Free The Day the Music Died by Ed Gorman Page B

Said they all reminded her of her father. You know, the swaggering type and everything. Renauld’s pretty pathetic so I guess that’s why she slept with him. But I think she got scared.”
    “Of what?”
    “Of Renauld. He was making a lot more of it than it was. She went to bed because she felt sorry for him, like I said. But he saw it as this big romance. He was going to leave his wife and daughter. He wanted them to move to Iowa City. You know, he was always talking like Iowa City was—what’s that place the Arabs always go to?”
    “Mecca?”
    “Yeah, he always talked like Iowa City was Mecca. Or something. She was going to run away from Kenny and he was going to run away from his wife and they were going to be this real cool artistic couple and live in Iowa City.”
    “And she didn’t see it that way?”
    “Are you kidding? She got to be as afraid of Renauld as she was of Kenny. He really started putting a lot of pressure on her.”
    We were at the supermarket. I swung into the drive. A lot of people left their cars running. You could see the exhaust putt-putting out of their mufflers. Folks trust one another out here, and that’s nice.
    “Maybe you should talk to Renauld,” she said, opening the door and flipping the butt of her Winston out the door.
    “That’s a good idea.”
    “I just hope, if Kenny didn’t kill her, you find out who did.”
    “So do I,” I said.
    She was gone then, hurrying through the dusk into the lights and hustle of the supermarket where a hundred shoppers were trying to hurry their way home.

11
    I DROVE PAST THE police station. The big black Indian motorcycle, the one belonging to our esteemed police chief, Cliff Sykes, Jr., wasn’t there.
    A block away, I pulled up to a phone booth. It was getting dark, cold-winter dark. Across the street was a small diner with a long, wide front window. Edward Hopper was my favorite painter and the window of the diner looked like something he would have painted; there were six, seven working-class men sitting at a long counter eating their dinner but not in any way communicating with anybody else. Totally isolated in this little strip of light in the otherwise black prairie night. Even the plump waitress in the pink uniform, standing alone by the cash register, seemed forever cursed by isolation and loneliness.
    I put in my nickel.
    “Hello?”
    “Were you eating, Mom?”
    “No, honey. But I’ll be putting supper on the table in about fifteen minutes if you want to come over.”
    “I’m afraid I’m working tonight.”
    “For yourself or the judge?”
    I lied. “For myself.”
    “Good. You’ll be on your own if you just keep trying. Won’t that be nice when you don’t have to work for the judge anymore?” Having grown up in the Knolls, my mother had no time for the imperious Whitneys.
    “Is Ruthie there, Mom?”
    “No, hon. I’m afraid she already left for the library. Said she had a lot of homework to do. School seems to be getting her down this year.”
    “Oh?”
    “She looked so tired lately. And her appetite’s awful.”
    “How’s Dad?”
    “Well, Cheyenne is on tonight, so he’s happy. You now how he likes his westerns.”
    The judge had been nice enough to give me a good bonus at Christmastime. I’d finally been able to replace my family’s old 12-inch Arvin with a brand-new 21-inch Admiral console. Now Dad could really enjoy his westerns.
    “We’d like to see you sometime, hon.”
    “I know, Mom. It’s just I’ve been so busy.”
    “Well, the water’s boiling over on the potatoes. I’d better go grab them. Thanks for calling.”
    I spent a lot of time in the library when I was a kid. I liked books. But I also liked girls and the library was a good place to sit with a book and watch girls troop in and out. I think even back then, I was looking for a girl to make me forget Pamela. She was never a girl from the Knolls, though. She had to be better than the Knolls. Just as, for Pamela, her ideal man had