up on and so is the daughter, Ella. Item three on my list is Sara Hall again. I know you told me not to bother her but I just happened to run into her out at the shopping mall.”
“I’ll bet you just happened to run into her.”
“She looked very rocky. Scared, angry, confused. Take your pick. Or maybe all three. Anyway, after she left me she met the good Reverend Courtney. They went into The House of Beef together.”
“I wonder what that was all about.”
“So do I.”
Her face twisted with displeasure. “She wasn’t having an affair with him, was she?”
“She’s your friend, Judge. You’d know better than I would.”
She walked over to the long, leaded window that overlooked the courthouse lawn. She loved to pose dramatically in front of it. Maybe she was practicing for Milhous.
“Did she ever mention Courtney to you?” I said. “Did she say why he was counseling Dierdre?”
“Not really. But Dierdre’s always had problems. Depression. She saw her father drown.”
The story was well-known locally. Extremely wealthy man trying out his brand-new Chris-Craft one late Fourth of July on the river when a speedboat being driven by a monumentally drunken local playboy smashed into him. The wealthy man—Art Hall—drowned after rescuing his wife and daughter.
Dierdre went back in the water after her father.
Bystanders had to restrain her from doing it again. She spent a fair amount of time in a mental hospital shortly after that. She was thirteen years old at the time, probably seventeen now.
The playboy had some good lawyers. He quickly moved to California and had not been heard from since.
You saw Dierdre walking around town. One of her doctors had apparently told her that exercise was good for combating depression. So she walked. Everywhere. Day and night. She had yet to finish high school. She hadn’t attended the previous semester. Depression. She had a prim, Victorian beauty except for the troubled eyes. She favored heavy sweaters, jeans, white Keds. Even in the summer, when other people wore the least the law would allow, there would be Dierdre in her cable-knit sweater. Walking.
“You want to talk to Sara?”
She shook her head. “I’ll have you do it. I value her friendship too much. She’ll resent it coming from me.”
“She’ll resent it coming from me, too.”
She smiled. “Yes, but I don’t really give a damn about that, do I? Now get out there and find out what’s going on, McCain. When my people ran this town, we didn’t have any unsolved murders, believe me.”
The thing was, for all the puffery, the statement was probably true. If nothing else, the Whitneys are bright and tidy and efficient civil servants.
At the door, she said, “Muldaur being killed did one good thing, anyway.”
“What?”
“No more of those damned anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic flyers he was putting out. And I say that as a Protestant, McCain. You know I don’t have a prejudiced bone in my body. I’m very happy that all you people came over here on your little boats.”
I could tell she wanted some sort of Nobel peace prize for saying what she’d just said.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have one on me to give her.
137
Ten
I heard girlish giggling as I walked through my office door. Kylie was parked with great poise upon the edge of my desk and Jamie was sitting behind her typewriter stand. They both were smoking filtered cigarettes and drinking Pepsi from bottles.
“God,” Kylie was saying, “so how did you get your clothes back?”
“That’s the thing,” Jamie was saying. “We didn’t. The dog dragged them off. We never found them again.”
“Then how’d you get home?”
“We drove back on dirt roads and then we had to take alleys all the way to my house.
I had to get a blanket from the garage and sneak into the house. I was afraid my dad was gonna wake up and see me in my birthday suit.”
Giggling again. They were as drunk as they could get on Pepsi. There was
“I’ll bet you just happened to run into her.”
“She looked very rocky. Scared, angry, confused. Take your pick. Or maybe all three. Anyway, after she left me she met the good Reverend Courtney. They went into The House of Beef together.”
“I wonder what that was all about.”
“So do I.”
Her face twisted with displeasure. “She wasn’t having an affair with him, was she?”
“She’s your friend, Judge. You’d know better than I would.”
She walked over to the long, leaded window that overlooked the courthouse lawn. She loved to pose dramatically in front of it. Maybe she was practicing for Milhous.
“Did she ever mention Courtney to you?” I said. “Did she say why he was counseling Dierdre?”
“Not really. But Dierdre’s always had problems. Depression. She saw her father drown.”
The story was well-known locally. Extremely wealthy man trying out his brand-new Chris-Craft one late Fourth of July on the river when a speedboat being driven by a monumentally drunken local playboy smashed into him. The wealthy man—Art Hall—drowned after rescuing his wife and daughter.
Dierdre went back in the water after her father.
Bystanders had to restrain her from doing it again. She spent a fair amount of time in a mental hospital shortly after that. She was thirteen years old at the time, probably seventeen now.
The playboy had some good lawyers. He quickly moved to California and had not been heard from since.
You saw Dierdre walking around town. One of her doctors had apparently told her that exercise was good for combating depression. So she walked. Everywhere. Day and night. She had yet to finish high school. She hadn’t attended the previous semester. Depression. She had a prim, Victorian beauty except for the troubled eyes. She favored heavy sweaters, jeans, white Keds. Even in the summer, when other people wore the least the law would allow, there would be Dierdre in her cable-knit sweater. Walking.
“You want to talk to Sara?”
She shook her head. “I’ll have you do it. I value her friendship too much. She’ll resent it coming from me.”
“She’ll resent it coming from me, too.”
She smiled. “Yes, but I don’t really give a damn about that, do I? Now get out there and find out what’s going on, McCain. When my people ran this town, we didn’t have any unsolved murders, believe me.”
The thing was, for all the puffery, the statement was probably true. If nothing else, the Whitneys are bright and tidy and efficient civil servants.
At the door, she said, “Muldaur being killed did one good thing, anyway.”
“What?”
“No more of those damned anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic flyers he was putting out. And I say that as a Protestant, McCain. You know I don’t have a prejudiced bone in my body. I’m very happy that all you people came over here on your little boats.”
I could tell she wanted some sort of Nobel peace prize for saying what she’d just said.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have one on me to give her.
137
Ten
I heard girlish giggling as I walked through my office door. Kylie was parked with great poise upon the edge of my desk and Jamie was sitting behind her typewriter stand. They both were smoking filtered cigarettes and drinking Pepsi from bottles.
“God,” Kylie was saying, “so how did you get your clothes back?”
“That’s the thing,” Jamie was saying. “We didn’t. The dog dragged them off. We never found them again.”
“Then how’d you get home?”
“We drove back on dirt roads and then we had to take alleys all the way to my house.
I had to get a blanket from the garage and sneak into the house. I was afraid my dad was gonna wake up and see me in my birthday suit.”
Giggling again. They were as drunk as they could get on Pepsi. There was
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