Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2006

Mischief by S. L. Franklin

He’d stolen a stud gun. Fill it with regular bullets and you have a Saturday Night Special.

R. J. CARR:

“So what actually is a stud gun?”

“You don’t know?”

“Nope.”

The total ignoramus in this exchange was myself and the expresser of incredulity a man named Terry Swenson. Time: 2:55 P.M., Friday, January 8, 1999. Location: Swenson Equipment Rental on Harlem Avenue in Chicago. Subject: recovery of the item under discussion, which had been rented on the previous Monday but never returned.

“Well,” Swenson said, “I’ll tell you straight off that it’s not what you might be thinking. We rent out contractors’ equipment, not any other kind.”

I nodded. To look at, Swenson was a lanky six-footer in his forties with an open face but a brusque manner. Across the office desk from him, I was busy being my usual half-wit deadpan self — six five, two-thirty, birthmarked, bespectacled, and pushing fifty-six that year.

“It’s a — you know, just a little pistol, maybe twenty-two calibers, but it fires nails.” He paused to reflect. “Into studs — two-by-fours — to attach to concrete, mainly. He took four boxes of loads too.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“Not compared to a lot of things — jackhammers. Generators. Anyway, it’s been a couple of years since I rented this one out, because even the little contractors have their own nail drivers now. The thing’s outmoded, except for maybe a guy remodeling on the cheap.”

“And this guy?”

“It’s like I told you — the kid was a gofer for one of my regular accounts, only he wasn’t. Not anymore.”

“Uh-huh. How much does one of these things cost to replace?”

Swenson made a gesture of indifference, then said, “I haven’t checked it out, and that’s not the point. The kid put up two hundred in cash bond against loss, so I’m covered there. I just don’t want to have to go to the cops — that’s what I’m worried about. But this is theft of a handgun, in a way. Fill it with regular bullets and it turns into a Saturday Night Special. Maybe not a good one, but—”

“My rates are three hundred a day and expenses,” I interjected, even though I was getting six hundred that year. I’ve always been flexible, and I felt the way Swenson did — it was a job that needed doing.

“Fine.” He stood up. “I’ll take two days worth, then call me.”

The kid’s name was Jason Harnisch: brown hair, blue eyes, five feet eleven inches in height, one hundred ninety pounds, date of birth 9/9/77, place of residence Silicon City, California — or so I learned from the photocopy of his driver’s license that Swenson had made at the time of the rental.

“I knew him already, you see. That’s how I got taken in. I remembered he was going to college some place up north and working summers for L & L Construction through a family connection. Except when I called up over there this morning, the boss wasn’t around, and the gal who answered said the kid hadn’t been on the payroll since the summer.”

The head shot on the license had come out fairly well on the copy, and in it Jason Harnisch looked cocky and callow, with close-cut hair, a full, immature face, and three-day’s growth of beard. The date of issue on the license was August 31, 1997, sixteen months earlier.

“Does he still look like this?” I asked.

“Yeah — pretty much. His face isn’t so fat, and — oh yeah. He’s got an earring. My kid tries that and he loses an ear, but whatcha gonna do?”

“Find him, I guess, and hope he’s not getting into mischief.”

My first stop was L & L Construction about two miles west. Snow from the record-setting blizzard over New Year’s was plowed into six-foot high banks in the small parking lot beside the business office, but in the yard to the rear I could see a Bobcat, a tractorlike affair with a backhoe, and various other vehicles all stranded in drifts that rose high up over the axles. The parking lot held one car when I pulled in, an SUV, and the office held one person, a girl-woman of twenty or so who seemed to have spent the day making the air around her unbreathable with cigarette smoke because she had nothing else to do.

She buzzed me in the secured door at the front, then stood waiting behind a counter as I came through. She wore Levi’s, a ski sweater, and a distracted expression, but otherwise she looked friendly and intelligent, and without the cigarette she might even have been pretty: five feet six at a guess, with pert features and toffee-colored hair that flowed down her back.

I said, “Hi. Are you the one who talked to a man named Swenson about Jason Harnisch?”

“Yeah, that was me.” The distracted expression melted into a mix of curiosity and apprehension. “Who are you?” I gave her one of my cards, and after looking it over she let out an exaggerated sigh. “Oh boy. The idiot’s in real trouble, is he? I was afraid of that.” She tapped the ash from her cigarette, then went on, “All right — so what’s he done?”

“Swenson didn’t tell you?”

“Not much — something about a piece of equipment Jason rented for L & L. As if. We’re down through the fifteenth, except for a couple of dink jobs. Dad and Mom are in sunny Arizona, and I’m here freezing my — never mind. What did he do?”

“Monday morning he rented a stud gun, agreeing to return it by Tuesday. The phone number he put on the rental form turns out not to exist, and actually Jason only insinuated that the gun was for your company, since the name on the form is his own. Not that that exonerates him. He’s either irresponsible or up to something.

“Swenson’s shy of bringing in the cops for a bunch of reasons, but he has to have the gun back — that’s the point — and I’m here because he’s willing to put out a little of his own money to recover the thing privately, rather than seeing the boy charged with a felony.”

The girl stood there listening and smoking until I finished, then she mashed the cigarette in a tray with an angry gesture. “Sometimes I think Jason is a living, breathing felony. What do you want to know?”

“Anything at all about Jason Harnisch, but mainly how to find him.”

The girl invited me around the counter to sit beside a large desk and offered me a Diet Coke, which I accepted. Then she slumped back into a leather chair and said, “All right. Shoot.”

“You seem to know Jason. Tell me how.”

A gesture. “Third cousins, or something. I’m Cathy Lindner, in case you were wondering, as in Lindner and Lindner Construction — only I’m the silent L. Jason — as to where he is, that’s simple: Appleton, Wisconsin. He went back Monday.”

“So he goes to Lawrence?”

She raised her eyebrows. “You’re bright.”

“My son’s a sophomore there.”

“Oh. Well, Jason’s a senior — kind of. He says he’s dropping out. Why don’t I start over?” She sipped Diet Coke from a can, looked at the pack of cigarettes on her desk and then at me and decided to hold off for a while.

“Jason’s folks divorced about ten years ago, and God knows where his father went off to. His mother — that’s my mother’s second cousin — she remarried about four years ago to an exec at Motorola, only he jumped to Intel — I think it was — and so they moved out to California. Jason hates his stepfather and he hates California. I said he was an idiot, didn’t I? So he’s spent a lot of time here with us in the summer mooching off my mom and dad’s good humor. This is the first Christmas we’ve had him, though — not that we saw him much.”

“Why not?”

“We-e-ll... I was working here, what work there is. Dad and Mom left Christmas night, and Jason was gone in the evenings. I don’t know where. We weren’t talking much.”

“Nobody I know went out last Friday and Saturday, though. You couldn’t drive five blocks where I live in Elm Grove.”

The girl had been avoiding me with her eyes, and not for the standard reason, I thought. She finally looked at me directly and exhaled audibly at the same time. “You’re being awfully nosy, you know. All right. Off and on Jason has had the idea we ought to be closer than third cousins, especially if I’m not dating anybody and we’re alone in the house. I’ll say it one more time: he’s an idiot.”

“But you’re not.”

“Is this about me or Jason?”

“I’m just trying to figure out, Ms. Lindner, why he used subterfuge to obtain a dangerous piece of equipment that doubles as a handgun and then failed to return it.”

“Do you mind?” She had a cigarette out of the pack and lit in about two seconds whether I minded or not. “If I am an idiot, it’s because I let Jason worry me. He’s such a loser, and when I — you want the truth, so here it is — he tried to hit on me when we were snowbound, and I pinned his ears back, as my gramps used to say. That was last Friday, so it’s been a week, New Year’s Day around lunchtime. He stayed in the guest room sulking and soaking up beer until Sunday, and I left him alone because I didn’t want to give the impression that I was feeling sorry.”

“Not a good weekend, in other words. I get the picture. But what about those evenings when he went out? You honestly don’t have any ideas about where he went?”

“Honestly?” Blood rose into the girl’s cheeks. “Honestly, I think he had a job someplace, and the stupid mutt’s got me covering for him, so I am an idiot. He came here for Christmas, you see, because he wanted to work for L & L, free room and board courtesy of Hank and Marilyn Lindner, only we haven’t got any work. We’ve got three crews doing nothing until spring, two down until the fifteenth, and—”

When the phone rang she jumped to answer it and sounded cordial and efficient for the next three or four minutes concerning a construction bid. Then she wrote on a form after hanging up, consulting a computer screen half the time.

“Sorry,” she said when she glanced back in my direction. “But even Jason has to wait for business. I just remembered something, though. Sunday morning the phone rang at home while he was in the shower, and it was a woman who wanted him to call back right away. Cindy at Berkham’s.”

“Did he do it?”

“Yep. And then he got dressed in a hurry and took off. In fact, that’s the last time I saw him, although he did call me here Monday morning to say he was just leaving for Appleton to hunt for work up there.”

“So he has his own car? What kind?”

A shrug. “Old and medium sized. To be honest, I don’t pay attention to cars.”

“Then let’s try a different question. Do you have a phone book with a business listing?”

After pondering for a moment, she said, “Wow — you are bright. Or I’m not, more likely.” She brought a stack of directories around the desk and stood next to me while I hunted through the B’s in the largest book.

“That’s it! I remember the number.” She jabbed a finger at the only Berkham on the page, highlighted in boldface: BERKHAM TRUCK RENTALS. “WE SPECIALIZE.”

“You’re sure?”

“Ninety-nine percent.” She carried the directory back around the desk and sat, then punched numbers before handing the phone receiver to me.

“Berkham’s,” said a voice. “Dave speaking.”

“Hi. This is R. J. Carr of Carr Investigations and Security. I need to ask a few questions about a former employee of yours named Jason Harnisch. According to my information he only worked there for a couple of weeks at night, so you may not—”

“Harnisch? Oh — that kid.” A ten second silence. “Okay — what do you want to know?”

“Did he leave voluntarily? Or was he fired?”

“That’s straight to the point. Without asking the boss, though, I’d say that it’s also confidential information.”

“Uh-huh. So the reason he was fired must be confidential too.”

“Well...” Another long pause.

“Could you tell me if he threatened anyone?”

“Uh... not that I heard. Carelessness. I’ve just been informed that he was dismissed for carelessness, and we’re looking into the matter.”

“What matter?”

“I’m sorry, but even if you really don’t know, it’s definitely confidential.”

“I really don’t, but I’ll be calling again.”

Throughout the conversation Cathy Lindner sat watching me with an anxious air about her, playing with a cigarette without lighting it. “He was dismissed for carelessness,” I told her as I handed the receiver back. “No other details, unfortunately.”

I stood and looked down at her from across the desk. “Are you sure he went back to Appleton, Ms. Lindner? Because it seems like he had a pair of good reasons to stick around Chicago, if he wanted to make trouble with the stud gun.”

All at once the girl sighed with such bitterness that I was genuinely startled, not something that happens much with me.

“You won’t let me keep even one secret, will you!” she cried. “I’m sure because he tried to call me collect from Appleton about eleven o’clock last night, and I refused the charges. And I’m sure because he tried it again here at work this morning, and I still refused. So naturally, I feel like a real jerk right now!”

“You shouldn’t.”

“Of course I should. You don’t know.” She rose up from behind the desk and made a sweeping gesture as she spoke. “Being heir apparent to the vast Lindner construction empire is somewhat lonely, as you may have noticed. And right before Jason left last summer he and I got very palsy in an innocent, cousinly way. Palsy, nothing more, but I thought...” She made another gesture, one of defeat. “Out of sight, out of mind. So when he got out of sight, I was out of my mind to let it bother me. It’s pretty depressing, though, to send your chatty e-mails into a black hole, especially since I’m down here not going to college and he’s up there with buddies galore. So now we’re not palsy or even close, but for some reason he suddenly refused to take any more money from his stepfather and decided to drop out. As big an idiot as he is, I’ve just been mean not to admit that he was having problems and maybe needed me to talk to a little.

“And that, Mr. Carr, is every secret I have — I think.”

STEVE CARR:

An e-mail from Dad was a rare thing, and when I put the question to him once, he explained that from a detective’s standpoint, face-to-face was best, and while a live voice on the phone was a poor substitute, it was still a live voice.

Problem: My live voice that Friday night was in Green Bay cheering on the Varsity team, along with the other J.V. team voices, and we didn’t get back to Lawrence till midnight.

Well, Appleton’s a decent-sized city, and Martin Avenue on my map turned out to be an older street a little way beyond downtown, so I was able to hop a bus for all but four blocks.

As for some other things in the e-mail: 1) Lawrence students weren’t encouraged to live off campus, but seniors over twenty-one got a pass; 2) I’d never heard of Jason Harnisch, but I didn’t know many seniors; 3) I’d only helped Dad on a case maybe three times and nothing important, so doing some real detective work for once wasn’t anything I’d pass up regardless. But as a favor to Dad, I would have staked out Mafia headquarters — a thing that Mom understood and didn’t like, even though I knew for a fact that she would have done the same and had — or similar things at least as dangerous.

The temperature was about five degrees, and snow was falling when I got up — later than I should have, to be honest, eight thirty. But I made up for it some by skipping breakfast and catching the nine o’clock bus. Martin Avenue was in a pretty decrepit section of town, where half the sidewalks hadn’t been shoveled, so my four block walk over packed snow and ice was the hardest part of the day.

I was expecting to find an apartment building, but 1722 was an enormous old frame house with an addition tacked on the back that about doubled its size, so I don’t know exactly what you’d call it except a respectable dump. I went in the front and let my glasses unsteam, then looked around a little and saw a row of old-fashioned doorbell buttons mounted near the entrance with numbers next to them and names written on a single large card. The name for number eight had been whited out and written over as L. Clarke, and when I couldn’t find a Harnisch anywhere on the card, I decided that L. Clarke was as good a person to start with as any, if he was in, so I gave button number eight a push, and after about a minute another push.

“Who is it?” came a voice from beyond a pair of locked narrow doors, only it wasn’t the voice of a he, but a she.

“Are you L. Clarke?” I said as I stepped closer. “I’m looking for Jason Harnisch who used to have your apartment.”

“Are you police?”

“Nope.”

A latch snapped, then one of the doors drew back and a round-faced, blond, female head appeared in the opening, followed by a plumpish female body, on the short side, dressed in gray sweats. I wasn’t good at guessing ages, but she looked to be in her early twenties.

“Wow — you’re tall,” she said.

At six foot six and a half, it was something I couldn’t deny, so I just said, “Yep. Are you L. Clarke?”

“Yep,” she said back in a mocking way. “L for Liz. Who are you?”

“Steve Carr. Could I ask you some things about Jason Harnisch?”

“You’re definitely not a cop, so — sure. Is he really dead?”

“What?”

The truth is, I almost said Who? But in the last nanosecond I realized that she was referring to Harnisch, and in another nanosecond my brain kicked in with the equation STUD GUN x DEPRESSED EMOTIONS = SUICIDE. Not exactly a pleasing piece of math. Plus, the girl’s expression as she watched me was hard to read, almost excited by the fact that I was staring at her without a clue.

“It’s a rumor, that’s all,” she said, stepping out into the foyer. “Who are you, anyway?”

Here at least was a question I’d come prepared for. “Steve Carr. A friend of mine in Chicago e-mailed me last night that this other friend of his named Jason was acting weird, phone’s disconnected and some other stuff, and so here I am checking it out — I hope not too late. Does this rumor have any details?”

“Read for yourself.” She pointed a finger at a homemade sign on the wall opposite the doorbells:

I read the sign through twice and then untacked it from the wall, probably just to show the girl I could be decisive. “Mind if I take this?”

“Go ahead. He shoved a copy under practically everyone’s door.”

I folded it and put it in my coat pocket, then asked, “Do you know Jason at all — I mean, did you, while he lived here?”

“Uh-huh. I used to be in number eleven, but when he got tossed out I laid a claim. Eight’s a lot larger.”

She had a different expression on her face now, sort of calculated and curious. I was your original novice detective, but I’d heard the Master’s voice two million times on the subject of questioning people, and one thing I remembered him saying was, “Some people want to tell you things just because you show up. A lot of times it’s only about them, but you never know if you don’t listen.”

Except while I stood there dreaming up a conversational gambit, Liz Clarke made one of her own. “Don’t you even want to know if there was a car fire?”

“You mean there wasn’t? I sort of took it for granted. And besides... I heard someone talking about it on campus, only I didn’t make the connection.” A judicious lie goes a long way — more words from the Master.

“Really? Wow!” She shook her head. “Say, listen, why don’t you come up for a minute.” Then she whispered, “A busybody’s coming down the hall behind me. You’re Steve, right?”

“Steve Carr.”

So I followed her in and up a sagging staircase after being introduced on the fly as her friend Steve, and thirty seconds later we were passing through a kitchen with an old porcelain sink and a stove that smelled of gas. “I’m no corrupter of youth, honest,” she giggled to me over her shoulder. “Just an apple-cheeked Appleton maid who likes beer for breakfast.”

Beyond the kitchen was a small sitting room and we landed there, but she bounced up as soon as she’d plopped down, saying, “Scat, cat,” as she shooed a kitten past me through a door three quarters closed. “Bedroom. Avert your eyes — it’s a mess.” She pulled the door to and turned with an embarrassed look. “So there goes my image as a woman of the world. Hard to keep up anyway when you teach preschool. How about some coffee?”

“None for me, thanks. But as long as I’m here, an answer or two would be good. You didn’t happen to go to that car fire, did you? And who’s Kirsten?”

She sat down again before saying, “Kirsten... is a kind of a witch, I think. Rhymes with bitch — but we mustn’t be like that stupid cat.” A feline noise came from her as she grinned across toward the bedroom door. “Kirsten occupies number twelve up yonder. A man magnet. If she could bottle it and sell it, she’d make millions and I’d be her first customer. The trouble is — meow, meow — she just wants to be ‘friends’ and she can’t understand it when the guys get the wrong idea.”

“Jason Harnisch?”

“Yep — just one of the guys. Kirsten works in the office at the park district and picks up extra money as a scorekeeper for the over-twenty basketball league. Well, one night last fall, just after the league started up, the regular timekeeper wasn’t going to make it, and Kirsten hates doing double duty. How do I know? I’ve been her sucker a couple of times myself. But this time she cornered Jason with that sweet, innocent smile, then goofed around with him between games and went for pizza and beer and necked a little with him in the hall outside her apartment when they got back. I was in eleven then, and sound gets sort of trapped back there.” She sighed. “And that was all for poor Jason.”

“Jason didn’t see it that way, though.”

“How very true, Steve Carr. You have the makings of a detective.”

“And the fire?”

“Oh, it happened, all right, and I was there. Kirsten would have gone too, just out of curiosity, if she hadn’t been committed to a friend’s party. It’s January and it’s Appleton, remember, so a car fire advertised in advance is almost as good as free beer.” She stared away toward the bedroom. “Well, anyhow, there were three of us in my car, and we drove out on Kane Road wondering, you know, what kind of mischief Jason really had planned. Nobody’d seen him around here — not officially — since December first when he was booted for nonpayment, and I know he went to Chicago for Christmas to stay with relatives. I also know he sneaked up one last time just before he left, poor sucker, and cried real tears talking to Kirsten, and she was so, so sympathetic about telling him to get over it. To her that sort of thing happens all the time.

“The fire — when you turn off Kane onto Orchard Road, what you see is a big open shoulder that angles up a hill, and that’s where the fire was. It was only five to eleven when we got there, but Jason’s car was already backed in, up away from the road, shooting flames about twenty feet into the air. And it wasn’t fun, actually. It was scary.

“There were two or three cars there ahead of us and people standing around, but nobody wanted to go very close. We got out to watch, and pretty soon everyone started looking around asking, ‘Where’s Jason? Where’s Jason?’ More cars pulled up, and then there were sirens and police cars and fire engines, and after a few minutes some cops came over and told us to leave — didn’t even ask questions, but we’d all decided not to rat on Jason anyway.

“Only... I’d been talking to a couple of people who’d gotten there early, before the car was burning that bad, and they swore, Steve, that they’d seen a body in it stuck behind the wheel! And — and so that’s why I’m wondering if Jason isn’t dead.”

Whew! By this time I personally, Steve Carr, was feeling pretty grim — a day late and a dollar short. Plus the thing had turned ugly. Looking grim too, I guess, since Liz suddenly stood up saying “Hey!” and waved a hand in front of my face. “You okay? Honestly? Let’s... let’s go into the kitchen. I still need to have breakfast. I was joking about the beer.” She waved me ahead of her and then paused at a desk to take something from a drawer before coming on behind.

“I’ve got a coffee cake, and I’m not going to eat alone, so what’s your pleasure — coffee, tea, or milk?”

“Well, I’d take milk, with thanks, Ms. Clarke.”

“Liz to you. You’re awfully tall and green, Steve, not that I’m fire engine red.” She came close to me then and said in a serious tone, “You wanted to know about Jason, so here’s something I found in the desk after I moved in. It’s made me think.” I took the piece of paper she held out and saw that it was a print of an e-mail to Jason dated September 18, 1998.

“Explains things some, doesn’t it?” Liz Clarke said quietly as soon as I looked up.

“Uh-huh. Except... I don’t know. How does hard luck translate into car fires? You know him — I’m taking the view that he’s still around, you see. What kind of a guy is he, except maybe a smart-ass and a loser?”

She frowned but only said, “Breakfast first.” We sat at a table and dug into big slabs of a cinnamon coffee cake, and after a minute she asked, “You play basketball over at Lawrence?”

“Yep. On the J.V. team this year, but next year I’ll start on Varsity, knock on wood. Everyone over six three is graduating. You really teach preschool? Do you like it?”

“Yep — excepting the pay. Four years at UW — Green Bay and now eight-fifty an hour. What’s your major?”

“Oh — chronic indecision, more or less. Do you know Jason’s major, by chance?”

“Psychology, I think.”

“That figures. Screwed-up types are always psych majors. What else about Jason?”

“He’s a nice guy, first of all. I wish you wouldn’t say things like ‘screwed up,’ even if they’re true, okay? Not that I knew him that well. Last fall he was this big, sad puppy-dog type who wanted everyone to like him. But some people — this is observation, not experience — they’re never happy unless they’re on the outs emotionally. Preschool psychology.

“So what are you going to do now, Steve?”

“Head back to the dorm, I guess. I wish I knew if there really was a body in that car.”

She glanced up at a wall clock that read 9:58. “You know, there’s local news on WAPL at ten, I think. Maybe we can hear something.”

She hurried to turn on a radio, and after some commercials a voice announced: “The Appleton News Break — all local, all important. Hi, I’m Bob Borowsky. The big story of the last twenty-four hours in Appleton has been the discovery by firemen of the charred remains of an unidentified male body in a car set ablaze late last night on Orchard Road. Police are trying today to trace the owner of the vehicle and... just a minute, please. My producer Jan Harms has just handed me a fresh briefing from Appleton Police Headquarters. Let’s see. The... uh... all right, here we are: The body found in the vehicle, it says, quote, ‘though burned beyond recognition, had a large construction nail driven into its head.’...My God! (A pause.) Well, that’s how the briefing reads, ladies and gentlemen. So, uh, please stay tuned to WAPL-FM for future developments.”

Liz Clarke switched off the radio, then turned to stare at me. I may have looked as green as I felt, but I decided not to mention the stud gun to her.

“That doesn’t sound good,” she said. “I mean, it sounds really... bad.”

“To me, it sounds pretty much like suicide or murder, to be honest, and Jason really is dead or he’s in for it. He didn’t hold a grudge for any guys that you know about, did he?”

She shook her head, looking stunned.

“Well, in any case, I think I’d better go.” I slipped back into the sitting room for my coat and saw the door to the bedroom cracked open again with the kitten peeking out curiously.

“Why, that stupid cat!” Liz exclaimed as she pushed past me to close the door. “The latch sticks sometimes, but how can that little thing make it come open?”

“Maybe it’s the ghost of Jason Harnisch,” I said half under my breath.

“Jason is — or was — a nice guy, Steve. Honestly. Things must have just gotten to him.”

“I’d say definitely. Well — good-bye.”

When I got out by the street, I stood for a few seconds to reorient while I put on my hat and gloves. The snowfall had stopped, but the walks were still ice packed, and the only thing Liz’s coffee cake had done was whet my appetite. I finally started off, but I hadn’t gone ten steps when a car slid past me to a slippery stop and sounded its horn. I kept on moving because I didn’t think the driver could possibly want my attention, but a few seconds later I heard a voice yell, “Mr. Carr? Is that you?”

When I turned I caught sight of — stumbling through the snow after me — was what I hadn’t seen in Liz Clarke’s apartment: a girl who looked genuinely sick with worry.

“Gosh! You’re not—”

We stared at each other for a moment. The view from my side showed a cute girl with long hair the color of dark honey. She seemed about ready to cry, never mind the fact that she smelled like cigarettes from five feet off.

“Are you Kirsten?” I asked.

“Who?” She came even closer. “You’re not Mr. Carr. I see that. All right. Are you — that is, R. J. Carr, the detective — are you his son?”

“Well, yeah.” I was probably staring. “We look sort of alike, but how—? Are you his client on the Jason Harnisch case?”

“Me? I would be if I–I’m Jason’s cousin and...” She started crying all at once there on the sidewalk, and I said, “Don’t! It’s not all bad, I don’t think. Or not necessarily.” Lying, probably. “And Dad’s coming this afternoon.”

I took a look back at the building I’d just left, then said, “You don’t want to go in there, though. Maybe we should sit in your car, or find some food or something.”

Five minutes later I was pretty much gagging in the smoky interior of Cathy Lindner’s Cherokee as we drove off looking for a real breakfast, but at least we’d undone some confusion. She told me what she knew and why she’d gotten up at four thirty this morning to drive to Appleton, and I explained a few things and held a few others back in order not to worry her even more. Not, at least, until I’d checked in with Dad.

It’s a mistake to theorize on insufficient data — Rule Number One of the Master. And I didn’t have much data that morning. If I had anything, it was a hunch.

GINNY CARR:

At twenty minutes to four that Saturday afternoon I left R. J.’s Chevy parked in front of 1722 Martin and traversed ice, snow, and then shoveled cement walk to the entrance of the building, a former rooming house enlarged and converted into cheap apartments. The late afternoon sky overhead was heavy with lowering clouds, but the bleak-looking vestibule inside the building seemed even darker as I entered, lit by a single 40-watt bulb high on a wall.

In its dim glow, nevertheless, I was able to find the name Kirsten Postlewaite listed on a large hand-printed card. Then I pressed the bell button for apartment twelve. While I waited with neither hope nor expectation that the young woman might be home at that hour, I reviewed the events and revelations of what had been a rather grim day.

First, R. J.’s failed in-person confrontation with a manager at Berkham Truck Rentals over the subject of Jason Harnisch’s summary dismissal from employment. Next, our drive north from Elm Grove, slowed by heavy traffic in Milwaukee and occasional snow from south of Fond du Lac into Appleton, punctuated as well by a horrible fast-food lunch near Osh Kosh. Then our arrival at our son Steve’s dormitory and the multiple revelations, beginning with the surprise presence at his side of Jason’s cousin, Cathy Lindner; continuing by way of Steve’s account of the bizarrely staged and advertised car fire; and concluding in the young woman’s temporary absence, with a more detailed report of what Steve had actually found out — facts, events, opinions, and personalities — during his morning interview with the third young woman in the affair, Liz Clarke.

Finally, our leaving Cathy in Steve’s benign company, my dropping R. J. at the Appleton police station to garner whatever information he could concerning the body found in Jason’s burned-out car, and my problematical attempt at interrogating the last unknown character of any consequence in the affair, save Jason Harnisch himself.

Yet, even given Steve’s half flippant inquiry — “So which is worse? Suicide or murder?” — all three Carrs, father, mother, and son, viewed with distrust the appearance of horrific tragedy in the events thus far. Something — the tone, perhaps — was wrong. Mischief still seemed the operative term. There was a staginess to the proceedings that belied their bleakness, and if Steve was to be believed, the third young woman, Liz Clarke, seemed to share our skepticism.

Just after touching the bell button a second time I heard approaching footsteps, and a few seconds thereafter not the anticipated young woman but a young man stepped out into the vestibule. He and I examined each other beneath the 40-watt bulb, his view being that of a woman two months short of fifty, of average height with black hair, dressed seasonably in corduroy slacks, heavy boots, and a down-lined coat. My prospect, in contrast, was that of a well-formed, college-age youth, shaved bald and beardless except for a straggling mustache, fairly tall, and dressed also for the outdoors in high-top boots, insulated pants, and a long coat with a parka top folded down.

“You’re looking for Kirsten?” he asked.

“Yes. Kirsten Postlewaite.”

“She sent me down—” He rolled his eyes slightly in an uncertain way. “—sort of to check up first. She’s not feeling well, and there’s... a little trouble going around.”

“Concerning Jason Harnisch? That’s why I’m here, I’m afraid.”

“Oh. Well.”

“I have just a few questions to ask. I’m one of the guidance counselors, and there’s some concern on campus, as you may imagine, about what’s been happening. The rumors—”

“The rumors?” He made the same uncertain ocular movement. “I guess. She’s sick, but maybe you could come up. Sure. She might say no, but—”

I followed the young man along an interior hall and up two long flights of dimly lit stairs. “She’s at the back,” he mouthed over his shoulder, and when I drew alongside him at the end of the top floor hall, he turned with a foolish grin on his face and said, “You’re not one of the counselors, you know. They’re all ugly and stupid looking.”

In his hand was a small pistol almost like a starter’s gun, but with the sharp point of a heavy nail protruding from its barrel. “Let’s go inside.”

My feelings at this precise moment were a complex mingling, of which fear constituted the smallest and least relevant part. I felt relief primarily — for the young man surely was Jason himself and no other, notwithstanding his shaved and glistening skull, and therefore he wasn’t a suicide but an ongoing player in his own game, whatever that might be. As to the question of his being a murderer, I had no opinion, but I was hoping to form one shortly.

My next strongest feeling — paradoxically, perhaps, considering the grotesque firearm pointed at my abdomen — was compassion, both for the young man and the others concerned, especially his cousin Cathy Lindner, whom I liked very much upon meeting, if for no reason other than her intrepid response to Jason’s erratic behavior. The depth of my compassion for the unknown, Kirsten, in contrast, depended almost entirely upon what I found after passing through her apartment doorway, which I did in silence, eyeing the young man and being eyed in return.

The apartment consisted of two “rooms” joined at an arch, a kitchen-dining area to the left and a living area to the right, with two chairs, a table, and a large futon doubling as a sofa. A bathroom opened off the kitchen, and I ascertained immediately that the young woman wasn’t anywhere in the apartment.

“She’s not here,” the young man admitted. “Even the cat’s gone. And so I’m waiting. Lurking. Skulking.”

“You’re Jason, of course.”

“Possibly. Who are you? Possibly.”

“I... The truth is I am a school guidance counselor. And although I don’t counsel at Lawrence, there is concern about you there. My name is Virginia Carr. My husband is a private investigator who was hired by Swenson Equipment Rental to recover the stud gun you have in your hand prior to your doing anything with it that you might regret. In that regard he’s far too late, of course, but if you were to give it to me voluntarily—”

“No!” The virulence of his response was superseded almost instantaneously by another rolling of his eyes. “Kirsten first. Where is he? Your husband?”

“I’m not sure,” I lied. “He dropped me here.” Another lie. “That is, a student on campus, never mind the name, gave us several possible leads and I volunteered to question Kirsten because that’s rather in my line. How did you break into her apartment?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“True enough, why should you?” After observing him for a moment I said, “May I?” Whereupon I ventured to remove my coat and sit on a chair at the dining table. Then I placed my purse and the coat on the table and continued, “It’s my understanding that you’re almost destitute, Jason. It may be none of my business again, but—”

“I’ve got seven dollars left and a pocket full of change, not that it is your business. I’ve maxed out two credit cards, I owe two months rent here, and the phone company’s collection department would very much like a corrected mailing address. If one existed.”

“Then you’ve been living in your car?”

“No.”

“Thank goodness for that, considering—”

“Considering. You are so right.” He removed his coat but remained standing with the stud gun pointed at me. “It was a junker anyway, and I couldn’t afford new plates. Plus the insurance runs out in three weeks. Money makes the world go round.”

“I–I heard that you stayed with relatives over the Christmas break, but before that—?”

“A guilt-stricken friend, nameless and fameless, helped me hide right in this building, right under the nose of Downtown Management Company, God bless its corporate soul.” He rolled his eyes shamefacedly, as he had not for a while. “It was strictly a favor to get me through finals. So I’ve made my own bed, sleeping down by the boiler with the mice. You think I’m kidding.”

“No. But—” I laid my purse flat, then opened it and peered inside. “I know for a fact that you have other friends, Jason. And if money is the only difficulty, my husband and I would—”

“Stop! I don’t know you. I don’t want charity. I just don’t...” His eyes panned wildly around the room before focusing on my face again. “No more talk, okay? I’m through with talking. When I wanted to talk, everybody blew me off, so let’s not say anything. I won’t bother you, if you won’t bother me, and oh, what a quiet, pleasant place this place will always be. And that way you’ll also be safe. Probably.” He gestured with the pistol. “I make no guarantees.”

My gaze followed his to Kirsten’s apartment door, and only then did I notice the ominous nailpoints, four of them, protruding like spikes from the opposite side.

“Cathy Lindner—”

“Shut up!” The pain in his face matched the anguish in his voice, and so I relented. Instead I checked the interior of my purse again to make absolutely certain that the handle of the target pistol was as I wished, then I sat back in the chair and looked at my watch, wondering how much longer it might be before R. J. came hunting for me. Or the girl Kirsten decided to come back. Or something else happened.

In any event, my only logical recourse was to wait. As my husband might have said, had he been present, When you don’t know what to do, don’t do anything.

STEVE CARR:

Well — it was a minute after five that the telephone rang, and to be honest, it wasn’t a minute too soon. Seven hours with Cathy Lindner, mostly spent by both of us trying to keep up a hopeful pose, was taking its toll, more on her than me since she was the real sufferer, not only being so anxious about her cousin, but also trying to step outside for as few cigarettes as possible as a gesture to me.

I learned a lot about her in those seven hours: She was twenty-two; she was of German and Norwegian descent; she was a late, only child, a Lutheran, a full partner in the family construction business with her father and mother; she was the company’s unlicensed practical architect. Not currently going out with anyone, not currently having much fun, not seeing much of her old high school and community college friends, not making new ones. Exasperated by Jason, worried to death by Jason, full of guilt about her recent treatment of Jason, hurt pretty deeply by Jason’s earlier blasé treatment of her. Confused by Jason.

By the time the phone rang I was basically fed up with hearing about it all, since it was hard for me to find points of empathy. I got along fine with my own sister, for instance, if Jason was like a brother to her. And the girl I was secretly holding out for was just that, a secret, so if Cathy loved Jason in more than a sisterly way, I wasn’t about to exchange confidences.

“Hello?”

“Steve — it’s Dad. Your mother isn’t there, is she?”

“No. Didn’t she—”

“She dropped me at the police station and went over to Martin Street to try to question the other girl. She was going to be back here by four fifteen. I think... the body in the car definitely wasn’t Harnisch’s, first of all, so I think—”

“He’s got her!”

“Well — I think we need to get to Martin Street anyway, both of us. Can you borrow Cathy’s car? Or, no — she’d better come too.”

The one thing you should never ever do is panic. The case was turning into a proving ground of all of Dad’s professional wisdom, it seemed like, and the reasoned calm in his voice made me think of this favorite axiom as I tried to hold down my sudden fear. “We’ll be there in ten minutes,” I said.

I tossed Cathy her coat from where it lay across the back of my desk chair, then explained what had happened, as much as I knew, while I hustled her ahead of me out to her Cherokee. After that we sped along the dark streets, Cathy driving and puffing at a cigarette with the window wide open while I told her about the charred body in the car fire and the nail in its head. She didn’t have to be shielded from that particular uncertainty anymore, since Jason was alive.

Or alive, at least, until I got my hands on him if he’d done anything to Mom — that’s what I was thinking privately.

At the police station, Dad climbed in the seat behind us saying, “Let’s go,” and Cathy burned rubber pulling out into traffic. She was upset but being very quiet. It wasn’t far to Martin Street, and when we got there Dad’s Chevy was sitting right in front, so he and I got out while Cathy parked farther up the block. Then Dad stepped back to the trunk of the car and dug around in the dark for a minute; he’d only just pocketed the pistol he kept hidden there as Cathy came hurrying up beside us. From there we waded snow on up to the building entrance, with Dad in charge all the way. While panic was as far from his manner as hilarity, he was what you might call intent on the job. “Follow my lead, you two,” was all he said, “and be quiet.”

In the foyer he didn’t even look at the bell buttons but went straight to the locked double doors, where he kneeled down with a little pocket tool out. It wasn’t fifteen seconds until I heard the latch snap open. “The girl you talked to, Steve — lead the way.”

At the door to Liz Clarke’s apartment Dad knocked, then stood back and said to me, “Get her to open the door.” How he knew she’d be there I didn’t figure out until a few seconds later, just about the time I heard Liz’s voice saying from a distance, “Who is it?”

“Steve Carr. I was here this morning, remember? I need to ask you a couple of things.”

“Oh. Just a sec.” There were various muted sounds, then the door drew in enough for Liz to poke her head through. That was when Dad crashed it wide open and stepped past her, saying, “Ms. Clarke, I’m Steve’s father. The young lady there is Jason’s cousin Cathy. We need to talk to Kirsten right now, so if you won’t bring her out, I’ll have to.”

Liz was dressed in slacks and a sweater this time and had makeup on, which made her look older, maybe late twenties. I felt young and a little stupid, having guessed dead wrong about who she was hiding in the bedroom. It was Kirsten — not Jason, the way I’d theorized. Anyway, before Liz could answer, a girl in a fatigue-print jumpsuit stepped through the doorway to the sitting room holding the kitten against her with one arm and gripping a beer bottle in the opposite hand.

I’d stepped to the side when we barged in, so I could see the look Cathy Lindner gave her as she approached and the look she gave back. The two of them didn’t look that much alike — Kirsten was taller and older and had dark hair and eyes — but each one held herself the same, and they had similar faces and expressions, or they did when Cathy wasn’t staring Kirsten down.

“Well?” Kirsten addressed Dad in a tone that sounded to me more than slightly buzzed.

“Why are you hiding out?”

“I’m scared.” She raised the kitten up and kissed its head. “We’re scared, aren’t we, Tig?”

“Why?”

I stepped close and grabbed the cat away. “Look. It’s important. Someone else is in danger besides you.”

“Oh.” She fell back a step. “I... well, I... came in late, like, you know, last night? And there were, like, these nails pounded through my door, and I thought, omigod, Jason’s pissed because I didn’t go to his stupid car fire! And so I grabbed the cat and ran down here to good old Liz—”

“The good old sucker,” muttered Liz.

“Then you haven’t actually seen Jason?” Dad asked.

“I’ve heard him!”

“She’d been listening at the door,” Liz said in a dubious tone.

“I know how he walks, and I’ve heard him! He went down the stairs and back up — so he’s up there!” She pointed upward toward the back of the building. “He’s got a passkey. You know he does!”

“Then why, for God’s sake, haven’t you called the police?” Dad asked.

“Liz won’t let me.”

“No one’s going to rat on poor Jason,” announced Liz, “not around me.”

Dad looked coldly from Liz back to Kirsten, then said, “Well, now you’re both going upstairs. We’re all going. He’s holding a hostage in your room, you see, until you come back.”

“But—”

“He won’t hurt you!” Cathy proclaimed suddenly. “It’s me he really wants to hurt, and since I’m here now...”

It was an interesting procession once we got going, anyway, with Dad in the lead telling Kirsten what she had to do, followed by Liz, then Cathy, then myself as backstop. Along the third floor hallway we went slowly and in dead quiet. Dad made Kirsten rattle the door a little and then say, “Where’s that key?” before she unlocked it, but he was the one through first, straight at the danger, as usual, with his eyes wide open, shielding everyone else.

For various reasons, I couldn’t see things from where I stood, but the scenario was described to me like this: Mom was sitting calmly at a kitchen table a few feet in and to the left, while Jason stood to the right and farther back with the stud gun pointed at her, only he looked different from what everyone expected because he’d shaved his head and beard and dropped the earring. The three girls crowded in after Dad, but when Jason saw Kirsten peeking out and then Cathy standing openly to one side, he did what I think of as the inevitable but unpredictable thing, as if he’d been waiting there the whole afternoon, going through all the permutations in his head until he found the single workable response. He raised the nail point sticking out of the stud gun and braced it against his right temple.

The revolver Dad had halfway drawn was useless against that particular move. Even Mom’s deadeye marksmanship, now that she could pull out her target pistol, was useless too; the angle made it impossible for her to shoot away the gun and not kill Jason.

“Jason, no!” I heard Cathy cry. “Please! I’m sorry!”

Cathy’s presence must have been what threw Jason off. He knew Dad was coming eventually because Mom had told him so; he was expecting Kirsten; Liz was a familiar friend, the one who’d hidden him out secretly through his last finals, I found out later.

But when he saw his cousin there, crying and crying out, he was up against an eventuality he hadn’t considered and wasn’t prepared for. So all at once there were tears in his eyes and a tremor in his voice. “I’ve... you just stay back, Cath. I’ve already done this to one person.”

“But the person was already cold and dead,” Dad responded. “For days. And you’re not.”

Mom and Dad exchanged a quick, communicative look and Dad nodded. “Berkham’s. Right.”

None of the rest of us understood, except possibly Cathy, but no explanation came because things started happening too fast.

“Oh, Jason! Why don’t you stop whining and grow up!” Kirsten said in a whiny tone from behind Dad’s shoulder.

Jason tried to answer her, speaking through Dad: “You don’t need to hide, Kirsten. Honestly. This was never for you. I just wanted you to pay attention! I wanted someone to pay attention! So now... you’re all paying attention!”

“Don’t!”

“No!”

Liz and Cathy seemed to shout together before Cathy stepped much nearer and Jason ordered, “Stay Back, Cath! I mean it!”

“Shoot me, then, Jason, if you have to, but don’t shoot anyone — that’s best! Nothing’s that bad if you didn’t—”

“Get away, I said! And — and everyone, all of you, move! Over by Mrs. Carr! Do you understand! All of you!”

So then came a mass shuffling toward Mom, with more cries and protests, followed by Jason circling around toward the still open apartment door with the weird pistol held up to his head. “Mr. and Mrs. Carr?” he said finally. “I’m sorry for all the trouble. I really am. Liz? You’re a good friend. Cathy — Cathy, I love you. Honestly.” A long pause. “You’re the last, I guess, Kirsten. And you can go straight to hell for all I care now.”

Only as he stood there making farewell speeches with his back to the open door, I slipped up behind him from outside in the hall — I was the backstop, remember — and sort of slapped the gun away from his head. It flew off and bounced around without firing, and I had Jason’s arms pinned before he could even respond.

And so that’s pretty much how Steve Carr turned out not to be an entire flop in his first real detective case — brawn far more than brain.

Dad has fudged quite a few cases over the years to keep what Mom calls “the innocent guilty” from facing authority, but mostly when no serious harm was done. In this affair, the car fire alone was serious enough, not just mischief, and so we four, Dad, Mom, Cathy Lindner, and I, escorted Jason to the Appleton police station, where he turned himself in, basically in a state of shock but looking relieved. Cathy promised to post bail as soon as it could be managed, and seeing the two of them say good-bye in front of a bunch of strangers made me decide I didn’t know enough about the ins and outs of human feelings.

After that we had dinner in a good but noisy restaurant, then the folks and Cathy checked into a motel with me tagging along, and finally, at about nine that night, we all got together for the full explanation which, as usual, only Dad knew.

“The crucial point, Steve,” he began, addressing me because I was being a little querulous about the delay, “was the point we didn’t know. Jason all of a sudden called up Cathy at work on Monday morning and announced that he was coming back up here to hunt for a job. All right, fine. But why? He and Cathy were—”

“We weren’t really speaking,” she said. “I was mad at him and he was mad at me, and we both felt guilty about... various things. It was mostly my fault, though, because I never gave him a chance. I was so hard on him, I’m ashamed. I wanted him to hurt a little, the way I had, before we made friends again.”

“Yes,” said Mom. “Except that, in his state of crisis he took it as absolute rejection.”

“Anyway,” I grumbled, “somehow he hatched a crazy plot. So what is this mysterious point I still don’t know?”

“It’s why he was fired summarily on Sunday night from his job at Berkham Truck Rentals. He wasn’t scheduled to work Friday or Saturday — or Sunday either — but he was called in unexpectedly that last morning. It wasn’t to do his usual work, which was cleaning vehicles overnight.”

Mom took over then: “It was a holiday weekend, you see, and there had also been that horrible storm. So not many trucks were under lease, but breakdowns among those on the road were doubtless far more numerous statistically and probably more difficult to confront with an understaffed holiday crew. That much was evident.”

“And so,” Dad picked up, “our guess was that Jason had been called to go out as a helper on some kind of emergency roadside service. Since I knew that the motto of the company was ‘We Specialize,’ I was expecting something a little different when I drove over there this morning, but I honestly didn’t see anything that gave me a clue. Lots of vehicles geared to specific use, sure, but nothing that connected to the problem.

“When I asked about Jason, though, the manager on duty practically shouted me out of the place. I yelled back that by not opening up he might just be allowing a crime to be committed, and he said that if one did happen he wasn’t responsible — and only if it did would he talk to the police. A real nice fellow, and logical too.”

“So you came up here still not knowing why Jason was axed.”

“The official explanation was ‘carelessness,’ but consider the time sequence. He and Cathy had argued and weren’t speaking all Friday and Saturday; he was called in for emergency work Sunday morning and got back to the Lindner house in the middle of the night. At ten or so on Monday morning he rented the stud gun, putting up two hundred dollars in cash; an hour later he called Cathy to say he was heading up here. Late Thursday and again Friday morning he tried to call Cathy collect, meaning he was out of money and desperate to talk. Friday afternoon he posted the announcement about the car fire—”

“And consider also, Steve,” Mom interrupted, “the rather forlorn, self-pitying humor of the wording. When you asked this afternoon which was worse, suicide or murder, we all were thinking — or I was — that murder was the greater worry at least, but in fact the young man I spent a silent hour with later was being consumed by despair, not guilt.”

At that statement she gave me one of her patented penetrating looks, and a shift occurred in my mental perspective. “You don’t mean to say he robbed a grave, do you? And brought the corpse with him to Appleton?”

Dad said, “Close enough. When I went in to see the police, the autopsy had just been completed, and it found that the body in the car had been dead for at least eight days and frozen solid for part of that time, meaning, for one thing, that Jason hadn’t murdered him, and the nail in the forehead was simply more window dressing à la Harnisch. The true cause of death was heart failure, and even though it was charred on the outside, the corpse had the physical characteristics of a man in poor health around seventy years old.”

Mom said, “No doubt, your father immediately placed a call to Berkham Truck Rentals and, with the backing of the Appleton police, forced the true story out of the recalcitrant shift manager. But as yet he hasn’t divulged that truth even to his wife.”

“Nope. A single retelling is all I can face. Everybody ready? Berkham, it seems, has a contract with a consortium of Midwestern medical schools to transport bodies, some left by will to science, some collected for a nominal sum from small-town communities without funds or willingness to bury derelicts and paupers, some from sources the guy wouldn’t identify. They even have a special refrigerated truck for that purpose with bays, I think the guy said, to carry up to eight stiffs at a crack.

“Anyway, the blizzard held up a run out south and west in Illinois from Thursday on, and the driver seems to have spent his time stranded in Moline getting oiled. Sunday morning early, after the roads opened again, he started off with a hangover toward Chicago coming in on I-88. Going over the Rock River bridge, he hit a patch of ice. The truck went into a skid, plowed off the road and down an embankment, rammed a tree, and dumped four dead bodies and one live one out into the snow. The driver ended up in the hospital with a drunk driving citation, the vehicle was more or less demolished, and Berkham Truck Rentals had a major crisis on its hands with none of its regular people available to help.”

“Poor Jason,” Cathy said.

“Right. He drove out there behind the shift manager in a normal refrigerated truck, and together they loaded the bodies into the rear. Then the shift manager buzzed off back to Chicago as fast as he could and left your cousin to deal with bringing the bodies in at a safe, slow pace. That’s all we know for sure, except that Jason showed up very late with one of the back doors of the truck flapping open and only three bodies in the truck.

“So — carelessness. Jason apparently just fumbled around and acted defensive and hostile, and the night manager blew up and paid him off out of petty cash.”

“He was out of his mind,” I said, referring to Jason.

“Rather he was confused and depressed and at the end of his tether, don’t you think?” Mom has a definite way of putting people like me in our places when we say stupid things. “His parents had virtually disowned him, remember. His one confirmed emotional anchor wasn’t speaking to him. The girl he had a crush on here in Appleton didn’t return his interest. His college goals seemed unattainable after seven semesters. He was out of money and wasn’t thinking rationally—”

“And he’d just spent several hours first wrestling frozen stiffs up a snowy embankment into a truck and then driving two hundred miles with them as his only company,” Dad added.

“Yes. It’s hardly difficult to see how he might come to have morbid or desperate ideas, such as staging a car fire. As he informed me this afternoon, his car insurance and license plates were expiring and he had no money to renew. What he said to Kirsten in all of our hearing is the key, I think. He needed attention. He just wanted people to pay attention to him.”

“Poor Jason,” Cathy said again. “Poor dumb, crazy mutt.”

Some final observations by your novice in crime:

Didn’t the whole affair seem a little melodramatic? After the fact, absolutely. While it was going on, though, it was dead serious.

Would Jason actually have pulled the trigger when he held the stud gun to his head? Maybe not, since it seemed just as likely that he was ready to cut and run.

Was I glad I put the matter out of doubt? Yep.

Did he do jail time for all the mischief he caused? Ninety days in Wisconsin, suspended sentence in Illinois, approximately a million years of community service and big bucks in fines, which his parents refused to pay, so the Lindners did.

What about Liz Clarke? She stopped being a sucker for Kirsten and got on with her life.

Kirsten? Went on being Kirsten. That type always does.

Did Jason and Cathy iron out their differences? Well...

The second year after I graduated, winter of ’03, I was home in Chicago working at a brand-new occupation, and on my way to an assignment, my route took me past L & L Construction over near O’Hare. For three days I fought it off, but curiosity finally took control, and so I pulled my car up in front of the place and went inside on the fourth morning, not knowing what I was going to find. Probably strangers.

The first thing I noticed was a rather faded, dog-eared sign in lettering I thought I recognized:

And the next thing I saw, off behind a counter, was the head and shoulders profile of Cathy Lindner seated at a computer terminal. We Carrs are pretty impossible not to recognize, once seen, so when she looked around I just said, “Hi. How’s the head architect?”

She stood up and came toward me before replying, “Slightly, well—” A gesture. “Hello, Steve Carr! I saw your father I don’t know how long ago, and he told me you were getting married.”

“Got married.” I nodded, then took a good look at her left hand for a reason, since even without the gesture she’d made, I would have caught on that she was possibly seven months pregnant.

“Me too.”

I was honestly afraid to ask, so I waited.

“Yes. To Jason. It’s legal for third cousins, and not regarded as dangerous, you know. I guess the fact is, I was Jason’s big problem — maybe you remember — and when I stopped being a problem for him, he basically stopped being one for himself. And it’s great being married to your best friend.”

I agreed, then asked, “So what’s he up to now — more mischief?”

“Some.” She smiled. “Mainly, he’s been learning the business from Dad for the past three years. Dad’s sixty-eight, you know, so one of these days, very soon I think, we’ll have to change the sign out in front from L & L to H & H.”

It seemed a good belated ending, at least for what to me was just the beginning — not that Carr Investigations and Security had to change anything about its name when it signed me on.

Copyright 2006 S. L. Franklin