Fools Rush In (The Sam McCain Mysteries Book 7) (19 page)

“You’re not gonna get me in those easy, McCain, I’ll tell you that.”

“Then you’ll be going to jail with one hell of a headache.”

He didn’t expect it, but when it landed, I think he was as much shocked as hurt. And that wasn’t right. So I hit him again, and this time I was sure he was more hurt than shocked. The way I’d intended.

He’d probably never been slugged on the temple with a gun before—come to think of it, neither had I—but he sure caught on fast about the protocol of it all. He staggered and touched his fingers to his head. I grabbed the other hand and used it to whip him around. I got one cuff on him and said, “You can either put your other hand around your back or you can get hit again and I’ll do it for you.”

Anderson was sobbing. Between the alcohol and the rage and the dim recognition that he was, yes indeed, going to jail, he was coming apart.

Hannity gave up the fight. He was no doubt plotting my death.

I got him cuffed, both hands.

Mrs. Goldman was gliding down the backyard walk. “Are you all right, Sam?”

“Would you be so kind as to call the police?”

“Of course. But are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

She turned back toward the house and hurried to her own rear door.

“You sleepin’ with her, are you?” Hannity said.

“Yeah, as soon as I finish with your mother, I usually grab Mrs. Goldman.”

“You don’t know what’s gonna happen to you, McCain. My old man’s right. You’re just trash from the Knolls. You’ve got it in for us because we’ve got money and you don’t.”

“Knolls trash is right. You little jerk. You just wait till my old man gets done with you.” Anderson would’ve sounded meaner if he hadn’t been crying while he threatened me.

When the cop car came, I helped pile them into the backseat, then I got in my ragtop and followed them to the station.

“’Lo.”

“Don’t bother to look at your clock. I’ll tell you the time.” Which she did.

“Jane.”

“Uh-huh. I thought I’d share the misery with you.”

“Oh, shit.”

“At least.”

“Anderson’s old man and Hannity’s old man. They called, I bet.”

“Anderson’s old man called. Hannity’s old man came over.”

“Oh, God.”

“He plans to use all his power, which he seems to think is considerable, to get your law license lifted.”

“God, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You did the right thing. I mean, these two are spoiled brats to the highest power. I suppose he would’ve visited you, but then he would have had to look at all the windows they broke.”

“The breeze is nice, but I don’t appreciate all the bugs.”

“But neither one called?”

“Yeah. But I hung up after they started calling me names.”

“Well, expect trouble tomorrow. You’ll be hearing from their lawyers. You don’t have to be nice to them, but I have to, since I’m supposedly the objective third party.”

“I still think those two jerks are good for the murders.”

“So do I. Now more than ever, in fact. This shows how irrational they are. I’d love to get either one of them on the witness stand.”

“Damn.”

“What?”

“A bug. The cats are going crazy, chasing them all over the place.”

“Good. Then you’ll be as tired as I am in the morning.”

“Yeah, but you’ll look prettier than I do.”

“Listen, Sam, you made some serious enemies tonight.”

“I know.”

“They don’t have as much power as they think they do, but I’ll bet their lawyers can get them a hearing on your license. I wouldn’t make them any madder than you already have.”

“I won’t. Damn.”

“Bug?”

“Yeah.”

“’Night, Sam. Just remember what I said.”

“I’m not likely to forget it. They’ll be all over me tomorrow.”

At 9:30 the next morning I wandered around the flower shop looking for something appropriate to send to Jane. I wasn’t sure what the occasion was—thanking her for waking me up in the middle of the night?—but I hadn’t bought a woman flowers in quite some time and doing so always made me feel better about myself, as if I had a bit of class after all.

The siege had run about an hour, 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. First Mr. Anderson and then Mr. Hannity, full of threats, had called me about their sons. Then their lawyers called to tell me about all the things they were suing me for, both of them adding that I would be lucky to be a legal secretary this time next year. And then finally Nick Hannity himself called to tell me that he hadn’t forgotten about last night. I congratulated him on his remarkable powers of recall.

Jamie sat there with tears in her eyes. She could hear some of them shouting at me. After each call she’d said, “He’s such a mean SOB, Mr. C.”

I, in turn, called the most successful lawyer I knew in Cedar Rapids, laid it all out for him and asked him to tell me if I was in any serious trouble. He said he didn’t see how. He mentioned case law for every part of the incident and every one was in my favor. He told me to relax and to steer any further calls, messages, or bomb threats to his office.

“Why, good morning,” Karen Porter said. “Well, maybe I shouldn’t say ‘good morning’ after last night.”

She was in her domain here, an attractive middle-aged widow who’d co-owned this florist business with Ellen Williams longer than the senator had held his seat in Washington. Her youthful face made her graying hair look out of place.

Walking into the store was like sliding down the center of a bouquet of flowers, sights and scents overwhelming, the beauty and aromas almost alien in their lushness, like those in a hundred pulp science fiction stories I’d read, where the gorgeous forest finally grabbed you and ate you, a light snack for the monsters disguised as tulips.

“Ellen called me in the middle of the night. I’d never heard her that upset before. She just kept sobbing and sobbing and sobbing.”

“Wasn’t the senator there to help her?”

“You know Lloyd. As much as I love him, he’s useless in a crisis.” She glanced around the store, making certain that we were alone. “He just gets angry and sputters and splutters. I almost feel sorry for him. He just can’t deal with crises.”

“I wonder how Lucy’s doing.”

She frowned. “I’m a family friend. So I probably shouldn’t be kibitzing this way. But I think Lucy could’ve thought the whole thing through a little better.”

“‘The whole thing’ being David Leeds.”

“I actually liked David. I had him do some work around here. Best helper we ever had. Punctual, bright, really hard-working. I was all for David and Lucy going out. I just wish they could have confined it to Iowa City. We’ve got a nice town here. Once most of us got over the initial shock of Lucy and David being together, we did our best to accept it. That doesn’t mean to condone it exactly but just to say that it was their own business. And if people had opinions, they kept them private. They were still nice to Lucy and still nice to David. But of course there’s always ten, twenty percent who can’t accept anything or anybody different. And they’re active about it. We lost a few customers here who didn’t want David to wait on them because he was going out with Lucy. Can you imagine that? You look at people like that and you think they must be insane. They can’t get past anything that’s different.” She leaned in, “Of course, the senator is like that himself. Anything a little bit different and he can’t deal with it. Look at his voting record. The traditional way is the best way even if it doesn’t work anymore.” She smiled. “How was that for a speech?”

“I told you ten years ago you should run for mayor.”

“Why, when Howie provides us with so much fun?”

Howard D. K. Fogerty Jr. was both the local Chrysler dealer and the mayor. He was given to quoting Herbert Hoover, a local boy who probably deserved better by historians than he’d received thus far. He also quoted, no kidding, the Lone Ranger. In his most memorable commencement speech, he’d quoted not just the masked man himself but also Tonto. The town was waiting for him to quote the Ranger’s horse, Silver.

The bell above the shop door rang.

“Duty calls,” she said, smelling wonderfully of an exotic perfume as she passed by me.

From flowers I can’t tell you. I know what a rose looks like, a red one anyway, and I know what a gardenia looks like. The rest of them, I’m pretty shaky on.

I walked up and down the aisles. I was in no hurry to make my decision. I was glad to be out of the office for a while. Poor Jamie. She’d probably had a breakdown by now.

I stuck with the roses. By the time I hit the counter, the store was busy. Karen Porter was waiting with a customer. I gave my order to one of the Klemson twins. Betty Klemson worked in the store here while Sandy Klemson had eloped with the Gutterman boy who’d since joined the navy. The now pregnant Sandy was living in San Diego with many other navy wives. Every once in a while I read the “Catching Up” column about former citizens of ours now living afar.

“Half dozen red roses, please.” Then: “Wait a minute. Make that two orders of a half dozen roses each.” Mrs. Goldman deserved a treat too. Thanks to me, she probably hadn’t gotten much sleep last night.

“Sure, Mr. McCain.”

I gave her Mrs. Goldman’s name and address and then Jane’s.

“Boy, she’s a really classy woman, isn’t she?”

For some reason I was suddenly back in ninth grade and sending roses to the beautiful Pamela Forrest, the sort of thing that was embarrassing to a he-man freshman.

Right there and right then, a grown man, a court investigator and a private eye, I did the unthinkable. I blushed.

Outside the hospital room where James Neville was currently residing, Cliffie had stationed one of his auxiliary cops, a scrawny kid named Sullivan who stood rather than sat in the chair they’d provided for him. Hard to look tough when you were sitting down. Leaning against the wall like this, your right hand on the handle of your holstered weapon, a suspicious squint for everybody who passed by in the hall, people knew you were tough. Except he’d spilled some coffee or cola on his tan cotton auxiliary police shirt and that detracted from his tough-guy pose. Tough guys should never be spillers.

“You got permission to go in there, McCain?” He hated me because Cliffie hated me. That was the first thing they learned under his tutelage. Cliffie good, Judge Whitney/Sam McCain bad.

“Do I
need
permission?”

“You do as far as I’m concerned.”

“All I need is five minutes.”

“That ain’t what the chief said.”

“How about the district attorney?”

“Who?”

“Cliffie’s cousin.”

“You ain’t supposed to call him Cliffie.”

“Well, she’s technically his boss. And she gave me permission.”

“Is that true?”

“Which part?”

“Her bein’ his boss?”

“That’s how I learned it in law school.”

Like hell I did.

“And she really gave you permission?”

“She did indeed.”

He looked around. I didn’t feel good about lying to him. Sullivan was stupid but he wasn’t mean. He just liked to play dress-up like most of the other auxiliary cops. I’d seen him playing cop at the county fair and the Fourth of July corn roast. He was nice to everybody. Why couldn’t he be one of Cliffie’s thugs? Then I wouldn’t feel so guilty about getting him in trouble with Cliffie.

But then I remembered the promise I’d made to Cy out there on his porch.

“Five minutes is all and if Clifford says anything to you, tell him to call me and I’ll take complete responsibility.”

“You will?”

“I will.”

“Say, you wouldn’t happen to have any gum on you, would you?”

“Two sticks or three?”

“Two’d do fine. I got a break comin’ up here.”

While he was unwrapping the first stick, I made my way inside the room where Will Neville sat on a chair talking to his brother James, who lay in the bed with his right arm in a cast and enough gauze and tape on the rest of him to wrap up Boris Karloff in a
Mummy
sequel.

“You get that son of a bitch out of here,” James said. “I wouldn’t be in here except for him.” James grimaced. He was in pain of some sort.

Will got up. He was going to lumber over to me and pound my head in. I reached in my back pocket and brought forth my sap. “This can put you in a bed right next to James here, Will. I’d think it over.”

“You son of a bitch.”

“I think James already said that, Will.”

“You got no business here.”

James grimaced again.

“Boys,” I said. “I’m here to find out who killed your brother. And I expect you to help me find out. Otherwise, James, you’re going to go straight from the hospital here to a jail cell. Personally, I’d prefer the hospital. You don’t get all those cute nurses in jail.”

“What the hell’s he talking about, James?”

“Yeah, McCain, what the hell are you talking about?”

I lit a Lucky Strike. “You ran some kind of blackmail ring in Chicago. You told Richie how to set one up here. That comes under the heading of felony, in case you forgot all the law you learned while you were in Joliet.”

Will looked at James, then at me. “You can’t prove that.”

“Well, among all the rubble at the murder scene, I found several pieces of equipment in the darkroom that had been bought in Chicago. Sounds like you bought him one of those handy-dandy blackmail kits, huh?”

“You can’t prove that,” Will said again.

This was where I decided to risk another lie. Two a day is usually my limit, but this was a sudden-death playoff and I needed it bad.

“I haven’t figured out your share of the proceeds yet, but after Richie made his collections—once a month, I suspect—he sent you your cut. Fine and dandy, but he did it by check.”

Both their faces froze as what I’d just said registered in their small criminal minds.

“So any smart detective and any smart DA could lay their hands on bank records and demonstrate the pattern of payout you and Richie had going.”

I pulled up a chair and sat down. “If you think I’m lying about any of this, wait and see how fast I can have a detective up here.”

“A detective from Cliffie’s office?” Will sneered.