Kathy Hogan Trocheck - Truman Kicklighter 02 - Crash Course (3 page)

“What about the cooler?” Truman wondered. He had no intention of being conned into examining Mildred Davis’s pipes, aboveground or otherwise, but by damn, not many people went to the trouble to churn homemade ice cream these days. He didn’t want to miss out.

“There is no cooler in the car,” she said. “The ice cream’s out there under the table, packed in a tub of dry ice. I brought it in earlier. Do you really think I look that helpless?”

“Well, probably not,” Truman admitted.

Margaret shook her head. “Never mind. My fault. It’s a bad habit of mine. Trying to throw a lifeline to a man who’s only testing the water. Go on back in there. Mildred’s probably sent out a search party for you by now.”

“I’m full,” Truman said. “In fact, I was trying to leave gracefully when Mildred ambushed me. So I do thank you for the rescue.”

“Full?” Margaret said, hooting. “Leaving? Oh, please. You were loading up that bag of yours with food to take home. That’s the only reason you come to these meetings, isn’t it? Not that I blame you. I was only wondering. How did you plan to brown-bag the ice cream?”

Truman blushed furiously.

“I’m an avid reader,” he said. “Read all the time. Just not Jane Austen. And if you must know, I was actually holding back on the chow tonight, saving room for that ice cream of yours.”

She reached for the book bag, which he’d been trying to hide behind his back. He let her take it, feeling both foolish and a bit relieved.

“Guess you caught me,” he said. “Red-handed. I didn’t know I was being so obvious. That’s sort of embarrassing for somebody like me. I’m a journalist, you know. We pride ourselves on not being obvious.”

Margaret smiled widely and he could see the pale pink skin in the folds of the tanned laugh lines.

“I’m a busybody. We pride ourselves on noticing everything.”

She handed the bag back to Truman.

“I’ve got another whole quart of peach ice cream in the freezer at home,” Margaret offered. “And my car is parked just outside.”

It sounded good, but Truman didn’t like the feeling that he was being buttonholed. Or that she would have the impression that he had nothing but time on his hands. Or that he was just out to mooch free meals.

“The Braves are playing a doubleheader on the coast,” he said. “Thought I’d go get a beer, see how L.A’s new manager is doing.”

She nodded that she understood. “Another time, then.”

A tray of plastic bowls and spoons was sitting on the stainless-steel kitchen countertop. She picked it up. “Good night, then.”

He held the door open for her. It seemed the thing to do.

“Margaret?”

She caught the door with her hand. Her nails were as short as his, scrubbed bone white.

“Yes?”

“How’s your air-conditioning?”

“Excellent,” she said. “I have a ten-year service contract. And I never allow gentlemen callers to see my pipes.”

It was her broad wink that caught Truman off guard.

Ollie wasn’t supposed to work Saturdays at the news stand. There were no office workers or post office customers or passengers waiting around to catch a bus at Williams Park across the street on Saturday evenings. Especially not in August, when anybody with any sense or money had escaped up north for the summer.

Bored, he’d wandered over to Chet’s some time after seven. He read some professional wrestling magazines, straightened the dusty rack of postcards, ate a package of Cheez Nips washed down with an orange soda, and busied himself uncreasing the dog-ears of the foldouts in Playboy and Hustler. It had gotten dark outside, past nine o’clock, when he shut off the lights and locked up.

He was crossing Central Avenue toward the hotel, minding his own business, not even jaywalking for once, when a flashy red sports car roared up to him and slammed on its brakes, sending Ollie flying sideways to avoid ending up as a hood ornament.

BEEEEP. The driver, a woman wearing a flowing white scarf, laughed hysterically.

“I’m hit,” he screamed, dropping to the pavement. “Christ, lady, you killed me.” BEEEEP.

“Scared you, didn’t I?” Jackie said, standing up with her head sticking out of the open T-top of the red Corvette.

Her laugh, not like any laugh he’d ever heard from Jackie, scared him almost as much as nearly being splattered all over the blacktop.

Ollie got to his feet. “Jackie? You tried to kill me? On purpose?”

“Check it OUT!” she yelled. “What do you think of my new wheels, Ollie?”

“My knees are bleeding,” he pointed out. “And look. I got tar on my good new shorts.”

The crotch of the baggy orange shorts hung to his knees, which were indeed slightly scratched up. And his high-topped white cotton crew socks were streaked with tar and dirt, his thick-lensed glasses askew.

“I’m sorry,” Jackie said. “I guess I got carried away. What do you think? Isn’t it cool?”

Ollie straightened his glasses and stepped up to the Corvette, running his finger down the glistening red hood, whistling in admiration.

“You can make it up to me,” he told her. “Let me drive.”

At breakfast Sunday, the youth hostel kids pushed their tables together and were noisier, sloppier, and ruder than usual.

Or so it seemed to Jackie. Her feet hurt. She and Ollie had walked all the way back to the hotel after the Corvette broke down while they were joyriding out on the beach. Neither of them knew anything much about the way cars worked, they’d had only a dollar in cash between them, and Jackie had been too proud to call anybody to tell them her brand-new used car wouldn’t crank. If she’d been alone she might have tried hitchhiking, but Ollie was sure that the only people who picked up hitchhikers were homicidal maniacs.

So they’d walked. And walked. And arrived back at the hotel around two a.m. And she’d had to get up at six to work the first breakfast seating at seven.

She slammed plates caked with maple syrup and egg smears into a bus tray and snarled at anybody who asked for seconds of anything.

Ollie never came to Sunday breakfast, which cost a dollar more than weekday breakfast because you got bacon and ham, plus hash browns and a lot of other stuff. He usually slept late, had peanut butter crackers and orange soda in his room, and showed up starved at dinnertime.

Truman didn’t materialize until the second sitting. Nearly eight o’clock.

He’d gotten in late, too, around one, but unlike Jackie, he was beaming now with energy and conviviality.

“Hello, Sonya,” he said, passing Mrs. Hoffmayer. She was so shocked by this sudden show of friendliness that she coughed and sputtered bits of french toast all over her chin.

“Hello, KoKo,” Truman said to the small dog whose head poked up from Mrs. Hoffmayer’s lap. The dog pricked up its ears and bared its teeth, remembering the last time Truman had shown him any attention. The incident had involved white paint and necessitated an expensive and unattractive new grooming style for KoKo.

“Don’t touch him,” Mrs. Hoffmayer screeched.

Truman smiled and made his way to the corner table.

He had to signal Jackie twice to get her attention. Finally she trudged over with a tray of steaming food, and slid the bowls of food noisily onto his table.

“You’re late,” she said.

Truman eyed the offerings with frank disappointment Only one biscuit in the bread basket, two shriveled strips of bacon, and an anemic-looking slice of ham. He touched his finger to the grits. They were cold. The eggs, too. And Jackie was obviously in a foul mood.

“Coffee?” he asked.

“It’s brewing,” she snapped. “And don’t say nothing about the food, ‘cause those damn hostel kids came through the first seating like a horde of locusts. You’re lucky to get this.”

Truman took a biscuit and slathered it with butter. She hadn’t brought any of his strawberry jam, but he was in too good a mood to let her sour his morning.

“You seen Ollie?” Jackie asked.

“No,” Truman said. “Why?”

She shrugged. “I thought maybe he told you about what happened last night. About my new car. How it broke down.” She glared at him reproachfully. “We tried to call you for a ride. Spent all the money we had. Then we had to walk home. All the way from the beach. Where were you so late?”

“I went out with a friend after Great Books,” Truman said. “We watched the ball game. It was a late one. The Braves were playing on the West Coast.”

That much was true. After they’d left Mirror Lake, Truman had suggested they might watch the game at the El Cap. He was still apprehensive about wandering into widows’ lairs.

It turned out that Margaret McCutchen had never been to his favorite watering hole, the tiny sports bar on Fourth Street that was the nearest thing to a hangout Truman had.

He had introduced Margaret to Frankie, who was running the place now that Steve and Rose were retired. They ordered a pitcher of Budweiser, and Margaret insisted on paying for half.

This was a woman he could like, a woman who drank real beer and didn’t mind paying her share. She knew about baseball, too, although she was an American League fan due to growing up in Boston. She could cook, too.

After the game, she’d invited him over to her place, and he’d gone.

Margaret lived in a very nice condominium in the old Detweiler Hotel, which had been renovated and was now quite upscale. As promised, her air-conditioning was cool and efficient They’d talked and laughed and gotten to know each other.

He’d learned that she’d been divorced only six months before her wealthy husband had died, while they were both in their fifties. So, Margaret told him firmly, she was not technically a widow at all. There were no children or grandchildren. She’d been a college physics professor before retirement, liked to sail and travel, had her own money and a late-model Nissan.

They’d talked until quite late, enjoyed large dishes of her delicious ice cream and healthy slabs of her home-baked pound cake. In fact, a good chunk of that pound cake was upstairs, wrapped in foil on his dresser. He would have it for his late-afternoon treat.

“A friend?” Jackie said. “Like, a date?”

“It wasn’t a date, dammit,” Truman said. The eggs were cold and greasy, and his biscuit was burned on the bottom. “But what if it was? Anything wrong with that?”

“None of my business,” Jackie said. She went over to the coffee station and got the pot of coffee that had finished brewing. As a peace offering, she went in the kitchen and grabbed some biscuits that had just come out of the oven, and tucked Truman’s strawberry jam in the basket, covering it with a napkin.

When she got back to the table, Truman had his head buried in the sports section. She poured his coffee, but didn’t leave.

“Brought you some more biscuits. And some jelly. Aren’t you going to say ‘I told you so’?”

He took a sip of coffee. “I told you so. Where’s the car now?”

“Ollie helped me push it into a gas station,” Jackie said. And then her words came out in a torrent. “I couldn’t help it. That car and me were meant to be. A red Corvette, Mr. K. And I got a great price on it. You should have seen me driving around, guys looking at me, women giving me the evil eye ‘cause I looked so hot. Until it started making a funny noise and it stopped dead where it was.”

“A Corvette?” Truman dropped his newspaper on the floor. “I thought you told me you were going to look at a Gremlin. A six-hundred-dollar AMC Gremlin. What happened?”

She told him everything. About how hot and smelly the bus had been, and how the salesman, Jeff Cantrell, made her such a good offer, and how they’d financed it right there, and how they didn’t even do a credit check because they were in the business of helping people buy cars.

“Ollie said maybe it was something simple that went wrong, like a spark plug or something,” she said.

“He wouldn’t know a spark plug from a bathtub plug,” Truman said ungraciously. “Have you got a contract, or anything like that?”

“In my purse. In the kitchen,” Jackie said.

“Better let me take a look,” he said.

He perched his reading glasses on the end of his nose. The print on the contract was tiny and faint, a carbon of a carbon. He’d been thinking about going to the VisionMart to get some new prescription glasses. He had a coupon—$14.99, including the eye exam.

As he read, Truman frowned. And sighed. Jackie kept busy with the hostel students, who were shoveling down pancakes and hash browns as fast as she could bring them out, but every few minutes she came by and stood next to his shoulder, anxiously watching his expression.

“Well?” she said when she could stand it no longer.

“These people ought to be run out of town,” Truman said, flinging the contract aside like a soiled napkin. “Goddamn con artists.”

“What?” Jackie said. “What’s wrong? You haven’t even seen the car yet. Wait till you see my ‘Vette, Mr. K. It’s cherry. Jeff said so. You can even ask Ollie. I was gonna see if you’d give me a ride out there after breakfast, to pick it up. Maybe the battery just needs charging. That happens sometimes, right?”