“Oh thank you, Fannie. I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t here. I guess maybe I could serve myself.” Mrs. Foster follows her onto the porch. “I’ve never done it that way, but I guess if it’s an absolute emergency, I could manage.”
“I feel certain I can make it,” Fannie says and heads down the steps.
“I hope so,” Mrs. Foster calls. “And I hope everything is okay, Fannie. I really do!” Mrs. Foster is already back inside the cool when Fannie gets in the taxi and slams the door. “Take me to the jailhouse,” she says, and looks that driver square in the eye.
Bob Bobbin only has a few details to work out on the case before he goes to lunch. He’s got to get Harold Weeks down to the station to get him to identify the man, but first he’s got to go talk to Ernie Stubbs and make sure that Janie Morris is telling the truth. Of course, it seems logical that she would be, cause she could have protected her boyfriend and lied. It just doesn’t make sense, and it’s these kind of details that seal up a case. A man with no alibi is usually guilty as sin. Bob swings through those big gates of Cape Fear Trace and almost sideswipes one of those old taxicabs that is such an embarrassment. Bob has suggested that Marshboro get itself a transit service, buses and such, but the chief or nobody else pays much attention to what he says. That’ll change after today. He pulls up in front of the Stubbs’ house and gets out; nice house, too, got that old look to it even though it’s brand new. Bob doesn’t care for that look, but he can appreciate it. In his opinion, when he’s got something brand new, he wants everybody to know that it’s brand new. He wouldn’t mind being called what people call “new money” or that other way to say it that’s in a different language, wouldn’t mind being known that way at all. Ernie Stubbs is new money or must be, if what Harold told him about Injun Street is true. That’s something else that Bob is curious to prove, because if it’s true, then he knows that he can do the same thing himself. Hell, he’d have a far shorter way to go, considering he’s living in that complex right near here. He rings the bell and steps back with his cap in his hand.
“Yes?” Mrs. Stubbs is a lady you’d never forget. She’s got that same husky sort of build as Harold, though there’s no resemblance in their faces, Harold with that thick dark hair and tan, and her with that yellow hair and sort of white skin. “May I help you?”
“Is the husband home?” Bob steps right inside, figuring it’s okay since she hasn’t come outside and hasn’t closed the door. It’s nice in here, all right.
“Yes, he is, but may I ask what this is about?” She backs up and watches Bob the whole time. Bob thinks he’d like to have a pair of those shorts to put over his alarm clock so he wouldn’t have so much trouble waking up.
“Police business, routine questioning.”
“Ernie!” Mrs. Stubbs turns her head to one side to yell while she keeps her eyes on Bob. “Honey, a police officer is here.” She smiles but doesn’t offer him a seat and he sure would like one, rest a minute. Mr. Stubbs comes through the hallway, his little half glasses on his nose, the newspaper in his hand. He’s reading that fine print financial section, and Bob always has liked to see somebody that could read all of that.
“What can I do for you?” Mr. Stubbs asks.
“Well, first, do you remember me? Bob Bobbin, I advised you about the security of your new office and I also rented one of the new apartments.”
“The red shag,” Mrs. Stubbs says, suddenly remembering, and it makes Bob feel good to know that he had made a favorable impression on her. “I remember.”
“Why yes, Bob.” Mr. Stubbs sticks out his hand and Bob shakes it. “What’s this all about, haven’t been robbed, have I?”
“No sir, keep a tight watch on that building.” Bob steps in a little closer, hoping that they’ll offer that seat, but they don’t. “I’m here about your secretary.”
“Oh?” Ernie feels his knees getting weak. What if she’s accused him of rape? That happens sometimes. He’s heard of that happening before. Or what if she was found dead and he is the last link, another Chappaquiddick? God, maybe the Kennedys could afford that but he can’t.
“Yes, there was a murder last night.” Bobbin takes out his pad. “Surprised you haven’t heard, since it was Harold Weeks who gave us an I.D. of the murderer.”
“We don’t deal with my brother often.” Mrs. Stubbs leans against the doorway. She ain’t about to offer one of those seats, or even offer him something cool to drink.
“Well, I can see that.” Bob nods, gives Mrs. Stubbs that look of his that says that he knows exactly what she means. “A person just can’t afford to be that close to Harold, you know, no offense intended.”
“I don’t see what this has to do with …” Ernie cannot complete his sentence before this Bob character starts up again.
“Charles Husky was the victim. Doubt if you know him, didn’t lead much of an exciting life, not like most of us if you know what I mean?”
“I know,” Ernie says and nods, so that this man will hurry up. What does Janie have to do with it all? He did know Charlie Husky, so did Kate. Charlie Husky grew up right near Ernie; he was in their class at school. It makes him cringe to remember. “That name doesn’t ring a bell with me.”
“Or me,” Kate says, and looks at Ernie, knowing that they both know otherwise.
“Anyway, Harold got a description and I arrested a man that fit it.” Bob pauses for a minute for them to congratulate him, but they don’t. “Any way, it so happens that the murderer’s girlfriend is your secretary.”
“What?” Kate steps closer. She is taking in every bit of this, and Ernie doesn’t want her to hear it, he’s afraid for her to hear it, but if he asks her to leave the room she’ll get suspicious. He can’t let her get suspicious.
“So what do you want from me?” Ernie asks.
“I want to see if you can verify her story. You see this man ain’t, excuse me, doesn’t have a alibi and her story still didn’t give him one. But still, I have to check it all out and need to ask a few questions.”
“Okay.” Ernie feels that he is maintaining a very cool, calm dignified appearance, even though he is feeling sick.
“What time did Miss Janie Morris, the woman in question, leave your office last night?”
“Night? I thought she got off at five!” Kate looks at Ernie, stares at him.
“I had her work later than usual, big land deal coming through.”
“What time?” Bobbin has his pencil ready to write.
“I gave her a dinner break and then we worked straight through.” He looks at Kate. “She must have left around midnight.”
“Midnight!” Kate puts her hands on her hips. “You went all these years without a full-time secretary, and all of a sudden she’s working till midnight? What on earth did you do before you got one?”
“It took a long time to get the work out, that’s what.”
“Something’s fishy,” Bobbin says and shakes his head. Ernie would like to knock his head off. “Little lady told me that she didn’t get home to this boyfriend until after two. For some reason, she’s lying.”
Ernie’s head feels like it’s spinning now. He’s got to make his story go along with hers without getting Kate all upset and wise. If he doesn’t go along with her story, Janie Morris will probably tell everything! “You know I’m awful about time,” he says. “You can ask Kate. I work so hard that I never know what time I’m getting in.”
“You got in well after one last night, though,” Kate says. “I told you that I was up at one to write down an idea and you weren’t home. Did she work as late as you did, Ernie, or what?”
“She left right before I did, I swear, though it didn’t seem that late. Of course, I lose myself in my work.”
“Know what you mean.” Bob Bobbin steps closer to Mrs. Stubbs. Her name is Kate. No reason why he can’t call them Ernie and Kate. “So, Kate, if you verify that Ernie here was in closer to two than one, and he can verify that Miss Janie Morris, the woman in
question, left just a speck of time before he did, then I reckon we can believe that little lady which means that without a trace of doubt that man has no alibi and more than likely is just the man that your brother saw leaving the Quik Pik which was the scene of Charles Husky’s brutal murdering.” Bob waits for their response. “Now, is that correct? You can verify that?”
“Yes, yes,” Ernie says and both of them nod. Ernie steps forward, hoping that this man will leave. “Anything else?” he asks, an exasperated tone in his voice that Bobbin doesn’t even notice.
“Yeah, how much do you know about your secretary?”
“What do you mean by that?” Ernie shakes his head. “I try not to know about my employees’ lives outside of the office.”
“Good policy, but I feel I gotta let you in, considering all of this will probably make the papers.”
“Go on,” Kate Stubbs says, and Bobbin almost hates to tell her, a lady doesn’t need to hear such.
“You know I told you that it’s her boyfriend that she stays with sometimes that’s accused of the murder.”
“Yes.” She didn’t tell Ernie that she had a regular boyfriend. She didn’t tell him that she sometimes lived with someone; play it loose, no strings, is what she had said.
“Well, what I didn’t tell you is that her boyfriend is a niggerman, uh, Negro.”
“Ernie, I thought you said you hired a nice girl!”
“She seemed nice enough,” he stammers. “She can type and she seemed like a nice girl.”
“I think you ought to fire her! Just look at what she did to you as well!” Kate steps closer to Ernie, those shorts like a bomb exploding.
“What? What?”
“All that overtime! She knew what she was doing. She’s been there long enough to see how you lose yourself in your work! She was probably sitting on the phone with her black boyfriend or filing her nails and letting the dollars and cents add up!” Kate is through now, out of breath, wheezing a little.
“I didn’t mean to cause a ruckus,” Bobbin says and puts his pad back into his pocket. “Got all I needed. Told you what I felt was my duty, Ernie.” He puts his hand on Ernie’s shoulder. “Keep on using that timer on the lamp in your office. Best security around these days next to the force.”
Ernie stands at the door and watches Bobbin disappear. He can feel Kate’s anger.
“The nerve! Honestly, it’s a shame that you can’t find a secretary who doesn’t act just like a secretary, cheap little money-hungry nothing!”
“Kate, honey,” he puts his hands on her shoulders. He is safe now. “You were a secretary once.”
“That was different!” She shakes her head and not a hair moves. “I knew that I wasn’t really like all the others!” Ernie knows those words well. He thinks them every time that he looks back at how he got where he is.
“But did everyone else know?”
“Why are you doing this to me, Ernie?” Kate pulls away. “Don’t get all guilty-feeling if you fire this person. She deserves it!”
“Maybe so.” This pacifies Kate enough that she goes back to her cross-stitch, says that she doesn’t know why they allow people as stupid as that man who was just here to become a policeman. “God! What’s it coming to?” she screams from the other room. “I mean what if your business is linked to this hideous scandal, and believe you me it will be if my nasty brother has anything to do with it.
“Yes, dear,” he says. “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it. We’re not associated with any of that.” It’s amazing how those two words “pretty” and “little” can appease Kate so quickly, two little words that in reality make no reference to her.
“You’re right, honey. Why don’t we have a cocktail before we go to Mother’s?”
“Fine.” He goes and mixes Kate a vodka martini just the way that she likes it and pours himself a straight shot of scotch. Kate sips hers and he goes over to his chair in the den and stares out at the swimming pool. He downs the shot and closes his eyes. It seems lately that Injun Street is not that far away, not with the mention of Charlie Husky, a man that he probably once identified himself with, not with the realization that he has gone through those same weak desires that he had as a child, to throw that brown-skinned girl down on the bed of that truck, to feel manly and powerful. And he had done it, not with a black girl, but with the closest thing, a white girl who sleeps with a black man. That’s not exactly the kind of thing that anyone would tell on the golf course or on a drunken deep sea fishing trip. There’s not a soul that he can tell, and he can’t fire her, either. Sometimes, like right now, he thinks that it may have been easier if he had never even tried to get off of Injun Street, if he had been living right nearby when his Mama accidentally turned that pot of boiling grease on herself and bashed her head on the counter, if he had just been there to pick her up, to mop up the grease.
Corky keeps looking at the clock. Already, it is a little after one and Sandra Rhodes has come in to relieve her. She ought to just leave is what she ought to do, as if there isn’t enough going on this day, with Mr. Husky’s dying and Granner’s party only a couple of hours away. But then again, she doesn’t mind waiting a few extra minutes, just in case he does come back, though now she’s thinking that he might have hopped a bus and be long gone from Marshboro. Lordy, it must be the weather that’s got her feeling so funny. Lord knows, she’s been out with boys cuter than this one, boys with hair on their heads, boys that come out smelling of Old Spice or Aqua Velva, boys in clean clothes. She goes over and sits at that table where she sat with him a little while ago. That Sandra, eyeing her that way, like she’s got no right to sit in the coffee shop after work. Sandra just wants to fix herself up some big lunch and sit there and stuff her stuffed self. Sandra Rhodes would give her eyeteeth for a date with Bob Bobbin, and takes it out on Corky that he never asked her. Corky can’t help Bob liking her; if she had her way, he wouldn’t, that’s for sure. Now Sandra is standing over there tapping that spatula up against the stove like she’s about to jump right out of her uniform. Sandra is about as much fun as Columbus when the Indians shot him, or whatever that is that Harold Weeks is always saying. If he’s not answering a question with a question, he’s saying one of those that’s-about-as-funny-as things. That’s about as funny as a bubblegum machine on a lockjaw ward. That’s about as funny as ExLax on a diarrhea ward. She is staring out that window, when all of a sudden she sees that shaved head rounding the corner. He is staring down at his feet and doesn’t even see her, so she gets up and gets a stack of menus to sort through so it won’t look like she’s been sitting there waiting for him. She doesn’t even turn around when the bells ring over the door and she hears the squeak-squeak of his shoes.
“Sorry I’m a little late,” he says and shifts from one foot to the other. He smells clean like soap, and those prickles have a little fluff to them, not much, but a little. His clothes and shoes are soppy wet, though.
“I hadn’t even noticed,” she says and flips back through the menus. “Looks like you showered in your clothes.”
“No, I showered first.” He sits down across from her. “Then I showered off my clothes.”
“Well, that makes loads of sense.” She puts the menus down on the table and stares real hard at this Sam boy. “Don’t you have any more clothes?”
“Nope, threw them all away before I left New York.”
“Oh,” she says, like that makes a whole lot of sense, because it very well may make a whole lot of sense. He could’ve had a good reason to do that and she doesn’t want to look stupid. For some reason, she wants this boy to like her and to go right on thinking that she’s smart and all, like he said earlier. Still, she can ask an intelligent question. “Did you get cooties or something?”
“No,” he shakes his head. “Claustrophobia, paranoia.”
“Oh.” Corky feels a little nervous and she can tell that he is, too, the way that he keeps rubbing his hands through that stubble. “Feel better?”
“Yeah, yeah, check me.” He picks up her hand and rubs it on his face, from his cool forehead down to his cheek. He’s got a little bit of a beard, not much, soft brown hairs like goosedown on that smooth cheek. His head ain’t downy, though, even with that little bit of fluff.
“It’s hot outside,” he says and keeps holding onto her hand.
“Yeah, it sure is.” Corky can’t ever remember feeling at such a loss for what to say to somebody. “You hungry?”
“Sort of.” All he says is sort of. Now, what is she supposed to say to that? “Oh, I’ve got some money now. I found it.” He reaches in his pocket and pulls out some damp bills all clumped together.
“Where’d you find it?”
“It was in my pants, all that time, right there in my pocket, and I didn’t even remember putting it there.” He gets this awfully confused look, sort of a helpless look like a kitten or a baby, and Corky gets that feeling that she wants to squeeze him as hard as she can, love and squeeze him so hard that it makes her grit her teeth, the way people always do when they hug a teeny little helpless creature, a kitten or a puppy. If Sandra wasn’t standing over there taking it all in, Corky probably would’ve squeezed him that way.
“Seems like you don’t remember a whole lot.”
He shakes his head and stares directly into her left eye, then her right one. “I’m starting to remember things. I think I drank too much for too long, you know?”
“Bad habit to get into.”
“But it’s not, a habit I mean, I had never done that, haven’t done anything, really.”
“I know what you mean.” Corky pulls her hand away so that Sandra won’t have that to talk about, and he looks that funny way again, like she might’ve just scolded him or told him to go to hell. “You remember last night, though.”
“Some of it, yeah. I was in this truck, you see, and I got sick.”
“That must have been when that trucker let you out, right there near Quik Pik.” Corky lowers her voice and leans forward. “Harold, that man that you saw in here? Well, Harold said that you got out of that truck and that the two of you together went in and found Charles Husky dead.”
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