“I hear when it’s finished you’re moving the crew on to another job.”
He looked down into his iced tea and grinned.
“So that’s what this is all about. You want to steal Robbie’s crew. You got some kind of gall.”
Jackie rose to object, but I put up my hand to stop her.
“Why would I want to do that?”
“To give them to the Battiston woman. Who else?”
“Not a chance. I just want to know how they hooked up with Robbie.”
“I don’t know. They’re from Up Island. Seem like good men to me. I put that tall one Patrick in charge. A natural leader. Already been doing some floors for me. Loyal to my boy, that’s for sure. Honest, too. I checked all the books, nothing funny going on. All on the up and up.”
“Did you have a reason to doubt that?”
He grinned again and looked at Jackie.
“I always knew he was a smart one, even though he never said much of anything. The only kid at the station who could fix anything. It didn’t surprise me when the Fourniers snatched him away from me.”
What I remembered was going to work for Rudy and John Fournier because Milhouser didn’t like me hanging out in the repair shop. He wanted me manning the pumps and cleaning windshields.
“Do you remember a guy named Paul Hodges? He worked at the station a few years before me.”
Milhouser frowned as he tried to remember. Then it came to him.
“Now, that was a mechanic. Knew his boats. Took care of all the outboards. I used to send him to the marinas. Wasn’t our main trade, but with Hodges I thought it might turn into something. You could always charge an extra forty percent for marine work. More mystery in it, which equals more money.”
“Why’d he leave?”
“Typical Vietnam vet.” He twirled an index finger around his ear. “Prone to moods. Couldn’t control him.”
“Still can’t.”
“That’s how I thought of you. Like a moody jarhead without the medals. Hodges a friend of yours?”
“I guess so.”
“Figures.”
“I never gave you any trouble,” I said.
“I knew your old man. Apples don’t fall too far from the tree.”
Jackie suddenly had a coughing fit noisy enough to make me start thinking Heimlich.
“I’m okay,” she croaked out. “Sorry. I think I swallowed a lemon seed.”
“I’ve told them about that,” said Milhouser.
He sat quietly with me as we waited for Jackie to catch her breath. When she got there she took up another thread of the conversation.
“So why did you check the books?” Jackie asked.
“You’re back on that?” he asked.
“Just curious.”
He shook his head in disgust.
“Wouldn’t you? What kind of a businessman would I be if I didn’t check the books?”
I knew what kind of businessman he was, but he still had a point.
“So Robbie ran a tight ship.”
“The tightest. Could teach his old man a thing or two.”
“Your crew said he left plenty of work for them.”
“He left some. I had some. Now it’s all in the same pot. Though I don’t know what that means to you. What do you care?”
He was still squinting, either because of the sun or to improve his concentration, it was hard to tell.
“I’m just curious about those guys.”
“You still haven’t told me,” he said.
“What?”
“Why you killed him. God knows I can’t figure it out. They said you had a fight at a bar someplace. Everybody drunk. Making assholes of yourselves. No reason to kill a man.”
“That’s right. No reason. That’s what I’ve been saying.”
“That was your tool that had Robbie’s blood all over it. You can’t explain that away.”
“Those matters will be thoroughly dealt with when we get into a court of law,” said Jackie.
He looked at me this time.
“She’s a heck of a mouthpiece, I can see that,” he said. “Didn’t used to be so many lady lawyers. I like it.”
“You ought to see her break a horse,” I said.
“I’d like that.”
“So,” said Jackie, slapping the tops of her thighs. “I think we’ve covered everything we wanted to cover today. We should let you get back to your work.”
“I’m just gonna get back to enjoying this glass of iced tea, if you want the truth.”
“We do, actually, Jeff,” I said. “The truth is exactly what we want.”
“Thanks for talking to us,” said Jackie, standing and pulling me up on my feet. “I know it’s hard hearing it from us, but we’re sorry for your loss. And we hope eventually justice will be served.”
“In a pig’s eye,” he said, almost cheerfully. “But thanks anyway.”
We’d almost gone beyond earshot when we heard him call us back. Jackie sighed, but let me retrace our steps. He still sat at the table, but now more relaxed, with his legs crossed.
“Do me a favor when you see that Battiston woman,” he said to me.
“Amanda Anselma. She’s divorced from Roy Battiston.”
“Whatever. Just tell her the offer’s still open. It’s not too late.”
“What offer?” I asked.
“She’ll know.”
“I want to know. Tell me.”
That made him smile. A smile without humor, all teeth and no eyes.
“You don’t matter, Sammy. Just tell the girl the offer’s still sittin’, but the clock she’s a-tickin’.”
I heard Jackie take in a big breath through her nose. She stuck her hand through my arm and got a grip on my bicep, then pulled me around and drove me out from the back of building and into the Grand Prix. We rode in silence to the coffee place where she’d left her Toyota pickup. Before she got out of the car I asked her.
“Thoughts?”
“I’m over my head again, Sam. Where I always am when I get within ten blocks of you, feeling like people are laughing at all these punch lines and I’m just sitting there thinking, ‘What the hell’s so funny about that?’”
“What did you think of Jeff Milhouser?”
“It’s not him I’m worried about.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s you. You’re no different than any other dumb lunk all tangled up with a smart woman. Let me rephrase that, a very smart man, made dumb in the presence of a very smart woman.”
She snapped open the door and started to step out when I grabbed a wad of her jacket and pulled her back into the car. “What does that mean?”
She kissed the tips of her fingers, then used them to tap the hand that held her. I let her go.
“Ask your girlfriend,” she said, then sped across the seat, opened the door and disappeared into the crowds of preseason pedestrians out testing the weather and searching for paradise.
I drove back to Little Plains Road so I could look at the ocean again and mete out a few more unanswerable questions.
Like why my father had asked Milhouser if he needed a kid to work at the station during the busy summer months, a fact I’d forgotten until Milhouser dredged up the recollection. And how well they knew each other. There were only a few gas stations in town in those days, all of which did repairs, a necessity of the times. Milhouser’s was at the intersection of County Road 39 and a connector leading up to North Sea, a logical stop for my father on the way home.
