pull.”
“Shut up and listen some more,” she said and turned to Adair again. “Because Sid wasn’t with us when we met with Parvis at Cousin Mary’s, I gave him a condensed version of what we talked about. Obviously, I left out a few details.”
“Like the stepmother’s maiden name,” Fork said.
She ignored him and shifted her gaze to Vines. “When you called earlier tonight, I was in some delicate political negotiations with the sheriff and that’s why I hung up on you. I apologize.”
“No need.”
“Later, Sid came up with some very important information, which is the real reason we’re here.”
She’s giving him all the credit for something, Vines thought as he looked at Fork. “What’d you turn up, Chief?”
It was not a modest smile that spread across Fork’s face. “This guy that B. D. and I knew a long time ago-the one who dresses up like a priest and a plumber and all-and who we knew as Teddy Smith or Jones?”
“The killer,” Vines said.
“Yeah. Him. Well, I found out his real name.”
“How?”
“From fingerprints he left on that pink van.”
“Stop milking it, Sid,” Huckins said.
His proud and happy smile still in place, Fork looked from Vines to Adair. “Well, the guy’s real name isn’t Smith or Jones-although that’s no big news. His real name’s Theodore Contraire.”
Fork watched with evident enjoyment as surprise rearranged the faces of Adair and Vines. It was Vines who recovered first and asked, “Her brother?”
Fork nodded. “Who else could she trust with something like that? According to his sheet, he has-or had, I guess-a sister three years older than him whose name was Marie Elena-like the old song-Contraire.”
“How long’s his sheet?” Vines said.
“Nine arrests and two convictions. He spent two years in Angola down in Louisiana and nine months in the L.A. county jail for aggravated assault.”
“What’d he give as his occupation-just out of curiosity?”
Fork grinned happily. “Actor.”
“Congratulations, Chief,” Adair said.
“Well, it took more charm than brains,” said Fork, trying to sound modest but not succeeding. “All I had to do was convince some guy to do something he wasn’t quite sure he wanted to do.”
Vines rose, went to the window, looked out, noticed the unmarked four-door sedan that was parked down the street and wondered whether it was the black detective or the too-tall one who was keeping the night watch. He turned from the window to B. D. Huckins.
“When you hung up on me,” he said, “I was calling to tell you your brother-in-law had phoned to say that the date and place of the switch are set. July fourth at Cousin Mary’s.”
Huckins nodded her approval. “Good. Merriman always closes on the fourth. What time?”
“Mansur didn’t say.”
“It’ll have to be in the afternoon.”
“Why?”
“Because Sid and I have to be in the parade in the morning.”
Chapter 36
After he gave the pan a small flip, Jack Adair’s first omelette in eighteen months folded over perfectly and Virginia Trice said, “Mine always falls apart right about now and I wind up with scrambled eggs.”
Adair glanced over his right shoulder to find her standing in the kitchen entrance, leaning against the doorjamb, her arms folded tightly against her chest, as if to keep the quivering at bay. Adair thought the smudges under her eyes were larger and darker than they had been that afternoon when she’d played reluctant landlady. Three-way exhaustion, he decided, confident of his diagnosis. Physical, mental and emotional.
“Better sit down and have some,” he said. “I got carried away and used six eggs.” Turning back to the gas stove, which he guessed was as at least as old as he, Adair asked, “Long day?”
“The longest,” she said and sat down at the pickled-pine kitchen table.
Adair moved a few steps to his right, keeping an eye on the omelette as he poured coffee from the Bunn automatic into a mug. He placed it on the table in front of her and went quickly back to the stove.
“Now comes the tricky part,” he said, “which’ll turn out to be either a breeze or a disaster.”
The omelette slid, as if trained, from pan onto plate. Adair quickly cut it in two, placing half on another plate, which he served to Virginia Trice along with silverware and a paper napkin. “Toast is in the oven,” he said.
“There’s a toaster over there by the can opener.”
“I know, but I like to do it in the oven under the broiler.”
He opened the old stove’s high door, used a pot holder to pull out the broiler grill and speared the four pieces of toast with a long-tined cooking fork. He served the toast on a plate along with a small open tub of margarine. “I couldn’t find any butter,” he said as he sat down across from her with his share of the omelette.
“We don’t use butter because Norm worried about his cholesterol,” she said, spreading margarine over a piece of toast. “But I guess he could’ve gone ahead and eaten all the butter he wanted, couldn’t he?”
“I guess.”
She tasted the omelette and said it was perfect. Adair said he thought it could use a little salt and pepper. She said she didn’t use much salt anymore. They ate in silence after that, Adair trying to think of something to say that didn’t sound like forced small talk. He was rescued from what was beginning to seem like an insurmountable task when Virginia Trice said, “When’s the last time you fucked a woman?”
Adair went on spreading margarine over his last small piece of toast. “Seventeen months and four days ago.”
“How long were you in Lompoc?”
“Fifteen months.”
“You didn’t have one final fling?”
Adair used knife and fork to pile the last bit of omelette on the last of his toast, vaguely pleased that they had come out even. He ate the final bite, swallowed and said, “My legal problems prior to incarceration were such that sex became a matter of supreme unimportance.”
“Something like saltpeter, huh?”
“Possibly.”
“What’d you do for sex in jail?”
“I did without and two hundred sit-ups a day. Of course, there was also a normal amount of masturbation. At least, I trust it was normal.”
She put her knife and fork down, pushed away the plate with its half-eaten omelette, and leaned on the table with folded arms, staring down at its waxed surface. “I feel like I’ve just been sent to jail.”
“That won’t last.”
Still staring at the table, she said, “I must’ve had four or five hundred customers in today. I opened at eight and closed at two-fifteen, two-thirty, around in there. Nine of the guys who came in to say how sorry they were about Norm tried to hit on me. Married guys. Good friends of his. When I was showing you and Vines your rooms this afternoon, I’d almost decided not to go back to the Eagle.”
“You learned an invaluable lesson today,” Adair said. “The assholes are everywhere.”
“I’ve lived in this town four years now, going on five, and that’s longer’n I ever lived anywhere. I know a lot of people because I’m Norm’s wife and before that I worked in the Eagle for him. But he’s the only real friend I had here and now he’s dead. So after I closed up tonight, I was sitting there at the bar with a gin and tonic that I don’t even like and wondering how I was going to last till morning when somebody knocks at the door-and it’s like two
