Dan Vining - Among the Living

“Spence wouldn’t ever do what I said,” the pink coat man said. “Still won’t.”

One of the women daubed at the corner of her eye, but she might have been crying about Spence. Or her own Spence.

When it was over, Jimmy bought a round in the bar.

“Everybody liked Jack and Elaine,” the pink coat man said.

Everyone nodded.

“His lawyer proved he was in Las Vegas,” the white-haired man said. “At the Rotary convention.” He and his wife were drinking tall club sodas. He’d sent the first ones back when they came without limes. “The prosecution had to admit there wasn’t enough time to drive there from Long Beach after the murders were committed.” He sounded like he was still mad about it. Or mad about something.

“The desk clerk testifie d,” another man said. This one looked as if he’d literally stepped off the deck of a boat to be there, sawdust in his eyebrows and in the hair on the back of his hands. Teak. You could smell it on him. “There wasn’t enough time.”

The pink coat man shook his head. They all shook their heads. Everybody knew all the same things.

“Even with the time change,” the sawdust man added.

“We’re in the same time zone as Vegas, Ted,” the white-h aired man said. He was still mad.

“I don’t believe so,” the sawdust man said.

“Yes. Same. All of Nevada,” the white-haired man said. “Including Las Vegas,” he added.

“Well, I don’t gamble,” the sawdust man said.

“You probably shouldn’t, Ted,” the white-haired man said.

The sawdust man could have said, “Well, at least my boat isn’t made out of plastic, ” but he didn’t. He just filed it away. And took a sip of his free beer.

“And there was the guy in the gas station in Barstow,” a fourth man said, to bring it back around. “The gas station guy also verified the time line. Tell him about that.”

“I believe you just did, Ev,” the pink coat man said and traded a look with the white-haired man.

“What was his lawyer like?” Jimmy said.

“Harry Turner,” the white-haired man said.

Jimmy waited.

“You don’t know Harry Turner?”

“He’s too young,” the pink coat man said.

“I’ve heard of him,” Jimmy said. “I didn’t think he — ”

“He didn’t. ” It was the white-haired man. “Harry Turner was behind the scenes. But everybody who knew anything knew Harry Turner was running Jack’s defense. Well, Jack was running it but he had sense enough to know to go to Harry. But up front was … The guy at the table in the courtroom was … What was his name?”

“Upland. Or Overland,” the sawdust man said.

“Harry Turner never lost a case,” the pink coat man said.

“Still hasn’t,” the white-haired man said with a harsh little laugh.

“He’s retired now,” one of them said.

“Yeah, retired, ” the white-haired man said.

A silence rose up. They all knew something that Jimmy didn’t know. Maybe someone would say it out loud.

“Up church, ” one of the women said. None of the wives had said anything until now, just sipped their G&Ts and traded looks while the men talked.

The men nodded. Up church.

And then things got too quiet again.

“None of you thought Jack Kantke did it,” Jimmy said.

“Not then,” the pink coat man said. “Nobody could believe it.”

“And now?”

There was a long moment.

“Well, there’s a system, isn’t there?” the white-haired man said.

The woman in the poppy-colored dress took her sunglasses off. She smiled at Jimmy, a smile not connected to anything in the scene but which now made it about her. Her hair still had life to it and whoever had done the work around her eyes had The Touch. She knew what he was thinking and enjoyed it.

“So,” Jimmy said, with a look that included all three women, “any of you in The Jolly Girls?”

On the microfiche at the newspaper library there was a sidebar on Elaine Kantke and her best friends. More importantly, a picture. Four vivacious, frisky babes at the selfsame Yacht Club bar, four of them on four stools, their hips stuck out.

That was what they called themselves, “The Jolly Girls.”

The woman in the poppy dress was quick and apparently spoke for all of them.

“No.”

Jimmy stood looking down into the water beside a black-bottom pool in a spectacular backyard in Palos Verdes, a bluff overlooking the battered green Pacific.

“You’re early,” a voice behind him said.

Jimmy turned.

Vivian Goreck approached with a professional smile. She was another striking woman in her fifties. She didn’t offer her hand, was from a time just before that. She wore a print dress, bright, tropical.

“You’re the same color as the wall behind you,” Jimmy said.

“All part of the plan,” she said brightly. “Like a spider. Did you look inside?”

“Nope,” Jimmy said.

She stepped back slightly and put a new smile on her face and he went where she wanted him to go.

The house was empty, high ceilings, blond floors, a lot of glass, Moderne. A man had lived here, alone, Jimmy could tell that right away. If a woman had lived here anything more than overnight she would have found something to take away at least some of the edge, to get the willful solitariness out of the air. A woman who cared about you, if you wanted her, alone was enough to do it.

There was an open kitchen with a pair of chrome sinks sunk in granite. Jimmy turned on the water, cupped his hand, bent and drank.

Vivian watched him. You see it all. Besides, she could tell he had money.

“The stove’s a commercial Wolf,” she said. “The fridge is Subzero. There are double Blankenship disposals, double Nero trash compactors.”

Jimmy turned off the water. “Was there a murder or divorce in the house? I always heard people ask that.”

She handed him a black dish towel. “They do. No, the house was owned by the builder and — ”

Jimmy stopped the pretense. “My name is Jimmy Miles,” he said. “I’m not your buyer, I just wanted to talk to you. Your office told me where you were.”

She didn’t even blink. She was solid. Secure. Jimmy wondered what had made her that way. It was something else you didn’t see much anymore.

“Talk to me about what?” she said.

“The Jolly Girls.”

She stood up straighter, almost laughed. “Really. Why?”

“I’m an investigator.”

“I’m sure there’s a statute of limitations on public drunkenness …” she said. Here was another beauty who still had her looks but kept reminding you of what had been, the way the fire must have flared once and how everybody, or at least the men, had gathered round to watch it. Jimmy liked her, wanted the time back when she was young.

“Gee, I sure hope so,” he said.

“So what is it?” she said.

“The Kantkes.”

“Really?”

Jimmy nodded. And waited.

“Who wants to know about that? Why now?”

Jimmy didn’t answer.

She leaned back against the counter and crossed her still pretty legs at the ankle. “I used to always say I don’t talk about those days,” she said. “And now it’s been ten years since anybody asked.”

“We all used to be jolly,” Jimmy said.

“You’re a little young to be world-weary, aren’t you?” she said in a voice, a Mrs. Robinson voice he could hear her using in a bar. “I have a daughter your age.”

Then somehow she guessed it. Her mind had been working though she hadn’t let him see it.

“Jean,” she said.

Jimmy didn’t say yes, didn’t say no.