Hunting Sweetie Rose : A Mystery (9781429950879) (39 page)

I set my phone to go directly to voice mail. Each of the ladies called once, as though in perfect symmetry. Amanda said she was swamped with meetings about the Sweetie Fairbairn fiasco and would probably have to cancel our trattoria date.

Jennifer's message was much more direct: “It was his Ma.” She laughed. I laughed as well, at the idea that Elvis Derbil's mother, the mayor's sister, had been the one to suggest he spread his greasy wings and peddle his altered oils beyond Rivertown.

Both Amanda and Jennifer ended their messages by wondering how I was getting on. I did not call either of them back, as I was not at all sure how I was getting on.

Leo called every day, because he knew how I could disappear, chasing impossibilities. His calls I returned because he made me laugh, especially on the evening I decided it was time to head back to Rivertown. I had done what I could with my time and his money, and now I was out of his money.

He sounded unusually chipper. I asked if he'd won a big lottery.

“More fabulous,” he said. “Ma's laid up in bed; sciatica.”

“That's fabulous?”

“Even Bernard said it was a blessing.”

“Bernard, the accountant nephew—?”

“Of Mrs. Roshiska's, who's now in the hospital. Threw her back out.”

“From…?”

He laughed a laugh that was almost a shriek, and said he had to go. “I have much to do. I've thrown out the dancing DVDs. Ma's handyman has already taken down the poles and disconnected the special lights. I myself pulled up the gold-flecked floor tiles and down the red velvet drapes. Ma's doctor said to get all the stuff back from storage before Ma gets back on her feet.”

“Doctor's orders to stop pole dancing?”

“All praise the doctor.”

As with his earlier calls, he hung up without asking if I'd gotten any leads to Sweetie Fairbairn. Nor had he offered to loan me more money to perpetuate my obsession for a second week, or a third. He is my friend.

I had enough money left for one more cheap dinner and two tanks of gasoline. I headed northwest, bound for one last town that evening, and three more the next day on my way back to Rivertown.

Hill's Knob did not look to possess a knob, though where the ground had actually risen might have been obscured by the dense, intertwined weeds that lined both sides of its cracked blacktop main street. No one in the business district was there to mind, since most of the town had burned. Only two buildings remained: an empty old gas station, missing its pumps like Ralph's in Hadlow; and the husk of something that once was a general store, judging by the signs for bait and men's socks that still rested, sun-curled and faded, behind its filthy windows.

The only indication that any commerce was alive anywhere nearby was a billboard for a diner called Blanchie's, five miles farther on. It advertised the best apple pie in four counties. Apple pie would do nicely for dinner, especially since driving five counties away to find better seemed unreasonable.

I drove the required distance, and pulled into the gravel lot in front of a brown-sided, green-roofed building raised up on a cinder-block foundation. The only car in the lot was a twenty-five-year-old station wagon, dotted with at least fifteen years' worth of rust.

It was eight o'clock and there were no customers, just a white-haired grill cook behind a pass-through window, humming along with an easy-listening radio station, and a gray-haired waitress sagging in a pink uniform at the far end of a white Formica counter. She was turned away from me, staring out one of the windows. I supposed that anything of interest was better found by looking out of such a barren place.

Neither of them was a candidate to be the missing Sweetie Fairbairn. That was all right. There would be pie. I sat in a booth by the window.

For several long moments, nothing—absolutely nothing—happened. The grill cook continued to busy himself, mostly invisibly, behind the pass-through. The waitress continued to be absorbed by whatever was outside the far window, though to my eye there was nothing out there but spindly trees, and even those were fading in the tiring sun. Hill's Knob, Indiana, didn't look like anywhere a right-thinking person would run to. People ran from such places, even if the next stop was a place like Hadlow.

Definitely, it was time to go back to Rivertown.

“Best apple pie in four counties?” I called out to the waitress lost in thought, after another few minutes had passed.

“Good enough,” she said, without tearing her eyes from the mesmerizing view out the window. Her voice was barely audible, and carried no trace of enthusiasm about the pie.

“I'd like a slice, à la mode, with vanilla.”

“Coffee?”

“How much is the pie?”

She mumbled something to the window that I couldn't hear.

“How much?” I asked again.

“Six fifty,” she said, a little louder. “With the ice cream.”

I would have mumbled, too, if I was looking to get almost nine bucks, with tax and tip, for a piece of pie daubed with ice cream, in the middle of Nowhere, Indiana. Those were Chicago prices, and downtown numbers at that.

“No coffee, thanks,” I said.

She continued to sit, staring out the window, as though expecting me to get up and leave, offended by the high prices. Certainly, such exorbitant numbers could explain why the joint was empty. More time passed until finally, when I'd made no sounds to leave, she sighed loudly, got up from her stool, and disappeared through a door into the kitchen.

Another twenty minutes went by, and I'd just begun to wonder if Hill's Knob was so removed that Blanchie had to send someone on a bicycle clear to Terre Haute to get the ice cream when the waitress finally came out of the kitchen and ambled over with a plate. Her face was averted, her eyes behind her red plastic eyeglasses still fixed on the parking lot outside, lit now by one lone dim bulb fixed to the side of the diner. It had gone dark.

She set my pie down, but there was no vanilla ice cream on top, as requested. Instead, there was a chunk of melted yellow cheese.

I thought about reminding her I'd ordered ice cream, but reasoned that might delay my research into the quality of the pie by another fifteen minutes, maybe longer, and by now, I was very hungry.

Besides, the cheese, melted as it was on the pie, did look good.

She walked away.

I picked up my fork, cut the point from the wedge, and brought it to my mouth. It was fine pie, and to my mind, the cheese made it tastier than could any scoop of ice cream.

My tongue puzzled, though, as to the identity of the cheese. It wasn't the usual cheddar or American usually encountered on restaurant apple pie. I lifted off a speck so I could taste only that.

I knew that cheese. The back of my neck tingled. I looked up.

She'd come over with a Thermos pitcher of coffee. She set it down and slid into the booth across from me.

Her forehead was crossed with a dozen deep lines, unhidden now by any cosmetics. Her lips were thin without lipstick, and her breasts were low inside her uniform. If there was a twinkle in her eyes, or a pinch from fear, it was obscured behind those heart-shaped, cartoonish red glasses.

“Around here, folks know to enjoy their apple pie with Velveeta,” she said.

CHAPTER 72.

She poured coffee into the two mugs on the table and pushed one closer to me.

I took another bite of the pie. “I'm sure glad I came.”

“Will I be glad you came?”

“I can leave, Ms. Fair—”

She stopped me with an abrupt shake of her head, and looked to smile at the white-haired man behind the grill window. He was whistling softly, in tune with Sinatra singing low on the radio, and watching us.

“Gus and I like the name Evie,” she said quietly.

“Evie it is,” I said. “Forever more.”

She took a moment to make up her mind about what was in my eyes, and then asked, “How did you find me?”

Without meaning to, I felt my fingers touch my face. I dropped my hand.

“It took me too long, but I finally remembered a picture postcard of a bridge, on the wall of the only sane room in a very swank penthouse. That postcard disappeared some time after the woman who lived there fled.”

“Did remembering that postcard have something to do with the scratches on your face?”

“They're healing just fine.”

“I'd written ‘Hill's Knob' on the back of that card, so I'd never forget. That man”—she gestured at the grill window—“and his wife had been very kind to me once.”

“Alta took that postcard. If you wrote on the back of it, she knows you're here.”

The shock I was expecting didn't come. Instead, she looked out at the parking lot, cut from the darkness by only that one dim bulb. Behind us, Sinatra had stopped singing.

“Yes,” she said softly, to the glass.

“You're not surprised?”

She turned to me. “You came to warn me?”

“Yes.”

Her face relaxed. “She was here.”

I waited, saying nothing.

“Two days ago,” she said, “she parked right out in front, came inside. It was around closing time, like now. She was dressed in blue jeans, plaid shirt, work boots. I took her for a man, a very short man. I walked up with a menu. She didn't want it. She kept looking at my eyes until finally she just turned and went out the door.”

“By then you'd recognized her?”

“Absolutely not. Georgie said she'd died the summer I left. And the years had twisted her face fiercely, Mr. Elstrom. The years, and the anger.”

“She just drove away?”

A small noise came from across the diner. Gus had come out from behind the grill window, and had put a hand on the stainless steel coffee machine. He was about sixty, powerfully built, with biceps that hadn't come from turning eggs. I would have bet there was nothing wrong with his ears, either.

His eyes weren't on the coffeemaker. They were on her.

She shook her head at him almost imperceptibly. I had not yet become a threat. He gave her a small shrug and went back behind the grill window.

“She did not leave right away, Mr. Elstrom,” she went on. “She stood outside, leaning against her car, an old, beat-up tan thing. After five minutes, I began to wonder if she was sick. Other than Gus, there was no one in the diner, so I walked outside. Whip fast, she was up against me. She had a knife—but first, she had things to say.”

Her hands trembled as she refilled our cups from the carafe.

“I was dumbstruck; she wasn't supposed to be alive. I sure never connected her with the TV reports of Darlene being found dead at your home. She started jabbering so fast and choppy I couldn't make out all the words, but there was no mistaking her rage. Or her intent with that knife.”

She squeezed both hands around her coffee mug, maybe for the warmth. Two-handed, she brought the cup to her mouth, took a sip, and went on. “Darlene told her I'd gone off to make a fortune, and would come back for them. I might have said that; I would have said anything to get out of Hadlow. Alta said they waited years for me to bring them to a better life. I tried to tell Alta I'd spent most of my years moving from one town to another, waitressing, clerking retail, working always for small wages, barely getting by. She wouldn't hear it. She kept chattering, spit flying out of her mouth, saying over and over it was my fault, them living hellish all those years.”

“Then Georgie called them?”

“That rat bastard,” she said, looking down at her coffee.

“He was doing well, in your employ.”

“Damned right. Several years earlier, he'd seen a picture of me in the
Tribune.
It was right after Silas had died. He came to the penthouse. He said he was down on his luck.”

“That was all? He didn't threaten you with blackmail?”

Her eyes got a little wider, but she kept her face under control.

“About what?” she asked, watching my face to see what I knew.

“About anything,” I said.

She let it die. “I rented him an office on Wacker Drive, and gave him a retainer to watch over a few checking accounts. For a long time, it was good enough for him.”

“Until suddenly he got greedy?”

“Not so suddenly. I think he'd been waiting since day one for the right opportunity to shake out some big money. He saw his chance with poor Andrew. Georgie came to me, told me he'd discovered Andrew had embezzled a half-million dollars from the Symposium. He said he'd negotiated with Andrew; Andrew would leave, and pay back the money over time. All it took was my blessing. I didn't think to question him, Mr. Elstrom. I was more shocked than anything.”

She looked at me with steady eyes. “But then I made things worse.”

“By not questioning?”

“By saying something stupid and rash. For some time, I'd been thinking about how burdensome my philanthropic life had become. There were so many requests to investigate, and never being absolutely sure which were worthwhile. I whined at Georgie, saying Andrew was the last straw, that maybe I should give away most of what I had. I could make last, major donations to charities I was already familiar with, and be done with all those hours. At that point, I'd made no final decision, Mr. Elstrom; I was merely feeling sorry for myself, in the wake of what I thought I'd learned about Andrew.”

“It sent Koros into action?”

“Like a rocket. He'd already wet his snout with that half million. He wanted more, but he'd have to act quick, before I gave everything away.”

“He called Darlene,” I said.

“Alta said when he told them I'd hit it rich, it was like I'd cut out their hearts. They didn't need any convincing to come down to Chicago to help. I'd have to pay for those years they lost.”

“Alta was telling you all this while she was holding a knife to you?”

“Calm as could be, looking up with her wet eyes and her dead-smelling breath.”