"Nothing.
Bare as a baby's ass. The old lady's personal papers. Nothing else.
Not an airmail stamp or a copper penny. Nothing."
"Burned
up?" I asked.
"Hold
your horses," Connley admonished.
Chastened,
I returned to my wall.
"Some
of it, the porcelain, it turned out was still out on loan to museums.
About two million worth. Never for the life of me been able to
imagine two mil worth of dishes, but you know, to each his own. Even
with that, there should have been about three mil in coins and stamps
in there. Nothing." He sliced the air with his arm. "Not
one damn thing."
"So
her relatives are raising hell," Carl suggested.
Connley
wagged his big head.
"They
could give a shit. The stuff was insured. They just wanted their
money. The fire just saved them the trouble of selling the stuff.
Hell, as I remember, the property itself sold for three mil or so
even without the house. It was the insurance company that was losing
its mind. They were looking for any excuse not to pay. Negligence.
Arson. Any damn thing."
He
waited to see if I would interrupt again. When I didn't, he went on.
"So,
about this time, Stan—my partner Stan Roker—gets off his big ass
and gets around to checking with local tradesmen. You know, the
old lady didn't go out, so Stan figured she must have had stuff sent
in and that maybe those folks knew something. He was mostly just
trying to cover our asses. Make damn sure we did everything we
could—and guess what?"
He
gave me a grin. "You can ask what now," he said. "What?"
"Stan
turns up this kid, David Lund, who works for Hansen's Market. It's
not there anymore, but at the time, it was a family market about four
blocks from the old lady's house. Seems the kid had been delivering
groceries and whatever else the old lady wanted for the past couple
of years. The kid claims that when he first started, he used to
deliver them to the old woman herself, but that since about September
of seventy-nine the old lady had a live-in companion. A young girl.
Dark, under twenty. Said her name was Michelle. No last name, just
Michelle."
"Anybody
else know about this girl?" asked Carl.
"Nary
a soul. We checked them all. Meter readers, social workers,
everybody. Nothing. All we got is the kid. And the kid's been in a
couple of scrapes with the law, minor drug things, nothin' serious,
but just enough so we're not real sure what to do with his girl
story. So—to give credit where it's due, Stan, it was his idea,
wants to know how the old lady went about hiring this mystery girl. I
mean, as far as we know, she hasn't been in public for a couple of
years. We check with the local agencies. Far as they know the old
lady drove off the last housekeeper a couple of years before. None of
them would have worked with her if she'd asked, which she didn't "
Connley
gave an exaggerated shrug.
"The
paper," Carl suggested.
"Exactamundo.
First week in September seventy-nine. There it was, an ad for a
live-in companion, the old lady's phone number and all."
"Oooh,"
I said.
"Oooh
is right," Connley agreed. "So Stan and I roust the Lund
kid again. He's still on probation, so we can push him pretty hard.
He sticks with his story. We drag the kid down to Madison PD and run
him through the mug books for a couple of days. Nothing. By this
time, the family is really pressuring the department to sign off on
this thing so the estate can be settled. There's a lot of heat being
passed around, and most of it is coming right at Stan and me. Chief
Petersen don't like this Lund kid or his story one bit. He's on our
asses to tie the thing up. Anyway, as a last resort, we sit the Lund
kid down with a police artist and come up with a likeness."
I
overcame the urge to pull Carl's likeness from my coat pocket.
"Identikit?"
asked Carl.
"Yeah.
Pretty primitive compared to what they got today, but in those days,
poor ignorant bastards like us thought it was the cat's ass. Sooo—-we
just started passing the likeness around when the word comes down
from above that the case is closed. Chief Petersen decides that we
can't hold up the wheels of progress on the word of some stoner kid.
Yeah, he's a bit intrigued by the newspaper ad we found, but like he
says, that was then, this is now. Most likely the girl took off a
long time ago. The old lady was notoriously hard on help. The Lund
kid's story that the girl was there as late as two weeks before the
fire don't hold water for the chief. He figures the kid is just
looking to get his name in the paper. Tells us to wrap it up and
submit a final report."
Connley
now was visibly excited. The story had gained a momentum of its own.
He wouldn't require further prompting.
"So,
Stan and I are back in the office the next day huntin'-and-peckin' up
a report when the phone rings. It's the trainee of the month from
over at the Seventh Street station. Been on the job all of a month -
or so. Fresh out of the university. Back there in the early eighties
was when you started to have to have a college degree to even apply.
Nowadays, they all got degrees in Fire Science, whatever the hell
that is, or forensics or some such crap. Anyway, the kid, I can't
remember his name, he says he just saw the likeness on the station
board and says he thinks he's seen the girl before. Well, you know, I
figure the kid is just trying to make a name for himself. Draw a
little limelight. That kind of thing can make quite a difference
at promotion time, if the brass remember your name. So I'm on my
guard, right. Well, the kid then proceeds to tell me this completely
off-the-wall story about this girl losing her mind and exposing
herself at this dinner he was at. This stands my ears straight up. I
mean, the story was way too wacko to be made up."
"The
sports banquet," I said.
"Right.
He says there's a picture of her in the nineteen eighty annual. Gives
me the page number and everything. So I hustle over to the university
and, sure enough, it's right where he said it was. It's a pretty damn
good match for the Identikit too."
Carl
gave me a small nod of the head. I reached into my jacket pocket and
unfolded the photographic likeness of Allison Stark. I dropped it
into Connley's lap.
"Look
anything like this?" I asked.
Connley
fished in his shirt pocket and came out with a pair of black half
glasses which he rested on the end of his nose.
"Eyes
are just fine. Just need 'em for reading," he said, peering at
the picture. He studied the likeness for a full minute before he
spoke. "As best as I can remember—it was what, fifteen years
ago—but as best as I can remember, that was pretty much her. It's
hard to tell. This is a photograph, that was more like a cartoon, but
it sure as hell could be the same person."
He
handed me back the papers.
"So
you went to see Anne Siemons."
"Right.
She told me essentially the same story that the trainee told me about
the party and the girl exposing herself and all."
He
folded the glasses and returned them to his shirt pocket.
"So
Stan and I are all excited. I mean none of this actually advanced the
investigation, but we figured it was just too weird to ignore."
He
patted the glasses as if to confirm their presence.
"Well,
to make a long story short, the chief didn't agree."
"Not
with the missing stuff, the newspaper ad, the Lund kid, the whole
sports banquet scene. Not even with all of that?" Carl asked.
"You
gotta understand. Petersen was under a lot of pressure. The family
had big-time clout, and we had absolutely no hard evidence. Nothin'.
We didn't even know for sure that anything was missing. For all we
knew it burned up in the fire. And now we were mucking around in an
incident that could have been embarrassing to the university. And
listen fellas, if there's anybody in this town you don't want to get
on the bad side of, it's the university. They own this town. They're
the only reason this town is here. Making them look bad was not a
good idea."
"But
you had corroboration of the Lund kid's story," I said.
Connley
shook his head sadly.
"Not
as far as the chief was concerned. Petersen was from the old school
He didn't make distinctions about drugs. As far as he was concerned,
the Lund kid was a drug addict. Which again, as far as he was
concerned, left us with a partially corroborated story of a junkie as
our only lead. I can't say as I blame him. He just wasn't willing to
take any more heat on what we had. He said that was the end; we shut
it down."
"And
that was the end of it?" I asked.
"That
was it," he confirmed. "After the insurance paid off, I
sent a list of the coins and stamps out on the national wire, just to
see if any of it would show up, but it never did."
"That's
not surprising," I said. "Most serious collectors
aren't like your Mr. Miles. They don't collect the stuff to share
with others. They hoard it strictly for themselves. Stuff that rare
would just disappear into a private collection and never be seen
again."
"Probably
the wackiest case I ever worked on," he said. "Well, Leo,
you want to share the rest of this with me or what? You got me
curious now."
I
started at the beginning and laid it out for him. He sat with his big
hands folded in his lap, listening intently. When I'd finished, he
retrieved his cane and struggled to his feet. He checked his watch.
"I'm
helpin' out. Relieving the dispatcher tonight. They figure I can
still handle that. I gotta go."
We
both thanked him for his time. He started to go, then stopped.
"So
you think it's the same girl?" he asked.
"It's
the same girl," Carl said flatly.
Connley
looked to me. "Believe him," I said. "If Carl says
it's the same girl, it's the same girl."
He
took half a minute to digest the information.
"And
you know for sure that she's the one bilked this guy out of a bunch
of money in this real estate deal a while back."
"Yes."
"Last
summer."
And
it's the same girl who married this friend's son?"
"It's
her," Carl said again. "That happened this year." Now
Bill Connley turned to face me. "And your friend, he didn't
think she went down with the ship?" "No, he didn't."
"Any particular reason?"
"Nothing
worth talking about," I said. "Same kind of vague maybes
you guys had about the fire."
"Quite
a gap in there. Between nineteen eighty and ninety-five. Fifteen
years is a long time. Even supposing she did burn up the old
lady and got off with the stuff, the best she could have hoped for
was maybe ten cents on the dollar for identifiable stuff like that. A
kid probably didn't get that much. Maybe two hundred thousand if
she was lucky. That's not enough to last fifteen years."
"Not,
it's not," I agreed.
"What
do you suppose she's been doing all these years?"
"I
don't want to think about it," I said. "Probably not
working at McDonald's," mused Carl.
We
watched as Connley crabbed down the polished ihall and disappeared
into the elevator. Carl started to speak, changed his mind, and
instead pushed the forward button on his chair. His sudden reticence
lasted through the hotel, through, leaving the van at the airport,
all the way until we had heeded the first call to board. We sat in
the back of the plane, watching the first-class passengers stowing
their gear.
"She's
like lions," he said, as a stout woman in blue jeans wrestled a
plaid overnighter into a distant overhead compartment. "She
hunts the weak. She spots 'em, cuts 'em off from the herd, runs 'em
down,
devours
'em, and then returns to the shade with a full belly to sleep it
off."
"I've
been trying not to think that."
"Think
it," he said.
"Kinda
makes you wonder if she went down with the ship."
"Doesn't
make me wonder. Lions don't go down with the ship. Wildebeest go down
with the ship."