by Gina Cresse
“The day, what?” Ronnie pressed.
Lance’s face took on a troubled look. “The day dad died. I remember seeing it that day. I asked Harold about it. He told me Cameron Boxer had just bought it and wanted something modified on the exhaust system.”
We all stared at Lance. “Do you remember who he worked for? He must have been making some pretty good money to afford all those expensive toys,” Rick asked.
Lance stared at the ceiling, searching his memory. “You know, come to think of it, he didn’t work. He came out to California from Texas, where his father had made a fortune in the oil business. They owned a bunch of wells. Filthy rich.”
“It would seem Cameron Boxer, the good son that he is, has worked hard to make sure the family business thrives,” Gary said.
Jake had been quiet during most of the meeting. Finally, he spoke up. “So what happens now? How do we get this Boxer guy and his goons locked up so they leave Ronnie alone?”
Good question, I thought to myself. I’m sure Ronnie was wondering the same thing.
“Cameron Boxer has been in business a long time. He must be good to not have gotten caught. He’s got to be afraid of Ronnie, because she can identify him as the man who tried to kill her,” Gary explained. “If he gets any hint at all that we’re on to him, he’s gonna be gone in a flash. Your best bet now is to get Sam involved again. He might even bring in the feds for help.”
We all nodded in agreement. “I think you’re right,” I said.
Rick cleared his throat to get our attention. “I hate to spoil everyone’s good mood, but the problem still isn’t solved, you do realize,” he announced.
I gave him a curious look, then suddenly grasped his meaning.
“Even if Cameron Boxer and his band of murderers are taken out of the picture, there’s probably a dozen more waiting in line for the new business opportunity,” Rick continued. “We can’t lose sight of the fact that Boxer’s success is due to the energy industry’s determination to stay in power.”
No matter how you looked at it, Ronnie’s future seemed hopeless. We all turned our faces to Jake, the one man in the room who might have a chance to turn things around for her, if only he would.
He felt the weight of our stares. “Why are you all looking at me like that? My hands are tied.”
Ronnie threw her hands in the air. “Fine. What are you doing here, then? Why don’t you pack up your toys and go back to your keepers in Detroit? I don’t need you here. All you’ve managed to do is lead every one of Boxer’s guys to my doorstep. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were one of them.”
Injured, Jake’s pleading eyes fell on Ronnie’s face. “Ronnie. Don’t be this way. You know I’d do anything to keep you safe from—”
“Save it, Monroe. Just go away,” she snapped, coldly.
“Ronnie,” he begged.
“Go away,” she hissed.
I couldn’t help but feel bad for Jake, but Ronnie was right. If he wasn’t willing to help her, then he needed to stay away from her to make it harder for the Cameron Boxers of the world to find her.
“Can I give you a ride to the airport?” I offered Jake.
He watched Ronnie’s face for any sign of a change of heart. When he concluded that he was getting no stay of execution, he nodded to me. “Thanks. I could use a ride.”
I dropped Jake off in front of the United terminal at the airport. “Sorry for the way things turned out,” I offered, with as much sympathy in my voice as I could manage.
“Not as sorry as I am,” he replied as he started to close the passenger door.
“Jake,” I said, stopping him from closing the door. “It’s probably best if you don’t try to contact Ronnie. You know, until…”
“Until? Until what?” he snapped.
I didn’t know how to answer. I shrugged my shoulders.
“Don’t worry. I won’t bother her,” he said, then headed for the doors to the terminal.
I delivered Ronnie and Lance to the police station where Sam had arranged a meeting with two federal agents who would be working with him on the arrest of Cameron Boxer and his crew.
After compiling a long list of charges made against Cameron Boxer, Sam looked at me. “As much as I hate to ask this, can you arrange to come with us to Graeagle?”
I couldn’t believe my ears. “You want me to come along?” I marveled.
“No, but you’re a witness and you can ID some of these characters. I don’t want to take a chance of picking these guys up and hauling them a thousand miles just to find out they’re the wrong ones. Besides, we’re gonna have to work with the local authorities up there. The more credible witnesses I have to back up my request to extradite them into my custody, the better.”
I smiled. “I’m not only a witness, but now I’m a credible witness?”
Sam scowled at me. “Don’t get smart. When can you be ready to go?”
Chapter Fifteen
Ronnie, Lance, and I sat in a quiet corner and watched the experienced police officers and federal agents flesh out their plan for the big sting operation. We’d been instructed to meet the local Plumas County Sheriff at his home rather than at the police station, to avoid being spotted by Cameron Boxer or any of his employees.
“You know where all these people live?” Sam asked the local sheriff.
Sheriff Dino Santucci scoffed at the question. “I know where every resident of this county lives,” he bragged. “And if I happen to forget one or two, I can have the address in five minutes.”
Sheriff Santucci’s big frame barely fit into the uniform stretched around his body. Not that he was fat, because I don’t think there was an ounce of fat on him. He was just big. I wondered why the county didn’t provide him with a uniform of the proper size.
“And as far as you know, these three men, Boxer, Hollers, and Pianalto, haven’t left the area?” Sam asked.
“Saw them myself this morning, having breakfast over at Perkos. They were having some kind of important meeting, looked like to me,” Sheriff Santucci said. “I sent three of my men to stake out their houses after you called me. I expect a report any minute.”
At that moment, the conversation was interrupted by a ringing telephone.
“Excuse me,” Sheriff Santucci said, picking up the phone. “Santucci,” he barked into the receiver. “What’ve you got? All of them? Good. Stay put. We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
Sam and the federal agents watched the sheriff’s face, hopeful for good news.
“We got ‘em. They’re all over at Boxer’s place. Doubles as his office, so that’s their official workplace,” Santucci said, pulling his big revolver out of its holster to check his bullets.
Sam and his men stood and proceeded to check their weapons. I got to my feet, ready to go.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Sam asked.
“I thought—”
“You three are staying right here. The last thing I need is a bunch of civilians getting in the way of a potentially hazardous arrest.”
“But—”
“But nothing. Right here. Understand?”
I nodded and sat back down next to Ronnie.
One of Sheriff Santucci’s clerks stayed with us at his house while the army of authorities set out to capture the bad guys. He produced a deck of playing cards and proceeded to shuffle them.
“Anyone for a game of fish?” he asked.
After a dozen hands of every card game the four of us could recall from our teenage years, Sheriff Santucci’s telephone rang. The clerk grabbed it and listened carefully to the voice at the other end. “Ten-four!” he blurted into the phone, then hung up.
“They got ‘em,” he announced. “I gotta take you all down to the station so you can ID the perps.”
I smiled at the clerk’s enthusiasm over what must be the most excitement to hit this community since the high school math teacher’s daughter chained herself to a buoy in the middle of Lake Davis to prevent
the poisoning the pike fish.
I wasn’t prepared for what I saw when we arrived at the small police station. An EMT was trying to get Sheriff Santucci to sit down long enough to apply a bandage to his bleeding arm. Santucci kept swatting him away like an annoying insect. “I’m okay, Elvis. Just a flesh wound,” he insisted.
“It’s a gunshot wound, Sheriff. I gotta clean it,” the EMT insisted.
“In a minute. Now go see about those other fellas over there,” Santucci said, pointing to three men huddled around a small desk, applying pressure to various wounds inflicted on their bodies.
Sam waved Ronnie, Lance, and I over to the desk he was perched on. A medic was cleaning a gash in his forehead. He winced at the stinging of the antiseptic on his open flesh.
“Are you okay?” I asked, staring at the cut, which was still producing enough blood to require a mopping up every few seconds.
“Ouch!” Sam exclaimed, trying to shrink from the cotton swab doused with something that smelled like it could kill every form of bacteria ever discovered.
“What happened?” I asked, glancing around the room at a half-dozen bleeding men in uniforms.
Sam pushed the medic’s hand away from his head and took over the task of applying pressure to his wound. “They resisted arrest.”
“I guess so,” I said. “Was anybody seriously hurt?”
Sam shook his head. “Just a few cuts and scratches. Maybe a few stitches. We were lucky.”
“Where are Boxer and his men?” Ronnie asked, nervously.
“They’re locked in a holding cell. When we’re done here, I’m gonna have you take a look at them. Make sure we got the right guys. Then we’re on our way home,” Sam explained.
News of the arrest spread like wildfire in the small community. By the time we returned to San Diego, every major network was reporting the arrest of the group of men implicated in the murders and attempted murders of several inventors across the country over a time period of nearly thirty-five years.
By the end of the second day of his incarceration, Cameron Boxer had not uttered a single word about the charges against him. Hollers and Pianalto were equally as tight-lipped. I imagined they were more afraid of the ramifications of exposing the entities that supported their business than the penalties imposed on them by the law.
Ronnie had been whisked off into a witness protection program until all the major players could be rounded up and an attempt made to hold them accountable for their crimes.
Craig and I made an effort to return to some normal semblance of life. We were in the backyard, playing with the puppy, which had managed to double in size since he came to live with us.
“Uncle Doug says if we don’t name this puppy by the end of the week, he’s going to do it for us,” I said to Craig.
“Uh oh. I bet we won’t like the name he comes up with.”
“Probably not. He suggested Dogzilla,” I said, chuckling.
The cordless phone rang on the patio table. I jumped up to answer it. “Hello?”
“Devonie? This is Jake,” he said.
“Hi Jake. How are you?”
“Fine. Have you seen Ronnie?” he asked.
“No, Jake. I don’t even know where she is. You know you can’t have any contact with her,” I reminded him. I was surprised he even made the attempt.
“I know, but now that Boxer is locked up—”
“Right. Boxer’s locked up. The hornet’s nest has been hit with a stick. You think that makes Ronnie’s situation better?”
There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Finally, he spoke. “Devonie. If by chance you see or talk to her, just tell her I asked about her and hope she’s doing okay.”
“I will,” I assured him.
“And tell her I love her,” he quickly added.
“Okay, Jake.”
Craig ran into the master bathroom and grabbed my arm while I brushed my teeth. “You’ve gotta see this,” he said, as he pulled me down the hall to the living room, where the nightly news blared from the television.
I wiped the toothpaste from my chin and sat on the edge of the sofa. I watched the replaying of the horrible events as they played out earlier in the day. As Boxer, Hollers, and Pianalto were being escorted into the courthouse, a military-looking helicopter appeared from out of nowhere. A sniper in the chopper opened fire on the men, striking them all down on the front steps of the courthouse. In ten seconds, it was all over and the helicopter disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. The reports had been verified. It was official. Cameron Dean Boxer, Archibald Quincy Hollers, and Antonio Vincent Pianalto were pronounced dead at the scene.
Chapter Sixteen
Not more than twenty minutes after hearing the news about the assassination, our phone rang. It was Sam.
“Devonie, have you seen Ronnie?” he asked, sounding almost out of breath.
“Ronnie? No. Don’t tell me you’ve lost her,” I said, dreading his response.
“She’s missing. Just disappeared. No one saw anything. I was hoping maybe she’d try to contact you,” he explained.
“No. Have you checked with her brother?” I asked.
“Yeah. Tried him first. He’s madder than a cat with a sock on its head.”
“So you think she took off on her own? Not taken by those guys who killed Boxer and his gang?” I asked.
“At this point, we don’t know. We’re hoping she just saw the news and got scared. Took off and found her own hiding place,” Sam said, trying to sound hopeful.
“Well, she has no home to go back to. Lance is her only family. Jake is back in Detroit. I doubt she’d look him up. Last time I saw them together, he wasn’t earning any points with her,” I said.
“Anyone else you can think of?” Sam asked. “Anyone she may have mentioned that might hide her out?”
I searched my memory for anything she might have told me in passing. “I can’t think of anyone she talked about enough that she’d trust her life with.”
Sam made a half growl, half moan sound into the phone. I pictured him eating aspirin like candy. “Okay,” he groaned. “If you hear anything, call me. Don’t go playing Wonder Woman. I think we’ve got a dragon by the tail here, and no swords.”
I told Craig about Sam’s call as we climbed into bed. He eyed me closely as I told him about Ronnie’s disappearance. I noticed his strange stare.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“What are you planning?” he replied.
“Me? Nothing. Why?”
He laughed. “Yeah, right. Nothing. I don’t think you’re capable of doing nothing.”
“Am so,” I defended.
He just grinned at me. He wouldn’t look away. I felt like a bug in a glass jar. He knows me so well.
“Okay. So maybe I’ll just ask around tomorrow. Maybe her friend Larry knows something. Or maybe I’ll call Jack Pearle. Couldn’t hurt,” I said.
Craig switched off the lamp on the nightstand. “Just promise you’ll be careful. Okay?”
“I’m always careful,” I said. Then I thought about the events of my life over the past three years and wondered how I could make such a claim.
I called Larry’s shop and asked him if he’d heard from Ronnie in the last couple of days. He hadn’t heard a word from her.
I called Jack Pearle, but could not get an answer. I finally decided to take a drive to his shop. When I arrived, the place didn’t look much different than the first time I’d been there. The doors were all closed. I knocked, but no one answered. I stepped up to the window and cupped my hands over the glass to see inside. The place was empty. All the machines were gone. The workbenches were bare. I stepped back and double-checked that I had the right shop. The number stenciled on the door was definitely the right one. I gazed around the complex, confused. I wandered across the driveway to an open door where I saw activity inside.
“Excuse me,” I said, catching the attention of a man busy applying some sort of fiberglass resin to the
underside of a small boat.
He stood straight and removed the mask from his face. “Can I help you?” he asked.
“I’m looking for Jack Pearle. Have you seen him?”
The man glanced past me, toward the door that used to belong to Pearle Manufacturing. “That’s his shop over there,” he said, nodding in the general direction of Jack’s shop.
“I know, but it seems to have been closed down,” I said.
“Huh?” he replied.
“It’s empty. No machines. No nothing,” I explained.
The man set down his tools and shook his head. “Can’t be. He was here, big as life, yesterday.”
“Well he’s not here now,” I reiterated.
The man put his mask down on a bench and marched across the driveway to Jack’s door and tried the knob. When he realized it was locked, he knocked. “Jack’s late coming in most days,” he said, waiting for something that wasn’t going to happen. “Like he always says, Jack doesn’t tick for time. Time ticks for Jack.”
I motioned toward the window. “Take a look for yourself. It’s empty.”
He peered through the window. “Well I’ll be danged. I swear it was business as usual yesterday. He had to have moved everything out last night.”
All the way home, I racked my brain to come up with an answer to where Jack Pearle might have disappeared to, and why.
When I arrived home, I tossed a pile of mail on the table in the foyer, set my purse on the kitchen table and rummaged through a stack of business cards, looking for the one Jake Monroe gave me. I dialed the direct line for his office. As I listened to his voice-mail announcement, I carried the cordless phone through the house to the back door to let the puppy in. I didn’t have the heart to lock him in his kennel, which didn’t seem big enough for a dog his size. I decided he should have free run of the back yard. He happily bounded in through the open French doors and licked my feet. I giggled and patted him on the back.
When Jake’s recording beeped in my ear, I left him an urgent message to call me as soon as he got in. I didn’t tell any details of the emergency over the phone. When three hours had passed and he had not returned my call, I decided to try calling him again. I pressed the 0 button halfway through his voice-mail message so I could speak to the company switchboard operator. After being transferred to a half-dozen different departments, I finally determined that Jake was not anywhere in the plant. Though no one told me so, I got the impression that his absence was not planned. He just didn’t show up for work today.
