Free Too Sweet to Die by Ron Goulart, Llc Ebook Architects Page B

humorless laugh. “I guess you would feel strange after a gang bang, if you’ll pardon the expression. No, but what I mean is … she was very up, manic. I figured she must have taken something, some kind of upper. But it wasn’t exactly like a drug high, I mean … the shock of Poncho and all that, on top of what she’d taken … it must have made her remember. It was remembering that made her high. If you follow me.”
    “What,” asked Easy, “did Jill remember?”
    “It’s pretty crazy sounding.”
    “You believed it.”
    “Yes,” said Mitzi. “Jill’s mother didn’t commit suicide. You don’t know Jill, but that whole lousy business, the suicide and after, she hardly ever talked about. Sunday, though … Jesus, she was filled with it.”
    “If it wasn’t suicide, what did happen to Jill’s mother back there five years ago?”
    “Jill had seen what happened, seen the last part of it anyway.” Mitzi bit her lip, frowning. “Her father … well, he killed her mother. Strangled her.” Mitzi inhaled, blinking. “It wasn’t in Carmel even. It was up in Sonoma County somewhere. Senator Nordlin had a hideaway sort of house up there. Well, not exactly a hideaway, since Jill and her mother both knew about it. Anyway, he liked to meet some of his … you know, he was playing around. Jill’s mother knew and finally got angry enough to drive up to the place. Nordlin didn’t have a woman with him at the time, but there was a showdown anyway. A big fight and he killed her.” She paused for a second. “I know how that can be. My own folks used to have some pretty good ones themselves.”
    “Jill saw all this?”
    “She walked in on the senator right after,” said Mitzi. “Jill had been having trouble with some guy and she decided to go to the hideaway and be by herself a little. She didn’t know anyone would be there that particular day.”
    “And old Nordlin was able to cover everything up?”
    “Yes. He got Jill to calm down and then he had his pet faggot, Montez, come up and take change. They rushed the body down to Carmel, where it was easier for Jill’s father to pull strings. He persuaded the coroner and the cops to buy the suicide story. Jill’s mother really had tried to kill herself before.”
    “What about Jill? What did they do with her?”
    “The senator dragged her back to Carmel with him,” said Mitzi. “First he tried to get her to promise not to talk, but she wouldn’t.” The girl bent down to retrieve the blue pen. “So he got some outside help.”
    “From Dr. James Duncan Ingraham,” suggested Easy.
    “Right,” replied the chubby girl. “The good doctor kept Jill doped up until the fake suicide had been bought and her mother put safely underground. Then … well, then he went to work on Jill.”
    “Went to work how?”
    “I guess,” said Mitzi, “I guess it must have been something like brain-washing. Jill didn’t tell me all the details. Well, maybe I didn’t want to hear. Drugs, electric shock …He made her forget about the murder and the house in Sonoma. For a good long while is seemed to have worked. Jill even gave up her apartment and went home to live with her dad. Except it didn’t stick. She finally broke with him. She went south and turned herself into Jill Jeffers. It looked like maybe she was going to be fine and happy. But back inside her head someplace there was what she really knew … I guess lately that’s been trying to get out. With a little help from Poncho it has now.”
    “Where is Jill?”
    “I’m not really sure,” said Mitzi. “When she told me about Poncho I wanted her to see a doctor. I have an intern friend who could have helped and then kept quiet.” Mitzi shook her head. “Jill wouldn’t agree to seeing him. I did get her to rest for a few hours. By Sunday afternoon, though, I couldn’t keep her down. She insisted on leaving.”
    “To go and confront her father?”
    Mitzi gave a long sigh. “Yes, she wanted to talk to him