The garage had six bays and smelled wonderfully of oil and grease and cleaning compound.
There was no activity today, no wrenches clanging to the floor, no Hank Williams song on the radio, no Pepsi bottles yanked out of the nickel machine in the corner. It was Edsel Day, after all. Only heathens would work on a day like this.
I looked around the silent garage wistfully.
I’ve always wanted to be one of those manly men who can walk into a service garage and know exactly what to do. I’m terrible with hammers, saws, and screwdrivers. My dad learned my terrible secret when I was nine years old and he asked me to help him hang a pair of shutters my mom had bought at Woolworth’s. They were supposed to go on either side of the kitchen window.
My dad held the shutter in place-which was the hard part of the job-while I was supposed to bang in the first couple of nails. I banged, all right -right through storm window and window alike. My mom jumped back from the sink, screaming, as glass icicles flew everywhere. From then dad always got my kid sister to help him with his carpentry projects.
And that’s why I take my ragtop to Denny’s garage whenever anything goes wrong. I sure couldn’t fix it myself.
“I need you to look at something, Sam.”
“What is it?”
“I’ll just let you see for yourself.”
I looked at all the Rotary good service plaques he had mounted above the desk.
If you’ve read any Sinclair Lewis-my undergraduate major was American Literature -y know the word booster. And boy, that was
Dick. He belonged to everything-Rotary, Kiwanis, Eagles, Elks, Vfw,
Masons, Chamber of Commerce, you name it-and he boosted everything too: high school sports, the new swimming pool, the new softball diamond, and stricter regulation of teenage drinking at both drive-in theaters. His people had come out here from New England in the early 1850’s.
They brought a lot of good recipes and clean, admirable habits with them, including the principles of education with which the Iowa Territory established its first schools. And they brought along the dulcimer, an instrument till then unknown in these parts. The odd thing was, whenever you saw Dick with his fellow Rotarians or
Kiwanians, he seemed apart from them. The smile touched the lips but never the eyes, and the eyes strayed constantly, looking out some window that was his alone.
“C’mon.” Then, as we started walking, he said, “You’ve got a private investigator’s license, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And you do work for Judge Whitney?”
“Yes I do.”
He sighed. The handsome face looked a little fleshy and old. It was a strange feeling. He seemed older now than he had a few minutes ago. He was Jay Gatsby at fifty-five, and that’s no Jay Gatsby at all.
He said, “There’s a dead girl in the trunk.”
Three Edsels were lined along the rear wall, their trunk ends out. The colors of these three were as silly as the colors of those on the lot: exotic fruity colors that no self-respecting automobile should ever be.
“I was just getting these ready for delivery,” he said. “That’s why they’re in here.” He looked paler, grimmer even than before.
I wasn’t sure which trunk held the girl until we got close. A bloody handprint was on the fender of the center car, the peach-and-kiwi-colored one.
“That’s my handprint, by the way.”
Great. The Sykes clan that ran the town and thus the police department didn’t need any help being incompetent. But Dick was going to see they got it. I wondered what other parts of the crime scene he’d violated. He saw my expression. “I panicked, McCain. I reached in and touched her to make sure she was dead-”
“That’s all right.” What the hell. He was having a bad enough day as it was. “The trunk open?”
He nodded.
I got down on my haunches and took my ballpoint out of my white button-down shirt.
That style of shirt, chinos, and desert boots are my customary uniform. They give my baby face and diminutive stature at least a semblance of age.
The tip of my ballpoint slid in nicely beneath the trunk catch. I delicately raised the lid. Then I stood up, my knees cracking, and looked inside.
Next to me, Dick said, “She’s-”
He didn’t finish his sentence. He hiccuped.
“She certainly is.”
I recognized her immediately: Susan Squires. Mary Travers had worked for her a couple of years. Susan was married to the then District Attorney, so they did a lot of entertaining and needed help around the house. Hence, a high school girl like Mary. Inexpensive and tirelessly hardworking. Even more, they were friends, confidantes. You’d see them downtown together, shopping and giggling like girlfriends. Susan told Mary virtually everything about her life.
“She was a pretty gal.” Hiccup.
“She sure was.”
“And nice. She used to work for me. That’s why she was here yesterday, decorating for Edsel Day.
A lot of old employees pitched in. This just makes me sick.”
“Me too, Mr. Keys.”
“And I don’t mean just ‘cause it’ll hurt my business.”
I patted him on the shoulder. “You’re a good man, Mr. Keys.”
He hiccuped.
“Here. Thought you might want this.”
He handed me a flashlight.
I played the beam inside the shadowy trunk.
She smelled of death. Unclean. This odor fought against the strong smell of the brand-new spare rubber tire. She’d been wearing a blue knee-length skirt and black flats and a white blouse. She had dark hair worn short and was curled up into a kitten ball. The side of her head had been smashed in so brutally you got a few glimpses of clean white bone.
“You’re going to have to call the Sykes boys.”
Hiccup. “I know I am. But I hate to.
They don’t have any idea what they’re doing.”
He leaned forward and hiccuped in my face.
“That’s between you and me.”
With all the power the Sykes clan had in this town, a wise man made a point of keeping such opinions to himself.
“Why don’t you go call them and I’ll look around?”
“I guess I better, huh?”
“Yeah, Dick, you better.”
He hiccuped and walked over to a wall phone by a rack of old tires.
I started playing detective.
Cliff Sykes, Jr., had seen one too many Glenn Ford pictures.
You know how Glenn always wears a khaki uniform whenever he plays a lawman? And keeps his gun slung low? And wears tight tan leather gloves? Well, imagine a 250-pound six-foot bullyboy in the same getup, and you’ve got yourself a picture of Cliff Sykes, Jr. The rest of the force wears standard blue uniforms. But Sykes, being the chief, and his daddy being the richest man in town, gets to play Glenn Ford.
The music stopped as soon as he arrived.
First the live band quit playing. Then the calliope went dead, and then the Ferris wheel music went silent.
And you started to see people at the windows, peering in.
I’d told Keys to lock the doors, just the way I’d learned in the criminology courses I’d taken at the University of Iowa while studying for my private investigator’s license. An unadulterated crime scene is the most important part of any murder investigation-short of a confession.
While we were waiting for Cliffie, I walked around the garage. Found nothing interesting. Went outside in back. Found nothing interesting.
Walked around the side of the building. And found something. There’d been some kind of accident here last night. A car had backed into the concrete-block edge of the building. Bits of red plastic taillight littered the ground. I got down and picked up a piece. I’d driven over this earlier today. I checked my tires and found the rear left with a sharp angle of glass stuck in it. The tire was quickly going flat.
I walked back to where the taillight pieces lay. Two little kids watched me. One had a Flash Gordon ray gun that made this really irritating noise every time the trigger was pulled.
I tried to avoid them as I sat on my haunches and examined the pieces again.
The kid pulled it thirty or forty times.
“How come you’re doing that?” his pacifist pal asked.
“I lost a dime,” I said. I didn’t want to explain myself.
“If I find it can I have it?” he asked.
I also didn’t want to get in a conversation with him.
“You find it, you keep it, how’s that?” I asked.
The ray gun shot me several more times, and then they started looking for the dime I hadn’t lost.
The taillight pieces belonged to a recent model car. There were two chunks large enough so I recognized the shape. There was also glass, and pieces of chrome trim, on the ground.
Flat-tire material. I knew how fussy Dick was about maintaining his lot. If one of his mechanics or customers had lost a taillight this way, it would’ve been swept up immediately.
Meaning they didn’t know about it. Meaning it happened last night and they hadn’t found it yet.
“Hey, Bobby, look what I found!” I heard one of the kids say, the one without the gun.
He held up a V8 insignia. It was about the size of a fifty-cent piece.
I was just about to ask him for it when a gray suede lady’s pump stepped into my view. I followed it up a length of hose, a length of skirt, and a length of matching jacket to the handsome if imperious face of Judge Whitney.
“I assume you’re sober, McCain.”
“He lost a dime,” Bobby said helpfully.
“Pitiful,” she said.
I stood up. “I may have found something.”
“Something more interesting than a dime, I hope.”
The boys started looking for the money again. “How about I give you a dime for what you found?” I said.
“A dime?” Bobby said. “Are you kidding? This is worth at least fifty cents.”
“Fifty cents?” his pal with the gun said.
“It’s worth at least a buck. My dad knows a junk parts place where they buy stuff like this.”
Before the price went any higher, I gave them a dollar and took the V8 insignia.
“Now if you only had the rest of the car to go with it,” Judge Whitney said. Then: “What’s going on?”
I told her.
“Take me inside, McCain.”
“You don’t want to go in there, Judge.”
“And why not?”
“Cliffie’s in there.”
“Oh.”
About the only time they ever saw each other was in her courtroom, when he had to testify against a defendant. Even then they rarely looked at each other and seldom spoke directly.
“I still want to go in.”
“You sure?”
“I said so, didn’t I?”
We went in a side door.
Cliffie stood in the center of the garage, talking to one of his deputies. Snakeskin boots. A Bowie knife hanging from a scabbard on his belt. A white Stetson hat that would have done John Wayne proud. But the critical part of the image were the eyes. For all his silliness, he was a dangerous man. He’d killed five men in the six years of being chief of police. Not one of them was armed. Most grand juries would take issue with such behavior. But when at least half that grand jury is beholden to your father for their jobs, charges are rarely brought.
He saw her then and she saw him.
It was a Saturday-afn Western movie showdown, good versus evil.
True, the Judge is arrogant and a snob, and a pain in the ass, and pretentious about her Eastern roots. And yet she’s generally fair in the way she dispatches justice. She’s an intelligent jurist and a true believer in the Constitution, if that doesn’t sound a mite corny in these cynical times.
The Sykeses came here in the last big migration from the Ozarks, which was just after World War One. They ran liquor during prohibition and a variety of black-market items during World War Two. But by a fluke Cliff Sykes, Sr., got a government contract in to help build training airstrips and barracks for the Army Air Corps, and it made him a millionaire many times over. He was soon building them all over the Midwest. In the process he bought himself the town of Black River Falls. The Judge stayed in office-she was appointed by a state panel that not even Sykes could buy off-but all the appointments she’d made during the Whitney tenure were long gone. The Sykeses ran everything.
Now they faced off.
“He looks dumber than I remembered,” the Judge whispered.
Then Cliffie surprised us not only by walking over but by doffing his Stetson and sort of bowing from the hip.
“Judge Whitney,” he said. “This is a true pleasure.”
“I’d like to offer the services of my own investigator,” she said.
He was stunned by her abruptness. So was I.
Then he got mad. And then he gave us a grin a lizard would envy. “You have reference to young McCain here?”
“I do indeed. He’s a lawyer recognized by the bar and he’s also a licensed private investigator who has a passion for modern crime-solving techniques.”
“Well, does he now?” The lizard smiled again. “And here I thought he had a passion for that young secretary of yours, Miss Forrest.”
“Very funny, Cliffie,” I said.
“What’d I’d tell you about calling me that, mister?” he snapped.
“I guess I don’t remember,” I said.
The Judge said, “The point is, Chief, it doesn’t look good for our town to have murders go unsolved. Everybody who can should pitch in.
That’s why I’m offering you McCain here.”
He wouldn’t say yes. But he couldn’t say no. Because he’d look uncooperative. And he was learning that part of his job was public relations.
He no longer beat men in their cells, because that was bad press. Now he took them into the woods, and when they came back he talked about how they’d tried to escape. Cliffie and his father had somehow managed to buy their way into the country club -the last bastion of the Whitneys-and certain amenities were expected of them. No more blowing their noses on the tablecloths.
“I certainly appreciate the offer,
Judge. And I certainly will take it under consideration.”
The three of us looked up at the man walking quickly toward us, the Judge’s number-one nemesis in court. Pure preppy: early thirties, brush-cut blond hair, Brooks Brothers gray three-piece, button-down pink shirt, black tie, graduate of Harvard Law. At one time his parents and the Whitneys had been best friends here in the valley, the only people the Whitneys considered even marginally civilized.
Then they’d had a falling out over a business transaction. This had been about the time the Sykes clan had assumed command. The Squires family, no doubt holding their noses, had thrown in with the Sykeses. This was the youngest Squires, David, husband of the dead woman in the trunk of the Edsel. He wore dark glasses and looked like an assassin.
“Aw, David, I’m sure sorry about this,” Cliffie said.
“What the hell are they doing here?”
He meant us.
“Just talking, I guess.”
“Well, I don’t want them here.”
Much as he was no doubt enjoying himself, even Cliffie had to wonder about a lawyer who would draw down on a judge he frequently appeared before.
“Get them out of here, Cliff. Now.”
“Yessir, David.” To us: “I guess I have to ask you folks to leave.”
Squires was already walking over to the car where two of our town’s finest were pawing all over everything without first dusting for fingerprints.
Cliffie doffed his hat again and started to turn away. Then he turned back to us. “Oh, McCain, I seen you outside with that busted taillight stuff. We’ll take care of that.
Now I’d better see to Mr. Keys.”
After I got one of the mechanics to put on my spare, I walked the Judge back to the courthouse.
It was so warm it was hard to imagine that jack-o’-lanterns were only a month away, the smell of fresh-carved pumpkin in the kitchen and scarecrows ready to stalk the twilight land, crows on their ragged shoulders and eerie bogeyman gleams in the vacancy of their eyes. That’s why I always kept a Ray Bradbury paperback near my bed. It’s fun to be scared that way.
When we got to the courthouse I remembered an article I’d recently read in The Iowan about an 1851 trial held in the original version of this Greek-revival building. Seems Black River Falls had been visited by a gang of outlaws on the run from Missouri. They took a liking to the place and stayed for a week or so. They drank, they gambled, they fought. They were in and out of jail.
During a card game, a hayseed of eighteen accused the gang, rightly, of cheating. The leader of the gang shot and killed him. All who had seen it insisted that the boy had lunged at the outlaw. The judge said it would be hard to indict the gang leader, even though the boy had been unarmed. Two nights later, the boy’s seventeen-year-old sister confronted the gang leader and shot him dead.
A trial was held; there was a hung jury. The judge said the girl committed murder, and to be true to the law you have to convict her; the jurors reluctantly did so. But that night the judge himself appeared at the rear of the jail where the young woman was being kept. He’d outfitted a horse for her, and he gave her enough money and provisions to make it to Minnesota. The girl was never seen again, and no one ever went after her. Her name had been Helen, and she grew so mythic in the minds of the settlers that they called their county Helena.
“You saw him squirm?”
“I saw him squirm. That was a great idea, Judge, asking him if he wanted me to pitch in.”
“He’ll take it under consideration.”
“He wasn’t too happy when I called him Cliffie.”
“And Squires wasn’t very happy to see us.”
“He sure wasn’t.”
“It was one of the few times he could challenge me and get away with it.”
When we reached the steps, she said, “I want to humiliate Sykes, McCain.”
“I figured you did.”
“I want to really rub his face in it.”
It was the only way a Whitney could get back at a Sykes these days. A series of embarrassments.
“Do I have time for a beer first?”
“One,” she said. “And no more.”
“How about two?”
“Two and you’ll be asleep. You’re a terrible drinker, McCain.”
She strode up the courthouse steps, used her Saturday key on the door, and went inside.