Lynn Shanlon’s small house blazed white under the searing sun. When I pulled into the narrow drive, I saw Jimmy Adair, the next-door neighbor, just emerging from his own house with his big sloppy St. Bernard. He waved at me, then walked down his sloping front yard to the mailbox.
I knocked on the front door twice and waited for a response that didn’t come. Against the faultless blue sky, a jet trail could be seen. I could hear the plane but not see it. I knocked for a third time, then decided to walk around back.
When I reached the back yard, I detoured and went over to the side of the garage. I peeked into a small dusty window. Her Dodge station wagon sat inside.
I went over to the back stoop, passing an outdoor grill as I did so. There was still a faint scent of burgers on the air. There were several blouses on the clothesline. I went over and touched two of them. Still damp. Given the heat, I knew they hadn’t been hanging here all that long.
I knocked on the screen door at the back of the house. No reply. I opened the door and put my ear to the glass portion of the other door. A houseful of hums and clicks and snaps. The house robots doing their duties.
There wasn’t any particular reason to be suspicious about her not being here. She might be visiting a neighbor, though she didn’t seem to be the neighborly type. She might also have gone for a walk, though at ninety-three degrees it struck me as unlikely. But a friend could have picked her up and taken her somewhere.
I knocked again, waited a few minutes, then walked out front again. Jimmy Adair was down on the street with a fistful of mail, talking to an elderly bald man in scotch-plaid walking shorts and a lime-green golf shirt.
I went over and leaned against my ragtop and smoked a cigarette. The smoke was just about finished by the time Adair and the old man separated. When Adair and his St. Bernard were halfway up the slope leading to his house, I wandered over and waited for him.
“It’s a son of a bitch of a day,” he said, shaking his mail at me. “I wish I could handle it as well as Chauncey does.”
Chauncey. I’d been trying to remember the dog’s name. Chauncey came over for a pat on his massive head. I gave him three. He looked up at me with those sweet dopey eyes. He was drooling as usual, but I probably had some habits he didn’t like, either.
Adair wore a red-and-white-striped shirt and jeans. He still carried himself like the jock he’d been in high school, that sense of swagger. But there wasn’t any threat in him. He just clung, like many of us do, to the memories of better times. I wondered if he ever got jealous of the kids he coached at the high school, wanting the thrill and glory of being in there himself. I would have.
“I was looking for Lynn. Wondered if you’d seen her.”
“Earlier I did. Around breakfast time. I was getting the paper and she was pulling out in her car. She waved and said she was going to do some early shopping. Everything all right? You seem a little tense.”
“Everything’s fine. I’m tense because of something that happened a little while ago. Nothing to do with Lynn.”
Chauncey barked basso profundo. I was surprised the front window didn’t shatter.
“Ol’ Chauncey’s hungry. It’s lunchtime for both of us, I guess. The summer’s going by too fast. Pretty soon I’ll be eating the cafeteria food at the high school. That’s one way I keep my weight down. I can’t eat very much of it. I don’t know what the hell they do to it, but whatever it is, the Reds could use it for torture.” He grinned. “I like the gals in the cafeteria. I always feel a little guilty knocking them like that.”
For me, the pitiless sun precluded any more small talk. “You know Lynn pretty well. Does she talk about Karen’s fire a lot?”
He watched as Chauncey nuzzled his leg. “She was pretty mad at herself after the fire. But these days, she talks about her ex more than she talks about the fire. The three of us were all pretty good friends. It’s that kind of neighborhood. I think the whole block pitched in to help her with Karen dying. But it’s different with her ex. Not much we can do about that except sit and listen to her. The guy sounds like a jerk.”
“Does she go out much at night?” I wanted to keep him talking. He’d started blinking a lot and licking his lips. I wanted to know what he was afraid of.
He started to speak, then stopped. He gave me one of those looks that he hoped would take him into the deep dark recesses of my mind. “What’re you trying to find out here?”
“Just trying to get to know Lynn better.”
“Why?”
“Thought I might ask her out.”
He was silent for a time. “You didn’t bother to ask if Lynn and I might be seeing each other.”
“No, I didn’t. And I apologize.”
“Well, we’re not. But you picked a strange way to ask her out. All these questions, I mean.” The smile surprised me but seemed real. “Sorry if I snapped at you there. I’m very protective of her, same as I was with Karen. We all helped each other through a lot of bad times. My wife left me shortly after we moved here. I thought I would end up in a mental hospital. I lost twenty pounds in less than two months. The only thing that held me together was spending evenings with the girls here. They nursed me back to wanting to live again. And then one day I woke up and got interested in somebody else, and I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t care about my ex any more. That’s the point I want to get Lynn to. Where she doesn’t hate him any more. Because that’s the grip he has on her. How much she hates him.”
I put out my hand. “I appreciate all this, Jimmy. Next time I’ll be more careful about my bird-dogging.”
He laughed. “Well, I hate to admit it, but I’ve done a little of that myself over the years. And I’m not proud of it. Ended up in bed with my best friend’s girl at this drunken party one night. She blamed me for it all, and neither one of them has had anything to do with me since.”
“It’s a dangerous game.”
“That’s why all this talking we’re doing makes me nervous, McCain. I had some trouble with the bottle back then, and sometimes when we talk about those days I kind of get the shakes. Lots of bad memories.”
For the first time, I saw why the sisters had befriended him. There was a sadness beneath the swagger that gave him a kind of teenaged vulnerability.
“The bottle’s destroyed a lot of lives. I see it every day in my line of work.”
“I’m just about two years dry. I finally did something I’m proud of, besides throwing a football.” Chauncey’s bark rumbled across the grass. “I guess he’s hungry. See you, McCain.”
By the time I sat behind the wheel of my ragtop, Adair and Chauncey had disappeared into their house. I sat there, looking straight ahead at the garage, then at the house, and then back at the garage again. A momentary desolate silence ensued. Something wasn’t right. Maybe she’d left town. Packed a small bag and fled. She had the best reason for killing Bennett and Davenport. Maybe she had found out about the real cause of the fire and the men behind it and had started killing them. But if she’d left town, she’d done so leaving Raines and DePaul alive. That wouldn’t fit the pattern of an obsessed killer.
Her car being in the garage bothered me more than anything else. There was always the chance that she’d given in to panic and had taken a bus to the Cedar Rapids airport. Get far away before there was even a hint of anything being wrong.
But there was another person I needed to talk to as well. William Hughes had been a friend of the Shanlon family. He would also have had a good sense of just abut everything that had gone on in the mansion. What if he cared more about his relationship with the Shanlon women than his relationship with Lou Bennett? He wasn’t a young man, but I had no doubt he was a capable one.
I took the ragtop out of gear and let it start to roll down the driveway. I popped the clutch and the V8 stirred into life. I had one chance of seeing Hughes. That consisted of getting to the mansion before Linda Raines learned that her husband was going to prison and would refuse to let me come inside.
I pointed my Ford eastward and set about violating some speed laws.
A middle-aged maid in a gray uniform dress and a white apron greeted me at the door. When I asked to see William Hughes she said, “I’m sorry, he’s not here.”
“Is he in today?”
The blue eyes showed confusion. “Well-”
“It’s all right, Marilyn. I’ll talk to him.”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.” She backed out of the doorway, nodded to Linda Raines, and went back into the house.
“I’ll have to get me one of those.”
“I’m sure she offends your sense of justice for the poor.”
“Not any more than a lot of other things.”
This morning she’d gone cowgirl-a white silk blouse tucked into tailored jeans and cordovan Western boots.
Obviously Cliffie hadn’t called her yet to tell her that her husband was in custody and just might not be wheeling up the old driveway in his expensive sports car any time soon. If he had, Linda Raines would not be so collected and poised.
Her dark hair was gathered at the back, emphasizing the chic bones of her face. Even though the mark of beauty changed over the centuries, it was difficult to believe that her face would ever go out of style.
“You were asking about William?”
“I need to talk to him.”
“You can’t; he isn’t here.” Irritation in her words.
“You don’t sound happy about that.”
“To be honest, Mr. McCain, I don’t understand any of this. I’m sorry I was cold a bit ago. I swing back and forth between being mad and being afraid. You caught me when I was mad.”
“Have you seen William today?”
“No, and that’s just it. We usually know where he is. But he wasn’t here this morning. I can’t even find my husband.” Then: “Oh, I’m sorry. Would you like to come in and have a cup of coffee?” She wasn’t faking her muddled thinking. She was going to be even more muddled and more fearful when she heard where David Raines was at the moment. But somebody else would give her that news, not me.
“No, I need to be going. I just thought I could see William.”
From her jeans she extracted a package of cigarettes. Next came a long, narrow silver lighter. After she got her cigarette going, she said, “Something was wrong yesterday. I asked him several times if there was anything I could do for him. When I was a little girl, William was my best friend and confidant. I told him everything. And every once in a while he’d tell me about himself, what he’d done with his life. He was the same with Karen Shanlon, but even more so. He spent as much time with her as he could when he was here. He was very protective of her. One of the few times I’d ever seen him stand up to my father was when Dad was telling me that Karen just wasn’t right for our family. William spoke right up. He didn’t attack Dad, but he made his case and didn’t back down. Dad was surprised. And so was I. And that was when I realized it.”
“Realized what?”
“About William being in love with Karen. I’d just assumed it was all very paternal, the way he hovered around her. But that day when he took on Dad, I heard it in his voice. He was really smitten. And I didn’t blame him. Most people liked her. I think her damaged foot had given her a different perspective on life. She was good. Not phony good. But actually good. She was so kind and patient and loving. I liked to see her play with our cats and dogs. They took to her in ways they’d never taken to us.” Then: “I feel guilty saying this, because for a long time I was a real bitch to her. I wish I could take it all back.”
I remembered Wendy telling me about how rough Lou and Linda had made it for Karen. At least Linda had eventually come around.
Then I thought about what she’d just told me.
William had loved Karen. So when Karen was murdered, did William start killing the people who had taken Karen’s life? Maybe I could make a case for it. The same kind of case that had Lynn Shanlon avenging her sister’s death.
“Are you sure you won’t come in?”
“No, thanks. I need to be going.”
She angled her head so that it pointed west. “I’m going riding. It’s hot, but my horse needs a good run and it’ll get me out of this house. I just can’t stop thinking about Dad being gone. I hated him but I loved him too. Have you ever felt anything like that, Mr. McCain?”
“All the time.”
The smile was gentle. “I just hope life gets simpler the older I get.”
I felt like a coward for not telling her about her husband’s trouble, because her life was about to get more complicated than it had ever been.
Two minutes later, I was winding the ragtop around the circle drive in front of the mansion and heading out to see my good friend Ralph DePaul.