The Last Quarry by Max Allan Collins Page A

breasts distorting Marilyn Monroe’s image but not in a bad way, and said, “You know...I see a guy over there who’s just cute enough to interest me, and drunk enough to think likewise....”
    She got up and out of the booth less graceful than a ballet dancer, but more fun to watch.
    Janet gave me a sideways look. “Now you’ll think that’s how I spend my weekends.”
    “What is?”
    “You know. Picking guys up.”
    I offered half a smile. “Have I been?”
    Her hands were draped around the Coke glass like it was the Silver Chalice. “It’s just...I never had anybody do anything so... sweet for me, before.”
    “Sweet like pound the piss out of your boyfriend?”
    I expected a laugh, but what I got was: “Exactly....I’m not really the type to, I don’t know...hit the bars on a Saturday night.”
    “I know.”
    Her eyebrows tensed with curiosity. “You do?”
    “Today was your day off, right?”
    Mildly surprised, Janet said, “Right.”
    I shrugged. “You cleaned all morning, did laundry all afternoon, and then you listened to music or maybe read, a while. You fell asleep and were almost late to go out with your girlfriend.”
    Astonished, she said, “My God—are you psychic?”
    “No.” I toasted her with my beer glass. “I’m shadowing you.”
    That got a smile and a laugh out of her. The truth will do that.
    She was shaking her head. “I’m just not good at this. The game. The ritual. The small talk’s all so...”
    “Small,” I said.
    “I guess....I’ve always been kind of shy, frankly. A loner.”
    “Me, I’m a people person.”
    Another smile. “Oh, yeah, I can see that,” she said.
    “You often...gravitate toward people like Rick?”
    Her smile was gone and a smirk took its place. “Connie says it’s low self-esteem. I say it’s bait and switch...guys on their best behavior when they meet you, but who aren’t really, you know...”
    “What they seem?”
    Suddenly she sat up, something obviously occurring to her. She checked her watch.
    “Shit,” she said.
    “Was it something I said?”
    “No! No, no, there’s just....Look, there’s something I have to do, something that slipped my mind, I should’ve done earlier.”
    “You need a lift somewhere? Your friend seems busy.”
    Connie was flirting with a guy over by the jukebox, which was having the good if rare sense to play a Patsy Cline song, “Crazy.”
    Janet was shaking her head, saying, “Well, you see, I’m sort of semi-housesitting...for some friends of mine? Anyway, I need to bring in their mail, and their dog’s probably half-starved....Somehow after last night, with Rick, I just...spaced out on it, today.”
    “I see.”
    She gave me a look that had some pleading in it. “I don’t want to bother Con. Would you mind...driving me out there?”
    “Sure,” I said, getting out of the booth, and helping her do so, too. “But you’ll have to show me the way.”

Nine
    She was a tad over-dressed, in that silk blouse, for watering the plants, but the plants didn’t seem to mind, and I certainly didn’t.
    I followed her around as dutifully as a dog—she’d already fed the real dog, and put it on a leash and walked it, and I’d kept her company on those chores, too—and we’d already worked through a lot of small talk about the library and her friend Connie and a little bit about Rick, who she actually sort of felt sorry for (I let her get away with that) (for now) and currently she was filling me in on this beautiful house itself, which was as wood and stone inside as out, including a hall fountain that was like water rushing over mountain rocks.
    I asked when the place was built, and she said, “In the fifties some time, by my friend’s father...my friend, Dave Winters—he owns the office furniture plant, that keeps Homewood going? This is his house now, his and Lisa’s....I met Dave at college.”
    Following her to the next plant, I said, “I thought you weren’t a local girl.”
    “I’m