, I’d never seen any place like it. I’d never seen a sports car like hers, either. She didn’t ever say it—she wasn’t much for talking about herself at first—but I caught on that these men were keeping her somehow. I wasn’t sure of the arrangement right away but it got to be clear. And then they started getting jealous of each other.”

  “Anyone in particular?”

  “Carlson?”

  “Peter Carlson?”

  “Yes. I was in her apartment one night when he started banging on the door. She was terrified of him. We had all the lights off. But he was so drunk, he just kept pounding. I asked her why didn’t she call the police? Later that night she explained her arrangement with the men. I could see why she couldn’t call the police. Then she started hearing from her brother. The first time I met him I couldn’t believe they were even related. Quiet little guys like that I usually feel sorry for. But not him. He scared me. He was four years older than she was. She told me he used to force her to have sex with him all the time they were growing up. He wasn’t as meek and mild as he liked to seem. Anyway, what he wanted her to do was start shaking down these men. He knew that with Carlson acting the way he was, the whole thing was going to come apart very soon. But he saw the opportunity with Ross Murdoch running for governor to really collect one big blackmail payment. He said that since he’d set this whole thing up he was entitled to half of it.”