The Man Who Would Be F. Scott Fitzgerald by David Handler

Author:David Handler [Handler, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9781453259726
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 1993-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

I LEFT FOR CONNECTICUT that night.

I wasn’t alone. I talked Merilee into coming along. She needed to get away from her acid-splashed apartment for a couple of days, and I needed to keep an eye on her. It also meant I could drive the red Jaguar XK 150 drophead convertible we’d bought when we were together, and which she got to keep. It’s a rare beauty, every inch of it factory original the engine, transmission, black top, sixty-spoke wire wheels, tan leather interior, polished hardwood dash. The damned car only has 31,000 miles on it. Its previous owner had been an elderly East Hampton cereal heiress who’d only driven it to the beauty parlor and the Maidstone. I’d missed how it handled and purred. I’d missed Merilee’s riding next to me with the wind in her golden hair.

We left after her curtain with the top down and Lulu in her lap. Merilee wore a baseball jacket and cap of matching suede, a white linen camp shirt, faded blue jeans, and her Converse Chuck Taylor red high-tops. Lulu had her custom-knitted Fair Isle vest on against the night air, and one of Merilee’s white silk aviator scarves wrapped around her throat.

“What do you think he’ll decide to do?” Merilee asked me when I told her about my breakthrough with Cam.

“Tell all. Take his punishment. Not that it’s entirely fair. He’ll be judged for the rest of his life over something that he did on a drugged-out suicidal binge when he was sixteen years old. That’s tough.”

“Not as tough as it was on the children who were on that bus,” she pointed out.

“I know that.”

“He’s not above the law just because he’s gifted.”

“I know that, too.”

“And if he decides not to confess?” she asked. “What will you do — turn him in?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“He’s made you into something of an accomplice, hasn’t he?”

“I’m afraid I did that to myself.”

“Do you think he pushed that Skitsy Held woman?”

“No, I don’t.” I believed Cam. I wanted to believe him. Still, part of me wasn’t so sure — the part that had asked Vic to check out his sleazy-motel story. The part that was making for Farmington without telling him. What I would find there? What was I even looking for? I had no idea. But I had to go.

The late-night traffic on I-95 was light through the commuter towns Greenwich, Stamford, Fairfield. After New Haven it was nonexistent. I let the Jag out to eighty. It seemed happiest at that speed. Lightning began to crackle in the sky when we were outside Guilford, and a light rain began to fail. I stopped and put the top up. It was pouring by the time we pulled off the highway at Old Lyme, the wind gusting sheets of rain before our headlights as we eased slowly through the snug, slumbering little historic village at the mouth of the Connecticut River. The Bee and Thistle Inn there was saving two rooms for us. Old

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