The Sleuth Sisters

by Pill, Maggie

  “That’s awful.” We paused for a while, reflecting on the fact that you’re fine one day and not fine the next. “If there’s anything you can tell us that might help, we’d appreciate it.”

  She blew out a breath. “I took the call, that’s it. Wozniak was shouting they were dead.”

  “Then later you heard Carina was still alive?”

  “She lived till they got her to the hospital, but I don’t think she really had a chance. It gave the doctors time to save the baby, though. Have you ever seen Brooke?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “She’s a doll. Looks just like Neil, and she’s got his temperament, too. Not like Carina.”

  “Carina was difficult?”

  “Humph.” That was it for a few moments, but she added, almost to herself. “She did not deserve him, and I don’t care if that’s speaking ill of the dead. Neil did everything to make their marriage work, but Carina was a selfish, scheming brat.”

  A note in her voice sent three clear signals. First, Susie Mason had feelings for Neil Brown she couldn’t quite hide. Second, she’d seen Neil and Carina’s relationship the same way Meredith had, and finally, she’d said all she was going to on the subject. I switched to questions about how her daughter was doing in track, listened for a few minutes, then watched her disappear into the dispatch office, heels clicking on the sidewalk like military drumbeats. There was something more than a friend’s outrage at work. Susie was hiding something.

  Returning to my car, I sat for a few minutes wondering who might tell me about any relationship Susie and Neil might have had prior to marrying other people. I couldn’t think of a person, but another inspiration hit: high school yearbooks. If I looked to see who’d graduated with Neil and Susie, I might find someone I knew well enough to ask.

  I am a member of the Allport Alumni Association, called “Triple A” with no attempt at originality. Our main function is to provide a party once a year for alumni at the last home football game, but we beautify the school grounds and give out scholarships too. We had an archive of every yearbook from the ’30s to the present, kept in the library at the high school.

  It took some digging to find what I wanted. Neil Brown was pictured only twice in the book, his posed senior photo and a group shot of the baseball team. In his sophomore year, however, I found pay dirt. He’d served as escort to Homecoming Queen Candidate Susie Wexford. The picture showed a boy two inches shorter than his date, who of course had chosen heels. The extent of his dressing up for the occasion was black slacks and a long-sleeved white shirt. His hair was a mess of unruly curls, his expression one of extreme discomfort.

  That was what I wanted to know. Susie and Neil had once been close. Barbara and Faye had considered his buddies as possible helpers, but had they looked at Neil’s old girlfriends?

  Faye was excited when I called to tell her. “That could be important,” she said. “I’ve been looking over the file, and some kids saw a blue truck parked at the dispatch center. Neil’s truck was blue, but it turned out someone passing through town stopped for directions.”

  “Who told them that?”

  After a prolonged hum of concentration, she read from Sparks’ notes, “Dispatcher reports a man in a blue Chevy stopped for directions. Neil’s pickup was a Ford Ranger.”

  “Susie was the dispatcher on duty. Maybe you should talk to her.”

  “Maybe I should.”

  “Keep my name out of it. I don’t want my friends thinking I’m a snitch.”

  Faye coughed the smoker’s version of a chuckle. “You got it, Retta. And thanks.”

  I hung up, feeling that Faye was starting to lean to my side. If I kept this up, I’d soon be part of the Needs-a-New-Name Detective Agency.

  Chapter Eleven

  Barb

  Jasper Conklin was an old guy who looked like his legs wouldn’t hold him up but his ears might. Windswept Apartments were not nearly as whimsical as the name indicated, but Jasper assured me it was a good place to live. “Lots of kids,” he said, ushering me in and indicating a blanket-shrouded couch. “I like to watch them.” He pointed at the sliding glass door, where the dying daylight revealed an overturned trike and a slightly deflated soccer ball. I could hear a child crying a floor above us, but there was no sign my host did.

  He recalled Carina and Neil Brown. “They was a beautiful couple. Out of the world.”

  “Happily married?”

  “At first.” He shrugged. “Later on, they had fights, but everybody does.”

  “What did they fight about?”

  “Money, mostly. One time I heard her say her dad could help them and they could have a real house before the baby came.”

  “And what did he say to that?”

  Conklin frowned. “I never could hear much of what he said. But I heard her real good.”

  “She was a screamer?”

  “Girls, they’re different when they’re, you know, P.G.”

  I hadn’t heard anyone use that euphemism in decades. “They sometimes threw things?”

  “I wouldn’t say they. I think she did the throwing and Neil, he just did the ducking.” He laughed at his own joke, snorting a little. “He did the ducking.”

  I sat with the old man for an hour, letting him talk, as Faye had advised. He was thrilled to have company, and I ended up drinking tea from a poorly-washed cup (bad eyesight) and eating slightly stale cookies from the dollar store. (“You get two packages for a buck.”) I heard stories about his kids, too busy to visit very often, and his neighbor, the object of pity because of her failing health. “Osteo-arthritis,” Jasper said, lowering his voice to emphasize the seriousness of it. “When she drives me to the doctor’s she can barely see over the steering wheel. I do the shifting ’cause she can’t raise that right arm hardly at all.”

  When I finally bid Mr. Conklin goodnight, it was after nine. Once I left the reach of the parking lot’s lamps, it was as if a blanket had dropped over my car. There was no moon, no stars, and the street lights were swathed in mist so that I moved from black to light to black again.

  Conditions were perfect for some night work. A billboard at the edge of town needed my healing touch, a bedding ad that read, A person needs their rest. Holy mixed numbers, Batman!

  My paints and a change of clothes were always handy in the trunk of my car, so I was ready. The problem with the task was the billboard’s position. Situated on poles sunk deep in a ditch and rising far over my head, I didn’t know if I could reach the spot that needed fixing. At least it hadn’t rained recently, so the ditch would be dry.

  At an empty house a hundred yards or so down the road from the billboard, I pulled my car far enough up the driveway that it wasn’t visible from the road. I turned it around, difficult to do with the lights out, but it makes for a quicker getaway if things go bad.

  The night was cool, not cold, but I wore gloves anyway. No sense leaving fingerprints, no matter how unlikely the possibility of CSI. Hiking back to the sign, I ducked down when a car appeared, letting the darkness hide me. When I reached the sign’s base, I was pleased to see foot pegs leading up a post, supplied to facilitate changing the message. That was precisely my intent.

  Climbing to the platform, I tested my reach. I couldn’t get to the top line, “A person needs,” but the last two words were accessible. I had a decision to make: “her rest” or “his rest”? The picture showed a woman, but of course masculine pronouns are understood to refer to both sexes. I decided to take the easy way. Taking out my white paint, I began doing away with the t and the i in their. No complaints, no outrage—just another Correctional Event.

  Chapter Twelve

  Faye

  Before I approached Susie Mason, a woman I didn’t know at all, I decided to check with Meredith to get the facts straight. It’s not that I don’t
trust Retta. Well, maybe it is. She sees romance everywhere, probably due to her reading choices.

  Meredith had just arrived home when I got there. The big cloth bag every teacher in the world seems required to carry sat on the kitchen table along with her purse, an umbrella, and something that looked vaguely like a ceramic ashtray I once made at summer camp.

  “It’s a bird feeder,” she explained, following my glance. “They want to give you things.”

  “And you’ll find a place for it.”

  She raised her brows in a what-can-you-do grimace. “Have you found him?”

  “No.” The look on her face made me wish I’d called first and avoided getting her hopes up. “I have a few more questions.”

  Just then a kid who hadn’t yet got the hang of girl-walking clattered into the room. Her feet moved around each other clumsily, as if each wanted the other to fail. She stopped when she saw me, head tilting to one side in curiosity. The two looked a lot alike, right down to the tilt.

  “Brooke, this is Mrs. Burner. She’s helping me with some work.”

  “Hello.”

  “Hi, Brooke.” I kept it short. To a kid, an adult is just someone they have to be polite to.

  “I’m going to go over to Allie’s for a minute, okay?”

  “Sure, hon, but watch the time. Supper’s at five.”

  “What is it?”

  Meredith appeared to think. “I can’t remember. It has something to do with pasta, I think. Maybe something with red sauce and cheese. What do they call that?”

  “Lasagna!” Brooke’s face lit with delight. “Cool. Can Allie eat with us?”

  “If her mom says it’s okay.”

  Brooke was gone in a flurry of scuffs, rattles, and a bang as the door slammed behind her. Meredith frowned and smiled at the same time. “She always moves at full speed.”

  “It’s the age,” I replied. “When they get a little older, you can’t speed them up.”

  Her eyes stayed on the window and the disappearing child for a moment before she turned to me. “Allie’s mom says Brooke can stay with them when I go into the hospital. At least I’ve got that off my mind.”

  I touched her arm gently. “It’s going to turn out all right. I just know it is.”

  “Thanks.” She shook off her thoughts and asked, “Now, what do you need to know?”

  “First, tell me how Neil and Stan Wozniak treated each other.”

  “They were complete opposites. Neil doesn’t care about money and boardrooms and plaques from the Chamber of Commerce.”

  “And Wozniak does.”

  Meredith looked at her hands. “He cultivates this image of a self-made man who can run with the big dogs or walk with the common man. Some people eat it up.”

  “So Neil didn’t like his father-in-law much.”

  “He never said it out loud, but I sensed it.” Her sweet expression hardened. “After what he’s done to my brother’s reputation, I can’t say I like him much, either.”

  “Sometimes in-laws make an effort for the sake of the person they both love.”

  Meredith answered obliquely. “A while back I got Brooke two cats, thinking they’d be company for each other. One cat refuses to let the other anywhere near Brooke.”

  “Neil’s father-in-law resented his influence over Carina.”

  Opening the refrigerator, Meredith pulled out a casserole dish ready for the oven. “Stan resented her choosing a guy with a mind of his own.”

  I was wondering if I had time to make lasagna for dinner. Hers looked really good. Sliding the dish into the oven she closed the door and twisted the timer button. “It wasn’t just that Neil didn’t have money. It was also that he wasn’t impressed by Stan’s wealth.”

  A son-in-law who refused his offer of employment and his advice on how to get ahead in life. How much had that figured into Carina’s choice of husband? Apparently it had backfired. Carina couldn’t have guessed Neil would actually expect her to live on his paycheck.

  Meredith wiped her hands on a towel. “I was afraid he’d wake up one day and realize she wasn’t what he wanted in a wife. What would he have done then, with a baby and all?”

  I was wondering how far he’d have gone to escape the marriage, but Meredith saw it in my eyes. “He hadn’t come to that place, Mrs. Burner. Neil was still in love with Carina.” Her smile was a little sad. “When she found out she was pregnant, he was so happy. He bought her this necklace with their names on it. Even with the pressure to move to Detroit, he wasn’t mad at her. When she said he should get out if he wasn’t willing to make a good life for their baby, he came to ask me if I thought he was being selfish.”

  Meredith wouldn’t—probably couldn’t—admit Neil might have come to the point of violence, so I changed the subject. “We asked you about Neil’s male friends, but I wonder if there were any women he was close to in the past.”

  She thought about it. “The only other girl he ever dated was Susie, and that was over a long time before he married Carina.”

  “Might he have gone to her for help?”

  She thought about her answer. “Neil was a little uncomfortable with Susie. He never said why, but I figured it was because he broke it off with her when he met Carina. I think she still had feelings for him, even after she married John.”

  “And that made things uncomfortable between them?”

  She ran a hand down her sleek ponytail. “Neil pretty much steered clear of her unless John was around. I got the impression he was avoiding any appearance of wrongdoing.”

  “Even when his marriage went sour?”

  Meredith’s pretty face hardened. “Especially then. Neil wanted his wife back. He wouldn’t have done anything to jeopardize that possibility.”

  Susie Mason was leaving work, which was perfect. There was no one around to hear our conversation, and the day was nice enough that we could stand in the parking lot chatting without seeming out of place. I hoped the warm, sunny spot would put her at ease.

  “I’m Faye Burner, of the Smart Detective Agency. Could I ask you a few questions?”

  “About what?”

  “Neil Brown.”

  Her expression turned suspicious. “Did Margaretta send you?”

  “Not exactly, but you probably know she’s my sister. We were talking today, and she mentioned you graduated with Neil. I did some digging and learned you two dated in school.” I handed her a business card. “We’re trying to locate Mr. Brown.”

  “So you can throw him in jail for something he didn’t do?”

  “Just the opposite. We hope to prove his innocence.”

  Susie sighed. “There’s nothing I can tell you.”

  “All right. Then can you give me your impression of Carina Wozniak?”

  She made an ugly face. “You don’t want to hear that.”

  “Actually, I do. If Neil didn’t kill his wife, there must be another reason for her murder.”

  “Everyone in that family thought their money meant the rest of us should just bow down,” Susie said, her eyes hard. “Carina thought she was better than everyone in Allport. I didn’t know the brother, but I’ve heard the same thing about him.”

  “What about the father? Might they have had a family squabble that turned out badly?”

  She shook her head. “Stan was crazy about his kids. Neil said Carson was a screw-up, and he and his dad argued about money, but the old man never held a grudge for long.”

  Interesting that Susie knew Neil’s opinion of his in-laws. “Someone saw a truck similar to Neil’s here around the time of the murders.”

  Her gaze shifted like my sons’ used to when they lied. “It wasn’t Neil’s. I told them that.”

  “Yes.” Moms know that if you want someone to say too much, shut up a
nd let her talk. Susie was no gabby teen, though, and she remained silent. “Your name never has to come up.”

  Her gaze turned away from me. “I can’t help you.”

  Guessing she was trying to decide whether it was best to help those who might prove him innocent or to let Neil remain hidden, I gave her a little nudge. “Brooke needs her dad.”

  Susie studied the concrete, repeating, “I can’t help you.” But before she moved past me to her car, she added, “If I was Neil, I’d have gone in the opposite direction the cops expected.”

  She left then, but I took the statement as confirmation that Neil Brown had gone north, not south, and somehow Susie Mason knew it.

  I returned home, anxious to tell Barb what I’d learned, but she’d left a note saying she’d be in late. Dale and I go to bed early, but I often hear her come in after midnight. It’s good she has a social life, though I’m not sure what it is. I hope whoever keeps my sister out nights knows she’s one classy dame for the likes of Allport.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Barb

  “I can’t get over the idea he went to that lodge,” I said the next morning when Faye finished catching me up. “It’s isolated, and they’re used to strangers showing up.”

  Faye tapped her pencil against her note pad. “Too bad we can’t talk to that Mr. Makala. The owner might remember a guest better than a guy who just worked there at the time.”

  “Why can’t we talk to him?” When she looked at me in confusion, I said, “How many people can there be in Arizona named Haike Makala?”

  Only one, it turned out once we’d figured out how to spell the name. It took most of the day to find that Haike resided at the Sweet Air Assisted Living Facility outside Flagstaff. Once we’d located him, another problem arose. “He’s able to talk,” the receptionist assured us, “but he doesn’t like to. Won’t have a phone in his room.”

  “Let him know it’s about Buck Lake Resort,” I suggested.

  We listened as the woman explained our call. There was a question, an answer, and grudging assent. Haike’s voice came in the booming tones of the almost deaf. “Hallo?”