by Jacob Lee
I nodded with them, and leaned forward. “Yeah, and he's an adorable kid. Seems a shame, him not having a daddy who could come and take him. Do you think anyone around here knows who the father is?”
All three of them looked at one another, but they all seemed genuinely unaware of the father's identity. It was Letha who spoke up first.
"I don't think anyone knows for sure," she said, "but it's no secret that she was quite friendly for some time with her next-door neighbor. I can't think of his name at the moment, but I know he's a single man who runs an accounting business from his home."
"So, he's an accountant, then?" I asked.
Norma nodded. "Yes, but I'm afraid that's about all I know. As to whether or not he's the little boy's father, I couldn't say, and I don't think anyone else knows either."
I shrugged, as if it were not of any importance to me. "Oh, well," I said, “I just think it would be nice if the boy had a father to turn to."
Six
For the rest of the day, it seemed like every time I turned around I ran into Clark. Needless to say, that made it very difficult to "stick my nose" into anything, so I ended up spending most of the day at home. I curled up on my couch with a cup of fire cider spiced coffee, Baggins on my lap and one of my favorite Terry Pratchett novels in hand, and just let myself relax. I had a fairly light schedule for the following day, which was a Wednesday. That was one of the days I was scheduled to offer counseling at the county detention center, and I needed to be out there before nine a.m.
Baggins, being the perfect alarm clock, woke me promptly at seven with his usual kneading of the tender flesh on my chest. I had gotten smart enough to wear a heavy shirt to bed every night, especially now that the weather was cooling off, so the awakening wasn't quite as unpleasant as it used to be. I scratched him behind his ears, making him purr, then set him on the floor as I got to my feet. We did our usual morning dance to the kitchen, with me making a stop in the bathroom along the way. By the time I caught up with him, he was doing his figure eights around the bowl.
I decided to surprise the cat, and got down a can of his absolute favorite food. When the can opener began singing its song, poor Baggins was just about to have a heart attack with excitement, but when I used a fork to get the food into his bowl, and set the bowl back on the floor, I thought that cat was going to bow down and worship me.
After two cups of spiced coffee, I felt myself ready to face the winter world that awaited me outside, and began bundling up and preparing for the ride through the chilly air. A glance at the thermometer outside my kitchen window told me that we were getting close to freezing, so I added an extra layer of thermals under the jeans, just to be safe. Now, as long as it didn't snow or rain, I should be just fine.
The detention center is about fifteen miles away from where I live, on the other side of Harrison. It's one of those new, modern looking jail type buildings, with lots of tall fences around it and enough concertina wire to make it look like some sort of old military prison. Anyone who tried to climb over those fences would find themselves fileted like a fish, I was sure. Fortunately, no one had tried it since it was built about twenty years ago.
As always, when arriving at the detention center, I checked in with the duty Lieutenant and let him know I was there. He smiled and hooked a finger at me to tell me that he wanted to speak to me for a moment. I went into his office and sat down in the chair in front of his desk, then waited to see what he needed.
"Dex," he said, "just wanted to ask you how it's been going. You having any problems, anything I can help with?"
"No," I said, shaking my head. "I've actually been getting a pretty good response from most of your inmates, or at least none of them have been openly hostile toward me. Have there been any complaints coming back to you about me?"
The lieutenant shrugged and made a face that I thought was rather comical. "The only complaint I have heard is that you can be a little bit long winded on some of your sermons," he said, "but any preacher who doesn't get that complaint from time to time probably isn't doing his job, right?"
I nodded and chuckled. "So true," I said. "Maybe I should try to stretch it out a few minutes longer, you think?"
He laughed. "Might be a good idea, maybe some of them would actually get the message. Listen, I just want you to know how much we appreciate your efforts in here. My wife gets a kick out of the fact that some of the people who have gotten out of the jail have been showing up at our church, and trust me, that's all because of you."
I smiled, but shook my head. "No, Lieutenant, believe me on this," I said. "If any of these men are finding their way back to Jesus, it's not because of me. I only carry the message, but it's the Holy Ghost who has to call them to hear it. This is God's doing, not mine, and I don't want to try to take credit for His work."
The lieutenant grinned, and I nodded as I left his office. I slapped down the pride that tried to rise at his words, and simply whispered a prayer of thanks for God's wonderful blessings as I made my way to the little visiting room that they let me use for individual counseling sessions.
The room had a small table and only two chairs, all three of which were bolted to the floor. It was normally used by attorneys visiting with a client, and was designed for one-on-one meetings. That worked perfectly for me, since that's how I dealt with counseling sessions, one on one. On this particular morning, I had only five sessions scheduled.
Ironically, my very first scheduled session was with Enzo Mallozzi, whose nickname was, of all things, Beans. He had told me that he got the nickname because he was an accountant, a “bean counter,” as they say, but it didn't take me long to realize that it probably had more to do with the fact that he had a constant problem with flatulence. Unfortunately, a staple of jailhouse food tends to be, you guessed it, beans; poor Beans couldn't possibly escape his problem as long as his diet consisted primarily of beans, pasta and a lot of boiled cabbage. I steeled myself for the olfactory tragedy that was about to happen to me, and told the guard to go ahead and bring him in.
"Beans," I said as I rose to shake his hand. "How have you been?"
"Ah, not bad," he said in reply, his grip firm in my hand. "Good to see you again, Chappy. World treatin' you okay?"
"Oh, I can't complain," I said, "and no one would listen if I did. So, what can I do for you today?"
Beans smiled as he took the seat across from me. "Listen, Chappy, I was wondering if you could try to talk to the judge for me. I know, I know, you can’t do anything about my sentence, and he probably won't either. I fudged the paperwork, so now I gotta do the time, I understand that, and I got no beef with that. The thing is, they got me in the general population here, and I got people trying to make me do stuff for them that could get me in even more trouble. So, I'm thinkin', maybe you talk to the judge, and he moves me into one of the private cells they got upstairs, the ones they save for the big shots. Think you could do that for me, Chappy?"
Beans was a local guy, and his Italian mobster act was literally just that, an act. I knew people who had gone to school with him in Harrison, and they assured me that he didn't have this Sicilian accent until after he saw the movie Scarface. I didn't call him on it simply because I didn't want to embarrass him, so I grinned and told him I would see what I could do.
As I said, though, Beans is a local guy. As a local accountant, he would know just about everyone in the business, so I asked him if he might know an accountant who lived on Blevins Street, just off of Cemetery Road in Alpena, and he smiled like a fox who had just caught a chicken dinner.
“Preston Gotter,” he said. “About as straight an arrow as you'll ever run across. Most accountants, you wanna know how to fudge your tax returns, they'll find a way to do it for you, but not Gotter. Won't even talk about it; you either do things the honest way, or you go someplace else. Why you askin'?”
I carefully told Beans a short and somewhat cleaned up version of events, adding that Gotter may have been seen slipping away from Bren
da's place a few times at night. He grinned again.
“Maybe,” he said. “Gotter's a lonely type, and word was he had some secret girlfriend for a while, so maybe it was Brenda, who knows? And she wasn't bad lookin', either, and she was a nice person the last few years. It's a shame she got iced like that, but if you're thinkin' Gotter mighta done it, Chappy, think again. I don't think the guy could hurt a fly.” He screwed up his face, then. “You want my guess, if someone whacked Brenda, it was probably somebody connected with that daddy of hers. Old man Hawley's dirty, sure as sin, he uses that construction company to launder money for a lot of, let's just say, less legit operations he's got his fingers into, know what I mean?”
I nodded. “I gotcha,” I said. “Thanks for filling me in, okay? And do me a favor, and keep your ears open; if you hear anything else that might be important, let me know. You've got my number, and all you have to do is say you're having a crisis and I can come and see you anytime as the jail Chaplain.”
Beans grinned and said he'd see what else he could find out. Some of the people he was in with would know people on the street, and would hear things that he could pick up on. I was hoping someone might have heard who killed a young woman a couple nights back, and might let it slip in front of Beans.
The rest of my sessions went by pretty quickly, most of them having more to do with minor marital issues than anything else. I was happy to offer the advice I could, and as chaplain, I was allowed to take messages from inmates to spouses, as long as I logged them with the lieutenant on duty. I did so as I was leaving, showing him the festive drawings that a few of the inmates were sending to wives and children, and he smiled.
"Chappy," he said, "I'll grant you that it's God behind it all, but you've made an incredible difference in some of these men. Keep it up, man."
Once again, I had to fight down the pride as I left.
When I got outside, I got my phone out of the saddlebag — you're not allowed to take them inside the jail, of course — and googled up the number for Preston Gotter. I called immediately, and asked for an appointment to discuss my taxes, and what I might need to do to be sure they were filed properly early next year. Gotter said he would have time to see me the following day, if I could be there by ten, and I assured him that would be perfectly fine by me.
Meanwhile, it was Wednesday, and just happened to be the day of the last monthly flea market of this year. I decided to see if Crazy Maisy had set up her stall like she usually did, because I was getting low on fire cider and, if I were to be honest, I was just a little more than curious about that woman.
I love going to the market, and especially at Christmas time. I had discovered it the year before, not long after I had moved here, and before my hair had gotten long enough for people to start referring to me as Santa. This year, however, just about everyone that I met there that day called out, "Merry Christmas, Santa!" as I walked by, so I greeted them all with a hearty "Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas," and I got such a kick out of the children present, staring at me in awe as parents hastily explained that Santa only wore the red suit on Christmas Eve, or when he was making special appearances.
I spotted Maisy, and could tell that she was doing a brisk business so I waited until she had a quiet moment. When she finally looked around at me, I smiled and said, "Merry Christmas, Maisy," but she simply glared at me and said, "Oh, the Noise! Noise! Noise! Noise!"
Naturally, I recognized the line: How the Grinch Stole Christmas was a story every parent knew, and every grandparent had better know. I had read it to Chance many times when he was a child, and got to read it to Ben for the first time just the year before. I grinned at Maisy and said, "Maybe Christmas — perhaps — means a little bit more."
She continued to simply glare at me, but didn't say another word so I picked up a bottle of the cider and a couple of handmade catnip pillows for Baggins. "Well," I said, "I went by Brenda's house and took a look, and the man you saw sneaking away from her place seems to have been her neighbor, as you guessed. He's an accountant, and a single man; could be they just were friends, don't you think?"
"Bah, and a humbug to go with it," she said. "Friends don't sneak through the hedges! Clark Rodgers and a deputy sheriff already been out to my place to see me, and they trampled my herb garden while they was at it."
I grimaced; I'd known when I went to the police that they'd end up talking to her, but there was no help for it. "Sorry about that, but I'm sure they had to verify the story you told me about seeing someone sneaking away from Brenda's house. Of course, they had to talk to you. How much damage did they do? I'd be willing to pay for it."
She'd been looking at some of her stock, but suddenly spun her head and let one eye focus clearly on me. The other eye was mostly closed, but there was a hint of a smile on her lips. "Ye don't need to pay nothin'," she said. "That deputy told me how ye went out there and made a stink at Hawley's place and got that poor boy away from his crazy, drunk, degenerate grandfather. That's what I meant, when I said I knowed ye was a good man. Ye done the right thing, even when it got them in power agin ye!"
"Well, for what it's worth, I'm going to see that neighbor tomorrow. I made an appointment to discuss my taxes with him, but I'm really just out to get a feel for the type of person he is. To be honest, I've heard some good things about him, and at least one person who knows him doesn't believe he could possibly have hurt Brenda."
Maisie grinned. "Mayhap he didn't," she said, "but seems t'me if they was friends good enough for sneakin' through hedges, then might be they was friends good enough to be watchin' each other's place, wouldn't ye think? Could be he seen something, but could be he's afraid to tell."
I chewed on my cheek for a moment, thinking about what she was saying. She could be absolutely right. If Gotter was close to Brenda, he might well know something even if he himself were not guilty. And, let's face it, many people would be afraid to come forward after witnessing a murder. There had been too many stories about killers not being arrested, and then coming after the witnesses who spoke against them.
I grinned. "You know," I said, "you're a whole lot smarter than you let people think you are."
She suddenly lifted a hand to her face and pushed back the wild locks of hair that usually hung in front of her eyes, and winked at me. "I'm a mite prettier than I let on, too," she said, and it hit me that Maisy wasn't nearly as old as I had thought she was. I smiled and dipped my head once in acknowledgment that she was correct, and then asked, "Any chance you know anything else interesting about Brenda?"
She shook her head. "Nah," she said. "Stupid girl wouldn't even speak to me after I told her I wouldn't help her get herself knocked up. Guess she was mad at me, but they's only two reasons why a single woman wants to be pregnant. Either she's tryin' to trap a man, or she thinks so little of herself that she's cravin' the only one she thinks could ever truly love her, and that'd be a baby of her very own."
I'd had to deal with female soldiers who had low self-esteem, and I knew that she was correct on the second part. As for using pregnancy to trap a man, I was fully aware, having counseled many a young soldier to demand a paternity test before agreeing to either marriage or child support, that this was a ploy as old as mankind. As far as I knew, the only man who never had to wonder if the child was his, at least for a moment now and then, would've been Adam.
And me, of course.
Seven
There really wasn't much more for me and Maisy to talk about, but I wasn't ready to go home yet. It had warmed up considerably since morning, and I was regretting the extra pair of thermal underwear, but I decided to wander around the market for a bit. I picked up a few fresh greenhouse veggies, carrots and celery that I love to munch on, and bought a bag of taffy from the candy stall. I was just about to decide to head for home when my phone rang in my pocket.
When I answered, I got the recording that said it was a call from the county detention center, so I pressed five when prompted to accept the call. I always accepted cal
ls from the detention center, even though they were collect calls, because there was no way to know whether it could be a potential suicide on the other end of the line.
This time it wasn't, it was Beans. "Hello, Beans," I said once the call was put through.
"Okay, Chappy, you asked me to let you know if I heard anything. I got somethin', don't know if it's what you want or not, but thought I'd better tell you, anyway. You know that builder guy we were talking about a while ago?"
Of course, I realized he was talking about Hawley, so I grunted an acknowledgment.
"Well, he's got this little cutie, y'know? And she really, really likes, um, candy, y'know? Well, turns out the builder is footing the bill for the candy, but the cutie is shoppin' for more than candy at the candy store, you get me?"
I got him, all right, and was disgusted when I realized that he was telling me that Hawley was supplying the money for his wife's drug habit, and that she was having an affair with the drug dealer. Beans said that was all he had, so I thanked him, but I couldn't see how it fit into Brenda's death. To me, it just didn't seem connected.
I gathered up all of my purchases, and headed for the Harley in the parking lot. At least, while I was riding down the road in this cool air, my legs weren’t going to sweat themselves to death in the double thermals. I went home and relaxed, and even managed to resist the temptation to try the new bottle of fire cider, finishing off the old one first.
I got to Gotter’s house about twenty minutes early the next morning, anxious to meet the man and get my own sense of who he was. I knocked on the door, but there was no reply, so I wondered if he was outside somewhere, and wandered around to the back of the house in search of him. I spotted a shed with an open door, and heard what sounded like whistling coming from it so I walked over to it and stuck my head inside.
I found him, leaning over a table inside the shed, so I smiled and said, "Hello!"
