AllFreeNovel
Share Us
With that done, the little nicotine bell begins to ring. She lights up, places her portable ashtray on the console, and gets rolling. It’s time to start knocking on doors. Starting with Hugh Clippard’s.
2
The Victorians on the graceful downhill curve of Ridge Road are nice, but the ones on Laurel Close deeper into Sugar Heights are nicer. If, that is, one’s definition of nice includes not just expensive but really expensive. Holly couldn’t care less. As far as she’s concerned, if the appliances in her apartment work and the windows don’t leak, all is fine; a groundskeeper (or a crew of them) would just be an annoyance. There is such a fellow outside of the Clippard residence, which is a Tudor with a big, velvety lawn. The groundskeeper is mowing the grass as she pulls in at the curb.
Holly thinks, A new millionaire parks and watches a man on a riding mower clip the Clippards’ grass.
She calls Hugh Clippard’s number. She’s prepared to leave a message, but he answers and listens while Holly gives a brief version of her interest in Cary Dressler.
“What a great young man!” Clippard exclaims when she finishes. He is, Holly will discover, an exclamatory sort of fellow. “Happy to talk to you about him. Come on around back. My wife and I are out by the pool.”
Holly pulls into the driveway and gives the groundskeeper a wave. He gives her a return flick and keeps on trucking. Or mowing. For the life of her Holly can’t see what there is to mow. To her the grass already looks like the surface of a freshly vacuumed billiard table. She takes her iPad—it has a bigger screen for the picture she wants to show Clippard—and walks around the house, pausing to peek into a dining room with a table that looks long enough to seat a football team (or a bowling league).
Hugh Clippard and his wife are on matching loungers in the shade of a vast blue umbrella. The pool, the same shade of blue, isn’t Olympic size, but it’s no kiddie pool, either. Clippard is wearing sandals and tight-fitting red trunks. He sees her and bounces up. His belly is flat and rippled with a modified sixpack. His hair is long and white, slicked back sleek and wet against his skull. Holly’s first impression is that he’s seventy. When he gets close enough to shake hands, she sees that he’s quite a bit older, but in awesome shape for a Golden Oldie.
He grins at her hesitation to take his hand, showing perfect white teeth that probably didn’t come cheap. “We’re both vaccinated, Ms. Gibney, and we plan to get the boosters as soon as the CDC approves them. May I assume you have also had the jab?”
“Yes.” Holly shakes his hand and lowers her mask.
“This is my wife, Midge.”
The woman under the big umbrella is at least twenty years younger than Clippard, but not in such sculpted shape. There’s a little round bulge under her one-piece bathing suit. She takes off her sunglasses, gives Holly a desultory wave with them, then returns to her paperback, which is titled, not very subtly, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.
“Come on in the kitchen,” Clippard says. “It’s sweltering out here. You okay, Midge?”
The only answer is another desultory wave. This time without looking up. She clearly doesn’t give a f*ck.
The kitchen—reached through glass sliders—is about what Holly expected. The fridge is a Sub-Zero. The clock over the granite counter is a Perigold. Clippard pours them each a glass of iced tea and invites her to tell him in more detail about why she’s here. She does, touching on Bonnie—the Jet Mart connection—but focusing on Cary.
“Did he say anything to you about his plans? Confide in any way? I’m asking because Ms. Haverty said you guys were his favorite league to bowl with.”
Holly doesn’t expect any help from his answer. There might be something, never say never and all that, but one look at Midge Clippard has told her that she’s not the old woman Imani McGuire saw cleaning out Ellen Craslow’s trailer.
“Cary!” Clippard exclaims, shaking his head. “He was a hell of a good guy, I can tell you that much, and he could roll a ball, too!” He raises a finger. “But he never took advantage. He always matched his skills to those of the teams we bowled against.”
“How often did he substitute in?”
“Pretty often!” Clippard adds a chuckle that is in its own way exclamatory. “They don’t call us the Golden Oldies for nothing! Someone was usually out with a strained back, pulled hammy, stiff neck, some darn old thing. Then we’d yell for Cary and give him a round of applause if he could roll in with us. He wasn’t always able to, but he usually managed. We liked him and he liked us. Want to hear a secret?”
“I love secrets.” This is true.
Hugh Clippard lowers his voice to a near-whisper that is exclamatory in its own way. “Some of us used to buy weed from him! He didn’t always have great stuff, but it was usually good stuff. Small Ball wouldn’t touch it, but most of us weren’t averse to a joint or a bowl. Back then it wasn’t legal, you know.”
“Who’s Small Ball?”
“Roddy Harris. We called him that because he rolled with a ten-pounder. Most of us used twelves or fourteens.”
“Was Mr. Harris allergic to marijuana?”
“No, just crazy!” Clippard shouts, and bursts out laughing. “A good guy and a decent bowler, but nutty as a fruitcake! We also called him Mr. Meat! Roddy makes that Atkins guy look like a vegetarian! Claims meat restores brain cells and certain vegetable products, cannabis included, destroys them.”
Clippard stretches and the sixpack ripples, but she sees wrinkles encroaching on the insides of his arms. Time, she thinks, really is the avenger.
“Gosh, this takes me back! Most of these guys are gone! When I started with the Oldies, I was teaching at Bell College, living downtown and day-trading on the side. Now I’m in the investment business full-time, and as you can see, business has been good!” He sweeps his arm around, presumably indicating the kitchen with its high-priced appliances, the backyard pool, perhaps even the younger wife. Who’s not quite young enough to be called a trophy wife, Holly gives him credit for that.
“Trump is an idiot and I’m glad he’s gone, dee-lighted, the guy couldn’t find his ass with both hands and a flashlight, but he was good for the markets. More iced tea?”
“No, thank you. This is fine. Very refreshing.”
