‘Meaning it was no big deal your sister got killed?’
‘Meaning no real need to investigate her murder.’
‘Do you believe Bales about those two brothers?’
‘I believe he could have made it up yesterday or today.’ He pulled out a pipe, slipped the bowl into a plastic pouch. His hand shook as he tamped the tobacco with his thumb.
‘Did anyone in your family ever talk about who killed Betty Jo?’
Reed lit the pipe with a blue plastic Bic. ‘They never mentioned her at all. Keep in mind, I was six when I was sent to live with Bella. At first, I figured that was because I was a kid. Yet even when I was full grown, they didn’t talk about her. Not to me; not to each other. My brother, Fred Junior – he was the one supposed to get married that summer – he never said a word. The shock of it all shut Fred up for the rest of his life. He died a couple of years back, in an auto accident.’
‘As you know, Bella didn’t want to talk when I called.’
‘She’s spent out. By the time I got to my teens I’d heard all kind of things about Betty Jo. People came up to tell me their own theories about who killed her. I’d repeat them to Bella; she’d shush me and tell me it was best forgotten. That’s how she coped; that’s how everybody in the family coped. So when that reporter, Jen Jessup, called in 2007, Bella told her to drop it cold. Of course, that Jessup woman did no such thing, and the story caused Bella a lot of pain.’
He set down his pipe and lit a cigarette. ‘When you called, she saw it all beginning again. She called me. I called Jimmy Bales, thinking we’d ask you to drop your investigation. Now your aerial picture has got me seeing other things, like why nobody before figured it could have been a one-man job, though I don’t see how knowing that will help at this late date.’
‘Maybe there was a lid on the investigation.’
‘What do you mean?’
Mac excused himself, went up to his office and came down with the tan envelope the restaurant’s previous owner had pressed upon him. He shook out the old news clippings and chamber of commerce booklet. Opening the booklet, he pointed to the checkmarks above some of the photos.
‘Importants, my dad used to call them.’ Reed said, squinting at the yellowed old photos. ‘You think they covered something up?’
‘I don’t know. The woman who co-owned this restaurant gave this to me at the closing. I think she was linking the check-marked photos to the newspaper clippings.’ Then: ‘You’re sure your father never said anything about the killing?’
‘Not to me.’
‘He’s dead now?’
Reed Dean nodded. ‘Most mercifully. He suffered. Dad worked at the Materials Plant. Blacksmith work, repairing the chutes and machines. Someone once told me Clamp Reems made a point of telling Dad that he must have passed Betty Jo’s body on his way to work that Tuesday and Wednesday morning. Passed within a few feet of his own daughter, Clamp supposedly said, rotting dead just off the Devil’s Backbone. Must have torn at Dad, hearing that, especially from that shit chief deputy, but he never said.’
‘Your father didn’t like Reems?’
‘Everybody’s afraid of him.’ Reed blew smoke up at the ceiling. ‘But Dad, I think he had a special dislike for the hick.’
‘Any idea why?’
Reed crushed out his cigarette. ‘I’ve got the damnedest recollection from right before Betty Jo died. I see the two of them, Dad and Reems, out in front of our house, yelling at each other, with Dad doing the most of it. I can see Dad’s finger jamming that bastard’s uniform shirt.’
‘You sure it was Clamp Reems? You were awfully young.’
‘I can see it like it happened today. The reason I’m sure it was Clamp Reems was because of that damned fool corncob pipe, always with a ripped piece of cigar jammed into it. That’s the kind of thing a kid would remember.’
‘You’re sure it was before your sister disappeared, and not after? Your father would have been impatient with Reems afterward for not making any progress.’
‘Reason I’m pretty sure is I remember looking up at the house and seeing Betty Jo watching from behind the bedroom curtain.’
‘You never asked your parents about it?’
‘They’d been damaged enough, especially my mother. She came out of East Moline wrecked. She told me they gave her electric shocks, made her bite down on a rubber thing so she wouldn’t bite off her tongue. She kept pointing to the door.’
‘The door?’
‘Our front door. She kept saying Betty Jo was due to come through it any time. Said she’d gone off to be a nun in a convent, that she’d come back when she was trained and things would be like before. At first, my dad would say nothing when Mom got to talking like that. And me being so young, I didn’t understand, so I started watching the door myself, thinking Betty Jo really was going to come on through, even though I’d been to her funeral. But Dad wouldn’t let Mom go on too much that way before he’d have Doc Farmont come over and give her something to quiet her, though he couldn’t stand that bastard any more than he could stand Reems.’
‘Why?’
‘I never knew, other than Dad said once that Doc just knew too much.’
‘About what?’
‘About every damned thing, I suppose. He was like Reems; he knew where the bones were buried. Doc was the only medical man in town. Took care of things and kept ’em quiet.’
‘What sorts of things?’
Reed shrugged, looked away.
‘Abortions?’
‘They were legal then. I checked,’ Reed said.
‘You think Doc Farmont gave Betty Jo an abortion?’
‘No sense talking that way now. Look, Mr Bassett, now that you’ve acquainted yourself with the events about my sister, isn’t there anything you can do?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Then why are you doing it?’
‘I didn’t intend to go this far. I’d just set out to ask a few questions.’
Reed stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Before she died, my mother made me promise to find out where Betty Jo had gone. Until now, I never figured anything could be done. Now we’ve got Jimmy Bales saying he’s known for some time it was two brothers.’
‘That came awfully fast.’
‘Jimmy Bales is not known for independent thinking.’ He tapped the page of photos in the Chamber of Commerce booklet. ‘Somebody put those words in his mouth.’
He stood up and said he had to be at work.
Mac walked him out to his fastback Mustang. He had to be someplace, too.
He ordered a burger at the Willow Tree’s front counter and walked down to the deserted end of the dining room like he was going to the washroom. The door to the private room was open. He ducked in and reached up behind the red-painted boxcar on the high shelf. The audio recorder was right where he’d left it. He took it down, jammed it in his pocket and walked back out to the counter.
His burger came up five minutes later. Mac drove home. In his living room, he sat in the big overstuffed chair and thumbed the recorder to Play.
There was a brief click, and then the static of a blank recording.
He rewound the instant of noise, then pressed Play again.
Again the click; again the static.
He knew what it was. It was the sound of the recorder being lifted up and switched off.
Someone had known what was hidden high on the shelf in the private dining room.
FORTY-ONE
Mac never bothered to go to bed on Tuesday night. He spent the evening and into the middle of the night in the big chair in the living room, sipping Scotch to dull the memory of the ominous click of his voice recorder, signaling he’d been found out, like perhaps Delbert Milner, Laurel Jessup and Dougie Peterson had been found out. It didn’t work. He jerked alert at every creak of the half-dead ash tree in the back yard, every brush of a tendril of a bush against the clapboards of his house.