A Dead Red Cadillac

by Rebecca Dahlke

  Noah. My dad had made a decision not to fill me in on what he knew about the Hollander murder, but then maybe it wasn't the time. Of course, it would be logical that my father was acquainted with the owner. But then what was the connection between all of them—Patience, her husband, an Ag chemical company owner, a retired real estate lawyer, who just happened to be my dad's only friend, and my Father. It would be just like Noah to withhold crucial information from the police because he saw it as none of their business.

  I called my house. The phone rang seven times without answer. He'd turned off the answering machine, avoiding news reporters, nosy neighbors, and maybe me. I closed the phone. Since a dead woman I barely knew was found in my Caddy, my father has been exceptionally irritable.

  I guess I shouldn't be surprised. He'd neglected to tell me about the Hollander murder. Or that his fly-fishing buddy and real estate pal was also the defense lawyer for Patience McBride's convicted husband.

  The first I'd heard of Hollander Chemicals, I was in the hospital, and distracted by my visitor, I'd let the moment pass. ‘Don't worry, Lalla,’ Noah had said. ‘You're not in this alone.’ Something told me there was a whole lot more he wasn't telling me. Time to find out for myself.

  I opened my cell again and scrolled down the list of names and punched in the number. “Hi, Judge Griffin, it's Lalla Bains. I'm fine. No, no, Noah's fine too. Could I come by for a bit? I won't take up much of your time, I promise. Yes, thank you, I'll be there in ten minutes.”

  He didn't have to ask what I was calling about, he still read five or six newspapers every day where the salient details of my latest disaster could be found.

  I waited till Darlene's back was turned, slipped the microfiche sheets onto her desk and hurried out of the library.

  If Jan Bidwell had already connected the dots, true or not, my reputation, and now maybe my father's reputation was back in the hot seat. And when Darlene came out of her hormonal stupor over Caleb, she wouldn't be above selling her version to the tabloids. If I wanted to head off tomorrow's shocking headlines, I was going to have to hurry.

  I jaywalked and unlocked my Rent-A-Wreck, got in, and put on my seat belt, thinking, ‘So, Caleb chose not to tell me about his break up with Marcy? Well, why should he, Lalla Bains? You didn't exactly ask his permission to get married and divorced. Twice. I guess he thought it none of your business.’

  Adjusting my mirror, I looked over my left shoulder for any oncoming traffic and pulled out. In my side mirror I saw another car pull out from its parking place half a block back. It was a twin of my Ford Tempo but cleaner. I couldn't see the driver, but the hairs on the back of my neck started to tingle. Maybe I was imagining things, but it looked like a man driving and he was still behind me when I reached Magnolia Ave. The air-conditioner in my rental sputtered and died, and so did my self-confidence. I was being followed.

  nine

  He was still on my tail slouched down in the seat. I slowed to thirty and then twenty five figuring he'd have to pass me and then I'd see if the face matched the mug shot I'd seen of Eddy McBride. Exasperated drivers passed both of us with a one-fingered salute. I was left crawling along at twenty, with the white car stuck to my bumper like cockle-burrs to socks. I thought about slamming on the brakes and causing a fender-bender. Then he'd have to get out of the car, I'd call the police, he'd be arrested and my worries would be over. That was my plan in a nutshell. But, while I fantasized, my part-time stalker turned right.

  I got a glimpse of a gray head and oversized earrings peeking over the steering wheel.

  Twenty miles an hour was probably her cruising speed.

  Retired Judge Sidney Griffin's home was a two-story federal style. The changes from my last visit as a teenager, unfortunately, were not pretty. The house could hardly be seen for the wild growth of bushes in front. I got out and walked up to the doors stepping over weeds pushing up through the brick walkway, sycamore leaves overflowed the house gutters and paint was peeling off the shutters.

  I stood on the steps and pressed the bell. The door was eventually opened by the same happy-go-lucky ol’ judge I've known most of my life. White hair fringed his freckled scalp and a pair of dusty reading glasses were perched on his red veined nose. His dressing gown looked like something Hugh Hefner would wear if he was going to impersonate Santa Claus. When he saw me he chuckled and beckoned me inside. “Come in, come in. I had a bet with myself as to when you'd show up.”

  “Who won?”

  “What? Oh, figure of speech, so to speak.”

  I stepped into his living room thinking the inside was even more decrepit than the outside, then wandered over to the fireplace mantel and looked at his collection of dusty photos.

  He pointed to a woman and two children. “That was taken when my Lexy was alive. She couldn't have children, but she did love them. The kids on her lap are her sister's boy and girl. They named the girl after my wife. Cute, but spoiled, not that Lexy cared, she doted on that child.”

  The girl gazed unselfconsciously into the camera with a serene smile on her lips. I'd seen that look on glossy magazine covers. It was a look of complete confidence that said she was loved and petted and told she was a beauty and always would be. I touched at my own straight hair and thought again how I would have liked to have had a daughter.

  “I can see the family resemblance.”

  “Lexy's family, not mine, thank God. Too bad her temperament didn't go with that pretty face.” He gave the silver framed photo a swipe with his sash and invited me to sit.

  We settled into a pair of threadbare Queen Ann chairs next to a blackened and quiet fireplace still holding onto its sooty winter smell. He put an ashtray on the table next to me.

  “Thanks, but I quit,” I said, giving a quick touch to move it out of my reach. Hopefully, it wouldn't follow me out the door, begging to be used.

  “Me too,” he sighed. “Seems like that's all I do these days, give up the things I used to love. But, that's not your problem. So, I suppose you'll want to know how I came to be involved with the original case. Did Noah tell you?”

  “Noah? I wish. I had to read about it at the library archives.” He took off his glasses and dropped his gaze while he gave the lenses a once over with the sash of his robe. Exasperated that the moment was dragging on, I blurted, “I'm pretty spooked here, Judge. Patience's husband broke out of prison and I don't know if he murdered his wife or not, but there's a good chance he's tagged me for taking whatever loot he was convicted of stealing when he killed Mr. Hollander.”

  He looked up, put his glasses back on his nose, gazed at the family pictures on the mantel and then, with amusement in his voice, said, “And did you?”

  “Kill Patience? You're joking, right? Before today, I didn't know Patience had a husband, much less that he was convicted of murder.”

  “You really should leave the investigation to the police, my dear. They'll find Eddy McBride.”

  I sat on the edge of my seat ignoring the faint smell of stale cigars and frowned. “They aren't looking at a twenty year old murder, I am.”

  “The investigating detective has already been here, my dear. It'll all be cleared up very soon, you'll see.”

  I ran my hand over my eyes, remembering the whisperer's warning that he knew where I lived, and took a deep breath. “Yes, but is it simply a coincidence that you're my father's best friend when you were also this guy's attorney? If there's a connection, I need to know—-because none of this makes any sense to me.”

  “Well, it's understandable, since I'm at a loss as to how that poor woman's body ended up in your automobile.”

  No direct answers, and he wasn't going to make it easy for me, but I plowed ahead anyway. “Well, let's start with the obvious. If you weren't with the PD’s office, how did you come to represent Patience McBride's husband?”

  Apparently caught off-guard, he pretended to consider the question. Somewhere along the line, he gave up his internal argument and said, “Well, that's obvio
us. His wife retained me to represent her husband.”

  “How could Patience afford a private attorney? Were you friends with her?” I asked, hanging onto the edge of my seat cushion.

  “Was I romantically involved with Mrs. McBride? The answer is no. After the trial, I never saw the woman again.”

  There it was again, that slipping away from any real answers. I tried another tack. “So, did you think he was guilty?”

  “No, I didn't think so,” he said, pausing for a moment to reflect, and perhaps recall. “At least, at the time, I didn't. The evidence was circumstantial; Bill Hollander was rumored to keep a great deal of cash in his office safe, though why he chose to do that is anyone's guess. Patience would have had knowledge of his movements, but I wouldn't allow her to testify, a wife doesn't have to, you know, and her nerves were such that it would've been counter-productive. Anyway, when Eddy and I heard that the prosecution was considering her as accessory, he changed his plea to guilty. Whatever Eddy was, he loved his wife, and rather than see both of them on trial for murder, he pled guilty for second degree murder. He told the jury that he killed Bill in a fit of husbandly jealousy, but he denied ever seeing any money or stealing it.”

  “But, could she have been guilty as well?”

  “There was no evidence for it. She wasn't on the security tape that night, Eddy was. Going in and coming out ten minutes later. He wore a jacket, so there was nothing to say he'd removed anything from the office. Of course, this would have been cash and therefore unaccounted for, but I objected every time it was brought up as biased and unsubstantiated.”

  I thought of a secretary's wages, her part time work as a piano teacher and her Social Security. It was obvious from both her home and her lifestyle that if she did have the stolen money, she hadn't spent any of it. But something didn't add up and it was becoming an itch on the back of my brain that I couldn't ignore.

  “The burglar at Patience's house. I'm sure now it was Eddy poking me in the back with that gun, demanding that I and Garth and I had taken what wasn't ours. It has to be the stolen money.”

  The judge shrugged, bored with the subject. “I think you're confused, my dear.”

  “ But, the paper said Hollander was involved with smuggling drugs up from the border; that could've accounted for the amount of money he was holding.”

  The judge gave the sash on his robe a hard twist. “Alleged drug smuggling. Bill's involvement was never proved. I certainly never saw any evidence of it. Yes, yes, I knew Bill, like I knew your dad. Modesto is a small community of business men, just as it is today. Trust me on this, if there was money from any drug deals, his two children, who later drifted back home, would've found it. I tell you, there was nothing. His children talked their mother into selling his business and that was the end of it.”

  I thought of something else. “What about the way he was killed; strangled with a piano wire?”

  The judge leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. “Garroted, not strangled, my dear, as a piano wire between two sticks is called a garrote. The newspaper referred to it as Eddy's calling card. But there were no prints on it and I clearly demonstrated that Eddy couldn't have had the strength to get the upper-hand on a two hundred fifty-pound man like Bill Hollander and subdue him long enough to strangle him to death.”

  “Then what about the gangster connection?”

  Amusement twinkled behind his glasses. “I did tell you that this was a small town, didn't I? Perhaps someone at the news room was led to consider it a mob hit.” He leaned forward, and winked, “I was counting on the morning paper, you see. The jury wasn't sequestered, only admonished not to read any news accounts or listen to radio or TV. This was the biggest murder case we'd had in years.” Looking at a space over my shoulder, he seemed to see the final words that would send his client to prison printed on the wall. “We should've gotten an acquittal!” he said, slamming his fist into the other palm.

  “So, he loved her too much to implicate her then, but two months shy of being released from prison, he breaks out of jail to come home and murder her? It doesn't make sense.”

  “Who knows what drives a man to murder? Eddy's wife was an attractive, but not a very sensible woman. She should have divorced the man and left town long before this tragedy.”

  “If you weren't friends with either Patience or her husband, then why take Eddy's case?”

  “You don't know?” He leaned forward, looking into my face, like he wasn't sure if I was hiding something from him to make him slip up and say something foolish. I, however, only had a sinking feeling that his next words were going to make me wish I'd never asked.

  “I'm sorry. I thought surely by now your father would have told you.”

  “My father would have told me what?” I asked, my breath anxiously hitching up a notch.

  “It was your father who paid my retainer.”

  I knew my mouth was hanging open, but I couldn't seem to help it. “What?”

  He shook his head wearily and stood up. “I'm sorry, my dear.”

  I remembered my dad, thoughtful at the mention of Patience McBride, as if it had brought back an old, if not unpleasant, memory. I'd never known my father to date. If anything, his gloomy demeanor would scare off most women. But, I'd been wrong about men before.

  “Noah paid for their attorney?”

  He held up a wrinkled finger. “Only the retainer. Mrs. McBride mortgaged their house to pay the rest of my fee, which included the private investigator, not that we came up with much.”

  “So, Noah did this for Patience?”

  He avoided looking me in the eye, and instead, stood up and went to the fireplace, where he gazed sadly at the picture of his dead wife holding someone else's children. “I'm sorry, my dear. I'd rather you asked your father. It's simply not for me to say.”

  I glanced down at a scrapbook where he'd left it open to a page with a yellowed column at the bottom left. It was the photo of an old Stearman, the bi-wing airplanes my dad started with. This one had ended up one wing torn off, nose burrowed deep in the fragrant dirt of an onion field. The caption said, Bob Norquist¸ Major Witness in Murder Trial Plows into Onion Field.

  A snoot full of onion... Greedy pilots... Where had I heard this before? Noah. Brad reminded him of another pilot who got in trouble from greed. Doubt twitched its ugly tail around my thoughts. I could feel my face flush with the knowledge of it.

  The judge gently took the offending scrapbook out of my hands and closed it. He was eyeing me carefully over his glasses as if afraid I might faint. “Terrible thing that incident. I suppose it reminds you of your own recent forced landing. Poor man wasn't so lucky.”

  “When…when do you think this will all come out?”

  “You mean the connection between your father and the McBride's.”

  “Yes.” I swallowed. “What will you say to the police?”

  “I've already spoken to the police. I've said nothing, nor will I, that would incriminate your father. I'm still his lawyer.” A light twinkled behind his glasses, or maybe it was the glittering reflection from the late afternoon sun. “Now that Cadillac of yours; there's an interesting coincidence for you. Bill bought his wife a new model every two years, just so she could keep up with the Joneses.”

  “You aren't saying….”

  “Yes. I know that Bill's widow sold it to Halverson Motors because I offered to buy it from her. It sat on his dad's back lot for most of twenty years before Ricky got hold of it. His dad told him it was bad luck, but Ricky never let a little thing like parental advice get between him and something he wanted.”

  If I had to pile on one more coincidence to this mystery I was going to run out of room to move. I shoved myself up out of the chair, and with slow measured steps, made it to the door.

  “How long do you think I have before the police come looking for my dad?”

  Judge Griffin quietly took my hand between his own wrinkled paws. “I really don't know, my dear, but even if they do
, try not to compound this tragedy with any more digging, it can only bring you heartache.” Then he opened the front door and led me out to stand on the steps while he quietly closed the door behind me.

  I clung to the railing, gulping in huge draughts of air, and trying to get my feet back under me. Stumbling blindly for my car, I fumbled the keys and finally got into the rental. Not generally a superstitious person, I wondered if perhaps someone beyond the grave wasn't trying to send me a message: Perhaps Bill Hollander, or Eddy's wife, Patience? If McBride really killed Bill Hollander, why was my dad involved? I shivered in the heat and glanced back at the judge's house. He was standing at the window, holding back the edge of the curtains and looking out at the car. Feeling foolish that I was still sitting in front of his house, I put the car in gear, crunched over the leaves rotting in the gutter, and hoped that if a ghost was sending me messages that they were at least benign.

  ten

  I drove away from the judge's home, sure that I was going home to confront Noah, demand that he tell me the answers to this damnable mystery, except I simply couldn't point the car in that direction. I got as far as the city park on Sycamore where I left the rental and hobbled around the perimeter of the park matching my off-beat stride to my own cock-eyed thoughts. Finally, sweaty and breathless, I leaned against the cool and soothing weight of the block bandstand and thought about what I would say to my father. How to start? Should I have been surprised that he hadn't confided in me? I was one to talk, and I was by no means guilt-free here. After all, I still carried around my own heavy guilt of omission.

  Instead of going home, I drove aimlessly through the city streets, down McHenry, the four corners, where four streets actually met and the city fathers erected a monument to hometown boy George Lucas for putting Modesto on the map with American Graffiti. Except for the monument in his honor, George stayed mostly in Marin where he kept busy with his production companies. I wandered down J Street, glancing at the fading sun gleaming off store windows. It was close to closing time and dinner would be waiting for me at home, but before I could go home and talk to Noah I thought it would be best to run some of it by Roxanne.