LITMIR.BIZ

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was thirty or so, white, skinny, and had the ability to edit most words to a single syllable.

      “The prelim’s out front, Ryder,” Clair said, looking up from a copy of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Monthly, required reading for pathologists.

      “I wanted to ask you something else.”

      “And?”

      I shrugged. “I forgot.”

      Clair pulled off her reading glasses, studied me with the big blue miracles.

      “Maybe because you’re not getting enough sleep. You’ve got dark circles under your eyes.”

      “It’s the Franklin case. Nothing’s moving ahead.”

      “Take vitamins and eat right. Remember to sleep.”

      “Thanks, Mom.”

      She frowned, but said nothing. I turned to leave, then tapped my forehead, like I’d been hit with a sudden thought.

      “I was at a Channel 14 party the other night, Clair. Formal, all the bigwigs. I half-expected to see you there with the social types.”

      “If I never see another champagne fountain it’ll be too soon. Out of your element, weren’t you?”

      “If I never see another tux it’ll be too soon. You wouldn’t know a family named Kincannon, would you?”

      Her face darkened. “Why?”

      “People treated them like royalty. I’ve never seen so much bowing and scraping.”

      Clair turned to the housekeeper. “That’s fine, Lula. You can go.”

      “Be bact’mar.”

      Lula rolled the mop and bucket out the door. Clair set the CDC report on a counter.

      “The Kincannons have money, Carson. It equates to power: lots of money, lots of power. Some people have an automatic reflex when they get near power. Their knees bend.”

      “A lot of politicos were there, too.”

      “Political knees bend further and more often. She was there, too, wasn’t she: an older woman, white hair, chunky, aloof?”

      “Yes. May-bell-line?”

      “Maylene. Yes, she would have been. She’ll always be there, in some way or another.”

      I heard something off-key in Clair’s voice, anger maybe, or resignation.

      “Some way or another?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

      She looked at her watch, frowned. “I’ve got two pathologists down with the flu. I’ve got the day’s second post in three minutes. Look, the Kincannons do a lot of giving to the community and the region. Hundreds of thousands of dollars for parks, health-care institutions, schools, law enforcement …an incredible amount of money.”

      “And so …?”

      “The Kincannons …well, only some of the truly wealthy can give with both hands, Ryder.”

      Her words seemed cryptic; Clair was rarely cryptic.

      “You mean the Kincannons have so much they can shovel it hand over hand into the community?”

      “Think about it. But elsewhere, please. I’ve got to get to work.”

      I sucked in a breath, said, “How about Buck Kincannon?”

      “Is there a specific question there?”

      “No,” I admitted. There are about a hundred.

      Clair picked up the phone on the counter, asked for the body to be brought to the table. She turned to me.

      “Buck Kincannon is the current golden boy of the family, forty-eight karats of flawless Kincannon breeding. Last month’s Alabama Times magazine listed him as one of the top ten eligible bachelors in the state.”

      Not what I needed to hear.

      “Current golden boy, Clair?”

      “Maylene Kincannon runs that family like a competitive event. Next month it may be Nelson on the pedestal. Or Racine, unless he gets blitzed and slips off. Race likes women and liquor, probably not in that order. Now, unless you’re going to assist, it’s time to skedaddle.”

      I nodded, headed for the door. I was stepping into the hall when she called my name. I stopped, turned.

      “The Kincannons, Ryder. They haven’t stepped outside any limits, right? You’re not investigating anything, anyone?”

      “Just natural curiosity about a lifestyle I’ll never know.”

      She gave me the long look again. “It’s mostly fiction. Stay away from those folks, Carson. There’s nothing to be gained there.”

      I picked up the report at the front desk, then stepped into a day more like August than June, heat rippling from the asphalt surface of the parking lot.

      Stepped outside any limits …

      Walking to the car I revisited Clair’s phrase, a curious assemblage of words. And that throw-away line about staying away from the Kincannons …

      Was that some kind of warning?

      You’re losing it, I thought, slipping behind the wheel. The only warning here is to keep your imagination in check.

       CHAPTER 14

      Mrs Kayla Rudolnick was the mother of Dr Bernard Rudolnick, Harwood’s victim. A thin woman in her late sixties, she wore a brown pantsuit and pink slippers, holding a cigarette in one hand, a glass ashtray in the other. She’d apologized for having her hair in curlers and led us to a couch with antimacassars on the back. The room smelled of Ben-Gay and nicotine. She switched off the television, a soap opera.

      “It was just a phone call. But I recall her saying she was a reporter.”

      “Taneesha Franklin?”

      Smoke plumed from her nostrils. “The Taneesha is what I remember.”

      “What did Ms Franklin want to know?” I asked.

      Mrs Rudolnick’s eyes tightened behind a wall of smoke. “I told her to leave me alone. Bernie was gone. Never call me again.”

      Mrs Rudolnick plucked a pink tissue from her sleeve, lifted her bifocals and blotted her eyes.

      “He was a good man, my son. Brilliant mind, good heart.”

      “I’m sure.”

      “He had his problems. But we all do, don’t we?”

      I shot Harry a glance. We’d come back to that.

      “The doctor wasn’t married?” I asked.

      “When he was twenty-eight, again when he was thirty-six. Both marriages lasted under two years. He couldn’t pick women, they both cleaned him out like a closet. Two times he started over.”

      A photo sat on the table beside me: Rudolnick and Mama maybe a half-decade back, his arms around her from the back. Like his mother, Rudolnick had sad Slavic eyes and a nose-centric face. His hair was black and thinning, brushed straight back. His white shirt was buttoned to the Adam’s apple, the collar starched. He looked like he could have been dropped into the 1950s and no one would have noticed.

      Harry and I had hoped a wife might provide insight into Rudolnick’s behavior and patterns. But the good doctor had been five years gone from marriage and lived alone. I said, “So his last wife might not be able to tell us much about his life.”

      “Shari? He met her at a bar. You don’t meet decent

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