Breaking Up Is Hard to Do (The Sam McCain Mysteries Book 6) (7 page)

Mike Hardin half-leaped from his chair and started pacing. “Face it. We’re screwed either way we go.” He made huge frustrated fists of his hands. He wanted to rip something apart. If I’d been in his situation, I’d have reacted the same way. He walked over to the window and looked outside. Nobody talked. A grandfather clock in the corner made the only sound.

“The longer you wait, the worse it’ll be,” I said. “And even if you try to hide the body, it’ll be found and you’ll still have to face all the same problems.”

“I’m willing to call Cliffie right now.” Ross Murdoch held an unlit briar pipe. A pacifier for older tots. “And I’m going to be the number one suspect.” He sighed again. “And it’s going to be the end of my political career.”

He’d obviously been thinking realistically about everything in the hours I’d been away.

“Your career is finished, Ross,” I said. “But all four of you’ll be suspects.”

“Us?” snapped Peter Carlson. “It’s not our bomb shelter. It’s Ross’s. We don’t live here.”

“No, but you were one-fourth of the deal.”

“Does he have to be here, Ross?” Carlson said. “He’s some two-bit lawyer. He doesn’t know jack shit.”

“Well,
I’m
not a two-bit lawyer and I say he’s right on the money,” Hardin said. “Hell, yes, we’re all going to be suspects. The workers in and out all day. Doors opened wide. I imagine there were times when nobody in the family was home when the bomb shelter was being worked on. Anybody could’ve slipped in. Any one of us. She probably weighed a little over a hundred pounds. She wouldn’t be hard to move in if you got in right after the workers were done for the day and the family was gone.
Were
you all gone yesterday, Ross?”

“I was in Iowa City. I’ll have to check with my wife and daughter. The maid usually leaves around four. She leaves the dinner for us in the stove. We like to eat early, around five.”

“There you go. You see what I mean?” Hardin said. “This house is big enough that people on the second floor wouldn’t hear anybody if they snuck into the basement and were quiet about it.”

“Cliffie isn’t that smart,” Gavin Wheeler said.

“Cliffie won’t have to be smart,” Murdoch said. “I know enough people in the capital that I can insist on the state boys getting involved. I want to find out what the hell happened.”

Gavin Wheeler said, “My own TV stations’ll cover this. I’ll be sittin’ at home watchin’ my own TV station treat me like a common criminal. Damned good thing it’s privately held. Stockholders’d kick my ass out for sure.”

“We’re all going to have those problems,” Murdoch said. “People’ll be shocked when they hear this. And then they’ll start laughing. And they’ll laugh at us the rest of our lives. It’ll be like when Carmichael took bankruptcy.”

Andy Carmichael had owned twenty-some mom and pop grocery stores throughout the state. He wasn’t afraid of the huge supermarkets that had just reached the outlying Midwest. He said that people in our kind of towns would resist them. Would hate the size. Would hate the impersonal service. Would hate all the hoopla that always goes along with places like that. Two supermarkets came into town in 1950 and by 1952 all of Carmichael’s stores were out of business and he’d gone bankrupt. He took to walking with his head down so he wouldn’t have to acknowledge anyone on the street. He took to staying home for days, sometimes weeks at a time. He took to solitary and severe drinking. And then one night he took to putting a .45 in his mouth and pulling the trigger. Just once is all it takes. It wasn’t Jews, Negroes, homosexuals, or even Catholics—despite the name he was a virulent anti-Papist Protestant—that had done him in. It was capitalism in its simplest and most ruthless form.

Murdoch set his pipe on the desk, walked around so he could face everybody and said, “I’m going to call Cliffie. Sam, you shouldn’t be here. That’ll make things look bad for you and bad for us. I’m going to tell one lie that I want you all to agree with. That I didn’t discover the body until just before dinner. That way it won’t look as if we even considered covering all this up. I found the body, called you gentlemen over, and we all arranged to be here when the law arrived. Is that all right?”

“I won’t swear to it under oath,” I said. “In fact, I think it’s a very bad idea. Lies never work in investigations like these.”

Murdoch shook his head. “I’m going to take the chance.”

“That’s up to you, Ross.”

I nodded to the four of them. “Good luck.”

I had almost closed the door—hoping I wouldn’t hear any disparaging whispers about myself—when Peter Carlson, obviously wanting me to hear it, said, “What a nickel-dimer he is. I don’t want him around any more, Ross, and I mean it.”

All the way out to my car I wondered which was more insulting, nickel-dimer or asshole. I am frequently involved in such philosophical debates.

I was so lost in asshole versus nickel-dimer that I didn’t even see her until I opened the door and got in the car. She sat smoking a cigarette in the passenger seat.

Her hair was in a ponytail now and she wore a crew neck sweater, white shirt and jeans. She looked like a high school girl. “Hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all.”

“God, I love making out in cars, don’t you? And I don’t mean that as an invitation.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“And then smoking afterward. And drawing your initials in the steam on the window. And pretending that nobody can ever hurt you as long as you never leave the car. And as long as the night never ends.”

She was bringing back a lot of memories and for a long wonderful moment I rode on the crest of them, surfer style. But then I began wondering what she was doing out here.

She spoke before I could ask her.

“I just had to get away from my mom for a while.”

“I thought you got along.”

“We do. But—today’s been a real strain on her.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

She said, “She’s been eating Miltowns all day.”

“Still the tranquilizer of choice.”

“She’s terrified and so am I.”

“Of what?”

“Oh, please, Sam. Something terrible’s going on, isn’t it? Dad won’t let anybody go in the basement and if you even go near it, he explodes. He’s usually very calm. Then his three so-called ‘friends’ have this secret meeting in the den.”

“Why ‘so-called’?”

“Well, both Hardin and Carlson have tried to put the make on me ever since I was fourteen. Hardin even got me drunk one night at this New Year’s Eve party and really felt me up.”

“Our esteemed counselor?”

“Our esteemed counselor.”

“Anything else I should know about?”

She angled herself over so that she could lay back against the window. “I love the feeling of a cold car window on your skin. If I had a blanket I could probably go to sleep right here.”

“It’s my company. I have that effect on people. I once put an entire stadium asleep by telling them my life story. And I only got up to age two before they all nodded off.”

She smiled. “I’ll bet a lot of girls have told you how cute you are.”

“I’ll bet a lot of guys have told you how beautiful
you
are.”

“‘Pretty,’ I’ll go along with. Beautiful—no.”

“You never did finish telling me about our esteemed counselor Hardin.”

“I know. I just feel kind of funny—you know. Talking about private family things.”

I didn’t want to push her. Make her any more suspicious about what was going on all around her. I just said, “Well—and please don’t tell anybody else this—the same thing happened to me.”

“What same thing?”

“With Hardin. He got
me
drunk one night and felt
me
up, too. But then he dropped me when he found out I couldn’t mambo.”

She laughed. “You must’ve been crushed.”

“Well, not really. His breath is pretty bad.”

She leaned over and kissed me. “You really are an idiot, you know.”

“So give me some dirt on Hardin. He’s a competitor of mine in a way. I just enjoy hearing things about competitors.”

She shrugged and then leaned back against the window.

“Well, it’s not anything hot or sexy. It’s just this housing development in Des Moines. Wheeler and Dad went ahead and invested in it and made a lot of money. They didn’t invite Hardin or Carlson in. Hardin and Dad actually got into a fist fight in the den over it. Hardin was adamant about it for months. He seems to believe that they made some kind of agreement to always act as a group. And that any time there’s an investment opportunity, they should all be told about it. You know, have the right to turn it down at least.”

“So he gets along with Wheeler?”

“Oh, God,” she said and put her head back against the seat. “I really shouldn’t say this. But I had two drinks and that always turns me into a snitch. You know how in the big war they always said ‘Loose lips sink ships’?”

“There were posters everywhere that said that.”

“Well, after two or three drinks, I sink a lot of ships.”

“Meaning?”

She couldn’t decide if she wanted to sink any more ships. While she was deciding, I saw a car pull up at the distant entrance to the place and cut its lights. I recognized the car immediately. A white and blue 1955 Chevrolet. The car that changed automobile styles around the world. Probably my all-time favorite design. There were still a number of them around. But I had the feeling I knew whose car it was.

“My father once accused Wheeler of cheating him in a land deal. They patched things up but they’ve never been very close since. I think the only reason they see each other at all is because they have so many investments together.” She tamped out another cigarette. “So now it’s your turn.”

“My turn?”

“You have to tell me what’s going on with my father. And why you keep looking in your rearview mirror.”

“There’s a car parked near the entrance to your drive.”

“A burglar?” she said lightly.

“A reporter.”

“Not the intrepid Don Arbogast.”

I laughed. “Yes, indeed. The intrepid Don Arbogast, the man who gave narcolepsy a bad name.”

Don was, depending on whom you believed, in his seventies or eighties. It was believed that he had something naughty on his employer. How else could he keep his job? He hobbled around on a walker half the time. And the other half—as when he was covering trials—he sat in the back and snored. He was a decent guy and had once been a first-rate reporter. These days he’d get lucky once in a while and stumble into a story that really mattered.

“Well, at least we don’t have to worry about him coming up here and bothering us. He can’t walk that far.”

“I think I’ll check him out,” I said.

“Hey,” she said. “You’re supposed to tell me what’s going on with my father.”

“C’mon now, I need to talk to Arbogast before he leaves.”

“Leaves? He’s probably asleep.”

And he probably was.

I leaned across her and opened the door. “I need to hurry.”

“This isn’t fair.” She was still keeping the tone light, a kind of mock petulance. But her eyes were anxious. She rightly suspected that something was badly wrong.

She got out of the Ford and said, “I hope I’ll see you tomorrow. By then maybe I’ll know what’s going on around here.”

I drove away.

The intrepid Don Arbogast was just getting out of his nifty mobile when I pulled up alongside him on the road in front of the Murdoch place.

I always felt sorry for him. Couldn’t help it. His wife had died ten years ago, his kids were grown and dispersed throughout the galaxy, and he had no life but his reporting job. The paper had two young reporters to do the heavy work. The publisher just sort of let Don do whatever he wanted to.

I wished he hadn’t dyed his hair black. I wished he didn’t wear drape-style sports coats of the kind most often seen on Elvis Presley. I wished he didn’t wear bow ties, pinkie rings and a snap-brim fedora. He didn’t seem to understand that all this was lost in the old-man shuffle and the old-man drool.

I rolled down my window and said, “Kinda nippy tonight, Don.”

“Yeah, but I dig cold weather.”

Which was another thing. He used a lot of “cool” slang. Oh, Don Don Don.

“You having engine trouble?” I said, nodding to that enviably cherry vehicle of his.

“Huh?” He cupped his hand to his ear like a hearing horn.

“
YOU HAVING ENGINE TROUBLE
?” I guess I forgot to mention the hard-of-hearing thing.

“No, man, I’m just checkin’ out a tip.”

“What kind of tip?” My stomach started to feel funny, tense and vaguely sick.

“Somebody called and said there was a dead body in the Murdoch place. He’s runnin’ for senator, you know.”

“Governor, actually.”

“Huh?” Again with the hand to the ear.

I decided to let this one pass. “You remember who called you with the tip, Don?”

This one he heard. His face broke into a smile that made him look twenty years younger. “You think I’d fink on a source of mine?” And then those old sad-dog brown eyes got a lot brighter. He was like a boxer who is flat on his back at the count of nine but who suddenly springs to his feet and starts throwing killer punches. That was why you couldn’t ever dismiss him. Just when you thought he could never put a story together, he’d give you a tale that would rock you. “And by the way, McCain, what’re you doing out here?”

“Just visiting Deirdre.”

“She’s got some caboose on her, don’t she?”

“She sure does.” And she did.

“The wife, she had a caboose like that. Kept it, too, right up to the end.”

I smiled. “She was a good woman, Don.” A little woman, quick and attractive, her well-known sorrow being that she’d never been able to have kids. Out of a Hamlin Garland or Willa Cather story, in her way.

I thought of driving back to the house and warning them about Don. But what was the point? Cliffie would be out here soon enough and Don would have his story. What I was more interested in was who had called him and tipped him.

And then I had reason to realize all over again how you could underestimate this old guy. He leaned back through his car window and brought forth a pair of binoculars. High-powered ones from the looks of them. He scanned the driveway. “That’s interesting.”