Lucifer's Weekend (Digger) (6 page)

"Well, thank you, sir," she said. "I love all you smooth-talking travelers who wander in here and try to turn a girl’s head."

"You been living in Belton long?" Digger asked.

"Long enough."

"You like living in a town without air?" he asked.

"The smoke? It’s not that bad," she said. "You kinda get used to it."

"If you don’t, you’d better, right?" Digger said. "The Beltons are pretty important people, I guess."

"You said it. Old Lucius, he’s like the town daddy, and we’re his children."

It sounded to Digger as if she were describing God.

"What’s he like?"

"Who?"

"Town daddy Lucius."

"I ain’t never met him," she said, as if the question were absurd. "But he’s gotta be all right. I mean, he’s over seventy if he’s a day and he’s got a wife who probably ain’t even thirty yet. That takes a man, doesn’t it?"

"Or a lot of money," Digger said.

"I guess you’re right," she said with a laugh that seemed surprisingly sincere. "What’s your name anyway, stranger?"

"Clem," said Digger. "Clem Barff. That’s with two
f
’s.
F
as in fellatio."

"I’ll be sure to remember that. Vodka rocks, you said?"

"Make it a double," Digger said.

There was a hawk-nosed man behind the bar who engaged Dolly in rapid conversation when she came back behind the bar. The four customers leaned forward on their stools to listen. Digger couldn’t hear what they were saying over the roar of the television, but he knew they were talking about him and he didn’t care.

He glanced through the window and saw the red pickup truck backing into a parking spot that faced the door of Eddie’s. The afternoon sun kicked up a glare from the windshield and Digger could not see the driver’s face.

Dolly returned with his drink, a regular-sized beer glass filled with ice cubes and vodka.

"Sorry," she said. "No rocks glasses. All we do here is shots and beers usually."

"No problem. As long as it doesn’t leak. You see that red pickup out there?"

He nodded toward the parking lot and Dolly leaned over him to look, threatening to engulf him in her chest. He thought if her bra straps ever broke, she might just plunge through the floor and into the cellar.

"Yeah," she said.

"You know who it is?" Digger said.

"No. He ain’t one of our regulars ’cause I know all their trucks."

"I bet you do. Would you do me a favor?"

"I’ll try," she said.

"Bring me back a bottle of beer."

"Something wrong with your vodka?"

"No, no, it’s fine. Please. A bottle of beer."

"Okay."

She went back to the bar and engaged in more whispered conversation while Digger dragged one of his business cards from his wallet. The card just listed his name and the name of Brokers Surety Life Insurance Company.

On the back of it, Digger wrote, "If you’re going to wait, don’t wait dry."

Digger also took a five-dollar bill from his wallet.

When Dolly came back, Digger slipped the five into her hand.

"That’s for you. Would you take this beer out to the guy in the red pickup truck?"

"Huh?"

"Give the beer to the guy in the truck. And give him this card too."

"Oh," she said.

"He’s waiting for me," Digger said.

"Okay." She looked at the card. "Who’s this? Julian Burroughs."

Digger shrugged. "I don’t know. Some insurance salesman who gave me his card. I save junk like that."

She nodded, a very knowing nod. Digger noticed that she had a beauty mark near the left corner of her mouth, and he wondered who first decided that moles on the face would be called beauty marks if the owner was pretty. And what was the cutoff age when young women’s beauty marks became old crones’ moles?

Dolly took the bottle of beer outside and sashayed across the parking lot to the red pickup. She walked, hip-swinging suggestively in almost a parody of sexual invitation. She went to the driver’s side of the pickup, said a few words to the driver and handed the bottle into the truck. Then she came back to the bar, and a few moments later the driver got out of the truck and walked toward the bar too.

Digger didn’t think you could tell anything about people from their faces. That was his intellectual position, although his instincts told him he would rather be with smiling, smooth-faced people than with some leering ape with a face that looked like a testing range for buckshot. Still, as he watched the young man following Dolly toward the door of the roadhouse, he felt he was an unlikely candidate to be tailing someone. The man was tall and lean with a broad forehead, neatly trimmed hair and features that were regular and as uninteresting as a television test pattern. He looked vaguely like a high school English teacher, much beloved by his students, about whom the worst that one could imagine would be that he had an envelope of
fin-de-stècle
French postcards hidden behind his t-shirts in his dresser drawer. Digger turned on his tape recorder.

Inside the roadhouse, Dolly nodded the man toward Digger’s table, and he came over and slid onto the bench opposite Digger’s. He looked sheepish.

"Thanks for the drink," he said.

"Least I could do. Tailing somebody’s hard work."

"I thought I was doing pretty well too," the man said glumly.

"Take my word for it, you weren’t," Digger said. "So who are you and what do you want with me?" Digger glanced over toward the bar, but Eddie and the four morons were engrossed in the baseball game. Dolly was washing glasses. No one was paying attention to Digger and this man.

The man was holding Digger’s card and he looked at it again.

"Julian Burroughs?"

"That’s right. Who are you?"

"Cody Lord. Vernon Gillette was my friend."

"So what? What cause does that give you to follow me?"

"None, I guess," Lord said. "I was just wondering who you were and what you wanted."

"You always follow insurance men?" Digger asked. He looked toward the bar, caught Dolly’s eye and pointed to his glass for another drink. She smiled and nodded.

"No," Lord said. "I heard you at Louise’s and she told me you were an investigator. You a detective?"

"To a detective, I’m not a detective. To somebody who follows as badly as you do, I’m a detective," Digger said. "Why?"

"I know what you told Louise, that you were up here to try to get her to take the money…." He looked up at Digger as if hoping to be interrupted. Digger was silent. "…but you told her you were an investigator and I thought you might be here for more than that."

"Like what?"

"Like looking into the cause of Vern’s death," Lord said.

"Why should I do that?"

"I think—"

"Hold it," Digger said, looking up as Dolly approached their table. With a large smile, she set a drink down in front of Digger, picked up his empty glass, dumped his ashtray of dead cigarettes into a paper napkin, hovered as much as she could without being too obvious, then vibrated away.

"You were saying?"

"I think Vern was killed."

"Why?" Digger asked.

"I don’t know."

"That’s a lot to go on," Digger said in disgust. He saw that Lord looked pained and he said, "Why don’t you start slow and kind of build up to it?"

"All right. Vern was my friend. We worked together at Belton and Sons. I was with him up at the cabin where he died. We were up there to go deer hunting for the weekend, but that first night I couldn’t stay and I had to leave. He stayed up there alone. I was the one who found him when I came back the next day. I couldn’t believe that he was dead. I still can’t believe it."

"Why’d you go home?" Digger asked.

"What?"

"You said you couldn’t stay that night. Why not?"

Lord hesitated, then shrugged. "I had some family things I had to do. Personal stuff."

Digger let it pass.

"Why do you think it was a murder?"

"I got up there and I found Vern was dead but…I don’t know…there was somebody else there. I don’t know how I know. Does that make any sense?"

"About as much as I’ve come to expect of you," Digger said. "Why do you think there was somebody there? Footprints? Cigarette butts in the ashtray? Beds slept in? What?"

There was a slow growing light shining behind Cody Lord’s eyes. "You know I never thought of that."

"Share it with me now. Enrich both our lives."

"Both beds were mussed," Lord said. "And they were made when I left and I didn’t sleep there. Maybe that’s what made me think somebody was there."

"What size beds were they?"

"Huh? Oh, little beds. Almost like army cots." He looked off into space. "Yeah, both of them were unmade. Maybe it kind of registered but didn’t really, if you know what I mean."

"Yeah. I know what you mean without knowing what you mean," Digger said. "His wife said he was too smart to stick his finger in a socket or whatever he’s supposed to have done."

"She’s right. Vern was smart and I can’t figure him getting killed in an accident that way, but accidents happen to everybody. I guess it was the slept-in bed."

"What about a heart attack? That’s what his wife thinks."

"He had the physical condition of a kid. He never had anything wrong with his heart. Anybody can have a heart attack, I guess, but I wouldn’t figure he did."

"All right. Who’d want to kill him?" Digger asked.

"I don’t know."

"Somebody at work? Maybe he was stepping on somebody’s toes?"

"I don’t think so. Everybody liked Vern," Lord said.

"Maybe somebody was going south with company money and Gillette found out about it."

"He would have told me," Lord said. "He was my friend."

"Okay, then. Tell me about Gillette. What women was he fooling around with?"

"What?"

"You heard me," Digger said.

"Mr. Burroughs, I don’t think—"

Digger interrupted, "That’s exactly right. You
don’t
think. Try it though. Maybe you’ll like it. Now you say the second bed was slept in and it wasn’t by you. So maybe he had company. Maybe a forest ranger with frostbitten toes stopped in to spend the night. Maybe Smokey the Bear showed up and needed a room after spending a busy day harassing people about their cigarette butts. Or maybe some broad showed up to play house. That’s not all the possibilities, not by a long shot, but out of those three I like the last one best. What woman or women was he involved with?"

"I don’t know anything about that," Lord said. Digger knew he was lying by the way he looked away as soon as he finished the sentence.

"When did you guys go up to the cabin?"

"Last deer season," Lord said.

"What day of the week?"

"Saturday," Lord said. "We went up Saturday morning."

"And you found his body Sunday morning?"

"That’s right."

"Did he know you were going to go home Saturday night?"

"I don’t follow you," Lord said.

"What do you do for a living?" Digger asked.

"I’m in the quality-control department at Belton and Sons."

"Christ, no wonder nothing works in America anymore. Did Gillette know you were going home Saturday night?"

"Yes. I guess so. I told him I’d have to."

"When did you tell him?"

"I guess it was the day before," Lord said.

"Did you go up there in your pickup?"

"Yes."

"So he was up there Saturday night without a car?" Digger said.

Lord nodded.

"Okay," Digger said and turned his attention back to his drink.

"What does that mean, okay?"

"It just means thank you for your time and I don’t want to hold you up any longer. There must be other people you have to follow."

"You don’t believe me, do you?"

"It’s not belief," Digger said. "It’s conviction. Sure, I think you really believe that somebody killed Gillette. But you haven’t given me one reason that would convince me. The mussed-up bed probably belonged to a girl friend who drove up, and you’re lying to me about not knowing who she was. What time did you get up there Sunday morning?"

"I don’t know. Around eleven," Lord said.

"How long had he been dead?"

"How would I know?"

"Well, if the corpse was still bleeding, you’d know it was pretty recent. Try this. Was he warm? Most living people and recently dead people are warm. Except maybe in Belton, PA."

"I don’t think I like you, Mr. Burroughs."

"That’s fine. I don’t much like myself. I’m only able to go on because I like other people a lot less. Including you."

"All right," Lord said. He slid down the bench toward the end of the table, as if getting ready to leave. "There was almost an accident, Mr. Burroughs."

"What kind of an accident?"

"The brakes failed on Vern’s car, right after he had a brake job. He almost got killed."

"Maybe a coincidence and maybe a bad garage mechanic," Digger said.

"And maybe somebody trying to kill him," Lord said. "Vern told me once that he was going to make…what’d he call it…a big score."

"What was he talking about?"

"I don’t know," Lord said. "He wouldn’t tell me."

"I don’t blame him," Digger said. "Did Mrs. Gillette know about his near accident that maybe wasn’t an accident?"

"I don’t think Vern wanted to worry her," Lord said.

"Did you ever tell her how you feel? That it was murder?"

"Yes. I thought she ought to know."

"What’d she think?" Digger asked.

"She said I was crazy."

"She would recognize the symptoms," Digger said. "Did you tell the police?"

"You can’t tell them anything," Cody Lord said. "They had accidental death written in their book before they even got to the cabin."

"Let me ask you something else," Digger said. "When you told Mrs. Gillette about your suspicions, could Ardath have overheard you?"

"I don’t know. She was in the house, I guess. She might have."

Digger said, "Lord, if I were to do something, what would you want me to do?"

"I don’t know. I thought, well, you being a detective, maybe you could find out what really happened to Vern."