Breaking Up Is Hard to Do (The Sam McCain Mysteries Book 6) (14 page)

“He told me he couldn’t find her.”

“Bullshit. He’s been out here from day one. She said he had a lot of nasty things going on the side in Chicago but that when he’d run out of money, he came back here and got some from her. Then recently he got the idea of shaking all of us down. Murdoch tells me the little guy hired you?”

“He told me he wanted me to deliver a package. To a woman. That’s all he told me.”

“You ever deliver it to her?”

“She was dead before I got to her.”

He lay his head back on the pillow. For the first time he looked like a sick man. Drained. Weak. “I don’t think my life was supposed to turn out this way. I was always supposed to be the hero. The good-looking football star. Now I’ll be a creep to everybody.”

“Maybe not to the people who matter to you.”

He smiled. “You gonna go ‘Dear Abby’ on me, McCain?”

“Nah. It’s too early in the day for that. I only go ‘Dear Abby’ after a couple of beers.”

I was in court for two hours. My client had been charged with shoplifting. He was seventy-six years old.

Judge Frank Clemmons said, “Sid, what the hell’re we going to do with you?”

There were only four people in the pews. One of them gasped when Clemmons, who was nearly as old as Sid Cosgrove, said “hell” in court. The other three laughed. Clemmons fixed them with the evil eye.

“Sid, now I’ve looked into your Army pension and your social security and your savings account and for the life of me I can’t figure out why you shoplift. You’re not rich but you’re set up pretty good. You don’t have any reason at all to shoplift. Now the first three times you got caught, I’m told that the store just let you make restitution. But you know how Ken Potter is, especially when he’s having a bad day with his rheumatism. Well, looks like you caught him on one of them bad days, Sid, because here you are in court. Now what’ve you got to say for yourself?”

“I just like to have a little fun.”

“That’s your defense? That you like to have a little fun?”

“Sure. I sit out to the danged nursing home all day with nothin’ to do. So every once in a while I walk into town and have myself a little fun. They all know I shoplift by now. So it’s even more fun. See if I can grab somethin’ without them catchin’ me.”

“Well, you’ve been caught four times. That’s not a very good record.”

“Yeah, but it gives us all somethin’ to talk about at suppertime. Instead of hearin’ the same war stories over and over again. Or lookin’ at pitchers of everybody’s grandkids or great-grandkids. Or listenin’ to everybody bitch about their aches and pains. We’re old—seems logical that we’d have aches and pains. What’s the point in complainin’ about ’em?”

“So you shoplift to sort of entertain yourself?”

“Most fun I’ve had in years. People see how old I am and they expect me to fall over dead any minute. So it’s fun to show ’em I’ve still got the stuff.”

Sid made a pretty good case for himself. It was a pretty unique defense and you could see that Judge Clemmons was enjoying himself except when he looked out and saw Ken Potter the dime store owner glaring at him. I would say in fact that Sid was well on his way to becoming a folk hero except that he blew it by falling asleep right then and there. Just dropped off to slumber-land with no warning. And talk about your wall-rattling snoring. Folk heroes aren’t supposed to do that. And it says so very plainly in the folk hero book of rules. At least it did last time I looked.

I was standing on the courthouse steps, Sid’s niece having taken him back to the rest home, when a voice behind me said, “I would’ve put him in jail.”

“Sure you would’ve,” I said when she stood next to me.

“At least for seventy-two hours.”

“Sure you would’ve.”

“Well, at least forty-eight.”

“Not even twenty-four.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“First of all, the jail wouldn’t know what to do with anybody that old. And second of all, even as mean as you can get, you’re not that mean. Well, not usually.”

She gave me one of her rare smiles. She was an undisclosed fifty-something. And still a damned good-looking woman. Hand-tailored business suits, white scarves at the neck, dark hose, one-inch heels, just a touch of gold at the wrist. Standard operating gear for Judge Esme Anne Whitney. All the attire bought, of course, in New York City, which she escaped to three or four times a year.

The day was so ridiculously gorgeous I wanted to run around in circles and give out with Indian whoops. Like a little kid. Maybe roll around in piles of autumn leaves. And then later carve out a jack o’lantern.

“They’re all friends of mine and they’re all ruined,” she said.

“Yeah. I know.”

“I talked to Peter Carlson earlier today. He seems to think that when they find the killer that this’ll start to fade. I felt very sorry for him. But they were so stupid. This was like some fraternity boy prank or something. Keeping a woman, the four of them. My God.” She shook her sculpted head. Great graying hair cut short to emphasize the features of her face. “I know this’ll sound pompous, McCain. But I want to help our little town. If you’ve seen any of the state papers, we’re the laughingstock. ‘Peyton Place Comes to Iowa.’ We don’t deserve that.” She gave me a second rare smile. “Believe it or not, I realized when I saw all those nasty innuendos in the papers that I love this little town. It’s not very sophisticated and there isn’t much to do and the Sykeses haven’t spent a dime on anything remotely resembling culture—but the people are decent and the town’s a nice, safe place to live.”

I looked at her and laughed. “Why, Anne Esme Whitney, I can’t believe it. You’re actually sentimental about our little town here.”

Then she did it. Dipped into the small slash pocket of her custom-tailored suit and pulled out a rubber band. I wasn’t quick enough. She got me on the nose. She loved shooting rubber bands at me, the way Sid liked shoplifting I suppose. Made me really look forward to my own years of senility.

“It’s up to you, McCain.”

“To me? What’s up to me?”

“To find the killer and get this part of it over with at least.”

“Believe me, I’m trying.”

“I’m going to say something and you’ll probably disagree with me. But at least think about it for a while.”

“Fair enough.”

“I don’t think any of them killed her.”

“I’m going to surprise you and say that I agree with you.”

“Why, McCain, you’re much smarter than I ever realized.”

I tapped out a smoke from the pack. “No matter how I think it through, I can’t see any of them doing it. They had too much to lose. Even though each one of them is trying to convince me that one of the others did it.”

“Crime of passion?”

“Possibly. But only with Karen Hastings. Killing the brother had to be premeditated.”

“So that leaves us with whom?”

“Somebody who wanted to destroy them by forcing the whole thing out in the open. Not only destroy their reputations but implicate them in a murder besides. That leaves us with the wives of the four men and a mysterious man in a black Corvette.”

“Where he does he fit in?”

“He visited Karen Hastings a number of times recently, I’m told. From the insignia on his license plate, I take it he’s an MD.”

“Keep me posted, McCain.”

“I will.”

T
HE DOCTOR’S NAME WAS
Ned Evans. His office was out on First Avenue, the main drag in Cedar Rapids. Every once in a while you’d see an interurban track shining through the bricks. Somewhere in this area was the last of the blacksmith barns. Cedar Rapids had always been a special place for me because it was there I got to shake hands with Hopalong Cassidy. He was the most Irish man I’d ever seen except for my cousin Donald, who came here from County Cork. In his black outfit and big dramatic black hat, Hoppy looked like somebody from a different species. Everybody else looked small and incompetent compared to him.

The small city shone like a trophy in the early afternoon sun. I stopped at a drive-in for lunch. The carhops didn’t wear roller skates. Penny loafers seemed to be the general choice in shoes. I heard four or five girl-group songs. There was a guy named Phil Spector, a record producer, and that was his specialty, girl groups, wondrous girl groups, and they were so good that when you heard them sing you almost resented it when the following song was sung by a guy. Man, their sounds were so sweet and light and melancholy, they just took you out of reality.

I listened to the radio while I ate. There still hadn’t been any response from Russia, though its ships could be seen heading toward Cuba. President Kennedy had called a news conference and then an hour later canceled it. I spent a few minutes with mutant dreams. All those drive-in movie images of radioactive beasts that had formerly been men. I always felt sorry for the mutants. They hadn’t asked to be mutants. But that’s the way life was. Some of us got the hero roles and the rest of us got to be the ragged, smelly, bulge-eyed mutants. Guess which of us got the women.

The office was in a new two-story building of glass and metal. Very futuristic, like something on the covers of one of my old science fiction magazines. Most of the cars in the parking lot were new. With their huge fins they looked futuristic, too. I always wanted to be one of those guys on science fiction paperback covers. Very tense in their futuristic clothes, a ray gun in their hand, and a lovely scantily clad blonde accompanying them. Just give me a time machine and say goodbye.

Evans’s receptionist was young and dark-haired and pretty. She was also competent. While she was taking notes from the phone—lab results, I guessed, given some of the information she was repeating—she inserted a form onto a clipboard and handed it to me along with a pencil. She nodded to an empty chair across the room.

I took the clipboard and went over and sat down. I’d have to wait till she was off the phone to explain that I wasn’t here to have my throat examined. I was here to ask the good doctor some questions. I went through a pile of magazines. At least four of them had Khrushchev’s photo on the cover.

It was a noisy waiting room thanks to all the toddlers. They crawled, ran, fell down, bumped into things, cried, screamed, laughed, and screamed some more. Their mothers scolded, pleaded, begged, scolded and sighed. Deep, long sighs. Deep, long maternal sighs. They’d earned their sighs.

A nurse took me back to a small office that was crowded with too much office furniture of the wooden variety, too many medical tomes and too many samples of medicine. It was like one of those tiny closets Shemp, Mo, and Larry always found themselves in. Turn around and you give the guy next to you a concussion. The west wall was covered with framed photos of Evans and his family, two pig-tailed teenage girls, and an appealing out-doorsy sort of wife.

Dr. Ned Evans was as advertised by the stewardess I’d talked to earlier. A short, trim, bald man imposing not because of good looks but because in a completely modest way he exuded virility. He had to have been an athlete and a good one. A college wrestler, perhaps.

He wore the white smock over his slacks. A stethoscope sagged around his neck like a tired snake. He held up my card and smiled. “A private investigator. I sure never thought I’d ever have one of you guys in my office.” He sat down. “I can give you five minutes. Then I’ve got to get back to the grind. The flu season is starting early this year.”

“Then I’ll get right to it. Karen Hastings.”

He nodded. He put his hands on the desk. They were big hands and now they were tightening into fists. “I was sleeping with Karen Hastings for three, four months. She’d been a patient of mine. There was a lot of cancer in her family. She was something of a hypochondriac. She came in with a mole she was very worried about. Basal cell carcinoma. I had it biopsied—state law if you take anything off—and we found out it was nothing to be worried about. Most basil cell carcinomas don’t spread or metastasize. They stay pretty much where they are and never become anything to worry about. That’s how it started. Then one day I was downtown for a quick sandwich and I ran into her. We had a Coke. Three nights later I was sleeping with her. I probably would still be sleeping with her if her brother hadn’t started blackmailing me. He’d taken photos of me entering and leaving her place. Then he got a couple of shots of me taking her into a roadhouse. It was the usual bullshit. He’d mail them to my wife if I didn’t pay him.”

“How much?”

“Three grand.”

“Did you pay him?”

“Did I have any choice?”

“Did you keep on seeing her after that?”

“Are you kidding? I figured she was part of it.”

“When was the last time you talked to her?”

He thought a moment. “Week ago. She called to say how sorry she was about her brother. That she hadn’t had anything to do with the blackmail. She wanted me to come over and see her. She said she was in love with me.”

“Did you believe that?”

“No. Or at least I didn’t care if she was telling me the truth.”

“Why’s that?”

He made a face. “Why’s that? Well, I’m forty-four years old, I have an enviable medical practice, my peers tell me I’m damned good at what I do—and most of all I’ve got a wife and two daughters I love more than anything on this earth. And when I finally woke up and realized that I was jeopardizing it all—I just wanted out.”

“He would’ve kept blackmailing you.”

“I know.”

“That’s a pretty good reason for killing somebody.”

“I know that, too. Ever since I heard about her being killed—and then him on top of it—I can’t relax. I have to force myself to concentrate on my work. I just keep waiting for the knock on the door. The police. I’ll be a murder suspect and it’ll all come out and I’ll be ruined. Like those four stupid bastards who put up the money for her.”

“Why ‘stupid’?”

“Are you kidding? How long did they think before it’d get out?”

“You spent time with her.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t put her on the payroll.” Then: “Whether you noticed it or not, I’m scared shitless.”

It was one of those moments when somebody sort of forces you to like them against your better judgment.