Bleeding Blue

by Don Weston

  “I didn’t kill Darrin,” he said. “I’m telling you it’s all a mistake. And I won’t be treated with kid gloves once they get me downtown.”

  “I’ll have a talk with the arresting officer.”

  And that was that. I closed my heart, denied the ache inside me, and called McGraw on my cell.

  I decided I needed clarity and a break from all the recent drama. Something about this whole business didn’t feel right and there was too much stress floating around in my head. So, after McGraw hauled Steve off as a startled Angel and Earl arrived, I asked Angel to book me on a flight to Pocatello to visit the Fleming ancestral home.

  The smallish recently remodeled Pocatello airport lay on the western outskirts of the city along the winding Snake River. We descended across a reservoir and touched down on an abbreviated landing strip. The sky was blue, but there was a chill in the late afternoon breeze as I walked to the rental car. It came with a GPS unit, and I spent ten minutes trying to enter the address of the Pocatello City Hall.

  I pulled up fifteen minutes later alongside a dreary building painted in three horizontal stripes of brown tones. The building was cheerier inside, with lemon and lime-flavored walls. I wandered down the hall to glass doors with a city emblem.

  A tall, thin, middle-aged woman with a ‘70’s bouffant black hairstyle and eyeglasses the size of pickle jar lids, sauntered across the medium-sized office with a stack of file folders in her arms. I must have startled her because the folders slipped through her fingers as she turned her head and her folders sprawled across the floor.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said.

  She huffed deeply from the floor: “What do you have to be sorry for, Dear?”

  “I think I scared you.”

  “I drop stuff like these three or four times a day. I’m supposed to be the city clerk, but since the layoffs I’m about the only one here most of the day. Sarah comes in from two-to-five on Mondays and Fridays.”

  In an artful scoop, she gathered the folders from the brown linoleum floor and stacked them on one of the three desks in the office. Then she walked over to the front counter and winked at me.

  “What can I do for you, Honey?”

  I showed her my ID and told her I was investigating the deaths of Mr. and Mrs. Fleming.

  “Oh my God,” she said. “Mr. Fleming’s dead? And his wife too?” She took two steps back and plopped on a desktop. “Was it a car accident?”

  “They were both murdered.”

  She shook her head. The pickle jar glasses highlighted her olive irises as her eyes widened.

  “Murdered? How awful. The poor man has had more than his share of bad luck.”

  “Can you tell me about it? The bad luck?”

  “Well I shouldn’t say anything about any employees, past or present,” she said. “But poor Mr. Fleming got such a raw deal and now he’s dead. Somebody’s got to know he was a nice guy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He worked here for years and one day he was accused of embezzling from the city. He would never do such a thing and they never found the money—oh they discovered a couple extra thousand in his savings he couldn’t account for—but he didn’t have the $500,000 they said was missing.”

  She leaned back on the desk and shook her head, as if in deep thought.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Well, the city auditor found some irregularities in his bookkeeping and notified the city council. The auditor’s report showed funds were transferred to bank accounts under a phony name which he says he traced back to poor Mr. Fleming.”

  “What happened to the rest of the money?”

  “Nobody knows. Still, the prosecutor had enough of a case to get him seven years in the Idaho State Pen. I heard he got off for good behavior a few years ago and was back in Pocatello. I haven’t run into him though.”

  “Could I talk to his supervisor?”

  “Ben Miller? He died suddenly a year after Mr. Fleming was sentenced. Heart attack.”

  “Mmm. Too bad. What about the city auditor? Is he around?”

  “Robert Paul left for greener pastures a couple years ago. He left a forwarding address in New York City. Think I got it somewhere.”

  She walked over to a gray steel filing cabinet and opened the bottom drawer. “Here it is.” She wrote the name, address, and phone number down on a scrap paper and handed it to me. “Don’t tell him where you got it.” She winked again.

  “Is there anyone else around here who knew Mr. Fleming and might be able to answer some questions?”

  “Doubt it. He was one of those studious types, you know. Kept to his self a lot. Never saw him around town with anyone but his wife. You might talk to his mother. She lives over in Chubbuck.”

  I got the number and called Mrs. Delilah Fleming. Five minutes later I pulled up to a 50’s ranch-style track home with brown grass and myriad weeds. Delilah Fleming answered the door in a green paisley housecoat. A cigarette hung precariously from her lip as she pushed the screen door open.

  “You Missus Bly?” Her voice cracked and sad eyes peered at me through a wrinkled face.

  “Miss Bly,” I said. “I’m not married.”

  “That’s okay, Sweetie. You still got time.” She chuckled. “Come on in.”

  Like the little bit of Pocatello I’d seen so far, the furniture was left over from the seventies. Her carpet was green shag and the wallpaper peeled some. If Art Fleming stole money from the city, she never saw any of it.

  “I’m investigating your son’s death,” I said.

  “I understand.” She stubbed out her cigarette in an overflowing ashtray. Tears welled up in her blue eyes, and she wiped her face with the sleeve of her housecoat. “Sorry. I knew something bad had happened to him, but when I finally got the news from the cops . . . well, it didn’t make it any easier.”

  “Uh, I’m afraid I have more bad news, Delilah. Your daughter-in-law was found dead in her motel room last night. Foul play is suspected.”

  Tears streamed down her face. “Stella, dead? Oh my. Is the world coming to an end? How did it happen?”

  “The police are treating it as a suicide, but they are also looking at it as a possible murder.” Well, I was anyway.

  “Who would possibly want to murder Stella?” She quieted for a moment, taking it all in.

  “It must have something to do with the money stolen from the city. Art said he was innocent and I wanted to believe him. I mean, I did believe him, but there was always a little bit of doubt. After he got out of jail, he was obsessive about proving his innocence. But everyone involved in the case was gone. He was able to start his own insurance agency, but he didn’t do too well. Stella told me he spent most of his time on the job trying to track down the city auditor back in New York somewhere.”

  “Did Art ever reach him?” I asked.

  “He told Stella he left a couple of messages and suddenly the number was no good any longer.”

  “Sounds like Mr. Paul didn’t want to be found.”

  “I guess. Art hired a private eye, but the guy didn’t find anything, and Art couldn’t afford to keep paying him.”

  “Why did your son go to Portland?”

  “He had a convention to go to. He called me from the hotel the night he arrived and that’s the last I ever heard from him.”

  She started sobbing again and I waited.

  “Did he say anything about his plans when he called?” I asked.

  “He said he had a dinner date with an old friend he had run into and that maybe his luck was about to change. I asked him what he meant, and he told it was a secret. He’d explain it to me when he got home. He sounded excited.”

  “Did he happen to mention this old friend’s name?”

  She sighed. “No. Just an old friend.”

  “Would you know many of his friends?”

  “He didn’t have many after he went to jail. There’s a few old high school buddies, a few women he dated before he met St
ella. I think I could remember some of them.”

  She took about half an hour writing names down—mostly after going through Art’s high school yearbook, which she had kept all these years. There were only ten names, six men and four women. Most of them dated back to high school. None were familiar to me.

  “What about the city auditor, Robert Paul? Was he a friend of Art’s?”

  “Not anymore. I mean they used to golf together for a while, but about a year before Art was arrested something came between them. I think Mr. Paul was having an affair with some married woman and Art thought that was wrong.”

  “Do you remember her name?”

  “I don’t think Art ever mentioned it. He seemed embarrassed about it. Stella might have known, but I just don’t remember.”

  I thanked Delilah for her help and promised to let her know if I found out anything further about her son’s and daughter-in-law’s deaths. I took the list of names and added Robert Paul and even the supposedly deceased Ben Miller to it. I wanted to have Angel check to see if any of the names now lived in the Portland area. Something about Art Fleming’s imprisonment seemed fishy to me, and I wasn’t going to take anything at face value. Delilah Fleming promised to call me if she thought of any other of Art’s friends.

  I stopped at a little Philly cheese steak sandwich place in downtown Pocatello and contemplated who else I might be able to talk with and came up empty. The Idaho State Journal newspaper offices were across the street so I decided to research the infamous theft from the city of Pocatello.

  A helpful receptionist walked me into a back room with a computer and showed me how to research their articles on-line. I spent an hour and came up with several computerized versions of the news events: City Auditor Accuses Investment Officer of Embezzling $500,000; Fleming Indicted for Embezzlement, Claims Innocence; Auditor Says Money Gone; Fleming Turns Down Plea Agreement; Jury Convicts Fleming, Sentencing Tomorrow; Fleming Gets Seven Years.

  The stories were long and tediously accurate, but something seemed to be missing. I swirled around in my chair and saw a wall of bound newspapers with notations on them. I found one dated the month of the trial and pulled out the oversized bound volume. It didn’t take long to find what was missing from the online stories.

  The hard copy pages had more pictures. And on page one with a banner story of City Auditor Office Accuses Investment Officer of Embezzlement, was a picture of Ben Miller. I stared at the picture and shook my head. I hoped I might recognize Art Fleming’s supervisor as a Portland official. The mug staring back at me, with a mole above his lip and weasel-like dark eyes, bore no resemblance to anyone I knew.

  I searched through the stories hoping to find more pictures of the players in the city’s scandal. The two main players were city auditor Robert Paul and Miller. I found one other photo of Miller, but none of Paul. I did a search of Miller’s name in the newspaper files, thinking I might learn something about him that would be helpful and turned up nothing.

  I had hoped to find a fresh lead on the Fleming murders and had nothing to show for it except upsetting a grieving mother and flushing three hundred dollars down the drain for airfare and a four-hour car rental.

  I tried to enjoy the ten-minute drive out to the airport, slowing to admire a clump of mountains which surrounded the city and nearby valley. The scenery was ruined by a stiff breeze carrying the odor of rotten eggs. A few minutes later I found the awful smell’s origin, a J. R. Simplot potato processing plant. It seemed to sum up my entire trip.

  Chapter 25

  I arrived home in time for dinner. I was grouchy and tired and not much in the mood for what greeted me. Dan met me at the door and took my briefcase. Loud voices boomed from the dining room, and I turned the corner to see a family dinner in progress. Seated at the table were Jason, Dag, Angel, Chris and Earl. Dan pulled out an empty chair for me and I slid in.

  “You’re just in time,” he said, “Angel cooked spaghetti and meatballs.”

  Angel passed a plate of spaghetti to me and everyone wanted to know where I’d been and what I learned. I covered the trip with them right up to my discovery of the J.R. Simplot plant. Then I filled them in on my midnight visit to City Hall the previous night. Dan and Dag shook their heads at me and tried to cover their grins with their hands.

  “That poor Eileen called for you,” Angel said. “She’s worried you might be upset with her and wanted me to have you call her as soon as you got back.”

  My face flushed as memories returned of waking up in bed practically naked next to her.

  “I’ll call her later,” I said, without much conviction.

  “Steve’s going to be arraigned tomorrow afternoon,” Dag said. “The prosecutor must feel pretty confident.”

  “Why so fast?” I said. “I figured they would sit on him for a couple of days and shore up their case.”

  “I heard Mayor Clemons is pushing it,” Dag said. “He’s under a lot of pressure from the public and the police union to find Darrin’s killer.”

  “I have a hard time believing Steve could have become a serial killer just for revenge against me.”

  “Stranger things have happened,” Jason said. “A woman up in Oregon City shot a guy in Dunkin Donuts because she thought he swiped one of her maple bars.”

  “If it was a jelly-filled donut, I could understand,” I said.

  “Yeah, but the donut was from his own bag. Her bag was on the other side of her on the counter,” Jason said.

  “Case of mistaken identity,” Dag said.

  “How many years did she get?” Angel asked. “Bet she got a baker’s dozen.”

  The jokes got considerably worse as I attacked my meatballs and once I think I snorted a spaghetti noodle through my nose or at least if felt that way. After things settled down, I told everyone what Steve had said about being framed before I cuffed him, managing to leave out the kiss.

  “Sounds like someone’s got it in for him,” Jason said. “They must have had him in their sights for a little while.”

  “You got any theories about who else might be after you?” Dan asked me.

  “I’ve got plenty of theories. The problem is keeping the players straight while I investigate four murders.”

  “Four?” Dan said.

  “Yeah. Darrin, The Jet, and Stella and Art Fleming. As much as I hate to say it, Steve is a good fit for the murder of Darrin and The Jet and at least one attempt on me. I keep wondering why Steve slowed down, allowing The Jet to pull alongside and shoot at me.”

  Dan tapped his fork nervously on his dinner plate. “I’ve known Steve for quite a few years and he’s always been a straight arrow. I can’t see him straying now.”

  “I know but remember how he stepped outside for a few moments at the funeral home. I saw him make some calls on his cell. By the time we left, we had picked up The Jet as a tail. How did he know where I was?”

  “I don’t know, but . . .”

  “And just before The Jet was iced at Cathedral Park, he told me his handler was a cop and I shouldn’t trust anybody.”

  Jason whistled. “Man, that’s heavy stuff. You sure about this?”

  “Ask Chris. He was there.”

  All eyes turned to Chris, who was slumped in his chair, hiding behind two large meatballs heaped on a mound of uneaten spaghetti.

  “I, uh, it’s like she said. A cop was involved. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Chris appeared agitated and nervous as we talked, and he wasn’t eating. I realized he was avoiding Earl’s glance and slapped my hand to my forehead.

  “I forgot. Earl, Chris thinks you tried to kill him.”

  Earl sucked a noodle into his mouth. “What are you talking about?”

  “You tried to kill me.” Chris’s spine stiffened I could tell he was trying to be brave.

  “He said he saw you talking with Commissioner Tuttle downtown near the hot dog stand.” I nodded at Chris.

  “He’s wrong,” Earl said flatly. “He must have me
mixed up with someone else.”

  “I don’t know. He gave me a pretty good description right down to your naked lady tattoo.”

  “The naked lady man,” Chris stammered.

  “I was down there yesterday, but I didn’t see Commissioner Tuttle,” Earl said.

  “Chris said he heard Tuttle say he hired you to work on a case,” I said. “I know you have a private investigator’s license. Eileen told me. I also learned that you worked for Tuttle once before a few years back on an elections violation case.”

  “Okay, I talked with him,” Earl said. “But I can’t tell you about what. It’s confidential.”

  “I can understand that. It must be difficult working under a man like Tuttle, who wants results now and is trying to undermine your cover. I mean if you were to be too overt the person you were investigating might become suspicious.”

  I stopped short of telling Earl he was investigating me.

  “Listen, I don’t know what that creep told you, but it’s a bunch of bull,” he said in a low voice. “I’m working a case, but it’s not related to you. I promise.”

  I watched Chris. His eyes seemed to plead with me and he glanced back at Earl, who seemed unperturbed. I was about to say something when Angel spoke up.

  “Earl Monroe Thompson! Are you courting me just to get inside information about Billie?”

  “No, I swear,” he said. “Don’t jump to conclusions. I’m dating you because I like you.”

  “Eileen said you dated her to find out information about an investigation,” I said.

  Angel jumped up from the table muttering under her breath. She was crying, and I felt like a heel. She had asked the question I was dying to ask but couldn’t without her hating me. As it was, she’d probably hate me anyway.

  Earl started to get up to follow her, but Dan grabbed his arm.

  “Sit down,” he said. “It won’t do any good. She just needs to get it out of her system. Maybe tomorrow.”

  Earl sat down shaking his head. “You’ve got it all twisted up, and I can’t tell you what I’m doing. I’m certain it has nothing to do with Billie.”

  “Then can you explain why after Chris saw you and Tuttle talking, not ten minutes later you tried to run him down in your tow truck?” I asked.