Craig Smith - Cold Rain

I showered and went to my room, but I couldn’t sleep. Married, right before Thanksgiving. Walt had told me they were going out of town to meet friends of hers. An alibi? With five million-plus in play it was just was too neat for coincidence.

I lay awake working through the possibilities, but it always came down to Buddy Elder. I could imagine Roger falling under his spell, the three of them, Roger, Denise, and Buddy, working up a double homicide and making it look like domestic violence.

What still did not make sense was the disappearance of Johnna Masterson.

I joined Molly fairly late the next morning on the third floor. ‘Guess what I found out?’

Molly looked at me, waiting but not guessing. Denise Conway and Roger Beery got married last week.’ Molly didn’t seem especially interested. When I tried to explain my theory that Buddy and Denise and Roger had conspired to murder Walt and Barbara, she laughed at me.

‘Please, David.’

‘I’m serious! He and Roger staged a fight at The Slipper.’

She smiled. ‘Like you and Buddy staged one?’

I laughed and shook my head. ‘I’m just telling you.

Walt and Barbara were murdered. The three of them did it.’

‘I suppose they’re involved in Johnna Masterson’s disappearance as well?’

‘I expect an arrest any day now,’ I said.

‘Great. That means I can get back to Florida.’

‘You and Lucy have a good talk?’

‘Reasonably. I told her I needed to stick around for a while. I told her that you’re in trouble. You know what she told me? She said you didn’t sleep with Denise Conway. She said you’re not lying.’

I considered a snappy comeback, but something in Molly’s tone told me Lucy’s faith in me was not the point.

‘When we got home I showed her the diary.’ Denise Conway’s diary had become The Diary in our parlance. Molly met my stunned gaze with a degree of satisfaction I found cruel. ‘She asked me how I could stand it, staying here in the same house.’ The flesh around Molly’s mouth quivered, almost a smile. Her martyrdom was now fully appreciated by her daughter.

‘You didn’t have to do that, Molly.’ I said this without energy or bitterness. I was too tired to fight. A part of me had actually begun to accept the diary as fact.

I carried the guilt of it at any rate.

‘How many ways did you swear to her you were innocent, David?’

‘I told her the truth. I told her it was none of her business.’

‘You keep nothing from me, wasn’t that it?’

I was not angry. My mood was closer to that of a man who has been told he has only a few weeks to live. I had no blood flowing through me. I had no reason to hope. I had nothing at all besides a madman who was determined to ruin my life one misery at a time. Devastation piecemeal.

‘You’re the one who got Lucy into the middle of this, David. Don’t give me that look.’

I said it wasn’t a look. ‘I’m just afraid I’ve lost her too.’

Molly turned back to work without comment.

Whatever I had lost, I had lost by my own doing.

‘Kip Dalton,’ Molly said, holding the phone receiver toward me. We had been working for close to an hour installing a tongue-and-groove floor. I blinked as I stood up and stretched. Dalton meant more questions about Johnna Masterson. I calculated the possibility of convincing him that Buddy Elder was behind it and decided I needed to go slowly. My credibility was in question. The first thing I needed to do was to sell Detective Kip Dalton on David Albo, The Honest Man.

I took the phone from her nervously because I had not been The Honest Man since I had walked out of the wastelands for the last time. Dalton apologized for bothering me. I tried to sound cheerful. It was the voice suicides use once their minds are made up, the enthusiasm thin, imaginary. ‘Not at all! What can I do for you, Detective?’

Kip had a few questions. Could I come into the sheriff’s department around three o’clock? I told him I needed to check my day planner, then I laughed.

‘What do you know? Free all afternoon.’ Molly, who had been watching me intently through this exchange, whispered the word lawyer. I shook my head. Talking was my business! Dalton and Jacobs were just a couple of tire kickers I was going to turn into a sale!

The moment I was off the phone Molly told me to call Gail. I said I didn’t need her. Besides Gail didn’t understand what was going on. The best thing to do, I said, was to be upfront. ‘If I go in there with a lawyer they’re naturally going to assume I’ve got something to hide.’

‘Dalton isn’t buying a car, David. He’s looking for someone who wanted to hurt Johnna Masterson.’

‘Maybe I can help.’

I felt less confident when I walked into the brightly lit front offices of the sheriff’s department and asked for Detective Dalton. I did not like the place. Men and women came and went wearing county brown uniforms, sleek compact handguns, and all manner of accessories strapped to their belts. These were serious folks with powers I had not fully reckoned with from the comforts of my ivory tower. The people they escorted all had the same hangdog look. They were rough people too, but at the moment all the mean had been squeezed out: they were at the mercy of others, and they knew it.

I was getting rabbity sitting there, and was thinking about walking away while I still had my freedom when Kip Dalton appeared. He was cheerful, courteous, and apologetic for keeping me waiting. I found myself liking him again. I would have bought a car from him. He was that kind of guy. At the same time it occurred to me I could never have sold Kip a car. He kept his defences up. He ran the show. It would take Tubs Albo to get this man to sign a contract. Even then Kip would have come out all right. Having come to this decision, I should have made for the door: pressing engagement, heart attack, business at the bank, anything!

For some reason I recalled an old woman who had appeared at the car lot one day. A veritable army of well-meaning children and in-laws surrounded her. Milt had asked me if they were buying a car or having a family reunion. I explained what had soon become quite obvious. They weren’t going to let Mom get taken! The old lady had so much protection they couldn’t all fit into the car for the demo drive. At the desk her two eldest sons sat to either side of her, while the younger ones took chairs in phalanxes behind them.

When a buyer brought someone along to help negotiate a purchase we called that individual a third baseman. On that close, Milt said I didn’t have a third baseman, I had the whole frigging baseball team.

They took most of the afternoon taking any semblance of profit from the deal. Milt fussed until he knew they were going to buy. Then he worked his way down slowly until that old woman’s kids were sure we had nothing more to give.

As they drove off in Mom’s new Ford Milt waxed philosophical about motherhood and loving children.

The next day the old lady came back alone. Milt had explained to her kids after the deal was struck she just needed to sign off on some paperwork with our business office. Belaying their fears, he assured them that a purchase order was a contract. They had a copy!

All she needed was to take delivery and that wasn’t possible until tomorrow, since his business manager happened to be out.

With these assurances the old lady’s sons and daughters went back to their lives. Having eluded a fox they had no idea the wolf was waiting. I could still remember leading that old woman, now perfectly alone, across the lot to the business office, where Tubs waited with his friendliest smile.

Milt told me later I had given the car away at the front door, but Tubs, God bless him, had skinned the old woman alive at the back! And not another word about mothers and the sons and daughters who loved them.