Grave Doubt (The Jacob Lomax Mysteries Book 5)

by Michael Allegretto

  Nora Foster cocked her head and gave me a quirky smile. “Well, that was a little odd. Larry stayed in a hotel near the airport, but Blyleven stayed at a condo owned by the church. At least, that’s what he told Larry. All Larry knew for sure was that someone would pick up Blyleven at the airport. In a big stretch, he said.”

  “A limo?”

  She nodded and swirled the last half of her beer in her glass, building foam. “And it wasn’t a church limo, either.”

  “No?”

  She shook her head. “Blyleven told Larry that the church didn’t own any limousines.”

  “So it wasn’t church people who picked him up?”

  “I guess not.” she said.

  “Who was it?”

  “I don’t know. Neither did Larry. He said Blyleven never talked about what went on down there, except that it was ‘church business.’”

  “I see. Did Blyleven return to the airport in the limo?”

  “I believe so. I know that Larry would meet him there in the morning and they’d fly home.”

  “Did Blyleven ever carry anything down there or back?”

  “Like what?”

  “Packages, boxes, whatever.”

  “No. Nothing besides an overnight bag. They each brought one of those. And Blyleven had a briefcase.”

  She started to sip her beer, but then stopped and set the glass down. “There was something about that briefcase, though. Larry mentioned it.”

  “What?”

  She frowned, thinking, then shook her head. “I can’t recall what it was.”

  “Was there something unusual about it?”

  “I’m trying to remember.”

  “What sort of a briefcase?”

  “Just an ordinary one, I guess. I never saw it. I think Larry said it was leather.”

  I heard noises inside the house, and a moment later a dog and a boy came out the back door. The boy was around ten, and he wore jeans with a ripped knee and a black-and-purple Rockies T-shirt. He gave me a suspicious look. I wondered if there were lots of strange men who came calling on his mother. Somehow, I doubted it.

  He turned from me and said, “When are we gonna eat, Mom?”

  “Pretty soon, honey.”

  Meanwhile, his dog had become fascinated with my pants’ cuffs.

  “Lady, stop that,” Nora said. Then, “Brian, this is Mr. Lomax. He’s a private investigator.” As if that would impress him. It didn’t.

  “It's nice to meet you,” I said. I nodded at his shirt. “I see you’re a Rockies fan.”

  “I guess. Mom, I’m going in.” And he did. I never was too swell with kids. Lady, however, plopped down at my side and let me scratch behind her ears.

  Nora Foster shrugged an apology. “Brian’s not very friendly toward strangers.”

  “That’s probably a healthy attitude. Look, I won’t keep you from your dinner. I just want to know, did you ever meet Martin Blyleven?”

  “No.”

  “What did your husband tell you about him?”

  She pressed her lips together and looked up at the leafy tent overhead. “Nothing that really stands out. He was just an average sort of guy, I guess. Although Larry called him ‘anal.’”

  I had to smile at that. “Why?”

  “Picky about little things, I guess.”

  “I see.” No doubt a prerequisite for an accountant. “Anything else?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Well, I appreciate your help.” I handed her my card. “If you remember anything about Blyleven’s briefcase, would you call me?”

  “Yes.”

  When she took the card, our fingers touched. No electric current passed between us, but if she had asked me to stay for dinner, I would have. She didn’t.

  She led me through the house. Lady trailed behind us.

  Brian was in the living room playing a video game on the TV set. He didn’t turn around.

  Nora stood at the door, saying good-bye.

  I drove off, feeling something stirring in my gut. A tiny blue flame. I wanted to know who had killed Larry Foster, whether it was Martin Blyleven during the act of suicide or someone else committing murder. I’d never met Foster, but I had the feeling I would have liked him. I hated that he was dead.

  More than that, I hated that Nora was without her husband and Brian was without his dad.

  9

  COLFAX AND WADSWORTH ARE two heavily traveled commercial streets that intersect west of the city. The continuous flow of traffic has painted a grimy mixture of road dust and carbon monoxide on all the storefronts in the area.

  The Adobe Bar was no exception.

  It was a single-story, flat-roofed box, once white, now dull gray, its windows painted to keep out bright lights and Peeping Toms. Not that anyone ever walked around here. There was barely room for a dirty strip of sidewalk to squeeze between the building and the stream of cars and trucks.

  I turned into the parking lot, a cracked asphalt apron that wrapped around three sides of the building. City-tough weeds pushed up around the edges. I parked the Olds between a battered GMC pickup truck and a ten-year-old Camaro with no wheel covers and went inside.

  It was smoky and loud.

  There was a bar running down the right-hand wall fronted by a dozen stools, most of them occupied, mostly by men—blue-collar workers, if they worked at all. To the left were tables and booths, also filled. There was a pool table near the back wall where two guys were laughing and shouting and banging around the balls. Except for a few geezers sucking back draws and shots in a corner booth, I was the oldest customer in the place.

  I sat at the bar between a skinny young woman with long brown hair and a laugh that rattled the fillings in my molars and a guy the size of a Volkswagen wearing a Harley-Davidson T-shirt.

  The bartender needed another arm. She held a pitcher under a tap with one hand, pulled three beer bottles out of the cooler with the other, rang up a sale on the register, shoved some change at the only waitress, loaded up one tray, and emptied another. On her way over to me she dipped a couple of glasses into a soapy basin, then a rinse basin, then set them on a rubber drain mat at the end of the bar.

  “What can I get you?”

  She was forty or so, and she wore a man’s oversize black-and-white striped shirt, like a referee’s, with the baggy short sleeves rolled up past her elbows. She wiped the bar in front of me, emptied the ashtray, and laid down a cocktail napkin that immediately soaked up moisture on the bar.

  “A Bud.”

  She was back in a flash with my beer, then snatched up my five and brought back the change before I even had a chance to say thanks.

  The Harley man next to me rumbled, “Give us another round, Chris.”

  If she was Chris Esteves, she wasn’t going to be free for an in-depth conversation, at least for a while.

  So I sat there and drank beer and watched the game. The TV was on a shelf near the ceiling behind the bar. No sound, but a good picture, Reynoso was throwing against the Cards, top of the first, two outs, nobody on.

  By the seventh inning they were tied at three, and I was on my fourth beer. The bar had quieted down. There were empty stools on both sides of me, and only a few tables were occupied. The waitress was sitting at the far end of the bar smoking a cigarette and talking to a Hispanic guy wearing an LA Raiders cap. Chris Esteves was talking seriously to a big guy with a black ponytail. Earlier, I’d seen him busing tables, helping Chris out behind the bar, and getting between the two pool players, who had looked about ready to fight. I thought at first he might be her husband. But after I saw the way she ordered him around, I figured he was the part-time helper and full-time bouncer. Of course, he still might be her husband.

  I watched her take some bills out of the till and count them carefully into his hand, talking all the time. He nodded, shoved the money in his pocket, and walked out.

  Then she came down to my end of the bar.

  “Another Bud?”

&n
bsp; “No, I’m fine, thanks. You’re Chris Esteves, right?”

  “That’s me.” She had frizzy black hair and a strong face, with high cheekbones and a prominent chin. There were laugh lines at the corners of her large, brown eyes, and her eyebrows were thin, painted arcs.

  “Thomas Doherty said I could find you here.”

  “God, I haven’t seen him in a couple of years. How’s he doing? Still at Centennial?”

  “Yes. In fact, I was out there this morning talking to him about Martin Blyleven.”

  “Oh?” A frown wrinkled her forehead. “Wait a minute, are you a cop?”

  She’d said “cop” loud enough to alert anyone in the bar who might be dodging warrants or holding grass. A few heads turned our way.

  “Far from it,” I told her. I gave her my card. “I’m working for an insurance company, trying to find out what I can about Blyleven’s death.”

  “I already told those fucking feds all I know.”

  “This isn’t a federal thing. I just want to ask—”

  “Bullshit!” This came from the pool table, the same two characters who had been arguing earlier. The only difference now was they were drunker. “I don’t give a fuck! It touched the eight first!”

  Chris ignored them and said, “How do I know for sure you’re not a fed?”

  I made an “X” on my chest. “Cross my heart and hope to die?”

  I think she started to smile. But she was interrupted by a crash of chairs. The two pool shooters were wrestling each other to the floor. She said, “Assholes,” and ran down the length of the bar and out the other end shouting, “Break it up, goddamn it, that’s enough!”

  The two guys were back on their feet. But they hadn’t had enough. In fact, they were just getting started, wrestling and punching, bouncing fists off shoulders and ears and noggins. Everyone in the bar—a handful of guys and a couple of women— was standing, but nobody seemed eager to interfere. In fact, most of them were enjoying the show.

  Chris was shouting at the two men to stop. Then she grabbed the nearest guy by his shirt and tugged. Which put her too close to the action. A flying elbow caught her in the upper chest and sent her stumbling backward onto the floor.

  Well, shit, Lomax to the rescue.

  I hustled over there, pushing aside a few enthralled onlookers. I lifted a cue stick from the table, said, “Fight’s over, gentlemen,” and smacked the elbow-thrower across the back of the head with the butt end. He fell into the arms of his opponent, then dropped to his knees. The other guy, a moon-faced character with a beer keg for a stomach, shoved his partner aside, called me a motherfucker, and reached toward the table for a pool ball. I brought the cue stick down on the back of his hand, and that was the end of that.

  “God damn,” he said, clutching his hand and glaring at me with tears in his eyes.

  Chris was on her feet now. She gave the guy a shove.

  “Get out of here, Neal, you’re eighty-sixed.”

  “He started it.” He nodded toward his pal on the floor, who was moaning and holding his head. There was some blood, but not much.

  “Both of you,” Chris said. “Find someplace else to do your fighting.”

  “But—”

  “GET OUT!”

  They did, Neal trying to help his buddy along and cradle his wounded hand at the same time. Chris followed them to the door, and I followed her. Everyone else sat down. She turned from the open doorway, bumping into me. I was still watching the two guys, because now was when things could get deadly. There are more guns than gloves in glove compartments.

  “Where’s the key that locks this door?”

  “The key? I’ve got it. Why?”

  I watched Neal and friend climb into a battered Chevy S-10. They drove away.

  “No reason,” I said. I handed her the cue stick. “I should practice more.”

  She smiled, then winced, rubbing her chest above her breasts. “Let me buy you a beer.”

  We went back to the bar and I sat in my stool. The bouncer with the ponytail walked in carrying two sacks of burgers.

  Chris said, “You missed all the action,” and told him what had happened.

  “I should’ve tossed those two fuckers out before I left,” he said, barely glancing at me. I thought he might come over and thank me, but he actually looked angry, as if I were horning in on his job. He took one of the sacks to a table and began eating by himself.

  Chris brought over a Bud for me and a draw for herself. She took a small bag of fries from the sack and set them on the bar between us.

  “Help yourself.”

  I ate a couple of fries and wiped the grease off on the bar napkin.

  Chris said, “Why is the insurance company still asking questions about that plane crash? I thought they would have settled everything by now.”

  “Different company,” I told her, starting to feel stupid using the same old lie. “How well did you know Martin Blyleven?”

  “Not well at all. I’d see him at the airport now and then.”

  “What about Lawrence Foster?”

  “Larry?” she smiled. “Sure, I knew him. Everybody around there did. He was a great guy.” Her smile faded and she shook her head. “That was the shitty part, that he died.”

  “Do you know anyone that would have wanted to kill him?”

  “Christ, no. He’d give you the shirt off his back if you asked him. I doubt he had an enemy in the world.”

  “Did he ever seem depressed to you?”

  “Do you mean could he have committed suicide by blowing up the plane? No way. He was a happy-go-lucky guy. Plus, he loved his wife and kid. He’d never leave them like that.” She shook her head again. “They’re the ones I really feel sorry for.”

  “Thomas Doherty said you were there when Blyleven and Foster took off that day.”

  She nodded, unwrapping her burger. “I hope you don’t mind. This is my dinner.”

  “Go ahead.” Although the smell was making my stomach rumble. “You saw them get on the plane?”

  “Mm, hm.” She chewed a bite of burger.

  “You’re sure it was Blyleven? Not just somebody who might have looked like him?”

  She nodded, still chewing. Then she washed it down with a swig of beer and said, “I was standing right next to him. The feds asked me the same thing. About a thousand times, the assholes.” She took a ferocious bite of burger.

  I let her finish chewing it. “What have you got against the feds? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  She gave me a long, cynical look, still trying to see if there was a cop hidden somewhere inside. Then she took a swig of beer and said, “Because they fucked over my little brother, that’s why.” She picked up a fry, stared at it for a moment, then put it down. “Well, okay, it was partly his fault. He got busted with some coke, not much, a quarter ounce. They could have charged him with possession, first offense, given him probation and community service—you know? Like they do for rich people.” She sighed. “But they wanted to make an example out of him. Or maybe they just didn’t like his attitude, because he refused to rat on the people he bought it from. So they hung a distribution charge on him, and he got ten to fifteen years in a fucking federal prison. He’ll be out next year.” She stared down at her burger. “But he changed in there. He’s harder. It’s like he’s… not my brother anymore.” She looked up at me. “That’s why I hate the goddamn feds. After the crash, they asked me all sorts of questions. Sure, it was a terrible tragedy, but I told them as little as possible. Fuck ’em.” She pushed her burger aside and gulped down some beer.

  “Did you withhold information?”

  “No,” she snapped. Then her look softened. “Well, not exactly. I mean, those arrogant bastards paraded through there like they owned the place, demanding to know every little detail about me and my job and Foster and Blyleven. I finally got sick of it—of them—so I just gave them yes and no answers.”

  “What did you leave out?”

  She ga
ve me a brief, suspicious look. “Nothing important.”

  “But something.”

  She hesitated. “They asked me if I’d talked to Foster that morning. I told them sure, and then spent the next two hours going over every little detail of the conversation, which hadn’t amounted to shit. So when they asked me if I’d talked to Blyleven, I said no. I lied, so what.”

  “So you did talk to him.”

  “Briefly.”

  “What about?”

  “An earthquake in Mexico City. I heard about it on the radio that morning when I drove to the airport. I was concerned because my husband has relatives there. I mentioned it to Blyleven. He got very upset.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, his jaw dropped and his face turned white and he started pumping me for details about what I’d heard. I thought maybe he had friends or family down there, too.”

  “Did he?”

  “I asked him, and he said no.” She shrugged. “That’s it. But you know what?”

  “What?”

  “It felt good lying to the feds, even for something that small. The assholes.”

  10

  THE NEXT MORNING, I phoned Roger Armis at home. I wanted to catch him before he left for work. Actually, it was Vivian who I wanted to speak with. I hoped that by now Armis had told her about my involvement. I didn’t want to proceed further until I had the answers to one or two dozen questions, starting with, Why would Blyleven be upset about an earthquake in Mexico City?

  Armis’s line was busy.

  While I waited for it to clear, I could deal with a more crucial matter. My laundry. I was down to my last clean pair of jockey shorts.

  I dug out an old sea bag and began stuffing it with clothes from under the bathroom sink. I yanked the drawstrings, but the bag was too full to close. I dragged it into the living room and reached for the phone. It rang before I picked it up.

  Agent Cochran.

  “Thanks for calling back,” I said.

  “I was going to leave a message on your office machine, then I thought I’d try to catch you at home. I have the information you requested. That is, the lack of it.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Martin E. Blyleven has no arrest record.”