Just in Time

by Suzanne Trauth

  Edna took some bills out of her wallet. “Some Creston cops are joining the chief at the station.”

  “Any talk about Dale?” I asked.

  “Everything’s tight as a tick on that score.” She hugged the brown takeout bags and leaned into the cash register. “But I can tell you this. They had Dale in a lineup this morning.” She raised an eyebrow.

  Did the eyewitness hammer a nail in Dale’s coffin? “Doesn’t look good for him.”

  “Copy that.” Edna hurried away.

  19

  The restaurant was full of people who agreed it didn’t look good. They had plenty of thoughts on why, which I discovered when I circulated with a coffee pot.

  “Dale never should have taken the role in Bye, Bye, Birdie. That way he wouldn’t have met Ruby.”

  What?

  “I heard he’d known her from the time they were kids.”

  Was Dale from Indiana?

  “They’re saying Ruby owed Dale money.”

  Hardly.

  “…or he was getting revenge because she wanted him out of the Creston Players.”

  That’s a motive for murder?

  “Ruby knew a secret about Dale,” said one patron.

  Now that made sense.

  My cell buzzed. It was Pauli.

  “Uh, like, hi!” he said.

  “You’re awfully perky. Having fun in the frozen foods?”

  “Uh…I’m on my break.”

  “What’s up?” I motioned to Gillian to clean off some tables and headed to my back booth.

  “I was doing some lateral thinking again…like you know…coming at Ruby’s life from another angle.”

  “What did you come up with?” I asked.

  “I forgot about her and, like, searched stuff on Otto Heinlein, Junior.” He paused. “That was the son’s name.”

  “That’s a great idea. We know Otto Heinlein Senior died in 1986 and his wife was already dead…but what happened to the son?”

  “There’s some things on his birth and high school. He graduated in 1987. Then nothing until 1991. He got a speeding ticket in Ohio. Like, he was in college there.”

  “So he left town too. Guess staying in Greenburg after his father’s death was too much for him. Is that all you found?”

  “Nope. He moved to Pennsylvania in 1993.”

  The Windjammer suddenly felt warm.. “Pauli, Ruby lived in Ohio and Pennsylvania too.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What are you doing later? Can you come to the Windjammer after work?”

  “No problemo. I get off at four,” he said.

  “We need to do a timeline for Ruby and Otto Junior.”

  “Awesome. Gotta bounce.”

  Pauli clicked off. My mind raced. Was it simply a coincidence that both Otto Junior and Ruby moved first to Ohio and then to Pennsylvania during approximately the same years? Was Ruby following Otto’s son and harassing him as well? Did he end up in New Jersey too, or had Ruby abandoned her pattern of provocation? If Ruby had been stalking Otto Junior, her need for revenge ran deeper than I suspected. I was beginning to see a motive for Dale’s actions if he was the object of her persecution.

  I was so lost in thought that I missed Bill’s entrance until he was leaning against the back of my booth. “Hey, how’s the car running?”

  I jerked my head up. “Whoa! Don’t sneak up on me like that!”

  “Sneak up on you? In the middle of a busy restaurant?” His mouth ticked up at one end.

  “You’re in a good mood. You here for lunch? Henry’s lasagna soup is almost sold out—”

  “I ate. It was excellent. My compliments to Henry.” Bill sat down opposite me and withdrew a notepad from his shirt pocket. “Just tying up loose ends, as you would say.”

  “Meaning?”

  He glanced at the pad. “I got a preliminary report on the Metro from the arson squad. Cause of the fire was the gas leak. Could have been the result of a fuel tank rupture. According to them, fuel injectors seldom leak but their rubber components are susceptible to corrosion. They can wear out. Same with fuel lines. Corrosion, road debris…they become more vulnerable as a car ages.”

  There it was again—road debris. Same excuse given for the leak of my brake fluid. What did these guys think? That I was deliberately running over garbage in the road? “So nothing definitive?”

  “The squad is continuing to investigate,” Bill said calmly.

  “What about the interior? Anything on the door and window handles?”

  “They’ll take a look but the interior was badly damaged…” He spread his hands as if helpless.

  “Right,” I said coolly.

  “Look Dodie, if there’s anything to discover, they’ll find it. Meanwhile, you have transport, so let’s be glad you weren’t badly injured.”

  I stared at him. “Since when did you become so tranquil? Suki’s rubbing off on you.” Her middle name was ‘om’.

  “Things are winding down on the Ruby front,” he said confidentially.

  Bill described the scene at the lineup, how the witness recognized Dale, how Dale, when confronted with the results of the lineup, broke down and admitted to a fraudulent relationship with Ruby. “She was collecting a thousand dollars a month to keep her mouth shut. It’s not an airtight case for murder but the county prosecutor thinks he can make it stick.”

  I gasped. Dale wasn’t paying Ruby the interest on her investments; he was paying her off. “Ruby was blackmailing him?”

  “Apparently he’s been bilking clients for years. A modified Ponzi scheme—”

  “Like Bernie Madoff?” I asked.

  “On a more limited scale. But yes, the same principle. Paying off existing clients with new investors’ money. All the time Dale is skimming off funds for his personal use.”

  “He was doing this to Ruby?”

  “Apparently with Ruby he was guilty of something called ‘churning.’ Making unnecessary or weak stock trades to pad his own pocket. Dale was no match for Ruby. She discovered what he was up to and threatened to call the police. When he begged her to reconsider, she offered to keep quiet about his illegal activities in exchange for a monthly payment.”

  “Wow.”

  “He’s providing a list of other clients who might be victims.”

  “So when I saw them arguing backstage…”

  “Dale had had enough and was pressuring Ruby to let him off the hook. After all, he’d been paying her hush money for a year,” Bill said.

  “And your eyewitness?”

  “She spotted Dale and Ruby on the access road by the highway. He appeared to be physically threatening her.”

  “And Dale admitted all this?” I asked, surprised.

  “He confirmed the fight but denied killing Ruby. He says she was alive when he gave up and left.”

  “How did he get her out there?”

  “He was following her to Creston when she suddenly stopped on the access road. Going in the wrong direction. She’d been driving erratically and Dale thought she might be drunk.”

  “The Ambien?” I asked.

  “Most likely. According to Dale, he pulled over after Ruby did. When he approached the car, he thought she was falling asleep. He tried to talk to her but she pushed him, and continued to drink from the flask. He says he got angry, ripped the flask out of her hands, and threw it away.”

  “That’s why it wasn’t in her bag!”

  “Supposedly it’s somewhere in the grassy area off the access highway. If he’s telling the truth we’ll find it.”

  “So he spiked the flask with Ambien?”

  “Denies that too,” Bill said.

  Was it worth mentioning the missing Ambien in Ruby’s bathroom? “I hate to bring this up because I know you got your nose bent out of shape when you found
out I’d been back to Ruby’s apartment but…”

  “What?” He became suspicious.

  “You know how I like to check out bathrooms? Well, the first time Lola and I went to Ruby’s, the Ambien bottle in her medicine cabinet was half full. The lid was off,” I said.

  Bill tucked his pad into his pants pocket. “And?”

  “The second time I was there, the bottle was gone.”

  “This means what?” he asked, “Besides the fact that you weren’t supposed to be snooping around.”

  “Someone removed it? The man who was measuring the piano?” I added helpfully. “Whoever doctored her flask?”

  Unexpectedly Bill chortled. “Dodie, some day that vivid imagination of yours is going to get you into serious hot water. Let’s just let the prosecutor take over.”

  “So your work is done,” I said lightly.

  “Except for paperwork.”

  He agreed to meet up after tonight’s performance of Bye, Bye, Birdie, to make up for last night’s unfortunate end to the evening. Yowza! My blood pressure shot upward as I envisioned Bill and I lounging in his living room, Norah Jones on the CD player, sipping an expensive bottle of cabernet, nibbling on cheeses while he nibbled on my ear—

  My daydream shut down without warning. What was still bothering me about Ruby’s death? Was it the loose ends? Dale’s firm denial about murdering Ruby, even though he obviously had motive? The other men in her life? I shook the cobwebs out of my brain and went back to work.

  * * * *

  Pauli showed up at four thirty, backpack with laptop slung over his shoulder, Slurpee in hand. “Hey.”

  “Hey yourself,” I said and delivered a serving of French fries and a slice of Georgette’s coconut cream pie to my booth. He’d already begun typing by the time I settled onto the bench opposite him with a cup of coffee. The restaurant was quiet—it was an hour or so before the early birds would arrive for dinner. Enrico was busy in the kitchen assisting Henry 2.0. The new version of my chef, who’d been gracious and cooperative with the ELT and Creston Players, and agreed to release Wilson for Bye, Bye, Birdie performances this weekend. “So what do we have?”

  Pauli bobbed his head and stuffed fries in his mouth. “I have a spreadsheet on Ruby with years and locations,” he said, eyes shining.

  Maybe Carol and her husband were wrong to force Pauli into a traditional college program. He was like a kid in a candy store when it came to anything related to digital forensics—online classes, deep searches, unusual databases. He had a career ahead of him, no doubt about it. Now, if only he could straighten out his love life. “Terrific. Let me see.”

  Pauli whipped the computer around to face me. “Like I started when her touring ended.”

  I scrutinized the spreadsheet. I knew from her scrapbook that Ruby was born in 1940, and the newspaper clippings stopped abruptly in 1969. Pauli discovered that was the same year Ruby’s father died and her mother moved to Iowa where she had family. Ruby returned the same year to Indiana—the year Otto Heinlein married.

  “From all the facts I found…like uh census records and whatever, Ruby stayed in Indiana until 1986,” Pauli said.

  “In Greenburg?”

  He sucked on his straw. “Nope. She lived in Indianapolis. It’s about an hour from Greenburg.”

  Close enough. “Any information on what she was doing during that time?”

  “Besides harassing Otto Heinlein?” Pauli asked, poker-faced.

  “Right.”

  “So, like, she was teaching music at a high school.” Pauli looked up. “You think teaching drove her crazy?” He was dead serious.

  “It’s always possible.” Lola shared horror stories about rowdy students dissecting frogs during her teaching days at Etonville High. She fled education after a decade in the biology classroom. “Anything else?”

  “Like Otto junior was born 1969 and Otto Senior’s wife died 1985. The obit said ‘after a long illness.’” Pauli looked up. “Like cancer or something.”

  “And Otto’s death...”

  “Suicide…1986,” Pauli added.

  “Right. The same year Ruby left Indiana.”

  Otto’s son was about sixteen-seventeen when he lost his parents. About Pauli’s age—too young to be left adrift in the world.

  We both sat in silence pondering the Ruby/Otto relationship.

  “Wanna go on?” Pauli asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Awesome.”

  “What’s next?”

  “I tracked her through Ohio and Pennsylvania until 2005. Like still teaching music…a bunch of different schools,” Pauli glanced at me knowingly.

  Did Ruby switch jobs on her own volition, or did the schools fire her? In the classroom, did Ruby employ the bullying tactics she used on Otto and Dale? “She would have been about sixty-five. Retirement age. Is that when she moved to New Jersey?”

  “Guess so ’cause the next thing I located was an address in Clifton, and then the one in Creston,” Pauli said.

  “This is great detective work. I couldn’t have found all of this without you.”

  He blushed and swiped a hank of brown hair off his forehead. “Like thanks. But there’s more,” he said eagerly.

  “Otto Junior?”

  “Remember, he left Indiana after his father died and went to college in Ohio.”

  “Right. Did he stay there after he graduated?”

  Pauli consulted his laptop notes. “For six years. Then he moved.”

  Benny approached my booth. “Dodie, Cheney Brothers are at the back door.”

  “Sure. Be right back Pauli.”

  Pauli nodded and swallowed the last of the cream pie. Benny threw a bar towel over his shoulder. “Where does the kid put it all?” he asked as he went to the basement for a case of red wine.

  “Got me.” I walked to the rear entrance.

  * * * *

  It took longer for the delivery guy to haul the meat and vegetables into the refrigerator than I anticipated. By the time I’d signed off on the requisition, popped in the kitchen to check on Henry and Enrico—who were scanning a recipe, snorting at something, and enjoying themselves royally—and returned to the dining room, Pauli was storing his laptop. He stopped to answer a text.

  “Sorry it took so long—”

  “Gotta bounce. Like…I’m uh…meeting…somebody…sort of like a date.” He shrugged.

  “Janice?”

  He beamed sheepishly. “Grabbing food before the show tonight.”

  Yahoo! Finally. I was happy for him. “Go and hook up. Uh…you know what I mean,” I finished lamely.

  Pauli understood.

  “Could you text me the end of Otto Junior’s dates and locations?”

  “No problemo.”

  “Good luck,” I said.

  Pauli saluted and loped out the door. Ah, young love…

  Gillian set up the dining room and left to manage the concessions at the park while Carmen took over waiting tables. Benny served drinks, and I pitched in where needed. As the dinner hour approached, I was surprised at the lackluster crowd. Patrons wandered in filling half the tables and booths, speaking quietly, fairly subdued. This was Etonville after a series of crises involving murder, fire, financial scams, and an arrest? What was going on? What happened to the mob that blathered during lunch? Could it be the weather? A blanket of clouds slowly covered the sky as the afternoon wore on. Was the resolution of Ruby’s murder a sobering experience for the town? That would be a first.

  “Table for three,” a voice said.

  I looked up from the bar napkin that I was doodling on. It was Abby, Penny, and Alex. “Hi. Nice to see you all.”

  Abby pointed to a table in the corner, and I led the way. “I’m surprised more ELT folks haven’t come in for dinner.” I handed out menus.

 
; “Everybody’s depressed over Dale,” Abby said, and plopped into a seat.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Glad I do my own taxes,” Penny cackled. “Who needs a financial advisor in an orange jumpsuit?”

  “Isn’t that…cruel?” Alex asked.

  “Nah. Dale just thought he was too big to fall,” Penny said.

  “You mean too big to fail,” Abby corrected her.

  “Whatever. O’Dell, what’s on special tonight?” Penny asked.

  “Beef Stroganoff and rosemary potatoes.”

  Alex closed his menu. “I’ll have that. And I know I shouldn’t before a show…” He peeked at Penny. “…but I’ll also have a glass of the house cabernet.”

  “What the hay. Me too,” said Penny.

  Abby regarded Alex and Penny. “If both of you are having wine…make that three!”

  There would be some happy people doing the show tonight!

  My cell pinged. I waved to Carmen to write up their orders, and moved to a barstool. It was Pauli: Otto Jr. in PA after OH. 1999. I texted back: Thnx. Janice? Pauli: Burgers now. Real date next weekend.

  Nice.

  Otto Junior was in the same states as Ruby. She was following him…did she harass the son as well as the father? Had she been so heartbroken by Otto’s betrayal that her life became years of payback? What did Professor Yurkov say about Ruby’s confrontation with Otto? …the rage on her face…. She promised Otto would be sorry that day on the Maynard campus. Hers was a voice full of vengeance.

  I shuddered. Goosebumps rose on my neck and shoulders. “Think laterally,” Pauli said, “Turn things around”…What if we had it wrong? Ruby wasn’t stalking Otto Junior. He was stalking her for decades because he felt the need to settle a family score! 1969 was the year everything imploded: the end of Ruby’s tour, Otto’s marriage, the birth of his son. Yikes! Was it possible that Otto’s wife was pregnant before they married? Did Otto consider himself obligated to marry Junior’s mother? If so, a shotgun wedding might have added fuel to Ruby’s burning rage. What, as Bill would ask, did any of this have to do with her death?

  Alex was returning to his table from the men’s room. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “I’m fine…just some strange news.” I waggled my cell phone.