stationery business in Chico and moved down to
Southern California to cultivate a tan and a heart condition.
Guinness maintained a kind of bored,
deferential attention, asking a question just often enough to keep
his father in law’s monologue going smoothly—he wanted the old boy
to like him—but Louise was in agony. Occupying a chair in the
opposite corner, next to a portable record player that rested on a
brass stand, she was working her way through a pack of cigarettes
she had purchased from a service station machine in Santa Barbara
(Guinness couldn’t remember ever having seen her smoke before),
drumming her fingers and frowning. Her father didn’t seem to
notice.
It was out of character for her, but not
inexplicable. She had a new husband and a father who was something
of an embarrassment, and probably still some feeling that she was
out on approval, so it couldn’t have been a very pleasant afternoon
for her.
After that she was better. She made dinner
that night and the three of them played canasta until nearly ten
o’clock. They went back to Belmont on the morning of the fourth
day, and so that was that. There was a meager exchange of letters,
perhaps two a year, and father and daughter never saw one another
again.
Then, the day after Louise’s murder, about
three hours after he had inserted the key in the ignition of his
car and received its gaudy warning, Guinness phoned Mr. Harrison
and delivered the news.
The next morning they met at the San
Francisco Airport and drove directly to Sergeant Creon’s office on
the second floor of the Belmont City Hall. Guinness had already
decided he would prefer not to be present and waited in the car. He
had seen the performance before.
Sitting behind the wheel with the window
rolled down, listening to the birds chirp, he tried not to think
about anything, but that was impossible. A couple of kids went by
on bicycles (Guinness wondered for a moment why they weren’t in
school and then remembered that it was a Saturday) and a squirrel
was carefully picking his way over the roof gable of the Episcopal
church. The noon whistle sounded; Guinness checked his watch and
frowned at the unrelieved ugliness of life.
After thirty-five minutes Murray Harrison
came back out into the sunshine, and Guinness could tell by the way
he walked that Creon had at the very least strongly intimated that
he had a favorite suspect all picked out.
That evening, in Murray’s room, Guinness
twisted apart the seal on a bottle of Jack Daniels he had smuggled
into the hotel in a paper shopping bag marked “Kepler’s Books.” He
poured a good three fingers each into two stubby water glasses from
the bathroom, and the two men sat together in the filtering
twilight, silently drinking.
It wasn’t until about two thirds of the way
through the second glass that Murray began to cry. Small and
birdlike, with his white hair falling down around his ears and his
Adam’s apple pumping up and down, he sat on the edge of the bed,
rocking back and forth in time to the spasms of his grief.
“I dunno,” he whimpered damply, “I just dunno
who coulda done a thing like that.” His eyes were on Guinness in a
way that suggested he might be afraid of what sort of an answer he
would receive. Guinness only shrugged and freshened the old boy’s
drink. After all, to him the question of who could have killed
Louise was technical rather than moral; it contained no element of
outraged surprise.
After a tentative sip, Murray brought the
glass down to rest on his thigh and uttered a kind of wheezy groan.
He took a couple of panting, carefully separated breaths and then,
for a moment, didn’t seem to breathe at all. “Well, at least she
didn’t suffer,” he said at last. “At least we have that to be
thankful for.”
Guinness could think of no appropriate
answer, or at least not one that he would care to give to a
ravaged, half ¬drunk old man, so he simply made a small
noncommittal sound that his father
Southern California to cultivate a tan and a heart condition.
Guinness maintained a kind of bored,
deferential attention, asking a question just often enough to keep
his father in law’s monologue going smoothly—he wanted the old boy
to like him—but Louise was in agony. Occupying a chair in the
opposite corner, next to a portable record player that rested on a
brass stand, she was working her way through a pack of cigarettes
she had purchased from a service station machine in Santa Barbara
(Guinness couldn’t remember ever having seen her smoke before),
drumming her fingers and frowning. Her father didn’t seem to
notice.
It was out of character for her, but not
inexplicable. She had a new husband and a father who was something
of an embarrassment, and probably still some feeling that she was
out on approval, so it couldn’t have been a very pleasant afternoon
for her.
After that she was better. She made dinner
that night and the three of them played canasta until nearly ten
o’clock. They went back to Belmont on the morning of the fourth
day, and so that was that. There was a meager exchange of letters,
perhaps two a year, and father and daughter never saw one another
again.
Then, the day after Louise’s murder, about
three hours after he had inserted the key in the ignition of his
car and received its gaudy warning, Guinness phoned Mr. Harrison
and delivered the news.
The next morning they met at the San
Francisco Airport and drove directly to Sergeant Creon’s office on
the second floor of the Belmont City Hall. Guinness had already
decided he would prefer not to be present and waited in the car. He
had seen the performance before.
Sitting behind the wheel with the window
rolled down, listening to the birds chirp, he tried not to think
about anything, but that was impossible. A couple of kids went by
on bicycles (Guinness wondered for a moment why they weren’t in
school and then remembered that it was a Saturday) and a squirrel
was carefully picking his way over the roof gable of the Episcopal
church. The noon whistle sounded; Guinness checked his watch and
frowned at the unrelieved ugliness of life.
After thirty-five minutes Murray Harrison
came back out into the sunshine, and Guinness could tell by the way
he walked that Creon had at the very least strongly intimated that
he had a favorite suspect all picked out.
That evening, in Murray’s room, Guinness
twisted apart the seal on a bottle of Jack Daniels he had smuggled
into the hotel in a paper shopping bag marked “Kepler’s Books.” He
poured a good three fingers each into two stubby water glasses from
the bathroom, and the two men sat together in the filtering
twilight, silently drinking.
It wasn’t until about two thirds of the way
through the second glass that Murray began to cry. Small and
birdlike, with his white hair falling down around his ears and his
Adam’s apple pumping up and down, he sat on the edge of the bed,
rocking back and forth in time to the spasms of his grief.
“I dunno,” he whimpered damply, “I just dunno
who coulda done a thing like that.” His eyes were on Guinness in a
way that suggested he might be afraid of what sort of an answer he
would receive. Guinness only shrugged and freshened the old boy’s
drink. After all, to him the question of who could have killed
Louise was technical rather than moral; it contained no element of
outraged surprise.
After a tentative sip, Murray brought the
glass down to rest on his thigh and uttered a kind of wheezy groan.
He took a couple of panting, carefully separated breaths and then,
for a moment, didn’t seem to breathe at all. “Well, at least she
didn’t suffer,” he said at last. “At least we have that to be
thankful for.”
Guinness could think of no appropriate
answer, or at least not one that he would care to give to a
ravaged, half ¬drunk old man, so he simply made a small
noncommittal sound that his father
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