my heroes.”
“What’s wrong with William F. Buckley?”
“Too prissy and too smug.”
“I’ll mention that to Bill when I see him next month.”
“I have several other things you could tell him, but you wouldn’t want those words to come from your mouth.”
A dramatic drag on the Gauloise: “So if he didn’t kill her, who did?”
“Right now there are several possibilities. I wanted to ask you if you’d ever heard anything at your club about Eve Mainwaring.”
She stretched her legs out, inspected them. Long and slender, perfectly turned. She had good wheels and knew it. “Personally, I like her. She’s a bit standoffish, but that’s only because when she first started coming there all the usual sex fiends started chasing her.”
“Paul didn’t object?”
“Paul wasn’t around. God, that man travels more than LBJ. She usually came with one of the other club women.”
“So you haven’t heard anything about her?”
“That she sleeps around? Of course. I’ve heard it. But I don’t believe it. I’ve talked to her a number of times. It turns out she loves Lenny’s music.”
“Ah.”
“Don’t think I don’t know what’s behind that ‘Ah.’ When I told her that Lenny was a friend of mine, she was fascinated and wanted to hear all about him. I consider that a sign of intelligence and sophistication.”
“So you don’t think any of the scuttlebutt about her is true?”
“I most certainly don’t.”
“I don’t suppose she’s a fan of Dick Nixon, too.”
Another momentary indulgence on her cigarette: “I wouldn’t be crude enough to ask, McCain. That’s something people like you would do. She did say, however-and I had absolutely nothing to do with this-that she didn’t think much of Hubert Humphrey. I’ll let you make up your own mind on that.”
“She’s supporting George Wallace?”
She slipped off the desk. “I’ve had enough of you for today. Now get busy. I want to put a stop to all this nonsense about Cliffie having solved the case.”
“If I pull it off will you invite me to your club?”
She couldn’t help it. She smiled. “They’d eat you alive, McCain. And they wouldn’t laugh at even one of your stupid jokes. Now get going.”
The main floor of the courthouse held what was called a luncheonette. For employees of the courthouse it was perfect for quick breakfasts, quick lunches, and twenty-minute coffee breaks. Next to it stood a small stand run by a blind man named Phil Lynott. He’d gone to the Vinton School for the Blind back in the mid-’40s and had been running the stand ever since. He sold newspapers, cigarettes, cigars, and pipe tobacco. He was a rangy, balding man who wore dark glasses. He could tell you where every single item was. He could retrieve said item in seconds. Just about everybody liked him. One time a smart-ass, on a bet, tried to steal a newspaper. A big defense lawyer who’d played tackle for the U of Iowa got the culprit around the neck and damn near choked him to death. Phil had had no such trouble since.
“Hi, Phil. Did Cartwright finally convert you?”
Phil laughed. “You know he’s on in the afternoon now, too.” He nodded to his small black plastic radio.
“Oh, goody.”
“Whatever else you can say about him, he’s great entertainment.”
“… and so tonight in the park my flock will be presenting a one-act play called Jesus Meets a Hippie. This is something the entire family will want to see, especially if you’ve got boys or girls who think they might want to grow their hair long and take drugs and fornicate before marriage. As I said to my wife just the other night, when I think of all that fornicating I just can’t get to sleep.”
Phil’s laughter rang off the sculpted halls of the courthouse. “‘Don’t bother me now, honey, I’m thinking of all that fornication.’” He was still laughing when I pushed through the heavy glass doors and stepped into the ninety- six-degree afternoon.
“She’s in the bathroom.”
Jamie was whispering. And pointing. As if I didn’t know where the down-the-hall bathroom was.
“Who are we talking about?”
“Shh. Not so loud, Mr. C. She’ll hear you.”
I seated myself at my desk.
“She came in real mad and then she just sat there and started crying. I don’t blame her. If my brother committed suicide I’d be half crazy, too. I feel sorry for her.” She was still whispering.
Sarah Powers walked in then. “Jamie said it would be all right if we talked.” She stood in front of my desk. The anger Jamie said she’d come in with had probably depleted her momentarily. “I want to thank you for getting me out of jail. I probably owe you some bail money.”
“No bail, Sarah. I told them I wouldn’t press charges against you for hitting me with that steel rod. And I convinced them you weren’t being an uncooperative witness-that you didn’t know any more than you were telling them.”
“Well, I really appreciate it, Mr. McCain.”
“I’m Sam. You’re Sarah.”
No smile, just a nod.
Jamie held up her bottle of Wite-Out, her lifeline to secretarial success. “I’m all out, Mr. C, I need to go get some more.”
I knew she kept half a dozen emergency bottles in her desk. I was impressed that she’d devised such a clever way of excusing herself so I could talk with Sarah. Someday when I’m a little more successful I’ll have an office with two rooms. I will stop people on the street to tell them about this and eventually two men in white will cart me off to the mental institution one town away while I’m babbling, “Two rooms, I tell ya! Two rooms!”
“Good idea, Jamie.”
“You want me to bring you anything, Mr. C?”
“No, I’m fine. Thanks, though.”
Jamie stood up, that wonderful dichotomy of Teenage Babylon body and Donna Reed face. In her pink summer dress-something Wendy and I had bought for her on her birthday-she was a sweet young mother. Married, unfortunately, to a little rat bastard who considered Iowa a surfing state. Have you ever seen a cow surf? Neither have I.
When we were alone, Sarah said, “He didn’t kill himself.”
“Why don’t you sit down, Sarah? You look exhausted.”
“I know my brother. He wouldn’t kill himself.”
“You said you were worried he’d kill himself when he got strung out on that one girl.”
She was still standing up. “I shouldn’t have said that. Deep down I didn’t believe he would have. And I don’t believe it now.”
I pointed to the chair. She finally walked back to the most comfortable chair in the place, the one I’d bought when the largest law firm in the city redid their offices and sold off most of their old furniture.
“He didn’t commit suicide and he didn’t kill her.”
“I believe he didn’t kill her. I’m not as sure about him committing suicide, though for some reason I tend to agree with you. I think he was murdered.”
“You mean that?” She looked younger then, still and always the tomboy, but there was a childlike frailty in the dark gaze now as if she’d finally found a true friend. I could abide her usual anger because I could understand it but it was pleasant to see her almost winsome.
“There’s something I got from one of the girls at the commune. Emma Ewing. She said that just before dusk she saw Bobby Randall’s Thunderbird parked down by the barn. He was talking to Donovan. She was in the house for maybe twenty minutes, and when she came out again his Thunderbird was still there but she didn’t see him anywhere.”
