Max Collins - Midnight Haul

“Such as what?”

“Something else.”

She got up, put her cigarette out in an ashtray on the coffee table. She sat back down. She and the empty side of the love seat stared at him. “What do you want from me?” she asked.

“I want to ask you a few questions.”

“Ask, then.”

“Did your husband know Mary Beth?”

“I really don’t know.”

“He never mentioned her? She was working out of the secretarial pool.”

“I never heard him mention her. I never heard of her at all, until a friend told me a young woman down the street killed herself. Where is this heading?”

“Do you have any suspicions about your husband’s suicide? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“No, I haven’t any suspicions, and yes I mind.”

“Mrs. Meyer, I have reason to believe Kemco is and has been involved in some illegal practices. I think it’s possible that Mary Beth and possibly your husband and others among those ‘suicides’ may have been well aware of those practices, and... well, now you should be able to see where I’m headed.”

She stood. “There,” she said. She was pointing at the front door. “That’s where you’re headed.”

He got up. “I’ll be glad to leave. I know I’m intruding. Please excuse me and I’ll go.”

“You’ll go, but not till I’ve had my say. My husband killed himself. There’s no doubt in my mind that he did. He had emotional problems, which I’d rather not discuss with a stranger. They were problems that ran deep. He had them before he met me. We tried to work them out together. We failed, or I failed, or maybe he failed. But one night he went in his study, where he sometimes slept, and in the morning I found him dead. By his own hand. By his own hand, Mr. Crane!”

“Please, Mrs. Meyer...”

“Kemco was one of the few things in Paul’s life that he was satisfied with. He was assistant plant manager, and he had a good future... this was just a first, small step for him with the company. I’ll tell you something about Kemco, Mr. Crane. Paul lied to them when he filled out his application forms; he withheld information, namely that he had been in a mental institution, and more than once. This came out, after Paul’s suicide, of course. But they are paying me the full pension due Paul. Which they have no legal obligation to do.”

“Doesn’t that seem suspicious to you?”

“Suspicious?” She raised a tiny fist as if to strike him, then quickly lowered it. “It seems humane. It seems very moral. It does not seem suspicious. Don’t bad-mouth Kemco around me, Mr. Crane. The Kemco people have been kind to me. Generous. I think your suspicions, your accusations, are as irresponsible as they are unfounded.”

“I do have suspicions. But I’m not making any accusations.”

“By implication you are. Mr. Crane. I don’t mean to fly off the handle at you. I’m not a cold person, really. I, if anyone, can understand how you feel. What you’re going through. You can say you didn’t come here for advice, and I said I wouldn’t give you any if you asked. But I do have some. Let go of her. Your fiancée. Let her die. Let her be dead. Accept it. Go on living. Stop this vain attempt to place the blame for what happened on somebody or some thing. Even if someone was to blame, she’d still be dead.”

He couldn’t tell her, didn’t know how to tell her, that this had gone beyond that; that he had started to share Boone’s conviction that there was a criminal conspiracy, here, endangering lives.

So he just said, “Thank you. I’ll think about what you’ve said.”

“Good,” she said, smiling her thin red line, extending her hand, which he took and shook, as a way of signing a truce.

And he left her, standing in the doorway, watching him go.

Even a block away, as he walked by Mary Beth’s, he could feel those dark eyes on his back.

The grade school was a one-story modern building on the west edge of town. It was approaching three o’clock. Crane stood near the playground across from the school, leaning against a telephone pole, watching school buses pull up for the farm kids, while older kids, who served as crossing guards, were getting in place at the curb.

He didn’t imagine too many of the kids would be making a beeline for this playground, which was a dreary little place, just a flat piece of land running back to a fence that separated it from the backyards of some modest, modern homes. There was a jungle gym, slide, swings and so on on it, but no trees or bushes, just some puddles scattered around, from a recent rain.

Soon the kids were streaming out from the school, and among them was Boone’s kid, Billy. He was wearing a blue zipper jacket and striped T-shirt and jeans. And a sullen expression. Or at least the expression was sullen once he’d seen Crane.

“What do you want?” he said.

“Your mom isn’t home right now,” Crane told the boy.

“So?”

“I just thought you should know.”

“I can walk home by myself. You aren’t walking me.”

“I’m not here for that, Billy. I came to talk to somebody at the school. But I wanted to catch you so you didn’t wonder why the house was empty when you got home.”

“Well. Okay.”

“I’ll be home in a little while.”

“I don’t care.”

The boy walked away. Another little boy, a tow-headed kid in a denim jacket, joined Billy. They roughhoused as they walked along, picked up some rocks from the playground and hurled them at each other, narrowly missing, the rocks careening off the sidewalk, flashing bright colors. Crane supposed he ought to tell Billy to quit throwing rocks, but as much as he liked Boone, he just couldn’t find it in him to give a damn about her bratty kid.

He entered the school and went to the front office and was directed to room 714, where Mrs. Alma Price was waiting for him.

She was behind her desk, grading some papers. Behind her, on the blackboard (which was green), were some multiplication problems and a geography assignment. The little tan-topped desks that filled the fourth-grade classroom seemed very small to Crane, incredibly small compared to the fourth-grade classroom in his memory.

Alma Price was a redheaded woman in her late forties, not unpleasantly plump, with a wide attractive face and the same sort of smile, which she gave Crane generously as she rose from behind her desk, smoothing out her green dress, greeting him with an outstretched hand.

He shook it and smiled back.

“There’s a normal-size chair over there,” she said, gesturing to one corner, as she returned to her desk. “Pull it up and we’ll talk.”

He did so.

“I hope you don’t mind my asking to see you here at school,” she said, still smiling, but some strain in the smile, now.

“Not at all,” he said. “I’m just grateful you were willing to put up with this.”

“Having gone through something very similar to what you are, I’m more than happy to give you whatever benefit my experience might give you. I take it Mary Beth must’ve mentioned me.”

That caught him by surprise.

“Uh, no,” he said.

That caught her by surprise.

“Why did you come to see me then? Who told you that Mary Beth had been a student of mine?”

“No one,” Crane admitted. “I didn’t know. I’m fascinated to find it out, but I didn’t know.”

She pushed her hands against the edge of her desk, as if about to rise, but remained seated, studying Crane. “Then just what are you doing here, Mr. Crane?”

“As I said on the phone, I’m aware that you lost your husband, several months ago...”

“Seven months ago.”

“And that like Mary Beth, he committed suicide.”