Breaking Up Is Hard to Do (The Sam McCain Mysteries Book 6) by Gorman Ed

Author:Gorman, Ed [Gorman, Ed]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781480462595
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2013-12-31T05:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

HE WAS ON THE top floor in a cul-de-sac, the nearest room half a hallway distant. A nurse had just stuck a thermometer in his mouth as I walked in. The white room gleamed with sunlight. A wall-mounted TV was muted. The image was that of Garry Moore, a comforting image.

He gave me a little nod. The nurse gave me a nod, too. She was old and tough and serious, the master sergeant type. He looked like Mike Hardin. He didn’t even look pale. Both his wrists were bandaged pretty good, though.

I lighted a cigarette and walked over to the window and looked out on the town. In the daylight it’s Norman Rockwell. For all its foibles and shortcomings, it’s a good town with good people. The exceptions to the latter generally don’t bother you with anything worse than brief burst of malicious gossip or pontification. You could see the changes, though. Like the shopping center distant on the north edge of town. The downtown merchants were scared of it, and rightly so. We had recently added a McDonald’s near the community college. There was talk of a chain pizza coming here next year. And then there were the commuters who lived in the large, expensive housing development to the west. Four bedrooms, three baths, two-and-three stall garages. The Interstate would swing by here in another couple years and the number of commuters would triple after that. Judging by things they wrote in the newspaper letter columns, they seem to regard us and our customs as “quaint.” Some of the quaintness irritated them. They especially hated farm smells and slow traffic when they were trying to get to their jobs in the morning. I don’t believe that a Jaguar or a Mercedes-Benz had ever so much as passed through our little town till the high-powered executives arrived. It was the brave new world of 1962.

After the nurse squeaked out the door, Hardin jammed a cigarette between his lips, fired it up with an expensive lighter, and said, “Pretty stupid, huh?” He held up his wrists to show me. He held them up the way he would little kittens.

“Pretty stupid.” We still didn’t like each other but this was no time to play tough guy.

“I can tell you what everybody’s saying.”

“That you killed her and her brother and then tried to kill yourself rather than face prison.”

“Yup. ‘Former University Football Star Murders Mistress.’”

“You should write headlines for a living.”

He smiled. It was a wide and deep and sincere smile, too. The suicide attempt had transformed him into a relaxed, friendly human being. “I’ll have to consider that since I’m soon going to be broke. If not behind bars.”

“You kill her?”

We watched each other for a while. Just watched. No particular expressions. Then he glanced out the window and back at me.

“I was always kind of an asshole to you, wasn’t I, McCain?”

“Me and a lot of other people, though this probably isn’t the time to say it.”

“I’m going to be changing that.

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