“I was rounding,” she said.
“Both of you would remember the Taylor girls, then,” I said.
“Darlene and Rosemary, real lookers,” Clarence said.
“Why would you want to know about them?” the wife asked.
“An insurance policy was taken out on the three of them, when they were children.”
“Three of them?” the husband asked, looking confused.
“Alta, Clarence. Remember, there was Alta.”
He nodded. “The one that never came to town.”
“Darlene’s still around,” the wife said. “You can talk to her direct. Rosemary, though, took off when she was still in high school.”
“So I was told,” I said. “Following some trouble at a gas station, or something.”
“Nothing to do with those girls,” Clarence said.
“A killing,” his wife said to me. “Folks saw them nearby.”
“There was a boy with them,” Clarence said.
“Folks wondered if the sheriff thought the three were involved,” the woman said.
“Baloney,” said Clarence.
“Darlene and Rosemary were real nice girls,” said the wife.
“That boy left the summer after the incident,” Clarence said. “What the hell was his name?”
“He didn’t wait until summer, Clarence. He left just a few days afterward.”
“What the hell was his name?” the old man repeated.
“Georgie Korozakis,” his wife said. “He was sweet on the older girl, Darlene.”
“Did you think the Taylor girls were involved?” I asked.
“Only busybodies thought that. Nobody with a brain,” Clarence said.
“How about Sheriff Lishkin?”
“He didn’t, either,” Clarence said.
“You go ask Ellie about that,” his wife said to him. “You go ask her how he spent every day that summer.”
“Ellie Ball, the sheriff?” I asked.
“Ellie Bell, Roy Lishkin’s granddaughter,” Clarence said. He looked at his wife. “I’ll bet she’ll say Roy never believed those girls had anything to do with that shooting. As for that boy…”
“Georgie Korozakis,” his wife said.
“Moonstuck on Darlene was all he was ever guilty of. She was a looker, that Darlene.”
“An attractive girl,” his wife agreed.
“Great body. Damned shame, the way those looks got washed away, living out on that farm,” Clarence said. “Even cutting it back, the way they had to after Herb took off, it’s still too much ground to take care of for one woman.”
“Still, they were better off with him gone,” the wife said.
“Wasn’t much of a farmer,” Clarence said. “Drinking, now, that Herb could do. And he got mean doing it, every time.”
“Obsessed, he was, for a time,” the woman said.
“Herb Taylor?” her husband asked.
“No; Roy Lishkin. Like I said, he was out to the Taylor place every day that summer,” the wife said.
“What about Alta?” I asked.
Clarence pursed his lips at the recollection. “No one ever did see much of her, after she grew some. Not that folks had cause to drive out that way. Only thing out there was the Taylor farm, and it had gone to hell even when Herb was around. No one ever went visiting there.”
“Except Roy Lishkin,” his wife said, “every day, the summer of the incident.”
“Baloney. You heard all that from people who knew nothing,” Clarence said.
“No one saw Alta that summer?” I asked.
“No one had seen Alta for any summer, in quite some time,” said the wife. “The girl had some sort of breakdown, and Martha kept her sheltered. Some said her condition was the last straw for Herb, chased him away.”
“Martha had a condition?” her husband asked.
“Alta,” his wife corrected.
“Alta died, that same summer,” I said.
“Scarlet fever,” said Clarence.
“Pneumonia,” said his wife.
“Scarlet fever,” the old man said again.
“Best I can say: Go see Darlene,” the old woman said.
“Baloney business, all of that,” Clarence said.
I left them to their facts and went to where Leo was sitting.
“What are those?” I pointed to the breaded clumps lying next to the chicken in the baskets he’d bought.
“Fried jalapeño cheese broccoli florets. Healthy.”
“Healthy how?”
“Broccoli’s good for you.”
“Deep fried?”
“Broccoli’s broccoli.”
“What about the jalapeño part?”
“For the sinuses.”
“Baloney,” I said, because the word was still ringing in my head.
CHAPTER 52.
Five minutes away from the Would You? Leo cracked wise in what he regarded as a great Humphrey Bogart voice, “We’ve picked up a tail.” His Bogart was nervous.
I checked the outside mirror, saw the cruiser. “One of Ellie Ball’s deputies again, and not too subtle this time. He’s staying close.”
“Por qué?” he asked, slipping his Bogart into Spanish for no appropriate reason.
“Intimidation. We’re not being tailed; we’re being nudged, out of town.”
“Por qué?”
“Because she’s afraid we’ll stumble into something she does not want stumbled into.”
“What could that be?” he asked, blessedly back in English.
“The incident. I think it figures into everything I’m looking at.”
“What are you looking at?”
“I have no idea. I want to see if any of the people who saw the kids out by the gas station are still around.”
“Then we’re out of here?”
“Anxious to get home, are you?”
“Ambivalent. Ma will be dancing the night away with her friends. On the other hand, if I stay up here with you, I might get shot.”
“It’s a toss-up,” I agreed.
* * *
At the motel, I gave Leo the names I’d written down at the sheriff’s office, and he headed off to question the desk clerk. I went into my room, to the phone book and directory assistance.
It was short work. Only one of the three names had a working phone number.
Before I could call, Leo came back with the news that the desk clerk didn’t recognize any of the names. He also brought back three Cokes. He gave one to me, went out to pass another in through the deputy’s car window, and leaned against the cruiser’s door. Leo is like that; he makes people comfortable with him in seconds. In no time at all, he’d have the cop talking about something that might be useful.
The only active name answered her phone on the third ring. I played it straight up, introducing myself and saying I was interested in the gas station killing forty years before.
“My word, I thought that was talked out years ago,” she said.
“I’m particularly interested in your conversation with Sheriff Lishkin.”
“You mean when I said I’d have no part trying to railroad the poor Taylor girls and that Georgie Korozakis?”
“Actually, his notes didn’t mention that.”
“Good thing, but he wasn’t going to do that, anyway. He was just looking for the truth.”
“You’re sure you saw both Darlene and Rosemary in the car?”
“They were good kids, the Taylor girls. You’d see Darlene everywhere with that boy, Georgie, racing around in his convertible, laughing, sucking up life. Big car, it was. A Chevy Impala, white, I think. My husband always wanted one just like it.”
“There were three of them, out that afternoon?”
“That’s what made it memorable, that and their faces. Every other time, it was just Georgie and Darlene, all the time laughing, stuck on each other.”
“Their faces?”
“They looked scared to death. Georgie’s hands were tight on
the wheel; I could see his knuckles popping, white as the color of his car. Darlene was up front, riding shotgun like always, but there was no giggling for her, not that day. She was staring straight ahead like she was willing the road to swallow her up. Rosemary was in back, hunching down toward one side, like she was holding at her stomach. Sick, maybe.”
“You told Lishkin they were driving away from the gas station?”
“All I said was they were out this way, and they were not exhibiting their normal demeanors.” She breathed heavily into the phone. “No way those kids did any killing. I didn’t know Georgie—he’d only been in town for a short time—but everyone said he was real mild-mannered, no burden to his teachers or to his parents.”
“Darlene?”
“Sweet-tempered girl full of spunk, an asset to her mother and that disadvantaged sister.”
“That was Alta?”
“A problem child. Mean-spirited, some said. Not similar in appearance or demeanor to the older two girls. People wondered about that.”
“Wondered, how?”
“There was talk. Always is, in a town like this. Martha Taylor and Roy Lishkin went way back, to when they were kids. People wondered about Alta, is all.”
“There was talk that Alta was Roy Lishkin’s child?”
“Bothersome talk, was all it ever amounted to. Gossip. Some said that’s why Herb left, that he found out. Theory was, that’s why the child acted up, that she’d found out as well. Martha used to bring her to town, but then she quit that when the girl started getting out of hand.” She stopped for a minute, then continued in a softer voice. “Darlene was an angel. She helped her mother with everything around that dust patch of a farm, and that included Alta. When Martha died, Darlene took charge right off, taking care of the two other girls.”
“What about Rosemary?”
“Always dreaming, head in a book. Even wrote one. A thin thing, but the folks at the high school made a fuss over it. There were mimeographs of it all over town. I tried reading it. Tacky thing, as I recall. I don’t expect she was of much help around that place, spending her time on such foolishness. Didn’t surprise me one bit when she took off, leaving Darlene stuck to that place and that poor, agitated child.”
“Did you think those kids happened upon the scene at that gas station?”
“Meaning, did they stop for gas, see the blood and the body? Then take off, because they were scared they’d be blamed? Bless you, sir.”
“For what?”
“For seeing that as a distinct possibility. That’s just what I told Roy Lishkin.”
“He didn’t write that down, either. He just noted it was a robbery gone bad.”
“You must be mistaken. He knew it was no robbery, gone bad or otherwise.”
“There was cash in the register?”
“There was no register, just a drawer beneath the counter. Anyone going out there to rob the place would have robbed the place, know what I mean?”
“You’re sure the cash drawer wasn’t emptied?”
“Darned sure. My cousin’s husband owned that gas station. He told Sheriff Roy he lost a fine young employee, but no cash.”
Roy Lishkin’s notes were wrong, saying that the cash drawer was empty.
Deliberately wrong.
CHAPTER 53.
An explosion, set off on my way out of town, seemed appropriate.
I called Ellie Ball. “Have you located Alta Taylor’s death certificate?”
“It was pneumonia, just like I said.”
“You found the death certificate?”
“You’re leaving?”
“How can I find Alta’s birth certificate?”
“Why would you want that?”
“There are rumors about her paternity.”
It was enough. She hung up.
I stepped outside. Leo was still leaning against the cruiser, but the radio inside was crackling to life and the deputy was powering up his window as he reached for his handset. I assumed Ellie Ball was calling to find out what I was up to.
“Let’s pack up, we’re leaving,” I said to Leo.
“Leaving, like in finally going back to Rivertown leaving?”
“I’ve become something of an issue here,” I said, with what I thought was refined understatement.
“We’re still driving?”
I nodded again. Leo’s smile showed relief. Driving would take longer, and that was a real incentive when one’s septuagenarian mother and her friends were seeking youth in one’s basement.
“See you in twenty minutes,” he said and darted into his room.
He came out in ten, grinning when he saw me already sitting in the minivan’s passenger’s seat. He threw his bag in, didn’t bother to ask if I needed a loan to pay for my room, and beat it down to the office to settle both our bills.
Five minutes later, we were headed toward Hadlow with the deputy tailgating a hundred feet behind, murmuring into his handset.
“I have news,” Leo said.
“So do I. You won’t believe—”
Leo held up his hand for silence. “Mine is huge.”
“Then continue.”
“Apparently, reclusive Darlene isn’t so lonely after all. Our friend behind us”—he cocked a thumb back at the trailing deputy—“normally works the overnight shift. He said he sees Darlene driving around in the middle of the night, always with the same guy.”
“She works the night shift at the high school. She’s sharing a ride home with a co-worker.”
“Nope,” he said. “They’re out much later than that. Three or four in the morning is when he sees them. The guy is doing the driving, though they’re always in her old Taurus. It’s quite the joke at the sheriff’s station, her sneaking around, doing some guy on the back roads, and in her own car, no less. They’re hoping to spot the car weaving or something, so they can pull them over and find out who the mystery man is.”
“Mystery man,” I said.
“Don’t you see? That must have been who took you down behind the Taylor place. You owe me, big-time. No one can say you got rolled and shot by a sixty-year-old woman. I’ve found you a stronger culprit—a manly culprit.”
I supposed it was a relief, though it needed more thought.
We came to Hadlow, and Ralph’s defrocked Shell station, and there was no time to talk more.
Ralph said he’d been mulling on it for the past two days, and decided he’d need nine hundred dollars to flatbed the rental Chevy to Swifty’s at the Minneapolis airport.
I opened my wallet, fanned it open to show I was removing all the bills, and counted them out. I had six hundred and forty-one of George Koros’s dollars left. I took out the change from my pants pocket. Seventy-eight cents.
I put all of it in my left hand. “For the balance of the truck rental and the tow to Minneapolis.”
“What about the charge for me to be driven out to pick up my truck you abandoned?”
“Included,” I said.
He looked at me, looked at the money, and after the briefest of hesitations took it all. He must have decided it would be a lifetime until another guy who couldn’t navigate around a truckload of pigs came along.
* * *
“Now your news,” Leo said, as we headed toward the interstate.
I told him what the woman who’d seen Georgie and two Taylor girls speeding away from the gas station had said.
“From that you inferred that Sheriff Lishkin covered up the whole thing, because Alta was his daughter?” he said.
“He must have figured out what went down at the gas station fairly quickly—either by Alta’s behavior or Darlene telling him—and that it wasn’t a premeditated crime. Somebody, likely Georgie, brought along a pistol, maybe for target shooting. Alta got her hands on it and blew away the gas station attendant. Lishkin had witnesses who’d seen Georgie and the two girls out in the car, near the gas station. He also knew Alta was never left alone. He had to figure Alta was along for the ride, even
though no one saw her in the car. The best Lishkin could do, afterward, was drive out to the Taylor place every chance he got, to make sure Darlene had Alta under control. Then Alta died.”
“Of pneumonia, or of Darlene?”
“The answer to that is buried at the cemetery, along with the DNA that would tell us whose daughter Alta really was.”
“So there was nothing left for Lishkin to do but make up a scant little report about the crime being a robbery, and file it away to confuse anybody who might read it years later?”
“Alta was dead. Case closed.”
We came to an intersection, empty of everything except weeds. I told Leo to pull over. Behind us, the deputy sheriff stopped. I could only imagine what he was saying on his radio.
“What’s up?” Leo asked.
I pointed across the street, at a barren plot of ground partially covered by stained concrete slabs. “That’s where the gas station was,” I said. “Seems like there ought to be a marker, something to signify that lives got lost there, one day in April, over forty years ago.”
“Lives? More than one?”
“An arts symposium director, a clown, a bodyguard.”
“And a man who was once a boy with a convertible?”
“Absolutely. He was a victim, too.”
“At least now we know what he had on Sweetie Fairbairn.”
“Accomplice murder. Technically, she was guilty, like Darlene, like Koros himself. A retainer and rent on a fancy office must have seemed like a bargain to keep Koros’s mouth shut.”
I leaned forward to look up. Chief Winnemac’s immense shoulders and head loomed high above the tree line. His back was toward us; he was looking toward the river. My head felt immense and heavy and full of concrete, too. I leaned back on the seat. I was exhausted by the weight of all the ruin that had been set into motion at that corner.
Leo put the car into gear. “You’re done?” he asked, as he started us away.
“By now, Plinnit has put out alerts on Darlene for the murder of George Koros. It’s in his hands.”
“What about the murder of that kid at the gas station, back in the day?”
“I’m not going to say anything about that. Too many lies, too old to unravel.”
“Ellie Ball’s not going to bring it up, not with her grandfather so involved,” he said.
Hunting Sweetie Rose : A Mystery (9781429950879) Page 23
