“That’s close to a million dollars,” Truman cut in, “just for doing what a compassionate pastor would do for a member of his flock for free. What happened to the lawsuit?”
“Let me scroll the other entries and I’ll see.”
Truman kept writing notes while he waited.
“You there?” Miss Peters asked.
“Still here.”
“It looks like the Sowers family dropped their suit. There’s a story here saying that they requested the district attorney to investigate Newby for criminal charges, but after a two-month investigation, they couldn’t find enough evidence of criminal intent.”
“Too bad,” Truman said. “But this is good stuff. You got any more lawsuits against him?”
He heard more tapping.
“It doesn’t look like it. Hey. Here’s a note appended to the file, though. Somebody from Austin, Texas, requested a copy of some of this Sowers file.”
“Another newspaper reporter?”
“It doesn’t say so,” Miss Peters said. “The name is Leda Aristozobal. Address is the Texas Department of Revenue in Austin.”
“Tax people,” Truman said. “I wonder why they’re interested in a lawsuit against Jewell Newby?”
“I don’t know,” Miss Peters said. “Oops. There’s the phone. I’ve got to go.”
She hung up before he could thank her.
Truman tried to figure out the spelling of Leda Aristozobal. A tax lady in Texas. Hadn’t Jewell Newby gotten his start in Texas? Truman would have to check the notes in his file. He reached for the phone again. He wanted to call information in Austin. See if he could find a home listing for Leda Aristozobal.
“I’m back,” Yvonne Sweatt chirped. She was clutching a grease-stained paper sack in her arms, and she was out of breath.
“Any calls?” she asked, obviously waiting for him to vacate her chair.
“Nothing important,” he assured her as he vacated her chair.
He was standing waiting by the elevator, feeling just the tiniest bit smug about the scam he’d just pulled.
“I saw that,” a voice hissed in his ear.
He jumped a foot in the air.
“Jesus, Jackleen!” he exclaimed. “You startled me. Saw what?”
“Saw you tricking Yvonne into leaving you alone with the switchboard,” she whispered. People were beginning to straggle into the lobby now, so she had to keep her voice down. “Pretty slick work for an old-timer. What’d you find out?”
The elevator dinged and the doors opened. He gestured for her to enter. “Come on-a my house and I’ll fill you in.”
Chapter TWENTY
“Hold the elevator, hold the doors!” a woman demanded. Truman stuck his foot out and the doors closed on it, then slowly parted again.
Sonya Hoffmayer trundled aboard, holding KoKo in her arms.
The little dog had a good memory. It pricked up its ears when it saw Truman, bared its teeth, and let out a low, menacing growl. Jackleen backed away from Mrs. Hoffmayer and the dog.
“KoKo!” Mrs. Hoffmayer said, pretending to be shocked. She kissed the top of the little dog’s head. “We’re not ourselves, are we, precious? No, we’re not. We’re certainly not.”
Mrs. Hoffmayer turned to Truman, pretending not to see Jackleen. “One of those awful painters got paint on our little hiney. We’ve just been to the groomers, and we’re not at all happy, are we?”
“Latex, I hope?” Truman said innocently.
“Oil,” she said gloomily. “There was nothing the groomer could do but shave.” She took the dog out of the basket it was riding in and held it up for inspection. It was wearing a tiny white diaper.
Mrs. Hoffmayer got off on the fourth floor. After she was gone, Jackleen sighed. “Now I know somebody’s got a job worse than me.”
“What’s that?” Truman asked.
“Whoever had to shave that dog’s butt,” she said.
He’d just begun to fill Jackleen in on the results of his research when there was a knock at the door.
Pearl Wisnewski stood in the hallway, her arms piled high with men’s clothes, coats, slacks, and shirts on hangers. Beside her on the floor was a plastic laundry basket full of more neatly folded garments. Pearl’s eyes were red- rimmed, but she looked resolute.
“Hello, Jackie,” she said. “Here.” She thrusted the arm-load of clothes at Truman. “I talked to Mel’s doctor this morning. He says Mel’s not going to get better. It’s a degenerative disease, and he says the advance is rapid. Mel wears pajamas all day in the nursing home, that or a couple pair of those loose elastic-waist slacks. I want you to take these clothes.”
Truman transferred the clothes from her arms to his bed. She followed him inside with the basket.
“Isn’t this kind of drastic, Pearl? Mel is going to want some of these clothes, I’m sure.”
She set the basket on the bed beside the other things. “No,” she said simply. “For months now he’s only wanted to wear the same clothes over and over again. The doctor says it’s a symptom of the Alzheimer’s.”
She ran her hand over a blue blazer with gold buttons at the cuffs. “Some of these things are like new, Truman. If you can’t wear them, give them to somebody else.”
“Why the hurry?” Truman asked.
Pearl bit her lip and put her left hand over Truman’s. Her wedding band, loose on her hand, clicked against her engagement ring.
She looked ten years older than she had last week.
“He’s not going to get better. I’ve got to face facts. Every time I open the closet I think of the things we’re not going to do together any more. The places we’re not going to go. I’ll feel better if his clothes are put to use.”
She smiled weakly. “I’m German, you know. A Bierbohm. We don’t like to see a bit of waste. Didn’t you know that?”
“Sure,” Truman said, nodding. “I’ll take care of it.”
He gestured toward the easy chair by the window. “Have a seat. I was just going to tell Jackie what I’ve found out about that Newby fella. The one who’s buying the hotel. It’s not a lot, but I think he might be involved in something sticky out west where his church started.”
But she was already moving toward the door. “No thanks. I’ve been with Mel all morning. I’m exhausted. I think I’ll take a little nap before I go back over there to give him his supper.”
When she was gone, Truman stood and looked at the pile of clothes.
He shrugged himself into the blue blazer. It fit all right through the shoulders, but the sleeves were two inches too long. He held up a pair of worn corduroy slacks. Miles too big and too warm for St. Pete anyway. He started working his way through the pile, separating out the few things he thought he could use from the majority that wouldn’t fit.
“How about you?” he asked Jackie. “Don’t you have a boyfriend? Somebody tall? Some of the stuff’s not too bad.”
She snorted. “Boyfriend? That’s a good one. The last man I dated was like Mr. Mel. He had memory problems too. He kept forgetting he had a wife and two little babies waiting at home for him.”
Jackleen got up and went over to the bed. She fingered the fabric of a plaid jacket in Truman’s discard pile. “Mr. Mel was wearing this last week when we went to the track. Remember?”
Truman shook his head. “I guess I wasn’t paying too much attention to what anybody was wearing. I was too busy worrying that Mel would get lost.”
She stroked the jacket. “Lost. Huh. Funny to think about it. Him in a nursing home, hardly knows any of us. So what did you find out while you were minding the switchboard this afternoon?”
He filled her in. “I’m gonna call that Leda Aristozobal person. Even if I have to pay for it myself. But I guess I’ll wait till tonight. After the rates go down.”
“Hope you find something out,” she said fervently. “There’s an architect walking around downstairs in the kitchen right now. He’s got a clipboard and I heard him telling Cookie they’re gonn
a close the coffee shop in two weeks so they can start ripping out.”
Her eyes glinted angrily. “I’d like to rip out her skinny little ass, that’s what I’d like to do. Her sashaying around like she runs the place. She saw me coming in to clock out. You know what she said? ‘Girl,’ that’s what she called me. ‘Girl, could you get a cup of hot coffee for our architect?’”
“Ignore her,” Truman advised. “We’ve got to concentrate on other matters.”
Jackleen slipped into the plaid jacket. The hem hung nearly to her blue-jean-clad knees, and the sleeves hung loosely, three inches from her fingertips. She pushed the sleeves up to her elbows and flipped the collar up. There was a full-length mirror on the back of the closet door. She stood in front of it, turning this way and that, preening really. The jacket gave her a jaunty, boyish air.
“Look,” she said, pleased with what she saw. “Annie Hall.”
“Who?”
Jackleen laughed. “Never mind.” Her smile faded. “You know, I keep thinking about that dead girl. Rosie. I never saw a dead person outside a coffin before.”
Truman had. He didn’t bother to tell her you didn’t get over it quickly. “I’ve been thinking about it too. One of those cops came to see me, you know.” He snorted. “Thought maybe Mel told me something about why he did it.”
“A cop that was there that night?”
“Uniformed cop, not a detective,” Truman said. “He knows my daughter. He said something funny too. The police think that girl was killed because of a computer program.”
“What kind of a program?” Jackie asked.
“One that handicaps racing greyhounds. Whoever had it could get rich from making the right bets. The cops say this Rosie and her boyfriend came up with the program. And whoever killed her, killed her for that program. It’s on a computer disk. Of course they haven’t found it”
“Hey,” Jackie said. “Remember what Mel told us last week when he went to look for Rosie? He said she had a new system to pick winners. That must have been what he was talking about.”
“A computer disk,” Truman said. “I’ll be damned. Wonder if anybody else out at the track knows anything about the thing?”
“We could go out there,” Jackie said. “Walk around, ask some questions.”
“Play detective?” Truman sounded dubious. “I don’t know.” He looked down at the pile of clothes on the bed. Picked up a loud flowered sport shirt. He remembered Mel wearing it to cookouts at the house back when Nellie was alive. He picked the shirt up idly. It smelled like Mel. Like tobacco and some kind of woodsy soap or aftershave. Like Mel used to smell. Not like he did now, not that sour nursing-home smell. The flowers reminded him of the ones on the girl’s hat. Roses.
“The newspaper story gave Rosie Figueroa’s address. A tourist court off Fourth Street,” he said. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt anything to go over there, ask the neighbors what they know. Maybe hit the track after that. Just walk around. Ask some harmless questions.”
“All right now,” Jackie said, grinning. “You think Pearl would mind if I wore this jacket? I really like it.”
“Take it,” he told her. “Take the whole basket if you want. I got no use for it. And Pearl wants somebody to get some use out of it”
“Just the jacket.” Jackleen said, thrusting her hands down into the patch pockets.
Truman bundled the discarded clothes into his arms and plopped them on top of the basket. “We can drop this stuff off at the Free Clinic,” he said as he followed Jackie out into the hallway.
He set the basket down to lock the door.
“Hey!”
Truman looked up at Jackie.
She was holding a small brass key in her palm. “This was down inside the jacket, in the lining. There’s a little hole in the pocket lining. It must have slipped through. I better take it back to Pearl, it could be something she needs.”
“We’ll stop on the way down,” Truman agreed.
Pearl turned the key over and over in her hand. “Just a minute,” she said.
She went to the dresser and reached inside her pocket-book. When she came back she had a bulky key ring with a dozen or so keys jangling from it. One by one, she held the keys up to the small brass key Jackie had found.
“No,” she said, puzzled. “I’ve never seen this one before. You’re sure this came out of that jacket?” She nodded at the plaid coat Jackie had draped over her arm.
“It was down in the lining,” Jackie explained. “I felt something hard. I thought maybe it was a button or a piece of change or something.”
“Wasn’t this the jacket Mel was wearing at the track that night?” Truman asked.
“The police gave me his things back yesterday. They were in a horrible brown envelope marked ‘Evidence.’ I tore the envelope up and put the jacket with the other clothes to give away. The pants,” she said, pausing, her face crumpling, “the pants had spatters. Bloodstains. That girl’s blood. I threw them away.”
“Never mind,” Truman said. He’d thought things over in the elevator. “Never mind. We’re going to clear Mel’s name, Pearl. Find out who killed Rosie. This key could have something to do with it.”
Pearl shook her head sadly. “It won’t matter much now, will it? Mel’s in that nursing home. I’m here. Alone.”
Truman took the key from her. “She was just a kid, Pearl.”
When they were alone, on the elevator, Jackie put the jacket back on. “Are we crazy?” she asked. “Thinking we can find out who killed that girl when the police and the district attorney and the judge and everybody else already decided Mel did it, and he can’t remember himself?”
Truman took the key out of his breast pocket and looked at it again. “Crazy?” he said. “What’s so crazy about asking a few harmless questions?”
They were almost to the lobby door when Truman heard his name being called. He turned around.
Ollie came bounding across the tile floor. He was dressed in a pale yellow sport coat, baggy slacks, and the loudest, widest tie Truman had seen since the forties.
“What’s up?” Truman asked.
Ollie favored Truman with an exaggerated wink “You’ll never guess where I’m going.”
“You got me,” Truman said. “Where?”
Ollie glanced around the lobby to see if anyone could overhear. “Over to Cookie Jeffcote’s condo. What do you think about that? Huh?”
“Cookie Jeffcote! What you messing with her for?” Jackie demanded.
Ollie held a finger to his lips. “Shh. It’s top secret. I’m not supposed to tell anybody, but I guess you two wouldn’t count. She invited me over for drinks. To tell me about the special deal the church might cut some of us on this conversion thing.”
“Special deal?” Truman looked dubious. “What special deal?”
“I dunno,” Ollie said. He slicked his hair back with the palm of his hand. “But Ollie Zorn was never a man to let opportunity pass him by. No sir.” He glanced at his watch. “Gotta go. She lives all the way out at St. Pete Beach and not that many buses go out there Saturday night.”
He gave Truman a subtle elbow in the ribs. “I’ll give you a full report in the morning.”
Jackie watched him hurry out the door. She shook her head. “What you think that’s about?”
Truman laughed. “I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.”
Chapter TWENTY-ONE
Wade Hardeson was hungry and thirsty. But he’d had to part with most of the cash his grandmother had given him to pay the back rent and get back into the apartment. And for what? Someone had been there already, trashed the place. The disk wasn’t there.
He’d fucked up. Set up a meeting with the mob guy, Mikey, just assuming he’d find the diskette.
There was a shopping center with a brand new Winn-Dixie just a block away. He’d think better after he had some lunch.
Once inside, he got a shopping cart and wheeled it directly to the paper-goods aisle. There he stacked the cart with bulky
rolls of paper towels, the largest package of disposable diapers he could find, and an eighteen-roll package of toilet tissue. It made a high white tower, totally obscuring Wade from view.
Then he made his way to the beer coolers. He pulled the cart in front of the cooler door, opened it, and helped himself to a quart bottle of malt liquor. He uncapped it and let the cold liquid slide down his throat. He needed this. It felt like he’d been gargling sand all day.
Moving on to the deli, Wade positioned the cart to shield himself from view again and picked up a half-pound package of sliced honey-baked ham and a tray of sliced sharp American cheese, tucking both under the waistband of his jeans. He was enjoying himself.
Shoplifting smorgasbord, Rosie had called it. If they were broke, which they usually were, they’d make a game of it. Rosie liked shiny new supermarkets, especially the ones with self-serve delis and the hot-entree sections. She got so good at the game, she’d go in, have the clerk fix her a Styrofoam tray of fried chicken, baked beans, coleslaw, and potato salad, and then she’d roam the aisles, eating as she went, stuffing more groceries down her shirt and in her purse. “The fools even give you a plastic fork and knife,” she’d said, laughing.
At the bakery, Wade untied a bag of rye bread, slipped four slices of bread out of it, and retied the bag. He reached into a plastic display case, grabbed a chocolate- frosted Bismarck, and gobbled it.
Using the paper tower as a shield, Wade worked himself into a corner display of liter bottles of Fresca and Tab and fixed himself two thick sandwiches, which he ate just as quickly.
He was still thirsty, though, so he wheeled the cart back down the beer aisle.
Kathy Hogan Trocheck - Truman Kicklighter 01 - Lickety-Split Page 13
