by Curry, Edna
“I suppose.” I buttered another roll and bit into it, savoring the wonderful fresh baked flavor. I wondered if I could learn to bake my own. “Mmm, these are good.”
“Aren’t they? Their homemade bread is one of the reasons this is my favorite restaurant.”
“Mine, too.” If only it wasn’t so expensive.
“As I was saying, when Clara grew up, her father allowed her to work in the office during school vacations, but drew the line at allowing her in the working area of the factory. She went off to college and came back with modern ideas.”
“I’ll bet that didn’t go over too well with Jacob, huh?”
The waitress brought our food and retreated.
“So anyway, Jacob wasn’t very well by then, so he let Clara run the office. But he hired and groomed Sam Carter to be the factory manager. By then, Clara had convinced Helen she could take her father’s place when he was too sick to do it. But Jacob wouldn’t allow it and put Sam in charge. That angered Helen and prejudiced her against Sam.”
I frowned. “But shouldn’t she have blamed Jacob instead of Sam?”
Nora laughed. “Of course she should have. But one’s emotions aren’t always logical.”
“So she resented Sam instead.”
“Yes. Then Sam and Clara fell in love and Helen had to accept him as her son-in-law, at least in public. But she didn’t have to like it.”
I was beginning to understand the reason for Helen’s bitterness.
“So Helen and Sam have never been like family?”
“No, not at all.”
“Still, that’s a far cry from thinking he’d kill his wife. Surely Helen knew Sam loved Clara?”
Nora drank her coffee thoughtfully.
“Yes, I’m sure she knew that. But Sam had a reputation with the ladies. I’m not saying it was true, but Helen believed it was and she was furious about all the rumors. She loved Clara and was very protective of her. Maybe too much so, because of John’s disability, you know.”
I frowned.
“I’m not sure I follow you.”
“I meant I think Helen was always afraid something would happen to Clara, too, to prevent her from doing everything Helen thought she should.”
“Oh. Like running the factory.”
Nora nodded.
“Yes. Helen wanted Clara in charge with a passion and resented her husband’s idea that only men could do that job.”
“I see.”
“She felt Sam brought shame on their family by his philandering. And to Helen, appearances are everything.”
“But why would she be so angry that Clara left the factory to Sam? I mean, don’t most husbands and wives leave their property to each other and their children?”
“Oh, of course they do.”
“Then why?”
“How can I explain it? Helen still thinks of the factory as hers. Sam and Clara bought out her interest in it and changed the name to Carter Manufacturing after Jacob died. But Helen seems to just block that information out. So, I’m sure she thinks it should come back to her, not go to Sam.”
“How strange.”
Nora nodded. “People sometimes get something in their heads one way and can’t seem to understand that they have it all wrong. Helen only hears what she wants to hear.”
I sipped my coffee and thought about what that might mean to my investigation. How far would Helen’s warped view of the situation take her? What would she do? Where would she draw the line?
Another thought struck me—Clara’s brother. Had Helen talked about this to John? How would her feelings of resentment have influenced him? What was he capable of doing?
I remembered John’s comment about the will at Clara’s wake. He’d said the factory should come back to him and his mother, not go to Sam. I’d thought it odd at the time, but now it made sense.
I thanked Nora for the lovely lunch and headed back to work.
Chapter 10
Thankfully, a message from my garage waited for me, saying my car was ready. I drove the loaner back and happily exchanged it for my beloved little red Chevrolet.
Next, I needed to check out the ‘accident’ that had killed Harry Alders, the Minneapolis private investigator Clara had hired. I felt sure Ben was covering up something when he said he had nothing new on him. I’d have to find out for myself.
In a couple of earlier phone calls, I’d learned my stepbrother, Jerry, had Harry’s car in his lot. I usually had as little contact as possible with Jerry or his gas station and auto repair shop, but the other station didn’t do towing, so Sheriff Ben had called Jerry. Thus, I’d have to deal with him, like it or not, if I wanted to find out anything about the PI’s car. I could only hope his employees would be on duty instead of Jerry.
No such luck. When I stopped by, Jerry spotted me and started walking out to the back lot where he kept the cars. Sheriff Ben had evidently gone over it already and left it with Jerry until some relative decided its fate.
I’d gotten Harry’s vehicle info from the internet, so I knew what to look for, so I headed out back to find his car.
“Did you run out of cheating husbands to take pictures of?” Jerry asked sarcastically.
I gritted my teeth, then turned around and sent him a little smile. “Nope. Are you afraid Elaine has hired me to check up on you?”
Jerry’s face turned red with fury.
“Of course not. I’d never cheat on Elaine and she knows it!” he sputtered.
“Oh really?” I asked innocently, pleased to have riled him. But then I sobered, remembering I needed some info from him. Needling him wasn’t the way to get it.
“This the Taurus the Alders PI went over the cliff in?” I asked, eyeing the vehicle.
“Yeah. Not much left to fix on that one.”
“Nobody’s claimed it yet?”
“Not yet. What’s it to you?”
“Just curious,” I said, shrugging. “It’s the talk of the coffee shop, you know.”
Jerry thought most women did little except gossip if they went to a morning coffee group, so I might as well play up that angle.
“Yeah, I suppose it is,” he agreed with a smirk.
“Ben’s all through with it then?” I asked.
I knew if it was here and not at the sheriff’s impound lot, he was, but played dumb. Jerry liked me better that way, so he could feel superior. When Jerry felt superior, he often volunteered information to brag about how much he knew.
“Yeah, Ben’s done with it. I’m just waiting for someone to give me the word from a relative to send it to a recycling place or sell it for parts.”
“Then you won’t mind if I take a quick look at it?”
Jerry scratched his head. “Why do you want to do that?”
I gave him a secretive little smile. “Just to satisfy my curiosity, you know.”
“Curiosity killed the cat, you know, but suit yourself. I’ve got to get back to work.” He strode back to his shop.
His comment sent a chill trickling down my back like when my big brother used to stuff a snowball under my jacket, but at least Jerry had left me alone. I headed to the vehicle to look it over. Maybe the car could tell me nothing. I needed to get a feel for this guy at least.
The car was a black Ford Taurus, now mostly demolished. I wrote down the license plate number, which could probably give me Harry’s home address. The car had apparently rolled after being forced off the cliff as all of the glass was broken. I’m no claims adjuster, so I couldn’t tell whether it was a total loss.
I looked inside the car through the shattered windows. The foul odor of rotting garbage and fishy lake water permeated the air. Soggy fast food wrappers, a half-eaten hamburger and smashed Styrofoam cups covered the floor in the front seat. An empty camera case, soggy magazines and an old down jacket lay in the back.
Sheriff Ben had probably taken anything useful to his office. With him already unhappy about me being on the case, there wasn’t much chance of getting access
to whatever he’d found. Although this wasn’t exactly what Sam had hired me to investigate, I felt sure it was connected to Clara’s death in some way. Maybe finding an answer to his death would lead me to who had killed Clara.
I went around the car, reaching inside to open the glove box. It held the usual assortment of stuff like candy bars, binoculars and a lighter and cigarettes, now wet, soggy and beginning to mold. The smell made me gag.
I was about to leave when I decided to go through the pockets of the still partially damp jacket. The first pockets yielded only wet, matted Kleenex—yuck—a pack of gum, more candy wrappers and some crushed crackers in little wax paper packets. I was about to drop the jacket back on the seat when I felt something heavy in one corner.
The pocket was empty, but the bottom of the pocket was torn. Something had slipped down inside the lining. I worked it back up through the pocket.
It was a small, wire-bound notebook. His handwriting wasn’t the best, but it was legible. I slipped it in my pocket and left. I wanted to dry it out and go through it in private and I wasn’t sure if Jerry would come back to check up on me. I didn’t want him reporting to Ben that I’d found something he or his deputies had missed. Ben was a bit touchy about things like that.
* * * *
Wade Burcell pulled into the station for gas as Lacey left. She hadn’t seen him, but he had spotted Lacey and frowned.
Lacey and Jerry’s aversion to each other was common knowledge in the area. So, what had she been doing there?
Wade filled his tank, then went inside to pay. He made sure Jerry was the one to wait on him. “Saw your stepsister was in. You two finally make up?” he asked, curiously.
Jerry swiped the credit card Wade had handed him, sending him a scowl as he printed out the receipt. “Hell, no.”
“No? She just come in to razz you a little, maybe?” Wade grinned as he signed the bill, then watched Jerry’s face carefully for his answer.
“She was snooping around that PI’s car. Thinks she can solve Clara’s murder better than Ben, you know.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s the PI’s car got to do with it?”
Jerry ran a grease-stained hand through his red hair, then took the signed bill and handed back Wade’s credit card.
“Who knows? When that woman gets a bee in her bonnet, she’s not gonna quit.”
“Huh. Well, I have to get back to work. See you around.”
“Yeah, thanks. Have a nice day.”
Wade strode back to his car and drove back to the factory. He didn’t like this at all. What if Lacey had found something in Harry’s car that tied the PI to him? He could search her office and see if he could find anything, then get rid of it, but she had that damn dog he’d have to deal with.
She’d been ignoring his warnings. What would they have to do to stop her? Another accident wouldn’t work.
Ben hadn’t been fooled by Harry’s ‘accident’. Therefore, he’d be sure to think another death was suspicious.
Where would it all end? This had all gotten excessively complicated.
With a sick feeling in his stomach, Wade parked his car in his designated spot outside Carter Manufacturing and strode inside, going back to work.
* * * *
I went home and carefully used my hairdryer to dry the pages of the notebook in order to be able to read them.
On a back page was a note,
“Meet Clara in WBL.”
That corresponded to the date in Clara’s computer. Now I was sure Harry Alders was the private investigator Clara had hired. I couldn’t make much sense of the rest of the entries in the notebook. Some were phone numbers, some addresses, some apparently appointments.
I knew from my own experience that Harry’s appointments could pertain to several different cases. Cases didn’t fit neatly into boxes of time, they often overlapped. A couple of the phone numbers were local; I definitely needed to check those out.
It was going to take time to track all of this down and figure out if there was a connection to Clara, and if so, what it was.
I still had no idea what she’d suspected or whom. Had Harry found some evidence for her? Had he given it to her, or had she been killed before he could? It made me wonder even more—who had killed Clara and why? Was her death connected to Harry’s investigation? Was there a connection between his investigation for her and his death? It seemed very likely to me, but I needed proof.
Worse, if Clara had had Harry investigating Sam, he would have had a very good reason for killing him, but Sam was with everyone at Clara’s wake when Harry had died. Had he hired someone to do the job as Ben thought? If so, who? Hit men were not exactly plentiful around our little tourist town. However, the Twin Cities were only an hour away.
This case was becoming more puzzling by the hour.
* * * *
Using the license plate number, I was able to get Harry’s address in Minneapolis from the pay-by-the-minute database I often used. I let Scamp out for a run, made myself a thermos of coffee to tide me over, then headed for Harry’s place. It turned out to be an apartment in a two-story brick building in a nice neighborhood.
Surprisingly, there was no security on the outside door, so I had no problem walking on in. A row of mailboxes hung on the wall just inside the door. Harry’s name was on one hundred and seven. The apartment turned out to be way in the back on the first floor.
The hallway was empty, so no one objected as I walked back to his door. Since Harry hadn’t died in his apartment, apparently no one had sealed it off or considered it necessary to search it for evidence.
Had Sheriff Ben been here to check it out? I would have expected him to. It was outside his jurisdiction, but he could have come with a local officer, or just asked them to do it and give him a report. Did Harry have a family who lived here with him?
I kicked myself for not finding those things out before coming here. That was stupid, damn it. I usually did my homework better than that, but I was here now, so I knocked. No one answered.
I glanced around; no one appeared at any of the other doors either. I slipped on my gloves, then pulled out my picks to unlock the door, which actually takes quite a bit longer than it does on TV. Finally, I heard it click. I opened the door, slipped inside, then flipped the deadbolt to lock it behind me. The room was dark, the curtains drawn, giving the room a musty, closed in smell.
“Anybody here?”
Nobody answered so I felt along the wall for a light switch, flipping it on. I checked around, cautiously. The apartment was furnished in what my mother called ‘early attic’. That is, the old things people no longer want and stuff in their attic until they can get rid of them.
Harry’s main room held a worn brown couch and a saggy looking green stuffed chair in front of an open cabinet holding a television with a DVD and CD player on a shelf above it. Shelves of CDs and DVDs filled the rest of the wall unit.
At one end of the room was a built in kitchenette. I glanced through the refrigerator and cabinets. Obviously, Harry hadn’t liked to cook. No evidence the police had dusted the place for fingerprints, either. I saw nothing to indicate anyone else lived in the apartment, so he probably lived alone. I heaved a sigh of relief, since it meant I was less likely to be caught snooping.
I had no desire to get caught and charged with breaking and entering, which could cost me my PI license.
I walked through, opening the door to the adjoining room. It held an unmade bed with blankets hanging halfway off the bed. Dirty clothes lay on the floor. The open door to the bathroom showed Harry to be similarly messy with his bath. Towels lay on the floor and a wadded up washcloth lay in a scummy tub.
The closet held a sizable wardrobe of a variety of styles of clothes. A dozen pairs of shoes and boots lay on the floor of the closet along with an odd assortment of hats and other headgear filling the shelf above. Harry had probably used the clothes in a variety of costumes to disguise himself when he did stakeouts.
The remaining room p
roved the most interesting. Harry might have furnished the rest of the apartment with cast-offs, but he went state-of-the-art for his office equipment. I drooled over his computer as I turned it on, sitting down to see if it could tell me anything.
Nothing in his emails. He’d more than likely made his contacts and appointments over the phone.
His search history held many of the addresses of the same ‘pay by the minute’ databases I used. No surprises there. The last item in his appointment book said,
“Canton at six p.m.”
He had died an hour later. Too bad he hadn’t recorded who he was meeting in Canton.
The majority of his cases seemed to be as boring as mine. Background checks on potential employees for various companies. Women looking for evidence of their husband’s infidelity, or vice-versa. Wasn’t anyone faithful to their wedding vows anymore? File after file held similar information of stakeouts, dating information and pictures of people together in compromising situations.
Finally, I found some interesting info he had saved in a file labeled Clara. I opened it; giving the content a quick look to be sure it was her. It was.
I dug in my purse for my jump drive, then copied it. I could study it at my leisure on my own computer later. I was getting antsy.
I’d already been there too long and needed to get the heck out of there. I shut down the computer and carefully checked over the apartment, making sure I had left things as I’d found them and left no evidence of being there.
I locked the door behind me and didn’t breathe easily until I was back on I-35 heading home.
I hated taking risks like that— never knowing if I’d find anything worth risking my license for. Had I found enough this time? Probably not.
* * * *
On my way back home, I stopped for coffee at the restaurant where Paul had seen Clara meet Harry.
It was a truck stop, of course. Paul didn’t stop anywhere else when he was driving a semi. There had to be a place meant for those drivers to have room enough to park their semi trucks while they grabbed whatever they needed.
