by Ace Collins
Her words hung in the air like the smell coming from the stockyards. Neither of the agents could escape it. It filled their senses making them feel helpless and sick.
“You need to get away from this case,” Reese suggested.
Pulling herself off her chair, she walked over to the window. Below her, just like it had been every day for the past month, was Chicago. Maybe Rose was down there.
“What are we missing?” Meeker asked.
“I can’t think of anything,” Reese answered.
“Do you think this was pulled off by just one person?” she asked, folding her arms over her blue suit as she turned back to face her partner.
“My gut feeling?” he asked as he raised his eyebrows.
“Yeah, what does your gut say?”
“No,” the man answered. “It would have to be two people to make it work this smoothly. One to get the girl and hold her, the other to watch the family.”
“And to know about those ten one-hundred-dollar bills,” Meeker added, “at least one of those involved has to be from Oakwood.”
Moving quickly to her desk, she picked up the phone and dialed seven numbers.
“Meeker here! Get me a list of all those who bought flowers or anything else from the family’s flower shop the week before Rose Hall was kidnapped. Interview Mrs. Hall and try to get her to recall every person who came into her shop. And get a complete list of anyone who might have known where the family got the money for the down payment. I want to grill that list like they’re associates of Al Capone.”
“We’ve already done that a couple of times,” her partner noted.
She put the phone down and looked back at Reese. “And we need to do it again. And, Henry, we have to find that car!”
Chapter 34
At Bynum Aluminum, Bill Landers had gone from goat to king in a matter of a week. The company plant and offices were alive with activity thanks to three new large accounts the salesman had landed. With a huge bonus in the bank and a raise in salary, Landers was awash in cash for the first time in his life. He was also off the road for a while, too. Until the company could hire another full shift of workers, Bynum couldn’t handle any other new contracts.
It was almost six on a busy Friday night when Landers walked into Doris’s Café. The staff knew him well. At least three times a week he grabbed a meal at the counter. To honor their most loyal customer, Doris Sinks had even had his name painted on one of the counter’s stools.
Easing down in his centrally located spot, Landers looked across the counter to a new face. She wasn’t movie-star beautiful, but there was a kind of fresh cuteness about the dark-eyed brunette that he rarely saw in a woman approaching forty. She had a few wrinkles around her eyes and a softness at her chin, but it just served to add to her wholesome mystique.
“You must be Bill,” she announced as she approached him. “Doris has told me all about you.”
He’d never been good around women. He’d always stumbled on his words when trying to talk to them. His mother said he’d grow out of his shyness, but he never did. The woman he married, Betty Scroggins, had trapped him. She was pushy, six feet tall, and had the arms of a lumberjack. She’d asked him out on his twenty-first birthday, from their first date she had controlled everything and, simply because she’d told him, they’d married two months later. It lasted a year until she found someone older who could provide her with a lot more than Landers could. So at twenty-two he found himself divorced. Since that time he could count on one hand the number of women he’d taken out.
So rather than say anything to the new waitress, he did what he always did when attractive women talked to him—he just nodded.
“I understand you are quite the salesman,” the woman continued with a tone as sweet and warm as heated maple syrup.
“Well,” he replied, “I’ve done pretty well recently.”
“Congrats,” she sang out. “Then you have reasons to celebrate. My name is Coco Cakes. And please don’t make fun of it.”
“I haven’t heard of a name like that before,” he said, “but it would seem to be a good handle for someone who waits tables in this place. Doris is famous for her chocolate cake.”
“So I’ve learned.”
“Why did your folks name you Coco?” he asked. Realizing he might be treading into an area he shouldn’t, he quickly added, “If you don’t mind me asking.”
“My dad thought it went well with Kalen.” She smiled.
“Kalen? But I thought you said your name was Cakes.”
“Traded in Kalen for Cakes when I got married,” she explained.
The news took the air out of the imaginary balloon Landers had just launched. So much for anything more than small talk over the counter.
“John was a good man, too,” she continued. “We had a couple of great kids together. He made a good living as a foreman in a coal mine back in West Virginia. But a cave-in a couple of years back took him from me. The girls are on their own now. I needed a job and landed here.”
Landers felt a tinge of guilt in silently celebrating another man’s death, but that quickly passed as he looked into the woman’s face. “How did you get here from West Virginia?”
“Got a sister who lives in Benton,” she explained. “She urged me to move out here and get a fresh start. I came in March. Got settled in and landed this job. Been hearing about you ever since, but today was the first time my shift came during one of your visits.”
“I’m glad it did,” he said.
“What would you like to order?” Her smile was wider than before.
“How about a turkey sandwich, some fried potatoes, and a cup of coffee?”
“I can arrange that,” she assured him.
As she turned and sauntered back to toward the kitchen, his eyes followed her every move. She might have been carrying a few extra pounds, but at this very moment Landers would have rather spent his night talking to Coco than Ginger Rogers.
Chapter 35
I can’t do it anymore, Carole.”
Carole glanced up from the kitchen table and looked across to her husband. The dark circles under his eyes now dipped below his cheekbones. He was drawn; streaks of gray were showing up in his hair; and he had the hangdog look of a man at death’s door.
“George, you just have to keep the faith.”
“I can’t,” he said. “And I don’t want to either. It’s been six weeks, and she’s not coming back. She’s gone and I have to admit that. It’s easier to think of her as dead than alone, frightened, maybe abused.”
“George …”
“No, Carole, don’t try to find any words to lift my spirits. I don’t want them lifted. I want to face the facts. I failed as a father. I failed as a husband because I didn’t protect her for you. I’ve let everyone down. The world would be better off if I’d never been born.”
She pushed her chair back from the table and walked over to a spot behind the man. Placing her hands on his shoulders she whispered, “I need you, George. I couldn’t go on without you here. And you didn’t let Rose down. What happened was beyond your control. If anyone should be feeling guilty, it’s me. She was with me when she was taken. I was the one who didn’t protect her.”
She’d thought those thoughts a hundred times, but she’d never said them out loud before now. And facts were facts. She was the person Rose had depended on that day to make everything all right, and she was the one who let her daughter down in the worst way a parent could.
“Maybe we need to call Reverend Morris,” she suggested.
Jerking to his feet and pushing her hands off him, George roared, “I don’t need a preacher! I don’t want to hear about this being God’s plan. If there is a God, I hate Him for letting this happen!”
“George …”
“Don’t go there, Carole! I mean what I said, and I’m tired of pretending I don’t.”
Through horrified eyes she watched him stomp out of the kitchen, through the living room, and out t
he front door. A few seconds later, she heard the old Dodge they’d bought a few weeks before start up. She knew where he was going, but she tried to pretend that she didn’t. She couldn’t stand the thought of him drowning his anger and frustration at a tavern. Yet the fact was, he spent more time there now than he did at home. And perhaps, in a strange way, that place offered him something she couldn’t—the ability to forget.
She dragged herself into Rose’s room. It was just as it had been the day she’d been taken. Her pajamas were still lying on the foot of the bed, and the stuffed lion she so loved was still in the rocking chair. As she inventoried the room, her eyes filled with tears. George was right. Rose wasn’t coming back. Yet, unlike her husband, Carole did not hope Rose was dead. In fact, the only prayer on her heart was that somewhere Rose was with a woman who would love her and give her all the things that Carole had planned to give her.
Picking up the yellow lion from the chair, she adjusted the ribbon collar and then hugged it. If only there were a way that she could somehow hold her daughter the very same way. But George was right; it was time to admit the obvious. It was time to let go, even if she couldn’t pick up the pieces and start all over. And to do that, she was going to have do something she dreaded doing.
Dropping the stuffed lion onto the bed, she walked out to the garage. There were three empty cardboard boxes at the back. She retrieved them and retraced her steps back to Rose’s room. Opening the top drawer of a chest, she began to pull each tiny outfit out one at a time. She quickly studied them, tracing a button or a stitch, before dropping them into the box. This trip down memory lane was the most painful journey in her life. There was a story behind each piece of clothing, each shoe, each toy, and each book. And putting those stories into boxes was like sticking a coffin into the ground and covering it with six feet of dirt. She was burying her daughter one item at a time.
When the last thing was packed and the bed had been stripped, she carried the boxes back to the garage and placed them in the corner. Stepping back, she studied her forty-five minutes of work. In the harsh light of a single one-hundred-watt bulb was the sum total of Rose’s life. It seemed to be little to show for a child who’d brought her so much love.
Glancing down, she noted another empty box sitting against a far wall. Tears began to stream down her face as she studied it. That box held the memories that would never be made and the dreams that could never be realized. That empty box, much more than the full ones, represented what she’d lost.
Falling to her knees, Carole began to sob. “I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.”
Chapter 36
August 2, 1940
What a day it had been! Without ever leaving the office or putting a single mile on his Packard, Bill Landers had closed two additional deals. Even before this pair of new contracts, the deals he’d landed in the past two months had turned Bynum Aluminum upside down. In the four months since he had landed that first deal, the company was running three shifts seven days a week just to keep up with demand. And yet the success he was having as salesman paled when compared to his personal life. Landers was in love, and the feeling was like nothing he’d ever experienced.
As he pulled the Packard up to Coco’s small duplex, he couldn’t help but laugh. Why had he suddenly been so blessed? Where had it all turned around for him? He could trace the change down to one event—the moment he bought the car. That was when everything had changed. Old Blue was his version of a good luck charm.
“How you doing, good looking?” Coco asked as she walked out her front door to his car.
Landers smiled at the woman who’d obviously been so excited about their date she’d been waiting on the porch for him to pick her up.
“I don’t look that great,” he corrected her. “You are the good looking one in this duo.”
“We’ll call it a draw,” she said as she leaned down to kiss him through the driver’s window.
After the extended kiss, Landers opened the door and stepped out so that she could slip into the car. When she was in the middle of the bench seat, he slid in beside her. “Where to?”
“I think we should try that new catfish place out on the highway,” she suggested. “I hear it’s great!”
“Perfect,” he answered.
As Coco turned on the radio and searched for a station, George announced, “Two more big deals today. You know what that means, don’t you?”
After tuning in a popular music station and smiling as the strains of Glen Miller filled the car, she glanced his way. “What does it mean, sugar?”
“That house, the yellow one just off Main Street—I can buy it with cash.”
“Good for you!” She laughed. “That’s a great place. I love the yard and that little fence out front.”
“So do I,” he agreed. After swinging the Packard around the corner, he headed down Main Street. Neither of them spoke until he pulled up in front of the home he was hoping to buy.
“Get out,” he ordered as he threw open the driver’s door.
“Well, aren’t you being bossy?” she announced, pretending to be put off by his assertive manner.
“Sorry,” he said, softening his tone. “Would you please join me on the front porch?”
Sliding out of the car and taking his arm, she smiled. “I’d love to.”
He escorted her up the walk and onto the wraparound porch, directing her to a swing in front of a set of bay windows. “Have a seat, my lady.”
She grinned and eased down. A second later, he joined her.
“I like that dress. Is it new?”
“Thank you for noticing, and yes it is.”
The checked green pattern in the shirtdress and the solid belt that separated the top from the bottom displayed the best facets of her figure. As he studied her from neck to ankle and back up, she giggled. “The way you’re taking inventory, I feel like a teenage girl again.”
“And you look a lot better than any girl I’ve seen in a long time. Maybe ever.”
“Bill …”
She looked into the nearest window and then back to the street. “Are you sure no one will mind on us sitting here? You don’t own this place yet.”
“No one lives here,” he explained, “and the agent told me to come on by and look it over. She even gave me a key. Want to see it?”
Coco didn’t have a chance to answer as Landers reached into his suit coat pocket and retrieved a small item. A hopeful grin covered his face as he held a diamond ring between the index finger and thumb of his right hand and pushed it toward her.
“That’s not a key,” she whispered.
“Yes it is,” he assured. “This is the key to my heart, and if you don’t accept it then I don’t need the one to this house.”
“You’re asking me to marry you?” Her words dripped with sweetness.
Sliding off the swing, he got down on one knee, looked into her eyes, and said, “Coco, will you do me the honor of being my bride?”
She didn’t speak, but she did nod and take the ring from his hand. Slipping it onto her finger she whispered, “It’s a perfect fit.”
Chapter 37
What a night!” Coco announced as Landers escorted her out of the restaurant and to his car.
“Well”—he laughed—“I’m still not sure fried fish and Cokes are the best way to celebrate an engagement, but it is Friday.”
“So it is,” she said.
After they slid into the car and he slipped it into reverse, she leaned over and kissed him. As their lips met, his foot slipped off the clutch and the car lunged backward. Before Landers could hit the brake, the Packard’s rear, driver’s-side fender introduced itself to the front passenger side of a 1940 Ford coupe.
“Hey,” a man’s voice screamed out, “watch what you’re doing!”
Pulling his lips away from Coco’s, Landers hit the brake, slid the transmission into first, and eased forward. After he shut the motor off, he glanced over to his date.
She shrugge
d and giggled. “That was probably my fault.”
He winked, pushed open the door, and walked back to survey the damage.
“What were you thinking?” the stranger demanded.
“I wasn’t,” Landers admitted. “I just got engaged and kind of had my head in the clouds. This is all my fault. I’ll cover the damages.”
The stranger, dressed in a black suit and white shirt, took off his dress hat and studied the two cars. “I think your car came out worse than mine. My Ford’s got a scratch, but yours is creased pretty good.”
Landers nodded. There was a deep foot-long dent down the side of the fender that had literally scraped the paint off.
But the salesmen was in too good a mood to worry about the fender, so he just smiled and asked, “What do you think it will cost to get your Ford fixed?”
The stranger shrugged. “It belongs to Uncle Sam. My name’s Reese.”
“That’s great!” Landers laughed. “Of all people to hit, I pick an employee of the good ole USA! Do you think twenty would fix it?”
“Probably,” Reese shot back, “but can you give me your name and number?”
“Sure,” the salesman replied while reaching into his inside coat pocket and pulling out a business card. “This has my name and office number.”
Reese took the card, studied it for a moment, and then stuck out his hand. As Landers took it the agent asked, “You’re William Landers?”
“Yeah, but most folks call me Bill.”
“You know how the government is,” Reese said, “I’ll need to copy your license number and the year, make, and model of your car, too.”
“The number on my driver’s license is 33478. And the car is a 1936 Packard sedan. Need anything else?”
“No,” Reese assured him, “that’s all I need.”
Landers walked back toward the driver’s seat, but the agent’s voice stopped him just as he reached for the door handle.
“Mr. Landers. Is your car a six or an eight?”
“It’s an eight. And what a ride it is! Well, good night, and don’t hesitate to call if I need to get you any more money. Once again, I’m so sorry I wasn’t more careful.”
