Smith's Monthly #6

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  “I’m dying to hear what you two found today,” Annie said. “From the tidbits Dad has been giving me along the way, it was amazing amounts.”

  Lott smiled at his daughter. “Soon as Andor gets here, we’ll lay it all out.”

  “He’s on his way,” Julia said, pointing in the direction of Andor coming in the door.

  As he came up to the table, he dropped a manilla file folder in front of Julia.

  He nodded to everyone and then sat down.

  After the day, Julia was almost afraid to pick up the folder and see what was in it.

  “Rogers, you said you thought the body looked familiar,” Andor said, smiling at her. “More than just a passing resemblance to your ex-husband.”

  “I did,” Julia said. “Can’t seem to get a grasp on from where though.”

  Andor pointed at the file. “You two just solved one of Reno’s most famous missing body cases.”

  Suddenly she knew exactly where she recognized the body.

  “The fingerprints match the Stanton Case?” she asked, staring at Andor. Was that even possible?

  Andor grinned. “Spot on the money.”

  “I’ll be go to hell,” she said, opening the file to stare at naked pictures of Benny Stanton. The same guy, the same bullet patterns, only he was not bloated at all. The photo she had in front of her was taken just before an autopsy was supposed to have taken place on the body.

  And just before the body vanished without a trace from the MEs basement office.

  The guy who had executed Benny Stanton had already confessed, and they had the pictures and crime scene photos, so the body vanishing had just been an annoyance and a headline grabber in the papers. She remembered it well as a city cop, not yet a detective. It was the topic of a lot of conversations for months after it happened.

  She couldn’t remember the name of the family member who had shot Benny, but the last Julia had heard, he had died in prison a few years back. That body going missing had caused a real stir in Reno.

  No one seemed to have a motive for taking it, and there were no suspects at all. It just wasn’t often a body was stolen like that.

  From that point forward, for years, it had always been sort of a standard joke among detectives to try to not pull “a Stanton” when they were dealing with a body.

  “Someone want to fill all of us in?” Annie asked.

  She turned the folder around so Lott and his daughter could see them. “We don’t have a murder.”

  Lott looked at her, clearly puzzled.

  “That’s Benny Stanton,” Julia said, feeling amazingly light and happy at the moment. “He was shot and killed by a family member in a fight over a car twenty-two years ago. The family member confessed and died in prison. Benny’s body was stolen from the ME’s office right before the autopsy was to be performed. No trace, no motive, nothing.”

  “So you’re telling us that Stan Rocha wasn’t killed back then?” Annie asked, looking up at her.

  “That’s right,” Julia said. “My gut tells me that Stan stole Benny’s body, dressed it in his clothes, left his wallet with it, and then put it in a warehouse where eventually someone would find it.”

  “And he would be declared dead,” Lott said.

  “Exactly,” Julia said.

  “And what happened to Stan?” Andor asked. “With five wives and five kids, I can sort of see why he would want to vanish. But where’d he go?”

  Julie looked over at Annie, who was smiling at that question. Julia had a hunch Annie knew the answer, but she wanted to let Annie confirm it.

  “He just kept running his company,” Annie said. “He never went anywhere. A man by the name of David Buel, ran the companies. It wasn’t until we went back into the history of the Lost Breyfogle Mine legend that we ran across the name of David Buel. Breyfogle worked for a David Buel back in the 1870s.”

  “You’re kidding me?” Andor asked.

  “Nope,” Annie said.

  Julia nodded. “The minute I realized he wasn’t killed, I knew he had to have kept working, chasing his lost mines. Tell me, did that company of his have any money?”

  “Not a penny,” Annie said, taking a file from the floor beside her chair and sliding it over to Julia. “Every dollar it earned it sank back into buying more property and land and mining rights. Land rich, cash very poor. In fact, it had no employees, even though we thought it did at first. That’s why it was so hard to track. Buel was the only name associated with the company at all.”

  “So the son-of-a-bitch really was broke when we were together,” Julia said, nodding. “Did he make any money on the sale?”

  “From what my people can find,” Annie said, “he made a lot. But it was structured to pay out over a ten-year period, the last year being next year.”

  Julia looked at Lott, then at Andor, who was looking as puzzled as she felt. So she just went ahead and asked, even though she was very, very afraid of the answer.

  “So, you are telling me you know where this David Buel is?”

  Annie smiled and nodded. “He lives about a mile from here.”

  Julia felt stunned, more so than with any other bit of news that kept slamming at her in this case.

  Stan was alive and if Annie was right, living just a mile from where they were sitting.

  “Let’s go arrest that bastard,” Andor said, pushing his chair back.

  “On what charge, Detective?” Annie asked. “You have no murder, you have adult children, he stole only a body twenty-two years ago, and he married five times without a divorce. I’m pretty sure the statute of limitations has passed on the theft. Not so sure about the bigamy charges. We’d have to talk with a prosecutor to figure out if being declared dead changes that.”

  Suddenly the four former detectives sitting around the table had nothing to say.

  And all Julia could do was take slow, deep breaths, and try to make some sense out of all of this.

  An impossible task.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  October 2014.

  Pleasant Hills.

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  LOTT SAT ALONE at his kitchen table, working at a bowl of shredded wheat covered in milk, trying to get enough energy to just go to bed. In one day they had been in three states and discovered more about Stan Rocha and his life from twenty years ago than Lott ever wanted to know about another person.

  A bunch of what they discovered wasn’t pretty, right down to the point where the guy had stolen a body in Reno and faked his own death.

  And by doing so left five wives and five children without a husband or a father.

  He was some kind of creep, of that there was no doubt. A selfish, pathetic one as far as Lott was concerned.

  One thing good had come of the day. The Cold Poker Gang had cleared another cold case, one that Lott had given them no chance to clear when they started. That felt good.

  The poker game this week was going to be fun.

  And the Chief of Police was happy about it when Andor called him from the Bellagio.

  Lott and Andor and Julia and Annie, along with the Chief of Police, had an appointment tomorrow morning at eleven to talk with the prosecuting attorney, Hanson Evans, about the possible charges against Rocha. Lott had a gut feeling there just wasn’t going to be much Evans was going to be able to do.

  Bigamy was a felony, but it was rarely prosecuted and now that Rocha was found alive, all the wives would have to do was file for an annulment or a divorce under Nevada law and the bigamy charges would be moot. And four of the wives hadn’t even actually been legally married to Rocha, since he had first married Kate McDonald a few years earlier.

  Plus the statute of limitations had passed on the body theft.

  But there were still a few things that really nagged Lott about all this. And his tired mind just wouldn’t let the worry go.

  Lott had little doubt that Stan Rocha was devious enough to fake his own death. And enough of an ass to walk away from five wives and his kids
. But he wouldn’t have been able to do the actual theft alone. He had to have help, real money help, to do such a thing, and Rocha just didn’t have the funds to do that.

  And who could he have trusted to do such a thing and stay quiet for twenty-two years?

  So who helped him? And why?

  Suddenly the image of Kate McDonald being shocked about Stan’s corporation flared into his memory. The governor’s wife was actually very upset about that, more so than she should have been after all the years. She said she knew that Stan had been killed, so why be shocked at the corporation?

  Was it possible that to clear out Stan from her life, maybe so she could get on with an affair with the future governor, Kate and the future governor had helped Stan fake his own death?

  Having Stan suddenly die made sense for the future governor’s wife. It solved the problem of her husband, the bigamist. It solved the problem of her moving on with her two kids, and having a regular relationship with someone her parents approved of.

  And from the sounds of it, it also allowed Stan to just keep on with his search for lost treasures.

  Lott got up and started pacing. Connie had hated it when he paced in the kitchen late at night, worrying about a case. But it helped him think.

  He glanced at the clock over the stove. It was only a little before eleven in the evening. It felt more like three in the morning.

  Annie would still be awake. More than likely this case was still bothering her as well.

  A few seconds later Annie answered her cell phone. Lott could hear the sounds of a poker room in the background. More than likely she had joined a cash game at the Bellagio while waiting for Doc to get finished in the tournament.

  “Sorry to bother you,” he said.

  She laughed. “Can’t let this one go yet, huh Dad?”

  “Exactly,” he said. “Did your people do research into the governor and Stan’s first wife?”

  “They sure did,” Annie said. “Hang on, let me get my bag from the desk here where I have all the files and then find a quieter place to talk.”

  He held on, still pacing the kitchen, as she asked for her bag, then ducked off to an area of the poker room with empty tables.

  “Got it all right here,” she said after a moment.

  “When were Kate and the governor married?”

  “Almost one year after Stan’s fake death,” she said. “You think she had a hand in helping him take the body?”

  “I’m betting that she and the future governor both did,” Lott said. “Only thing that makes sense. But I’m also betting, since she knew that Stan was still alive, she would have filed for divorce from Stan quietly at some point, just to get it on the record in case he suddenly came back to life or the actual identity of the body was discovered. Did you look for a divorce by Kate from Stan?”

  “Shit,” Annie said. “Of course she would have done exactly that. I’ll get someone searching both Idaho and Nevada and we’ll have the information before tomorrow morning.”

  Lott laughed. “We let that become public, we cause Kate and the governor no amount of political trouble.”

  “If they actually did help Stan fake his death,” Annie said. “They deserve every problem that can be shoveled at them.”

  “Oh, I like your attitude, dear daughter,” Lott said.

  “So,” Annie said, “is Julia there with you right now?”

  “No, why?” Lott asked.

  “Bummer,” Annie said. “See you tomorrow morning.”

  Lott stopped pacing and hung up, staring at the phone for a moment. Sometimes his daughter just had a way of making herself very clear without actually saying anything on topic.

  He took a deep breath and quickly dialed Rogers’ number before he got cold feet.

  She answered with a quick “Hi.”

  “Just wanted to say that it was great working and traveling and being with you today.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I wouldn’t have managed to get through it all without you there.”

  “So get some sleep and I’ll see you in the morning,” Lott said.

  “Thanks, I will,” Julia said. “And thanks for the call. It made me smile.”

  “Night,” he said.

  “Night,” she said in return.

  And then he hung up.

  He sat back down at the kitchen table to finish his now soggy shredded wheat.

  That had felt right.

  And she wasn’t the only one smiling.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  October 2014.

  Café Bellagio

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  LOTT WAS THE ONLY ONE in the Café Bellagio when Julia got there. Somehow he had again beaten her there after their meeting with the Prosecuting Attorney this morning. Andor should be right behind her somewhere. They all had their own cars.

  She walked up to Lott, who smiled up at her from a table tucked against some plants to the right of the main door.

  She went around to his side of the table and kissed him on the cheek, then sat down next to him.

  She smiled at his shocked, but pleased look.

  “That was for being such a nice guy and that wonderful phone call last night. I needed someone right at that moment to tell me they cared.”

  “I very much care,” he said, looking her right in the eyes with those fantastic, dark eyes of his. She couldn’t imagine ever growing tired of looking into those eyes.

  “I know,” she said, keeping her gaze locked with his. “And I care as well. And once we get through this mess, I’d love to find out where this feeling between us might lead.”

  “Now that’s a great plan, detective,” he said, smiling.

  Right at that moment all she wanted to do was lean over and kiss him completely. But out of the corner of her eye she could see Andor striding toward the table.

  “Well, that meeting was a bust,” Andor said as he grabbed a menu and dropped into a chair across from them. “We can’t even arrest that bastard.”

  “We knew that going in,” Lott said. “But we can cause a lot more grief than simply arresting him.”

  “Oh, oh, folks, Lott has that devious look on his face.”

  “I like it,” Julia said, winking at him.

  He kept smiling but blushed a little, which she found even more charming.

  “Oh trust me,” Andor said, “that look has gotten us into more trouble over the years than I want to think about.”

  “Not thinking of doing anything rash,” Lott said. “Just this.”

  He pointed to where Annie was coming toward them with a young guy who looked to be in his late twenties. The guy had long brown hair, a short-sleeved blue dress shirt tucked into jeans, and he carried a backpack slung over one shoulder.

  He was looking around as if he had never been in the place before.

  Julia had no idea what Lott and Annie were up to, but after the surprise this morning about Kate McDonald getting a divorce from Stan after she knew he was supposedly dead, Julia had a hunch this punishment for Stan and Kate and the governor of Idaho was going to be pretty nasty.

  And she liked that.

  Since there wasn’t a thing the prosecuting attorney could do that would be worth the state’s time and money, revenge was just about the only card left to deal Stan and Kate and the governor for what they did to so many people.

  Annie and her guest stopped at the table and Annie introduced the three of them, using the word detective in front of each of their names. Then she turned to the young man with her.

  “Detectives, I’d like you to meet Robert Austin, the political reporter for the Idaho Statesman newspaper and a freelance journalist for the Associated Press.”

  Julia was stunned. And pleased beyond words.

  Annie got herself and Robert seated, then said, “Doc sent his plane this morning to bring Robert here. I gave him all the information I had to read on the way down. Now it’s up to you three to explain how all this came about and what you know.

/>   “Over lunch, right?” Andor asked as a waitress approached.

  “Over lunch,” Annie said, laughing.

  Julia reached over and touched Lott’s arm. “Was this your idea?” she whispered.

  “It was if you like it,” he said. “Otherwise I’m blaming my daughter.”

  “I like it a lot,” Julia said, laughing. “Far better than putting the bunch of them in jail.”

  And now, for the first time since she learned Stan was alive, she was looking forward to seeing his face. And the shock on it when he discovered that he and Kate and the governor’s scheme was blown.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  October 2014.

  Café Bellagio

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  THEY SPENT AN HOUR briefing the reporter on the story and all the poor kid did was get more and more excited. For a moment, Lott thought he just might start drooling.

  “This story has everything,” Austin said after they had filled him in on all the sordid details. “Politics, scandal with a sitting governor, bigamy, lost treasures, stolen bodies, and corporation underhandedness. This will hit the national nightly news, it’s so strange.”

  “Perfect,” Julia said.

  “Can’t thank you enough for calling me in,” Austin said. “And that fantastic plane ride.”

  “Our pleasure,” Annie said. “Just make sure every fact you publish is backed up, so this guy and the governor can’t snake their way out of this.”

  “Oh, trust me,” he said. “Both the AP and the Statesman check everything I do carefully. And I make sure it’s accurate before I give it to them.”

  The kid sounded perfect to Lott. This case was going to make his career, of that there was no doubt. And from the looks of it, he already had a pretty good career.