Hunting Sweetie Rose : A Mystery (9781429950879) (17 page)

Jennifer got to the Maverick and leaned in. She looked to be saying a few long, slow words. Benny's head started bobbing in agreement. She then straightened up, slowly tugged an imaginary wrinkle from her yellow knit top, and came back smiling. Behind her, Benny Fittle was smiling, too, substantially happier than he'd been the moment before.

“Screw with me, screw with the devil,” Jennifer said.

I did not doubt the truth of that. Nor, I supposed, would Benny Fittle, ever again in his life.

“How about some coffee before we go to Indiana?” she asked.

“Indiana? We're going to Indiana?”

“Andrew Fill's place.”

“George Koros said he'd sent something to Fill at a vacation place, but he thought it was in Michigan or Wisconsin. How did you locate it?”

“I found a canceled check in his apartment, made out to a homeowners association. Fill had put his cottage in trust.”

“Secretive?”

“Not necessarily. More likely, he was following the advice of some lawyer when he bought the place. Just a quick cup of coffee, then let's leave.”

I opened the door, and we went up to the second floor.

“Think I'll ever get all the way to the roof?” she asked, as I turned into the kitchen.

“We can take our coffee up there.”

I fed Mr. Coffee new grounds. Normally, afternoons, I just run new water through the morning's grounds—a habit of the financially challenged—but she was the press, and curved. There would be no reruns for Jennifer Gale.

“Interesting collection of appliances.” she said, as Mr. Coffee burbled, sounding every bit as happy as Benny Fittle. “Sort of like a museum of what people used to have in their kitchens.”

“I've had them longer than I'd hoped. That avocado-colored refrigerator I got from an alley. The microwave I bought new, but dented. It might leak radiation, but we won't know that for years.”

I poured coffee in travel mugs and capped them. “The roof?”

“Yes, please.”

I led us up two more flights of stairs, then up the ladder to the fifth floor.

“Why not stairs all the way?” she asked, as I went ahead, up the next ladder, to the roof.

“My grandfather's thinking was not always clear.” I pushed open the trapdoor. “One of my aunts said he was going to distill up here and wanted to make sure he could drop a door on any charging police, then pull both ladders up to the roof with him.”

“Wouldn't he then be trapped?”

“As I said, his thinking wasn't always clear.”

“Wow,” she said, when she got up.

“Best view in town.” I leaned against the wall.

She worked her way around the roof, taking in the views from each direction.

“You think Andrew Fill could be in Indiana?” she asked, finally.

“I'd be surprised if he's that close. The man's got a half-million dollars, enough to run far away.”

“Maybe we'll find a cottage abandoned like his apartment.”

“I think I should tell you about a development that might make you want to forget Indiana and head back to Channel 8. Sweetie Fairbairn wrote very big checks to several charities the same day she disappeared.”

“You know this how?”

“One of the recipients got a charitable donation that was way more than what she'd asked for. That person said two others also got substantially more than they requested. Sweetie gave away millions that last day, Jennifer.”

“How many millions, do you think?”

“Maybe most of what she had.”

“This recipient will verify what you're telling me?”

“Off-limits,” I said.

“I figured as much,” she said, knowing who it was. She took out her cell phone and flipped it open. “Who else knows?”

“I don't know, but it will get out today.”

Jennifer called her news director. After repeating what I'd told her, she nodded a couple of times, frowned, and hung up. “They'll check it out.”

“That's it? No on-air time for you?”

She shrugged. “Your tip is unsubstantiated; there's no second source. The news business is changing. We got our news director cheap.”

“Indiana, then?”

“Indiana, for sure.”

We'd just gotten out the door when Leo rumbled up in his Porsche. The convertible top was down, the bossa nova was up. He turned off his CD player.

Across the street, Benny Fittle leaned his head out the side window.

“Jennifer, this specimen is Leo Brumsky. He is my friend.”

Below his summer standards of a wide-brimmed straw hat and big wraparound sunglasses, Leo wore a plum-colored Hawaiian shirt, forested with bright green palm trees that, amazingly, bore bright red apples. Jennifer laughed as she held out her hand.

“Run away with me to the south of France,” he said.

“Apples on a palm tree, Leo?” she asked.

“That's artistic license, my dear. I wear only designers with expanded imaginations.”

“How much did you pay for the shirt?” I asked, to cut the crap.

“Because of the apples, only a dollar ninety-nine.” He extended his chest. Outside his spare 140 pounds, the XXL shirt didn't move.

“We're off on a trip,” I said.

Leo still hadn't taken his eyes off Jennifer Gale. “You look…” He stopped.

“Older than I appear on television?”

“Even more newsworthy.” He fluffed out the front of his shirt and grinned, a letch covered with apple-laden palm trees. “There's room in here for both of us.”

She laughed, charmed. Everyone is, with Leo.

He started to reach for the gear shifter, then stopped. “You do know your Jeep is on your lawn?” he asked me.

“Yes.”

He nodded, turned on the bossa nova, and gunned the Porsche back toward Thompson Avenue.

Benny Fittle withdrew his head.

Jennifer Gale and I set off to find Andrew Fill.

CHAPTER 28.

We took her Prius because, as she put it, she'd already experienced my Jeep.

“What do you want to talk about?” she asked, when we crossed into Indiana. We'd drifted into our own lulls once we left Rivertown.

“Not murder,” I said.

“That would be best.”

I turned, surprised, to look at her. “Why?”

“I want to show you I'm not all business, ever on the lookout for scoops to further my career.”

“Is that true?”

“Of course not, but it's what I want to show.”

I laughed and turned back to look out the windshield. The expressway through western Indiana looked the same as when I'd last driven it, the roadside dotted as always with billboards advertising buxom females with come-hither pouts, welcoming gentlemen to stop at gentlemen's clubs. Outside the Prius, inside the Prius, there seemed to be no place for a testosterone-revved man, on the outs with his girl, to rest his eyes.

So I spoke about murder. “The police would like me as a suspect.”

“For the guard's murder?”

“Or for Sweetie's disappearance.”

“They'll take what they can get, to show progress,” she said. “The story is huge. A prominent socialite disappears, following a murder. Now comes word that she dumped most of her fortune on her way out the door? Big-time heater case for sure; lots of pressure on the police.” She looked over at me. “Do the cops suspect the link between Sweetie Fairbairn and the clown?”

“Because it was a blond woman in a limo who hired James Stitts? I don't think they know about that yet.”

She got off the interstate a few miles west of Michigan City, picked up Route 12, and for several miles we followed the narrow blacktop as it curved under Lake Michigan. The old two-laner was tranquil and arched with trees, a road to take to a picnic on the beach, not to hunt down an embezzler.

Just before Beverly Shores, she turned left and drove along ancient streets that ran through marsh.

“I thought you said he was in the dunes.”

“These are the dunes,” she said, “just the wet section. According to my computer map, there's a trailer park in here.”

“Exuberant mosquitoes, too, I would bet.”

We found the trailer park on a crumbling cross street, two dozen tired mobile homes hunkered down on flat tires and cinder blocks. There was no office, no directory at the entrance. Two rows of arched rural-style mailboxes had been screwed to a rack of two-by-fours. The red flags were up on a quarter of them. There was only one car around, a tan sedan parked down the road, well past the entrance.

Above the mailboxes, a faded sign read
LAKE VISTA ESTATES
. I double-checked the views toward the lake. Lake Michigan hadn't been visible from that spot since the dunes were formed, some number of million years before. Then again, the sign might have referred to the stagnant green water that covered the acres of sodden tree stumps and cattails we'd just driven through.

Jennifer glided the Prius to a silent, electric halt. She reached for a sheaf of pink-colored leaflets from the backseat and handed half to me. They were flyers for a missing schnauzer, Wilma, and listed her age as six. The black-and-white photo showed she was adorable.

Jennifer grinned at my confusion. “This only works if the day's mail has been delivered. I got the dog's picture off the Internet. The contact name and phone numbers I made up. Take your time folding one into each mailbox.”

“You keep these with you?”

“Always.”

It was a slick way to read the names on the mail inside the boxes, because no one would roust someone for hand-delivering such flyers.

I took the right section of boxes, she the left. Five minutes later, she said, “Step it up, Dek; we're done.” She'd found Andrew Fill, on the top row.

We jammed flyers into the rest of the boxes and got back in her Prius. “Space twelve,” she said, starting the engine. We followed the road to the left, reading the numbers. There were no cars parked in the little enclave, no towels hanging on any lines. And there were no people.

“Ghost trailer park,” I said.

“Beach access, down the road and on the cheap. The place must come alive just on weekends.”

The trailer at number twelve was small, like all the others. Once bright white, it had faded to the same chalky gray as its corroded aluminum windows and sat slightly tilted, barely a foot above its slab. A disconnected telephone wire dangled limp from a pole twenty feet away. It did not look like a place someone with a half-million dollars would ever return to.

“I can't imagine he's there,” Jennifer said.

“I'll deliver a pink flyer anyway.” I started up to knock on the pitted aluminum door.

“He ain't home,” a voice, squeaky for a man's, said behind us.

At least I supposed it was a man's voice, because when I turned to see who had spoken, I saw someone who was barely five feet tall. His hair, such as it was, was pulled taut into a pattylike clump on the top of his head. He wore blue jeans and an oversized plaid work shirt. A plastic bag filled with crushed aluminum cans dangled from the handlebars of a boy's black bicycle.

“We'll try to reach him at work,” Jennifer said to the little man.

“What do you want Andrew for?” he asked.

“He called, said he might have seen this dog.” Jennifer walked the few feet to the street, holding out a pink flyer.

“You said he called, from here?” As the bike rider looked up at the disconnected phone wire, his voice registered disbelief. “When?”

“Some time ago,” I said. “We've come by before, but we never seem to find him at home. So we thought we'd leave flyers. Maybe one of his neighbors saw the dog.”

“He's just here weekends. He's got another place somewhere in Chicago.”

“Do you know where?” I asked, because it was expected.

The bicycle rider leaned down on the handlebars, studying the picture. “Andy seen this dog?”

“Some time ago. We're hoping he might know who has him now.”

The bike rider looked up, into my lying eyes. “Andy ain't been around, not for a month, maybe more, judging by the cans.”

“Cans?”

He tapped the bag hanging on the handlebars. “Cans. Andy's always good for a dozen Mountain Dews every weekend. Been no empties for weeks.”

I pulled a fifty from my pocket and handed it to the rider.

“What's this for?” the man asked.

“Help with the cans.”

The rider gave a small snort, took the bill, and pedaled, strangely and silently, away.

“That was a man, right?” I asked.

“I think so.”

We stood watching until he turned the corner.

“For a guy who can't afford heat, you were generous,” Jennifer said.

“It might erase a memory of us being here.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to break in. I caught a smell when I was close to the door.”

“What kind of smell?”

“Bad.”

I walked back up to the trailer door. The latch gave with a whisper; the door swung out.

I stepped into a trailer that was swarming with flies and stinking of life gone away.

The place was as neat as Andrew Fill's apartment. No food lay out in the galley kitchen; no dirty dishes were piled in the tiny stainless steel sink.

Yet there were flies, thousands of them, and the smell that was sticking onto the back of my throat. I looked past the kitchen.

It only took a few steps to get to him.

He was lying on his back. His face was red and raw, pocked long and deep by the swarms of flies. Waving my left hand to keep them from my face, I jabbed my right hand under him and found a wallet in his hip pocket. A quick flip opened it. His driver's license was beneath a little plastic window in the worn black leather.

Hurrying past the tiny kitchen, I grabbed a neatly folded dish towel, wiped the door handle, and pushed it open. Down on the ground, I made a fast wipe at the outside door handle as well, rubbed my hands with the towel, more for my mind than my skin, and threw it underneath the trailer.