“Don’t be ridiculous, Cal,” Paul said. “Rob doesn’t dislike anyone. It would take too much mental energy and he’s got to conserve all he’s got. I’ll call him for you, all right?”
“Thank you, Paul. I’m off to invite Miss Geraldine. She’s had a bad cold, but she’s better now. I’m taking some homemade coffee cake to her. My father admires her so very much, you know.”
“Beats me why,” Paul said. He added to me, “Miss Geraldine Tucker is our mayor and a retired high school math teacher. She also heads up the Edgerton Citizen Coalition, better known as the BITEASS League. Its members range in age from in vitro to ninety-three- that’s Mother Marco, who still owns the Union 76 gas station downtown.
“And no, there’s no correlation between the letters and the name of the group. Didn’t your dad come up with that, Cal?”
“It was my mom, actually.”
“Your mother? Elaine?” There was surprise and disbelief in Maggie’s voice.
“Why, yes,” Cal said. “My mom’s got a great sense of humor. She’s also very smart. Actually you, Mr. MacDougal, are the only one coming who isn’t a member of the League.”
I said, “You need to come up with words to fit the letters.”
“People have tried,” Paul said. “Is that all, Cal? We’re really busy here. Maggie is acting like I’m responsible, like I drove Jilly off that cliff. She’s asking all sorts of questions.”
Maggie waved her ballpoint pen at him, before turning back to Cal Tarcher. “Before you go, Cal, did you happen to see Jilly last Tuesday evening?”
“There was lots of fog that night,” Cal said, looking, I thought, at her Bally shoes. “I remember Cotter’s date canceling because she didn’t want to drive in it.”
“Jilly went over about midnight,” I said. “Was there fog then?”
“No,” Maggie said. “It.was nearly gone then.” She added, “It’s very changeable around here-the fog flits through like a bride’s veil or it settles thick as a blanket, then all of a sudden it vanishes. It was like that last Tuesday night. Cotter’s date was driving to your house?”
Cal nodded. She was, I saw, finally making eye contact with me. “Cotter likes his dates to pick him up,” she said, seeing my raised eyebrow. “He says it makes women feel powerful if they’re the ones driving. If they get annoyed with him they can just drop him off and leave him on the side of the road, no harm done.”
“So did you see Jilly or not?” Maggie asked. She didn’t like Cal Tarcher, I thought, looking from one woman to the other. I wondered why. Cal Tarcher seemed perfectly harmless to me, just painfully shy, just the opposite of Maggie, and that was perhaps why she didn’t like her. Cal Tarcher made her impatient.
“Yes, I saw her,” Cal said. She took two steps toward the door. It seemed that now she wanted to get out of there. “It was around nine-thirty. She was driving her Porsche down Fifth Avenue, playing her car stereo real loud. I was eating a late dinner at The Edwardian. There were maybe ten, twelve people there. We all got up and went outside to wave to Jilly. She was singing at the top of her lungs.”
“What was she singing?” I asked. “Songs from the musical Oklahoma. And laughing. Yes, I remember she was laughing. She shouted at everyone, told them she was going to go serenade all the dead folk in the cemetery. Then she did a U-turn and headed back east on Fifth Avenue.”
“That’s what everyone else said, more or less.” Maggie added, “The cemetery is just south of the main part of town, really close to the ocean, so it’s possible that’s what she did. But then, much later, she was driving north up the coast road.”
I remembered that Rob Morrison lived south of town. No, I thought, Jilly wouldn’t break her marriage vows, not Jilly. She wanted to have a kid. She wouldn’t screw around with anyone else. But I knew I wouldn’t be able to leave it alone. I’d have to ask Maggie.
“Maybe she went to the cemetery and something happened to her,” Cal said.