The Mortal Groove (20 page)

 

 

G
us brought them all coffee before he sat back down to begin his story. Jane figured he wanted a little more time to think about what he wanted to say. She wondered at his reticence, but then this wasn't a big city, where murders happened if not daily, then at least frequently. The fact that a family member had been arrested for the crime undoubtedly added to his sense of unease. And also, they'd pretty much walked in and blindsided him with their request to talk about the old murder case.

Gus took a sip of coffee, then held the mug in his hands. He seemed to relish the warmth against his gnarled fingers. “You gotta understand one thing up front. Ethan and Randy were always good kids. Ethan, contrary to popular opinion, wasn't stupid. And back in his early years, he was as handsome as they come. Fact is, around here, people thought he looked a lot like Robert Redford. Lots of girls liked him, too. He had a sweetness about him, a kind of innocence that appealed to the ladies.
I know when my wife saw him comin', she got out the pie and put the coffeepot on real fast.”

Jane smiled.

“Randy asked Ethan to look after Sue while he was gone to war and Ethan took that seriously. I know because he talked to me about it. He wanted my advice on how to do it just right. Some people saw them together and got the wrong idea—humans being what they are. Always made me mad when I saw people whispering about them behind their backs. It was just plain stupid.”

This was a twist Jane hadn't heard before. Gus was working so hard to make sure Jane and Cordelia didn't have the wrong impression that she wondered if there was something to it.

“Ethan didn't kill Sue. He couldn't have. He was the gentlest boy I ever knew. Why, he'd see a baby robin fall from its nest and he'd care for the little thing until it was strong enough to fly away. I can't say the same thing about his brother. Randy had lots of fine qualities, but gentleness wasn't one of them. He had a temper, especially when he was younger. I'm not saying he had anything to do with Sue's death, mind you. Don't take that the wrong way.”

“A bad temper can be like a loaded gun,” said Jane. “Especially when you mix it with alcohol.”

“Well, I'll give you that much,” said Gus, stretching his legs out in front of him. “He and his buddies were all drunk as skunks that night. So was Ethan, sad to say. And he wasn't used to drinking.” He turned the cup around in his hands, looked past the barn at the horizon line, where the peach-colored sky was quickly fading to a deep blue. “I'll tell you one thing I never told anyone before. There was some thin' goin' on with those boys the day it happened. Some tension they wouldn't talk about. I happened to be
over at my sister's house that afternoon. There was a plumbing problem, and like always, I get the phone call to come fix it. Randy was in one of his black moods. He was sitting at the kitchen table. Didn't do more than grunt at me when I walked in. His friends were out in the yard, sitting under a tree, smoking cigarettes. Nobody looked very happy.”

“You have no idea what it was about?”

“None. That was a Tuesday, which meant there were few people out and about that evening. Randy's two friends walked into town to get themselves a drink after dinner. Randy arrived a few minutes later with Sue. They all sat at the same table, and somewhere in there, Ethan joined them. I guess they played some pool, even did a little dancing to the jukebox music. The talk around town was that Sue left the bar around twelve thirty with the black kid. They walked down the center of the street, laughing and grabbing at each other, really making a spectacle of themselves. You have to understand, in a small Midwestern town in the early seventies, there were lots of people who thought a black man with a white woman was just plain wrong.”

“We're talking sexual ‘grabbing'?” said Cordelia.

Gus nodded.

“Where was Randy when all this was going on?” asked Jane.

“Still in the bar, with his other buddy.”

“Larry Wilton.”

“Wilton, yeah. And with Ethan.”

“What did you think of Larry Wilton?” asked Cordelia, swatting a fly away from her face.

“He was real friendly, had a pretty good sense of humor. See, Randy and his two buddies came over to the house for dinner a couple times that summer. The only thing I had against Wilton was that he drank like the dickens. We usually had beer around
the house, but after he left, it was all gone. My wife thought he had atrocious manners at the table, like he'd been raised with the pigs and chickens.”

“Staying with that bucolic image—,” said Cordelia, unwrapping a stick of gum.

“But I liked him,” continued Gus, cutting her off. “The black kid, on the other hand—”

“Delavon,” said Jane.

“Yeah, Del. He was more quiet. Acted real uncomfortable around us. I liked Wilton better, not that I got to know either of them very well.”

“We know the bare outline of what happened that night,” said Jane. “What was reported in the papers. Ethan and Sue were found in a field early the next morning. Ethan had a hangover, said he didn't remember how he'd gotten there. Sue was dead. She'd been strangled.”

“I always figured Ethan was headed home,” said Gus. “The Turk house wasn't far from where they were found. I suppose he saw Sue by the tree. He just lay down with her and fell asleep.”

“You think she was already dead?” asked Jane.

He shrugged. “That's the conclusion most of the jurors came to at trial.”

“But it's just not logical to think Sue was strangled by a total stranger for no apparent reason,” said Cordelia, chewing thoughtfully. “Homicide victims generally know their attackers. Crimes are motivated.”

“True,” said Gus.

“So, the next question seems to be,” said Jane, “could Randy or one of his friends have done it? Did anybody ever investigate that possibility?”

Gus set his coffee mug on the TV tray, then leaned forward and pressed his hands together. “Honestly, ladies, I don't know the answer to that.”

“But think about it,” said Cordelia. “Three guys home from Vietnam. One with an admittedly bad temper. A young woman who had a romantic connection to him, and maybe one of his buddies. And then there's Ethan, wherever he comes in. It was like a firecracker waiting for a match.”

“Could be,” said Gus. “Or maybe it just looked that way from the outside, when in reality, it was nothing at all.”

“Nothing at all
doesn't get somebody killed,” said Jane.

“Okay. Point taken. But the problem with all that is, if you're right, if Randy or one of his pals did murder her, the only people who know what really happened that night—Randy, the black kid, and the motormouth—all gave statements at trial that they had nothing to do with it. You can propose any theory you want, but the police needed proof, solid evidence, and they didn't have any.”

“Do you remember what they said at trial?” asked Jane. “Specifically?”

“Del said he walked Sue back to her house, left her there on the front steps, and said good night. He returned to the Turk home around one
AM
. Randy and Larry had a few more drinks at the bar, and then walked home themselves. They left Ethan behind, all by himself. He said he left about half an hour later. If they all took the main road out of town and then cut across the field like they usually did, they would have passed right by the spot where Sue died, right about the time she died.”

“What time was that?” asked Cordelia, chewing her gum way too eagerly.

“We heard that the police put it at sometime between one and
three in the morning. On the witness stand, the boys said they didn't see a thing. They came home and went to bed—that the black guy was already in the basement, dead to the world.”

“And you believe that?” asked Jane. In the darkness, she could sense him staring at her. “If you know something—”

He ran his fingers over the stubble on his face. “This is awfully hard for me.”

She could feel agitation coming off him in waves.

After almost a minute, he leaned back and picked up his pipe, tapped the cold ash into the chili bowl. That small act of normality seemed to release something inside him. “Before my sister died, she told me a secret, made me swear to never tell another living soul. I refused, because, well, I don't believe in that sort of thing. But she went ahead and told me anyway. She said that the boys never came home that night. What they told the police—and repeated at trial—was a lie.”

“Where were they?” asked Jane.

“They never said. I don't think she ever asked. They didn't come home until the next morning. Alice wasn't able to sleep that night, for some reason, so she was up drinking a cup of tea on the front porch when they walked into the yard just after sunup. She backed up their story, lied to protect them. But she didn't want to die with that lie on her conscience. I think what she wanted from me was forgiveness.”

“Did you give it to her?” asked Cordelia. Her gum chewing stopped midchew.

“I did,” he said. “Unreservedly.”

 

 

J
ane was just about to check her cell phone messages when Cordelia opened the bathroom door and emerged looking like Cleopatra after tussling with the asp. A towel surrounded her head like a royal turban.

“Feeling better?” asked Jane. “You were kind of drooping there when we left the Mortonsen place.”

Sitting down primly on the other double bed in the room, she turned her impassive gaze on the offending bathroom. “It was nothing six steaming jets couldn't have fixed. But there's only
one
in that shower and it barely spits, let alone sprays.”

“This isn't the Ritz.”

“You think?”

“We could have driven to Conner's Mills, booked a room at the Trail's End Motor Court instead of this place. Gus said they were about the same. Clean and cheap.”

“But the one in Conner's Mills was fifteen miles away. This one was just up the road.”

Jane shrugged.

“I am
not
in a good mood. I haven't eaten since lunch and it's almost nine.”

“Except for that quart of Nestle's Quik.”

“That wasn't food.”

“No, it wasn't.” Jane saw that she had four new calls. They'd all come in while she was talking to Gus Mortonsen. “The pizza should be here any minute.”

“How good could pizza be from
Bjorn's
Pizzeria?” She whipped the towel off her hair. “And they don't even have a TV in this room. Or a phone.”

“But there's a refrigerator.”

“Odd priorities. By the way, while you were out walking Mouse, I called the hospital again. Still no change.”

“Did you talk to Melanie's mother?”

“No, the charge nurse. Tammy had gone home for the night.”

Jane listened to her voice messages. One was from the club, asking if she'd spoken to a particular vendor before leaving town. Two were from Kenzie. It sounded like she was going great guns with her party preparations. She wanted Jane's opinion on how many people to invite. The last message was from Nolan. All he said was, “Let's talk about your brother. Call me.”

“You know,” said Cordelia, setting a framed picture of Hattie on the nightstand between the two beds, “I've been thinking about what Gus told us. If Randy's mother hadn't backed up his story, we might not even be here. Melanie might never have been attacked.”

“She was protecting her son.”

“Yeah, I get that. But at what cost? It doesn't take a trained bloodhound to figure out that something monstrous went on that night. If Randy wasn't the murderer, he certainly knew who was. I mean, if you'd been his mother, what would you have done?”

Jane stared down at her boots. “Hard to say.”

“No way. You're St. Jane.”

She laughed, flipping on her back and pulling a pillow over her chest. “I'm hardly that. I've bent a few rules in my day. More than a few. But I think if you lie about something as important as that—if the truth never comes out—it's always going to be there ready to eat you alive.”