The Baby Blue Rip-Off (A Mallory Mystery)

by Max Allan Collins

  “You’ve changed, Mal,” she said. “You look different.”

  “Longer hair,” I said. “A little heavier.”

  “It looks good on you,” she said. “Both the hair and the weight. You were skinny before.”

  “I’m also older, Debbie.”

  She smiled. A tiny smile. “Everybody is.”

  Then I noticed it; she’d frozen herself in time. She’d purposely stayed the same. People do that sometimes, you know, especially in small towns like Port City—they think of their youth (their junior high and high school days) as the best time of their lives, and they stay the same, or try to. They don’t vary their fashions as much as the rest of us; Debbie still wore fuzzy pink sweaters, and her pink cotton skirt was a short shift that was decidedly out of style. And they don’t change the way they wear their hair; Debbie still had the cute skullcap of blonde curls. She had never been much for makeup, having rosy cheeks and deep pink lips anyway, thanks to God or somebody being in a good mood when she was assembled. Overall, she had been much more successful in holding onto her youthful identity than most people who try. You should see the women with beehive hairdos running around the streets of Port City in pedal pushers like it was still 1960. None of them have heard of the B-52s, either.

  “Listen,” I said, feeling awkward, “can I get you a beer?”

  “I don’t want to be any bother.”

  “Bother? Hey, I’m glad to have you. I, uh, always wanted to look you up, but....”

  “Yes. I know what you mean, Mal.”

  This was ridiculous! Here we were, talking in veiled, elliptical language, exchanging meaningful glances, as if we had shared some deep relationship. As if the last time we’d been together was at Casablanca, and not high school homecoming.

  “Can I get you that beer, then?”

  “Please.”

  I got two Pabsts from the icebox, gave her one, and joined her on the couch.

  “You said it was important, Debbie, on the phone. You said you had to see me. You seem pretty calm now.”

  She smiled again. That tiny smile was the only one she had, but it was a dandy. “Maybe I’m being silly. When I called you, I was upset, but... I’ve had time to think, driving over here, and now I wonder if I should’ve come.”

  “What’s bothering you?”

  “It’s my husband... Pat.” She looked down at the beer in her hands. Her hands were small—very small—and white, and in the dim trailer lighting they looked like something carved in marble by a first-rate sculptor.

  “What about your husband?”

  “Maybe you didn’t know that Pat and I... well... we’re separated. Have been for several months now.”

  “No, I didn’t know that.” In spite of myself, I felt fireworks going off in my inner recesses somewhere. Celebration was in order.

  “Pat has a drinking problem, of sorts.”

  “He’s an alcoholic, you mean?”

  “No. Not as I understand the word anyway. He isn’t somebody who drinks all the time, gets up in the morning and reaches for a bottle. Not that at all. He’ll go out maybe twice a week. Rarely more. Five days a week he won’t touch a drop, not even a beer like we’re having.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “He... when he does drink, he gets mean. He drinks himself silly and comes home and...” She looked down again, for just a moment. She looked up, and her eyes were bluer than anything I’d ever seen. The best-looking sky on the clearest sunny day came in second to those eyes. “Mal, I know we... haven’t seen each other, haven’t talked in years... but I feel like you’re someone I can trust, someone I can come to for help. I don’t have many places to turn for help, you know. With Dad gone....” She got a little choked up and stopped talking for a moment. I got up and brought her a Kleenex and she dabbed her eyes.

  Her father had died several years ago. He was a fine old guy, but both he and Debbie’s mother were on in years when Debbie came along. Debbie had been a change-of-life baby, as a matter of fact, and her parents had been more like grandparents than parents to her. Her dad had died at sixty-eight and her mother, who was still living, must’ve been in her mid-sixties or older. Debbie had a brother, but he was much older than she was and had moved away years before.

  “Go on,” I said. “Finish about Pat.”

  “Well, I’ve... said it all, really. He just comes home drunk and gets mean. He’s never hurt Cindy—that’s our daughter—but he doesn’t have much hesitation about... about beating on me.”

  And she started to cry.

  More Kleenex.

  My stomach was fluttering. Debbie had never been the emotional type when I’d dated her. I’d gotten to think of her as rather cold-hearted and manipulative, toward the end of our going-steady era, and seeing her break down, like a real human being, was disturbing.

  “And that’s why you came here?” I said after a while. “You wanted to talk to somebody about Pat, and this problem of his?”

  “No,” she said, stiffening her upper lip, taking a few final dabs with the latest Kleenex. She sipped her beer, smiled, and said, “No, that’s why we separated. And divorce is only a few tiny steps away. I can see no hope for reconciliation, especially now.... I wanted to try, for Cindy’s sake, but....”

  “What do you mean, ‘especially now’?”

  “That’s why I’m here, Mal. I got a phone call from Pat. Just before I called you. He was drunk... roaring. He said he was going to beat the hell out of me. And you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. He had some crazy story about you trying to frame him for that murder. The one mentioned on the radio this morning—the old woman?”

  The evening paper wasn’t out yet, so she (and the rest of the town) wouldn’t know the details as yet.

  I nodded.

  “You did find the old woman, didn’t you? I heard that much on the radio. You did find the body and contact the police?”

  “Well, it was the sheriff’s department I contacted, but yeah, I did all that.”

  “Pat says you told... I thought he said police, but maybe he just said ‘cops,’ which could just as easy be the sheriff’s people, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Anyway, Pat says you told the cops or whoever that you saw his car there. He says you’re trying to get this murder pinned on him. He thinks....” She smiled again, but at the same time her eyes teared up. “... he thinks you and I are seeing each other, having an affair, and have cooked up this scheme to get at him.”

  “Oh Christ!”

  “It sounds crazy, I know. I can’t believe Pat will still believe that when he’s sober, but right now I don’t think being reasonable is high on his list.”

  “No, I don’t suppose so. And he says he’s going to beat hell out of both of us?”

  She nodded.

  “Maybe we should call the police,” I suggested.

  “No!” she said. “I couldn’t stand the embarrassment. He is... Cindy’s father, after all.”

  “Okay. I can understand your point of view. But where do we go from here?”

  “Is it true? Did you report his car as being at the old woman’s place?”

  “It’s true,” I said. “And it was there. But Pat is clear; he reported the car stolen, prior to the murder. So I don’t see where he’s in much danger of getting framed.”

  “He said something about that, too. Mumbled something about maybe you did that; maybe you stole his car to get him involved; maybe you killed that old woman hoping to pin it on him. Ridiculous, I know, but tell that to a man crazy-drunk.”

  Not so ridiculous. I was everybody’s favorite suspect. Except Brennan’s, oddly enough.

  “What do you want me to do, Debbie? Do you want to stay here for a while?”

  “No. I don’t want to alarm Cindy—she’s with Mother now. Pat’s never bothered Cindy, or Mother, so I think the two of them’ll be all right.” She shivered.

  “Where are you living?”

  �
��We have an apartment downtown. Could you... would you stay with us tonight? I can tell Cindy you’re a friend of the family or an uncle or something.”

  This was the dream of a lifetime, but I had hoped to start poking into things tonight, contacting a few people who I thought could help me uncover some things regarding Mrs. Jonsen’s murder. But maybe this was worth the time at that. Maybe Pat Nelson was involved in the murder and was being either cute or stupid.

  “Okay,” I said. “Be glad to.”

  She leaned over, touched a hand to my face. “Mal.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can I do something I wanted to do for a long time?”

  I shrugged. “Sure.”

  “Good,” she said, and smiled her tiny smile.

  And kissed me.

  14

  As old, remodeled apartments go, Debbie’s wasn’t so bad. It was located on Second Street, in the block where the downtown makes its last gasp and the slope of West Hill takes over. About a third of the places of business on her block had new brick fronts and had witnessed considerable self-initiated urban renewal by forward-looking landlords; but she had her run-down neighbors, too: several bars, a pair of sagging, empty warehouses, and the old union hall.

  Below Debbie was a nice bar/restaurant owned by one of the conscientious landlords, who had seen to it that the apartment was freshly wallpapered and supplied with new kitchen appliances. The rest of her apartment, though, was clearly much as it had been, say, fifty years ago. The ceilings were high and of gray, faded plaster edged with plaster rococo—not unlike the wood carving at Mrs. Fox’s, only the work of a far less talented craftsman. The floors were bare dark wood, the varnish mostly worn away. It had apparently come furnished, because a secondhand-store decor was mixed oddly with things Debbie and her husband had bought, like the twenty-five-inch TV and the stereo console in the living room.

  After climbing up the narrow and gloomy stairwell, we entered into the daughter’s room, with its pink wallpaper and fuzzy pink throw rugs, scattered like discarded old sweaters of Debbie’s. A door straight ahead led to the bleak, brown master bedroom; a doorless archway to the right led to the kitchen, and through the kitchen was the living room, with its light blue wallpaper smattered with dark blue flowers, soft-focus lighting coming from standing lamps. A pleasant enough, very much lived-in apartment.

  An apartment a man had lived in. In the living room was a gun rack with three balsa-wood models of Winchester rifles, as well as two crossed swords on a tin shield, and over the bed were two pseudo-authentic dueling pistols on plaques—phallic symbols all, left behind (consciously or not) to remind anyone who entered this apartment that a man had been with the woman who slept here.

  “Can I ask you something?” I said.

  Debbie had decided to leave her daughter at her mother’s for the night. We were sitting on a black imitation-leather couch in the living room, sipping glasses of Pepsi. Debbie didn’t keep beer in the house. It was cold in there, an air conditioner chugging away in the bottom of a big bay window across the room. I was half-turned, studying a large frame behind the couch, a frame exhibiting half a dozen license plates; the two plates closest to my line of vision were number two from one year ago and number one from two years ago.

  “What do you want to ask?” she said.

  “Something about your husband.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “Why in God’s name does he go lusting after these damn license plates? What in hell possesses him?”

  “What makes anyone go after something?” she said. “What makes anyone try to be first at anything?”

  “But something so absurd, so pointless....” I stopped myself short. I was going condescending on her.

  “I suppose I agree,” she said, with her tiny smile, “but it’s one of the more harmless things a man like Pat might decide to pursue. But I must say I don’t enjoy camping out in the cold dead of winter on the courthouse lawn, teeth chattering all night, waiting to dash into the building next morning and fight and claw toward the license counter.” She laughed. “Have to admit, though, that year we got license plate number one was kind of a thrill.”

  I shook my head, laughed, and said, “To each his own, I guess. You think Pat’ll come around tonight and bother us?”

  “Hard to say. Could be he won’t show up at all. Could be he’ll show sooner than tonight... could be any time now. He’s already roaring drunk.”

  “How can he get away with that, getting drunk on a Friday afternoon? Doesn’t he have a job?”

  “He used to work at Ribbed-Stone Silo, but he quit a few months ago and went to work for a friend of his who lets him keep loose hours. This friend, Chet Richards, runs a nursery.”

  “Your husband changes diapers for a living?”

  She let out a giggle that took me back to junior high. “Plants and trees, not kids, silly. Anyway, it’s a good job, in its way... not particularly good-paying, as you can see by our surroundings... but he’s got lots of freedom, and besides, Pat really likes outdoor work.”

  “Can I ask some more questions, on the personal side?”

  “You can ask whatever you want to, Mal, if you’ll just stay here with me. I don’t like the idea of having to face Pat when he’s the way he is right now.”

  “Okay, then. When kind of marriage has it been, anyway? I mean you’re not newlyweds; you’ve been married for what, at least twelve years? Cindy’s eleven.”

  “Not quite that long.” Her cheeks reddened a little. “Cindy came along pretty early that first year we were married, if you know what I mean.”

  I knew what she meant, and shouldn’t have embarrassed her like that, but I’d completely forgotten that she had dropped out of school midway through her last semester as a senior, to marry Pat Nelson.

  “It’s been a good enough marriage,” she said, still a bit flushed. “Pat’s a quiet person, usually. Spends a lot of time doing male things... hunting, poker with his buddies a couple times a week, sports on TV on the weekend... but he loves little Cindy. He’s been good to her, and treated me pretty well until this drinking thing started. Me, I’ve had my own friends to spend time with, and Cindy, and Mother.”

  “When did it go sour?” I said. “How long has this beating and drinking nonsense been going on?”

  “Not long. Less than a year, I’d say. He didn’t like his job at Ribbed-Stone—not anymore, anyway. See, there was a change in management; the son of the guy who founded the silo company took over when his dad retired. This son is a college-kid type: nice enough, but not Pat’s idea of a boss. He was discontented because of that, started drinking a couple nights a week, and started beating on me along with it. I thought when he changed jobs he’d get back to normal. No such luck. Oh, he was happy in his new job, happier anyway, but his drinking pattern was set by then, and he kept right on with it. And...” She touched my arm, moved closer on the couch. “... he thinks I’ve been cheating on him. He’s very paranoid about it, as you can tell from this crazy idea he has about you and me having an affair.”

  “Is there... any basis to his suspicions? After all, you did say he was out with the boys a lot.”

  She looked hurt for a moment, then said, “Of course not. I’m too busy for any stupid hanky-panky silliness. I have Cindy to raise, and I have my job.... Well, I used to have it, anyway.”

  “You lost your job?”

  She nodded. “I was a secretary. Worked for William Morgan.”

  “The attorney?”

  Another nod. “But when Pat started in on his drinking and all, I got less efficient and was let go. Haven’t found anything since.”

  I could understand how she could lose her job; a legal secretary has to be perfection personified, and outside pressure of the sort her husband had exerted on Debbie would’ve been plenty to throw her off.

  “I’ll tell you something, Mal. I’ll tell you something about how faithful I’ve been to that damn husband of mine. Not only was I faithful to him when
he was going out with his stupid friends all the time, playing poker and hunting and that damn drinking; not only that, but you’re the first, the very first man I’ve been alone with since Pat moved out of here.... Even now, even when I’m through with the bum, I’ve been faithful to him. Out of dumb habit, I guess. Isn’t that silly?”

  “Kind of,” I said.

  “I think it is,” she said firmly. “Silly.”

  She was sitting very close now.

  “Me too,” I said. “Silly.”

  “Silly,” she agreed.

  The fuzzy pink sweater was soft and warm under my hands; it slipped off so easy, and I felt the soft coolness of her flesh. Her bra was one of those no-bra things and came off in a whisper; her breasts were large without sagging, her nipples small and as pink as her sweater. The skirt came off as easy as the bra, then the pantyhose and panties, and we kissed and fondled. My clothes gradually came off somehow or other, and soon I was nuzzling the full breasts of the girl I’d so longed to kiss in junior high, enjoying the slightly plump but nicely formed body of Debbie Lee, a small woman but with plenty of everything, proof positive that good things come in small packages, and we made love there, slowly, on the cool imitation leather of the couch, beneath the framed license plates.

  15

  When the heat of the moment subsided, the cold of the air conditioner took over. My exposed backside was invaded by goose pimples, and they spread to the rest of me and then to the cooling body beneath me. We jumped up and got into our clothes as quickly as we’d gotten out of them. The only pause in the procedure was as I was slipping my shirt on, when Debbie took a moment to caress my bruised side with gentle, sympathetic fingertips.