Beside me, Mac lit a cigarette and gazed out the window, as serene as an elderly passenger on the deck of an ocean liner. He was hardly the type to express remorse, I thought with a frown. A century earlier he would have worn black and leased his six-shooter skills to the highest bidder. I wished I could come up with a motive that explained why he'd killed Cyndi and Steve, but I couldn't.
I worked on Warren for three blocks, but I couldn't come up with much of a motive for him, either. If he hadn't had an affair ( and it seemed he hadn't) , then he would hardly fly into a rage and strangle Cyndi with the hair-dryer cord or shoot the Senator from the light booth. I considered the possibility that he nurtured a secret passion for Cyndi, and had been forced to watch helplessly as the Senator took advantage of her youthful innocence. How many nights had he driven around town while his boss and his beloved frolicked in his very own bed?
It wasn't great, but it might play and Warren did have opportunity. He had been in the theater at the time of the first attempt on Cyndi's life. During the festival, he could have slipped away from his charges to meet Cyndi
at the theater. He could have abandoned them to Disney's enthralling clutches for a few minutes this evening.
Eunice? She had a motive, although a feeble one. Cyndi had betrayed her, had laughed at her affections, had cast aside her financial investment and her dreams of the Big One. Eunice had spoken to Cyndi in the hospital, and could have arranged a meeting at the theater. As I replayed the conversation at Eunice's house that evening, I realized that she knew the truth about the affair, or at least had a healthy suspicion. Her acrimonious attack of Steve indicated as much. She might not have murdered Cyndi ( it sounded extreme, even to me) , but she might have listened to Steve's “confession” and gone berserk with rage. Really extreme.
Before I could rationalize away the extremities, we arrived at the brick building that housed Farberville's finest. The teenaged policeman parked, ordered us out of the car, and with a jaunty step guided us into Dante's Inferno.
As Peter predicted, the early birds were hopping around as I came out the glass door to the sidewalk. The sky was metallic gray, the air oppressive with humidity. The infant officer had disappeared, as had my fellow grillee. The whiskery deskman had informed me that no one was available to drive me back to my car, which I'd left behind the theater about a decade ago. He hadn't sounded overly apologetic about it, either.
I trudged along the sidewalk, muttering to myself and kicking an occasional beer can. Now Peter could determine, should the mood strike him, where I'd been every blasted second for the last seventy-two hours. The final six had been spent in a grubby little room, done in contemporary dungeon. The scarred table was now covered with cups of cold coffee. Ashtrays brimmed with acrid
cigarette butts. Somewhere within the hallowed walls, a clerk was facing the inspirational job of typing a two-pound manuscript of my mundane movements. I had been ordered to return within twenty-four hours to sign it. I doubted it was of publishable quality.
“Hey, Senator,” called a jovial voice.
I halted and looked back at a battered pickup truck, the predominate color of which was rust. Arnie waved enthusiastically from the driver's side. His eyes were red, his smile effusive. I recognized the symptoms. “Hey, Arnie,” I said, edging back to the far side of the sidewalk in case he decided to jump the curb.
“Did they arrest you for reckless driving?” Arnie continued. “Don't you have political amnesty? No, wait a minuteâthey call it something else. Diplomatic immobility. Don't you have any diplomatic immobility, Senator?”
“Only in the sense I'm without transportation.” As soon as the words came out, I regretted them. I prayed he'd missed the message, but Arnie was too sensitive for that.
“Hop in, then. We'll just have ourselves a little spin around town. This is a great time to tour, since everybody's asleep. No traffic, no kiddies in the street, no cause to slow down for anythingâexcept a stray dog or a suicidal squirrel. We can do every single street in town before most folks read their Sunday newspapers over bran flakes and instant coffee.”
“It sounds like a grand idea, Arnie, but I'm tired and I need to get home. It's been a hard day's night, and then some.”
“No problem, Senator. I'll run you home.” He disappeared for a moment as he leaned across the seat and opened the passenger's door. “Aw, come on. I'll drive
real careful; I swear it on my brother-in-law's bass boat. It's got a hundred-and-fifty-horsepower outboard you wouldn't believe. Wowsy, can that baby take off like a bat outta hell!”
Which is what I was afraid he might do, the very minute I was beside him. I shook my head. “Thanks, anyway, but I think I'll walk.”
“Suit yourself, Senator,” he said, sprawling across the seat once again to claw at the elusive door handle.
I risked it all to cross the sidewalk and push the door closed for him. He gave me a grin, touched the visor of his cap, and glanced in the rearview mirror to see if any police cars were going in or out of the station parking lot. As he started to pull away, a flicker of an earlier statement came back to me.
“Arnie! Stop, please,” I called, trotting a few steps in pursuit.
He stopped and leaned out the window. “Change your mind, Senator? You ole Washingtonians never seem to know what all you want to do.”
“I'd appreciate a ride to the theater. Is it possible that we can drive very slowly so that we can talk?”
“Whatever makes you happy.” He waited until I was settled beside him, then slammed the truck into first gear. We peeled away from the police station in a haze of burning oil and a shower of gravel.
I waited to hear a siren come to life behind us, but apparently all the good little cops were home asleep and the big bad ones inside the station bullying innocent witnesses. Once I could pry my cold white lips apart, I said, “I wanted to ask you about the parade, Arnie. Did you tell the state policeman who found you that you'd been given instructions?”
“Lordy, lordy, I get instructions all the time. My
brother-in-law sez don't drive the boat so gosh darn fast or you'll rip off the bottom on a stump. My boss sez hose down the trucks until they glitter like Christmas balls. My counselor at AA sez all sorts of things, but you may be able to tell I don't pay a whole lot of attention to him.”
“I'm curious about the parade. What were the instructions concerning the convertible?”
He took both hands off the steering wheel and began to count on his fingers. “First, be there at two-thirty or else. Go to the parking lot and do whatever they say through those megaphones. Don't drive too fast, and don't drive too slow. Don't say anything nasty in front of the passengers. Don't discuss politics with the Senator.”
I grabbed the wheel and jerked it to the side, thus saving a suicidal squirrel and an impassive fire hydrant. “Would you mind ⦠?”
“Sure, Senator. Hey, you don't mind if we talk politics just a little, do you? This uniform capitalization is making me crazy. I got to admit I can't figure out how to calculate my taxes this year. I thought you old boys was going to simplify it for us ignorant fellows.”
Having had some success steering the truck, I attempted to do the same with the conversation. “You're not ignorant, Arnie. We both know you're as sly as they come. After all, you followed instructions, didn't you?”
“To the best of my God-given talents,” he said, watching me out of the corner of his eye. He pulled over to the curb and cut off the engine. “Back in a jiffy, Senator. Can I bring you anything?”
I shook my head. He bounced into a yellow brick building, and emerged a few minutes later with a white paper sack. “Day-old doughnuts,” he announced as he
got back into the truck. “Help yourself, if you're feeling a little hungry after a night in the slammer. I'm always ravenous, myself.” He crammed one in his mouth, started up the truck, and blithely pulled back into the blessedly empty street.
“Now about these instructions,” he said, reaching into the sack between us. “You could say I did, and you could say I didn't, depending on your where you stand on the issues. Now, I'll be the first to say I didn't drive the convertible like the parade chairwomanperson said I was supposed to, although we might not have been shot at if I'd been at the helm. Then again, I did fetch the convertible after the parade like I was supposed to.”
“And head for the Dew Drop Inn?”
“I don't recall it was specified where I was supposed to go. All I was toldâinstructed, if you preferâwas to get the car and then get it and yours truly out of town for a couple of days. I was limited by my choice of destinations; I lacked the ready capital to make it to Florida, or even the racetrack in Hot Springs. So I said to myself, I said, Arnie, why don't you run out to the Dew Drop and see if anybody's interested in a friendly game of eight-ball? Worked out nicely, until old smoky showed up.”
“Were these instructions given with any financial remuneration?”
“Why, Senator, do I look like the sort of man who'd accept a bribe?” He gulped down a mouthful and gave me an indignant scowl.
“Heavens no,” I said hastily. “I'm terribly curious to know who gave you the instructions to snatch the car after the parade.”
“Do I look like the sort of man who'd accept a bribe?”
“Yes, now that I look at you more closely, I see that
you do.” I opened my purse and took out my billfold, which was in no way bulging with bribes. “How about an easy ten, Arnie?”
“I've been eating day-old doughnuts so long I've forgotten what fresh ones taste like.”
“Twenty will buy a lot of fresh doughnuts, Arnie,” I said with more mildness than I felt. “Dozens and dozens of them. More than anyone could eat in one day. If you buy too many, you'll end up with day-old doughnuts, anyway.”
“Ain't life ironic?” Chuckling, he stopped in front of the theater and offered the sack to me. “Last chance, Senator.”
Thirty-one dollars and eleven cents bought me the right to take three guesses. I handed over the cash, then leaned back and considered the most likely instructors. In the interim, Arnie ate doughnuts and discussed his favorite game shows. He seemed confident he could take all their money and shiny new cars, given the opportunity, but it was too expensive to get out to LA to take a test, and besides, everybody knew they were more interested in minority contestants. Now if he were a black Chicano woman â¦
McWethy had fired the shot, I decided, and therefore might have wanted the evidence whisked away until everyone calmed down. “A tall, gangly man with a beard?” I suggested.
He beeped the horn and shouted, “Who was the sixteenth President of the United States?”
Rain began to splatter on the windshield in the ensuing silence. “Ah, sorry, Senator,” Arnie murmured. “No, it wasn't any tall, ganglious type.”
While he hummed tunelessly and drummed his fingers on the top of the steering wheel, I tried to envision
Cyndi in a conversation with Arnie. I reminded myself that she had blackmailed Mac into abetting her. She certainly wouldn't want the bullet examined before her round of television interviews and press conferences.
I gave Arnie a stern look, then said, “Was it the girl who rode in the back of the convertible? Pretty, with dark hair and long, thick eyelashes?”
His hand jerked toward the horn, but stopped with centimeters to spare. “No, it wasn't the beauty queen who kept yelling someone was trying to kill her. I'd remember that. That's two, Senator.”
The rain increased, until it battered the roof of the truck and trickled through a crack in the windshield. The gutters along the street filled with bubbling brown water. Raindrops hurled down from the marquee and splattered on the sidewalk like ping-pong balls. I felt like the mendacious maiden in Rumpelstiltskin, which is to say I didn't have a clue to the unknown name. I wasn't sure it mattered, but at some level it seemed important. Vital. True to the fairy-tale premise, I ran through all the names of anyone remotely connected with the pageant, from the contestants and judges to Sally Fromberger. I was on the verge of admitting defeat and offering Arnie a check, when he abruptly switched on the engine.
“I've got to run along, Senator. I want to get home in time to watch âMeet the Press, ' just like you do. Really nice to have seen you; maybe we can have lunch some time. I hear the bean soup at the capitol dining room is wowsy.”
“I have one guess left,” I reminded him. “We agreed on the rules before I gave you every last cent in my purse. We are going to sit here until I make my third guess, and it may not be until âSixty Minutes' comes on tonight.”
“You politicians know how to drive a hard bargain, don't you? You've got me over the old porkbarrel, Senator. I don't know the lady's name, but she was attractive. Dark hair. No older than you. Nice manners. Better heeled than some. That's about all I can tell you. Now, if you'll pardon me, I would like to get home in time to whip up an omelette before my show comes on. You ever tried mushrooms and ricotta cheese, with just a pinch of oregano? Ciao.”