Hunting Sweetie Rose : A Mystery (9781429950879) (20 page)

I didn't kid myself into thinking he'd taken pity on me. Hunger had drawn him back to his car.

*   *   *

There are no auto parts stores in Rivertown, though parts get distributed from there every night. Rumor has it that another of the mayor's nephews—a cousin to Elvis, the salad oil king—runs the town's most profitable car theft and stripping operation out of an old factory building he bought at foreclosure a few years before. Those parts, though, are not available at retail; they get shipped out of town fast, in unmarked trucks.

I walked over to Jiffy Lube. They were out of batteries that would fit the Jeep, and wouldn't have one for two days. They suggested an auto parts store four miles east, in Chicago. I went back to the turret and started calling gas stations that were close enough to walk to. None carried batteries.

In the middle of it all, George Koros phoned. “You're going to Andrew's place in Indiana? It's our only lead.”

He was speaking too insistently, like a man on the verge of panic.

“I'm on my way there now.” I couldn't tell Koros I'd already been to Fill's trailer, and seen flies.

“Where are you, exactly?”

“Route 12. Just a few miles away, I guess.”

“I don't hear a car engine.”

“I keep it well tuned.”

“Sweetie's future could depend on that money, Elstrom.” He hung up.

By noon, I was resigned to that parts store four miles into Chicago. I called Leo's cell phone. “I need a ride.”

“No problem, so long as you're in Manhattan.”

“Manhattan, New York City?”

“Of course, New York City, you boor.”

I told him he was worthless as a friend. He told me I was a leech, too cheap to hire a cab. We hung up on each other simultaneously, each satisfied with the depth of the sentiments that had been exchanged.

I took the cab. Round-trip, including the wait time while I was inside the parts store buying the battery, cost me fifty bucks. Adding in the battery, I'd run up a hundred-and-forty-dollar morning.

Which then bloomed to a hundred and seventy dollars, throwing in the cost of the flats of flowers that I went to buy after I installed the battery. My cell phone rang just as I got back to the turret.

I figured it was Koros again. I figured wrong. It was Jenny.

“An odd little item just came in,” she said. “Based on an anonymous tip, police went to a trailer park outside of Michigan City, Indiana. They found a small house trailer on fire. Want to guess what they're looking at inside?”

I told her about Koros hiring me to find Andrew Fill. “He thinks I'm there now.”

“Right now, knocking on that same door?”

“He set me up to get found near a burning corpse.”

“Why?”

“I can't wait to hear his reason.”

I told her I was going to stay at the turret, where anybody at all could notice that I was nowhere near Indiana.

George Koros had become a very interesting man.

*   *   *

They came for me early that evening, Plinnit and the gray-haired, gray-eyed man.

“What the hell are you doing?” Plinnit asked, getting out of the car.

“Sprinkling my lawn ornament.” I stepped back from the Jeep, satisfied. I'd used scraps of wood to build racks for the hood, bumpers, and spare tire in back. They held flowers, tall, flashy flowers. They transformed the Jeep.

“You can't drive it like that,” the lieutenant said.

“All I need to do is park it like that.” I pointed to the
FIRE LANE
sign. “It's a matter of a hundred-dollar parking ticket or thirty bucks' worth of plants. There are no other options in Rivertown.”

Plinnit nodded like that made sense and said, “Catch the news today?”

“I've been too busy gardening.”

“Want to take a drive?” Plinnit asked.

“Andrew Fill's apartment again?” I asked, because I hoped that would sound reasonable.

“Why would you mention him?”

“It's where you always take me.”

I coiled the hose, locked the timbered door, and got in their car.

We talked of flowers and fire lanes until the gray-haired, gray-eyed man drove us onto the Tollway, eastbound.

“This is the wrong way to Fill's apartment,” I observed, sociably.

Plinnit turned around from the front seat. “Want to get out? We have no right to insist that you join us.”

“I'll ride.”

“When's the last time you saw Andrew Fill?”

“I've never met the man. George Koros told me Fill had a cottage in the Indiana dunes. He gave me the address and asked me to nose around, talk to his neighbors. He told me it was important that I get on it right away—today, in fact.”

“Because Fill might know something about Sweetie Fairbairn's disappearance?”

“That's what Koros thinks.”

“But you didn't go to Indiana?”

“My battery died. I blew most of the day getting a new one and then, as you saw, gardening.”

“I don't suppose you have proof of that?”

I fished in my wallet and handed forward the receipt from the auto parts store.

“Someone else could have bought you the battery,” he said, studying the receipt.

“That would have been delightful,” I said.

Plinnit nodded, handed it back.

We crossed into Indiana in silence.

CHAPTER 33.

“I thought we were going to Andrew Fill's cottage,” I said, as the gray man pulled to a stop in front of an Indiana State Police station.

“This is close,” Plinnit said, getting out.

The station house was small, dark brick, and had white-painted windows. Three police cars, a red van, and an old tan Ford Taurus were parked in front. The tan Taurus looked vaguely familiar. Then again, I supposed the world was filled with tan sedans.

A sergeant escorted us down a short hall cramped by scarred wood benches that lined both sides. The potentially androgynous bike rider from Lake Vista Estates sat on one of them, sipping Pepsi from a two-liter bottle.

“Excuse me, sir,” the sergeant said to the bike rider.

With that, two confirmations were offered up. The first was that the rider was indeed a man—a fact that, in fairness, I'd pretty much assumed two days before.

The second was more troublesome. I'd been brought to Indiana to be shown to the bike rider. The little one-perp parade I was starring in was a lineup, without the bother of rounding up look-alikes. It had the potential of being one hundred percent effective. There was no way the bike rider could fail to remember me being at Andrew Fill's trailer.

The bike rider separated his head from the Pepsi and looked up. Nothing showed on his face before he dropped his mouth to the Pepsi again.

At least not yet. He could have been told to show nothing.

The sergeant, Plinnit, and the gray-haired man escorted me into a room with a yellow Formica table and four chairs. I watch television. I know those rooms are supposed to have two-way mirrors, but this one didn't.

“Why don't you have a two-way mirror?” I asked. “Budget cuts?”

Plinnit frowned and leaned back in his chair. “Sergeant Colfax here has some questions for you.”

“First off, you have the right to an attorney,” Colfax said.

“He has a high-priced big-gun lawyer in Chicago,” Plinnit said.

“Impressive. You want to call him?” Colfax gave me a minute to think as he made a show of studying my T-shirt and jeans. The bits of old paint and caulk were still dirty and damp from the gardening I'd done on my Jeep.

“Am I being charged with something?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Then I don't need a lawyer,” I said.

“We've been informed you came to Mr. Andrew Fill's residence today,” Colfax said.

“You were misinformed. Car trouble kept me mostly at home today.”

Colfax looked over at Plinnit.

Plinnit shrugged. “On the way here, we learned he bought a battery in Chicago sometime after noon. Then, it appears, he spent the rest of the day planting flowers on his Jeep.”

Colfax didn't understand. “In his Jeep? He went somewhere, in a Jeep, to plant flowers?”

Plinnit spoke slowly. “No.
On his Jeep
. He spent the rest of the day decorating his vehicle with flowers.”

“You some sort of hippie?” Colfax asked me, distaste curling his lip.

“Power to the people, right on,” I said, recalling a line from an old Woodstock documentary. Power, too, to the little man sucking Pepsi down the hall, a ticking bomb—but I didn't say that.

“A smart-ass?” Colfax asked Plinnit.

Plinnit grinned. “Oh my, yes.”

Colfax turned back to me. “Tell me about Andrew Fill.”

“George Koros, Sweetie Fairbairn's employee, hired me to find him. Koros thinks Fill knows something about Sweetie's disappearance, and told me Fill has a cottage near here. He wanted me to come out today, to interview Fill, but my battery died.”

“And this evening, you rode with these gentlemen all the way here without asking why?”

“When the good lieutenant here stopped by, suggesting a ride, I figured I'd get new information.”

Colfax looked at Plinnit and the gray man. “Why doesn't this man Koros work with you, instead of this jerk?”

I answered for the detectives. “Mr. Koros thinks the police are spending too much time driving aimlessly, from state to state, instead of digging in to accomplish something.”

At that, Mr. Gray sat up straighter in his chair, but Plinnit stayed leaned back in his chair, grinning.

Colfax's next question was predictable. “You know Andrew Fill?”

“We've never met. As I'm sure Lieutenant Plinnit has told you, the closest I got was to enter Fill's apartment through an open door, illegally. I'm interested in talking to Fill, about whether he had motive to harm Sweetie Fairbairn.”

Colfax stared at me for an uncomfortable few seconds, then stood up and went out to the hall. I could hear him whispering to someone, but not what they were saying. After a minute, he came back. “Thank you, Mr. Elstrom,” he said, because apparently there was nothing else he could say.

“My turn,” I said, because it was expected. “Why was I brought here?”

Colfax ignored me, thanked Plinnit, and then led us out into the hall. The bike rider still sat on the bench, sipping Diet Pepsi.

Colfax gave it a last shot. “Excuse me, sir,” he said to the man.

The little man looked up. Colfax nodded toward me.

Again the Pepsi was lowered. This time the rider stood up to what was barely four and a half feet. He looked squarely into my eyes.

“Nope,” he said, after a long minute, and took another pull at the Pepsi.

“Why the short guy?” I asked Plinnit, when we got outside.

“He collects cans for recycling money, sleeps in his car. Colfax was hoping he'd seen someone out by the trailer park.”

“Seen me?”

“That was the hope,” he said.

“Why?” I asked, to further the charade. No one had yet mentioned that Andrew Fill was dead.

Plinnit didn't answer. No matter.

It had been the best fifty dollars I'd ever spent.

*   *   *

We drove back pretty much as we'd come—in complete silence. I tried questions about Sweetie Fairbairn's disappearance and Norton's murder from the backseat, but those were met with grunts. Asking about Andrew Fill didn't even get that.

When Mr. Gray pulled up in front of the turret, Plinnit got out with me. “You keep popping up, Elstrom,” he said.

“Like blossoms in summer?” I asked, gesturing at the Jeep horticulturally.

“Who'd call us anonymously, to say you were in Indiana today?”

“You won't even tell me why that matters.”

“Andrew Fill was found burned to death, in a trailer, not far from that police station.”

“Then someone wants me blamed for that.”

“Who?”

“George Koros pointed me toward Andrew Fill. He insisted I go to Indiana today.”

“You don't like Koros?” he asked.

“I don't understand his relationship with Sweetie Fairbairn.”

“That's it?”

“For now.”

He turned to get back in the car.

“Any idea where Sweetie Fairbairn comes from?” I asked.

“Hometown-wise, growing-up-wise?”

“Yes.”

“We haven't focused on that.”

“That's it?” I asked, when he said nothing more.

He smiled. “For now.”

*   *   *

It was too late to see if Jenny was reporting, but the ten o'clock broadcasts had just begun. Channel 5's anchor, a smiley fellow with shellacked hair, led with the big news from Indiana: “A tantalizing new lead may have arisen in the missing Sweetie Fairbairn case. Acting on a tip, Indiana police today discovered Andrew Fill, a onetime employee of Ms. Fairbairn's and someone long active in the arts in Chicago, dead in a house trailer fire. Fill was the director…”

I switched stations. Channel 2 was saying, “Andrew Fill, former head of the Midwest Arts Symposium, was found brutally…”

I turned off the little television, made tea, and took it up to the roof.

Rivertown was in its own full fire. Neon flashed up and down Thompson Avenue. Mixed in the usual cacophony of tonk tunes and the hysterical shrieks of lubricated people having Just Plain Fun were the rips and flashes of drunks getting a jump on the Fourth of July. Short bursts of firecrackers and cherry bombs were going off across the spit of land, sights and sounds of war on a bawdy street.

As I watched the tiny explosions, I let my mind nibble at the probability that George Koros was also trying to lay Sweetie Fairbairn's disappearance, and maybe Norton's murder, on me. He'd tried to send me to Indiana, to get caught sniffing around Andrew Fill's trailer at the same time he'd tipped the police that I'd be there. He'd meant for me and the cops to collide, leading to more suspicions.