There was no sunlight inside Coon Hollow. It smelled of beer and salty pretzels and cigarettes. There was one glowing sign for Bud Light above the bathroom door on the far wall. Gordon Holcombe was bellied up at the bar, head down, shoulders hunched. There were maybe six other folks at the bar, either talking in low voices or as silent as Gordon.
Gordon glanced up when the front door opened and sunlight poured in. He watched the four of them approach. Fact is, Ruth thought, he didn’t look the least bit interested in anything except the drink he was sloshing around in his glass.
“Gordon,” Dix said.
Gordon glanced at Dix briefly before looking back down. “Since you’re all cops, I doubt you know what this is.” He held up the glass, swirled the scotch around. “This is The Macallan, Highland scotch whiskey, eighteen years old. It’s considered the Rolls-Royce of single malts. Our barkeep’s father orders it special for me. My last bottle is low so I can’t offer you any. Dix, if you find out who murdered Helen, I’ll buy you a bottle of The Macallan for Christmas. Any of you want a beer?”
“No, Gordon.”
“Then perhaps, Dix, you can tell me why you’ve got B.B. following me? He’s sitting in his cruiser right across the street. Afraid I was going to take off since I’m so damned guilty?”
Dix said, “Tell us what Helen said to you when she called you last night.”
“Helen called me often.”
“Last night, Gordon, or do you want me to get a warrant for the phone records?”
Ruth thought she saw Gordon flinch, and then he stared down into his glass again and swished the scotch around, watching it film the sides of the glass.
“All right, so she called me. I didn’t tell you in front of Chappy. He would have laughed his head off while promising to visit me in jail. He’d also volunteer to stick me with a lethal injection.”
“Helen’s call, Gordon.”
He suddenly looked old, and somehow smaller. He sighed so deeply it made him cough. “It was only a short phone call, Dix, nothing more. God in Heaven, I can’t believe she’s gone. There’s some maniac out there, some crazy man who hates me, who hates Stanislaus, who wants to destroy everything.”
Ruth said, “How very odd, Dr. Holcombe. You believe it’s all about you, and no one else. Don’t you think that’s a rather narrow view? After all, you’re sitting here drinking your fine single malt scotch, quite alive, while Erin Bushnell, Walt McGuffey, and Helen Rafferty are dead.”
Dr. Holcombe looked confused for a moment, then said, “Of course I care, dammit. I didn’t mean—Are you sure you don’t want something to drink?”
Savich said, “No, thank you, Dr. Holcombe. Why don’t we all go over to that booth?”
There were half a dozen ancient booths lining two sides of the room. The vinyl was slippery and cold, the cracks so large one could easily lose a wallet. Ruth allowed Dr. Holcombe to scoot in first, then essentially locked him in by sitting next to him on the outside. He didn’t appear to notice.
“It’s going to start snowing soon,” he said into his glass. “I’m wondering when I leave here with all this scotch in me whether I’ll be able to get back to Stanislaus. You know the media are there, Dix. Soon our donors will be on the line, asking to talk to me. What am I going to tell them? That their director is a murder suspect? I can’t even imagine Helen being gone, much less dead.” He raised pain-glazed eyes to Dix’s face. “She’s always been there for me, my guardian angel. After I left Tara, I was going to my office, but I couldn’t stand the thought of it. Helen wasn’t there, you see. You’ve got to believe me, I didn’t kill her.” He lowered his forehead to the table.
Savich went to the bar and asked for four coffees and a cup of tea.
“If that’s true, Gordon, you’d best start convincing me you didn’t. Tell us about Helen’s phone call.”
“I want another drink first.”
When Savich came back to the booth, he heard Dix say, “No more, Gordon. You need to stop with that stuff. Here’s Agent Savich with some coffee.”
Savich handed him a cup. Gordon stared at it, gave a little shudder. He picked up his scotch glass, tipped it, but it was empty.
“Talk to me, Gordon. Don’t even consider lying, or I’ll give Chappy a free pass to have a field day.”
“All right. Helen was whispering on the phone—it was absurd, really, her whispering like that. She told me she was worried for me, that I had to be careful. She told me you and Agent Warnecki and the other two FBI agents were snooping around, asking her about our affair.”