by Claire Booth
‘Did he ever talk about it again?’
Mr Moreno said no, Clyde never brought it up again. He was going to ask more that day at the diner, but didn’t get a chance because everyone else in the group came in right then.
‘Tell me about your group,’ Sam said, switching gears. ‘You’ve been getting together for five years? Did the bocce change anything? You all were getting together more often. You had this secret thing going. Was everybody into it?’
Mr Moreno laughed. ‘Oh, hell yeah. We all loved it. It was this big dose of excitement in our pretty boring lives. Dick Maher is always a hoot, but when he taught us all how to play, he took it to a new level. He’s like a social director or something. He’d map out the best way into the resort every time we hit a new place. He’d bring a cooler full of drinks. The only thing he wouldn’t do is drive. He always hitched a ride with somebody because, well, Dick likes his whiskey.’
Yeah, he does, thought Sam, whose work boots still smelled like single malt. Their outings were some of the only opportunities for Dick to kick back and enjoy that kind of thing, Mr Moreno said.
‘Dick’s wife keeps him on a pretty short leash. She worked as a nurse supervisor before she retired, and she’s got no sense of humor. She doesn’t appreciate the joy we get out of our bocce raids. We were all disappointed when she found out we were sneaking out at night. Hell, man, we were terrified. That she’d keep Dick from coming – or that she’d call the cops.’ Mr Moreno paused. ‘Although I guess now with Clyde bein’ murdered, our bocce isn’t you all’s priority, is it?’
‘That’s very correct, sir. I’m just trying to get to know about everyone in the group so I can get a better sense of Mr Timmons.’ And figure out which group member might have wanted him dead. Sam didn’t say that part, though. ‘What else can you tell me about Mr Maher?’
Dick was a retired salesman, Mr Moreno said. Some kind of medical equipment or something. It made sense, because he could talk a person into anything. Hell, he’d talked all of them into running around town under cover of darkness like damn-fool, oat-sowing teenagers, hadn’t he?
‘Did he ever get upset if one of you didn’t show up?’ Sam asked. ‘Anything like that?’
‘Nah. It’s Ned Hodges who does that. He’s the one who’s strung a little tight. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a nice guy. He likes things just so, is all. Always sits in the same seat at the diner, always orders the same breakfast, always has to drive. We all wondered if he’d be able to handle the bocce, honestly. It’s very by-the-seat-of-our-pants. He’s had a few little agitations, but otherwise, he’s been fine. You just got to take his quirks as they come. It’s no big deal.’
Ned was a teacher. Retired, of course. Mr Moreno thought he’d taught middle school, maybe in Forsyth? Widowed, lived alone. Sam thought about what Mrs Ullyott had said as he’d walked out of her house the night before – that Ned was the one with a temper. He pressed Mr Moreno.
‘That sounds more like irritation with keeping on schedule. Did he ever actually get angry at anybody?’
‘He did light into Owen Lafranco one night. It was right after we started the bocce. Owen stepped away from the match for a minute to take a phone call, and Ned just lost it. He started yelling and got right up in Owen’s face. Made the poor guy drop his cigarette. The rest of us were worried someone would hear the yelling and we’d get found out. It was over the top, I’ll admit. I was a little worried Ned would have a coronary.’
Owen had taken it in his stride. He always did. He was pretty laid back, which Mr Moreno attributed to him never having married. No wife and no kids to drive the blood pressure up. He’d worked as a construction foreman for years, and now had knees almost as bad as Clyde’s. But they both could still roll a decent bocce ball.
‘Not like ol’ Ward Ullyott. It’s taken him a long time to get the hang of it. None of us are any great shakes, but Ward – whew, he’s awful. His wife says his balance is off. He didn’t tell her about the bocce, because he didn’t want her clucking over him about his health. Oh … I suppose she knows now, though, doesn’t she?’
Sam said she did, which made Mr Moreno doubt that she’d let her husband come out and play anymore. She was protective. That’s why he loved his red Cadillac so much. She didn’t mind him driving it, said it was safe enough. Remembering all the times Mr Timmons was seen in that car, Sam asked if the two of them were particularly close.
‘Not necessarily. Ward is a … a helper, I guess would be the best way to describe it. You need a ride, he’ll pick you up. You’re short when the bill comes, he’ll loan you the money.’
For instance, Mr Moreno continued, he bought the whole group bocce ball bags. Sam sat straight up with a jolt. Bocce ball bags. Mr Ullyott had ordered six spanking new bags made just for bocce balls. They were supposed to arrive next week. Sam sat back and pictured the canvas tote in Mr Maher’s foyer. They were all using those kinds of temporary bags, Mr Moreno said. Bigger and loose, Sam thought, with enough room for eight bocce balls and enough material to get a good grip for swinging with enough force to bash somebody’s brains in.
TWENTY-ONE
Fin was crying. Which Hank expected, but that didn’t make it any less awful.
‘So do you see why we need to call the police?’
She nodded. ‘Absolutely. Tina hasn’t left town of her own volition, that’s for certain.’ She picked up the phone. ‘Let’s do it.’
Hank let out a long, slow sigh of relief. It was time for search warrants and forceful, badge-in-the-face interviews. An hour later, the Columbia PD detective thought so, too. He leaned back in the nice leather easy chair in Fin’s front room and snapped his notebook closed.
‘I do wish you’d come to us earlier, Mrs Lancaster. Even if you did’ – he shot Hank a look that would fit perfectly next to the dictionary entry for ‘exasperated’ – ‘have a policeman looking into it.’
Hank ignored him. ‘So you’ll take a look at the business, too? That young man who works there has significant worries about the discrepancies between the account he has access to and where that money is coming from. And you’ve heard what Mrs Lancaster knows about the Castle being in financial trouble, even if no one else will admit it.’
The detective, who’d introduced himself only as Ghassan, rose to his feet.
‘Of course we’ll look at Closeout Castle. If Ms Hardy uncovered something illegal there, that would definitely be motive to … well, to do whatever it is that’s been done to her.’ He would immediately put out a missing person alert and search her condo, Ghassan said. ‘And a late Friday afternoon visit to Castle corporate headquarters seems like a good idea. All sorts of things can happen to business records over a weekend, and we wouldn’t want that.’
Hank couldn’t keep the smile off his face. He was really starting to like this guy. He just wished he could tag along, but he knew that wasn’t possible. He’d already encroached enough. He gave Ghassan the notes from his conversation with Business School and told him about the message he’d left on Tina’s desk. The last thing they needed was to find that and launch a wild goose chase for a mysterious secret admirer.
‘Damn, man,’ Ghassan said. ‘When you retire, you should go into PI work. That’s some slick shit – oh, sorry, ma’am.’
Fin managed her first smile of the day. ‘Sir, you’ve taken me seriously. That’s all I care about. You can talk any way you want.’
He shook her hand, then as he shook Hank’s he leaned closer.
‘I know that you know more than you’re telling me,’ he said softly. ‘If I only had the resources to do one thing at a time, what should I do first?’
‘The office. And seal the warehouses. My bet is the inventory they have on paper isn’t there in reality. Don’t give them an opportunity to fix it. And the manager of Store Four. He’s in on it.’
Ghassan stepped back and nodded. They showed him to the door and watched him walk out to his unmarked sedan.
‘What do we do if they
don’t find the papers she hid under the mattress?’ Fin whispered, even though the detective was out of earshot.
That would be very awkward. Hank had already started praying the Columbia cops wouldn’t miss the documents. He didn’t want to have to confess his condo trespassing in order to point them in the right direction.
‘We’ll just have to cross that bridge if we come to it.’
The address was burning a hole in Sam’s pocket. And making his stomach churn. What was he going to do after he checked it out? Call Hank back? Maybe he could text a report. That would be a way to avoid an actual conversation. Because he wasn’t going to be able to keep quiet about the murder if Hank directly asked him what was going on in the department. Sam would have to tell him. Then the shit would hit the fan. And Sam had no desire to be the one who triggered that mess.
He traded the department cruiser for his personal car, although he was still in uniform. That was as low a profile as he could manage with everything he still had to do today. He pulled in to the strip of stores, which were an annex of sorts to the outlet mall on Gretna Road. There was a ladies’ clothing shop and an athletic shoe store for a brand Sam had never heard of. At the end of the row was the suite number Hank had texted him.
He pulled slowly through the parking lot and found a spot where he could see in the front of the store without having to get out of his Bronco. It had lines of shelving that made up long aisles running toward the back of the store. There was a counter on the right side that he assumed would be for ringing up people’s purchases. It looked like there was a door in the back, but it was hard to see much more than that. Otherwise, there was nothing in the store. No merchandise, no signs, no cash register computers.
He pulled around the building to the back, which was even more boring than the front. There were a couple of Dumpsters and two cars – a Chevy Traverse and a Toyota Avalon. He wrote down both license plate numbers, but he couldn’t run them because he wasn’t in his squad car with its computer. He sighed. This had been a waste of time.
The white board was covered in black marker. Sheila’s theories, connected by arrows to suspects, were linked by other arrows to a timeline of events. And the whole thing was decorated with a very liberal sprinkling of question marks. She sat down at the conference room table and rubbed at her aching temples. Usually putting it all on the board helped, but this time everything was just as muddled as when she started. It didn’t help that they had a long time period when the murder could have occurred. And no clear motive.
She glanced across the table at the empty chair. That didn’t help either. Hank not being here to hash through everything was really what was making her beloved white board ineffective. They’d been up against tough homicides before, but they could bounce things off each other. Now all Sheila had was peace and quiet. It wasn’t getting her anywhere.
She needed to call him. It would come out in the Daily Herald tomorrow, and she didn’t want him to see it there first. She actually never dreamed it would take this long to be publicized. She’d figured there’d be twelve hours – twenty-four at most – before she’d need to tell Hank about the murder. Somehow that had turned into more than forty-eight, and now things could get sticky. She placed her cell on the table in front of her and pushed his number.
He didn’t answer – which astonished her, quite frankly. Not that she was any great thing, but this was the man who wanted updates if he had to take a mere few hours off. He’d had a morning doctor’s appointment in Springfield a few months ago, and he’d called in four times before lunch. They hadn’t even had anything more exciting going on than those dumb kids drag racing out near Taneyville. So when he was essentially forced to leave town for days on end and then finally got a call from the office, she expected him to grab for it like the workaholic’s lifeline that it was.
She pushed the phone away and got up to pace the length of the board again. She hadn’t yet put little dots on the timeline points so she added those, because she had no other theories left to write. She started on the right end and worked backward in time, carefully coloring in unnecessary circles. She ended with the date six months ago when Lonnie Timmons maintained he last saw his father. Then she drew an arrow to the day only last month when bocce player Ned Hodges said Lonnie came to town. Both things were definite changes in Clyde’s life – Lonnie’s urgent pestering, and the start of the bocce nonsense. Were those the only two?
She traced the timeline forward, then back again and beyond, extending her line farther to the left. Then she dug through her notebook and finally landed on what she wanted. The little group of old men had started meeting at the diner five years ago. Might as well write that on the board, too. She flipped through more pages and came to the other date she wanted. Nine years ago was when the Clyde–Lonnie relationship went all to hell after Nell Timmons died. Maybe the roots of this thing went that far back. Maybe one of these two moments in time would eventually explain everything.
TWENTY-TWO
There was nothing to do but sit and wait. He kept telling Fin that they wouldn’t learn anything today. Even if the Columbia police did find something while executing their search warrants, they weren’t going to call and update her. That wasn’t how it worked. Sadly. Because Hank could really do with an update. So far, he’d resisted the temptation to drive out to the warehouses and see what was going on. Instead, he was sitting in Fin’s kitchen, drinking tea and playing gin rummy. They were on their sixth hand when the landline rang. Fin answered it and waved him over. There was no speaker function, so he had to lean in close to hear.
‘… need to know his schedule, Mrs Lancaster,’ Ghassan was saying.
‘Lew just told me that he would be back tonight. That usually means not to hold dinner for him.’
‘And did he tell you where he was going?’
‘He said he had a meeting in Jeff City.’
There was noise in the background, and Hank thought he heard someone say something about Marco Cortello. He pointed at the phone and then at Fin.
‘Is Marco there with you?’ she asked Ghassan.
‘You bet he is. Sitting in the office lobby swearing six ways to Sunday that he had no idea Tina Hardy wasn’t at her mother’s.’ There was some shuffling and the background noise disappeared. ‘Mrs Lancaster, did you know that Mr Cortello has a degree in music theory? I’ve got someone looking more closely, but it appears he has no financial training. Were you aware of that?’
‘I didn’t know what he studied in college,’ Fin said. ‘But I do know that Lew hired him on because he was having a tough time and he was a hard worker. That was back when there was only one store and no more than a half-dozen employees. Marco kept working hard, and eventually Lew made him CFO. It was more a reward than anything else, I suppose.’
Ghassan groaned. Hank shook his head in dismay. A privately held company that kept its nose clean could get away with that, he supposed. Closeout Castle certainly wasn’t that anymore.
‘Cortello is telling us he doesn’t know where Lancaster is,’ Ghassan said. ‘And we’ve checked where he was supposed to have his meeting, and he never showed. So I’m going to ask you again, Mrs Lancaster. Where’s your husband?’
She turned to Hank with tears in her eyes and a look halfway between worried and furious. He reached for the phone but stopped and moved away just the slightest bit. If he were the one talking with the wife of a suspect – a potentially on-the-lam suspect – he’d be furious if someone interrupted. He couldn’t let the fact that she was family ruin his judgment. He nodded encouragingly at Fin.
‘I don’t know, detective,’ she said. ‘I swear to you, I thought he was in Jeff City. I can try to call him if you like …’
That was an offer Hank would accept, if it were officially his case. Ghassan told her he might need her to do that later on, but not right now. Hank stuffed his hands in his pockets to keep from grabbing the phone. He listened as Ghassan asked where else Lew might be, what his hobbies were, wh
ether he had a favorite bar.
‘His only hobby is work. And the house – he likes to work on the house. He doesn’t drink. He doesn’t do anything else. The company is his life. He …’
She stopped and looked at Hank. She seemed to realize where that line of talk was headed and wisely cut herself off before she could gush about how Lew built his beloved company from scratch and would be devastated if anything happened to it. Hank nodded and mouthed a question.
‘What would you like me to do, detective?’ she repeated into the receiver.
Call if Lew gets in contact with you in any way, Ghassan said. Then the Columbia detective asked for Hank. He and Fin stared at each other in surprise and Hank took the phone.
‘We’re working on warrants for Tina Hardy’s bank account and credit cards, but we don’t have them yet,’ Ghassan said. ‘So we don’t know if she’s accessed them recently. We’re canvassing her condo complex right now, but I need to know if you already did that, and if you found out anything.’
Hank hadn’t done a true canvass, and he told Ghassan that. Then he stared at the kitchen wallpaper for what felt like an eternity but was probably only seconds.
‘I do have something I need to mention,’ he said. ‘Mrs Lancaster and I did enter Ms Hardy’s residence.’
Silence.
‘Excuse me?’ the detective finally said. ‘You did what?’
Hank looked over at Fin, who pointed to herself and nodded, then snatched the phone out of his hand as he started to speak.
‘Yes, detective. I let myself into her condo. I thought there might be something inside that would help me figure out where she is. I asked Hank to go with me. I was a little scared. He didn’t really want to, but he did because he’s a good nephew.’
All that came out in one torrent of speech. She took a deep breath and refused to look at Hank, whose jaw had dropped at the lie. She turned away from him and kept talking.
