Fools Rush In (The Sam McCain Mysteries Book 7) (23 page)

I hated this particular game. Lying to an employee who could get in trouble if she let me have my way.

“I’ll ring the number, sir.”

When he picked up, he said, “I didn’t even notice the phone when they rolled me in here. Who is this?”

“McCain.”

“You son of a bitch.”

“There isn’t time for that now. You can call me all the names you want after this is settled.”

“After what is settled? What are you talking about? Ouch. My damned head. You made it worse, you son of a bitch.”

“What I’m talking about is you not being considered a suspect in these murders.”

“I wouldn’t kill my brother. Even the cops would know that.”

“We’re talking Cliffie here, remember? He might decide to come after you for those killings. You know Cliffie.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to know who you and your brothers have been hiding from.”

“This colored bitch—we were shaking down her father, or tryin’ to. And he killed himself over it. She’s been stalking us ever since.”

Then he told me all about it, her real name and what she’d been up to. Now the murders made sense.

I
PARKED IN A
No Parking zone and rushed into the Greyhound terminal. The man behind the ticket counter looked shocked when he saw me running toward him.

Out of breath, I told him who I was looking for.

“That bus is leaving in about five minutes. She’s probably already on it.”

The loading area held only one bus. Most of the windows had passengers looking out them. At me.

The door was open. I climbed aboard. At first I couldn’t see much. But after my eyes adjusted, it was easy enough to spot her. She sat in an aisle seat about halfway back. She sat with her head back. Her eyes seemed to be closed.

It was a busload of corpses for the most part, longdistance travelers so fatigued they slept through most stops.

I walked back to her, passing through sections of perfume, tobacco, unclean flesh, whiskey.

I couldn’t tell if she was seeing me or not. Maybe she really was dozing.

“Hi, Marie.”

The eyelids parted instantly. “I figured my luck would run out.”

The woman next to her said, “Is everything all right?”

Marie said, “I killed some people. He’s going to take me in.”

“I need your wrist, Marie.”

I handcuffed her to me and then we left the bus. Whispers hissed behind us.

A killer. Handcuffs. My God. A dull trip suddenly became an exciting one.

When we reached the pavement again, she said, “How about we get a tenderloin and some fries?”

“I won’t let you get away.”

“You want to hear about it or not, McCain?”

“And the price of hearing about it is—”

“A tenderloin and fries. And a Coke. Be a long, long time before I ever have food like that again.”

The bus depot diner hadn’t been redecorated in years.

The place was a time trip. Framed newspaper pages of World War II vintage; framed photographs of Joe Louis and Harry Truman and of course FDR; the most recent movie stars were Clark Gable and Ava Gardner. There was a museum feel to it all.

I’d taken the cuffs off outside. We sat at a wobbly Formica-covered table. An exhausted waitress dragged herself over and took our order.

“You had us all fooled, Diane.”

“Diane?”

“You’ve used two other names since you got to town here. I don’t blame you for being confused.”

She just watched me. She knew it was over. Her dark and lovely eyes sparkled with tears.

“Diane Foster. The daughter of a Chicago alderman, the Reverend Thomas Foster. He was admired by black people and white people alike. Unique in Chicago politics in that he never took a bribe, never used his position to improve his own finances.”

“Don’t tell me about my father. He was the most wonderful man who ever lived.”

“But he fell in love with a woman in church and they had an affair. She had a baby out of wedlock.”

She angrily tapped a cigarette from her pack and put it in her mouth. I held my lighter out for her. She slapped it away.

“You keep your filthy thoughts about my father to yourself. You don’t have the right to even speak his name.”

“I’m not judging him. I’m explaining why you’re here and why you murdered three people.”

“Two people I murdered. Richie Neville and James Neville. David Leeds lunged at me after I shot that bastard Richie. I didn’t mean to kill him at all. It was completely accidental.”

“The woman your father had the affair with, she worked in the same office James Neville did. That’s how those three found out about your father. They were already blackmailing several other people, so they just added him to the list.”

She put her hand to her forehead. Tears gleamed on her cheeks now. “He didn’t have any money. He just had his salary from the city council. He never even took a stipend from the church. He had to clean out all his savings to keep paying them. And then when he couldn’t get any more money—”

I reached over and touched her hand. She jerked it away.

“You know the rest, McCain. He killed himself.”

“And then you went looking for the Nevilles. One time you set their house on fire in the middle of the night but they got out all right. And two different times you shot at them. But they got away from that, too. They couldn’t go to the police because they were blackmailers. And you didn’t want to go to the police. You wanted your own vengeance.”

She took the napkin from her side of the table and dabbed it against her eyes. “I didn’t get Will. That’s my only regret.” She was composed again. She scanned my face. “I’m glad it’s over.”

“How’d you find them here in Black River Falls?”

“I hired a private investigator to find them. He tracked them to Black River Falls. I came here to kill them. I found Richie first. Unfortunately, David Leeds tried to stop me and I accidentally killed him. But then I realized if I was going to stay here I needed a reason so people wouldn’t get suspicious—a Negro woman in this town sticks out—so I pretended to be David’s sister. There was plenty of information about him on the news the next morning here and from Chicago, so it wasn’t hard to fake.”

“I’m sorry about your father.”

“You didn’t even know him.”

“I’m sure he was every bit the man you said he was.”

“Don’t patronize me. That’s the worst thing of all.”

“I want to get you a lawyer.”

A cold smile. “You don’t want to represent me yourself?”

“I want to get you a better lawyer than I am. I haven’t had any experience in murder trials.”

“You let me worry about my lawyer. I don’t need anything from you. Or from anybody.”

“Is there anybody you want me to call?”

Her eyes shone again with tears. “I never thought of it before. I’m going to spend the rest of my life in Iowa. In prison. In Iowa.” She touched a slender ebony finger to her cheek. “I was the one everybody thought would be such a success. Just wait till this gets on the news.”

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry, Diane.”

She smiled. “If ‘sorrys’ were worth anything, McCain, I’d be a rich woman.”

S
HE SAT AT THE COUNTER
sipping coffee and smoking a cigarette, an air of isolation about her that old Edward Hopper would have appreciated. It had begun to drizzle, big hot drops dancing on the pavement, but the dampness felt good on my skin and so I stood across the street from the diner just watching her. She was a Sinatra song from just before the war, “Haunted Heart” or “Saturday Night Is the Loneliest Night of the Week” maybe, that sort of sad urban dignity right here in our little town of Black River Falls.

Except for the night man and Jane, the place was empty now. She raised her cup and he filled it for her. Then he went back to scraping the grill.

The rain started abruptly, as if some cosmic hand had flipped a switch. She turned at the sound of rumbling thunder. And saw me. She didn’t acknowledge me in any way, not even a tiny tip of the head.

Then she was grabbing her umbrella and her briefcase and dropping a dollar bill on the countertop and walking toward the door.

Standing beneath the overhang of the place, she opened her umbrella and then came walking toward me across the empty street.

She didn’t say anything even when she reached me, just tugged me close beneath the shelter of her umbrella. I was gallant enough to relieve her of her briefcase.

We were getting wet, of course, because now the rain was such that not even a dozen umbrellas could keep feet and legs dry. Sewers ran with water; rivers formed at intersections.

But I didn’t mind the rain at all. I was pretty sure I was going to get a real good kiss for all this trouble.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2007 by Ed Gorman

Cover design by Mauricio Diaz

978-1-4804-6272-4

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