by Jeff Nania
As he turned and started to walk into the house, I said, “Hey, David. One question before you go.” He stopped and turned around. “What was the name of the travel agent that you had Uncle Nick contact?”
He was briefly caught off guard but recovered quickly. “I am sorry, John. I don’t recall. I recently changed agents.” He quickly turned on his heel and disappeared into the house, ending the possibility of any further questions.
The look on his face confirmed I had caught him in a lie about the travel agent.
I got up and walked to the door. Derek remained seated, slump shouldered and looking down. I got in the jeep and drove out. As I approached the gate, it swung open, allowing me to leave. On the road, I immediately checked the glove box. The little Walther was there, minus the ammunition.
17
Cabrelli
I drove back into town and stopped at Ron’s jewelry store. In a parking stall in front of the store was a full-dress, made-in-Wisconsin Harley Davidson motorcycle, a two-wheeled advertisement that said Ron Carver was in. I parked and walked by the cycle. It was immaculate, chrome and leather all polished to a sheen. The gas tank had a custom paint job, flames trailing back from either side, joining in the middle to create a vortex.
Chrome exhaust pipes ran along the side and out by the back wheel, the chrome a little discolored from the heat. There are motorcycles and there are motorcycles. This one was really something, made for the open road.
I walked into the store and saw that Ron was holding court with his employees. He glanced up at me and gave me the sign for just a minute. The jewelry cases were full of every kind of jewelry imaginable. Hundreds of pairs of earrings, necklaces, and rings were all perfectly displayed in lighted cases. From plain silver bands to stone-encrusted pendants, it was all there.
At the end of the counter, I saw a different kind of display—a Plexiglas case that held custom knives. Not your run-of-the-mill hardware store fare, these were each handcrafted with the utmost attention to detail; locking folders and fixed blades dominated the selection. But down in the corner were several elegant little pocket knives. The handles were made from varied materials ranging from wood with beautiful grain to what looked like ivory. There was one that was a single blade about three inches long, and its handles were made of some type of highly figured wood. The blade was long and slim with a small “up” curve at the tip. It was a beauty. I needed to remember to ask Ron to let me take a look at it.
Ron Carver did not just walk into a room, he took the place over with his gravel voice, barrel chest, white beard and hair. His voice boomed, “Johnny boy, I see you made it to see ol’ Ron. Come on, let’s get out of here and go get a beer or whatever. We have got to talk.”
With that, he walked out of the store, across the street, and into the Fisherman Bar. He never looked back to see if I was following because he was the kind of guy that just assumed I would. And if I didn’t, he wouldn’t care. He had a strong stride and seemed to be a little bowlegged. He walked like a man that meant it and left a wake of vibes that said “mess with me at your peril.”
He slid into a booth, and I joined him.
A cute waitress hustled over to us.
“Hi, Ron! Do you want the usual?”
“I would, sweetheart. Have the cook grill up another steak sandwich for young Johnny here, too, and get him something to drink.”
I ordered a Diet Pepsi and Ron laughed.
“I gotta say, Johnny, it’s good to see you. You probably don’t remember me from when you were a kid, but I was around. Back then I was too busy building up my business, working all the time. Even then, your uncle Nick and I were best friends. He and I had independent streaks that really don’t require much social support. Besides that, we were both incapable of listening to chitter-chatter small talk. So we found that each other’s company suited our needs just fine.
“Your aunt Rose, though, just wanted to kill us sometimes. She was always doing something, organizing this and organizing that. If there was a good cause that needed a friend, Rose was the girl. She would tell Nick and I that we needed to show up at these fundraising events. She told me that it would be bad for my business if I didn’t. She told Nick it would be bad for his health if he didn’t. We tried it for about a year, but social butterflies we were not. We didn’t cause any trouble, at least not much, but some people are just not made for social small talk. Rose got tired of talking us into going, and we got tired of going about the same time. She was a smart one, that Rose.”
Ron stopped for a second and took a big sip of his beer. I could see in his blue eyes that his remembrance made him revisit the sense of loss he still felt. Sadness that never really goes away.
“So get this, one night she had us both in monkey suits and was taking us to the hospital fundraiser. Christ, every time Nick put on a tie I was sure his head would pop. His goddamned face would get so red. Well anyway, we get there, and before we walk in, Rose says she has a deal for us. We don’t have to go to any more fundraisers if we are willing to make a cash donation to the cause. We could buy our way out of jail so to speak. We didn’t even bat an eye, ‘How much?’ Nick asked as he reached for his wallet. ‘Not so fast, boys,’ Rose replied. ‘Nick, your donation cannot come from our household account or savings. It needs to come out of your shop/gun/gear fund. Ron, I don’t care where yours comes from.’
“Jesus, I thought Nick was gonna have a stroke right there. Rose was raiding his private little cash account, the account he had held sacred, the walking-around money he had gleaned from this and that. Aunt Rose had him. A continued life of chitter-chatter or a decrease in the net value of his most valuable cash resources. I didn’t much care what your uncle did. I was not going to miss my chance and I went for it. ‘Sounds good to me, Rose. How much?’ ‘We will start with ten times the event ticket price,’ She answered. Tickets for tonight are $25 each, your donation would be $250.’
“It was a no-brainer. I had a blank check in my wallet and wrote it out with a pen she just happened to have. Nick, however, was just standing there looking like a deer in the goddamn headlights. I knew he had been saving for a new milling machine for the shop, and this would put a dent in things, but he was more worried about the long-term consequences; Rose did a bunch of charity work, and it wouldn’t take long for him to feel the pinch. She took my check, waved goodbye, grabbed Nick by the arm, and dragged him toward the door. They almost got inside when Nick stopped stone dead. He didn’t say a word. He turned his back to Rose and pulled out his wallet. From a side compartment he pulled out some hidden bills, he carefully went through them, put some back, and handed Rose two hundreds and a fifty. She kissed him on the cheek and went inside. That Rose was quite a gal. She loved Nick and tolerated me. What more could you ask for?”
Ron got a misty, wistful look in his eyes, “Yeah, Nick and I had some great adventures. They don’t make many guys like us anymore. I miss him. I haven’t had a decent piece of blueberry pie since Rose died. She used to send us out into the bush to collect wild blueberries. Nick had these antique blueberry scoops he bought at the flea market, and they worked perfectly. In a good year, we would collect a couple of big buckets full. Then Rose would turn those into pie sent from heaven. God, I loved her blueberry pie for breakfast.”
Ron jogged my memory, and I said, “I used to love her blueberry pies too. I remember her putting a big scoop of West’s vanilla on top. I picked blueberries, too. We used to go out to Bear Island, and they were thick. One time out there, I was picking on one side of the island, and Uncle Nick was on the other. For every blueberry I put in the bucket, I ate two. By the time we got back in the boat to go home, I had reached my blueberry saturation level, and I was looking a little green, but I was happy. Uncle Nick just laughed at my almost empty bucket.”
We just sat there for a moment. I was thinking about the picture Ron had painted of my uncle and aunt. I longed to see them once more, just one more night by the fire, one more piece of pie. Jus
t a few more minutes to make up for time lost.
“Enough reminiscing, Johnny. We got a lot of ground to cover and work to do. You and I are going to find the son of a bitch that ran him down. I got some pretty good ideas about where to start looking. There’s a fair bunch of snakes in the woodpile around here. We are going to light it on fire and smoke them out. We’ll make them pay, Johnny. We are sure as shit going to make them pay.”
Steak sandwiches, a Diet Pepsi, and a glass of the darkest beer I had ever seen were served.
Ron ate like a man who was in a hurry but really liked what he was eating.
“This dark beer is a local brew. They don’t sell much of it, but there are a few locals that won’t drink anything else, so they keep it on tap. You can damn near get a spoon to stand straight up in it. It’s kind of like a meal all in itself. You ought to give it a try next time you’re drinking beer. It will put hair on your—”
The waitress interrupted, “Can I get you boys anything else?”
Neither of us needed anything. She put our check on the table, and as she turned her head to look at Ron, I noticed the beautiful sparkling earrings she was wearing. “So, Ron, what time are you going to pick me up tonight? I’m looking forward to that motorcycle ride you promised.”
“Around six or so. Looks like it’s going to be a nice night for it,” he replied.
“See you then, handsome,” she said, as she sashayed away with a little glance back to make sure Ron was watching, and she wasn’t disappointed.
We finished up and walked back out on the street. Ron suggested we go back up to his store. He had an office in the back that could be accessed from the showroom or the alley behind. The office was a mixture of hi-tech and log cabin. A bank of five super high-resolution security cameras were above a desk that was against what appeared to be one-way glass, making it so we could see everything going on in the store, and no one would know we were watching. In another corner, a fishing vest and wooden handled net hung on an antique coat rack, and a fly rod leaned against them. Hanging from another one of the hooks was an old cowboy belt and holster, made of black hand-tooled leather and adorned with silver conchos. In the holster was a vintage Colt single action army revolver with what looked like real ivory grips. Leaning in a corner beneath the coat rack was an AR-15 style rifle, made of black metal and plastic with a high capacity magazine sticking out the bottom. There was a well-worn leather recliner, and next to it a small table with a pile of magazines on top. A flat screen TV was mounted on the wall across from it. The remote control for the set was duct taped to a pine board about four inches wide and two feet long.
As I looked at it, he said, “I kept losing that remote. Haven’t lost it once since I taped it to that board.”
Then Ron added, “I knew that you would come here and help me look into what happened to Nick, so I waited for you. I know some things I haven’t shared with anyone. The fact is, I don’t know who to trust, so in that case, it is better to keep your ears open and your mouth shut. Now that you’re here, it’s time to get moving. I just needed a little backup.”
I started to speak, but he shushed me. “Listen to what I have to say first. Maybe it will answer some of your questions.”
He paced back and forth. “First off, they said there were no witnesses to the murder, and I am calling it murder because that’s exactly what it was. There were two witnesses, Nick and the bastard who ran him down. I don’t know about anybody else. No one came forward anyway.”
In a sense, perpetrators and victims are witnesses. This becomes most evident when there is more than one perp who rats out his or her buddy. The perp becomes an eyewitness—happens more often than you would think. Honor among thieves is not alive in today’s criminal population.
“Your uncle didn’t die right away. He had sure been killed but hung on for a while. He saw the driver. He saw the truck. He wasn’t himself, but even half there Nick was smarter than anyone else around here. It took him a while, but the story he gave me is one helluva lot different than what the cops came up with.
“The truck was a white Ford Expedition. I brought in pictures of every truck I could find, and he picked it right out. Then I showed him a color chart from one of the dealer brochures, and he pointed to white.
“He was getting weaker by the minute, but he wanted to tell me as much as he could. However, both of us knew that the end was close.
“Here is what I figured happened: Nick walked over to the café to have a cup and a little breakfast every day, rain or shine, 90 degrees or minus 20. He liked the place because the food was good, the coffee was strong, and the joint opened at 5:00 a.m. He loved to walk. I think it helped heal his mind after Rose died. His route took him along the lakeshore, then to a trail that paralleled the highway but was 100 or so yards off. The trail is in pretty good shape because it sees some semi-regular use mainly by locals on ATVs and snow machines. Nick loved watching wildlife, and he’d write in his notebook about every different kind of bird or critter he saw. He read a bunch of stuff by a guy named Leopold and really got into something called phenology. Anyway, he took very detailed notes about everything he encountered on his walks.”
“Do the police have the notebook?” I asked.
“Hold on. You’re getting ahead of me. The answer is they don’t have it, I do. We’ll get to that. Just let me finish.”
“Okay, sorry.”
“Here is what he was able to tell me about the day he got run down. He was just taking his normal walk, spotted a bird that he hadn’t seen before, and was stopped on the trail looking at it through his field glasses. When he got to the road, he stopped to record his sighting, and that’s when he heard the truck. It must have been coming fast. He was in damn good shape, but he couldn’t move quick enough to get out of the way. He said the truck aimed right at him, but he couldn’t see the driver. He had no doubt the guy was out to get him. That’s the last he remembered and pretty much the last thing he spoke, except for the words, ‘My journal.’
“I went and talked to the sheriff and gave him the information I had. He listened to me and then called an investigator in. I think they already had their mind made up that it was an accidental hit and run. I felt like they were just trying to humor me. I did my best to convince them. Before I left, I asked if they had recovered Nick’s journal, because I was sure when his nephew, you I mean, got here that you would want it. They looked over the evidence list and found no mention of a journal, and neither one recalled ever seeing one.
“I was pretty pissed off when I left there. The next morning, I hauled my ass out to the scene of the accident and started looking around for myself. After about an hour, I saw something yellow mostly buried by leaves. By God, it was his journal. He used these notebooks with waterproof pages so it was still as good as new. I put it in my pocket and kept looking around, but I didn’t find anything else.
“When I got back here, I started looking through the notebook and found a notation made two days before the accident. A couple of the seasonal lake homes had been burglarized, so the sheriff put out a notice in the paper and on the radio asking folks to write down the descriptions of any strange vehicles or people they saw in their area. Pretty much everybody participates in the Northwoods neighborhood watch anyway and especially when they put out a special alert.
“Nick had come upon a white Ford Expedition parked off the road, where it was out of sight. His hiding spot was on Nick’s trail. He must have thought things looked suspicious because he wrote down everything he could remember. And if Nick was anything, he was a detail man. As soon as the driver saw Nick, he slammed the truck in reverse and took off. I figure the sonuvabitch was looking things over, figuring the best place to take out your uncle. He got a little confused and pulled into the wrong trail. Nick saw his killer two days before he was run down. This was no accident; that bastard was stalking him.”
“Did he get a plate number?” I asked.
“No plate on the front, and one of tho
se temporary cardboard plates on the back. It was covered with mud, and he couldn’t make out the letters or numbers.”
“Did he report the truck as part of the watch program?”
“I would think he would have, but neither Chief Timmy nor the sheriff’s department had record of a report,” Ron answered impatiently.
I didn’t interrupt anymore and listened to the rest of the story. My uncle was murdered, premeditated, intentionally killed. The weight of the situation settled squarely on my shoulders. I had nothing to say. In fact, neither of us spoke for a while, keeping our heads down and avoiding eye contact to avoid the possibility of sharing feelings.
Our quiet was disturbed by a low but audible beeping. A red light at the bottom corner of one of the screens had started to blink triggered by an employee. On the screen, one of Ron’s salespeople was showing a customer a tray of rings.
Ron and I looked closer and backed up the video. You could see that the customer had passed his hand over the ring tray and selected a ring from the back row. When he brought his hand back with the ring he had selected, two of the previously filled slots in the front row were now empty.
“My people are trained to be cool in these cases. No one will do anything to spook the thief. They just go on like nothin’ happened.”
Ron hit the speed dial on his cell, notified the dispatcher of the situation, and gave a description of the thief. Then he told me to follow him, and we ducked out the back door and came around to the front, lingering on the corner like a couple of tourists. The guy walked out of the store, and Ron blocked his way.
At that moment, a squad pulled up. The thief, a thirty-something man with a goatee and a spider tattoo on his neck, did the look around—fight, flight, or give it up. Ron reached his hand inside his leather jacket and turned it back a little just so the guy could see his hand on the butt of a gun. The sight of the gun helped make up his mind for him, and his shoulders slumped as the cop approached. He emptied his pockets, and there were two of Ron’s rings worth a couple thousand dollars. The dude was up from Chicago on vacation and figured he would make a few extra bucks while he was here. The cop cuffed him and put him in the back of the car. Ron said thanks to the cop and sent him off with a “Book ’em, Danno.”
