Hunting Sweetie Rose : A Mystery (9781429950879) (30 page)

“Darlene?”

“Sweet-tempered girl full of spunk, an asset to her mother and that disadvantaged sister.”

“That was Alta?”

“A problem child. Mean-spirited, some said. Not similar in appearance or demeanor to the older two girls. People wondered about that.”

“Wondered, how?”

“There was talk. Always is, in a town like this. Martha Taylor and Roy Lishkin went way back, to when they were kids. People wondered about Alta, is all.”

“There was talk that Alta was Roy Lishkin's child?”

“Bothersome talk, was all it ever amounted to. Gossip. Some said that's why Herb left, that he found out. Theory was, that's why the child acted up, that she'd found out as well. Martha used to bring her to town, but then she quit that when the girl started getting out of hand.” She stopped for a minute, then continued in a softer voice. “Darlene was an angel. She helped her mother with everything around that dust patch of a farm, and that included Alta. When Martha died, Darlene took charge right off, taking care of the two other girls.”

“What about Rosemary?”

“Always dreaming, head in a book. Even wrote one. A thin thing, but the folks at the high school made a fuss over it. There were mimeographs of it all over town. I tried reading it. Tacky thing, as I recall. I don't expect she was of much help around that place, spending her time on such foolishness. Didn't surprise me one bit when she took off, leaving Darlene stuck to that place and that poor, agitated child.”

“Did you think those kids happened upon the scene at that gas station?”

“Meaning, did they stop for gas, see the blood and the body? Then take off, because they were scared they'd be blamed? Bless you, sir.”

“For what?”

“For seeing that as a distinct possibility. That's just what I told Roy Lishkin.”

“He didn't write that down, either. He just noted it was a robbery gone bad.”

“You must be mistaken. He knew it was no robbery, gone bad or otherwise.”

“There was cash in the register?”

“There was no register, just a drawer beneath the counter. Anyone going out there to rob the place would have robbed the place, know what I mean?”

“You're sure the cash drawer wasn't emptied?”

“Darned sure. My cousin's husband owned that gas station. He told Sheriff Roy he lost a fine young employee, but no cash.”

Roy Lishkin's notes were wrong, saying that the cash drawer was empty.

Deliberately wrong.

CHAPTER 53.

An explosion, set off on my way out of town, seemed appropriate.

I called Ellie Ball. “Have you located Alta Taylor's death certificate?”

“It was pneumonia, just like I said.”

“You found the death certificate?”

“You're leaving?”

“How can I find Alta's birth certificate?”

“Why would you want that?”

“There are rumors about her paternity.”

It was enough. She hung up.

I stepped outside. Leo was still leaning against the cruiser, but the radio inside was crackling to life and the deputy was powering up his window as he reached for his handset. I assumed Ellie Ball was calling to find out what I was up to.

“Let's pack up, we're leaving,” I said to Leo.

“Leaving, like in finally going back to Rivertown leaving?”

“I've become something of an issue here,” I said, with what I thought was refined understatement.

“We're still driving?”

I nodded again. Leo's smile showed relief. Driving would take longer, and that was a real incentive when one's septuagenarian mother and her friends were seeking youth in one's basement.

“See you in twenty minutes,” he said and darted into his room.

He came out in ten, grinning when he saw me already sitting in the minivan's passenger's seat. He threw his bag in, didn't bother to ask if I needed a loan to pay for my room, and beat it down to the office to settle both our bills.

Five minutes later, we were headed toward Hadlow with the deputy tailgating a hundred feet behind, murmuring into his handset.

“I have news,” Leo said.

“So do I. You won't believe—”

Leo held up his hand for silence. “Mine is huge.”

“Then continue.”

“Apparently, reclusive Darlene isn't so lonely after all. Our friend behind us”—he cocked a thumb back at the trailing deputy—“normally works the overnight shift. He said he sees Darlene driving around in the middle of the night, always with the same guy.”

“She works the night shift at the high school. She's sharing a ride home with a co-worker.”

“Nope,” he said. “They're out much later than that. Three or four in the morning is when he sees them. The guy is doing the driving, though they're always in her old Taurus. It's quite the joke at the sheriff's station, her sneaking around, doing some guy on the back roads, and in her own car, no less. They're hoping to spot the car weaving or something, so they can pull them over and find out who the mystery man is.”

“Mystery man,” I said.

“Don't you see? That must have been who took you down behind the Taylor place. You owe me, big-time. No one can say you got rolled and shot by a sixty-year-old woman. I've found you a stronger culprit—a
manly
culprit.”

I supposed it was a relief, though it needed more thought.

We came to Hadlow, and Ralph's defrocked Shell station, and there was no time to talk more.

Ralph said he'd been mulling on it for the past two days, and decided he'd need nine hundred dollars to flatbed the rental Chevy to Swifty's at the Minneapolis airport.

I opened my wallet, fanned it open to show I was removing all the bills, and counted them out. I had six hundred and forty-one of George Koros's dollars left. I took out the change from my pants pocket. Seventy-eight cents.

I put all of it in my left hand. “For the balance of the truck rental and the tow to Minneapolis.”

“What about the charge for me to be driven out to pick up my truck you abandoned?”

“Included,” I said.

He looked at me, looked at the money, and after the briefest of hesitations took it all. He must have decided it would be a lifetime until another guy who couldn't navigate around a truckload of pigs came along.

*   *   *

“Now your news,” Leo said, as we headed toward the interstate.

I told him what the woman who'd seen Georgie and two Taylor girls speeding away from the gas station had said.

“From that you inferred that Sheriff Lishkin covered up the whole thing, because Alta was his daughter?” he said.

“He must have figured out what went down at the gas station fairly quickly—either by Alta's behavior or Darlene telling him—and that it wasn't a premeditated crime. Somebody, likely Georgie, brought along a pistol, maybe for target shooting. Alta got her hands on it and blew away the gas station attendant. Lishkin had witnesses who'd seen Georgie and the two girls out in the car, near the gas station. He also knew Alta was never left alone. He had to figure Alta was along for the ride, even though no one saw her in the car. The best Lishkin could do, afterward, was drive out to the Taylor place every chance he got, to make sure Darlene had Alta under control. Then Alta died.”

“Of pneumonia, or of Darlene?”

“The answer to that is buried at the cemetery, along with the DNA that would tell us whose daughter Alta really was.”

“So there was nothing left for Lishkin to do but make up a scant little report about the crime being a robbery, and file it away to confuse anybody who might read it years later?”

“Alta was dead. Case closed.”

We came to an intersection, empty of everything except weeds. I told Leo to pull over. Behind us, the deputy sheriff stopped. I could only imagine what he was saying on his radio.

“What's up?” Leo asked.

I pointed across the street, at a barren plot of ground partially covered by stained concrete slabs. “That's where the gas station was,” I said. “Seems like there ought to be a marker, something to signify that lives got lost there, one day in April, over forty years ago.”

“Lives? More than one?”

“An arts symposium director, a clown, a bodyguard.”

“And a man who was once a boy with a convertible?”

“Absolutely. He was a victim, too.”

“At least now we know what he had on Sweetie Fairbairn.”

“Accomplice murder. Technically, she was guilty, like Darlene, like Koros himself. A retainer and rent on a fancy office must have seemed like a bargain to keep Koros's mouth shut.”

I leaned forward to look up. Chief Winnemac's immense shoulders and head loomed high above the tree line. His back was toward us; he was looking toward the river. My head felt immense and heavy and full of concrete, too. I leaned back on the seat. I was exhausted by the weight of all the ruin that had been set into motion at that corner.

Leo put the car into gear. “You're done?” he asked, as he started us away.

“By now, Plinnit has put out alerts on Darlene for the murder of George Koros. It's in his hands.”

“What about the murder of that kid at the gas station, back in the day?”

“I'm not going to say anything about that. Too many lies, too old to unravel.”

“Ellie Ball's not going to bring it up, not with her grandfather so involved,” he said.

We came to the interstate. “Cop's gone,” Leo said, checking the rearview as we drove onto the entrance ramp.

It felt good, riding on something solid, going in a certain direction.

I looked back. The tall pines along the road had already obscured where we'd just been.

I so wanted to believe that.

CHAPTER 54.

My cell phone woke me. I'd slept through half of Wisconsin.

“What's shaking?” Jenny Galecki asked.

“I'm headed back to Chicago.”

“Wounded, I just heard.”

“How did you hear?”

“Sources. How are you feeling?”

Her source had to be Plinnit. I didn't know whether he was using her or she was using him. Most likely it was mutual.

“I'm feeling sharp enough to fence with you about releasing what I know,” I said cleverly.

“Everybody's got the story: The police are looking for Darlene Taylor, Sweetie Fairbairn's sister. Apparently, she's no longer at home in Minnesota. I'm guessing you probably knew that first.”

Definitely her source was Plinnit.

“How's your investigation into Rivertown citizen boards?” I asked, to change the subject.

“I'll drop by tonight, after the broadcast.”

She gave me enough time to say no to that. When I didn't, she said, “Until tonight,” and hung up.

“Where does she fit?” Leo asked the instant I clicked off.

“Who?” I asked, sounding dumber than an iron bar.

“The lovely, ambitious, and potentially man-eating Jennifer Gale? Or, as you now call her, Jenny.”

“Beats me, Leo.”

He looked over at me. “No, I meant how does she fit into this case?”

“She's already cultivated Plinnit as a source, though she said everyone in Chicago now knows the police are looking for Darlene.”

“You going to tell her about the gas station?”

“I won't have to. The old story will blow wide open when the press digs into Darlene's background. Young Rosemary's presence in that car, at that gas station, will come with it.”

“It would be tough to prove anything about that,” he said.

“I'll bet that's not what Darlene and Koros passed on. I'll bet they got word to her that they could alibi each other, and make Sweetie the shooter.”

“Another reason to run?”

“On top of being blamed for everything else? I'd have run, too.”

We fell silent then, each of us content to watch the white road-dividing stripes slip under the front of the minivan. I imagined he was ready, like me, to let everything we'd learned slip away as well.

After a half hour, though, Leo had a question. “Did you deliberately forget to swing by and return Rosemary's manuscript to that retired lady?”

“What I heard,” I said, “was those mimeographs were all over town, back in the day. If none survived, other than the one Koros must have had, and the one I forgot to return, well…” He couldn't see me smiling because, by now, it was dark.

“Isn't that suppression of evidence?” he asked, in his most sanctimonious voice. “After all, that manuscript could incriminate your client.”

“Damn,” I said, thinking of matches and a small fire.

I slept, on and off, for the next hours as we drove south through Wisconsin. Sometime around Rockford, Illinois, I remember waking up, and Leo asking if I was sure I could negotiate the turret by myself. He said he'd be happy to stay over.

I told him all I needed was Ho Hos, and I had plenty of those.

I didn't tell him that Jennifer Gale had said she'd stop by.

*   *   *

It was ten thirty when we got to Rivertown. As we turned off Thompson Avenue, Leo said he'd drive to the airport the next day to turn in the minivan and get my Jeep. I told him I felt well enough to drive the Jeep now. He told me no one should ever feel well enough to drive my Jeep. There was logic to that. I gave him my keys.

He stopped the van halfway through the turn to the turret and turned on the high beams. The headlamps lit up the corner of the spit of land, and the turret beyond.

“Jenny's Prius,” I said, of the car parked in front of the turret. “She said she was going to—”

“No. This side of the turret, back toward the river.”

I saw it, something small and shiny, glinting in the headlamps, lying on the ground. He eased the van forward.

“My blue plastic tarp,” I said. “It's supposed to be covering the ladders around back.”