“Yes, of course. I understand.” Then, with a note of alarm, he added, “You’re not thinking of going to the Higmans and discussing this with them, are you?”
“Are you planning to go to the local law enforcement authorities and discuss this with them?” I asked.
“I believe it would be more appropriate to start with the authorities in the area where the crime—or crimes—were committed, although we’ll need the cooperation of local authorities here, of course. Although I am concerned that the Higmans may disappear again and probably do a better job of it this time if they know the authorities are definitely after them now. But I can’t do much if I don’t know the names they’re using now.”
I doubted that. He was, after all, a private investigator, quite a good one I thought, and he had the area pinned down now. I figured he’d guessed we were staying not far from where the Higmans lived. I tried to think back and remember if I’d given him any clues when I first talked to him on the phone or if we’d said anything today.
“I do have a photo, if you’re interested,” he added.
“I thought you didn’t have a photo. You were asking Franny if she had any photos.”
“That’s true. What I have is an old newspaper photo. I thought a current and clearer photo might be helpful. Would you like to see what I have?”
Megalthorpe opened his briefcase and drew out a photocopy of a newspaper photograph of a man with his hands cuffed behind him. He was considerably younger than the Brian Morrison we knew. Beardless. At least fifty pounds lighter. Lean, dark-haired, and good looking. The caption identified him as Andrew Higman, headed for incarceration after conviction on the stock fraud scheme. Megalthorpe also produced a photocopy of a driver’s license for Andrew Higman, also with a photo, again beardless. A private investigator has resources that grandniece Sandy doesn’t have.
Would I have identified Brian Morrison as the man in the photos if I didn’t already know fingerprints identified them as the same person? I doubted it.
Megalthorpe then produced a copy of a driver’s license for Genevieve Higman. Her hair was different then, a mousy brownish color, a mousy style. But I could recognize the Kathy Morrison of now in it.
“As I’ve mentioned before, I am authorized to offer remuneration for the current name and whereabouts of both Mr. and Mrs. Higman.” The lifted eyebrows again.
“Mr. Megalthorpe, we are not interested in remuneration,” Mac said firmly.
The private investigator’s sharp look swiveled between us. “But I think you are interested in justice. Mr. and Mrs. Higman have definitely committed insurance fraud and may have committed murder.”
So why weren’t we rushing to give Megalthorpe the information he wanted? Not because we doubted his information was correct. Not because we doubted Megalthorpe himself as a private investigator. But there was the matter of Renée Echol’s death. And an explosion of a Porsche. With this new information, it seemed rather more likely the Morrisons were deeply involved in both.
“Hardishan?” I whispered to Mac, and he nodded.
“You’ll be around for a few days?” Mac asked the private investigator.
“I plan to be, yes.”
“Leave us your cell phone number and we’ll be in touch.”
“When?”
“At the appropriate time.”
Chapter 20
IVY
Before he left, Megalthorpe also gave us the name of the motel where he was staying in Eureka. He asked about a good place to eat there and we recommended the Hideaway. After he left we discussed the situation briefly, and then Mac tried to call Deputy Hardishan. The woman on the phone at the sheriff’s office said he was unavailable at this time and would we like to talk to someone else?
We looked at each other and, with the silent communication that is so nice when you’re comfortably married, agreed on no. We’d had our rough spots with Hardishan, but we felt we could trust him. We needed advice on whether to give Megalthorpe full information about Brian’s and Kathy’s names and whereabouts or give the information to the local sheriff’s department and let them work with law enforcement in Missouri.
Mac left our names and number and asked that Deputy Hardishan call or come see us, that it wasn’t an emergency, but we had a matter we needed to discuss with him as soon as possible. Mac called the repair shop and found, not unexpectedly, that our motorhome wasn’t ready yet. We took BoBandy for a walk before dark and then spent the evening watching an old Steve Martin movie on DVD, one of us occasionally coming up with a comment or question about Kathy or Brian. I really wished we had a cookie to go with the hot chocolate I made to accompany our Bible study before bed.
The next morning we’d just finished breakfast when we heard a car pull up beside the garage. If Sheila were here, this would be a garage sale day. I could just ignore the potential customer but, peering out the window, I saw what looked like the sad woman from whom I’d bought the baby clothes. I went down to open the side door and tell her I could help with a few dollars without her having to sell any more of her meager possessions.
It wasn’t her, however. This woman was also thin and about the same age, but she was better dressed and driving a newer car. She said she’d seen a frilly lamp here earlier and wanted to look at it again. I told her the garage sale wasn’t really open, but I glanced around and spotted a frilly lamp with an eleven-dollar price tag on it. The woman stepped inside and offered eight. It really was a gosh-awful lamp, and Sheila always bargained on prices, so we haggled a bit and she finally paid ten dollars. I put the money in a drawer for Sheila, and I felt rather pleased with myself. Maybe being a yard sale haggler was my real calling in life?
I did not, however, intend to actually open Sheila’s garage for business even if this was Saturday, and when Mac came downstairs we decided to take the cans of peaches we’d found in the pickup over to Duke. Just as we were going out the door, a motorcycle roared up beside the garage. I can’t tell one motorcycle from another except by color and sometimes size, but Mac can. His forehead creased in a frown, and my intuition . . . a suddenly screamin’ intuition . . . kicked into gear.
“Is that a Harley Screamin’ Eagle?” I whispered.
“I think so.”
“Let’s just close the door and—”
Too late. The motorcycle rider had spotted us. A big man, black motorcycle jacket, heavy black boots, and a black helmet that gave him a vaguely Darth Vader look. He took off the helmet and hung it on a handlebar. Tangled dark hair shot with a few streaks of steel gray, same with the beard. Sharp blue eyes. Good-looking, in a tough, mess-with-me-and-you’ll-be-sorry kind of way. My heart and stomach did an uneasy square dance.
Had Ric Echols somehow found us?
I tensed, waiting for hostile questions. What were you two doing asking nosy questions about me all over McKinleyville? And when we had no satisfactory answers to that question—
His heavy eyebrows drew together as he looked at us. With recognition? Surely not. He may have heard we were looking for him at the bars and taverns, but we hadn’t actually encountered him. Did we fit some generic description of an older couple in a Toyota pickup looking for him? Oh, yes. But he couldn’t see the pickup. Blessedly, it was out of sight on the back side of the garage. We’d parked it there because Mac had been planning to wash it again, and the closest faucet was back there.
“Garage sale open today?” the biker finally asked. The question didn’t sound particularly friendly, but neither did it sound like a trick to trap older folks.
“No, Mrs. Weekson isn’t here today,” Mac said. “And we were just—”
I know Mac had started to say just leaving, but if we got in the pickup and drove off, Ric would see it and do a flash-bam Bingo!
“Just going back upstairs,” I interrupted hastily.
“I’ll be back.”
Warning? Promise? Threat? Any one of those was enough to make me feel a tap dance of dinosau
r toes up my back.
He turned and headed back to the bike. It was also black, decorated with a flame-shooting dragon that I could recognize if I saw it again. But then I had to question myself for speed-labeling him Ric Echol. He looked menacing, but he wasn’t doing anything menacing. He could be someone else entirely. Maybe simply a nice biker with a fashion sense hung up on basic black.
But then he gave us another speculative look as if again thinking we might be the people he was looking for. Well, maybe not specifically looking for today, because he was apparently on a garage sale run at the moment, but—
An SUV pulled into the driveway and parked near the door of Sheila’s double-wide. Sheila’s SUV. Great timing, Sheila! Welcome home! We’re so glad to see you.
I called to her when she stepped out of the SUV. “Hey, Sheila!”
She walked toward us. “Were you looking for my garage sale?” she said to the biker. “It’s usually open on Saturdays, but I’ve been away, and it won’t be open today.”
“I just came out to pick up something for a buddy. Golden Temple.” He lifted those heavy eyebrows questioningly. Sheila wasn’t saying anything, and he added, “Golden Temple incense? It soothes his bad back.”
Sheila gave him an inspection deep enough to x-ray his gall bladder. “I’m sorry, but Golden Temple is no longer available.”
“No longer available?” Even a tough, bearded biker can look dismayed, and this one did. “You mean just not available today or permanently not available?”
“Permanently not available.”
Mr. Hot-Tempered Guy in a Lexus was certainly going to be unhappy about that. But why did I suddenly feel as if Sheila and biker guy were speaking some other language? Sheila didn’t seem inclined to try to sell him a different scent and there were lots of incense sticks in that big cup in the garage.
“Who did you say your buddy is?” Sheila sounded wary.
“I didn’t say, but it’s Bowser. Short guy.” He held a hand at chin height. “Rides a Harley Low Rider.”
Did that mean something to Sheila? It didn’t to me, of course. Bowser sounded like an innocent enough name, as if he were a friendly, shaggy-dog type of guy. But maybe Bowser in this unfamiliar language meant something different too.
“The Bowser who works at the plant nursery near the airport?”
“Yeah, he fills in there once in a while.”
“Okay, you tell Bowser that Golden Temple isn’t available. Permanently.”
“Because I came in place of Bowser, is that it?” The biker’s tone went surly, and the question sounded like an accusation.
Sheila offered no explanation, just a glance at me and a sharp repeat of her earlier statement. “Golden Temple is no longer available. Permanently.”
Ric—if he was Ric—momentarily looked as if he might contest that statement with a big fist, but he finally slammed the helmet on his head and threw a leg over his bike. It was facing toward the pasture, so he had to make a tight circle to head back out to the road. And in making that little circle he went a few feet beyond the garage. Where our Toyota pickup was in full view.
I clutched Mac’s hand and dragged him inside, slamming the door behind us. Mac oofed and grabbed his knee. He’d been having trouble with it ever since that day at the dinosaur park when the broken branch dumped him on the ground.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to—”
Mac waved off my apology. “What’s he doing now?”
I peered through the small window draped with a towel. I thought for a moment the guy was going to jump off the bike and come right through the door after us. But, with Sheila standing there looking at him, he apparently decided against that approach and roared down the driveway to the road. Even inside the garage, we could hear the bike skid around the corner and then accelerate to what sounded like supersonic speed as he headed for the highway back to town.
Would he come back with a gun . . . maybe the gun with which he’d killed Renée? No, the gun that had killed Renée was the one found in the soap box in Kathy and Brian’s laundry room. Even if test results hadn’t come back yet, I was sure of it. That was why it had been planted there, to incriminate Brian. Planted by Ric?
I determinedly stopped the mental babble and opened the door cautiously. Sheila was still standing there, her back to us as she listened to the bike in the distance.
“That Golden Temple incense seems really popular,” I said.
“Yeah. Well, I wouldn’t have sold him any even if I had enough to sell. He looked kind of phony to me.”
Phony? A phony biker? Meaning she thought he was really a mild-mannered shoe salesman just pretending to be a bad-boy biker? Or was she thinking something different, such as undercover, as in undercover cop? But surely a garage sale business selling a few knickknacks and the occasional pocketknife or frilly lamp wasn’t enough to warrant investigation by an undercover cop.
“Ric hasn’t been here with his Bowser buddy before?” I asked. I was surprised at his coming here, given the hostilities between Sheila and Renée. From what Ron Sweeney had said, there had still been something going on between Ric and his ex-wife, so it seemed unlikely Ric and Sheila were friendly enough even for garage sale haggling. Of course, maybe this wasn’t Ric. Or maybe he hadn’t known it was Sheila his buddy had been buying Golden Temple from. I was babbling to myself again.
My question did bring a sharp turn from Sheila. “Ric?”
“Wasn’t that Ric Echol, Renée’s ex-husband?”
Sheila’s mouth did a startled drop and something like realization dawned in her widened eyes. Her gaze shot back to the road.
“So that’s how—” Then she shook her head, dismissing the biker. “I have no idea who that was. I heard Renée’s ex was in the area, but he came sometime after our friendship went kaput.” Then, even with Renée dead, she couldn’t avoid a dig at her ex-friend. “Although that guy looked like the kind of lowlife she’d have been married to.”
I changed the subject. “By the way, I sold that ruffled lamp in your garage sale things for ten dollars. I hope that’s okay. The money is in the drawer.”
Sheila looked delighted. “You got ten bucks for that ugly old thing? Great! Maybe I’ll have to hire you on garage sale days.”
“Did you have a good trip?” I asked.
“It was okay. I need to get my stuff unpacked. I want to go over to Duke’s later and fix him a good dinner. He probably hasn’t had one since I’ve been gone. I brought some T-bone steaks in an ice chest.”
I didn’t mention that I doubted Duke had been underfed. He’d bought a good supply of groceries when we went to town, and he’d really enjoyed that great burger at Billie’s place. “Did you know that several deputies from the sheriff’s department came out and searched Kathy and Brian’s place a couple days ago?”
“Really? Duke didn’t mention that when I talked to him on the phone. Did they arrest Brian?”
“They found a gun in their laundry room, but they didn’t arrest him.” I had no intention of yet telling her the other startling information we’d learned from Megalthorpe about Brian and Kathy.
“Why not? If they’ve got the gun that—” She gave a shrug. “Well, I suppose they have to run tests on it to prove it’s the gun that killed Renée.”
“Probably.”
“But you’d think, after the explosion and now the gun that they’d do something about Brian instead of just standing around with their hands in their pockets. I wasn’t exactly fond of Renée, as you know, but I do think her killer should be brought to justice. Have they figured out yet that Brian blew up the Porsche himself?
“We haven’t heard anything more. Well, we were on our way over to Duke’s to return some canned peaches he left in the pickup, so—”
“If you don’t mind waiting until later, we could all have dinner together. I have plenty of steak.”
Sounded good to me. But— “You don’t mind our being there at
your . . . reunion dinner?”
“It’s not like I’ve been gone for months. C’mon,” she urged. “We never did get to have dinner together that first time we planned to.”
I looked at Mac, who so far hadn’t participated in this conversation. “Sure. Sounds great,” he said.
We went back upstairs, where we had a nice surprise. The shop called. Our motorhome was repaired and ready to go! We immediately drove to the shop. Mac climbed up on top to inspect the outside roof, and we both scrutinized the inside. A great job! Mac drove the motorhome, and I followed in the pickup back to our place at Sheila’s. He temporarily parked beside the garage, and we got out and inspected everything again. It almost felt like a reunion with a long-lost friend.
By then, however, Mac’s knee pain had escalated to a full-time ache, so we decided to delay moving back into the motorhome. We’d stay in the over-the-garage room one more night. He took some ibuprofen, and I put a pillow under his leg on the recliner. I started to run over to tell Sheila we wouldn’t be going to dinner at Duke’s after all, but Mac stopped me.
“You go and enjoy a good steak. I’ll probably sleep most of the time you’re gone anyway.” Ibuprofen did tend to make him sleepy. “If I get hungry I’ll eat some of that leftover meatloaf.”
I fixed a plate with meatloaf and leftover mashed potatoes and carrots that he could just pop in the microwave. I felt a bit guilty leaving him home alone, but sleep was probably better for his knee than sitting cramped up in Duke’s little dinette. I also have to admit I was looking forward to a T-bone. Mac was asleep, with both BoBandy and Koop snuggled up beside him on the recliner, by the time I grabbed my jacket and cell phone and Sheila and I headed over to Duke’s in her SUV.
It was almost dark by then, though a full moon was coming up over the hills to the east, a few clouds turning the sky into a moonscape that made me wish I had some artistic talent and could paint it. Nice going, Lord! He provides these tidbits of beauty all the time, but we’re mostly too busy to notice.
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