So David Squires had put the make on her. Interesting. What if he were a chaser? What bearing might that have on this case?
On the way over to Keys Ford-Lincoln, I listened to the national radio news. The big Edsel Day had been something of a bust all over the country. A lot of people had found the car ugly.
And a lot more found it overpriced.
The cleaning crew was already at work on the grounds. There were dead balloons and pennants and Pepsi cups and gum wrappers and cigarette butts covering the tarmac everywhere. The celebration had been scheduled to last until evening with a country-western band and a barbecue. Dick had obviously called it off.
No police cars. Cliffie had done his usual thorough job. The body had been discovered less than four hours ago and Cliffie was already long gone.
I wheeled the ragtop around back and went in the service door. Keys’s big yellow Lincoln convertible was parked nearby so I assumed he was still there.
He was there, all right. In his office.
With a cigar and a bottle of Wild Turkey that he was pouring straight into a Pepsi paper cup.
He had his shirt open, his tie off, and his cordovan Florsheim wing tips up on his desk.
His wife sat on the edge of a wooden chair.
She wore a green dress that looked light enough for summer. For such a big-boned woman, she moved with appealing grace. Her perch on the chair was delicate.
“I feel like calling Edsel Ford at home,” he said, “and telling him what a piece of shit his car is.”
“I still like it,” his wife said. “But obviously the public doesn’t share my taste.” She rose. “Well, dear, I’m going to go spend some of your money.”
“Buy me a couple of gallons of bourbon,” he said.
She winked at me. “Be sure he doesn’t do anything foolish, Sam.”
He made a sound that faintly resembled a laugh. “I do foolish things all the time.
Nobody’s been able to stop me yet.” The bitterness surprised me. She looked embarrassed by it.
She nodded to both of us and left.
“Damn, she’s a nice lady,” Keys said.
“Don’t know why the hell she puts up with me.”
Then: “Drink?”
“No, thanks.”
He gunned some more of his own.
He sighed. “First the Edsel. And now Susan Squires.”
“Yeah, I was meaning to ask about her. She used to work here, you said?”
“Two years. Back when she dropped out of college.”
My question didn’t seem to surprise him at all. “Was she seeing David Squires while she worked here?”
“The last year or so. He was here so often, I damn near offered to put him on payroll.”
“I take it you didn’t like it.”
“She was the receptionist. She had to meet people and be nice to them. Most people don’t appreciate how important a good receptionist is. They’re your first contact with the public. A receptionist who is rude or unhelpful gives you a bad impression of the place.”
“Was she rude and unhelpful?”
“She wasn’t rude very often. But unhelpful, yes. At least for the last six-seven months she worked here. She was caught up in her affair with Squires. They’d have an argument and she’d come in to work looking teary and worn out. Started calling in sick a lot. You know how it is when you’re in love. Sometimes you have a hard time concentrating. And he’s still married all this time. You’d think they would’ve been a little more discreet.”
“Yeah,” I said, thinking of Pamela and her affair with Stu. “Yeah, you would.”
“I didn’t want to fire her. But I was glad when she finally quit.”
“Because of the scandal?”
“Hell, yes. It wasn’t real good for business, believe me. She just couldn’t take it anymore. She went to stay with some relative.
By that time, I sure as hell didn’t blame her.”
“Why was she here now?”
“Oh, hell, we’re still friends. After she and Squires finally got married and everything settled down, she dropped in all the time. Everybody here still liked her.”
I was writing all this down in my notebook.
“What’s wrong with Howdy Doody?” he asked.
“Huh?”
“Your notebook. Noticed you’ve got a Captain Video. They out of Howdy Doody, were they?”
I felt my cheeks burn. “I got a deal on these.”
“Msta been some deal”-he smiled-? make you carry a notebook like that around. Captain Video, I mean.”
I changed the subject. “Cliffie spend much time here?”
“They’re having corn on the cob over at the Eagles tonight and then showing two Abbott and Costello pictures. Cliffie’s like a kid about that kind of stuff. You think he’d hang around and do his job when they’ve got corn on the cob boiling in those big pots?”
The office was small. He had a lot of family photos on the wall and a badly thrumming Pepsi machine in the corner. There were also more plaques, these from the Ford Motor Company, one of them having to do with clean rest rooms. Not the kind of thing you’d want on your tombstone: He Kept A Clean
John.
“You notice if he did anything with that broken taillight cover?”
“He didn’t. I asked my boys if they knew anything about it and they didn’t. Gil said it wasn’t there when he left last night at seven but it was here this morning when he came in at six.”
“So Cliffie didn’t take it?”
“Far as I know, he didn’t even look at it. Think the cleaning crew finally picked it up and tossed it in one of the cans out back.”
“Mind if I look?”
“That’s some job you’ve got, McCain. Scrounging around in waste cans.”
“I didn’t get a law degree for nothing.”
He laughed. “Yeah, and everybody in this town is proud of you.” Then: “Poor Susie. Just can’t figure out how she got in that Edsel. Why couldn’t it have been the Pontiac dealer down the street? I know that sounds sort of mean, but between the bad publicity with the Edsel and the murder…
Sure you don’t want a drink?”
“No, thanks. I’ve got to put that law degree of mine to use.”
He smiled. “Thanks for making me feel better, McCain. I appreciate it.”
The sky was darker now, stains of mauve and gold and amber, a few thunderheads brilliantly outlined with the last of the day’s sunlight. There’s a loneliness to Saturday night, at least for me, that no amount of noise and movement can ever assuage.
There’re a lot of popular songs about Saturday night, about how you live all week for it to roll around so you can go out and have yourself a ball. But deep down you know it’ll never be quite as exciting as you want it to be, need it to be, and the lonesomeness will never quite go away. I think my mom used to feel this when my dad was in Europe during the war.
She’d kind of fix herself up on Saturday night and then sit in the living room by herself with her one highball in her hand and a Chesterfield in her fingers. Even when she’d laugh at the radio jokes there’d be a lonesomeness in her eyes that made me sad for her and scared for my dad. But we were lucky. Dad came home.
There were five large trash barrels out back.
A big lonely mutt hung around watching me.
It took me twenty minutes to find what I was looking for. I couldn’t decide whether to start on the barrels from the left or right. If I’d started from the left I would have been out of there in five minutes. So of course I started from the right. This is the kind of frustration that the nuns always said was good for us. Taught us humility
