Jane was about to start talking again when one of her auxiliary deputies, the Burt Reynolds macho man, swaggered up and whispered something in her ear.
“Where?” she said.
“Down the block. Right at the end.”
“You’re sure?”
“Heck, Jane, I used to help the guy move stuff. I should ought to know his car when I see it.”
Car. I’d been wondering about that, too. How had Lodge gotten here? While waiting for Jane to show up, I’d gone up and down the parking lot checking registrations. I hadn’t found a car with Lodge’s name on it.
I turned back for a look at the crowd. By now, what with all the lights provided by Cedar Rapids TV stations, the parking lot was starting to resemble a movie set, the crowd looking appropriately curious, the cops looking appropriately harried, the motel itself looking appropriately seedy. This would inevitably be a drama about a carousing husband who had met his fate in the very same motel room where he’d bopped innumerable married ladies and yummy teenage nymphets, most of whom were cheerleaders.
I saw him only because I felt his intense gaze at my back. I turned to the right and there he was, tall enough to tower over everybody in front of him. Despite the cool breezes, he wore only a T-shirt. But McNally didn’t need a jacket. He had his rage and his fear to keep him warm.
I was still wondering whom he’d seen this afternoon out at the Brindle farm. And why he’d seen them. And why somebody had kidnapped his daughter.
Just as I turned away, I saw a few more familiar faces. There, several yards from McNally, at the very back of the crowd and standing on a small rise of grass, were the good Reverend Roberts, Kenny Deihl and Mindy Lane. If they were here to save Sam Lodge’s soul, they were a mite late.
“There’s Doc Winick,” the auxiliary deputy said, referring to the rumpled little medical examiner making his way toward us.
“God,” Jane said, the stress of the moment clearly starting to tell on her mood, “I sure hope he’s sober.”
She started to walk away. I grabbed her elbow. “Are we still on for tonight?”
She glared at me. “You don’t know how much I dislike you right now.”
“I’ll pay for the pizza.”
She leaned in. “You jerk.” But she was smiling. “Double cheese.”
“I used to think that was my name until my mom told me different.”
“Very funny.”
“I’ll even bring some ice cream.”
She frowned. “We shouldn’t even be talking about food.” She nodded to the ambulance that was just starting to pull away. “Not with Lodge dead like that.”
“I’ll go get myself another room for tonight.” I pointed to the CRIME SCENE signs her two detectives were affixing to door and window.
“I meant what I said,” she said.
“You mean about the double cheese or me being a jerk?”
“Both,” she said, and was gone.
3
I decided to walk two blocks to the pharmacy where the town’s only newsstand could be found.
As I reached the end of the motel driveway, I turned left and saw the auxiliary deputy who liked me so much.
He was leaning against a car, a cigarette dangling tough-guy style from his chubby mouth. He looked pretty comic, so comic in fact that I felt a little sorry for him. This guy was obviously suffering from a terminal lack of self-esteem.
“You never seen a car before?” he said.
“A blue Toyota sedan.”
“Somethin’ wrong with that?”
The mercury vapor lights gave his face a chilly aqua gleam.
“Just passing a remark.”
“You know somethin’ about this car?”
“Nope.”
“You think there’s somethin’ weird about this car?”
“Nope.”
“You know who it belonged to?”
If I hadn’t, his use of past tense would have given me a big hint. I glanced across the street, in the front window of a diner. It was one of those strange May winds you get in Iowa sometimes, May but smelling of autumn somehow. The people in the diner looked very contented and very snug.
“Guess I don’t.”
“Him.”
“Him?”
He shook his head as if I were the biggest pea-brain who had ever lived. “Him. The dead guy. You know, Lodge. The guy in your closet.”
“Oh.”
“That’s all you’re gonna say? ‘Oh?’ ”
“What else do you want me to say?”
He shrugged. “You sure don’t act very shook up. Most folks would be goin’ crazy, findin’ a dead guy in their closet.” He looked at me sly, from the corners of his beady eyes. “ ’Less, of course, they happened to have killed the guy themselves.”
I wanted to give him a little grammar lesson, about the parts of speech and how singular has to agree with singular and so on, but I hate people who do stuff like that so I kept quiet.
He was just about to say something else when another auxiliary cop suddenly appeared on the edge of the motel driveway and called, “Chief wants you. Better get up here.”
“Damn,” he said.
“Don’t blame you for hating crime scenes,” I said, figuring I should be friendly, given what I was about to do as soon as he dragged himself away from here.
“Ain’t that. It’s the smokin’.”
“Smoking?”
“Yeah, she won’t let me smoke around her.”
“I see.”
“A man, he’d let you smoke.”
“He would, huh?”
“That’s the trouble with havin’ a woman chief of police. I mean, she’s smart enough and all, but she sure has a lot of rules.”
He pushed away from the car, dropped his cigarette on the sidewalk, and then crushed it to tatters with the toe of his cordovan Texas boot.
“You be around in case she’s got some questions for you?”
“I’ll be around.”
“I’ll tell her.”
Before he left, he added an accouterment I hadn’t seen before, one of those Western-style hats I call a junior Stetson. I believe Matt Dillon wore one like this in the old Gunsmoke. Unfortunately for my friend here, the hat dwarfed his small head and only added to the roundness of his cheeks. He looked like the meanest ten-year-old on Maple Street.
He gave me the sort of hard, measuring glance that men about to have a gunfight give each other, and then he strolled off, ready to slap leather.
I pulled out the pair of rubber surgical gloves just about the time he reached the motel drive. I carry the gloves for just such opportunities as this one. Plus you can put them on your fingers and make funny animal shapes. If you know how, that is. Not everybody does.
When he was gone from sight, I tried the back door of the Toyota. It was locked. I tried front door, passenger side. Locked. I tried front door, driver side. Locked. I tried rear door, driver. Unlocked.
I worked quickly, constantly watching front and back windows for sight of any casual strollers. They would certainly remember, later, seeing me going through the dead man’s car.
Nothing, nothing, nothing was what I found until I came to the glove compartment, in which rested several envelopes held together with a wide rubber band.
Being the sort of inquisitive guy I am, and fully planning to give back every single thing I took — having years ago taken the Boy Scout pledge, I mean, and having lived my life accordingly ever since — I then, given my suspicious nature, started groping beneath the front seats. People often hide things there, apparently figuring that most crooks are so stupid they’ll never think to look there. Your standard crook, of course, having graduated from a certified crook school, knows enough to look under the seats right away.