by Lee Killough
Duncan snorted. “Of course. That’s why I told him to go see her mother.”
Anna Bieber. Could this guy tell Anna something indicating Mada had been in Europe at the time everyone around here needed to believe she was in Sacramento giving birth out of wedlock to his father?
Than anger shot through the fear. “You sent a stranger to a old woman who lives alone!” However false his relationship to Anna, he had become as fond and protective of her as if he were really her great-grandson.
Duncan went defensive. “It isn’t like he’s an axe murderer, just a writer.”
“I still want to check him out.”
Garreth gunned the car north to the next crossing, then west toward Anna’s house.
Expose Sacramento as a lie and the truth about him and why he really came here could come out. He cringed at the thought of everyone feeling betrayed, played for fools. But most desperately, he wanted to prevent Anna discovering what a monster her beloved daughter had become.
Chapter Four
The Mustang in Anna’s driveway had Ellis County plates. Garreth eyed it — a rental from Hays? — while keying his mike. “Seven, Baumen. I’ll be on high band at 513 Pine.” With the radio’s sound low enough to be inaudible to human ears.
Sue Ann knew the address, so she would give calls to Duncan if possible.
Out of the car, he hurried up the walk and onto the porch, tucking his ball cap under his arm.
Anna answered his knock...thin with age but still straight-backed and sharp-eyed. Her face lighted. “Garreth! What a nice surprise.”
Garreth smiled back at her through the screen. “I understand you have another visitor.” He pointed at the Mustang. “And I hear he’s British.”
Her brows rose. “Ah. I should have known.” She shook her head. “Always the policeman...so suspicious and protective. Not that I don’t appreciate it.” She pushed open the screen door. “Come in and meet him. His name is Julian Fowler.”
Garreth followed her through the hall to the diningroom. Fowler sat at the table with one of Anna’s photo albums open in front of him and a teacup off to the side.
He stood as Garreth came in...an athletically lean six feet, middle forties, pale blue eyes, and the kind of English face probably pink-cheeked in his youth but with age, had gained character and masculine edges. Looking very writerly in a turtleneck and tweed coat with leather patches at the elbows. Also looking familiar, though Garreth could not place him.
The Englishman’s gaze raked him, too.
“Mr. Fowler,” Anna said, “I’d like you to meet Mada’s grandson, Garreth Mikaelian.”
The visual autopsy ended abruptly in a broad grin. “Really. Splendid!” He pumped Garreth’s hand, strength in the grip. “Anna was just telling me the story: deathbed revelation by your grandmother that your father isn’t her natural son but born to a girl who roomed with them during the Depression and abandoned the baby; you deciding to try finding the girl and tracking her here by an address on a letter. Then on the night you finally met her and had the kinship confirmed, she vanished. Now you think she’s dead? Why? How did it happen?”
Garreth rescued his hand. “Let me ask you a question. You’ve come to ask about my grandmother’s experiences in World War II. How do you even know she was over there?”
“She told him,” Anna said. “He’s met Mada.”
Garreth’s gut lurched. Where? When?
Fowler nodded. “In Nice, 1948, whilst there on holiday with my parents. She and they struck up a friendship and sat on the hotel terrace evenings swapping war stories before she went off to sing in the club where she worked. My father flew for the RAF and my mother was a nurse in London during the Blitz. Mada had been trapped in Europe by the war and her stories were about dodging the army and struggling to survive. She even managed to escape a concentration camp at one point. And I hung on every word, absolutely gobsmacked by her. Now I want to hear those stories again...and the ones I missed by being packed off to bed. I was eight years old.” He sat on the edge of the table, forehead furrowing. “You’re certain she’s dead?”
Anna’s breath caught.
Garreth saved her from answering. “I’m afraid so.” Then changed the subject. “So she told your parents she came from here?”
Fowler shook his head. “She was vague about her background...creating mystique. No...I learnt covertly.” He smiled ruefully. “Being so taken with her I’m afraid I spied on her, and one time when she mailed a letter I managed a peek at the envelope.”
Garreth eyed him skeptically. “You remembered the address all these years?”
Fowler shook his head again. “Soon afterward I fell seriously ill, and when I recovered, I remembered almost nothing of that holiday. But going through my mother’s effects several months ago, I found photos of Nice and suddenly my memories, including that of the address on her letter, came rushing back. The war stories inspired the plot for this new book.”
Garreth started. Now he recognized the man as a picture on the dust jacket of a book his first wife Judith had read. “You’re Graham Fowler.”
The Englishman shifted his shoulders, as if embarrassed. “Guilty. Julian Graham Fowler, actually, but my publisher insists I write as Graham because he thinks it sounds more fitting for a writer of thrillers.”
“So World War II will be a different subject for you.”
“Not really. The war drives the action but the story is about a young woman from a sheltered, insular background being exposed first to the sophistication and desperate glitter of pre-war Europe, then caught up in the violence of the war. She struggles through privation and terror until finally, stripped of all innocence, honed into a hard, shrewd woman by the needs of survival, she triumphs.”
Anna beamed. “Mada to a T!”
He nodded. “Based on her at any rate. So I’ve coming looking for her. But have arrived too late it appears.” He sighed. “How did she die?”
“In an apartment fire in San Francisco,” Garreth said.
“She fell that night after talking to Garreth,” Anna said, “and got amnesia from a concussion. Only instead of not knowing who she was, she thought she was one of her stage personalities. What did you say it’s called, Garreth?”
“A fugue state.”
She nodded. “So she didn’t understand what she was doing here and hitchhiked to California to go to the club where she sang when she used that name. She explained it all in a letter she wrote when she got her memory back, to let me know she was alive and what happened.”
A letter actually written by Harry’s wife Lien to create the illusion of Mada alive and distant from the John Doe buried here. She abetted his cover-up, he knew, hoping it would help rebuild the life shattered by Lane’s attack. Even without knowing the extent of that damage, and what Lane made him. Everything else he could tell her, but somehow, not that.
Fowler frowned. “What about the apartment fire?”
Anna’s eyes filled with tears. “It happened the day— ”
“The day she mailed the letter,” Garreth finished for her. “And we heard about the fire the day after the letter arrived here.”
“A friend she had been staying with called me.”
Lien, again.
“Is she buried here?” Fowler asked. “I’d like to visit her grave.”
Tears choked Anna’s voice. “There’s no grave. They couldn’t identify her body.”
Fowler straightened. “Then maybe she didn’t die. Maybe the amnesia— ”
“Can I talk to you outside?” Garreth said it through gritted teeth, heading for the door.
Fowler followed him onto the porch. “Have you tried looking— ”
Garreth wheeled on him. “Of course we thought of repeat amnesia. We spent months hunting her, checking every hospital in the bay area, every address in the state where Anna remembers Mada living, every friend she ever mentioned, looking for her by every stage name she used.” Not true, though he told Anna so. “Her pictu
re was circulated nationwide as a missing person. We never found any sign of her.”
“Can you put me in touch with her friend, the one who called?”
What was it with this guy? “No! What the hell are you trying to do? Can’t you see how much you’ve upset Anna...making her wonder all over again if Mada escaped the fire. Mada is dead! Accept that as we have! Go create your heroine with the stories you remember.”
Fowler stepped back, blinking. Finally appearing to hear the anger in Garreth’s voice. “Oh. I am so sorry. You’re quite right. What must you think of me. I don’t mean to be insensitive. Sometimes when a book grabs me I forget— ” He grimaced, shaking his head. “I must apologize to Anna.”
Garreth stepped between him and the door. “I’d rather you just leave. I’ll give her your regrets.”
Fowler stared down at him for a moment, face expressionless, then he nodded. “I understand. Tell her I’m so sorry to have distressed her.”
Garreth watched him climb into the Mustang and drive away before going back inside. “Are you all right?”
Anna wiped her eyes. “Do you think there’s any chance— ”
“No. She’d have remembered something by now and called you.”
After a moment Anna nodded. “Yes. Thank you for coming over.”
He gave her a hug. “Always...any time you need me.”
Chapter Five
He no sooner let Sue Ann know he was back in service than Duncan’s voice came on the radio. “Five to Seven direct. 10-43 high school parking lot.”
Duncan sat against the front fender of his patrol car when Garreth pulled into the parking lot. “How’d it go at your great-grandmother’s?”
Garreth grimaced. “Not good. The guy upset Anna going on about Mada maybe escaping that fire and disappearing because of more amnesia.”
Duncan shook his head. “I never should have given him directions there.”
Garreth shrugged. “If you hadn’t someone else would have.”
“Yeah. So...” Duncan grinned. “...I don’t feel bad pointing out you owe me for taking all the calls while you were there.”
Of course...Duncan being Duncan. Not that Garreth had heard all that much traffic on his radio. Still, why spit into the wind. “Yes, I owe you. But look, this Fowler seems like the obsessive kind, so will you keep an eye out for his car and make sure he doesn’t come back?”
“Sure thing. I won’t even add it to the favors you owe me.”
Joking or not? Hard to tell with Duncan. “You’re a prince.”
Duncan appeared not to hear the irony. He pulled his ball cap down to his eyebrows at a jaunty angle and drove out of the parking lot with a salute.
Garreth went back to work, too. Through a continuing warm evening he answered a loud music complaint, had a homeowner unwind his dog’s tie-out from around a tree so the dog would stop barking, took a report on hit-and-run damage on a car in the bowling alley parking lot, unlocked a car at the Conoco after the dog inside stepped on the door button while the owner went in to pay for her gas.
All the while wondering about Julian Fowler. The writer’s interest in Lane seemed particularly intense. More than might be expected toward a research source. Unless it was the way Fowler wrote...or because recovering the memory of her after all these years came with the crush he had as a boy? If he went digging for information on her in Europe, how much could he uncover? Surely many hotel records had been lost in the war. More to the point, if he did learn anything contradicting the story of her being in Sacramento, would it get back to Anna?
“Baumen, Five. See Ellie Pfaff,” came over the radio.
Followed almost instantly by: “Five to Seven...payback.”
It figured Duncan wanted to duck this call. Garreth keyed his mike. “Seven, Baumen. I’ll take the call.”
No need to ask the address; they all knew it. Since her husband died a year ago, the elderly widow called regularly...thinking a face looked in a window, hearing a prowler in the yard or suspicious sounds in the house, smelling gas. They never found anything, of course, except, once, squirrels in the attic. He had encountered the same situation on patrol in San Francisco, lonely people grasping at a means for company.
In San Francisco, he had been as annoyed as Duncan was by what seemed a waste of time. Here he found himself more patient. Maybe because in the first few visits he realized not only how vulnerable she felt without Virgil and her daughters living in other states, but that she feared dying and lying undiscovered for days because no one missed her. It made him grateful his Grandma Doyle and Anna had plenty of family around them.
Tonight Mrs. Pfaff swore someone was in her attic. “I heard a loud crash and when I ran up there I couldn’t open the door. Someone locked it from the inside.”
He climbed to the attic door. Sure enough, the door refused to open. He had a way to check the other side...though not with Mrs. Pfaff watching.
“Can you find me a screwdriver? Both a flat blade and a phillips head?” The equivalent of sending an anxious husband of a women in labor off to boil water.
As soon as she disappeared down the stairs Garreth took a breath, gritted his teeth against the pain to come, and leaned against the door.
Wrench!
As always, passing through doors this way, every cell of him felt ripped apart. He stayed on his feet as he stumbled into the attic, but doubled over, pulling in slow, careful breaths while waiting for the pain to ease. Cursing silently. This never failed to feel worse than he remembered.
But he had no time for whining. Mrs. Pfaff might be back any minute. He forced himself upright and turned to check the attic. And there was the culprit blocking the door...not an intruder but a chest of drawers lying on its side. A collapsed leg on the chest and a carton on the floor with magazines spilling from it told the story. Someone had set the carton on the chest and eventually it proved too much weight for the loose leg to support.
Garreth set the chest upright again, propping it with a pile of the magazines...and pulled the attic door open as Mrs. Pfaff appeared up the stairs.
He smiled at her. “I didn’t need the screwdriver after all, just brute force to push the door open. Let me show you what the problem was.”
Once she felt reassured about the attic, for good measure and hopefully to prevent another call tonight, he checked the rest of her doors and windows. All secure, as he expected...following suggestions he made not long after joining the department here.
His greatest nightmare was encountering the same situation that almost killed Harry: being barred from a dwelling he needed to enter. To arrange invitations in before some critical situation occurred, he had suggested the department offer free home security inspections...which he volunteered to conduct on his own time. Recognizing good PR when he saw it, Chief Danzig gave him the go ahead and Garreth estimated that between the security checks and wangling admittance when on calls, he now had access to ninety per cent or more of Baumen homes.
Leaving Mrs. Pfaff he reminded her — once again — that Megan and Hunter Casey across the street had urged her to call them any time.
While he sat in his car making notes for his report, Duncan’s patrol car rolled down the street and halted beside him. “Have fun with the old bird?”
Garreth hid his annoyance by continuing to write. “She did have a problem in the attic. Not threatening but I took care of it.”
“Meanwhile...” Duncan grinned. “...you missed fun with a bird of a whole different feather. Amy Dreiling at the Beergarten...celebrating her freedom to drink legally. Over-celebrating it, that is...blitzed and putting on a show on the dance floor that was about to be come one the Beergarten isn’t licensed for.” He sighed. “I almost hated to end it. But...I had her girlfriends drag her to the can and make her street legal again. I hope hizzoner Mayor Dreiling appreciates that tomorrow his niece is going to be embarrassed about tonight but still able to face her family and friends.”
Garreth looked up from his clipb
oard. “You didn’t let them drive home I hope.”
Duncan scowled. “Of course not. I didn’t even let them try walking. I poured them into Ralph Sewing’s taxi and gave him Amy’s car keys to hand over to her father at the house.”
Duncan was not always a jerk.
Garreth hated to ask, but... “So, given your fun compared to mine, are we even?”
Duncan considered, and winked. “I’ll let you know.”
Chapter Six
Midnight. For the next four hours he represented all the law and order in Baumen. They had reserve officers on call in case of emergencies but no immediate backup. Fortunately, they rarely needed it.
A quick sweep of town located Fowler’s car off south 282 at the Starlite Motel. Just overnight, Garreth hoped. A swing through Pioneer Park at the north end of town found an empty car in the parking lot and moans of a carnal nature coming from the direction of the bandstand on the park’s island. A couple taking advantage of the warm night for sex al fresco. Garreth left them undisturbed, recognizing the car as belonging to a middle-aged widower whose grown children had started domestic disturbances over their father’s attentions to a similarly-aged widow, feeling it disgraced their dead mother’s memory.
Radio traffic faded to time checks from area agencies. To that accompaniment he turned west to cruise neighborhood streets. They all seemed quiet, his the only vehicle moving, and all but a handful of houses dark. A light shone in the diningroom at Anna’s. Was she going through the photo albums she pulled out for Fowler? If so, he hoped it was not with renewed grief for Mada.
As one o’clock neared, he returned downtown. With the bars and VFW closing, he passed each several times watching patrons leave. The exodus appeared orderly, with no one unduly under the influence. So before he parked to rattle doorknobs along Kansas — a tradition Chief Danzig honored as demonstrating that the city’s tax dollars supported police who did not just ride round in patrol cars but took a hands-on interest in the security of local businesses — Garreth headed out to highway 282’s curve around the east side of town to check businesses along there.
