Kissing the Beehive

"When he came to, it was an hour later. Eleven-thirty, because he looked at his watch. She wasn't back. He got out again and looked all around, but she was gone. He thought she'd walked home. He was so angry at what had happened that he just drove right back to his house in Bedford."

"But you said he confessed when they caught him."

"He confessed to being there alone with her, to fighting, to hitting her, to passing out. They had a lot of proof from his past that whenever he drank he got violent. They put two and two together. And that, my friend, is usually enough to convince a jury."

"But why would he admit to all those things if he did kill her? That they fought and he hit her? It makes no sense. He never actually admitted to killing her?"

"No."

"And you don't think he did it?"

"Nope." He drank the glass of milk in one slug.

"Who did?"

"We're talking off the record here?"

I held up both hands. "I'm not taking notes and I ain't wired."

"Take it easy, Sam. What do you think this is, NYPD Blue? Do you remember David Cadmus?"

Cass came back into the room. Fra

I thought about it until a picture from our high school yearbook came to mind: three boys standing stiffly around a 16 mm movie projector, all wearing white shirts buttoned to the top and thick black Clark Kent eyeglasses. "The worms! Sure I remember."

Fra

Cass rolled her eyes. "Worms? God, you guys were so mean."

"And proud of it. But look, Cassandra, you kids got your own terms for them now. How about geeks? Nerds? Call 'em what you like, for us they were worms.

"But I found out something I bet you didn't know, Sam: David Cadmus's father was Gordon Cadmus. The Gordon Cadmus."

"No! The gangster?"

"That's right, bud. Crane's View's very own Mafia man. We just didn't know it then. We thought he was a business guy. He owned some companies in the city. We wouldn't have teased that kid so much if we'd known who his dad was."

Cass looked at me, then Fra

"Eleven years ago in a New York restaurant three men were having di

"The Tattooed City. That's how the damned story ends! My God, if I'd known one of the real victims was Cadmus's father . . . But what did he have to do with Pauline's death?"

"Pauline knew who he was back then. She had been seeing him on and off for two years."

"Fra

He shrugged. "Some kids start young. Especially ones like Pauline."

The room was silent awhile. Fra

"Dad, remember the girl I told you about, Spoon? The one with the tattoo? She sounds like Pauline in a lot of ways. Her motto is 'Do it now because you might not get a chance later.'"

Fra

I looked around the room where I'd spent so much time as a kid. In that corner we'd always put the Christmas tree. Over there our dog Jack used to stand on his hind legs and look out the window. Fra

"This is serious business, Fra

"I have! I've talked to a lot of people. I'll tell you about it sometime."

"Now you're suddenly getting mysterious on me? Where's David Cadmus now? Do you know?"

"Hollywood. Runs an independent film company. They put out that big hit recently, The Blind Clown?"

"Sounds like your worm turned, huh?"

Fra

"Why would Gordon Cadmus kill Pauline if she was his mistress?"

"Because Edward Durant's father was a federal attorney investigating racketeering. Guess whose case he was assigned to three weeks before Pauline died?"

Unfortunately I had to go out on a book tour to promote the paperback edition of The Magician's Breakfast, so I wasn't able to return to Crane's View for a while. Before leaving, I asked if I could rent a room in Fra

From the way he lived, it seemed my old pal could use all the money he could find. His house was beautifully furnished. I knew enough about furniture from my second wife to recognize that some of the pieces he owned were very expensive. He also drove an Infiniti and had a closet full of clothes that reminded me of the Great Gatsby's shirt collection. When I asked how he afforded these things, he laughed and said he'd once been married to a rich woman. I didn't know how far that explanation would fly but it wasn't my place to probe. Despite the fact he was chief of police and had apparently turned his life around since I'd known him, I had a lingering suspicion that somewhere behind Mr. Solid Citizen, old rogue McCabe was up to some kind of mischief that allowed him to live way beyond his means.

Book tours can be irritating and exhausting. Too many cities in too few days, "interviews" with people who haven't read the book but need you to fill up a few desultory minutes on their TV or radio shows, meals alone in dreary restaurants . . . When I'd first done them, I thought tours romantic and exciting; now they were only part of the job. Worse, I found I lived in a kind of empty-headed limbo for days after they were finished. This time I resented the fact I couldn't get to work on Pauline's book until this was out of the way.

Trying to find some way to cheer up the inevitable, I hit on the idea of asking Veronica to come along. I was hesitant at first because two weeks on the road with anyone could end in disaster. But by the time I did ask, we had been having such a nice time together that I was willing to try. So was she, and the way she accepted the invitation gave me hope. Her face lit up, but she said, "What a nice idea. Are you sure we won't drive each other crazy?"

"No, I'm not sure."

"Me neither, but I'd like to try."

Because of earlier commitments, she couldn't go to Boston or Washington, but would catch up in Chicago and we'd go west together.

The trip began dreadfully. In Boston, the tail end of a hurricane was visiting the city. As a result, about twenty sodden people showed up at the bookstore for my signing. The next morning while the weather continued to eat Bean Town, I dutifully showed up on time for an interview with an "alternative" newspaper. The woman asking the questions arrived half an hour late and immediately started launching verbal assaults at any person who'd ever been on a bestseller list. Things between us went quickly from coldly polite to open warfare. When she smugly asked if I ever read "serious" writers, I suggested she should stop reading Georges Bataille awhile and go get laid instead. Then I got up and left.