By the time I reached the house and parked the pickup it was twilight, although there would be plenty of light to see by for almost another hour. I picked up the neatly folded suits and jackets, the clothes that I had bought off a dead man’s widow, and went around the house and climbed the steps to the porch.
Audrey and Ruth were sitting around the spool table drinking what seemed to be ice tea. Audrey looked drawn and a little pale. Her eyes were red-rimmed as if she had been crying, probably about Sally, I decided. After I said hello to both of them and told Audrey I was sorry about Sally, I plopped down into one of the canvas chairs, looked at Ruth, and said, “Get me a drink, woman.”
“Tell him to get it himself,” Audrey said.
Ruth smiled and when she did I was glad I was married to her and not to Audrey, although I was very fond of my sister in what has been described as my own peculiar way. “He’s only teasing,” Ruth said, rose, came over, and gave me a kiss on the head. She then looked at me searchingly for a moment and said, “It was really bad, wasn’t it?”
“Godawful,” I said.
“Where’d you get those?” she asked, noticing the suits and jackets that I was holding in my lap.
“I bought them off the Widow Quane who may or may not come to stay with us for a while on Saturday, if she doesn’t decide to kill herself first.”
“Is Dorothy very bad?”
“I’ve seen her better.”
“I talked to the police,” Audrey said. “After I got out here I called them and talked to a Detective Oxley. I talked to him for a long time about Sally. He told me what happened. He said you’d been down there, to police headquarters, you and Ward Murfin.”
I nodded. “We were down there for quite a while. We told them what we saw. Oxley wasn’t too much impressed with my description, but he thought Murfin’s was superb.”
“Sally didn’t have to — well, I mean she didn’t have to hurt for a long time, did she?” Audrey’s voice broke a little when she asked.
“No,” I said, “she didn’t have to hurt. I think it was instantaneous or at least as instantaneous as death ever is.” I saw no reason to tell Audrey about the cigarette burns that Detective Oxley said they had found on Sally Raines’s body. Nor did I tell her about the gag that the police had found in the room that Sally had rented. I didn’t really want to talk about Sally Raines any more or Arch Mix or Max Quane.
Ruth must have seen how I felt because she said, “What can I get you?”
I sighed, rose, and put the clothes down on the spool table. “Nothing, thanks, I’ve got to go milk the goats.”
“They’re already milked,” Ruth said.
“You’re a remarkable woman,” I said and sat back down again.
“I had some help,” she said.
“Who?”
“Your French-speaking niece and nephew. Their French is really quite good, especially Elizabeth’s, although Nelson’s is very good, too.”
“Where are they now?”
“Still out with the goats.”
“How did the kids take the news about Sally?” I said.
“Almost matter of factly,” Audrey said. “Children are often like that. Elizabeth was somber and I suppose Nelson was grave. I was the one who broke down and cried all the way out here. I went on crying most of the afternoon. After that I talked to Ruth. That helped. I think the kids were worried about me.”
“And they’re still out with the goats?” I said.
“I think they’re trying to get them to speak French,” Audrey said.
I smiled. “Maybe they’ll succeed.”
“Now that the goats are milked, what would you like to drink?” Ruth said.
“I think I’d like some gin,” I said. “I think I’d like some gin and then I think I’ll sit here and drink the gin and look at the fireflies and listen to the frogs and the crickets. After that I’ll have some dinner and then I’ll take my wife to bed, if she’s of a mind to.”
“Be still my heart,” Ruth said, batted her eyelashes at me, and then went into the house to fetch my gin.
Audrey and I sat in silence for a moment until she lit a cigarette and her paper match made a little popping noise. The slight breeze blew some of the smoke my way. It was marijuana. “You two really like each other, don’t you?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Do you know how lucky you are?”
“Yes,” I said after a moment, “I think I do.”
“Arch and I were like that,” she said. “I mean I think we liked each other.”
“Did he ever mention someone called Chad to you?” I said.
Audrey thought about it and then asked me how it was spelled. I spelled it for her. She shook her head and said, “No but he did talk about a Chaddi to me. I remember now because after I mentioned it to Sally she came back the next day and asked me about it again.”
“Chaddi Jugo, right?” I said.
“That’s right. He was president of one of those little countries down in South America, wasn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Sally wanted to know everything that Arch had said about him. It really wasn’t very much.”
“What was it?”
“He just said that they were trying to do what they had done to Chaddi Jugo and he was going to stop them. That’s all. The only reason I remembered the name was because it was so unusual. I asked Arch if Chaddi Jugo was Spanish and he said no, he was an American. Or had been born here anyway. Does it mean anything to you?”
“Maybe,” I said, “but it probably would mean a lot more to somebody else we know.”
“Who?”
“Slick,” I said. “It should mean just a hell of a lot to Slick.”
Chapter Sixteen
By noon the next day I was sitting in Ward Murfin’s room in the St. Louis Hilton listening to him try to convince Freddie Koontz that we were no longer bastards, but really very nice guys. He was trying to do it by phone and Freddie didn’t seem to be buying.
Freddie was the longtime director of the Public Employees Union’s Council 21 in St. Louis who, according to Senator Corsing, had suddenly found himself out of a job. The Council, which virtually had been Freddie’s life work, was composed of the dozen or so Public Employee Union locals in the St. Louis area. It served as their spokesman during negotiations, did the organizing, published their union newspaper, sometimes handled members’ grievances, ran their credit union, furnished the locals with research material and even legal counsel, and most important of all, had provided Freddie Koontz with a rather nice livelihood for nearly twenty years.
“Freddie,” Murfin was saying into the phone. “Freddie, goddamn it, will you just shut up and listen a second? I wanta make three points. First of all, the only reason Longmire and me are out here is that we’d like to find out what happened to Arch. Now that’s one. Second is no, we’re not working for Gallops. We don’t like Gallops any more’n you do.” Murfin stopped talking and started listening again. He listened for almost a minute before he broke in again. “Freddie, listen just a goddamn second, will you? Longmire isn’t asshole buddies with Gallops. He doesn’t like Gallops any better’n you do. That’s right. Longmire’s sitting right here in the room with me nodding his head up and down.” Murfin started listening again but finally got the chance to break in with, “Look, Freddie, I know Longmire used to be a slick and slimy, no-good son of a bitch. But he’s changed. Christ, he even lives on a farm now. Can you imagine that? Longmire on a farm? Now listen, will you, and let me make my third point and then I’ll shut up. If you’ll just talk to us maybe it’ll help us find out what really happened to Arch and maybe that’ll help you get your job back. Just think about it.” There was a pause and then Murfin said, “Okay. Okay. That’ll be good. We’ll meet you there at two.”