Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine Presents Fifty Years of Crime and Suspense (38 page)

“All right, I'll wait a bit. Don't be too long.”

“You get homesick you can sit in the supermarket parking lot and sniff the exhaust fumes. I'll be over as soon as I can.” He tipped his cap back down and was asleep before I was out the door.

He was right about one thing at least. Algoma was definitely a small town. A single paved street lined with tacky little shops, supermarket at one end, self-service gas station at the other. Like most northern Michigan towns it had probably been a lumber camp once; God only knew what kept its economy afloat now.

Tubby's had no yogurt, no fresh granola, and no air conditioning. The pale August sunlight beating through the smeared windows made the room considerably warmer than my toast, which wasn't very, and I shed my tie and sportcoat. Passed the time trying to decide whether the place was named after the waitress or the cook. It was a tossup. LeClair came in just as my third glass of iced tea arrived. He'd pinned his badge on his cap.

“Christ,” he said, sliding into the red vinyl booth. “My call didn't get through, so about four o'clock I got sixteen National Guardsmen arriving on a wild goose chase, or I should say,
another
wild goose chase, counting yours. Okay, so you wanna fill me in?” The waitress brought him coffee in a mug with a chip out of it, and he nodded his thanks.

“I already have,” I said. “They came here. They apparently never came back. That's really all we know.”

“So what brings you all the way up here? You got a warrant for 'em or anything?”

“No, but if I can find the girl, we may just get a shot at them. We know they're into shylocking and narcotics, but they're very cautious people. Without the girl … anyway, it's fairly basic police procedure to keep track of the bad guys.”

“No kidding? Gosh, I wish I had something to take notes on. You see, I usually wait till folks do something illegal, and then I arrest 'em. Pretty unsophisticated, I guess.”

“Why did they bring Charlie all the way up here to be buried?”

“Roland and Charlie grew up here. Their old man was a bootlegger back in the thirties, or so I'm told. After Prohibition he moved on to bigger things in Detroit, but the family still has a good-sized cottage on the river. They come up for a month or so in the summer, and sometimes during hunting season.”

“You know them then? Personally, I mean.”

“Yeah,” he said, sipping his coffee, “I've known 'em since I was a kid, and everybody else in this town, too. So?”

“So nothing. I was just asking. Look, have you got some kind of a complex about being from the sticks? Or don't you like Chicanos, or what?”

He carefully placed his coffee cup on the table between us and took a deep breath. “Garcia, I'm tired. I've been up for over thirty hours now. I know nothing happened to those clowns in Algoma, because if a chipmunk craps in the woods around here, I hear about it. I'd like to go home, go to bed, maybe say hello to my wife so she remembers who I am, but instead I'm gonna nursemaid you around until you're satisfied there's nothing here, because it's part of my job and because I noticed your Vietnam bracelet. Okay? But don't expect me to be cheery about it. I haven't got the energy.”

“Terrific,” I said. “So why don't we get on with it, and I can be on my way. Where do you suggest we start?”

“We see Faye at the Dewdrop,” he said, rising, gulping the last of his coffee. I noticed he didn't bother to pay for it. I paid for mine.

F
AYE AND THE
Dewdrop Inn were like a couple who'd been married too long. They resembled each other, and both had seen better days. Her red hair was carelessly rinsed, matching the blush of surface capillaries in her cheeks, and both she and the ramshackle motel needed tidying up. If she was pleased to see us, she managed to conceal it.

“Morning, Faye. I need a look at your slips, if you don't mind.”

“Wouldn't matter if I did, would it? Here, help yourself.” She pushed a battered recipe file box across the counter.

“Roland Costa and Junior stayed here the day of Charlie's funeral, is that right?”

“If that's what it says there. No law against it, is there? They add a little class to this town, you ask me.” Her diction had the forced precision of a serious drinker.

“There's no checkout time on the card. When did they leave?”

“Hell, Ira, there's no times for half the people that stay here. I can't be at the desk every minute. Folks pay in advance and that's what I'm in business for, not to …”

“What time do you
think
they left?” LeClair interrupted.

“I already told you I don't know,” she said sullenly. “Now if you don't mind, I got things to do.”

He stared at her for a moment, frowning. She traced a gouge in the scarred countertop as though she'd never seen it before.

“All right, Faye,” he nodded, flipping the box lid shut. “I guess that'll do it. For now.”

“G
EE,”
I
SAID,
“it's a good thing you came along, LeClair. She might not have told me a thing.”

“She seems a bit … edgy,” he conceded, keeping his eyes on the dirt road ahead as he skillfully piloted my rented sedan through the potholes on the road north from the village. Except for an occasional farmhouse, the countryside was as empty of people as the back of the moon.

“Faye's been known to be a bit light-fingered with her guests' belongings,” he added. “That's probably all it was.”

“I'll keep that in mind.”

“No need to,” he said curtly. “With luck you won't be in town long enough to need a room. We'll visit the cemetery and talk to the groundskeeper, Hec Michaud, and that should do it. You can get back to Motown, and maybe I can get to bed.”

He slowed as we approached a line of elderly houses huddled beside a clapboard church and turned in. The cemetery covered most of a hill behind the church, an island in a sea of cornfields. The tombstones were a hodgepodge of styles and sizes, but the lanes were swept, the grass neatly trimmed, and not everyone in it was dead.

Two men were working on a plot about halfway up the hillside, or to be precise, one man was working, digging mechanically in a waist-deep grave, while the other sat with his back against a weathered headstone sipping from a can of generic beer. He was fortyish, barrel-shaped, with a stubbled moonface and wispy spikes of steel-gray hair poking out from beneath his greasy engineer's cap. He lumbered to his feet as we climbed up, smiling with beery good fellowship. “Welcome to Lovedale, gents. It ain't much as cemeteries go, but it's home. Hey, Paulie, quit diggin' for a minute. We got comp'ny.”

The digger was younger, mid-thirties, lanky, an open apple-pie face and sandy hair. A deep welt of a scar ran from his left temple to the nape of his neck, the hair bordering it bone white. Despite the heat of the day, his sweatstained denim work shirt was buttoned at the cuffs and throat. He clambered eagerly out of the hole with a grin like an April morning.

“Hey, Ira, good to see you.”

“Good to see you too, Paulie. Looks like Hec's got you doing most of the work, as usual.”

“Ahh, Paulie don't mind,” the beer drinker said. “Strong as an ox and twice as smart. Right, Paulie?”

“Sure, Hec. You want me to keep shovelin'?”

“Take a break, Paulie,” LeClair said. “I've got some questions for you both.” Hec's smile remained fixed, but his grip tightened on the beer can.

“You want a beer, sheriff? Paulie, run up to the toolshed and get Ira a cold one.”

“I don't want a beer, Hector, and Paulie isn't paid to be your errand boy. I want to know …”

“Who's this guy?” Hec asked, nodding warily toward me. “Maybe we don't wanna answer no questions with him here.”

“This is Sergeant Garcia from Detroit. We're working together.”

“What kinda work you gonna be doin?” Hec sneered. “Bean pickin' season's over.”

LeClair pushed two fingers into the heavier man's chest, backing him up. Michaud lost his footing in the loose earth and sat down hard in the open grave. Without spilling his beer. He stared up at LeClair more in surprise than anger, and a momentary flicker of satisfaction showed in his eyes.

“You had no call to do that, Ira,” he said slowly, “none at all.”

“Maybe not, Hec,” LeClair said, kneeling at the edge of the grave, “but there are a few things I've been meaning to discuss with you for a while, and today's as good a day as any. If I were you, I'd just stay in that hole for a bit while we have our little talk. Paulie, you take Sergeant Garcia up to the toolshed and get him a beer. He'll have some questions for you, and you answer 'em. Okay?”

“Do what he says, Paulie,” Hec said from the grave. “Maybe he'll wanna talk to Billy, too, while you're up there.”

I
WAS PUFFING
when we reached the toolshed. The climb hadn't affected Paulie at all. He took two beers from a cheap foam cooler and handed me one. “You in Vietnam?” he asked. I nodded.

“I thought so. I seen your bracelet. Ira's got one, too. I been meaning to get one, but … hey, you know, I had a friend there who was Mexican. I think he had a lotta names. You got a lotta names, too?”

“Sure,” I said. “Lupe Jose Andrew Mardo Flores Garcia.” My saints' names rolled off my tongue with surprising ease. I hadn't spoken them in years.

“Flores,” he exclaimed eagerly, “hey, that was my friend's name. It means ‘flower,' right?” I nodded, and I couldn't help smiling. His mood was contagious.

“Well, okay, Flower, why don't we pick out a comfortable hunk o' dirt here and we can sit and drink our beers. Ira said you wanted to ask me something?”

“Maybe you should ask Billy to come over,” I said, glancing around uncertainly. “That way I won't have to ask the questions twice.”

“You can ask him from here if you talk loud enough,” he said. “He's buried over there by the fence next to Major Gault.”

I took a long, thoughtful pull at my beer before glancing over at him. He was watching my reaction out of the corner of his eye, deadpan. “Gotcha,” he said softly, the smile finally breaking through. “Don't worry, Flower, I'm not bananas. I talk to Billy sometimes, but only to get a rise out of Hec. I know he's dead. I damn near died with him. We was friends in high school, got drafted together, same outfit in 'Nam. We was even in the same foxhole when this Cong grenade drops in. We both tried to throw the damn thing out and wound up knocking ourselves cockeyed instead. It would have been pretty funny except then the grenade went off, and Billy came here to Lovedale and I wound up at the vet's facility in Grand Rapids for two years. Believe it or not, it's nicer here at Lovedale.”

“How long have you been working here?”

“I'm not really sure,” he said, frowning. “Major Gault's been here since 1864 or '62, and Billy's stone says 1973, but I'm not very good at numbers anymore, so I can't say exactly how long I've been here. That's a funny thing about cemeteries. Time doesn't matter much anyway. Like, the major and Billy lived maybe a hundred years apart, but now they're here together, probably swapping war stories and stuff. At least, I hope so.” He lapsed into silence, sipping his beer.

“About three weeks ago there was a funeral here. Charles Costa's. Do you remember that?”

“Sure I remember it. It's only numbers I have trouble with, things like that.”

“Sorry, I didn't … well, anyway, were both you and Hector working that day?”

“Nah, just me. It was on a Saturday, and Hec don't like to work Saturdays. It was a funny one, though.”

“What do you mean, funny?”

“It was the biggest send-off I ever seen. See that big ugly hunk of marble with the cedars planted around it, like they were keeping it separate from the riffraff in the rest of the cemetery? That's Costa's. Really something, isn't it. And you shoulda seen his casket. It must've been standard size, but it sure looked bigger, burnished copper with burled walnut inserts. Probably weighed a ton. Maybe that was the problem.”

“Problem?”

“After the funeral, the director couldn't get the mechanism that lowers the box to work, but that isn't what I meant about its being funny. The funeral director wasn't a local guy, he was from Detroit, Claudio something or other, and he must've had a dozen assistants with him, dressed like headwaiters and scrambling around here like a school gym on prom night putting out flowers and stuff. Then, after all that, nobody came. Just Rol Costa Jr. and his old man. Just the two of 'em.”

“They were here, then? You saw them?”

“Yeah, I know Rol from school, and I've seen his old man around. They showed up in this big Lincoln, stuck old Charlie in the ground, and that was that.”

“And no one was here other than the funeral people, you, and Hec?”

“I already told you Hec wasn't here,” he said, with a trace of irritation. “Hec don't like working Saturdays.”

“It looks like you do most of the work even when he's here.”

“Could be,” he shrugged. “Look, maybe Hec takes advantage of me a little, but I don't care. I'm just glad to be out of that hospital and doing something, even if it's only digging graves. Besides, sometimes Hec stands up for me, like with old lady Stansfield. She's got a house near the west fence, and she don't like me, you know? When we had a complaint about me working without a shirt, I knew who it was, and I asked Hec to talk to her about it and he did. He don't get many complaints about my work, though. This place looks pretty nice, doesn't it, Flower? Maybe not to move into, but you know what I mean.”

“It looks good, Paulie,” I agreed. “Anybody can see you work very hard. When did the Costas leave?”

“Right after the funeral, I guess. I'm not sure, 'cause I was asleep behind the toolshed.”