by Claire Booth
‘And then you asked me out,’ she said. She was still the most beautiful shade of pink. ‘Just that next Monday. So …’
He just wanted to sit there and look at her but he needed to say something. He lifted up his pint glass.
‘So we’ll have our own celebration. No more old bat. Here’s to peaceful living.’
They clinked drinks as she laughed. They ordered their entrées and then she smiled.
‘So how’s your day been going?’
This was what Hank had missed. Her white boards. Jerry’s dining room wall just wasn’t the same. He stood in front of the one in the conference room and examined the meticulous timeline that laid out what looked like the entire life of Clyde Timmons. He smiled. Whoever killed that man had no idea what was coming for him. Sheila was an unstoppable force.
His phone squawked with the new ring tone he’d assigned to Ghassan. He wanted to make sure he didn’t miss a single call from the detective.
‘Are you done searching the woods for Hardy?’
Hank couldn’t bring himself to tell Ghassan that he didn’t have the personnel to do it. He’d practically begged the Missouri Conservation Department for a few sworn law enforcement agents to augment the volunteers searching around the dump site. It was better than begging his own men, at least.
‘They just called it off for the night,’ he said. ‘It’s almost pitch black out there. They’ll be back in the morning.’
Ghassan grunted unhappily. Hank had a feeling the guy had no idea how dark it really got out in the middle of an Ozark forest.
‘We think,’ Ghassan said, ‘that Melnicoe might have been down in your area because of a Branson strip mall location. We came across a lease agreement in Hardy’s stolen papers.’
Shit. He’d completely forgotten. He hung up as Ghassan was reading off the street address. He almost dialed Sam but stopped himself just in time. Instead he dug a scrap of paper out of his wallet as he ran for his squad car. A half hour later he barreled into the nearly empty parking lot of the nearly empty strip mall. Lew’s leased space was at the end. Was it going to be another store with a shadow inventory that funneled money who knew where? He got out and tried the door. It was locked, the lights were off, and he couldn’t see a damn thing when he peered through the front window.
He stepped back and took in the whole strip. It was like it wanted to be part of the bigger complex next door, but hadn’t quite made the cut. The ladies’ clothing store had closed for the day. So had the quilt shop. He headed for the still open shoe store and yanked open the door, sending the bell tinkling. The teenage employee, half-heartedly adjusting shoeboxes on the shelves, actually groaned.
‘We close in ten minutes. Clearance items are in the back.’ He turned to point and saw the uniformed Hank. ‘Oh. You’re probably not here to buy shoes.’
Hank said that he wasn’t and asked about the empty store at the end. The kid, who was wearing a black T-shirt, baggy jeans, too many necklaces, and a baseball hat with a brim so flat it looked like it’d been ironed, shrugged.
‘I ain’t seen anybody down there. But I’m stuck in here all day, so I wouldn’t really know.’ He didn’t seem any more interested in Hank’s question than he was in the shoes.
‘I need you to keep an eye out for me. It’s important.’ He handed over a business card.
Flatbill might as well have said Why should I help the cops? out loud, the look on his face was so blatant.
‘It’s a big case,’ Hank said, leaning conspiratorially on the counter and trying to think of a crime that would turn even a teenager into a dutiful citizen. ‘Possible elder abuse. We think he’s in a lot of danger. He’s quite old, and his relatives are really worried.’
The clerk considered that, then perked up.
‘I don’t know if people been going in and out, but I did see something this morning.’ He took in Hank’s encouraging look and kept going. ‘This guy, like, drove around back and then out to the parking lot again. Got out and walked around, but none of the stores were open yet.’ The kid thought a minute. ‘I’d say he was pretty suspicious.’
It was an observation. Whether it was based on genuine reconsidered hindsight or on watching too many TV crime shows was unclear. But it was better than nothing. Hell, it could have been Lew. Or Marco. Hank asked what the man looked like.
Pretty tall with short brown hair. Flatbill couldn’t tell how old he was, but he seemed pretty stressed. He saw something and then lit out of here like his pants were on fire. That, Hank thought, was the surest sign the person was involved in this mess, even though it wasn’t the pomade-slicked, silver-haired Lew. He asked if Flatbill had gotten a good look at the vehicle.
‘Yeah. It was this beat-up old red Bronco. Looked like it might’ve had hunting gear in the back.’
Hank’s hand balled into a fist. He thanked the kid and walked outside. Now he had no choice. He pulled out his phone and hit the button to interrupt a date.
Sheila was seriously considering putting Earl through the academy despite his advanced age. He was doing a bang-up job in here. And Molly March was the find of the century. She’d just answered the employment posting when the job at Billy Bob’s Dairyland restaurant fell through. But she was a natural. She could intuitively sense who the troublemakers were and was capable of handling multiple crises at once. Her only deficits were a lack of confidence and her current focus on Sheila’s spread-out paperwork instead of the jail inmates.
‘So these are your murder suspects?’ She made no attempt to hide the excitement in her voice.
Sheila shuffled things around. She had separate sheets for them all. Every person associated with the bocce bandits, to use Hank’s melodramatic term. She pointed at the men and told March about their Tuesday breakfasts at the diner. Then she explained about the bocce raids and held up the other four papers.
‘You think one of the wives had something to do with it?’ March asked. ‘They didn’t play bocce, too, did they?’
‘No. But I do think they’re involved. One of them, at least. Because the men had been getting together for the past five years. If one of them wanted to kill Clyde, it’s likely he would’ve done it already. Something changed recently that triggered the murder, and the only thing in his life that was different was the bocce. And everybody’s wives knew about at least some of it. So I think we need to look at all of them.’
Adam Moreno and his wife were in Texas visiting a new grandbaby at the time of the killing. So they were out. That left Dick and Roberta Maher, Ned Hodges, Ward and Belinda Ullyott, and bachelor Owen Lafranco. Sheila had stared at this information repeatedly, but now she looked at it through the lens of her conversation with Lonnie. What if he didn’t kill his mother, but Clyde was right and someone had helped her along to her heavenly reward? Who would’ve been in a position to do that, and then panic when Clyde figured it out all these years later?
She put Lafranco at the bottom of the pile. He worked construction and would have been unlikely to cross paths with Nell. Hodges was a schoolteacher – maybe he’d taught Lonnie at some point and gotten to know the boy’s mother. Sheila made a note. Ward Ullyott had been an attorney and his wife an accountant. Not much there one way or the other. She looked at Sam’s notes about his interview with the Mahers. Dick was a retired pharmaceutical rep and his wife had been a nurse. Well now. Either one of them might have had the expertise to assist Nell Timmons.
She flipped through the rest of her file. There was a notation that Sam had talked to some of Nell’s work friends yesterday, but there was no report attached. She scowled. That wasn’t like him. She reached for her cell and then stopped. She’d ordered him to take today off. If she hadn’t done that, she was quite sure she’d have the report in her hands right now. This damn OT mess. She looked at the clock. Sammy and his coffee girl were probably just finishing their entrées. She wondered if she had enough self-discipline to give them time for dessert before she called him.
THIRTY-THREE
<
br /> She grew up a little bit north of here in Republic. She was the middle of three children, with a brother on each side. That made Sam a little nervous. He had a feeling they were very protective of their sister. He knew she was soft-spoken from all the conversations they’d had as she worked the counter at Donorae’s. What he hadn’t known was how funny she was. She told some hilarious stories about the coffee shop and customers coming in off the Strip.
She was also really interested in him. He talked about being close to his grandfather and Branson Valley winning the district championship in football when he was a senior. So far, he’d successfully avoided talking too much about work. He did tell her about the fraudster couple trying to fool their insurance company by pretending more stuff got stolen than really did. Otherwise, he had to go back to the rash of shoplifting at the Easy Come & Go convenience stores over the summer to find something entertaining. Things hadn’t been too funny lately.
His phone went off as he finished his pasta dish. It buzzed softly in the pocket of his slacks. He cursed himself for not turning it all the way off. At least he’d silenced the ringer. And thank goodness the restaurant was noisy enough that Brenna didn’t hear. It buzzed again five minutes later. And then again. He didn’t care if it was another dead body, he wasn’t going to answer it. They decided against dessert and Sam asked for the check. Brenna excused herself and headed to the restroom. The second she was out of sight, he yanked out his phone. Hank. Two calls and a text.
What did you find out when you checked the strip mall address?
Oh, shit. He completely forgot to bring that up when he’d talked to Hank earlier. Although he had texted this morning and Hank hadn’t responded.
Store empty. Leased to Columbia holding company. Keys mailed to PO box. Two cars outside yesterday. Ran plates. Don’t have names with me now.
He saw Brenna coming across the dining room. He quickly dropped his napkin over the phone. Just as she sat down it buzzed again, rattling against the wood table. He was going to kill Hank. Or drag him here and force him to explain to Brenna why he was interrupting. That would be more painful actually, so that was the better choice. He uncovered the phone.
‘It’s my boss. He’s asking a question about a case. I’m sorry.’
She smiled. ‘That’s OK. It’s kind of exciting. What’s the case about?’
At least they were done eating. He tried to choose his words carefully. ‘I checked out a location for him earlier today. He decided he needs the report on it earlier than he thought.’
‘Why is it so urgent?’ She sounded genuinely curious, not annoyed.
‘Well, turns out it might be linked to, um … a deceased person we found way out in the woods, that dense stretch south of One Sixty and Hercules Glades.’
Those beautiful green eyes got huge. Then he got a slow smile. ‘There’s a lot you don’t mention when we talk at the coffee shop, isn’t there?’
He nodded just as his cell went off again, this time with a call. He felt his ears go red and then the rest of his head. But Brenna just laughed and leaned forward eagerly. He kept his eyes on her, the only way he could think of to stay calm, as he answered.
‘I said I don’t have the names with me right now.’
‘What?’ Sheila said.
‘Oh. I thought you were Hank.’
‘He’s bothering you during your date?’
‘You are, too.’
‘At least I waited until you were done with dinner.’
‘You get no points for that.’
Guilty silence. Finally she said she needed his notes from the interviews with Nell Timmons’s co-workers to see if they supported her theory that it was the Mahers who helped kill her.
‘Assisted suicide? What?’
‘Lonnie says his dad thought he helped Nell die when the cancer got too bad. I completely believe that Clyde thought his son had done that. It’s just whether Nell really was helped along, and whether Clyde could suddenly prove it. If so, somebody would have quite the motive to silence him.’
It wasn’t bad as theories went, but Sam didn’t see why it couldn’t wait until tomorrow. He told Sheila the notes were in his car and he’d get them to her later in the evening. He said goodbye before she could ask for anything else. Brenna looked disappointed.
‘Sometimes it’s exciting,’ he said, ‘but mostly it’s boring. I’d much rather go to our movie. Shall we?’
This time he’d make sure to turn his phone all the way off.
I left my car unlocked. At the IMAX. Info is in the glove box.
Hank read the text and whooped. He’d been about to start checking every restaurant in town. He turned the squad car toward the theater. Sam’s Bronco was parked in one of the middle rows. A hint of perfume floated out when Hank opened the door. He smiled and hoped the date was going well. Even with the interruptions.
The sheaf of papers was wedged in tightly. He wondered how two car registrations produced that much information until he saw that the top sheets were notes from an interview with someone named Mary Johnson. And a Jeanette Pistoresi. It looked like Sheila’s case. At the bottom were two printouts, a Chevy Traverse registered to William Kern of Hollister and a Toyota Avalon registered to …
Lewis Lancaster of Columbia.
Lew’s car had been in Branson yesterday, and Hank hadn’t known. He wanted to vomit. Sam had conscientiously included copies of the driver’s licenses. He could see the gleam off Lew’s pompadour even in the black-and-white printout. Had the old man been in the car? Or was he dead somewhere, just like his employee? Where was the car now? He slammed Sammy’s door and reached for his radio to put out a BOLO for Lew and his Avalon. There’d been one issued up in Columbia, of course, but no one down here would’ve paid much attention to it. Now the manhunt for Uncle Lew was going to go statewide.
He climbed into his cruiser and rested his head on the steering wheel. His duty belt dug into his middle and his vest into his sides. And now his phone was ringing.
‘You need to find Sammy. He’s got the notes I need in his car.’
‘I have them right here.’
‘What? He told you about it?’
‘No. He told me about mine. What I needed. Yours were there, too.’
‘Well, send them to me.’
‘Fine. Don’t suppose you’d be interested to know that Maggie’s uncle is probably in the area and might be a killer?’
‘Jesus. Really? How’d he go from being the employer of the body dump to a murderer?’
‘There’s a massive fraud going on. I was hoping it was the CFO and not Lew, but with Lew being down here, I got no other conclusion to draw.’
‘And the secretary’s still missing, isn’t she?’
‘Yep.’
‘Well, I don’t envy you that conversation with your father-in-law.’
‘You want to be there for it? I could probably use some protection.’
She scoffed. ‘So you’ll send those notes?’
‘I get your theory and all, and I’ll do it as soon as I hang up, but what’s the hurry? These bocce guys are older folks. They’re not going anywhere.’
Silence.
‘OK, that was stupid,’ he said. ‘Old people run away. Obviously. You think you need to move on this tonight?’
‘I wouldn’t be so worried if I could station a deputy outside the Maher house to make sure they don’t flee. But I got no personnel. There’s only so much I can ask of Earl,’ Sheila said. ‘I’d like to at least read through it and see if there’s follow-up that needs doing. I know Sam didn’t do anything, because I made him take the day off.’
Hank snorted. ‘That ended up working out well.’
‘Yeah, just like everything else lately. I’ll be waiting.’
The line went dead. Hank shifted so his gun would stop jabbing him in the side, and started snapping photos of Sam’s chicken scratch notes. Thank God the information for his case was on computer printouts.
Sheila put Earl to w
ork deciphering Sam’s handwriting.
Bea Kircher was the one co-worker Sammy hadn’t been able to track down. He’d left himself a note at the bottom of the paper to check with the company on Monday. Hell, he might have pushed through and found the woman today if Sheila hadn’t ordered him not to work. This lady might be the one who could finally give her some concrete link to the Mahers that she could use to confront the couple. As of right now, all she had was a vague theory and a lot of supposition. Which wasn’t great ammo for a confrontation.
She looked over Earl’s shoulder as he transcribed. There was a scrawl in the margin with a ‘manager Alex Chung’ and what looked like a business phone number. It was no good. She ran the man through the driver’s license database. She was guessing he lived locally – which could be a completely erroneous assumption, but she had to start somewhere. And luckily southern Missouri did not have a whole lot of Chungs. There was only one Alexander. She took down the address and plugged it into a reverse directory to find his landline phone number. If he didn’t have one of those, she’d move on to the databases that had access to cell phone numbers.
But this guy was old-fashioned. He had a landline and picked up on the second ring. Molly mimed applause and Earl pumped his fist. She swatted them away and told Chung why she was calling.
‘No, sir, I assure you, it has nothing to do with your company business at all. Yes, sir. I realize it’s the weekend. Is there any way you can access that information from home? You could? Yes, I’d be happy to wait.’
Her expression didn’t reflect the sentiment of those last words. But she had no choice but to listen to what sounded like an NCIS rerun as Chung set down the landline and stomped off. She flipped through Earl’s translation again. Sam’s interviews with the other two women had been pretty thorough, but this Kircher woman seemed to have worked most closely with Nell Timmons at White Tail Manufacturing.
