Locked rooms - Laurie R. King [138]
“Long time ago,” he said.
“Yes, I understand. Well, thank you—” I started to say, but he was not finished.
“. . . and you know how it's hard to be sure about details, when things happened, unless you pin them down at the time?”
“Yes?” I said by way of encouragement, settling down again on the hard seat.
“Well, after we found the brake rod—and remember, that was months later—end of December, first part of January—I got to thinking back. Like I said, I'd been the one patched the car's tyre, and when I heard a little later that it'd gone off the cliff just down the road, all I could think of was I hadn't fastened the wheel down strong enough and it fell off and I'd killed them. Can't tell you what a relief it was to see all four wheels still on the car—the rubber melted, of course, but there. So the day itself made what you might call an impression on me, you understand?”
I nodded encouragement.
“It's like there's a light on the day, and yeah, I forgot about it there for a while, but once I thought about it again, I could see a lot of details. Like those wheels, and where Dick stuck that hunk of rod, and that it was the afternoon a girl I was sweet on come by and brought me a cake she'd made, that kind of thing, you know?”
I nodded again, wondering where this tale was leading us.
“So, one of the things I remembered later, I'm pretty sure it was that same day, but if you told me it wasn't, I couldn't call you a liar, you know what I'm saying? But I think it was the same afternoon that the man with the scars was there.”
It was a good thing I was already seated; the thump of reaction would have put me on the ground. “Scars,” I repeated breathlessly.
“Yeah, burn scars, all over his face. Not real heavy, you know, and his eyes and nose were okay. Just that the skin was funny-looking, all shiny.”
“And his eyebrows were gone.”
“Not completely, but they were kind of patchy, like his moustache. Even the front of the scalp was uneven, like. And they weren't pink, so they probably weren't new. I was sixteen then and the war had just started up so it was in all the papers, and when I saw him I wondered at first if he'd got them in the war, then realised it was probably just some kind of accident.”
“What did he want?”
“Nothing, as far as I could see. I'd just finished putting the wheel on and noticed him standing about, and he was still there when I'd moved the car and helped another customer. So I mentioned it to my brother, thinking maybe the guy was looking to steal something. Dick laughed at me, said I'd been reading too many cheap stories, look at the guy, did he look like someone who needed to steal things? He went over and talked to him, turned out he was just waiting for a ride he'd set up. And his ride must've come, because he wasn't there next time I came out.”
“But you remembered the fellow, later.”
“When that cut rod got me thinking, yeah. But like I said, I can't be a hundred percent sure it was even the same day, just around then. And the guy didn't look like someone who'd crawl under a car with a hacksaw.”
“Dressed well?”
“Yeah, like a dandy.”
A dandy. “Did . . . by any chance, was he wearing a diamond ring?” This was feeding information to a witness, but it couldn't be helped, and imagination or no, I didn't think the mechanic was terribly suggestible.
The grimy face looked startled, then the eyebrows came down in thought. “He was, now I come to think about it. How'd you know?”
“A friend mentioned him,” I told him, more or less truthfully: The scars explained why Mr Gordimer's grey-haired intruder with a diamond ring had kept his back turned, only revealing his face when he spoke over his shoulder, showing a scrap of moustache. “You haven't seen him since?”
“That I haven't, and I think I'd have noticed.”
“I imagine you would,” I said. “Can we just check the insurance man's business card?”
He led me inside the tiny building, rooting around in his cash-drawer for a minute before coming up with a slip of white pasteboard identical to the one the man had