“Do you believe that story Atheneum McGee told?” I asked Geof on the way to his house, “About how he was blown out of a cave in Vietnam and wandered in the jungle? Do you think that really happened?”
“Who knows? We’ll check with the army to get their version of what happened to him. We’ll see if they think his story could be true.”
“It’s possible, I suppose.”
“It’s also possible he went AWOL and he used that story to cover his tracks.”
“Yes, but if he lied, he took an incredible chance that the army would catch him. I mean, he couldn’t have spent that money in the brig. I wonder if they could have executed him for desertion?”
“Ah-ha,” Geof said wryly, “at last, a motive.”
He turned into his drive.
“Come to think of it,” I said, “we don’t know much . . . even if he was Atheneum McGee.”
“What do you know about him, Jenny?”
“Not much more than you do, I expect. At the time of the sale of Lobster McGee’s property to the developers, there was a question as to whether all the heirs had been properly notified. Atheneum’s name came up then. I remember because his name was so odd. And the lawyers had to check carefully to be sure he hadn’t left any heirs of his own when he died, supposedly, in Vietnam.”
“Did he?”
“I don’t remember.”
We walked quickly up to his house. Within minutes, we were seated across from one other at the kitchen counter, eating braunschweiger on whole wheat.
“I wonder,” I mused aloud, “if the army, or whatever branch of the service it was, actually declared him dead. Or just presumed dead. He made it sound as if a sergeant had identified a body as his and shipped that body home to be buried by the other McGees.”
“If he had only been presumed dead,” Geof said, “they would have had to wait seven years to have him declared officially kaput.”
“Wasn’t his peat-uncle Lobster declared dead on the basis of a presumption? I mean, they never found his body, did they? But nobody waited seven years to say he was dead. If they had, we wouldn’t be building Liberty Harbor now.”
“I’m trying to recall.” Geof picked up a piece of braunschweiger that had fallen onto his plate. “Seems to me that was a case in which it was pretty clear as to exactly what had happened. The Coast Guard said he drowned, I don’t remember how they knew. But it must have been like what happens when an airplane crashes: they’re ninety-nine percent sure they know who was on board, and it’s pretty obvious what happened, so they feel safe in declaring that passenger John Doe died in the crash, even if his body was burned to a crisp and blown into the next state.”
I put down my sandwich. “Please.”
“They must have been equally positive about Lobster,” Geof continued imperturbably. “Or maybe they found his body. Maybe it washed up in Freeport.” He smiled and swallowed the last bite. “I don’t remember. It wasn’t a case that landed in a file folder on my desk. Listen, I got my own dead body to worry about, fresh and on view. His great-uncle is no concern of mine.”
He removed his plate to the sink, rinsed it and placed it in the dishwasher. I had Wife Number Two to thank for that good training, previous wives not being without their uses to the next woman in a man’s life.
The phone rang.
“I’ll get it,” he said.
“Yeah, Ailey,” he said next, then he listened for a few moments. “What do you mean, no car? How’d he get to church? Did you check the cab company? They didn’t? No buses out that way on Sunday. He must have walked. Yeah, right, or hitched. So what about the motel?”
Again, he listened.
“Hell,” I heard him say, “do we at least know where he came from? All right, hang tight. I’m on my way.”
I walked him to the front door.
“Well,” Geof said, “he had a wallet on him with an Illinois driver’s license in another name, but that’s no surprise. If he was hiding from the army, I’d expect that. But he also had an old ID card with his real, name on it.”
“Atheneum.”
“Yes.” He patted his pockets for his car keys. “That wallet was all he had on him, Ailey tells me. No car keys, no room key. Hell, maybe he walked all the way from Illinois.”
“And slept in the park?”
“He smelted like he slept in the men’s room.” Geof leaned down to give me a quick but imaginative kiss, I closed the door behind him, kicked off my high, heels, and curled up on the living room floor with a pile of Foundation applications.
Denied. Denied. Maybe.
My eyes lifted from an application that put forth a proposal for teaching French and German for travelers to the inmates of our state penitentiaries. I scratched my foot, but it was something in my brain that was itching. I forced my eyes back down to the typewritten application. I wondered which foreign phrases the volunteers would teach the prisoners. “The pen of my aunt is on the table” might not be nearly so useful as “I have a gun. Give me the money and the keys to your car.” Denied.
I looked up again, to stare out the window into the front yard. It was brown and dry. How did Atheneum McGee know that a sergeant had identified another body as his own?
I dumped the applications off my lap and padded to the phone. Though I had asked for Geof when I was connected with the police station, I had to settle for Ailey Mason.
“Ailey,” I said, “where, exactly, in Illinois was Atheneum McGee from?”
“Springfield,” he said grudgingly. “Why?”
“Thank you,” I said and hung up. I looked up another number in the phonebook and, hesitating only a moment to ask myself if I was sure I knew what I was doing, I dialed it.
“Yes?” a woman’s voice replied.
“This is Jennifer Cain.” I gave her a second to place me. “I’m the woman who accompanied Detective Bushfield to your house when your husband died.”
“Oh, yes.”
“Mrs. Reich, I think you ought to know that Atheneum McGee was murdered this afternoon in the Church of the Risen Christ.”
I heard her breath taken in sharply.
“He’s dead?” And then, for the first time in our short acquaintance, Annie Reich expressed emotion. “Damn him! What about my money!”