Hugger Mugger (8 page)

“Nope. I run a clean operation, pay my dues, the law leaves me alone.”

“Including Becker?”

“The black deputy-in-charge?”

“Un-huh.”

“I have no problem with him.”

“You pay him off?”

“No.”

“Operation like this pays off somebody,” I said.

She rocked a little and didn't say anything. She was small enough so that her feet only touched the floor when she rocked forward.

“But not Becker,” she said.

“Know a guy named Delroy?”

“Maybe. What's he do?”

“Private security,” I said. “On behalf of Pud's father-in-law.”

“Yes. I know him.”

A silver Volvo station wagon went slowly past us on
the empty street, its headlights bright and silent.

“Tell me about him?”

“One of the girls tried to supplement her income,” Polly said, “by putting the squeeze on Pud.”

“Threaten to tell his wife?”

“Worse. She rigged a Polaroid and got some pictures during the gig.”

“Which she threatened to show his wife.”

“And everybody else, I believe.”

“And?”

“And Delroy came down and explained the facts of life to her.”

“Which were?”

“I never asked.”

“Can I talk with her?”

Polly shrugged.

“If you can find her,” she said. “Name's Jane Munroe.”

“You know where I should look?”

“No.”

“She doesn't work for you anymore?”

“No. I fired her before Delroy even talked to her.”

“He talk to you first?”

“Yes. He suggested I fire her, but I would have anyway. Nothing kills a good client list like some whore threatening to blab.”

“Is Jane still in town?”

“I'm not their mother,” Polly said. “I manage their professional lives. I have no idea where Jane Munroe is, or if she's still using the name.”

“Was Delroy polite?”

“Very businesslike,” she said.

“He threaten you?”

“Didn't need to. As soon as I heard about the scam, I told him she'd be fired.”

A big yellow cat appeared and rubbed up against my leg. I reached down and scratched his ear. He stayed for a moment, then left me and jumped up onto the porch railing and sat looking out over the dark lawn.

“There anything else?”

“Like what?”

“Like something about the Clive family that I'd like to know, but am too dumb to ask?”

“Tedy said I could trust you,” she said.

“Tedy's right,” I said.

“How do you know Tedy? You gay?”

“I'm straight. I met him this afternoon, the way I've met you tonight.”

“I haven't had a lot of reason to trust straight men,” she said.

“You used to turn tricks?” I said.

“Sure. You think I bought a franchise?”

“Just being polite,” I said.

“A bunch of fat guys with hair on their back,” she said. “Usually drunk, telling me they loved me. Telling me that they were going to give me the fuck of my life.”

She laughed. It was a very unpleasant sound in the soft Georgia night. The yellow cat turned his head and looked at her without emotion.

I waited.

“What a hoot!” she said.

“You're a lesbian,” I said.

“How'd you know?”

“I'm a professional detective,” I said.

“Sapp told you.”

“Yes, but I questioned him closely.”

“Lot of the girls are lesbians,” she said.

“What's love got to do with it,” I said.

“Exactly,” she said.

The yellow cat turned his head back toward the dark lawn, then silently disappeared off the railing. There was a scurrying in the bushes and a small squeak and then silence. I waited some more.

“Sapp's a good man,” Polly said.

“Seems so to me,” I said.

“You was smarter,” Polly said, “maybe you'd ask me about Stonie Clive.”

“Cord Wyatt's wife?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me about her,” I said.

“She worked for me for a while.”

“When?”

“Two years ago.”

“You know who she was?”

“Not at the time.”

“How'd you recruit her?”

“She came to me. Said she'd heard about me. She said she had always wanted to do this kind of work and could I take her on? She was a nice-looking girl. Upperclass. I figured she'd do well.”

“So she actually worked.”

“Yes. But here's the cool part. I service a truck stop on the Interstate, up by Crawfordville. Normally I send the
worst girls up there. Mostly it's head in the cab of some ten-wheeler at twenty bucks a throw. Stonie wanted that.”

“BJ's at a truck stop?” I said.

“If you don't waste a lot of time talking,” Polly said, “you can make a pretty good night's pay.”

“Why would she need money?” I said.

A little light spilled out onto the veranda through the screen door. It was enough so that I could see her shrug.

“She's not still with you?” I said.

“No. Left about six, eight months ago.”

“With no notice?”

Polly almost smiled.

“Nope, just stopped showing up. Lot of girls do that.”

“How'd you find out who she was?”

“Saw her picture in the paper, some big racetrack thing.”

“You're sure it was Stonie?”

“I know my girls,” Polly said.

“She ever say why she wanted to do this?”

“Nope.”

“You have any theories?” I said.

She rocked some more.

“Most of the girls it's simple. They got no education. They got no skills. They need money. So they do this. Some girls do it because they get something out of exploiting men.”

“The men are often thought to be exploiting them,” I said.

“Uh-huh.”

I could tell that Polly had her own position on exploitation.

“Some girls just like it,” she said.

“Truck stops at twenty bucks a . . . pop?”

“Not usually. But everybody's different.”

“You think Stonie liked it?”

“No.”

“It wasn't the money,” I said.

“I don't think it was the money,” Polly said.

“Exploit men?”

“Maybe a little of that,” Polly said. “But . . .”

She rocked for a time, thinking about it.

“You know her husband's a chicken fucker?”

“I know,” I said.

“I think she was getting even,” Polly said.

“S
O WHAT DO
you think?” I said.

I was lying in my shorts on the bed in the Holiday Inn in Lamarr, Georgia, talking on the phone to Susan in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She said she was in bed. Which meant that she had her hair up, and some sort of expensive glop on her face. The TV would be on, though she would have muted it when the phone rang. Almost certainly, Pearl was asleep beside her on the bed.

“I think you're trapped inside the first draft of a Tennessee Williams play.”

“Without you,” I said.

“I know.”

“You're in bed?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Naked?”

“Not exactly.”

“White socks, gray sweatpants, a white T-shirt with a picture of Einstein on it?”

“You remember,” she said.

“Naked makes for better phone sex,” I said.

“Pretense is a slippery slope,” she said.

Her voice was quite light, and not very strong, but when she was amused there were hints of a contralto substructure that enriched everything she said.

“Don't you shrinks ever take a break?” I said.

“So many fruitcakes,” Susan said, “so little time.”

“How true,” I said. “What do you think of Polly Brown's theory that Stonie goes to truck stops to avenge herself on her husband?”

“It would be better if I had a chance to talk with her,” Susan said.

“I'll be your eyes and ears,” I said.

“Have you talked with her?”

“Once, at a cocktail party, for maybe a minute.”

“Oh, that'll be fine then,” Susan said. “No therapist could ask for more.”

“Gimme a guess,” I said.

“Her husband is actively gay, with a special interest in young men,” Susan said.

“Yes.”

“Would you say that she would experience that as him having sex in the most inappropriate way possible?”

“Yes.”

“And is that what she's doing?”

“Seems so. So it is revenge?”

“Could be. Tit for tat. People often are very crude in their pathologies.”

“Like me,” I said. “I keep pretending you're naked on the bed.”

“On the other hand, it may be more subtle than that. She may be simply enacting her condition.”

“Her condition is smoking the cannoli in a parking lot?”

“It's good to know that you haven't lost that keen edge of your sophistication. Perhaps her activities in the parking lot are, at least symbolically, how she experiences herself.”

“Because of her husband?”

“Not only her husband,” Susan said. “You said her father got her husband out of a couple of boy-love jams.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Appearances,” I said. “Save the family from scandal.”

“So he knows her marriage is probably a sham. Other than covering up for the husband, does he do anything about it?”

“Not that I can see.”

“So as far as we can tell, her father and husband don't value her beyond whatever ornamental use they put her to.”

“I get it,” I said.

“I knew you would,” Susan said.

“There's another thing bothering me,” I said. “The shooting of the horse over in Alton.”

“Why does that bother you?”

“Becker and I speculate that it might be to distract me,” I said. “And that's a reasonable speculation.”

“But?”

“But if it's the work of some kind of serial psychopath, which is what it seems like, then distracting me would seem to be too rational an act.”

“Possibly,” Susan said.

“I mean, the compulsion isn't about me.”

“You may have been added to what it is about,” Susan said.

“Or maybe it's not a compulsion,” I said.

“Are you just casting about, or have you any other reason to think it's something else?”

“Well, what kind of compulsion is this? A compulsion to shoot horses, with no concern for the result?”

“No way to know,” Susan said. “Compulsions are consistent only to their own logic.”

“Well, I remain skeptical.”

“As well you should.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

“Will that be Visa or MasterCard?” Susan said.

“I'll recompense you in full,” I said, “when I get home.”

“Soon?”

“I have no idea.”

“It's annoying, isn't it,” Susan said, “to have our life scheduled by the pathology of someone we can't even identify.”

“You should know,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “Sometimes I think we're doing the same work.”

“Do you think that absence makes the heart grow fonder?”

“No. I'm already as fond as I'm capable of being,” Susan said. “Makes me miss you, though.”

“Yes,” I said. “I feel the same way.”

“Good,” Susan said. “And stay away from the truck stops.”

T
HE HORSE SHOOTER
upped the ante on a rainy Sunday night by shooting Walter Clive dead in the exercise area of Three Fillies Stables. I was there at daylight, with Becker and a bunch of Columbia County crime scene deputies.

“Exercise rider found him this morning when she came into work,” Becker said. “Right there where you see him.”

Where I saw him was facedown in the middle of the open paddock in front of the stables, under a tree, with the rain soaking the crime scene. Someone had rigged a polyethylene canopy over the body and the immediate crime scene, in hopes of preserving any evidence that was left.

“Where is she now?”

“In the stable office,” Becker said. “I got one woman deputy, and she's in there with her.”

“Will I be able to talk to her?”

“Sure.”

I stepped to the body and squatted down beside it. Clive was in a white shirt and gray linen slacks. There were loafers on his feet, without socks. His silver hair was soaked and plastered to his skull. There was no sign of a wound.

“In the forehead, just above the right eyebrow,” Becker said. “Photo guys are already done—you want to see?”

“Yes.”

Becker had on thin plastic crime scene gloves. He reached down and turned Clive's head. There was a small black hole above his eyebrow, the flesh around it a little puffy and discolored from the entry of the slug.

“No exit wound,” I said.

“That's right.”

“Small caliber,” I said.

“Looks like a .22 to me.”

“Yes.”

“Figure he caught the horse shooter in the act?” Becker said.

“Be the logical conclusion,” I said.

“Yep. It would.”

“Where was Security South during all this?” I said. “Busy polishing their belt buckles?”

“Security guy was in with the horse,” Becker said.

“Hugger Mugger.”

“Yeah. When I say the horse, that's who I mean. He heard the shot, and came out, ah, carefully, and looked around and didn't see anything, and went back inside with the horse.”

“It was raining,” I said.

“All night.”

“How far out you figure he came?”

“His uni was dry when I talked to him,” Becker said.

“No wrinkles?”

“Nope.”

“Probably didn't want to be lured away from the horse.”

“Hugger Mugger,” Becker said.

I looked at him. He was expressionless.

“Of course Hugger Mugger,” I said. “What other horse are we talking about?”

Becker grinned.

“So nobody sees anything. Nobody but the guard hears anything,” Becker said. “We're looking for footprints, but it's been raining hard since yesterday afternoon.”

“Crime scene isn't going to give you much,” I said.

“You Yankees are so pessimistic.”

“Puritan heritage,” I said. “The family's been told?”

“Yep. Told them myself.”

“How were they?”

“Usual shock and dismay,” Becker said.

“Anything unusual?”

Becker shook his head.

“You been a cop,” he said. “You've had to tell people that somebody's been murdered, what would be unusual?”

“You're right,” I said. “I've seen every reaction there is. Delroy been around?”

“Not yet,” Becker said.

We were quiet for a while, standing in the rain, partly sheltered by the tree, looking at how dead Walter Clive was.

“Why'd you call me?” I said.

“Two heads are better than one,” Becker said.

“Depends on the heads,” I said.

“In this case yours and mine,” Becker said. “You been a big-city cop, you might know something.”

I nodded.

“Between us,” Becker said, “we might figure something out.”

I nodded some more. The rain kept coming. Walter Clive kept lying there. Behind us a van with
Columbia County Medical Examiner
lettered on the side pulled up and two guys in raincoats got out and opened up the back.

“Here's what I think,” I said. “I think that you are smelling a big rat here, and the rat is somewhere in the Clive family, and they are too important and too connected for a deputy sheriff to take on directly.”

“They're awful important,” Becker said.

“So you're using me as a surrogate. Let me take them on. You feed me just enough to keep me looking, but not enough to get you in trouble. If I come up with something, you can take credit for it after I've gone back to Boston. If I get my ass handed to me, you can shake your head sadly and remark what a shame it was that I'm nosy.”

“Man do that would be a devious man,” Becker said.

“Sho' 'nuff,” I said.

I
T WAS STILL
raining when they buried Walter Clive's cremated ashes. It had rained all week. After the funeral, people straggled into the Clives' house and stood under a canopy in the backyard looking glum and uncomfortable as they ordered drinks. I was there, having nowhere else to be, and I watched as people began to get drunk and talk about how Walter would have wanted everyone to have a good time at his funeral. People began to look less glum. Just the way old Walt would have wanted it. Penny was running things. She was sad and contained and doing fine. Jon Delroy was there in a dark suit. The family lawyer was there, a guy named Vallone, who looked like Colonel Sanders. Pud and SueSue, still sober, stood with Stonie and Cord. They were dressed just right for a funeral. Everyone was dressed just right for a funeral, except one woman who wore an ankle-length cotton dress with yellow flowers on it. Her hair was gray-blond and hung straight to her
waist. She wore huge sunglasses and sandals. Penny brought her over.

“This is my mother,” she said, “Sherry Lark.”

“It was nice of you to come,” I said, to be saying something.

“Oh, it's not Walter. It's my girls. In crisis girls need their mother.”

I could see Penny wrinkle her nose. I nodded.

“Yes,” I said.

“Walter was lost to me an eternity past, but the girls are part of my soul.”

“Of course,” I said. “Have you remarried?”

“No. I don't think marriage is a natural thing for people.”

She was drinking what looked like bourbon on the rocks. Which was probably a natural thing for people.

“So is Lark your, ah, birth name?”

“No. It's my chosen name. When I left Walter I didn't want to keep his name. And I didn't want to return to my father's name, about which I had no choice when I was born.”

“I had the same problem,” I said. “They just stuck me with my father's name.”

She paid no attention to me. She was obviously comfortable talking about herself.

“So I took a name that symbolizes the life I was seeking, the soaring airborne freedom of a lark.”

She drank some bourbon. I nodded and smiled.

“I relate to that,” I said. “I'm thinking of changing my name to Eighty-second Airborne.”