Breaking Up Is Hard to Do (The Sam McCain Mysteries Book 6) (13 page)

Screw it, I thought. They could have my apartment. I’d stay at a motel. I’d only go over there in the morning to shower and change clothes. Hell, I’d get a new bed out of it for my trouble and a good motel room would be eight, nine bucks was all. I’d come out ahead.

Stu answered when I called and I told him what I had in mind.

“But I’m making steaks.”

“More for you.”

“Jeez, McCain, this doesn’t seem right. Kicking you out of your own apartment.”

“You’re not kicking me out. I am. And by the way, the bed you’re going to buy me?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I want a one hundred dollar bed.”

“That’s no problem.”

“Great. Then I’ll see you in the morning. Oh—did I get any calls?”

“Hang on a sec.” Though he cupped the phone, I heard him say, “Did he get any calls?”

“Kenny Thibodeau. That dirty book writer.” She’d never much approved of Kenny.

“That dirty book writer. You know, Kenny.”

“Fine. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

There wasn’t any answer at Kenny’s place so I walked down the street to an Italian restaurant, the only ethnic restaurant in town except the one where they serve buffalo burgers. I’m not sure which ethnicity that is. Eskimo?

I ate a plate full of damned good spaghetti and started pouring down coffee. I don’t like the feeling of being drunk. The coffee and a bunch of Luckies helped me sober up. My dad has the same problem. When you’re as small as we are, you don’t hold your booze well. It’s a shameful thing for a Celt to admit.

One table away, a working class family of five were discussing the missile crisis. The littlest girl was so scared she started to cry. She crawled up in her daddy’s lap and he kissed her on top of her blonde curly head and then he sort of rocked her as he probably had when she was a baby. It broke my heart. And made me angry. Some guy somewhere in this place called Russia gets pissed off because some guy somewhere in this place called America was stupid enough to listen to the CIA and invade Cuba. Or try to. It sure as hell wasn’t much of an invasion. And so this guy in Russia, in a snit because of it, decides to play poker with nuclear warheads as chips. And maybe destroy or at least alter life on this planet for the next 50,000 years. Awfully damned hard to explain that to a little girl in Black River Falls, Iowa who’s too young to understand where Russia is or why the CIA was run by zealots who didn’t much care about lives, American or otherwise, or why her mom suddenly started crying last night when they all got down on their knees and said the rosary for world peace.

I got up and went for a walk. The cold night air felt good. The Johnny Cash song wailing out of the tavern sounded mighty lonely.

After my walk, I went to a corner grocery store and bought two Pepsis, a package of smokes and a paperback by a new guy named Dan J. Marlowe, who was one mighty fine writer. Fifteen minutes later, I was in my motel room in my underwear and under the blankets, reading my book.

After fifty excellent pages, I tried Kenny again. This time he answered.

“Heard something I thought I’d pass on.”

“Great. What is it?”

“Mrs. Murdoch tried to pay off Karen Hastings. To get her out of town. Mrs. Murdoch has plenty of money of her own. Her husband didn’t know anything about it. She started at ten thousand but the Hastings woman said no. So eventually she went to twenty thousand. I think she copped to the whole thing, man. The four guys and Karen Hastings, I mean.”

“Hold on a sec.”

I dug out my notebook and wrote it down.

“That’s useful. Thanks. I don’t suppose you’ll tell me who you heard it from?”

“Can’t. I took the Boy Scout oath.”

“You could be making all this stuff up. How would I know?”

“Would the author of
The Torrid Twins
ever lie to you?”

“I thought that was
The Tempting Twins.”

“They changed the title for the second edition.”

“Ah.”

“See what you can do with it, anyway. She might have iced the Hastings dame.”

“Boy, you’re really picking up on the tough-guy talk.”

“Yeah, I’m digging the hell out of this detective gig, man.”

I tried to go back to reading, I wanted to go back to reading, I told myself that I
should
go back to reading and put everything else out of my mind for the evening—

But since I already had my notebook at hand—I started going through motives that might lead an unstable mind to commit two murders.

Mike Hardin

Gavin Wheeler

Peter Carlson

Wanted her for himself

Ross Murdoch

Brother shaking him down for money

Mrs. Murdoch

Wanted her out of town

I fell asleep just before the ten o’clock news, not waking up until just before six. I dressed in yesterday’s clothes and drove over to my place.

I let myself in, being as quiet as possible. I opened the door to the meows of the three cats who stared up at me with long, guilt-inducing gazes. How dare I spend the night somewhere else? But I could see their bowls from here. They’d been fed well and their water had been refreshed and filled to the brim in the bowl.

A voice said, “Don’t worry about us. We’ve been up all night.”

I walked into the area that I used as the living room. Stu sat on the couch, smoking a cigarette. He wore pajamas and his hair was mussed and he needed a shave. A pillow was propped up against the arm of the couch. On the opposite end was a blanket.

“I slept on the couch.”

“Why?”

“I’ll tell you why. Because I’m leaving him.”

The beautiful Pamela Forrest was sitting up in the middle of my bed. She too wore pajamas and her hair was mussed. She didn’t need a shave.

“Why’re you leaving him?”

“Why? We patched things up last night and I told him I loved him and was glad he’d come back to get me. And then I told him about this art class I was taking and it started all over again.”

“What started all over again?”

She gave him a disgusted look and said, “You tell him, Stu. And then just listen to yourself.”

Stu seemed embarrassed. “Well.”

“Well, he got jealous. As usual. That’s why I left him. When I said our marriage wasn’t what I’d imagined it would be? Well, that’s the real reason. All those other reasons I gave you all boil down to this, McCain. He’s so jealous he wants to keep me locked up all the time.”

“What’s wrong with art classes, Stu?”

“You don’t know her, McCain. The way she flirts. She takes an art class—especially one at night—I’ll lose her for sure. I mean, back here, I didn’t have any competition. No offense, McCain. I mean, nothing personal. But I was the only guy she was interested in. But in Chicago—”

“That’s why I’m leaving him, McCain. ‘The way she flirts.’ God, I never flirt.”

“The party at Judge Armstrong’s house? That Peruvian bastard.”

“He was an Argentinean bastard.”

“Well, whatever he was, he had his eyes down your blouse.”

“There isn’t all that much to see down my blouse, Stu. I shouldn’t have to tell
you
that, of all people.”

“How many times did you slow dance with him?”

“Twice.”

“Oh, bullshit, Pamela. Don’t make it worse by lying about it.”

I just let them go. I doubted they even noticed. I grabbed fresh clothes and repaired to the shower. When I came out, I was ready to go.

Stu wasn’t on the couch.

Then I heard a moaning sound.

I turned. They were on the bed. They were under the covers and I do believe he was inside her, the noises she was making.

But she was still able to look around his arm at me and say, “We made up, McCain. He told me he’d never be jealous again.”

“Good for you, Stu.”

I’m not sure Stu was hearing much at the moment. He just sort of continued to work away down there.

“So tonight Stu’ll make you a steak,” she said around his arm again. And then: “Oh, by the way, Judge Whitney called for you last night. You better call her.”

“God, honey, can’t you pay a little attention to
me
?”

“Oh, Stu,” she said, eradicating my existence. “Oh, Stu Stu Stu.” And giggled giggled giggled.

At the office, I called Judge Whitney in her chambers. “My God, Pamela had nerve enough to come back to town?”

“Surprised me, too.”

“And Stu?”

“Yep.”

“Well, at least when my family had to endure a scandal, we went as far away as we could. All the way out here. And we never went back to our little town, either. But people these days—well, they’re staying at your apartment and probably having a great old time.”

“Sure sounded like it when I left this morning.”

“Spare me the details, McCain. I have tender ears.” Then: “Tish Hardin called me late last night from the hospital.”

“Is she sick?”

“She isn’t. But her husband Mike is. He sat in a steaming hot bath last night and slashed his wrists. She got him to the hospital and took him in the back way. She’s afraid that this’ll make people think he killed that Hastings woman.”

“Under the circumstances, I’d have to say that that would cross
my
mind, too.”

“He’s at St. Mallory’s. Go see him, talk to him.”

“I doubt he’ll talk to me.”

“It’s important that you at least try.”

“Let me check my mail and my calls. I’ll get over there as soon as I can.”

“I’m due in court in ten minutes, McCain. Call me later on this morning. After eleven.”

“All right.”

“And McCain?”

“Yes?”

“I think you should marry Mary Travers.”

I laughed. “What brought that on?”

“Well, everybody in town knows what’s happened to her. And everybody also knows that she’s still in love with you. She’s a very sweet girl.”

“I didn’t know you gave advice on romance.”

“You should know by now, McCain, that I give advice on anything I feel like.” She hung up.

H
E WAS ON THE
top floor in a cul-de-sac, the nearest room half a hallway distant. A nurse had just stuck a thermometer in his mouth as I walked in. The white room gleamed with sunlight. A wall-mounted TV was muted. The image was that of Garry Moore, a comforting image.

He gave me a little nod. The nurse gave me a nod, too. She was old and tough and serious, the master sergeant type. He looked like Mike Hardin. He didn’t even look pale. Both his wrists were bandaged pretty good, though.

I lighted a cigarette and walked over to the window and looked out on the town. In the daylight it’s Norman Rockwell. For all its foibles and shortcomings, it’s a good town with good people. The exceptions to the latter generally don’t bother you with anything worse than brief burst of malicious gossip or pontification. You could see the changes, though. Like the shopping center distant on the north edge of town. The downtown merchants were scared of it, and rightly so. We had recently added a McDonald’s near the community college. There was talk of a chain pizza coming here next year. And then there were the commuters who lived in the large, expensive housing development to the west. Four bedrooms, three baths, two-and-three stall garages. The Interstate would swing by here in another couple years and the number of commuters would triple after that. Judging by things they wrote in the newspaper letter columns, they seem to regard us and our customs as “quaint.” Some of the quaintness irritated them. They especially hated farm smells and slow traffic when they were trying to get to their jobs in the morning. I don’t believe that a Jaguar or a Mercedes-Benz had ever so much as passed through our little town till the high-powered executives arrived. It was the brave new world of 1962.

After the nurse squeaked out the door, Hardin jammed a cigarette between his lips, fired it up with an expensive lighter, and said, “Pretty stupid, huh?” He held up his wrists to show me. He held them up the way he would little kittens.

“Pretty stupid.” We still didn’t like each other but this was no time to play tough guy.

“I can tell you what everybody’s saying.”

“That you killed her and her brother and then tried to kill yourself rather than face prison.”

“Yup. ‘Former University Football Star Murders Mistress.’”

“You should write headlines for a living.”

He smiled. It was a wide and deep and sincere smile, too. The suicide attempt had transformed him into a relaxed, friendly human being. “I’ll have to consider that since I’m soon going to be broke. If not behind bars.”

“You kill her?”

We watched each other for a while. Just watched. No particular expressions. Then he glanced out the window and back at me.

“I was always kind of an asshole to you, wasn’t I, McCain?”

“Me and a lot of other people, though this probably isn’t the time to say it.”

“I’m going to be changing that. Or trying, anyway. My wife’s only going to stick with me if I try. I wasn’t a hell of a lot better with her than anybody else. And the worst thing is that I’ve been that way pretty much all my life. I knew it, too. And I didn’t care. I don’t know that my two boys’ll ever forgive me.” Then: “You think I killed her?”

“Nope.”

“How come?”

I shrugged. “Just don’t is all. Couldn’t tell you why. Just a sense I got.”

“Do you usually guess right?”

“About twenty percent of the time.”

He laughed. Then gave me a full rich phlegmy minute of a cigarette cough. He said, “I didn’t kill her. I sure thought about it when her brother started shaking me down, though.”

“He was shaking you down?”

“Nobody told you?”

“No.”

“Hell, he was shaking
all
of us down. I got pretty mad and threw him around one night.”

“When was this?”

“Two weeks ago.”

“You talk to Karen Hastings about it?”

“Yeah. She got real mad. Or pretended to, anyway. Told me how much she hated her brother. How she’d traveled with him with his magic act. He’d do the divorce detective routine. Get her in bed with some rich old bastard, hide behind the curtains and take snapshots of them. And then sell the pictures to the guy for a lot of money. She was honest enough to say that she hadn’t minded living that way for several years but then she just wanted out. That’s when we met her. That’s why she agreed to the setup we had. She thought it would get her away from her brother.”