Макс Коллинз - A Shroud for Aquarius

“ Who told you?”

“Ginnie, actually. She’d been checking up on him.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. She was kind of obsessed with her past; otherwise, why would she have lunch with me every week or so, and just hash over old memories? I didn’t mind — I liked Ginnie’s company. She was bright, and funny, and an old, good friend, always lots of fun. But on the other hand, always a little sad, too, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I didn’t see much of her in recent years.”

“Oh,” she said, getting it suddenly. “This is guilt you’re working through, here. You feel guilty about not seeing more of her, living so close up in Iowa City and all.”

I didn’t deny it.

“Whatever is motivating you,” she said, “I’m glad you’re looking into this. Ginnie may have been melancholy, but I don’t see her for a suicide. She had suicidal tendencies, like her gambling — but I just can’t see her putting a gun to her head. It just wasn’t in her. If you ask me, you should talk to this Brad Faulkner.”

“Oh really?”

“Really. I stopped at the Sports Page after the reunion, and Brad and Ginnie were there together.”

The Sports Page was an all-night restaurant out by the shopping mall.

“So what?” I said.

“So they had a rip-roarin’ fight. If you think Ginnie and I were arguing — and that’s why you wanted to talk to me today, right, I’m a suspect, correct? — Well, you should’ve seen her and Brad shouting at each other; and then he stormed out of there. Funny thing, though.”

“What?”

“He was crying.”

Tru-test hardware was a big one-story brown brick building on the slope of First Street, where East Hill falls toward the business district, almost directly opposite the toll bridge across the Mississippi. The place was only a few blocks from where I lived, and I’d stopped in from time to time for some screws (no jokes, please) or fuses or light bulbs; but I wasn’t what you’d call a regular customer. I wasn’t a regular customer at any hardware store, actually, being to Do-It-Yourselfing what Liberace is to pro football.

Still, I’d been in the store often enough for it to come as something of a surprise to me to learn that Brad Faulkner, former classmate of mine, was the manager of Tru-Test, a piece of information Jill Forest had passed along. It was now mid-afternoon, and I hoped to find Faulkner among the hammers and nails, in what proved to be a busy store.

I did.

The tall, dark, lumpy-faced Faulkner stood in white smock with Tru-Test circular red logo on the front, as well as green badge with his name and the word “Manager” underneath; his slacks were shiny black and so was his hair. He was standing by a display of popcorn poppers, a clipboard in his hands, checking his stock.

I approached and he sensed me there, spoke without looking at me, smiled the same way.

“Can I help you?” His smile was automatic and meant nothing more than customer service.

“Brad, my name’s Mallory — went to school together. Remember?”

Now he looked at me, face tensing. I had put my hand out for him to shake; he took it without enthusiasm.

“I remember you,” he said. “But we weren’t exactly friends, were we?”

I shrugged; smiled. “We weren’t exactly enemies either.”

He and his clipboard turned back to the popcorn poppers. In a voice that was almost a whisper, he said, “We weren’t exactly anything.”

“Faulkner, I...”

He glanced back at me, his lip gently sneering. “What happened to ‘Brad’?”

“Look, I feel awkward about this, too — I know we weren’t good friends or anything. I don’t know what to call you, exactly — I usually don’t call people my own age I went to high school with ‘mister,’ do you?”

“No,” he said, looking at the poppers, jotting notes on a page on the clipboard, “but I don’t feel awkward about finding something to call you. You’re a busybody.”

I resisted the urge to hook my thumbs in my belt and say, Them’s fightin’ words, podner.

Instead I just said, “I’ve had harsher reprimands in my time. But why do you consider me a ‘busybody’?”

He turned and looked at me; he had a couple inches on me, and was fairly sturdy — no middle-age spread at all. “You’re asking around about Ginnie Mullens, aren’t you?”

“Who told you that?”

“I don’t have to tell you anything. I don’t have to talk to you at all.” He poked me in the chest with a thick forefinger; he was trembling just a little, but with anger, not fear. His voice was soft, however, when he added: “If you aren’t a customer, I’d prefer you leave.”

“You’ve probably got a dozen customers in the store right now, Brad, old classmate o’ mine. Perhaps a few more. How would it look if this turned into a scene?”

“It’s not going to turn into a scene.”

“That’s fine with me. All I want is to ask you a few questions.”

His jaw muscles tensed. “About Ginnie Mullens.”

“About Ginnie Mullens.”

“Let’s step outside.”

“Hey, Brad — there’s no need for that—”

“To talk. Let’s step outside to talk.”

He wasn’t getting tough, after all; he just wanted to be out of earshot of his customers and employees. Fair enough. We sat in the front seat of my Firebird for further privacy; I even rolled up the windows and started the car to get the air conditioner going. I’m nothing if not a gracious host.

“I’m sorry Ginnie Mullens is dead,” he said, gazing forward, the impassive reflection of his impassive face staring back at him in the windshield. “But she really didn’t have much to do with my life.”

“Your recent life.”

He nodded; there was something quietly dignified in that lumpy face — that sort of David Hartman ugliness that some women find appealing. Another of the many mysteries of Woman I’ll never solve.

Going on the record, he said, “Ginnie Mullens and I went together in high school.”

“Secretly.”

With a barely perceptible shrug, he said, “Some people knew. Close friends knew.” He turned and with deadpan irony added, “I’m surprised you didn’t know, being so close to Ginnie Mullens and all.”

“Why do you always use both her names? Ginnie Mullens this, Ginnie Mullens that. Why the formality?”

“No reason.”

“You’re trying to maintain distance between you and her, somehow, for some reason, aren’t you? Why?”

Instead of answering, he looked at me like I was one of the popcorn poppers he was inventorying and said, “You write books, don’t you?”

“That’s right.”

He laughed with faint contempt, looked forward again.

I tried to dish some back at him. “What’s wrong, Brad? Don’t you read books?”

“Not that mystery junk. I read nonfiction.”

“Here I figured you more the Bible type.”

He turned to me, smiled faintly. “That’s what I said: nonfiction.”

Like my parked car, my engine was on, but I wasn’t getting anywhere.

“Look,” I said. “I don’t mean to pry into your personal life. But somebody we both cared about, once, has recently died. I’m examining the circumstances of her death, for personal reasons. Trying to understand what brought her... her promising young life to an early end. So I’m talking to some of her friends, hoping to find... well, some insights.”

“Why talk to me? Ginnie Mullens and I are ancient history.”

“Ginnie Mullens is history, all right. And you’re part of it.”

“Ancient history, I said.”

“Not so ancient. Our fifteenth reunion last month?”