Nope, didn’t wash. By the time I had decided to come out to Millar, Christina Jennings was safely wrapped in the loving arms of the Omaha Police Division. She would’ve had time to have lined up someone to follow me from her place all the way out here before Banner and Swanson took her downtown (as they say in the movies). When would she have had time? From the minute she first set eyes on me, she had been out of the company of the cops only when she was in her bedroom dressing for her date with the police stenographer. Even if she’d had an extension in the bedroom, Swanson had been on the living room phone almost the whole time.
Besides, why would Christina sic anyone on me? So I found the gun, so what? As I’d told Banner, someone would have come across the gun sooner or later, and probably sooner. And what good would it do Christina to try and scare me off the case? It wouldn’t help Walt any. Even if I turned in my badge right now, went straight home, and cooked up some new excuse for not working on my novel, the cops would keep right on looking for Jennings until this ol’ world was as cold and dead as the moon. And when you’re talking cops, you’re talking one whole lot of windshields.
Okay, not Christina. Who? Certainly not Kennerly. Banner? Nah; she was more the type who’d dump the paint over your head. Young Castelar? This morning he had been pissed because I wasn’t out pounding the pavement. Emily Castelar? Riiiight.
Hell, this was the wrong approach. Whoever had made this mess couldn’t have just up and decided to reach out and touch me, because even I hadn’t known in advance I was coming out here.
That left two possibilities. One, someone here on campus had been busy. Which I doubted very much. The only candidate was Tom Black, and I’d already ruled him out.
So, behind door number two: Someone had been following me, perhaps all day, certainly at least since I’d left the Jennings place. Someone who had a vested interest in my search for Kate. Someone who was obviously quite distressed over the work that I was doing, the places I was going, the people I was talking to, the questions I was asking. Someone who felt strongly obliged to try to persuade me to change my ways.
And although I couldn’t make any sense of it, although I tried to ignore it, one name kept popping up in my head like a cork in a rain barrel.
Walt Jennings.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It gave me a creepy feeling.
I caught myself checking out the parking lot, looking for suspicious characters, expecting to see a blue Ford pickup.
What I saw were blue hard-edged shadows, long and growing longer by the moment, reminding me that winter afternoons out here in the nation’s breadbasket are short indeed. I estimated two, two and a half hours before darkness crept in, and I wanted to run one more errand and at least get started back to the city in that time. The idea of ripping around on unfamiliar country highways in the dead of night in the dead of winter didn’t exactly set my heart a-thumpin’—especially since I wasn’t going to have the luxury of an unimpaired view of the road.
There was nothing to do about the damage done by the blows to the glass, but if that had been my only problem, I think I still could have navigated well enough. The points of impact themselves were white and opaque, but there were only about four of them, each no bigger than a quarter, and they were clustered on the passenger side.
That must have been where the vandal had stood, because the worst of the paint was on that side, too, on the windshield, down the right fender, and onto the parking lot, where the droplets had eaten jagged black cavities in the snow.
I circled the car a few times, feeling sick and mad. The Chevy was old and beat up, and it probably wasn’t worth as much as the paint splashed over it, but it was mine, it was a part of me, and even after I repaired the damage, it wouldn’t be the same. If you’ve ever had your home broken into you’ll know how I felt—vulnerable, exposed, slightly numb.
Since the damage hadn’t gotten any better by the third circuit, I stopped, stripped off a glove, and gingerly touched the paint. It was dry, cold, and slick. I prodded it with a thumbnail, and again more forcefully. It peeled back, a little stubbornly—like the stuff you scrape off to reveal secret numbers on game cards from fast-food joints—but it peeled back.
Whatever kind of paint this was, it didn’t adhere at all well to ice-cold glass.
I tackled it with an ice-scraper, which worked okay, but I soon discovered that once an edge was loosened the dried paint could be pulled away in long, uneven, brittle-rubbery strips. Between the peeling and the scraping and a few shots from the washer, I managed to remove the worst of it, except where it had bled into the threadlike cracks in the glass. The visibility situation was not what you’d call ideal, and the sun had sunk noticeably in the half hour or forty-five minutes I’d spent on clean-up detail, but by sitting tall in the saddle and relying heavily on the outboard mirrors, I figured I would be able to avoid calamity on the drive home.
But first things first.
I found the highway right where I had left it and traced it back toward Omaha until I found my exit. Instead of heading south, however, I looped a wide loop that put me into the northbound lanes, where I stayed for the next five miles or so. And there, where the highway intersected with a well-lighted franchise-dotted four-lane strip, sat the West Omaha State Bank and Trust.
The name had led me to expect a real bank building, of the old-fashioned variety—stone steps and white pillars and gold eagles on the peaked roof—but this was in fact a modern and new-looking building, indistinguishable from any suburban bank or S&L. It was a squat square box of red brick and smoked glass, sitting at an angle on the lot next to a Dairy Queen. At first I thought the lot was empty, and I wondered if the place was closed out of respect for Jack Castelar. But as I pulled off the street I spotted four cars parked behind the building, near the drive-through lane. Employee parking. I swung round the front of the building, put the car next to the handicap parking slot at the front doors, and stepped out onto the sand-sprinkled pavement. After a brief pause to moon over the violence inflicted on my poor old Chevy, I turned to the outer doors of the bank. A neatly lettered four-by-five card taped to the glass indicated that tomorrow was the day the place would close in memoriam. I guess they figured they should give their regulars a little notice.
The lobby was small and square. Not too surprising, that; so was the building. Three pale wooden desks were deployed at strategic locations near the south and east walls of the room. The latter of these walls was decorated with two so-so Western-motif paintings separated by a great wooden door bearing a plaque whose two lines of gold lettering said, respectively, j. a. castelar and president. Directly across from me, on the north, was the tellers’ counter, and beyond it the drive-up. The tellers, I noticed, made do with fake wood for their work station; Castelar’s door was the real thing. Mounted on the west wall was a writing counter (also phony wood) and small pigeonholes filled with deposit/withdrawal slips and the other paraphernalia of banking, as well as three ball-point pens of such inestimable worth that they were anchored to the wall more solidly than the table was.
The bank was empty but for two tellers behind the counter, a young gum-chewing woman in her early twenties and a middle-aged, sharp-featured woman with gray-salted hair. They were huddled over a blue vinyl binder stuffed fat with green-and-white computer printouts. I crossed the thin brown indoor/outdoor-type carpet and stood patiently at the counter. As far as the younger teller was concerned I wasn’t there, but the older one looked up, stepped over to the window, and asked if she could help me. She didn’t act as if she meant it, but she did ask and that’s something.
I went through the introduction, the I.D. flip, the explanation, the whole bit. The teller, whose name tag said she was Donna Avery, seemed impressed, which is always gratifying. She turned her head, tucked her pointed chin against her right shoulder, and said, “Jan, do you know who this man is?”
“No,” said Jan, not looking up.
“He’s a private detective.” She didn’t ha
ve to whisper the last two words; I knew I was a private detective. “He’s looking for Kate.”
Jan, a tall, thin girl with short reddish hair, looked up and flashed a smile that went on and off like a neon sign. “Hi,” she said, and then turned back to her work so quickly that for an instant I wondered whether she was greeting me or the binder.
Donna was more talkative. She put her elbows on the counter, leaned in conspiratorily, and asked in a just-between-us-girls way, “What really happened to Kate?”
Since I didn’t know what she had heard or been told, I didn’t know what she was after. What she got from me was the party line, the slightly abridged story I’d told everyone at Millar: Castelar’s murder affected Kate deeply and she ran away. No one needed to know much more.
Clearly this wasn’t the sort of tidbit Donna craved. She made a half-disgusted sound, straightened up, and said, “Yeah, that’s what he says too.”
“Who’s this?”
Donna angled her head briefly toward the door to her right and said, with some distaste, “Mr. Castelar.”
I nodded. Kennerly had told me that Jack’s older brother, Charles, would be minding the store. That’s why I was there now. Uncle Charlie being the only Castelar I hadn’t met, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to drop in, offer my condolences, see if he had any thoughts about the murder and his niece’s disappearance, and, generally, size him up. My understanding was that he had not been overwhelmingly close to the kids, so I doubted very much that he’d be able to offer much. Still, a guy tries to cover all the bases.
“It was a real shock to all of us, I can tell you,” Donna was saying. “First Jack, then Kate … . It’s so hard to believe. Jack Castelar was such a great guy; who would want to hurt such a wonderful man?”
I started to say I didn’t know, but she wasn’t looking for a reply. “Well, of course, Jolly Charlie here”—another cant toward Castelar’s door—”didn’t hardly say anything. He doesn’t have the time of day for the likes of us. He showed up this morning, said there had been an accident and his brother was killed. Then he holed up in the office—Jack’s office, him not even cold in his grave—and started arranging the interviews.”
Jack wasn’t anywhere near his grave, much less in it, but I didn’t share the thought. Instead I said, “Interviews?”
“For the interim manager.”
I knuckled a burning eye. There are two types of people who make investigatory work so rewarding. The first type seems to think you already know the story; his replies to your queries are phrased accordingly, as if he believes all he has to do is jog your memory. The second type enjoys being in the spotlight, enjoys knowing something you don’t know, and stingily apportions his answers like Scrooge parceling out the coal. Donna Avery belonged in the former category, I decided, which didn’t make getting the story any easier.
“What interim manager?” I asked patiently. “I thought Castelar himself was going to be managing the bank now.”
She shook her head. “If he was, there wouldn’t be one of us left after today. The way he acts, you’d think he was Prince Charles.” She chuckled in appreciation of her own cleverness. “Luckily, he hates banking as much as we hate—Well, anyhow, we figure he’s looking for someone to run the place for him until Vince—Vince Castelar—gets out of college next summer.”
That was news. “Vince? Isn’t he a little young?”
Donna opened her mouth to answer, but stopped as the door to Castelar’s office opened and a tall, pear-shaped, middle-aged man—sixtyish—stuck his carefully coiffed head through the six-inch opening. He frowned at one of the wooden desks outside the door, then looked up at Donna.
“Where’s Carol?”
“She had the afternoon off, Mr. Castelar, remember?”
The frown deepened. “No wonder she didn’t pick up the intercom,” he murmured, and made to withdraw again into the office. Donna thwarted him, calling out to him, and again the silvery head appeared, the frown now having taken on a distinctly impatient cast.
“Mr. Castelar, this gentleman is a private detective. He’s looking for Kate, your niece.”
He gave her a look. “Yes, Donna, I remember her.” After a moment’s hesitation, he stepped into the lobby, closed the door completely behind him, and crossed the seven or eight feet of carpet that separated us. Castelar had a curiously springy way of walking for a man his size and weight and age. It was as if his heels were coated with the stuff of Super Balls, and bounced up an inch or two after every step. It made his round face, pink under the silvery white of his hair, seem like the dot you followed on the old sing-along shows.
I showed him my I.D. and he ignored it, gazing down at me with heavily lidded eyes. “My sister-in-law told me she had hired a private detective on the advice of that shyster lawyer of hers, that Kennedy—”
“Kennerly.”
The gray eyes widened a bare fraction of an inch, and I could see why Donna had called him Prince Charles. We did not like to be interrupted, or corrected. “Thank you,” he said dryly. “I told her I thought this was a matter best left to the police. After all, what do we pay taxes for? But this … lawyer seems to think you’re some kind of Sherlock Holmes. Are you?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” This wasn’t false modesty, or any other kind; it’s just that, as much as I love those old stories, I don’t think Holmes could have detected his way out of his own bedroom if he had the blueprint. A kid with a 007 spy kit is a better detective.
“Then I wonder what motivates him … . Does he get some sort of kickback or rake-off from you in exchange for convincing the bereaved that they need your, ah, services?”
“Yeah, that’s right; I give him twenty-five percent of my fee and it’s almost enough for him to buy a paper and a cup of bad coffee.”
Castelar smiled primly. He had a small, perpetually pucked, fishlike mouth, the corners of which now ascended minutely, leaving the rest of the placid face unaffected. “Funny,” he said, meaning he didn’t think so. “But I think it’s a sinful waste of money anyway, and after I talk with Emily again tonight I’m sure she’ll agree. Consequently”—he lifted one pink hand in a lazy backhand stroke—”you may as well prepare your brief or report or whatever you’d call it now, because I can virtually guarantee that by tomorrow morning you’ll hear from Mr. Kennedy informing you that you’ll have to find another widow to bilk.” He turned away from the counter and bounced toward the office door.
“Kennerly,” I repeated. “And until I hear from him, I intend to give full measure. Since the meter’s running and all.”
He paused.
“I’d like to ask you a couple of questions.” I always feel vaguely silly saying that, but I’ve never come up with a better way of putting it.
He turned. “No,” he said plainly. I started to ask why not, but he anticipated me “Because I can’t think of anything you could ask me that would be any of your business. As I understand it, your job—your totally redundant and soon-to-be-ended job—is to look for Kate. Not to harass me as I try to ensure that this bank will continue to operate smoothly—and that my own business will not collapse while I’m distracted here.” He completed another hand gesture, this one tight and choppy.
“What sort of line are you in?” I asked conversationally. “If there were a bank in my family, I’m pretty sure I’d be in the banking dodge.”
Again the tight smile. “You prove my point. This is none of your business.”
“You know, no matter how often I hear that, I never get tired of it.”
“And I do not find you the least bit amusing.”
“Really? I think you’re a stitch. Funniest thing I’ve seen all week. A man less upset by his brother’s murder than by being called away from his business because of it; a man less concerned with the whereabouts of his missing niece than with how much it’s costing to look for her; a man less interested in what he can do to help find her than in getting back to the VIP cooling his heels in the fancy private offic
e. That’s funny, all right. Real funny.”
His round and ruddy head swiveled a quarter of the way toward the door behind him, and his pursed lips protruded even farther. When he glanced at me the gray eyes looked even sleepier than before. “Persistent. And self-righteous, aren’t you?”
“Maybe self-righteous,” I said, although it wasn’t so much that as not knowing when to keep my big mouth shut. “Definitely persistent,” although it wasn’t so much that as sheer pigheadedness. “I’ve been hired to look for Kate and I’m going to look for her, whether or not you approve, whether or not you think it’s any of my business, whether or not you cooperate. But I’ll tell you one thing: If I had a brother and my brother’s daughter turned up missing the day after someone shot him through the head, by God, I’d be doing everything I could to find the kid instead of pissing and whining like a dowager recovering from an operation. And I’ll tell you something else, too—no extra charge—if you had cooperated with me from the start instead of putting on a show for the hired help, I’d’ve been out of your hair ten minutes ago.”
Castelar had stood motionless through my declamation. Now he moved. He opened his mouth and a clipped “Ah” emerged. Then he spread his arms, which made him look something like a fat blue pin-striped gull getting ready to fly, and said, “At last I see!—You think Kate is hiding here at the bank! Do you want to check the vault? The night depository? Perhaps a safe-deposit box?”
Was it something genetic, something attached to the Y chromosome, perhaps, that made Castelar males so relentlessly disagreeable? Was this the way the family handled grief? Or was Prince Charles, like his nephew, Vince, just a self-inflated clod? Legitimate questions, these, but asking them would gain me nothing, except perhaps forcible eviction, so I choked them back down, settling for a contemptuous look as I pushed off from the plastic counter, pulling my gloves from the parka’s side pockets. “I’ll let you get back to your important guest.”
Moving Targets Page 8
