Songs in the Key of Death (7 page)

Now, as never before, she could understand what turned her husband on when this woman sang. Mama Cass was solo on this track, so vibrant and alive she might have been here in the room.

Anitra listened to the entire cassette—both sides—before she realized she was feeling impatient for Gary’s return. She began willing him to abandon his precious baseball telecast and get in touch with her. And so when the telephone rang she ran to answer it eagerly.

The
Prize
in the Pack

Originally published in
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine,
October 1986.

HERE WAS CASEY DOLAN TRYING TO PREPARE HIS SIX O’CLOCK sports broadcast and there was Carmen’s big brother Alvin, waiting for her to finish work and giving Dolan the evil eye from the outer office.

Clement Foy’s sonorous voice poured out of the monitor speaker. “A reminder that in fifteen minutes the old catcher will be along with your early-evening sports show. In the meantime, more rolling-home music here on CBAY, the voice of Baytown, as Les Brown and the Band of Renown offer some musical reassurance, ‘I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm.’ ”

Foy was stuck in the big-band era, which Dolan could stand. At forty-eight, he was five years older than the program director and he liked the bouncy sound. His two-finger typing of tonight’s script rattled along almost in time with the rhythm. The age problem, if he had one, was in relation to Carmen Hopkins, who was only nineteen. This was a gap that had seemed unbridgeable six months ago when she came on staff. Now that they had made love, there turned out to be no gap. Dolan had been surprised and gratified but soon learned he was exchanging the fear of inadequacy for that of an early death at the hands of big brother Alvin. He had always suspected there was a trace of Indian in the Hopkins genetic pool. Now those Iroquois eyes watched him from beyond the front desk. Did Alvin know? How could he know? Should Dolan give him a smile?

“I’m on my way,” Carmen said, leaving her desk at the back of the room, passing Dolan’s chair, letting her fingers brush the back of his neck. “Any problems with continuity, talk to my lawyer.” That was a laugh. In six months, she had mastered the job better than anybody the radio station had ever employed. She was good. Too good for such routine work, Dolan kept telling her. “You take it easy now, young lady,” he said in an avuncular tone. It was the voice he had used when he was catching for the Redmen and a young pitcher needed reassurance out there on the mound.

“I always try,” she said, riveting him with her mischievous stare, “though I don’t always succeed.” She swaggered away to join her brother. Dolan feasted his eyes on her. She still carried some babyfat he had discovered. Heart-shaped face, lips a bit on the heavy side but perfectly shaped, cheeks forever blushing. Her hair was glossy toffee, tied in twin braids with green ribbons. She had skin that drove Dolan mad, arms, legs, shoulders—she was packaged in this slightly textured, almost café-au-lait material and keeping his hands off it was for the over-the-hill but lately reborn athlete a severe exercise in self-discipline.

“Let’s go, Carmen,” Alvin said as he opened the door, towering over her, pretending to be out of patience with her instead of her slave, as even Dolan with his deteriorating vision could see. “I want to pick up some beer before the store closes.”

“If you’re getting drunk tonight,” she said, “I’m going out.”

Dolan got the message and the typewriter keys jammed. His heart was still pounding like a teenager’s when he went on the air ten minutes later. “Good evening, sports fans. First place changed hands last night in the Baytown Fastball League as—”

After he signed off, Dolan drove home and showered and washed what was left of his hair. He was still using Anna’s shampoo. A few drops was all he needed, so three months after his wife’s departure for Centralia the big plastic bottle was holding out. The smell still reminded him of her. So did the bath itself, oddly and sadly. In early years, when David was still a baby, they sometimes performed what seemed in those days an adventurous act—they got into the shower together. Soaping each other, they laughed a lot and he called her his seal. Now—it seemed no more than a few weeks later—David was in charge of the science department at Centralia Polytechnic while his mother had opened a shop in the same city selling coordinated paints and wallpapers. And Dad was making it on his own.

Dolan rubbed himself dry with a rough towel. He faced the mirror at an angle that showed the least paunch, the fewest veins. Carmen seemed to like him. Mind you, it was always lights off and after a couple of drinks. He got dressed in the coordinated green-and-grey outfit, a modified track suit. The store manager had said he looked twenty years younger. Anna would laugh. She had forever been after Dolan to smarten himself up, buy new clothes. All she had to do to get her wish was leave him.

She hasn’t really left me, Dolan said to himself as he pock-eted money and keys and went outside into a balmy summer night. After twenty-six years together, we’re trying it apart. A little freedom, room to move.

He knew he’d find Carmen in the back lounge of the Coronet Hotel. It was her idea to conduct their meetings in the public eye. “If we sneak around and drive out to The Cedars like you’re suggesting, somebody is bound to see us and say those two are up to something. But here in the heart of town, how bad can it be? We’re fellow employees having a drink together.”

“My problem will be keeping my hands off you,” he said.

“I have the cure. Think of you touching me, and then Alvin walking in.”

The blind jazz pianist was at the keyboard when Dolan entered the lounge. His dog lay at his feet, head down, barely tolerant of what was going on. Jack Danforth, owner of the Coronet, sat at the end of the bar. Dolan placed himself at a corner table, distributed a few waves, and ordered a large brandy-and-soda. He was halfway through it when Carmen appeared, spotted him, hugged the wall on her way to the table, and slipped furtively onto a chair.

“Are you all right?” he asked her.

“Do I look all right?”

He studied her face. It might have been called a swelling on the jaw. “There’s no light in here. Have you been hit?”

The music climaxed, lots of applause, end of set. Pianist and seeing-eye dog filed out behind Danforth to sit in his office. Carmen was at her most rebellious, a sailor on leave. “I came so close to putting a knife in him, Casey—”

“Tell me.”

“It’s one thing when he nags me. That’s what a big brother is for. But when he started in on Peter, I went for him.”

“Calm down.”

“All right. All right. Get me a beer.”

He ordered a Molson and another brandy. The drinks came and they started in on them but she was still taking deep breaths through her nostrils. In this mood, she was more attractive than ever to Dolan.

“Did he know you were coming out to meet me?”

“No. I don’t know. I don’t care. Do you care?”

“I don’t care.”

“Stop worrying about my brother. I’m over eighteen, I can do whatever I want. There’s not a damn thing Alvin can do about it.”

Dolan tried to put from his mind thoughts of Alvin Hopkins doing something about it and then being punished for it by a life sentence, with Dolan no longer around to appreciate justice being done. “What made you so mad?” he asked.

“He said I’m not a responsible person. Without him to look after me, I’d go down the drain. He thinks I should still be at university.”

Dolan thought so, too, but knew better than to tell the headstrong girl. She was a classic under-achiever. Born with brains to spare and limitless energy, she refused ever to do more than just enough to get by. In Baytown High School, she got top grades while hardly cracking a book. Her brother Alvin, with no encouragement from Carmen, borrowed the money to pay for her first year in an arts course at Queen’s University in Kingston, sixty miles down the road, past Centralia. He bullied her into registering and moving there and attending some lectures. But she only stayed three weeks, arriving back home on the bus, her trunk showing up, rail freight, a few days later.

The debacle cost Alvin a good part of the money he paid. And when his clever little sister got a job selling dresses at Artistic Ladies Wear, it was almost more than he could bear. The new job writing continuity (whatever that was) at CBAY was an improvement. But still she seemed more interested in going through the motions and having fun than in getting ahead. For a man who used all his limited ability to work his way up through the yards to a job behind a ticket window at the CN station, Carmen’s behavior was calculated to drive him up the wall.

Dolan said to her, “What did he say about Pete?” Carmen Hopkins’ other brother Peter, known to his friends as Hophead, had killed himself two years ago in a road accident involving his pickup truck and a steel power pylon.

“He said I’m not just bad for myself, I’m a bad influence on other people. That’s a laugh. Pete was drunk when he showed up that night.”

“I know.”

“I couldn’t ask him to stay. It was a girls’ party. And he kept grabbing hold of people, it wasn’t funny. Vera didn’t like him and he kept grabbing hold of Vera.”

Dolan had heard the story before. “So you ordered him out,” he said gloomily.

“I whacked him and pushed him out the door and locked it. Then when I went after him, it was too late. He was driving away.”

Dolan stared into the battered-baby eyes, hoping it was over. “Carmen,” he said softly, “it was not your fault.”

After a minute or so, she became calm. “You’ve had a normal life, eh, Case?” she said. “Good family. Lots of success.”

“Yeah, sure.” He gave her the grin that usually worked. “The only reason the Redmen kept old Casey Dolan behind the plate was I didn’t mind being hit by bouncing baseballs.” He took a drink. “And with our pitching we had a lot of bouncing baseballs.” He showed her his collection of broken fingers.

“It’s a wonder you can type,” she said.

“It explains a lot,” he said.

They went off for a drive later, across the Bay Bridge and into the county. The windows were down and there was a lot of clover in the air. On the radio, Clem Foy was doing his night show, ignoring the musical tastes of his audience, playing a selection of 78s from his own library. He thanked Lionel Hampton for rendering “Midnight Sun,” then introduced Louie singing “A Kiss To Build a Dream On.”

As they approached the colored lights of a roadhouse, Carmen said she was hungry. Dolan drove in and parked in darkness on the farthest patch of gravel and went inside to get takeaway, leaving her in the car.

“That really cheeses me off,” she said when he came back with hamburgers and shakes. He could feel the vibrations, so he switched on and got rolling again, heading farther into farmland. “You won’t even take me inside,” she complained with her mouth full. “I feel like some kind of cheap whore.”

Half an hour later, he parked off the road on a headland with a view of the bay where it becomes part of Lake Ontario. Her mood was sweet again. Dolan kissed her, and his advancing years faded, leaving him feeling strong, not worried for the moment about anything. He knew it was only nature trying to get him to propagate the race, but he didn’t care. Her mouth was soft, she smelled of soap and lipstick.

On the way home, she was buoyant. Her window was down, her eyes narrowed against the rush of air. “If you and I were married, there’d be no problem,” she said. “Alvin would have to shut up.”

“I’m already married. Did you forget?”

“She’s left you. Get a divorce.”

“What’s the rush to get married? You’re a kid, you’ve got your whole life. You’re a talented girl, you can write up a storm. I’m just a stupid ball player but I can recognize what you’ve got.”

“Here we go.”

“You sit at that desk bashing out promotion announcements and program scripts with one brain tied behind your back. Work, damn it. Write.” He glanced at her face, saw the down-turned mouth. “Develop the talent God gave you.”

“Who asked Him?” she said. Then after half a mile of slipstream, she said, “Would you marry me if I said I was pregnant? I’m not, but if I told you I was?” She was smiling now. “You wouldn’t believe me, would you?”

“Not in the nineteen-eighties.” He shrugged. “I believed it in the fifties.”

Carmen passed Dolan’s desk one afternoon in the following week and dropped a sheaf of folded typewritten pages in front of him. “Read it and weep,” she said and wandered away. He glanced at page one, saw “Nor Iron Bars by Carmen Hopkins.” He was so excited by the manuscript, he couldn’t get on with his work. He took it to the washroom and read it in the privacy of a cubicle.

She had written a story about a young girl in love with an older man. They both worked in a small-town radio station. There was practically no invention in it, the plot was his experience and hers, but it read like a house afire. At the end, the sports announcer was still with his wife and the girl was floating face-down in the bay.

He emerged into the office and went to her desk, where she was elaborately turning the pages of a newspaper. “Come for coffee,” he said, handing her the manuscript.