“But Audrey doesn’t know what it is that she told Sally?”
“Not yet. But she might remember. Sally wasn’t supposed to know what Max was up to either, but she must have put it together. Sally was smart. Very smart. Well, Audrey’s not exactly dumb either so whoever killed Max and Sally just might decide to make it a clean sweep.”
“Yes,” Slick said, “I follow your reasoning. It’s quite logical.”
“Let’s take my logic a step further,” I said. “You told me there’s a chance, a tiny one, I think you said, that Arch Mix is still alive.”
“Yes.”
“If Mix shows up, he can clear up this whole mess, can’t he?”
“So I should think.”
“All right, Slick, when?”
I could hear him sigh over the phone. “I really shouldn’t have told you, dear boy.”
“But you did.”
“Yes, I did.” There was another silence and then he said, “Forty-eight hours, Harvey. We should know within forty-eight hours whether he’s alive. But I must caution you — no, I’m going to warn you — that if you mention this to anyone, you’ll probably put Mix’s life in grave jeopardy.”
“You mean if he’s alive, he’s in real bad trouble? Or as you say, grave jeopardy, which sounds even more ominous.”
“That’s really all I can tell you.”
“Okay, Slick. Forty-eight hours. If nothing happens by then, I’m going down to police headquarters and tell one Detective Aaron Oxley of homicide that you have certain information about Arch Mix that might lead to the solution of the murders of Max Quane and Sally Raines. You’ll like Detective Oxley.”
“If nothing happens in forty-eight hours, dear boy, I’ll go calling on Detective Oxley myself.”
Chapter Fourteen
Max quane’s house out in the Bannockburn section of Bethesda, Maryland, was a block and a half off Wilson Boulevard. It was a medium-sized, wide-eaved, one-story house built of dark red used brick with a shake shingle roof. Its front lawn was green and neatly mowed and there were four or five tall elms that helped give the place a permanent, steady look — as if it were occupied by a family whose breadwinner was predestined to get his GS 14 by Christmas.
The overhead door of the two-car garage was up and the garage itself was partly filled by a large Ford station wagon that was two or three years old. The rest of the space was taken up with the junk that people put in garages because they can’t think of anywhere else to put it.
Max Quane’s car, a green Datsun 280-Z with a D.C. license plate that read LEASED, was parked in the driveway. Max had always liked to compose his own license plates and usually he came up with ones that were rather witty — or cynical — like Max himself.
I parked the pickup in the street and walked up to the front door, making my way around two boy’s bicycles. One of the bikes was supported by its kick stand. The other was lying on its side in the middle of the walk so that you’d be sure to trip over it. I picked it up and put it on its stand. Then I went up to the door and rang the bell.
Dorothy Quane opened the door. She had a drink in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and circles under her eyes. She looked at me for a moment and then said, “Well, it’s you. His other friend. You were his friend, weren’t you, Harvey?”
“Sure,” I said. “I was his friend.”
“So he had two after all,” she said. “I was beginning to wonder.”
“You want me to come in or leave?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m thinking about it. I guess I want you to come in.”
I went in and followed her into the living room. She turned and gestured with the cigarette for me to sit anywhere. I chose the couch. She stood for a moment, looking at me. She wore blue jeans and one of Max’s white shirts with the sleeves rolled up and the tails out. I could tell it was Max’s shirt because of the tab collar.
“You want a drink?” she said.
“If it’s no trouble.”
“It’s not if you get it. It’s in the kitchen. It’s bourbon. Wild Turkey. Ten dollars a fifth. Max had expensive tastes.”
“I know,” I said and went back to the kitchen, found a glass and fixed a drink. There were no dirty dishes in the kitchen. No smeared glasses or plastic sacks of unemptied garbage. Everything was as neat and as tidy as it was in the living room. I remembered that Dorothy had always insisted on having things neat. It was one of her minor obsessions.
I went back into the living room and sat down on the couch again. “Where’re the boys?” I said.
She gestured vaguely with her glass. “Out,” she said. Then she looked at her watch. “It’s nearly six so they should be home soon. They’re out somewhere, with their friends, I guess. Kids always have friends, don’t they?”
“Almost always,” I said. “What happened to yours? You used to have a lot of friends, Dorothy.”
She sat down in a green wing-backed chair that was one of a matched set that flanked the fireplace. She looked at me, almost staring. At thirty-five Dorothy Quane was still a striking woman with one of those finely boned faces that help keep the years away. She wore no lipstick, not even a touch, but then she had never worn any. Her dark grey eyes were clear and I wouldn’t have known that she had been crying if it hadn’t been for her nose. It was red and shiny at the tip and I remembered that it always got like that when she cried, which I also remembered was often on Sunday afternoons. Especially on wet, rainy Sunday afternoons.
The circles under her eyes didn’t tell me anything because Dorothy Quane had always had circles under her eyes. They were one of the things that made her appear so striking. The circles almost looked as if they had been artfully painted there for effect and the effect that they had, at first glance, was hauntingly memorable.
Finally she quit staring at me, took a swallow of her drink, a drag on her cigarette, and blew the smoke out as she said, “You’re right, I did have some friends once, didn’t I?”
“A lot of them.”
“They couldn’t take Max. I had the kind of friends who couldn’t take Max so they sort of drifted away. You and Murfin are about the only people who could take Max, but then you and Murfin aren’t like my other friends, are you?”
“I try not to be,” I said. Those friends of Dorothy’s that I remembered had been rather high-minded people who seldom approved of Max or wanted anything to do with him. I think they thought he was wicked.
She took another swallow of her drink, another drag on her cigarette, and looked into the fireplace. “I’m going to kill myself, you know.”
“Oh,” I said. “When?”
“You don’t believe me.”
“Sure I do. I was just curious about your timing.”
“I’m not sure yet. I guess after the funeral. It’s not going to be much of a funeral. Murfin can’t find any pallbearers. That’s pretty fucking funny, isn’t it? A thirty-eight-year-old man dies and he hasn’t got six friends or even acquaintances who’ll be his pallbearers. I think that’s pretty fucking funny.”
“After the funeral,” I said, “and before you kill yourself, why don’t you come out to the farm and bring the boys and stay a while. Ruth’ll be glad to see you. You always liked Ruth.”
She looked at me curiously. “You’re serious, aren’t your?”
“Sure.”
“Did Ruth put you up to this?”
“No.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “How long could we stay?”
“As long as you like,” I said, hoping that it would be three days, a week at the most. “I put up a new swing that goes out over the pond. The boys will get a kick out of it.”
Dorothy Quane ground her cigarette out in an ashtray. She kept on grinding it and smashing it even after it was out. “I don’t know,” she said. “Let me think about it.”