Fools Rush In (The Sam McCain Mysteries Book 7) (16 page)

“Her drinking.”

“Are you mocking me here?”

Extended sigh. “A little, I guess. I mean you’re making it sound more like a love affair than a business relationship. But I apologize, Sam. I guess it hurts my pride that you chose her over me. But that makes sense. You’ve been friends—or whatever you are—for a long time.”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t see each other socially.”

Nervous laugh. “I probably screwed that up for us, Sam.”

“How?”

“I said a lot of awkward things the first night we met. I was trying not to flirt with you but it sort of came out that way, and I’m sorry it did. The truth is, Sam, I don’t know what I’m looking for—if I’m looking for anything. I like to work hard because then I don’t have to think about it. I like you very much, but you’re very different from the other men I’ve been with. There weren’t that many—three, really—but they ran to a type and you don’t fit that type at all. And you’re so different from them and—”

“What type are we talking about?”

“Oh, it’s not worth discussing. See, right there I said something I shouldn’t have.”

“Tall, dark, and handsome? Is that the type we’re talking about?”

Pause. “Believe it or not, yes. It just seemed to work out that way. And it was very flattering, I have to say.”

“But you’re beautiful.”

“Well, I’m attractive. I don’t know about beautiful.”

“So it’s logical handsome men would be attracted to you.” Pause. “Let me ask you something personal about them.”

“Well, if it’s not too personal.”

“Were any of them ever nicknamed ‘Yosemite Sam’?”

I thought she might not have understood the reference, but after a hesitation she broke into a full-throated laugh. “That’s just what I mean, Sam. You saved the moment because you’re so witty.”

“And short.”

“Well—”

“And not handsome—”

“In your way you are.”

“And not dark. Fish-belly white and freckled in places.”

“You really know how to sell yourself.”

But then it was done. I could sense it. I’d kidded it along so we could both save face, and much as we enjoyed that moment, we both realized that it was one of those fireflies that only glow for a minute or so.

“I just don’t want to hurt you, if we go out socially I mean.”

“I understand.”

“I think I’m pretty good company sometimes, but I don’t know if it can ever be more than that for us.”

“Well, let’s think on it.”

“I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.”

“You didn’t. You were honest is all.”

“Well, I probably should go. We both need our sleep. I just wanted to make sure you’d heard about Rachael Todd.”

“I appreciate the call, Jane.”

“We’ll talk soon, Sam.”

“’Night.”

For a long time I just sat in the chair. The cats came and sat on me. I was looking for a bride these days—now that I was trying to be an adult again, and at age twenty-six it was past time—but maybe in looking so earnestly I’d lost whatever charm I’d once held for women. Trying too hard, to make it simple.

I spent a few minutes working out with self-pity, spreading it throughout my body, saturating every cell of my being and mind with it, and then I stood up and turned off the lights and went to the back door to make sure it was locked.

And it was then I heard it. And for the first time there was a sweetness to Noreen’s voice. Maybe it was because this particular song was about a lost love and not shooting cops or burning nuns or building monuments to Stalin.

This was a young woman singing about a love affair she couldn’t rid herself of. And it had an old hill-country quality—a good many townspeople were from folks who’d migrated here from the Ozarks following the Civil War, the kin of whom still lived in the section where I’d grown up—that particular sadness of the poor and the uneducated and the trapped that the Irish and the Scotch had carried with them on their boats to the new country.

I’d never heard any of these qualities in her voice or manner before and so I grabbed the last six-pack and went down to the old rocker porch swing that Mrs. Goldman had put near the alley and joined them.

And limned by starlight and soothed by wind and startled by the beauty of her voice when she sang this type of song, I became in those moments a fan of Noreen’s, something that verged on the impossible.

“I’d like to see her.”

“She specifically asked that you not see her.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“That was what Dr. Berryman told us. In fact, there he is now. You can ask him yourself.”

Hospital. Six-thirty a.m. Sights and sounds and smells of the new day. Crisp nurses, preoccupied doctors studying notes and charts. Gurneys being pushed toward one of three operating rooms at the far end of this hall. A glimpse into the room where loved ones waited for word of how the surgery went. Tense faces. Tears. A young man hugging a frail elderly woman.

The nurse I’d been speaking to pointed to Berryman, who had just stepped off an elevator and was just starting down the hall in the opposite direction.

I caught up with him. We’d known each other professionally for three or four years. He was a small man in his forties with a somber face and a cordial manner.

“She’s going to be all right, Sam. But it’s going to be a while before she’s back on the bench.”

“I don’t even know what happened. I just got a call from her driver that she’d been in an accident and was in the hospital.”

He frowned. Leaned in, quieted his voice. “She’s got to face it this time, Sam. She was coming home from the club alone and ran off the road out by Simpson’s Peak.”

“That ravine?”

He nodded. “She’d be dead if she hadn’t run into the pine tree that’s right down from the top. Nobody found her till about four this morning. She’d lost a lot of blood. She’s also got a broken hip, a broken arm, and a concussion.”

“Is she awake?”

He studied me a moment. “Sam, the way she tells it, the reason she got so drunk at the club last night was because she’d had some kind of falling-out with you. She said she didn’t trust you any longer.” Then: “She wanted me to be sure and tell you that.” One of his infrequent smiles. “Working the old guilt routine on you. Esme’s drunk every night of the week no matter what happens in her life, good or bad.”

“She wanted you to tell me that but she doesn’t want to see me.” Alcoholics always blame other people.

“That’s what she says anyway, and in her condition, I didn’t want to argue with her. For one thing, we gave her a lot of pain medication, so she’s not thinking clearly. And for another, you’re just a handy excuse, as I said.”

A nurse passed by and smiled at me. Former client of mine. Happily remarried after I helped her win an unchallenged divorce. Another wife abuse case. “Sam, you’re closer to her than anybody.”

“Than her friends at the country club?”

“I’m one of those friends at the country club. We all care for Esme a great deal, but we really don’t know her, even after all these years. You know how she holds herself back. Even when she’s drunk and staggering around, she never divulges anything personal. And she’s at the end, Sam. She can’t go on drinking. Her body won’t let her. Her liver—”

He made a face.

“You work with her. You have influence with her. You’re the only one we can think of who can get her into that clinic. If she doesn’t go through that program and give up the bottle, our Esme won’t live another year. Two at the very outside. And believe me, they won’t be pretty years either. Not for her or anybody around her.”

His name was announced in that sterile tone of all hospital announcements.

“Give her a day or two, Sam. Then come back and see her. I need to go.”

Judge Whitney submitting herself to the structure and vagaries of a clinic. Life lived at the mercy of somebody else’s rules. Unthinkable.

“G
OOD MORNING, MR. C.”

“’Morning, Jamie.”

“My birthday is next week. And guess where Turk is taking me?”

“The Dairy Queen?”

She laughed. “No, a birthday is a big event. He’s taking me to see Frankie Avalon.”

“Is Frankie Avalon still around?”

“He is in Des Moines. Don’t you like him?”

“He’s all right. But I’d take Chuck Berry, personally.”

“He puts too much grease on his hair. Like Jerry Lewis.”

I knew this could go on forever, so I said, “Any calls?”

“Just one. Nancy Adams.”

I got myself seated behind my desk, scanned down the “To Do” list I always make for myself the day before.

“You want her phone number?”

“Sure.” She gave it to me and I dialed. “Nancy Adams, please. This is Sam McCain returning her call.”

“Dammit,” the woman said, after cupping the phone. Or kind of cupping the phone. “Your father and I told you not to call him.” I couldn’t hear what Nancy said. The woman again: “May she call you back? She’s washing her hair right now.”

“Or I could call her back.”

“Well, actually we have to run a few errands after she’s finished with her hair. And she’ll call you after that. Good-bye, Mr. McCain.”

“Did you take the call from Nancy Adams or did the service?” I asked after hanging up.

“The service. It came in before I got here.”

I dialed the three digits to connect with our answering service. “Hi, this is Sam. Did you take the call from a Nancy Adams?”

“Yes, I did, Mr. McCain.”

“Did she say anything other than she’d like me to call her back?”

“Not really. Except—”

“Except what?”

“Well, I sort of had the impression she was sort of nervous. It was her tone, I mean. She didn’t say anything specific. She just sounded real uptight.”

“Thanks, Betty.”

I had three briefs I had to read before I could spend any time on the Leeds murder. Or on what I was going to say to Judge Whitney when the time came to go up and see her and bring up the subject of the clinic in Minnesota.

In the next two hours I caught up on everything pressing. I’d told Jamie to tell everybody I was out. She knew the exceptions were Judge Whitney and my folks. Right now, she didn’t have to worry about the judge.

When I finished, I leaned back in my chair and started mentally plotting out my argument for court tomorrow morning. An especially ugly divorce case. I represented a mill worker who, in response to the affair his wife was having, took their three-year-old daughter for the weekend without telling anybody (a) that he did it, or (b) that he was taking a hotel room in Cedar Rapids.

It was easy to portray the wife as a woman of soiled virtue. But I knew John, the husband, was almost psychotically suspicious of her and had made their lives hell from the start of their marriage. John was a decent man and Sandy was a decent woman. She claimed she was justified in having an affair because he’d had so many himself. The joys of divorce court. Plenty of psychic pain and blame to go around with the kids in the middle.

She came in just before lunchtime.

Turk had made his usual appearance (“Hey, Mr. C, you always look so busy, man, you should relax more.”) his black leather jacket looking like something from
West Side Story
rather than
The Blackboard Jungle.

A few minutes after Turk and Jamie left, Nancy Adams stood in the doorway and said, “Are you busy, Mr. McCain?”

“Hi, Nancy.”

She smiled nervously, a perfect young woman, slim in tan walking shorts and a starched white blouse, possessed of long, tanned arms and legs and a small earnest face. Her dark hair was worn short in a shag. “I wondered if we could talk a little bit.”

“Sure.”

“Don’t think badly of my mom. She just doesn’t want to see me dragged into court or anything. That’s why she said what she did on the phone.” A voice as soft as her brown eyes.

“I know my office isn’t much, but don’t be afraid to come inside.” She was still standing on the threshold.

“Oh, right.”

She came in and took one of the client chairs. “I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing.”

“If you’re telling the truth, then that’s the right thing.”

“That sounds like something you’d hear on TV.”

I laughed. “A little pompous?”

She smiled. She was blushing. “I probably shouldn’t have said that.” I’d been doing that lately—beginning to sound like Dear Abby.

“I have some pop in the refrigerator.”

“No, thanks.” Still busy with her hands. “I guess I may as well just tell you, huh?”

“Probably best, yes.”

She sat up a little straighter. “Well, you know I go out with Nick Hannity. Or I should say, used to go out with him.”

“You broke up?”

“Yes. He—he told you and the police that he was with me during the time David Leeds and Richie Neville were being killed out at the cabin.”

“Yes, he did.”

“Well, he wasn’t. I didn’t see him till much later that night.” She took a deep breath. “And the fact is, he hated David. One night when David and Lucy were having some problems, David came over to my house and we just talked. My folks—please don’t think they’re bad people because they’re not—they were pretty mad about him coming over like that. You know, with my dad’s position and all, he said if people thought I was going out with a Negro then they wouldn’t want to do business with him anymore.”

Another deep breath. “In fact—and this was really embarrassing—David and I were sitting out on the front porch talking and my dad came out and said he wanted to talk to me. He was very cold to David. Wouldn’t say hello or anything after David was so polite to him and everything. Anyway, my dad got me inside the front door and he was so mad he didn’t care if David heard him or not. He just ranted and raved at me the way he does sometimes. He said some very mean things about colored people and David in particular. David couldn’t help but hear him. He told me to go back out there and get rid of David in five minutes or he’d come out there and get rid of him himself. I was afraid to go back out after all the terrible things he said but I didn’t have any choice.”

“What did David say when you went back to the porch?”

“He didn’t say anything. He was gone.” She shook her head. “That was the last time I ever saw him. But that wasn’t all.”