“I may still be in here.”
The nurse came in. “Her folks’ll be back in a few minutes.” She had a kind, middle-aged face. She gazed down at Molly. “She conned me into phoning your office and inviting you up here. But I’d just as soon the doctor doesn’t know I did it.”
“I really appreciate you coming here, Sam.”
“I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”
The nurse beamed. “She’ll be fine. All her vitals are good and she’s in much better spirits this morning than she was last night.”
“What I am mostly is embarrassed,” said Molly. ““Poor, pathetic Molly crying out for help again.” I can just hear people saying that now.”
I leaned over and kissed her on the forehead.
She took my hand and squeezed it.
In the hall, Betty said, “She’s a nice kid. But unlucky.”
“Unlucky how?”
“David Egan. My oldest daughter went out with him a few times. I know you were his lawyer, Mr. McCain. And maybe he was your friend. But mothers aren’t thrilled when their daughter takes up with somebody like him. They’re like professional heartbreakers, boys like him. They want to wound the girl in some way and walk away. Fortunately for my daughter, she recognized this in him pretty early. She made sure he didn’t hurt her. She finally met a nice kid and told David good-bye. I was on my knees a whole lot of nights praying that Doris wouldn’t fall in love with him.” She nodded to the room.
“Poor little Molly wasn’t so lucky.”
The elevator doors started to open.
“I think I’ll take the stairs,” I said.
“I don’t blame you,” Betty said. “Her parents are in a mood to tear into somebody. And I’d hate to see it be you.”
Seventeen
I had to pass the Kelly house on my way out of town so I decided to see if they were home and if they would let me spend a little time in David’s room. I doubted if Cliffie had even bothered checking it out. Since he was convinced he knew what had happened, why would he? I’d have to check the lumberyard again to make sure Mike was there. Might as well get this done first.
I parked in the drive and heard them talking in the backyard. They were hanging white sheets on the clothesline. A wind was filling the dried sheets at the far end of the line and flapping them in the wind like the sails of pirate ships. Newly mown grass smelled fresh and crisp; and on a small stone cookout grill-one I suspected that David had made-a couple of burgers were cooking. On the edge of a picnic table you could see catsup, mustard, relish, and a stack of paper plates.
Amy had just stuck a wooden clothespin in her mouth when I approached. I heard Emma but I couldn’t see her. “I’m washing our special tablecloth. Emma’s birthday’s coming up.”
“She’s a year and a half older than I am, Sam,” Emma said, working her way out from behind a sheet.
“Year and a quarter,” Amy said.
It was the easy jocularity of two women who had literally spent their entire lives together.
I’d read an article about how close companions could virtually become one person after so many years. I believed it.
“I wondered if I could look around
David’s room.”
The look that passed between them surprised me.
Good old Sam suddenly became good old Sam the intruder.
“Now why on earth would you want to do that, Sam?” Amy said.
Now I was more than surprised. I was suspicious myself. Pretty harmless request.
“Well, you hired me to find out what happened to him. I just thought that maybe I’d turn up something in his room.”
The look again.
“Well,” Emma said. “Wish you would’ve given us a little warning is all.”
“Yes,” Amy said, “we did the best we could but it wasn’t easy to keep things picked up.”
“We just don’t want you thinking we’re bad housekeepers, Sam.”
I wondered what they didn’t want me to find. What was there to be so secretive about?
Especially in light of the fact that I was working for them. Supposedly, anyway.
“Maybe you could stop back later this afternoon, Sam,” Emma said. “Give us a chance to pick things up first.”
I glanced from one to the other. Such sweet old ladies. Such a sweet old day. Scent of laundry and fresh cut grass. And even a monarch butterfly perched on one end of the clothesline.
And yet there was something a little sinister about these two old ladies now. Norman Rockwell’s first drive-in movie poster-two sweet-faced little old ladies who were actually in the vanguard of an alien race about to take over planet earth. I half expected to see killer rays shooting from their eyes.
“You know,” I said, “if I didn’t know better, I’d say you two had something to hide.”
Amy was the blusher of the two. Her cheeks hued crimson at my words and her gaze fell to the grass.
Emma burst out with a rich but fake laugh.
“Well, he’s found us out, Amy. About our criminal past.”
Amy wasn’t as good at faking. She managed to stammer through, “Uh, oh yes, our past-criminal-past.”
“How about around suppertime?” I said.
“Now that would be fine, Sam,” Emma said, keeping her fake enthusiasm up. We really aren’t trying to hide anything. We just want to pick things up a little.”
They stood there smiling at me. Amy had her hands behind her back. Maybe she was holding a blood-dripping ax-Another drive-in movie poster.
I decided to try the office again. This time Jamie answered right away and in English.
“Law office.”
“Any calls?”
All this came out in a gush: “Gosh, you know who called you, Mr. C? Andrea Prescott.
Just about the most stuck-up girl who ever went to our high school. She was a good friend of Sara Griffin’s. She said she has to talk to you right away. She called from Iowa City. She’s going to school there. She said she’ll be back here in about half an hour and wants you to meet her at the Indian mounds.”
“She say why she wants to talk to me?”
“No. She was her usual snotty self.”
Jamie was never sweeter than when she felt snubbed. She was little-kid hurt, right up front, all naked pain. She didn’t try to hide it for the sake of saving face.
“I’m sorry, Jamie.”
“Oh, it’s all right, Mr. C. I didn’t cry or nothin’.”
“Good. I’ll talk to you in a while, all right?”
Once again, I had to postpone my trip to see Brenda Carlyle.
In ninth grade I had to write a paper on the mound builders. These Indians were descended in some way we still don’t understand from tribes that thousands of years earlier killed huge bison by running them over cliffs or running them into bogs, where they were trapped. The Indians then speared them to death. Bows and arrows hadn’t been invented yet. Spears alone wouldn’t kill the animals but cunning would. And the forbears of the mound builders seemed to have plenty of that. Running twelve-hundred-pound animals off a cliff is a pretty bright idea.
Except for certain stone artifacts, we don’t really know much about these ancient hunters except that they practiced communal living.
Bison of the size they hunted meant a thousand pounds of meat and that would presumably have fed everybody in the tribe for some time.
We know a lot more about the mound builders who came after them, though these people, too, remain mysterious. The mounds are large, above-ground tombs of maybe one hundred and fifty feet in length and maybe three feet in height. When they were opened, scientists found evidence of a people who were far more sophisticated than any who came before and many who came after. It was as if this certain people took a quantum leap up the ladder of knowledge. But then a strange quirk occurs. The native peoples that European explorers first met do not seem to have descended from the mysterious mound builders. The later people did not have the skills or scientific understanding of the builders of the mounds.
So who were the mound builders and what were they all about? I’m waiting for God to tell me.