Red Clover

by Florence Osmund

  “Mm-hm.”

  “You sly dog. You didn’t tell me you two had something going on.”

  “There’s nothing going on. All I did was offer to drive her to CJ’s.”

  “So how did that just happen?”

  “It just did, that’s all. Look, she a great gal. The whole Senator Wheland thing was such a godsend to my cause. There’s nothing more to it.”

  “For now.”

  “I’m still legally married, remember. I have to keep my nose clean. But if I’m honest about it...”

  “Go on.”

  “I’m not going to lie. I’ve thought about what it would be like to be with someone again.” He paused. “Someone genuine...like Francine.”

  “You deserve that.”

  “I’m not so sure of that. When I think back to my marriage, I think I may have been more wedded to my law firm than to Daphne. That wasn’t fair.”

  “You’re not thinking of reconciling with her, are you?”

  “No. I guess I’m just feeling a little guilty about things.”

  Lee learned the divorce was moving ahead and that Bennett and his wife would have to appear in court at the end of the month. He was giving her more than half of everything they owned and would be paying alimony and child support.

  “And the kids?”

  “I talk to them as often as I can, but she intercepts their calls most of the time. I’ll be glad when they’re old enough to make their own calls. Hopefully, she will not have turned them against me by then.”

  “They’re smart kids.”

  “I know, but if they hear from her how I am ‘the bad guy’ enough times, pretty soon it becomes a matter of fact.

  They moved on to discuss DeRam’s arrest. When Bennett insisted on knowing what Lee knew about it, Lee tried to maintain that he was as surprised as everyone else.

  “Right, little brother.”

  “Okay, so I had a little something to do with it.”

  “Spill it.”

  “There’s this guy in town who hates DeRam as much as I do. His nickname is Bulldog, if that gives you any indication about this guy’s character. Anyway, he’s been in his share of trouble over the years, has a record, but he’s not a totally bad guy. So I find out DeRam recently arrested him for a burglary he didn’t commit along with a bunch of other trumped-up charges, and this guy had no money for a decent lawyer and was looking at jail time for something he didn’t do. So I helped him out.”

  “You paid for his lawyer?”

  “I did.”

  “So this punk tells you he was arrested for something he didn’t do. And you believed him?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Why? You said he has a record.”

  “Because the burglary was at a Milwaukee gun store owned by one of DeRam’s brothers, and the guy said he would bet any amount of money DeRam was somehow involved in it and was trying to pin it on him. Maybe even an inside job to get insurance money. It wouldn’t be that farfetched.”

  “The same thing DeRam tried to pull on you.”

  “Right. It’s his MO.”

  “But you still didn’t know for sure, so you were taking a big risk getting involved. But go on.”

  “I know I didn’t think it all the way through at the time. Looking back, I think I probably attached more importance to seeing DeRam suffer what he justly deserved than to any risk I was taking. Anyway, I put a little bug in Bulldog’s ear that if police were to search DeRam’s house for the stolen guns, they might also find a rather large stash of pot.”

  “So what was the probable cause for searching DeRam’s house? No judge is going to issue a warrant on a hunch or an unsubstantiated suspicion.”

  “Well, it turns out DeRam’s sister-in-law, the wife of the gun store owner, hates him. Thinks he’s a bad influence on her husband and won’t even let him around her kids. And Bulldog knew this because he’s dating her sister, Roberta.”

  “Ah, the plot thickens.”

  “Something like that. Did I mention that this guy Bulldog walks with a limp?”

  “No.”

  “He held up a gas station one time. Got caught running from the scene of the crime by DeRam...who shot him in the back of his knee.”

  “Ouch! That had to smart.”

  “I guess. Anyway, when Roberta heard about Bulldog’s most recent arrest, she told her sister she wanted revenge against DeRam. So now we have two scrappy sisters and a reckless ex-con all wanting DeRam out of the picture, and I had the opportunity to help them make that happen.”

  “Now you’re scaring me. Tell me you didn’t do anything illegal.”

  “Of course not. I didn’t, anyway. I’m not so sure about Roberta.”

  “Go on.”

  “So Bulldog gets Roberta to come on to DeRam at the Deer Bottom Inn one night after DeRam has had a few beers. She tells him she broke up with Bulldog—a lie, of course—is feeling pretty lonely, and starts flirting with him. He buys her drinks. One thing leads to another, and she goes home with him. Once she’s in his house, she lays it on even thicker and gets him to drink more. Then when he’s just short of passing out, she tells him she’s been afraid to be alone in her apartment these days because Bulldog wasn’t happy about their breakup. She tells him she’s so scared of him, she’s thinking about getting a gun.

  “Well, DeRam is all over that. Apparently, he puffs out his chest and tells her he can take care of that for her, but she can’t tell anyone where she got the gun. She tells him it has to be a small gun because, ‘I’m just petrified of guns.' Roberta knew, of course, that many of the guns stolen from her brother-in-law’s shop were 9mm revolvers.”

  “And here I thought this kind of thing only happened in the movies.”

  “From what I hear, Roberta is quite a character. I’d like to meet her one day. Anyway, DeRam disappears down his basement stairs and comes back with a nice little compact Beretta. She waits until he passes out on the sofa and then leaves. When she shows the gun to DeRam’s brother, he verifies it’s one of the stolen guns and gets livid that his own brother had something to do with the burglary. He goes to the Milwaukee police, who turn the case over to the feds.”

  “So there’s your probable cause for the search warrant.”

  “And when they search his basement for the rest of the stolen weapons, voila! They find over a hundred pounds of marijuana.”

  “And DeRam gets arrested, thanks to you.”

  “All I did was come up with a few what ifs for three rather spirited individuals, shall we say. They came up with the plan and carried out the deed all on their own.”

  “Nice work, man.”

  “Thank you.”

  28 | Unauthorized Entry

  Knowing so little about his real father was beginning to gnaw at Lee. Here he was developing hundreds of acres of land to meet the man’s criteria without having any idea what life experiences or thought processes had led to them, and now he didn’t feel confident he was doing the right thing. Sure, Stonebugger had given him the go-ahead, but that may have been only because he was too overcome with grief over his sister’s death to argue.

  Determined to know more about Nelson Sambourg before he took his latest project any further, Lee went to the library and perused the names of printing companies listed in the Gary, Indiana Yellow Pages. There were fourteen companies. Arietta, the name his mother had thrown out, was not among them. She had said she thought the name of the company was musical. None of the names appeared musical to him, but he wrote down the addresses and phone numbers of all fourteen anyway.

  When he got home, he called all of them and asked to speak to Nelson Sambourg. Not one of the people who answered knew anyone by that name.

  Lee next got out a map of Indiana, wrote down the names of the four smaller towns surrounding Gary, and then called the library to see if they had Yellow Pages for these smaller towns. They did not.

  Not to be deterred, Lee drove two and a half hours to Clarke Junction, Indiana, the fi
rst town on his list, and found a phone booth. He flipped through the Yellow Pages only to find there were no printing companies listed. There was none in Ivanhoe either. Black Oak listed one company, Sorenson’s Printing. When Lee called the number, a recording told him it had been disconnected.

  He stopped at a diner for lunch before heading out to Aetna, the last town on his list. Prepared to find nothing, he finished his sandwich and thought about the disheartening drive home he was likely to have.

  The roadside sign indicated less than three thousand people lived in Aetna. He drove through the modest town looking for a gas station but found none until he was about five miles out of town. He pulled in, but the only phone book in their phone booth was the one for Gary, which he had previously examined. He went into the gas station.

  “Do you know anything about Aetna?” he asked the young clerk behind the counter.

  “Not much. What do ya wanna know?”

  “I’m looking for a phone book for that town.”

  “Not sure if they have one. I think they’re really part of Gary.”

  “Thanks.”

  Lee was almost to the door when the clerk called him back.

  “They do have a library. You might wanna check there.”

  “Do you know where it’s located?”

  “Town ain’t very big. Can’t be too hard to find.”

  “Thanks.”

  He drove back to Aetna in search of the library, thinking this was probably a big waste of time, and when he found it—a tiny little shack of a building at the end of a residential street—he was sure of it. He went in and asked the woman behind the desk if they had a phone book for Aetna.

  “Not a current one. We’re annexed to Gary now, so we’re included in theirs.”

  “If you have an older one, I’d like to see it.”

  She disappeared for several minutes and returned with a very thin book dated 1968, almost twenty years old. She handed it to him.

  “Thanks. I’ll bring it right back.”

  Lee took a seat at one of the two small tables in the center of the room. There were no Yellow Pages, so he had to scan each column of names in the entire book. And there it was, halfway down the second column of page one. Allegro Printing. Allegro was a familiar musical term meaning rapid tempo.

  He stared at the name for a moment and then smiled when he realized he was experiencing what must be an “allegro” heartbeat.

  “Can you tell me where I can find the nearest public phone?”

  “Is it a local call?”

  “Yes.”

  She glanced at the phone on her desk. “You can use this one if you want.”

  He hesitated. “It’s kind of personal.”

  “Gas station is your best bet then. Closest one is in Gary.”

  Lee thanked the librarian and headed back to the gas station in Gary, excited about his find.

  “May I speak to Nelson Sambourg, please?”

  “Mr. Sambourg is no longer here. May I put you through to someone else who can help you?”

  Bingo. “Perhaps. May I ask who the new owner is?”

  “The company is currently in probate.”

  “May I speak with the current person in charge then?”

  “If you tell me what you’re looking for, perhaps I can direct you to the right person.”

  Lee hadn’t thought through this scenario and had to think of something quickly. “I may be interested in purchasing the company.”

  “Then you’ll want to speak with the executor of Mr. Sambourg’s estate.”

  Wrong question. “Okay,” Lee said, knowing full well who that was. “Can you give me his name and number?”

  “His name is Basil Stonebugger.” She gave him the number.

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Lee had originally thought he could make a connection with whomever was in charge, and pretending to be Nelson’s nephew, ask if he could have one last look around the plant for old time’s sake. He had concocted a long tale in his mind about how his uncle had brought him to the plant on weekends when he was a small boy and let him sit in his big desk chair pretending he was the boss and his uncle worked for him. No chance of doing that now.

  He looked at the address he had jotted down at the library—800 North Lake Street. He remembered crossing over that street to get to Gary.

  Lee retraced his route to Lake Street. When he found it, he took a chance and turned to the right. It didn’t take him long to find the address.

  The three-story brick building sat in the middle of a long stretch of road surrounded by other industrial buildings. He pulled into a parking lot across the street and parked his car facing the building. High above the front door, the company’s name, faded and almost illegible, had been painted in white on the dark brick façade. He contemplated trying to pull off his original ruse by telling the receptionist he was Nelson’s nephew, thinking she would have no reason to believe he was the one who had called earlier. What did he have to lose?

  He rang the doorbell and was buzzed in. The reception area was just large enough for a small desk, four guest chairs, a side table, a plastic ficus tree, and a water cooler.

  “May I help you?” the receptionist asked. With her grey hair piled up in a mound on top of her head and silver-rimmed glasses balancing on the end of her nose, she reminded Lee of the old woman who lived in the shoe from his favorite boyhood nursery rhyme. Her nameplate read Henrietta Davis.

  “Hi. I have what may be a strange request.”

  “Yes?”

  He told her the touching story of how Nelson, his favorite uncle, had brought him here when he was just a youngster.

  Miss Davis listened attentively.

  “I’m sorry for your loss, and I must admit, that was a moving story, but I’m afraid I can’t let you have access inside.”

  “Why not? What would be the harm?”

  “This company is in probate. I have strict orders from the executor of Mr. Sambourg’s estate as to who can come and go, and you’re not on that list.”

  “Who is on that list?”

  “Employees, lawyers, tax people, and then of course there are prospective buyers. Except for employees, no one is admitted without an appointment.”

  “May I ask how many employees work here?”

  “Now? Not that many. Each additional week this place stays in limbo, the more people leave. It’s a shame I tell you.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Twenty-three years.”

  “So you must have known my uncle well.”

  “I met him a few times over the years. He typically didn’t come in during normal business hours. Someone else ran the place. Look, I’ve probably said too much already. It’s only a matter of time before I get the boot. And look at me. I’m fifty-nine years old. Where am I going to find another job? I have a sick husband at home who can’t work, and I’m carrying the load. So I would appreciate it if you’d leave before I get in trouble.”

  “Okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bother you.”

  Lee sat in his car and mindlessly stared at the Allegro sign for several minutes before driving off. Feeling defeated and sorry for himself, he went back and forth between feeling compassion for his mother and resenting her all over again for everything—for having the affair, for telling lie after lie throughout his life, for sharing so little about his father with him. But then he thought of Henry, and he couldn’t help but feel sympathy for her.

  He started beating himself up for wasting an entire day on a wild goose chase and decided not to tell anyone about it. He had been foolish to think he could gain entry to his father’s printing company with that pathetic story he had concocted. He had handled the whole thing like an ignorant kid instead of a mature adult.

  When Lee reached the sign welcoming him into Illinois, he was on the verge of tears and decided he’d better pull into a rest stop to collect himself. He parked away from the other vehicles t
o think things through. He questioned the importance of getting to know more about the man who had fathered him. After all, that was all in the past. Maybe he should be concentrating more on the future.

  Then Lee thought about DeRam, his nemesis, the man he hated, the man he had helped throw in jail...the man who always got what he wanted. He wondered what he would do in Lee’s situation.

  The sun was low in the sky by the time he got back to Allegro Printing—and only a thin ribbon of orange was visible in Lee’s rearview mirror. He parked in the far corner of the parking lot, away from the twenty or so other cars that were clustered near the building by what appeared to be the loading dock. Next to the wide overhead door were several steps leading up to a regular-sized door.

  The overhead door opened a few minutes after six, and several men in dark blue uniforms exited the building and sat on the edge of the platform, their legs dangling in front of the rubber bumper that protected the dock when trucks backed in. Some of them smoked, while others opened up lunch boxes. Lee wondered if any of them had known his father, and if so, would they be willing to talk to him.

  While he contemplated trying to start up a conversation with them, a truck from a laundry service pulled into the lot and backed into the far bay of the loading dock, away from the workers. The driver got out, waved to the men, and proceeded to unload his truck. One of the workers got up and disappeared into the darkness of the plant. When he returned, he was carrying bags of what Lee assumed were soiled uniforms, which he threw in the back of the truck. In less than ten minutes, the laundry truck had come and gone.

  Lee watched while the men finished eating and one by one left the dock. A few lingered behind to have one more cigarette. By six-thirty, the dock was empty, the overhead door closed.

  Based on the number of cars in the parking lot, Lee figured only half of the workers had come out on the dock for their break. He waited fifteen minutes for the other half to appear, and when they didn’t, he got out of his car and walked nonchalantly toward the building.

  Light was visible underneath the door. He climbed the steps and peeked in the small window to see a short hallway and three closed doors. The one closest to him was marked Dock Superintendent. The other two were unmarked. He tried the door. It wasn’t locked.