Edward Gorman - Everybodys somebodys fool

Everybodys Somebodys

Fool

by Ed Gorman

Book Jacket Information iii

Death revs up on the drag strip in a new mystery featuring Sam McCain

Things go as wrong as love in a

rock-n-roll song for dangerous, young David Egan when he finds himself charged with the murder of the pampered but seriously disturbed daughter in the wealthy Griffin family of Black River Falls. They go fatally wrong the night that Egan crashes his black Mercury into a bridge at ninety miles an hour in a drag race outside of townno accident, it would appear, as the Mercs brake line had been cut.

Struggling lawyer and sometime private eye Sam McCain finds himself, not unusually, hauled into the investigation by the incorrigible Judge Esme Ann Whitney, who continues to make no attempt to conceal her disdain for the local police and their khaki-clad chief Cliffie Sykes, Jr. While Sam manages to establish a critical connection between the two victims easily enough, the solution to the case more than eludes him the mellow autumnal afternoon that he stumbles on a third: Brenda Carlyle, wife of a former all-American, her once robust body lying lifeless in the last suds of her bath.

Jealous husbands, philandering spouses, jilted girlfriends, outraged parents, a long-suffering wifeSam does not want for suspects. Or for clues. Its the conclusive evidence that surprises him and that frostily ends the Indian summer in Iowa 1961.

Ed Gorman, winner of the Shamus, the Spur, and the International Fiction Writers Award among others, is the author of many novels, including Cold Blue Midnight and Senatorial Privilege. He has

written four other mysteries in the Sam McCain series..The Day the Music

Died, Wake Up Little Susie, Will

You Still Love Me Tomorrow?, and Save the Last Dance for Meand founded Mystery Scene magazine. He lives in Cedar

Rapids, Iowa.

All of the characters in this book are Very fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely

coincidental.

Praise For Ed Gormans

Sam McCain Mystery Series:

Sweetly nostalgic mystery.

[McCains] zeal to cleanse Black River Falls of evil makes him the kind of hero any small town could take to its heart.

Marilyn Stasio, The New York

Times Book Review

Gormans delightful series

provoke[s] a bracing nostalgia for a time that was neither as innocent nor as dull as is sometimes said.

.Wall Street Journal

Gormans successful capturing of time and place sharply evokes the twilight of the ejs.

.Los Angeles Times

No writer captures the mood of 1950s middle America better than Gorman.

..Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

Gorman seems to have hit a mother Vii lode with this series.

.Publishers Weekly

In Black River Falls good and

evil clash with the same heartbreaking results as they have in the more urban crime drama of Block or Leonard.

.Booklist

Also by Ed Gorman

The Sam McCain Series

The Day the Music Died

Wake Up Little Susie

Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?

Save the Last Dance for Me

The Jack Dwyer Series

New, Improved Murder

Murder Straight Up

Murder in the Wings

The Autumn Dead

A Cry of Shadows

The Tobin Series

Murder on the Aisle

Several Deaths Later

The Robert Payne Series

Blood Moon

Hawk Moon ix

Harlots Moon

Suspense Novels

The Night Remembers

The First Lady

Runner in the Dark

Senatorial Privilege

Short Story Collections

Prisoners

Dark Whispers

Moonchasers

For the good doctors Tammy OBrien, M.D.; Dean H. Gesme Jr., M.D.,

F.A.C.P.; Kevin Carpenter, M.D.,

F.A.C.S.; Leann Schneider, Lpn;

that very special oncology nurse Amy Hass; and the lovely ladies of the labCarolyn, Denise, Marcia, Sherry, and Wendy.

Xi

And hearts that we broke long ago

Have long been breaking others.

W. H. Auden

Everybodys Somebodys

Fool

Around eleven that night, the hostess broke out the Johnny Mathis and the Frank Sinatra, and everybody quit talking about their kids and their jobs and their mortgages and their politics, and got down to some serious slow dancing out on the darkened patio in the warm prairie night of summer 1961.

It was like all those groping, grasping ninth-grade parties wed always had in some kids basement, where the mom was gracious and the old man cast an evil eye on anybody who danced too close with his sweet blooming daughter.

The difference now was that we were adults, or rumored to be, or hoped devoutly to be. Andre Malraux once asked an old priest if hed learned anything from sixty years of hearing confessions and the padre said, Yes, theres no such thing as an adult. He was probably on to something there.

There were only three single women there that night, and only one single guy. Me.

I took turns dancing with all three of them and all three of them said pretty much the same thing when I slid into their embrace, Gosh, McCain, you always make me feel so tall.

And then a giggle.

Theres nothing worse than being insulted by people who dont mean to insult you. At five-five a guy can be awfully sensitive about short jokes.

We danced.

Back in high school the only girl I wanted to dance with was the beautiful Pamela Forrest, the girl Id loved since grade school. But since she went out with older boys, I didnt get to dance with her very often.

As I saw it, my prospective dancing partners were divided into three groups. Girls who were shorter than I was and therefore good for my public image; girls who were fun to dance with no matter how short or tall they were; and girls who didnt mind a little dry-humping in the darkness.

There werent many in the last category, at least not many available to me, anyway, but when you came upon one you immediately fell to your knees sobbing

in gratitude.

Tonight, I was hoping Id find a girl who, at twenty-five, had moved beyond the dry-humping stage. The best bet was Linda Dennehy, who was divorced and worked as a nurse in Iowa City, well known to be the capital of all great-looking girls in our state. I mean, you had girls there whod been to Paris and London walking around in heartbreaking Levi cut-offs openly reading Kerouac and Ginsberg. I spent as much time there as I could.

Linda was a little bit drunk and a little bit sentimental. She smelled good, too. Very good.

You ever wish you could go back, Sam, you know, to when we were in high school?

All the time.

I thought it was going to be so neat. You know, growing up and going out on my own.

I paid all the attention I could. The feel of her flesh beneath her silk blouse and silk slip made certain parts of my body more alert than others. There was a bonus to her slender but very female form. I liked her. Always had. She was one of those quiet, decent girls who, oddly enough, looked better with eyeglasses than without them. Nobody paid a lot of attention to her back then is what Im trying to say. But on hayrack rides and at skating parties and on Fourth of July starburst keggers, wed drifted together sometimes, friends and maybe a little more, but never enough little more that it ever went anywhere.

You still have your ragtop?

I sure do.

I dont suppose youd feel like going for a ride?

I sure would.

I have to tell you something, though.

She didnt finish the sentence, leaving me to wonder what she wanted to say but didnt quite have the courage to. (a) I have to tell you, though, that Im three months preggers. (but) I have to tell you, though, that I somehow picked up a venereal disease. (can) I have to tell you, though, that if I meet somebody whos taller than you, Im going to dump you in a minute.