“He comes there a lot?”
The eyes got shrewd. “Nobody told you?”
“Told me what?”
“A lot of us think he’s got a deal with Donovan.”
“What kind of deal?”
“Donovan says that we should only buy drugs from Randall. He said that right after we moved in. He says Randall’s the only one we know isn’t a narc.”
“So he gets a cut from Randall?”
“We can’t prove it but that’s what we think. And you know Donovan went after Vanessa before my brother did. He was way hung up on her. He didn’t go crazy like Neil but he started trying to sleep with every chick in the commune. He even hit on me a couple of times. I mean, guys don’t hit on me unless they’re really hard up.”
“You’ve got to stop that. I do all right with women and look at me.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you.”
“Oh, no? I’m short and I’m not exactly handsome. It’s attitude. I just pretend I’m this cool guy and sometimes it works. And that’s what you’ve got to do.”
“I’m scared of guys.”
“Well, I’m scared of women.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely. They’re like this alien species. Just when you think you’ve figured them out a little bit they do something completely unexpected. And you’re standing there looking like a fool.”
She must have been restraining herself to a painful degree because suddenly she was sobbing, her face in her hands. I walked around the desk and stood in back of her chair. I put my hands gently on her shoulders and started muttering all the stupid things people mutter at times like these, a reminder of how difficult it is to really comfort anyone.
I reached over and snatched Jamie’s Kleenex box from her desk. I handed it to Sarah. She plucked one free. It resembled a fluttering white bird in her fingers. She blew her nose but kept on sobbing.
When the phone rang, I took it on Jamie’s desk. Paul Mainwaring didn’t say hello. “I’ve sent you a check for a thousand dollars, Sam. That should be enough for your services.”
“Way too much, actually.”
“It’s done. We have our answers. Now we can get on with our grieving. I appreciate your work on this, Sam.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for the autopsy?”
He wasn’t angry; peeved was the word here. “Autopsy? We already have it. Vanessa was stabbed to death.”
“I mean Neil Cameron’s autopsy.”
“What’s that got to do with anything? Now I’m in a hurry here, Sam. As I said, I’ve sent you a check for a thousand dollars and I’ve thanked you for your work and I’m hanging up now.”
“What if Neil didn’t commit suicide?” I rushed my words, had to because he was about to put his phone down.
Peevishness was now anger. “He did commit suicide, Sam. That’s obvious to everyone except you, apparently. I talked to Mike Potter. His opinion is that Cameron felt guilty about killing my daughter and that he knew he’d spend the rest of his life in prison so he killed himself. Even you should be able to understand that, Sam.”
Yes, even you, Sam. Now quit picking bugs off yourself and begging for bananas and get off the damn phone!
“Potter hasn’t seen the autopsy yet, either. Maybe he’ll change his mind.”
“Good-bye, Sam. I wanted this to be a pleasant little call because right now I’m losing my mind over my daughter’s death and I need a lot of little pleasant moments. But thanks to you I’m all worked up again. Good- bye.”
Sarah was dabbing her eyes with the Kleenex. The sobs had given way to frantic sighs. I got myself a cup of coffee and said, “Where’re you planning to stay?”
“At the commune, why?”
“Everything be cool there for you?”
“Yeah, except for Richard. He’s pissed because all this is likely to get the commune shut down. That’s the only thing he talked about. He didn’t say anything about Neil being dead. I think he still hated him because of Vanessa.”
“But Vanessa ended up doing the same thing to Neil that she did to Donovan, right?”
“The same thing she did to all her boyfriends. They’d get close and then she’d dump them. But Richard couldn’t see it that way. When he’d drink he’d talk about how he’d still be with her if it wasn’t for Neil.”
“So it doesn’t bother you to go back there?”
“The people there are more my friends than Richard’s. They’re tired of him. This Emma I told you about?” A fleeting smile. “She calls him The Overlord.”
Jamie was back with two sacks. One was from the office supply store, the other from the deli. She placed the former on her desk and the latter in Sarah’s lap. “They were having a special on ham and cheese on rye so I thought I’d get you one. I’ll get you some Pepsi from the machine down the hall.”
“She sure is nice.”
“She sure is, Sarah. And so are you. I’m going to find Bobby Randall and meanwhile you’re invited to stay in this luxurious office of mine as long as you want to.”
Jamie returned just as I spoke. “Don’t worry, Mr. C. I’ll take good care of her. I’ll show her some of Laurie’s baby pictures.” She beamed down at Sarah. “Laurie’s my baby.” I was surprised she hadn’t already told our guest all about her. People who’ve been in my office for more than three minutes usually know the whole story by heart.
12
I’d been to Bobby Randall’s place only once. Two years ago a woman who worked in the courthouse asked me to tell him to stop seeing her sixteen-year-old daughter. He was, after all, in his early twenties. His age made him prosecutor bait but she didn’t want to press charges because, she said, her daughter, who was very much taken with the handsome, arrogant Bobby, would never forgive her. The woman told me that she had nightmares of her daughter getting pregnant.
I’d seen Bobby around town. In his red Thunderbird he was hard to miss. His trail of heartbroken women provided tavern talk for other young men. Bobby was not beloved. In the words of the Everly Brothers, he was a bird dog. He seemed to take particular pride in sleeping with women who were affixed to boyfriends, fiances, and husbands. He had the looks, all dark curly hair and features that were almost pretty, and swagger that would put my favorite draft dodger John Wayne to shame.
As I pulled into the alley where he had turned a three-car garage into his workshop, I heard the competing sounds of rock music and circular saw. I pulled off the gravel onto blanched grass crosscut with tire tracks. This was the visitor parking area.
The doors were wide open, allowing in heat and flying kamikaze bugs. The setup was impressive. Lighting was provided by overhead fluorescents. The walls were covered with shelving and pegboard that contained hammers, pliers, extra saw blades, screwdrivers, and so many other things that I gave up looking. He was cutting two-by-fours on a workbench big enough to play Ping-Pong on. He stood in a T-shirt and jeans on a floor of wood that he’d covered with a linoleumlike surface. Everything was bright and new, as if it would be used for a photo in a trade magazine. The one element that enhanced even the splendor of the workshop was the splendor of the blonde in the very tight Levi’s cutoffs and braless pink T-shirt who sat perched on a stool in the corner. She held a long cigarette in one hand and a magazine in the other. Neither she nor Randall looked up when I entered because neither could hear me above the whine of the saw. The smell of freshly sawn wood took me back to the days when
