Breaking Up Is Hard to Do (The Sam McCain Mysteries Book 6) (20 page)

A few days ago, I would’ve thought about asking her for a date sometime. She looked bright, earnest and sweet. But somehow as we’d been talking, I began to realize my need to be with a woman. And the woman who kept coming to mind was Mary.

I saw Janice Wilson to her car and said good-bye.

T
HERE WAS ANOTHER G
ATHERING downtown. On the steps of the Catholic church. No candles because it was daylight. Everybody in kind of a hurry because it was the end of the day and home sure did sound good. The spouse, the kids, the food, the TV, the furnace kicking in and sounding good and smelling good as it did so—heat having its own very particular smell—no wonder they said there was no place like it.

Again it was a cross-section of people, the old woman wearing the bulky winter coat she’d bought ten years ago, threadbare now; the young businessman in his camel’s hair topcoat and white silk scarf; the day laborer with his Oshkosh winter jacket, the collar lined with union buttons; the prim middle-class housewife in her smart royal blue dress jacket and dark blue jaunty hat; and the ancient Negro man, a face rutted and ruined by so many small losses and humiliations and modest dashed dreams that there had to be a few moments here and there when the notion of nuclear destruction didn’t sound all that bad.

A priest today, not a minister, a young and modern-minded one who wore a black turtleneck instead of a Roman collar, jeans instead of trousers, and played a guitar instead of read from the Bible, a Woodie Guthrie song I liked just fine except that I didn’t see its relevance here, given the occasion I mean, the world maybe going to blow up soon.

But that was my problem. I sit in a courtroom and mentally wander off about where I’ll have supper tonight. I sit in a church and think not of Jesus but about what comely ankles the woman in front of me has, which I happen to notice right below me whenever we’re kneeling down. Or I stand in front of a church and play music critic, thinking not of the holocaust that might soon befall us but of what a poor choice of songs the young priest chose for the occasion. I’m a regular pip, I am.

There were probably two hundred people here. There’d been no word from the Russians. Everybody was in a “what if” mode. What if the Russians did this, would we then do that? And so on.

The ceremony ended with everybody singing the Our Father, the priest leading us in the Protestant version because this was a Protestant town and he wanted to be polite, which was understandable.

As I walked back to my office, I heard somebody groan behind me. It was a very particular sounding groan. More like a moan, I guessed. I’d heard one like it only once before. When my Uncle Bill was having a heart attack.

I turned to see Abe Leifer again, only this time he was grasping at his left arm and starting to pitch forward to the sidewalk. His face was dead pale. His mouth was open in to scream but he had neither the time nor the strength for it. He grew whiter by the moment.

We were near the corner, where there was a police call box mounted on the support column of the street light. I ran to check Abe first.

Then I was shouting at a farmer in a John Deere cap, “Use that call box! Get an ambulance!”

He looked confused at first. Then he looked as if this might be some sort of gag, with a cameraman hiding somewhere.
Candid Camera
, the show that trapped people into doing dumb things and filmed them doing them.

I was no expert at mouth-to-mouth but I gave it a try.

Beth Leifer sat on one side of her mother and I sat on the other. This was the waiting room outside the surgery.

Helen Leifer would be all right and then she would not be all right. Beth was a pretty, thirtyish woman with intelligent gray eyes and a smile that was as gracious as a papal blessing. Her husband Del and I shot baskets a lot on the outdoor court at our old high school. Beth wasn’t smiling now, of course. She was trying to keep her mother in an optimistic mood. I was pretty sure she was trying to accomplish the same thing with herself. The doctor, a man named Fred Knowles, was big, cold, gruff. He’d interned with Himmler.

There was a clock down the hall. Abe had been in surgery more than an hour now.

I said, “I’m going down the hall to the bathroom, Beth.”

“We’ll be fine. Take your time. Get a cup of coffee if you like.”

“Would either of you like one?”

“I’d sure appreciate one. Mom can share mine.”

“I’m not even sure I could hold down coffee, the way my stomach feels.” Helen and Abe had been married forty years. Impossible to imagine what Helen was going through now.

On the way to the cafeteria, I passed the Volunteers office. I saw Peggy Leigh, the volunteer coordinator I’d met the other day.

I waved to her. She waved me into the office. She was behind her desk, talking on the phone.

I roamed the small room. One wall was covered with photos of various volunteers, including the candy-stripers. Deirdre certainly looked fetching in her crisp nurse-like blue-and-white uniform.

Next to this was a board that listed the monthly schedule for the candy-stripers. I looked at Deirdre’s name. She sure put in a lot of hours here. But as I started to note the particular hours, something didn’t seem right. I was still studying them when Peggy Leigh said, “How would you like to be a celebrity for a night, Sam?”

“I gave up tap dancing years ago.” I turned away from the scheduling board.

She smiled and I knew she was on a mission to get to me volunteer for something.

“Tuesday nights, we have guest speakers come to the cafeteria and give a little spiel to the patients who’re interested. You being an investigator and all, I’m sure they’d be fascinated.”

“You know, Peggy, now that you mention it, I
am
a pretty fascinating guy.”

“C’mon, Sam, I’m serious. You could probably tell a lot of stories about your work.”

“Names changed to protect the innocent, of course.”

“However you want to do it.”

“Could I do it next month?”

“That’d be fine. Second Tuesday all right?”

“Barring anything unforeseen.”

“My daily horoscope said this was going to be my lucky day.”

“I’ll probably have to make stuff up, Peggy.”

“Sure, Sam, sure.”

Her phone rang.

I nodded goodbye and went and got two coffees and brought them back to where the Leifers sat in the waiting room.

We drank in silence. Helen seemed to have shriveled inside her massive storm coat. Beth was starting to show the effects, too. Tears in her eyes. Hands trembling every once in a while. I tried to think of something to say. There wasn’t anything. I’d never gone through this kind of waiting before. But someday I’d have to, just as some day somebody would be waiting on me. Wife or child. Maybe my kid sister Ruthie if we ever lived in the same town again. There’s something holy about this kind of grief, the grief of waiting. Everything is cleansed but for the love you feel. The terrible wonderful holy
burden
of the kind of love that binds you forever to a particular person.

We sat through a shift change, some down-the-hall radio reports on the missile crisis that didn’t seem to be abating, and numerous offers of food from nurses.

The doctor came out at about seven o’clock. He’d undergone a personality transplant. He was almost tender now. He spoke mostly to Helen, as was appropriate I suppose. “Things are looking a lot better now. He suffered a heart attack but it wasn’t as critical as we first thought it was. I’d say his chances for recovery are very good and without any kind of permanent damage. We’ll have to raise some hell with him, Helen, about those donuts he likes so much.”

She smiled through relieved tears. “The donut shop is right next door to his business. It won’t be easy.”

He took her hand and then Beth’s. “You can see him in a little while. What I’d suggest now is that you two go down to the cafeteria and have some supper. I’ll talk to you in the morning again.”

He nodded to me and walked away, long, quick strides.

They both hugged me. I hugged them back.

“Say a prayer for him, Sam, please.”

“I will, Helen. I promise.”

Beth kissed me on the cheek. What nice soft lips.

I grabbed A couple of burgers and a Pepsi and ate in my office. In ten minutes, I got two calls. The first was from the Judge.

“There’s something funny going on, McCain.”

“And that would be what?”

“That would be Ross Murdoch getting out of jail on bail and then disappearing.”

“You mean jumping bail?”

“I’m not sure what I mean other than the fact that Irene Murdoch called me and is very frightened. She said she’d never seen Ross the way he was this afternoon when he got home from jail. She said he acted as if he was in some sort of stupor. Deirdre said she thinks he’s suffering from terrible depression about everything.”

“And I’m to do what?”

“Start looking for him.”

“He’s free to do what he wants, Judge, as long as he doesn’t leave town.”

“McCain, listen. I told Irene I’d get back to her. I want to tell her that you’re looking around town for him and I want that to be true.”

“I thought Irene was going up to that hospital for a while.”

“She was. It’s sort of a retreat for her. She just goes up there when things get too much for her. But she refused to leave until she heard that bail had been arranged. She wanted to be there when Ross got home. That’s when she got scared.”

“Well, I’ll look around. But don’t hold out much hope. If he wanted to disappear for a few hours, I’m sure he can find someplace where I’ll never find him.” Then I remembered something Scotty McBain had said. “Doesn’t he have a summer house?”

“Oh, a little one. Nothing fancy. They bought it when they first got married. I don’t think any of them has spent much time there since Deirdre was a little girl.”

I asked her for directions and she told me.

“Call me in a couple of hours and let me know if you found anything,” she said.

I went to the john and freshened up. I needed more coffee and I was nearly out of cigarettes. I kept a sweater folded neatly in the bottom drawer of my desk. A black crew neck that clashed with very little. I was sick of the necktie and suitcoat. I slipped on the sweater and was headed for the door when the phone rang again.

Janice Wilson was on the line, “I talked to the other waitress. She remembers Karen Hastings coming in that night. She was with another woman. She can’t remember anything about her. She said that one of the busboys actually served the meal and wrote up the check, they were so busy. She said that all she did was initial it so Karen could get the discount. That isn’t very helpful, I’m afraid.”

“Another woman. Well, at least we know it wasn’t with one of the four men.”

“Sorry, Sam. I’ve got to run. I’d like to see you again sometime, if you’re ever interested.”

“Very interested. Thanks for the call.”

Other woman, other woman, other woman.
You know how the echo machine plays the same phrase over and over again in a movie character’s mind? Mine was sort of doing that on the drive to Ross Murdoch’s summer home.

The problem was that the woman could easily have been just an acquaintance who had nothing to do with Karen’s eventual murder at all. I’d half-suspected her dinner guest was her brother. I’d thought maybe they were making last minute preparations for their final blackmail payment. The big one.

The wind was hard enough to make my ragtop sway side to side on the deserted blacktop road that led to the woods commonly called Peer’s Peak after the man who’d had a huge apple orchard out here for decades. The land behind his was thorny forest that dropped down to the river.

In the headlights, the black night looked bleak, the cold ebon river was touched by cold golden moonlight, and on the other side of the road steep timber rose to form one wall of a canyon. The river people lived out here year-round in shanties and shacks and tiny trailers. Every couple years, they got flooded out but they always came back. It was a hardscrabble life, their TV antennas and silver propane tanks and junker cars being their most valuable inanimate assets. It was one of those nights so dark you nearly suspected that dawn would never come again, that the dark forces at play in the cosmos had finally banished daylight forever. At the moment it was even impossible to remember what sunlight looked like.

I found the off-trail road the judge had described. I got out and took down the wooden crossbar and drove through the gate. I got out again, put the crossbar back in place and began the narrow, winding, strange trip into forest so deep it seemed to absorb the beams of my headlights. This time of year, autumn leaves covered everything. I kept the driver’s window down, my .45 right on the seat next to me. There was still enough wary kid in me to know that I was in the heart of an evil land. A cop I knew once told me that any time you found deep forest you’d find a human body or two that had been buried years ago and was now little more than dusty bone. If you were so inclined to spend your free hours digging. Not a pastime I’d care to indulge in.

Wooden shingled one-story house with a screened-in front porch and a steeply pitched roof. The grass was a couple of inches tall and the forest was starting to reclaim the backyard area. Ross Murdoch’s black Cadillac sedan was parked in front. My headlights gave the house a lurid bleached look, the way those photos look in true crime magazines.

I switched off the ignition, grabbed my .38 and flashlight and got out of the car. The wind off the river, which was behind a screen of birches, was hard cold. The stench was of fish.

I went to the side window and poked my flashlight right up against the glass. Murdoch hadn’t even tried to make it resemble any kind of hunting or sport cabin. It was furnished in solid middle-class New England furniture. Ethan Allen from the looks of it.

I saw nothing out of place. But I also saw no evidence of Ross. Had he gone for a walk? Was he maybe asleep in the bedroom?

I went back to the front door. Took out my handkerchief and proceeded to make my way inside without leaving any fingerprints. I stood in the living room and flipped on the wall light. Everything was dusty, including the 21-inch Admiral table model TV. The screen was opaque with dust. I called out his name several times. My voice sounded alien to me in the gloom.