The Quiet Streets of Winslow (18 page)

“We'll be her refuge,” my mother said, “like Father Sofie says about faith, during Mass.”

“What refuge will Dad have?” Damien said.

“You don't need to worry about me,” Dad said.

“What about Nate?” Damien asked.

“Nate comes to Mass with us sometimes,” Mom said, “don't you, Nate?”

Nate looked at us. “I don't know that it can be a refuge for me,” he said to Damien. “I would like it to be, and I've probably thought about it more than most people have. It's possible that I've thought about it too much. It might be one of those things you need to just fall into, like sleeping or dreaming, and I'm not so good at that. I don't know that I can do it.”

“That's a serious answer,” my mother said.

“Why put him on the spot like that, Julie?” my father said.

“She wasn't saying anything to me that wasn't true,” Nate said.

My father and Nate were facing each other. For the first time I noticed that the expression on Dad's face around Nate was a lot like Nate's expression around Dad: stubborn, almost angry, and at the same time sorry, like there was something they had done to each other that the rest of us didn't know about.

chapter twenty-seven

SAM RUSH

T
HE OWNER/BARTENDER OF
PT's, in Winslow, was a middle-aged, red-haired man with a poorly repaired cleft palate beneath a sparse moustache. He knew Jody Farnell. Said she used to come in three evenings or so a week. One young man or another, and some not so young, would buy her drinks, and she'd play pool when she was asked to. She had a talent for pool, the owner said, but never played for money, not that he had seen. He couldn't recall any man in particular that she spent time with, except for Paul Bowman, occasionally, and Kevin Rainey.

“Tell me about Kevin Rainey,” I said, and he said that he was a quiet, sandy-haired fellow, around thirty, of medium height, who did lawn work around town.

“He comes in often enough. Has a few beers, puts money in the jukebox, doesn't make trouble. He's a bit of a loner.”

“He lives here in Winslow?”

“I believe he lives in Holbrook.”

“How is it you know his name?” I said.

“He did lawn work for my sister-in-law, back when she lived here. That was a few years ago now. She saw him going door to door with his lawn mower, asking for work, and felt sorry for him. You know, somebody trying to scrape together a living.”

“She say anything else about him?”

“Well, she started doing her own yard work. I remember that. She said he wanted to be friends, maybe more than friends. Flattering, I would think, since my sister's fifty. But she told him not to come back anymore.”

“Did he listen?”

“More or less, I believe.”

“What about this man?” I said, showing him a photograph of Nate Aspenall. “Have you ever seen him in here?”

“No,” he said. “Doesn't look familiar.”

“How friendly was this Kevin Rainey with Jody? Did he pester her?”

“Well, a lot of the men pestered her, if by that you mean stared at her, bought her drinks. He didn't seem much different from the others. Quieter, maybe. He and Jody would talk a little, when he was in here. He would approach her. There was one time he wanted to buy her a drink and she said no. Just no. No reason given. He said, ‘Make her one, anyway, would you?' And I did. It sat there all night, right on the bar where I left it.”

“How long ago was that?”

“A month or so ago, maybe.”

“Did you ever see them talk after that?”

“Once or twice, maybe.”

“Did Jody ever say anything to you about him?” I said.

He paused to serve a beer to a bald man in overalls.

“Jody never said much to me about anything. But then my wife works here with me, and I'm careful about how much I talk to female customers, and they're careful about how much they talk to me. I never had a real conversation with Jody. Neither did my wife, for that matter. We knew her. She was here a lot. But we didn't know much about her. I don't believe she had lived here that long.”

“How often does Paul Bowman come in?” I asked.

“You don't suspect Paul Bowman of anything, do you? He's not going to hurt anybody. He likes women too much.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I've known him a long time, not that I see him as often as I used to. His wife doesn't like him drinking. But when he's here he's talking to whatever female happens to be here, including my wife. He's got a soft heart, my wife says. One night, when he was drinking more than usual—I don't let people get out-and-out drunk, Deputy Sheriff; I keep an eye on that—he told her that he had had an affair with somebody once, and that he would have divorced his wife if the woman had agreed to marry him. But she didn't want a husband, or at least she didn't want him. No name given,” the owner said. “No details. Just this sweet spot my wife develops for any man with a heart.”

“It's a surprise to women that we have them,” I said, and he laughed at that. I had ordered coffee, and he refilled my cup.

“How well do you remember the night Jody was killed?” I said. “It was April 24, a Thursday.”

“My wife and I tried to remember, after we heard. We both remembered Jody as having been here early in the evening, maybe seven or eight. Thursdays can get busy, people getting a head start on the
weekend, but we were fairly sure she was here, though I couldn't say when she left.”

“What about Kevin Rainey? Do you remember if he was in here that night?”

“He was. They might have talked a little. But they didn't come in together. He came in earlier than she did. I remember because he drank more than usual, and I was keeping an eye on that.”

“Anything else you recall about that night? Anything unusual?”

“Somebody left their vehicle in the parking lot,” he said. “Although that wasn't unusual. It happens all the time. People drink too much, and either they walk home or get a ride.”

“Did you know who it belonged to?”

“No. It was a station wagon that I'd seen there before, though.”

“An older model, burgundy Buick?”

“Well, it was burgundy. I noticed that much.”

“When did it get picked up? Do you recall?”

“Well, it was gone when I came in the next morning to open. That was at eleven.”

“Has this Kevin Rainey been in since then?”

“Now that you mention it, no. I don't believe I've seen him.”

“You know anybody who knows him? Knows where he lives?”

“Aside from my sister, no,” he said. “Not really. As I said, he keeps to himself. You suspect Kevin Rainey? You think he was involved?”

I smiled and said, “I suspect a lot of people. Pretty much everybody.”

“Well, I feel terrible about what happened to Jody,” he said. “My wife and I both do. We miss her coming in. There was something kind of touching about her. You felt for her, without knowing why.”

In the parking lot I checked on whether or not Kevin Rainey had a record. He did, as it turned out, albeit not an impressive one: a DUI and an assault that didn't involve a female. What I couldn't find for him was an address, a registered vehicle, nothing.

I phoned Paul Bowman and asked him to meet me at Burger King, near the interstate, for a sandwich. I wanted to talk to him away from his wife.

He pulled up to the restaurant when I did; we got our food, then sat at a window booth. He wore a tan shirt that was tight across his middle. His fleshy face looked uneasy.

“I know that you frequent PT's bar occasionally,” I said, “and that you've run into Jody there at least once. Was that by accident? Or did Jody ask you to come?”

“It was just by accident,” Bowman said. “I saw her there two or three times, and we talked for a few minutes. How are you, are things okay with the house, that kind of thing. Nothing special. Nothing personal.”

“How about on your side?” I said. “Any chance you went to PT's hoping to see Jody?”

“No chance,” he said. “I told you the truth about her. And I don't spend much time there anymore. My wife doesn't like me to. So I'll run out for something at Walmart and stop at PT's for a beer on the way back. If she thinks I'm gone too long, she'll ask me, and I'll tell her. If she doesn't ask, I don't tell.”

“Did you ever see Kevin Rainey talking to Jody at PT's?”

“I don't know a Kevin Rainey.”

“Well, he's around thirty, medium height, with light hair. Does yard work around town, drives an old burgundy station wagon. The
owner of PT's said he comes into the bar now and again and used to talk to Jody.”

“Well, there are always young guys in there,” Bowman said, “and I'd see them looking at her, but I don't remember anybody fitting that description. I mean, nobody in particular.” He took a bite of his Whopper and looked down at his fries. “My wife would kill me if she knew I was eating this.”

“So your wife doesn't like you going to the bar because she doesn't want you drinking? Or does it have to do with other women?”

“Both. She can be jealous, like I told you.”

“How jealous?” I said.

“We were out of town when Jody was killed. You know that.”

“Well, Jody felt threatened by somebody,” I said, “and I'm trying to establish who. Maybe your wife took to calling her, warning her to stay away from you.”

“Mary liked Jody well enough,” he said, “and she knew Jody's mother. You heard her say it yourself. She thought of Jody as a teenager, more or less, and so did I.”

“But jealousy is a powerful emotion, and not just for men. In my years on the job I've seen plenty of examples.”

“I bet you have,” Bowman said. “I've seen Mary jealous. But not over Jody Farnell, I can promise you. Jody Farnell was not the woman Mary was jealous of.”

“Who was?”

“A woman from a lifetime ago, and not from here.”

“How jealous did Mary get?” I asked.

“Enough to make me miserable, nobody else, Deputy Sheriff. It's me she wanted to suffer.”

“On another subject,” I said, “did Jody ever mention the town of Leupp to you?”

“Not that I can recall.”

“So no idea of her knowing somebody there, or having some kind of connection to it?”

He shook his head. “Leupp is a tiny town on the Reservation, pronounced
Loop
, by the way. I never heard Jody mention it. As I told you, I didn't know much about Jody's personal business. I didn't care to.” He drank his coffee and said, “For her sake I wish she'd never moved back to Winslow. For my sake I wish I'd never rented to her.”

“I can understand that,” I said.

W
HEN
I
LEFT
Winslow I took the route Nate Aspenall and Jody had driven the day before she died—north on Route
99
, then west on I-5, which was an absolutely straight two-lane road that ran parallel to I-40. The town of Leupp was a shorter drive from Winslow than I had expected, and the town was small, as Paul Bowman had said, cut through the middle by the Colorado River. There was an elementary school, a boarding school, El Paso Natural Gas, Sunrise Airfield, a few businesses, and two churches, one of which was probably the location of the funeral Alice Weneka had mentioned attending. I wondered if it were possible Jody had had a relationship with any of Alice Weneka's relatives in Leupp, back when Jody and Wes Giddens had had their baby, but even if she had, why keep up that relationship, when it seemed that the family had wanted so little to do with her?

I also wondered about the map found in Jody's car and whether it might have been designating a location in or near Leupp, and whether that was why Jody had wanted to drive there. But Alice Weneka knew
Leupp and hadn't recognized it. Unless she hadn't been telling me the truth, but for what reason? I still didn't have any evidence pointing to Wes Giddens, but on the other hand I had not located him yet, nor had the assistant deputy sheriff in Prescott I had asked to help with it.