A Shroud for Aquarius
- Автор: Коллинз Макс Аллан
- Серия: Mallory #4
- Год: 1985
- Язык: английский
- Год: Walker
- ISBN: 978-0-8027-5629-9
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «A Shroud for Aquarius». Краткое содержание книги:
“What do you mean?”
She half smiled. “I was never a hippie. I went to the University of Iowa, majored in business. I studied hard — I wanted to get out of this state.”
“Iowa, you mean?”
“Iowa, and the general state I was in. A nobody, a nothing, a female nerd. So I dug in and studied, to make something out of nothing. I was in the library for such lengths of time that I didn’t hear about Kent State till they shut the school down and pulled me out of the stacks and sent me packing.”
“You said you were in the school of business — did you know Caroline Westin?”
“Not well. She was Ginnie’s partner in ETC.’s, right?”
“Right. And squeezed Ginnie out apparently, just recently.”
Jill considered that. “I don’t know. I think Ginnie was ready to get out from under all that anyway. She told me she was sick and tired of business. She seemed frustrated, worn down by it.”
“Maybe that was Caroline Westin putting the squeeze on.”
“Maybe. But I don’t think so.”
“What was your argument about?”
“At the reunion? Oh, she’d been talking, the last few times I saw her, about going to Las Vegas again. She had something of a thing for gambling... I don’t know if you knew that, but she did. I’d almost call it an addiction.”
“You would.”
“Yes — the only things she wanted to talk about when we’d get together were A, gambling; B, her daughter; and C, old times. Those were her concerns in her last days.”
Her last days. That had a chilling ring to it.
“So,” I said, “you argued about her gambling?”
“Specially this ‘one last Vegas score’ she’d been talking about. She was going to take everything she had and let it ride.”
“Go for broke.”
“Go for broke, indeed.”
That sounded like Ginnie, all right.
I said, “Did you and Ginnie ever talk about drugs?”
“No. She knew better than that.”
“How so?”
“I never was into dope when I was a kid. I did some coke when I was in my New York period, going trendy in SoHo, around six years ago, but I got turned off to that scene quick. Saw some friends ruin themselves and their lives by letting their coke spoons lead ’em around by the nose. The first lunch Ginnie and I had together after I came back, this all came up in conversation, so she never showed that side of herself to me.”
“Well, that side of her was there.”
“I’m sure it was. But I doubt she was using anything much.”
“Yeah. Me, too. Her addiction lay elsewhere.”
“Right,” she said, nodding, “and that’s why we fought at the reunion. I was trying to talk her out of her ‘last’ big Vegas fling, and she was telling me it was none of my business. None of my ‘fucking business,’ to be exact.”
“Tact was never Ginnie’s long suit.”
Jill looked sad. “Oh, I don’t know. It could be, if she was in the right frame of mind. She could be a sweet, thoughtful kid, when she put her mind to it.”
“Jill, at the reunion Ginnie was dancing with this guy Brad Faulkner, remember him?”
She nodded.
“She was hanging all over him,” I said. “Why? It’s not like she was thick with him back in high school or anything...”
She smiled privately. “A lot you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“She went out with him her junior and senior year. They sort of went steady.”
“I never knew about it.”
“Few people did. They ran with different crowds, and there was a religious problem — his parents were Mormon or something, and, anyway, they used to sneak around. Go to the drive-in on weekends and stuff.”
Funny. Now Jill was talking like a kid — “went steady,” “weekends and stuff”; smooth professional woman of the world Jill. Funny how who you were in high school stays inside you, and can jump out over the years and take control any old time.
“I think Brad was really thrown by Ginnie coming onto him,” she said. “He’s still very straight, I hear, though he did get divorced last year. He lost a child in some sort of accident, and it broke up the marriage, or so I was told.”
“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.”
11
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...”