Miz Scarlet and the Vanishing Visitor (A Scarlet Wilson Mystery)

by Sara M. Barton

  Chapter Four --

  “She’s a material witness!” Sarge bellowed. “We’ll keep her safe here.”

  “She’s a child,” I insisted, “who recently lost her mother to cancer, her stepfather to stupidity, and I’m not taking no for an answer!”

  “Good God, woman! You’re worse than my wife when you get your dander up!”

  I’ll admit it. I was royally peeved. The hulking New Jersey state trooper wanted to keep Jenny in state custody, as a vagrant, all because she had no permanent address.

  “I’m giving her a job, Sarge. I’m giving her a permanent address. She will live with my family at the inn. Case closed.”

  “It’s not closed until I say it’s closed!”

  “I’ve got news for you, bub! It’s closed when I say it’s closed. She’s coming home with me because she needs a family atmosphere to help her heal!”

  “And if I let her go home with you, she’ll never come back to New Jersey to testify!” He was three inches from my nose and I could smell the coffee on his breath.

  “Want to bet? I’m putting her in nursing school and sponsoring her tuition. If I say she comes back to testify or she gets no money for school, she’ll testify!”

  “What’s your proof she’s college material?”

  “She had a 3.8 GPA in high school, and did it while she took care of her sick mamma!”

  “Well, fine! But if she doesn’t show up for court, I’m going to hunt you down, Scarlet Wilson, and make your life a living hell.”

  “You do that, Sarge, and I’ll tell your wife!” One minute he was glaring at me and the next, he threw back his head and let out a loud guffaw.

  “You and my Maggie are two peas in a pod! She’d think you were a real hoot!” he told me. “You’re one tough cookie.”

  “Yes, she’s crunchy on the outside and soft in the middle,” Kenny informed him, “and sometimes even a little nutty.”

  “Very funny,” I retorted. That just made the men laugh harder.

  We were sitting in Kenny’s living room, the three of us. Jenny was upstairs, trying on clothes that Kendra had stored in the attic. Her father’s daughter, she took his call for action on the Jenny Project and offered up her old cast-offs. “The only thing I don’t have is underwear for her. But check Mommy’s boxes in the corner. I haven’t had the heart to get rid of them yet.”

  His wife’s decades’ long battle with multiple sclerosis had taken their toll on the whole family, her most of all, but her death was unexpected. Jillian suffered brain trauma in a terrible fall down stone steps -- it turned out to be a fatal injury. Kenny and the kids were devastated.

  Decades after our teenage romance was crushed by Kenny’s move to New Jersey, we were reunited by a troubling case at the Four Acorns Inn back in late winter. My brother Bur called our old buddy for his investigative expertise and he rode to the rescue. The old spark of high school romance was rekindled, the flame fed with a more adult passion. Now that we were dating, I was actually glad that he had been happily married to his wife for so long. He wasn’t some dope who jumped into bed with every fanny-wiggling female. Even though I knew he still missed her, we were enjoying the chance to rediscover each other.

  After Kenny talked to his daughter, he and I had gone upstairs with Jenny, ready to get to work. He had pulled down the attic stairs, made his way up the wooden steps, and brought down the plastic containers of fabric-covered memories. I could tell it was tough for him to see those reminders of his past. There was real relief when we left the teenager alone to assemble her new wardrobe.

  “I’ll take her shopping this week and get those clothes back to you,” I promised him as we headed down the stairs.

  “No rush,” he said tersely. When he reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped into the foyer, his shoulders slumped. For a moment, he seemed miserable, but then he let out a sigh. “Jillian would approve, Scarlet. She’d say you’re doing the right thing.”

  “I’m glad, Kenny.” I thought about saying more, but that seemed all he really needed to hear. His wife would have seen the Jenny Project as a healing thing. Jillian had been an activist and an advocate for MS patients. She understood both the need to provide care and the need to receive it. Maybe that’s why Kendra was so generous in sharing her attic treasures with the orphaned teenager, especially after Kenny shared the details of Jenny’s life with his daughter.

  “Well, now what?” Sarge wanted to know. “You two taking off with the kid this afternoon?”

  “It depends. How soon do you think you’ll find Richie?” Kenny was adamant that Jenny’s pursuer was a threat until he was locked up, and he refused to allow me to leave until we knew what the score was.

  Of course, I couldn’t help but wonder what we’d do if Richie continued to evade the cops. He had assaulted a little old lady in Bay Head and stolen her 2006 Acura after he crashed his truck into three cars while chasing us. The local cops were on the lookout, stepping up their patrols in the area, especially after the search of the house failed to yield any significant clues in the case. The police had recovered Richie’s truck, which was registered in his real name. A convicted felon who worked construction after he did his time, he led an unremarkable life. It seemed likely that the bars of soap Jenny delivered to him in Point Pleasant were studded with jewels stolen in early 2013 from a store on West 47th Street in New York. The New Jersey State Police were working with the New York City cops to track down the rest of the uncut stones.

  “Richie was the hired muscle. He assaulted the shopkeeper when the thieves snatched the diamonds. They had been part of a shipment that had just been delivered by FedEx, so we think the information was leaked, possibly by one of the sellers, who then got to collect the insurance money.”

  “Nasty,” I decided.

  “Very. The old man may never fully recover from the beating he took,” Sarge informed us. “We think that the soap ploy was just the first effort to move the diamonds.”

  “But why not just hand them over in a pouch? Why go to all that trouble of sticking them in bars of soap?” I wanted to know.

  “Honestly? It’s got me puzzled. My best guess is that they need to distribute the stones slowly, which means the thieves can’t risk being caught with the goods, so they’re hiding them in the bars. We made sure to keep it quiet that we recovered the stones. We don’t want to spook anyone.”

  “But why soap?” Kenny was still curious. “What’s the game?”

  “Beats me,” said the New Jersey state trooper.

  “Unless....” I didn’t finish the thought. After all, it was kind of silly.

  “Unless what?” I saw my handsome boyfriend studying me. “Give it up, Miz Scarlet.”

  “It’s nothing. It’s just that...well, the only reason I can figure that anyone would put jewels in bars of soap is that they’ve got too many jewels to keep on hand.”

  “Hence, they need to hide them safely in some way that deflects suspicion and allows them to store the jewels safely.” Kenny pondered the implications of this.

  “Funny you should mention that,” Sarge grimaced. “We think these thieves aren’t professionals. They don’t know how to distribute the goods without getting caught. No criminal connections. So, maybe they’re holding onto the uncut diamonds and fencing them here and there. After all, folks know these stones were stolen. Flood the market and someone tips off the cops. They have to put them back into circulation a few at a time.”

  “Hmm....”

  “Hmm what?” Kenny asked me.

  “Well, when I think fancy organic soap, I think about gifts. Why did Richie want to meet the girl in Point Pleasant? Why not just drive up to Dover and pick up the soap from Paolo? Because Paolo is somehow connected to the diamonds? Or the soap? Or Richie?”

  “Maybe. Richie has a criminal past,” Kenny pointed out. “The mastermind could be well known in the Bay Head area and can’t afford to have people connect him or her to Paolo.”

  “And what does th
is have to do with Hinson’s house? Jenny said Richie was supposed to meet Hinson and give him something. Maybe Hinson is the fence,” the investigator with the billy goat whiskers decided.

  “Or even the mastermind. What do we know about him?” Kenny inquired of his buddy. The answer was disappointing.

  “So far, the only thing we know about the unidentified out-of-state owner of the property is that he bought it two months ago through a real estate trust, had the place gutted, and paid his construction crew through the law office of Mather and Johnston. No one, it seems, including the real estate agent in Bay Head, has ever met the guy. We’ve got the name of the general contractor in charge of the renovation. He’s well-known around town and seems legit, a plumber by the name of Lars Weims.”

  “Do you really think Hinson was going to meet Richie that night?”

  “Hard to say,” sniffed the man in the club chair opposite me. Bing! We all heard the message arrive on his Smartphone and waited for him to check it. “Oh, holy crapola. Guess what just washed up in Mantoloking.”

  “How could we possibly guess?” I challenged Sarge, but then I took a stab at it. “Oh, wait. The backpack of soap!”

  “I’ll give you a hint. What’s the worst thing that could happen to our case?”

  “I have no clue,” I shook my head. “Hit a dead end, I suppose.”

  “Dead is the magic word,” Sarge announced.

  “In that case, my money’s on Richie.” Captain Peacock solved that mystery a little too quickly. Did he know something I didn’t? “Cause of death?”

  “Gunshot wound to the temple.”

  “Suicide?” Both men looked at me like I unexpectedly sprouted two heads and had a future in a circus sideshow.

  “Hardly. No, Richie was offed,” Sarge declared.

  “Maybe there was a falling out among thieves,” Kenny suggested. “Somebody was disgruntled. Maybe Hinson was mad the cops got called in and served that search warrant.”

  “Or Richie mishandled everything by letting the kid get away,” replied the New Jersey state trooper. There was a long pause as we thought that through. Finally I asked the big question.

  “What happens now to Jenny?”

  “Well, it all depends on what she told Paolo about herself. We’ll have to talk to her.”

  “Hey, Scarlet....” Kenny gave me a funny look. I wasn’t sure I liked it. It struck me that he was trying to get rid of me. “Maybe you could go to Target and buy Jenny some underwear, socks, that sort of thing.”

  “Really?” I glared in his direction. I’m not a complete idiot. I know when I’m being blown off.

  “Please?” He said it nicely, pretty-please-style, with a cherry on top. Bastard.

  “Fine, but don’t you two dare bully that girl!” I hissed my warning and let it hang heavy in the air. I groused my way up the stairs, wanting the men to know just how unfair I thought it was that they were sending me away. I should be here. How did they know Jenny wouldn’t keep something important from them out of fear? She and I had already developed a rapport. Besides, they were leaving me out of the loop, and I deserved to be inside that tight little circle. Without me, that girl would have been murdered and the evidence would have wound up in some shark’s belly, or as food for the bottom-feeders in the salt water pond. So much for gratitude.

  Jenny gave me her bra and panty sizes, color choices, and even asked me to pick her up some shoes. That’s when I realized she was still wearing rubber flip-flops.

  “Just out of curiosity, where’s all your stuff? Back at your stepfather’s place?” I wanted to know. She nodded. I thought about that. The teenager had the right to her own possessions, but without a home to store them, what was the point in packing them up? We definitely needed to hire a good lawyer to represent her interests.

  I thought about that as I killed time, wandering up and down the aisles at Target. I hit the sales racks and found bargains. Ever since we recovered some of the Wilson family trust money that was stolen in a Ponzi scheme, I was feeling more confident about my future. I had spent decades putting money away for my retirement, and when it was siphoned off, it just about did me in. Getting some of it back went a long way towards soothing those wounds, enough so that I felt I could spend some of it to help Jenny.

  Jenny...she needed so much. If she didn’t go to college now, she might never get her degree. That would be a shame. If she moved in permanently at the Four Acorns Inn, she could go to the University of Connecticut and pay the tuition rate for state residents. Even if she worked and took two courses a semester, she’d be able to get her degree in five years or so. The commute wouldn’t be much, maybe twenty or so minutes, plus time to park and walk to class.

  Oh, you’re probably thinking I’m getting totally carried away, but you have to understand I trained as a teacher, and I’ve tutored high school students for the better part of my career, steering them towards college. I can’t imagine a teenager like Jenny not having a fair shot at getting a good education, and from what she told me about her mother’s cancer, I was confident that she had an aptitude for nursing. The trick would be to help her stay motivated.

  What kind of girl has no family at all? Was it even possible? How could her father’s family not contact her mother, not send money for her support? Maybe Kenny, the security consultant, could find out something about them. Better still, maybe we could convince them to cough up the financial aid Jenny and her mother should have received all along.

  I felt a tingle in my pocket and pulled out my phone. Brother Bur back at the Four Acorns Inn in Cheswick.

  “Hey,” I sighed. “How’s it going?”

  “You owe me big, Scarlet. You have no idea what a pain in the....” He was at his bombastic best. Lucky me. I cut him short.

  “You do realize they just fished the body of the really bad guy out of the ocean, right? I’m not down here lying on the beach, soaking up the sun and eating bonbons. I’m at Target, shopping for an orphan that some maniac tried to kill.”

  “Well, you still owe me!” he snarled. “Do you have any idea what Hilda Blevins is like? Not only did she insist on a different room, she wanted to know why you weren’t here to greet her. And she hated the licensed practical nurse that showed up to help her bathe.”

  “Who did the agency send?”

  “Marva.”

  “Well, I don’t blame her. Marva spends the whole time whining. I told them the last time she showed up that she was a bad fit for our guests. Tell Hilda that I’m calling the VNA now and I’ll make sure they send Ernesta or Belle. And I should be there later tonight.”

  Twenty minutes later, I had the licensed practical nurse situation for the guest with Parkinson’s all straightened out. I called Hilda to explain the snafu and to personally reassure her that her nurse tomorrow would be far more helpful and less talkative. As soon as I hung up, my phone rang again. This time it was Kenny.

  “You can come home now, babe.”

  “Mother, may I?” Shades of childhood.

  “Yes, you may,” he trilled, doing his best old lady impression. Funny how the games of our youth still make us silly.

  With my purchases in hand, I left the store, climbed into my Focus, and headed back to Kenny’s house. The driveway no longer had a state vehicle parked on it. That was a positive sign. I wondered if the neighbors just assumed Kenny was chummy with the cops in his capacity as a security consultant. I didn’t see faces peering out from behind the curtains on my walk from car to house.

  “Ready to hit the road?” That was the first thing Kenny said to me when I made it through the door. He seemed to have ants in his pants, itching and twitching, urging me to grab my suitcase from Kendra’s room.

  “On your way to put out a forest fire, Smokey?”

  “Something like that.” His eyes landed on me long enough for me to recognize the concern there. Not good. I wondered if he’d gotten bad news while I was gone. Or was this about Jenny and some dark secret?