“Jake Kilmer. That name ought to mean something to me,” she said.
She sat there struggling with her memories, trying to sort me out of the hundreds of names and faces
from her past. Then recognition slowly brightened her eyes.
“Of course,” she said. “You played football for the Dogs.”
“You have some memory,” I said, wondering how often that interlude was going to keep haunting mc.
I doubt that it had been mentioned once in the last ten years, and now it seemed to pop up every time I
said hello, or maybe it was just popping up in my mind.
“You and Teddy played on the same team, didn?t you?”
“For a while.”
“She?s not a real happy woman, Khmer,”
“1-low would you know that?”
“1 know everything, darling, it?s what I do, remember? I?m the town snoop.”
“I thought you said Raines had a wonderful family.”
“I didn?t say he had a happy one. Raines is married to politics and Doe doesn?t play second fiddle
well at all.”
“People seem to think she married well.”
“Tom Findley couldn?t have picked a better man for the job.”
“Christ, you are bitchy.”
“I like Doe,” she said, ignoring the slur. “She?s very honest. Not too bright, though, do you think?”
“I don?t remember. When I was in college I thought everybody was brilliant but me.”
“She had an affair, you know.”
I leaned over toward her. “1 haven?t heard a word about her since Teddy died, okay? I am not hooked
into the Dunetown hot line.”
“You?re really not going to ask who she had the affair with?”
“Nope.”
“It was Tony Lukatis.”
“No kidding. Little old Tony, huh?”
“You?re much too blase to really be blase, I know it. I know all the tricks. Listen, we have name
entertainers coming out to the beach hotels now. I get some big-time gossip. They all try to act blase,
too, but it doesn?t work—and they?ve been at it forever. Tony Lukatis was the guy. The golf pro at the
country club. His father was the manager.”
My memory jumped back to that summer like the ball bouncing over the lyrics of a song at an oldtime movie matinee.
“Nick?”
