“One more thing,” she said. “Darlene Taylor was buried yesterday.”
I nodded. It was noncommittal.
“I heard you were the only one there, besides the minister, and that you paid for the funeral expenses.”
Plinnit must have put a man behind a tree. “I wanted to make sure they didn’t drop the coffin.”
“Not just the coffin, Dek. You also paid for the cemetery plot, a stone, and that minister. For someone who is broke, all that must have been a reach.”
“You’re going to use this?”
“Personal interest only.”
“Darlene was a victim. Maybe most of all.”
She gave that a half-shake of her head, and turned to look out the open door. Newspeople seemed to be everywhere, including several who’d surrounded Benny Fittle.
She stepped outside. “Be careful of Plinnit.”
“Personal interest question of my own?” I asked, if only to delay for a moment more. “Who put Elvis up to that damned-fool salad oil scheme?”
It hadn’t been by magic that Jennifer Gale learned of citizens’ committees. Elvis was slinking around, offering the Feds something else to make his salad oil problem go away—and he was talking about all of it to Jennifer Gale.
She smiled, shook her head. “Good luck,” she said, starting off for city hall.
It sounded like a good-bye.
“Good luck to you, as well,” I called back.
As I watched her walk away, I had the thought that I’d like to follow her, at least as far as city hall. The lizards were sure to be frantic, dodging for cover behind whatever spokesman they were about to push out in front of the press. It was something I’d hoped for, since the day I’d moved into the turret.
I’d had enough of public news. I’d had enough of being the news. I went upstairs to my computer, thinking it was better to stay inside, surrounded by thick limestone walls. I pushed my head into the Internet, to find out what I’d missed while I was off invading graves.
Both of Chicago’s major newspapers offered recaps of Jennifer’s committee corruption story. They’d come late to the story, and details were sketchy. Sketchy or not, I took comfort in the short reports. Broad coverage of corrupt committees, following so closely on the heels of Elvis’s oily adventures, offered hope that brighter lights would begin to shine on Rivertown.
Both Web sites also carried updates on the firestorm that followed the news that Sweetie never had any right to give away Silas’s millions. So many people were claiming to be blood kin to Silas Fairbairn that law firms throughout the country had begun demanding to see birth certificates, death certificates, and other proof of family lineage before they’d consider taking cases against the recipients of Sweetie’s largesse. More than fifty-five lawsuits had been filed in Chicago so far, and many more were expected in the days to come.
After finishing with the major news sites, I moved down to the brackish water of the Argus-Observer. Immediately, I wished that I hadn’t. They’d run a short piece on Amanda and me, making her out to be a flaky former debutante, working for her father because she could do little else. I was portrayed as an impoverished lunatic, hunkering down in an unheated turret because I couldn’t afford to live anyplace else. In my case, I supposed it was accurate.
I called Amanda’s office. She was in, and she was furious. “I saw the damned thing. Five sets of lawyers, representing a dozen of Silas Fairbairn’s third cousins, are now demanding we escrow Sweetie’s gift, claiming she was unduly influenced by you to make the contribution to me. That will shut down everything we planned to do, for years.”
“I didn’t see this coming.” As soon as the words came out, I realized that could have been the mantra for everything I’d encountered with Sweetie Fairbairn: I’d seen nothing coming.
“Maybe you should have,” she snapped.
She stopped and took a breath. Then the old Amanda said, “Shall we have that date?”
“You mean at our trattoria?”
“Sure.” Hesitancy, though, had come into her voice, a sort of sighing, and I realized that neither of us believed the trattoria would ever be ours again.
Someone interrupted her. She put her hand over the mouthpiece, then came back on to say she had to take a call from yet another reporter.
“Good luck,” I said, sounding just like Jennifer Gale.
“Good luck,” she said back.
As with Jenny, “good luck” sounded now like “good-bye.”
I had no more energy for news. I called Plinnit.
“About those DNA results,” I said.
“You’ve been lying to me, Elstrom. You know where Sweetie Fairbairn is.”
“There’s an army of reporters outside, waiting for a news conference at Rivertown City Hall. I’m thinking about going over there and telling them about how a police officer might try to deliberately mislead with incomplete DNA. You didn’t recover anything from under my fingernails that’s conclusive enough to use in court.”
“You scratched it off, on that hall carpet.”
“That hall carpet,” I repeated, but it was for myself. My mind had lurched onto something I’d known before, but was beginning to understand only now.
“What?”
“Back at the Wilbur Wright, you said your officer was cut in the living room, and that’s where you recovered the attacker’s knife?”
“Yes. What are you thinking, Elstrom?”
“You’re sure you recovered the knife in the living room?”
“Right where Sweetie Fairbairn dropped it.”
There was nothing more to say. I hung up on him.
Alta hadn’t been clawing at the hallway carpet to find a knife. She’d been scratching to find something else she’d dropped. A very frayed old postcard, of a covered bridge with octagonal windows.
Alta had seen a destination in that picture, a place where Sweetie might run.
It took only ten minutes on the Internet to find the bridge. It was in Indiana.
I called Leo. “My credit card’s maxed out. Alta Taylor is headed to Indiana to kill Sweetie Fairbairn.”
“I have four hundred in my wallet,” he said. “Will that be enough?”
I told him I didn’t know if there was still time.
CHAPTER 71.
According to the Internet, Parke County was smack-dab in the middle of the western side of Indiana, and claimed to have more covered bridges than any other county in the state. The bridge with the octagonal windows that spanned Miller’s Ravine was built in 1878, and was about smack-dab in the middle of Parke County. It was there, smack-dab in the middle of apparently everything, that I was going to try to find Sweetie Fairbairn.
I took the fast roads, 294 into Indiana, then 65 south, to a maze of country two-laners. My plan was simple. I would work outward from Miller’s Ravine in increasing concentric circles, stopping at gas stations and stores and diners, anyplace a newcomer might find work. I was not seeking to ruin any sanctuary she might have found; I would not flash a picture, nor ask if anyone had seen her. I merely wanted to warn her that her sister—sick, runty Alta—was coming for her, dressed as a man or dressed as a woman … and that she liked knives.
It was a fool’s plan, statistically destined not to work. It was all I could think to do, at least until Leo’s four hundred dollars ran out.
* * *
The bridge had been painted since it had been photographed for Sweetie’s postcard. No longer a weathered gray, it glistened now, restored to its original red.
I walked through it and back, making echoing footsteps, pausing to admire its odd octagonal windows. It was a fine old bridge, a piece of historic infrastructure protected by people who valued such things.
It must have looked bucolic, maybe even romantic, to a girl or to a young woman on the run from a killing in Minnesota.
I wondered if it had looked the same, years later, to a woman now much older, and running from so much more.
* * *
For seven
days, I worked in circles out from the Miller’s Ravine Bridge. The towns were smaller than Hadlow, and had very few stores, but there were intersections to be checked, as well; bumps in the road with a lone gas station or a tiny grocery that might have offered work to a woman.
I worked diligently, and doggedly, sunup to past dark. I slept in the Jeep every other night, ate dry cereal for breakfast, cheese crackers for lunch, and the cheapest diner food I could find for supper—all so most of the money I borrowed from Leo could go for gas.
I worked mindlessly, never letting myself pause to think it was preposterous that Sweetie Fairbairn had run to those smack-dab parts in the first place, that a picture on an old postcard had showed a destination to a woman in trouble.
Never, though, did I let myself allow that my road trip wasn’t only about Sweetie Fairbairn, that it also had something to do with getting away from Rivertown and being at the jack-ready for the phone to ring, not knowing who I wanted to hear from most—Amanda or Jennifer Gale. Slipping into such thinking might be to disappear into a dark tunnel indeed, and I wasn’t yet ready for that.
I set my phone to go directly to voice mail. Each of the ladies called once, as though in perfect symmetry. Amanda said she was swamped with meetings about the Sweetie Fairbairn fiasco and would probably have to cancel our trattoria date.
Jennifer’s message was much more direct: “It was his Ma.” She laughed. I laughed as well, at the idea that Elvis Derbil’s mother, the mayor’s sister, had been the one to suggest he spread his greasy wings and peddle his altered oils beyond Rivertown.
Both Amanda and Jennifer ended their messages by wondering how I was getting on. I did not call either of them back, as I was not at all sure how I was getting on.
Leo called every day, because he knew how I could disappear, chasing impossibilities. His calls I returned because he made me laugh, especially on the evening I decided it was time to head back to Rivertown. I had done what I could with my time and his money, and now I was out of his money.
He sounded unusually chipper. I asked if he’d won a big lottery.
“More fabulous,” he said. “Ma’s laid up in bed; sciatica.”
“That’s fabulous?”
“Even Bernard said it was a blessing.”
“Bernard, the accountant nephew—?”
“Of Mrs. Roshiska’s, who’s now in the hospital. Threw her back out.”
“From…?”
He laughed a laugh that was almost a shriek, and said he had to go. “I have much to do. I’ve thrown out the dancing DVDs. Ma’s handyman has already taken down the poles and disconnected the special lights. I myself pulled up the gold-flecked floor tiles and down the red velvet drapes. Ma’s doctor said to get all the stuff back from storage before Ma gets back on her feet.”
“Doctor’s orders to stop pole dancing?”
“All praise the doctor.”
As with his earlier calls, he hung up without asking if I’d gotten any leads to Sweetie Fairbairn. Nor had he offered to loan me more money to perpetuate my obsession for a second week, or a third. He is my friend.
I had enough money left for one more cheap dinner and two tanks of gasoline. I headed northwest, bound for one last town that evening, and three more the next day on my way back to Rivertown.
Hill’s Knob did not look to possess a knob, though where the ground had actually risen might have been obscured by the dense, intertwined weeds that lined both sides of its cracked blacktop main street. No one in the business district was there to mind, since most of the town had burned. Only two buildings remained: an empty old gas station, missing its pumps like Ralph’s in Hadlow; and the husk of something that once was a general store, judging by the signs for bait and men’s socks that still rested, sun-curled and faded, behind its filthy windows.
The only indication that any commerce was alive anywhere nearby was a billboard for a diner called Blanchie’s, five miles farther on. It advertised the best apple pie in four counties. Apple pie would do nicely for dinner, especially since driving five counties away to find better seemed unreasonable.
I drove the required distance, and pulled into the gravel lot in front of a brown-sided, green-roofed building raised up on a cinder-block foundation. The only car in the lot was a twenty-five-year-old station wagon, dotted with at least fifteen years’ worth of rust.
It was eight o’clock and there were no customers, just a white-haired grill cook behind a pass-through window, humming along with an easy-listening radio station, and a gray-haired waitress sagging in a pink uniform at the far end of a white Formica counter. She was turned away from me, staring out one of the windows. I supposed that anything of interest was better found by looking out of such a barren place.
Neither of them was a candidate to be the missing Sweetie Fairbairn. That was all right. There would be pie. I sat in a booth by the window.
For several long moments, nothing—absolutely nothing—happened. The grill cook continued to busy himself, mostly invisibly, behind the pass-through. The waitress continued to be absorbed by whatever was outside the far window, though to my eye there was nothing out there but spindly trees, and even those were fading in the tiring sun. Hill’s Knob, Indiana, didn’t look like anywhere a right-thinking person would run to. People ran from such places, even if the next stop was a place like Hadlow.
Definitely, it was time to go back to Rivertown.
“Best apple pie in four counties?” I called out to the waitress lost in thought, after another few minutes had passed.
“Good enough,” she said, without tearing her eyes from the mesmerizing view out the window. Her voice was barely audible, and carried no trace of enthusiasm about the pie.
“I’d like a slice, à la mode, with vanilla.”
“Coffee?”
“How much is the pie?”
She mumbled something to the window that I couldn’t hear.
“How much?” I asked again.
“Six fifty,” she said, a little louder. “With the ice cream.”
I would have mumbled, too, if I was looking to get almost nine bucks, with tax and tip, for a piece of pie daubed with ice cream, in the middle of Nowhere, Indiana. Those were Chicago prices, and downtown numbers at that.
“No coffee, thanks,” I said.
She continued to sit, staring out the window, as though expecting me to get up and leave, offended by the high prices. Certainly, such exorbitant numbers could explain why the joint was empty. More time passed until finally, when I’d made no sounds to leave, she sighed loudly, got up from her stool, and disappeared through a door into the kitchen.
Another twenty minutes went by, and I’d just begun to wonder if Hill’s Knob was so removed that Blanchie had to send someone on a bicycle clear to Terre Haute to get the ice cream when the waitress finally came out of the kitchen and ambled over with a plate. Her face was averted, her eyes behind her red plastic eyeglasses still fixed on the parking lot outside, lit now by one lone dim bulb fixed to the side of the diner. It had gone dark.
She set my pie down, but there was no vanilla ice cream on top, as requested. Instead, there was a chunk of melted yellow cheese.
I thought about reminding her I’d ordered ice cream, but reasoned that might delay my research into the quality of the pie by another fifteen minutes, maybe longer, and by now, I was very hungry.
Besides, the cheese, melted as it was on the pie, did look good.
She walked away.
I picked up my fork, cut the point from the wedge, and brought it to my mouth. It was fine pie, and to my mind, the cheese made it tastier than could any scoop of ice cream.
My tongue puzzled, though, as to the identity of the cheese. It wasn’t the usual cheddar or American usually encountered on restaurant apple pie. I lifted off a speck so I could taste only that.
I knew that cheese. The back of my neck tingled. I looked up.
She’d come over with a Thermos pitcher of coffee. She set it down and slid into the
booth across from me.
Her forehead was crossed with a dozen deep lines, unhidden now by any cosmetics. Her lips were thin without lipstick, and her breasts were low inside her uniform. If there was a twinkle in her eyes, or a pinch from fear, it was obscured behind those heart-shaped, cartoonish red glasses.
“Around here, folks know to enjoy their apple pie with Velveeta,” she said.
CHAPTER 72.
She poured coffee into the two mugs on the table and pushed one closer to me.
I took another bite of the pie. “I’m sure glad I came.”
“Will I be glad you came?”
“I can leave, Ms. Fair—”
She stopped me with an abrupt shake of her head, and looked to smile at the white-haired man behind the grill window. He was whistling softly, in tune with Sinatra singing low on the radio, and watching us.
“Gus and I like the name Evie,” she said quietly.
“Evie it is,” I said. “Forever more.”
She took a moment to make up her mind about what was in my eyes, and then asked, “How did you find me?”
Without meaning to, I felt my fingers touch my face. I dropped my hand.
“It took me too long, but I finally remembered a picture postcard of a bridge, on the wall of the only sane room in a very swank penthouse. That postcard disappeared some time after the woman who lived there fled.”
“Did remembering that postcard have something to do with the scratches on your face?”
“They’re healing just fine.”
“I’d written ‘Hill’s Knob’ on the back of that card, so I’d never forget. That man”—she gestured at the grill window—“and his wife had been very kind to me once.”
“Alta took that postcard. If you wrote on the back of it, she knows you’re here.”
The shock I was expecting didn’t come. Instead, she looked out at the parking lot, cut from the darkness by only that one dim bulb. Behind us, Sinatra had stopped singing.
“Yes,” she said softly, to the glass.
“You’re not surprised?”
She turned to me. “You came to warn me?”
“Yes.”
Hunting Sweetie Rose : A Mystery (9781429950879) Page 30
