5432852385743

closest thing to fireworks came just after ten o’clock, when someone, possibly the same kid who
slashed my convertible’s tires, torched an old Studebaker that had been sitting abandoned in the
parking lot of the Montgomery Ward warehouse for the last week or so. Fort Worth FD came to put it
out, and everyone turned out to watch.
Hail Columbia.
The next morning I walked down to inspect the burned-out hulk, which sat sadly on the puddled
remains of its tires. I spotted a telephone booth near one of the warehouse loading bays, and on
impulse called Ellie Dockerty, getting the operator to find the number and connect me. I did it partly
because I was lonely and homesick, mostly because I wanted news of Sadie.
Ellie answered on the second ring, and she seemed delighted to hear my voice. Standing there in an
already roasting phone booth, with Mercedes Street sleeping off the Glorious Fourth behind me and
the smell of charred car in my nostrils, that made me smile.
“Sadie’s fine. I’ve had two postcards and a letter. She’s working at Harrah’s as a waitress.” She
lowered her voice. “I believe as a cocktail waitress, but the schoolboard will never hear that from me.”
I visualized Sadie’s long legs in a short cocktail waitress’s skirt. I visualized businessmen trying to
see the tops of her stockings or into the valley of her décolletage as she bent to put drinks on a table.
“She asked after you,” Ellie said, and that made me smile again. “I didn’t want to tell her that
you’d sailed off the edge of the earth as far as anyone in Jodie knew, so I said you were busy with your
book and doing fine.”
I hadn’t added a word to The Murder Place in a month or more, and on the two occasions when I’d
picked up the manuscript and tried to read it, it all seemed to be written in third-century Punic. “I’m
glad that she’s doing well.”
“Her residency requirement will be fulfilled by the end of the month, but she’s decided to stay out
there until the end of summer vacation. She says the tips are very good.”
“Did you ask her for a picture of her soon-to-be ex-husband?”
“Just before she left. She said she has none. She believes her parents have several, but she refused to
write them about it. Said they’d never given up on the marriage, and it would give them false hope.
She also said she believed you were overreacting. Wildly overreacting was the phrase she used.”
That sounded like my Sadie. Only she wasn’t mine anymore. Now she was just hey waitress, bring us
another round . . . and bend a little lower this time. Every man has a jealous-bone, and mine was twanging
hard on the morning of July fifth.
“George? I have no doubt she still cares for you, and it might not be too late to clear this mess up.”
I thought of Lee Oswald, who wouldn’t make his attempt on General Edwin Walker’s life for
another nine months. “It’s too early,” I said.
“I beg pardon?”
“Nothing. It’s good to talk to you, Miz Ellie, but pretty soon the operator’s going to come on the
line asking for more money, and I’m all out of quarters.”
“I don’t suppose you could get down this way for a burger and a shake, could you? At the diner? If
so, I’ll invite Deke Simmons to join us. He asks about you almost every day.”
The thought of going back to Jodie and seeing my friends from the high school was probably the
only thing that could have cheered me up that morning. “Absolutely. Would this evening be too
soon? Say five o’clock?”
“It’s perfect. We country mice eat early.”
“Fine. I’ll be there. My treat.”
“I’ll match you for it.”