Mr Peanut - Adam Ross [104]
“Nothing happened with her.”
“No, your honor, we were just friends, the Lossmans and us. We went boating on Lake Erie one day and decided to stop at that small island near Put-in-Bay, and Julee and I decided to disappear into the woods for a while—over an hour, actually—and yes, we’d slept together several years before. Sure, her husband slapped her face after our little jaunt. But nothing happened while we were gone, your honor, I promise.”
Sheppard shrugged.
“And, of course, the lovely Susan Hayes. How long were you two together?”
“We were on and off for three years.”
“Right up until March 1954. We do need to talk about her, don’t we?”
“Why’s that?”
“She was, after all, your motive for killing Marilyn.”
Sheppard and Susan Hayes were driving back to Los Angeles from San Diego. They’d attended an acquaintance’s wedding, though Sheppard couldn’t recall the groom’s name. It was nighttime and nearly freezing outside. The convertible Sheppard had borrowed from Dr. Miller—an MG—had a broken heater, and the wiper on the driver’s side was shot, so he’d taken the top down for visibility in fog that had rolled in as they drove up Highway 1.
“Can you see?” Susan said.
“Sometimes,” he answered over the motor’s snorkeling, which limited their conversation and was fine by Sheppard, who had nothing to say. As for whatever Susan said, he didn’t want to hear it, though she wouldn’t stop.
“You could switch it.” And when Sheppard indicated his ear, she added, “The wiper blade.”
He turned to face her. She was sitting with her arms crossed and her back against the passenger door, mildly furious and half-amazed. Her thin features were paled by the dim dashboard light, sharpened and predatory, revealed in the dark as the old hawk-lady she’d become decades hence. That they were building toward a fight only married people had, like he and Marilyn, was off-putting. Yet it suddenly dawned on him that next to Marilyn, he’d never been involved with another woman for a longer time.
“Then you could put the top up,” she said.
Where was the woman Susan had been three years ago?
Regardless, it wasn’t a bad idea. He was cold himself, though not unpleasantly so, and several minutes later he stopped at an overlook, a gravel promontory bulging over the Pacific. He left the headlights on to see, then checked the blade. It was fastened by two Phillips head screws, so he searched the trunk for tools (only a tire iron) and then stood problem solving by the closed trunk, watching the fog’s underbelly slide across the headlights and arriving, after a moment, at other means. He came around and leaned inside, and Susan’s look of disgust nearly resembled fear. Reaching behind the wheel, he turned off the ignition and pulled the keys. The car shook to silence with a tremor down the chassis, and all they could hear now was the punt and sigh of the ocean, a ceaseless concussing that, blow after blow, would erode millimeters of coastline until one day this road itself, he thought, would dissolve and slip into the sea.
“What are you doing?” she said. When he didn’t answer, she simply faced forward.
He held the key to the light. The flat edge was sharp enough to grip the screw’s slot, though the metal seemed too thick—but it did fit, just barely. He removed the first two screws with little difficulty and placed the warped blade on the hood, refusing even to glance at Susan lest she feel any more haughty about her solution. The second blade looked good though its screw was welded with grit, so he used the key and tried prying it loose, but it slipped and dug into his thumb, hacking the skin back, the pain zinging down his arm. Sheppard dropped the ring and, when he heard the passenger