Suspects (28 page)

She sprang to her feet. “I should have known better. You can always be counted on to let me down.”

He too stood up. “What does that mean?”

“I wouldn't be caught dead here again,” she said in a voice that though of moderate volume had the intensity of a scream. “And from now on, it's only professional between you and me.”

“That's what it ought to be between you and Dennis. Your superiors will be all over you if they find out.”

“You going to tell them?” Rage altered her features: he might not have recognized her on a photograph taken at this moment. “You son of a bitch.”

“That's enough,” Moody said quietly. “Get out of here.”

“Gladly,” Daisy said. “Soon as I get my linen.”

“What?”

She had already started toward the bedroom. Without turning she shouted,
“Our
sheets. Think we'd use those filthy things of yours?”

* * *

Joe made a tasty supper, crumbling hamburger into a skillet and adding a block of frozen mixed vegetables and, once the latter had thawed and the meat lost its pinkness, a couple of shots from a chili-sauce bottle.

“This is really good,” Lloyd told him at the kitchen table, where they were eating off plates of porcelainized metal spatter-colored in blue and white.

Joe chewed until he could swallow the food in his mouth. “I guess it's healthy,” he said at length. “Though all the flavor comes from the chili sauce, I guess.… How about the plates? Molly give ‘em to me. I generally ate right out of the pot or even the can. Her and my uncle Bob used them camping, I guess, and then came his accident and they don't go any more. Anyway, she brought ‘em over here.” He gave Lloyd a defensive glance. “She's always getting after me to clean up my act.” He went for bread from an almost exhausted loaf, penetrating the deflated package up to mid-forearm. He withdrew and held up the piece. “You want this? There's only the heel left.”

“No, thanks,” Lloyd said. “I still have some.”

“You're doing a good job in the living room. God knows when I would of got around to it.”

“I'll get going on the second coat after supper.”

“Well, it might feel dry,” Joe said now, with the surer fix of eye he employed when speaking professionally, “but it's best to give it overnight at least, especially with this humidity.” He picked up his empty plate, which he had polished to a high sheen with bread. “That reminds me, I got some lumber I wanna bring in the shop before it rains.”

“It's going to rain?” The afternoon had been unconditionally sunny, so far as Lloyd had been able to see through the living-room windows.

Joe showed his extra-white front teeth in his version of a grin. “I always get old Molly with my weather predictions. I don't take ‘em from the TV. I get ‘em from the feel of the wood. She don't believe me that if you work with wood all the time like me, you can feel the moisture content. But you can.” He took his gleaming plate to the sink and ran hot water across it. He turned, still grinning in the chipmunk manner. “But I'll admit I ain't always right. Just because there's a lot of moisture in the air don't necessarily mean it'll rain.”

Lloyd carried over his own plate. “Let me clean up here and then I'll be out to give you a hand.”

The dishwashing was soon completed, involving as it did only one skillet, two plates, two forks, a spoon, and one ceramic mug and another of plastic. There was a crumb or two on the table and a few on the floor. In a closet Lloyd found an old broom, its head slanted from use, and a cracked plastic dustpan. He was about to put them to work when a telephone rang.

By the time he located the instrument, on the wall beyond the refrigerator, the ringing had stopped. But a moment later he heard a shout outside and went to the door. Joe was waving from the entrance to the shop.

“Pick it up! She wants to talk to you.”

Lloyd returned to the kitchen extension. Molly was on the line. “So how's it goin'?”

“Okay. Fine.” He heard the sound as Joe hung up the workshop phone. “Your cousin's a nice guy.”

“He feed you?”

Lloyd told her about the supper, and when she groaned in mock pain, he protested, “No, it was really good!”

“But then,” Molly said gleefully, “what do you know? You never eat anything.”

“I cleaned my plate! I was hungry for a change.” He told her about painting the living room. “Of course, it was just a start. I got the second coat to do, and all the trim.… Listen, I saw the bird you brought over. He's recovered. He can fly all right, but he doesn't want to leave.”

“Sounds like you're doin' all right,” said Molly. “I'm glad to hear that. Now Joe's off the phone I can tell you he's not the easiest person to get along with. Hell, I don't care if he
is
listening. I've told him to his face: he's too bossy. That's why he never found a girl who would marry him.”

“Funny,” Lloyd said. “I thought he was easygoing.”

“To another
guy
. If you were a girl you'd see. He'd be running everything you did. You see how he acted when I showed up in my good clothes? I guess I was supposed to ask
him
what to wear?”

“The position I'm in,” Lloyd said, “I couldn't be critical no matter what.”

“Oh, I'm not criticizing. I'm just making a point. Joe's my favorite relative. Trouble is, he knows it. Well, I got to get back to the rig. I'm at Dexter. Remember? Where we got the fill-up on the way out? I was wondering about how you were getting along, that's all.”

“I'm fine,” said Lloyd.

“I'll seeya day after tomorrow, if you want.”

“I'll be here,” Lloyd said. “Don't worry about that: I'm not going to lose your bail for you.”

“Hey, come on! That's not what I mean.” She snorted. “I hope you ain't gonna pick up any of old Joe's sarcasm.”

Lloyd suddenly felt concern for her. “I hope you're going to be careful out there. Because of me, you don't have your gun any more.”

“Oh, you had your reasons,” said Molly. “I'm sure of that. And it's nice to have you thinkin' about me. But don't worry: I got me a double-barreled sawed-off my dad used to carry in the rig before he got the three-fifty-seven.”

“Oh,” said Lloyd. “Oh, good. Well, thanks a lot for calling, and get back safe, Molly.”

“It's real nice of you to say that. I'll seeya, Lloyd.”

Lloyd quickly swept the floor and then went out to join Joe, whom he found at a stack of boards behind the shop. The back door to the building was narrow, so care had to be taken to guide the planks through. Lloyd could have carried more than two at once, since they were light though long, but Joe told him two were the optimum number that could be easily negotiated through the clutter inside, en route to the place where there was room for restacking. Molly might have called this bossy, but it was a sensible instruction: it was Joe's shop and Joe's lumber.

Only when the task was completed—soon, with the two of them—did Joe ask about the phone call. “She ain't in some trouble, is she?”

“Oh, no,” said Lloyd. “I'm sorry, I should have told you. She was just calling to say hi. Nothing's wrong.”

Joe leaned against one of his machines. “She was probably worried how I was treating you. She don't have a high opinion of the way I operate.”

“She thinks the world of you.”

“She does?” Joe showed his broad smile. “Well, I do of her too, but we always fight a lot. I worry about her out on the road by herself, and she sees that as a lack of confidence.”

“I guess you know she carries a gun.”

“That three-fifty-seven mag is way too big for her,” Joe said, his smile converting to a downturn of disapproval. “But you can't tell her nothing. She can't shoot it worth a damn, you know. Uncle Bob's got a lot of land back of his place up there, and her and me been out back with that gun, and she can't hit a can at fifteen feet. But she's got to be the tough guy. Somebody her size oughta carry a thirty-two at most.”

“She's got a sawed-off shotgun on this trip.”

“Oh, for Chrissakes,” Joe cried. “That'll knock her on her butt!” He lowered his long head and shook it at the concrete floor. When his face came up his mood was changed. “Say, Lloyd, I don't want to be outa line here, but I been thinkin'. I know that you say her and you are just friends, and I ain't calling you a liar, but she never brought anybody else around here before. I don't think she even dated much…. Now my uncle Bob's laid up, she don't have anybody else to look after her, so I guess I been elected. So it's me who's got to ask you: just what are your intentions with regard to this young girl?”

“She's just been nice to me,” said Lloyd. “I don't know why.”

The statement did not sit well with Joe, who scowled and asked, “Just how nice you mean?”

Lloyd hastened to clarify. “Not in
that
way! She's just been kind, like bringing me over here.” He was not ready to say more unless he was pressed further.

“You don't know why?” Joe asked. “She's got a big crush on you, that's why.”

“I don't know about that,” Lloyd said, looking away. “You said yourself how nice she is to everybody and everything.”

“Well, you ought to see the difference.… She's awful young.”

“We're the same age, so far as that goes,” Lloyd said. He brought his eyes back to Joe's. “Look, I haven't touched her. I'm not interested in her that way.”

“You got trouble with the law, right? Those guys that came today, they were cops.”

Lloyd nodded and said nothing.

“You don't have to tell me why or how,” Joe went on, showing the angle of his sharp jaw, “but I done some time myself as a juvenile offender, not hard time but in a correctional facility, see, but I still remember what cops look like. It's like swimming—you don't forget. I still don't feel good when I see ‘em, and I've kept my nose clean for years. They were right to bust me. Armed robbery, at fifteen? Lucky for all concerned it was just a pellet gun. If I could of got a real piece, I was so cocky I might of killed somebody who called me. So the cops probably saved a life or two, including mine. That's what they're supposed to do, right? But I tell you, I think what they do is right, but I still can't stand the sight of them. I don't like to be reminded, I guess. That's my problem, not theirs.”

“My problem,” said Lloyd, “isn't the police.” Nor was it as simple as self-pity, much as it might have seemed so to Donna. “You're right: they're only doing their job.” He was suddenly and briefly enlightened. “I envy them.” He quickly glanced around the shop. “Have you got anything more for me to do out here? How about sweeping up?”

Joe raised a narrow eyebrow. “I don't think Molly would like me using you for just flunky work.”

“Don't worry about her,” Lloyd said. “I can still speak for myself. When it comes to being a flunky, that's the only work I know how to do.”

“She warned me you might say that.”

“Because it's true.”

“Yeah,” said Joe, smiling wryly. “That's just the way I used to be. But at the same time, along with this no ability at anything, I had a real high idea of myself. I thought I was way better than everybody else—and not because of not having a chance to show what I could do or whatever. No, I thought I was superior because I was useless.” He laughed with an open mouth, looking foolish as he expressed wisdom.

“You were awfully young then.”

“Old enough to try to rob a discount beverage store.” Joe rolled back his upper lip with a little finger. “Three in front are false. Guy came out from behind the counter, knocked the pellet gun out of my hand, and hit me so hard in the mouth that he knocked out three teeth. Lucky for me they have to destroy all juvenile crime sheets. Guy who knocked my teeth out, for some reason he took pity on me, probably due to my age, and he used to come see me at the correctional facility. He sure didn't bear a grudge. I stayed a little cocky till the time when I told him he wouldn't of jumped me if the gun was real, and he says, ‘It
wasn't?'
Till then he didn't know it! I asked him why would he risk his life to save what was in the cash register, and he said, ‘Because it was
mine
. You didn't have no right to the money I worked for. I didn't steal it. You're not gonna take it from me without a fight.'” Joe pushed himself away from the machine on which he had been leaning. “When I got out, he give me my first job, and I kept my nose clean because I was scared of him, not of getting beat up or anything: I was scared he'd think less of me if I screwed up. I couldn't stand having a man like that think of me as a punk.”

The situation was familiar to Lloyd, but there were significant differences when the person whose esteem you sought was a woman and you were furthermore obstructed by taboo.

If LeBeau attended the funeral for Patrolman McCall, he was not among the contingent of detectives, in uniform for the occasion, at either church or cemetery. Daisy O'Connor would have been in another division than Moody's, amid the large turnout from the city force, and he might not have seen her anyway.

Aside from the front pews occupied by McCall's relatives, the white-haired mayor, and accompanying officials, the nave of St. James's was solid blue.

At Brookside Cemetery the local cops were joined by a variegation of visiting officers from other jurisdictions, county sheriffs in khaki, state troopers in seam-striped breeches and campaign hats, patrolmen from big cities and little villages, and there were certain shoulder patches from other states, not all of them contiguous.

After the firing squad and the bugler had done their respective duties and the casket was lowered into the earth, Moody decided now was not an opportune time to say a word of condolence to Jack Marevitch, whom he had known since way back, even if he could have located him within the massed uniforms, so he sidled through the rear elements of the crowd, found his car after a brisk walk, and managed to get away before the traffic could clog the exit route.