by R. J. Lee
Suddenly, however, she found herself playing Devil’s advocate. What if they both weren’t leveling with her? Or what if one was telling the truth and the other wasn’t? And how would she know which one was which? Darn it all. Where was the metaphysical when you really needed it?
She must get with Ross and discuss all this with him, especially since she had promised to let him know about anything she discovered while doing the research and interviews for her feature article. She turned on the ignition as a reflex action and adjusted her rearview mirror. Somehow, it had gotten slightly askew, perhaps when she’d touched up her lip gloss last time.
Then, as she slowly pulled out of her spot, she caught a glimpse of a man quickly dashing across the street and getting into a car in the block ahead of her. He pulled out into traffic and effortlessly blended in. Something about him was very familiar, but she decided to concentrate on her driving, as there was a car coming up behind her and she didn’t want to risk a fender bender. At the next traffic light, she caught the red light and forced herself to focus for a moment or two until it changed to green. It didn’t take long at all for the recognition to come.
It was Gerald Mansfield she’d seen. She was almost positive of it. Her sleuthing skills would not allow her to dismiss this second encounter from a distance within such a short period of time as merely a random occurrence or coincidence that she should ignore. She now must consider the possibility that he was following her or hanging around for whatever purpose, although even if that was what he was really doing, he wasn’t very good at it. She’d spotted him both times. It was something else she needed to discuss with Ross the next time they got together.
CHAPTER 11
When Wendy had finally returned to her cubicle at the Citizen, she texted Ross about getting together that evening to compare notes on Hollis Hornesby and bring up her concerns about Gerald Mansfield. But apparently, Ross was having none of it.
meeting claude ingalls at retirement home; not sure how long it’ll take.
she texted back.
when did that come up?
today; called out there to confirm he’s still with us.
he’s the clock operator, right?
right; but no idea when I’ll be thru; going late.
need to talk about hollis hornesby & gerald mansfield.
why mansfield?
trust me; important we talk.
okay; i’ll text u when i’m thru w/ ingalls; what about hollis h.?
stuff out of left field.
a breakthrough?
don’t know; but you’ll want to interrogate him.
okay; ttyl
Wendy put down her cell and frowned. She’d temporarily forgotten about Claude Ingalls, one of the men Brent Ogle had insisted his father had paid off to rig The Four-Second Game, if any of them could manage it. That revelation had created a physical confrontation among Brent and his golfing buddies, but it was still unclear whether he had been telling the truth or whether either Tip Jarvis or Connor James had actually believed him.
Then she made an executive decision. Perhaps she should attend to some alligators in her cubicle and then head out later to the Rosalie Public Library to research The Four-Second Game so she could be prepared for whatever Ross chose to share with her of his conversation with Claude Ingalls.
And then that led to another bit of tantalizing conjecture on her part. All those years that Brent Ogle had made a general nuisance of himself to people—not only at the RCC but all over town—no one had seen fit to knock him off. There were certainly plenty who had had provocation, but they apparently had made their peace with it. But suddenly, within a couple of hours of Brent’s drunken boast that The Four-Second Game had truly been rigged, he had met a brutal end. Perhaps Ross had come to the same conclusion, but it seemed to Wendy that it was more than likely that someone had taken Brent Ogle deadly serious. Someone had believed him and decided he needed to be punished for it then and there. With that pestle in one angry, vengeful blow.
What if his death had had nothing to do with bullying or disrespecting people or threatening to withhold funds from the RCC? Suppose it had been about the results of The Four-Second Game all those decades ago and nothing else? In that case, it appeared once again that Tip Jarvis and Connor James would move to the head of the list of suspects, although Ross had stated that they had been interrogated twice and nothing conclusive had come of it.
Wendy felt she was driving herself crazy. All these angles were weighing heavily on her mind—some of them at cross-purposes: Hollis discovering the body and telling no one about it; Carly confessing she had had murderous thoughts about her husband; Deedah wanting to micro-manage everything at the RCC; Carlos with the easiest access to the pestle and the hot tub, the only one who had that convenient a combination; Mitzy Stone claiming that she and Deedah made a great team, but to what was she actually referring?; and now Gerald Mansfield creeping around town to keep an eye on her and for what purpose?
And then, her new idea that the only thing that mattered in this case was that someone had decided to take Brent Ogle out after learning the truth about The Four-Second Game. But was it the truth? Had someone actually believed a lie and been led down the path to violent murder because of it?
Not to mention that her favorite new phrase was tantalizing her.
Backstory.
It was time to finish out her afternoon and then head to the library. Ha! Shades of her term paper days at Mizzou.
* * *
Ross never talked much to anyone about the way he’d lost his parents twelve years ago. Not even to Wendy and Bax. Of course, they both knew that Donald and Jocelyn Rierson had died in a terrible head-on collision one foggy January night as they were heading to their small country home about ten miles south of Rosalie off US Highway 61. Ross had been a freshman at Ole Miss when his grandmother Dot Rierson had called him up with the bad news, her voice anything but composed. After that, he had gone to live with his grandparents in Rolling Fork in the Delta until his graduation, then returned to Rosalie to join the Rosalie CID. But he had never seen that country home of his youth again because his grandparents had had to sell it off to afford to continue sending him to Ole Miss. The life insurance his parents had left him was minimal.
It was a traumatic period of time for him to endure, to say the least, but he had come through it with a determination to make a good life for himself, infused with the kind of love his parents had always given him. Wendy, of course, was a big part of his long-term plan, if she would just settle securely into her newspaper job and say yes to him.
Yet, as he approached the parking lot of the Rosalie Retirement Home, which sat atop the highest of the bluffs just north of the city, he found himself growing increasingly nostalgic. Claude Ingalls had reached a ripe old age, and Ross couldn’t help but wish it were his parents he was visiting and that they had had the chance to live that long. But he pulled himself together as he locked the car with the remote and headed toward the front entrance of the facility. Charm, however, was not its strong point. It looked a great deal like a pedestrian brick and mortar motel, even though Ross knew the staff inside was more than qualified to look after its many aged patients.
So he headed in with a snap to his step and promptly signed his name in the ledger. The efficient receptionist, a pleasant-looking man with severely thinning blond hair whose silver nameplate on the counter identified him as Morris Loring, picked up the phone and notified the assisted living wing of the visitor waiting in the foyer to see Claude Ingalls.
“She’ll be right out to get you and take you to Mr. Ingalls,” Morris told him, putting down the receiver.
“She?”
“Nurse Louise Hawkins. She’s in charge of that wing.”
“I see.”
After only a couple of minutes or so, Nurse Hawkins emerged from one of the corridors and shook Ross’s hand warmly. She was an older woman who exuded empathy but obviously had not missed many meals. Hers was a so
mewhat fleshy face, but the laugh lines imprinted on it surely gave her patients an additional dimension of comfort as she tended to their needs. As a result, “jolly old girl” were the words that were most often used to describe her.
“As I told you over the phone,” she began, “this would be the best time to come for a visit. He’s just had his dinner, which always puts him in a happy mood. He’ll be good for another hour or so, and then he’ll want to watch a little television and then go right off to bed.”
Ross deferred to the notes in his head. “How long has it been since he was transferred from the independent living wing to assisted living?”
“Sometime last year, I believe,” Nurse Hawkins told him. “The night security guard found him at three in the morning a couple of times waiting in the hallway outside the dining room thinking it was time for breakfast. As a result, his doctor thought it was time to keep an eye on him a little bit better. A sense of time is often the first thing to go in these patients. So he was moved to assisted living. But if you ask me, he’s still all there. Now mind you, that’s just my opinion, not the doctor’s. I’ve seen them go downhill fast from independent to assisted to memory care, though. At any rate, I wanted to tell you to get to the purpose of your visit quickly. Don’t beat around the bush, because he does tire easily.”
Ross said he understood and followed Nurse Hawkins down a corridor or two until they had reached a door with the brass numbers 113 fastened to it. Just outside it on the wall to the right was a shelf with an arrangement of leaves in the colors of autumn—bright golds and oranges and reds.
“Those are silk, not real,” Nurse Hawkins said. “Mr. Ingalls’s daughter, Patsy, changes ’em out during the year and especially if there’s a holiday coming up like Thanksgiving or Christmas or Easter. We find it cheers the patients up when family members do these little displays on the shelves.”
“How nice. They’re very pretty.”
Nurse Hawkins knocked on the door twice and cried out, “Mr. Ingalls, are you decent? Your visitor, Detective Rierson, is here to talk to you.”
“Y’all come on in,” came the thin-voiced reply from the other side.
Nurse Hawkins opened the door and gestured for Ross to go on through. “Here he is just to see you, Mr. Ingalls. Now you push the button if you need me for anything, y’hear?”
“Thank you, Miz Hawkins. Hello there, Detective,” Claude said from his vantage point in his recliner facing the flat-screen TV on a wall that was otherwise cluttered with what looked like family photos. Then he gestured to Ross with a big smile. “Won’t you have you a seat? I’ll turn off this program I’m not much innerested in anyway. One of them infomercials trying to sell me somethin’ or other. But I’m not sure I know what it is. My daughter Patsy is all the time gettin’ after me for buyin’ things I see on the TV and then when I get ’em, I cain’t even use ’em.”
As Nurse Hawkins closed the door behind her and Claude aimed his remote at the set, Ross headed over to an armchair that definitely was in need of a new upholstery job. When he sat down, his rear end made contact with some ornery springs somewhere beneath the cushion and it was difficult to find a comfortable position.
“Sorry ’bout that,” Claude said, watching Ross’s struggles. “My daughter Patsy brought that old buttsprung thing in here a while back, but it’s worse’n useless, if y’ask me.”
Ross offered up a game smile. “Don’t worry about it, Mr. Ingalls.”
“You call me Claude, now.”
“Of course . . . Claude.”
Ross appreciated the cheerful tone of his voice, even if it was thin. Thinner still was the man himself. Not yet gaunt, but getting there, his bony physique was emphasized further by the oversized guayabera shirt he wore. If his daughter had bought it for him, she had not chosen well. The pale-yellow color matched his sallow complexion, and the entire ensemble made him look faded and washed out. To complete the sickly impression, there was the faint odor of Vicks VapoRub hanging in the air.
“I have to tell ya, Mr. Rierson, that I’m flattered you wanna talk to an old codger like me ’bout anything,” Claude said, while Ross continued to shift his weight to make peace with the armchair. “Now you said over the phone you wanted to ask me ’bout The Four-Second Game? Wazzat it? After all these years? Seems like some folks just can’t seem to get over it.”
Ross decided to give up fussing with the armchair and concentrate on his task at hand. “Yes. That seems to be the case. I’m sure it’s been a while since anyone has brought that up to you, right?”
“True’nuff. But I can still remember it all like it’z yesttidy. Course, I can’t remember what day of the week it is, but that I can remember.”
“Glad to hear it,” Ross said. Now, do you mind if I go ahead and record our conversation, sir?”
Claude shook his nearly bald head. “Nossir, I don’t. But I have to tell ya, I don’t know what good it’ll do.”
“You just let me worry about that, okay?” Ross said, bringing out his best interrogation smile.
“Alrighty, then. Ask me whatever ya want.”
Ross clicked on the recorder and said, “If I remember correctly, there was an accusation by the St. Mark’s fans that you tinkered with the game clock to give RHS another shot at the end zone that evening. It was a matter of an extra second instead of the game ending on the previous play where Brent Ogle’s pass was broken up. The St. Mark’s people thought the game was over.”
Claude’s voice suddenly grew a bit stronger. “Yep. They did accuse me a’ that. There were some places I coudd’n show my face ’cause a’ all that, ya know. In fact, some woman did throw iced tea in my face at a restaurant, and since I’m a gentleman, I won’t repeat the words she yelled at me.”
“But I believe you denied those clock accusations to everyone, didn’t you?”
Claude grinned. “Yep, I did.”
“Claude, are you aware that Brent Ogle was murdered last Saturday out at the Rosalie Country Club?”
“I was not,” he said, jerking his head back with a frown.
“Are ya tellin’ me the truth ’bout that? Who’d do such of a thing?”
“I am telling you the truth, and we don’t know who did it yet. But we’re investigating the possibility that something Mr. Ogle said to a whole roomful of people Saturday afternoon may have led to his death.”
Claude couldn’t seem to stop shaking his head. “What on earth’s this crazy world comin’ to?”
“I know what you’re saying,” Ross told him. “But I’d like to run what he said by you and get your reaction. He claimed that his father paid off all the officials that worked that game to do anything they could to make sure RHS won, and he included you, the clock operator. His wife says she thinks Brent was telling the truth by the fact he made her swear that particular revelation to secrecy. So, did he pay you money to affect the outcome or not?”
Claude seemed almost gleeful now and lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “I know I denied it way back then, but the truth is that Brent’s daddy, he did put uh wheelbarrow fulla money in my bank account. And I made sure that clock didn’t run out after Brent’s pass was broke up in the end zone. Yep, I surely did what they said I did. I wanted to earn that money, though.”
“Wow!” Ross said, his face a study in disbelief. “So Brent didn’t really win that game legit.”
“Nosirree. That game shoudda ended on the play before. But I seen to it that it didn’t.”
Ross exhaled and then thought for a moment. “Do you mind my asking how much money you were paid?”
“Am I gonna get in trouble if I tell ya?”
“Not at this late date,” Ross said. “And you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. The fact that you’ve admitted you were paid and actually influenced the outcome of the game is more than enough for me, and that won’t get you into any trouble, either. Thirty years have passed, and an entire generation has grown up during that time. That’s a great deal of dist
ance to put between all the controversy that The Four-Second Game generated and today. I really don’t think that many people would care anymore.”
Claude motioned for Ross to lean closer. “Okay, then. I’m trustin’ ya that I won’t get in trouble.”
“Believe me, you won’t.”
Finally, Claude was out with it. “Brent’s daddy, he paid me close to . . . one billion dollars in pennies.”
Startled, Ross could only manage a weak, “What?”
“Well, almost a billion. It was short a few pennies, but it was the same as he paid the others. We all got that much money apiece. But to bring mine up to a billion exactly, I went in to one a’ them convenience stores where they have the little dish that says: ‘LEAVE A PENNY, TAKE A PENNY,’ and I took three pennies. Thataway, I had exactly a billion dollars in pennies.”
Ross shut off the recorder and said, “I see.”
“We all hit the lottery,” Claude continued with a vapid grin on his face. “Ridin’ in high clover.”
“I’m sure you were.”
“That was why I hadda deny all them accusations. I didd’n want nobody lookin’ into my finances and all like that. I was afraid they’d come and take my money away from me, ya know? They’d ask where did it come from, and I’d have to up and tell the truth then.”
Ross nodded pleasantly, realizing that the interview had come crashing down around him. Nurse Hawkins had advised him not to tire the man out, but reality and Claude Ingalls had definitely parted company. After all, he had been admitted to assisted living sometime last year for being spotted in the hallway in the middle of the night waiting for the dining room to open for breakfast. And now there were exactly one billion reasons to keep him in assisted living and monitor him closely in case he needed memory care at some point after that.
