by Nick Pirog
“What did he ask for?”
“Maxim, Sour Patch Kids, Red Bull, chocolate chip cookie dough, lotto tickets. Your run of the mill nursing home contraband.”
“Sour Patch Kids?”
“Yeah.” I laughed, then continued, “Anyhow, I didn’t have a whole lot going on in my life at that point, and I would go visit him a couple times a week. We ended up becoming friends.”
“What would you guys do?”
“Watch horse racing, play chess—well, Harold’s version of chess—eat at the cafeteria, play bingo. I took him for Slurpees at 7-11 once. Whenever it was nice out, he liked to go sit on this bench and toss bread to the ducks in the fake pond.”
“That’s adorable.”
“Yeah, he was pretty great.” I found myself smiling. “But the best part of each visit was listening to him tell the story about how he met his wife and how she gave birth to my mother. Only I didn’t know he was my grandpa at the time. I thought he was just telling a story.”
“He didn’t tell you he was your grandpa the first day you came?”
“No. Not for a few months.”
“And you kept going to see him even though he was just this random old man who accidentally called you?”
“I told you I didn’t have a whole lot going on at the time. Well, aside from investigating the murder of the governor of Washington.”
Her eyebrows arched.
“But that’s another story altogether.”
“Let’s circle back to that,” she said nodding.
I laughed. “Sure thing.”
“So how did you find out this guy was your grandpa?”
“Each time I would visit, he would tell me a bit of this story, little snippets at a time. Started when he was eighteen, living right here on this farm. He wanted to join the army—I think it was the second or third year of World War II—but his dad wouldn’t let him, said he needed him to help with the farm. But Harold had his mind set on fighting in the war and stole his dad’s—or as Harold called him, ‘his Pa’s’—truck and was headed to the train station when he saw a young girl playing on a lake.”
“Which lake?”
“You know that big house with the lake out front?”
She nodded. “The Crowly house.”
“Back then, a family named the Kings lived there.”
“That sounds familiar. Rich family, owned half the land in Tarrin, then just up and skipped town one day.”
“Yeah, they left because of my grandpa.”
Wheeler slid a couple inches closer to me and we were only separated by two beetles. Her knee grazed mine as she said, “What did he do?”
“I’m getting to that.” I took a swig of beer, then said, “Harold was driving to the train station when he saw a young girl out on the lake. Turns out she wasn’t playing. Her dog had fallen through the ice and she was running out to try to save it.”
“I don’t like where this is headed. Tell me right now, did the dog die?”
I nodded.
She hung her head down for a moment, sighed, then glanced back up. “Okay, keep going.”
“Well, the girl came to where the dog had fallen in, and the ice broke around her, and she fell in. Harold watched this all unfold from the road. There happened to be a long span of rope in the back of the truck. He grabbed it, tied it to a fence post, then tied it to his waist, then went after the girl.”
Wheeler was grinning from ear to ear. Both of her dimples were showing. She reminded me of myself when Harold told the same story.
I said, “So he runs out on the lake, jumps in the water, and saves this girl.”
“Who turns out to be your grandma?”
“Well, not for a while. She was like fourteen years old at the time.”
“Right. Continue.”
“Harold pulled her out, wrapped her in a blanket that was in the car, and carried her up to the house. Instead of thanking him for saving his daughter’s life, the father threw rocks at Harold and told him to get off his property.”
“You’re kidding?”
“I wish.”
“What did Harold do?”
“He left, got in his truck, and joined the army the next day.”
“What about the girl?” Wheeler exclaimed. “If this doesn’t have a happy ending, I’m never talking to you again.”
“Remind me never to watch The Notebook with you.”
She said, “It doesn’t have a happy ending, does it?”
“Just listen to the story.”
“Dergen!”
I laughed and said, “Just listen.”
“Fine.” She took a drink of beer.
“He joined the army. Then when he’d been in for about two years—I think he was stationed in Poland or somewhere—he gets this huge stack of mail. Turns out, the young girl, Elizabeth, had been writing him a letter every day for over a year.”
“Holy shit,” Wheeler shrieked.
“Harold wrote her back, and they fell in love. When his enlistment was over a year later, he came back to Tarrin. Elizabeth said she would be waiting at the train station for him, but she wasn’t there. Turns out her dad found out she’d been writing to Harold, and that’s when they just up and left.”
“What an asshole.”
“The only good news was that after the Kings left town, they stopped paying property taxes, and after a few years all their land was turned over to the county. Harold’s father was able to buy the acres he’d been leasing for well below market value. If the Kings hadn’t up and left, I wouldn’t be here right now.”
“No one cares about you,” she said with a forced sneer. “Get back to the story, Dergen.”
“Right. Well, the Kings moved to Seattle. Harold found that out and he moved there as well. He took a job with Boeing and spent years looking for her. Then, one day, he finally found her. He spotted her leaving the movie theater with a big group of girls. He followed them in his car back to an all-girls university.”
“This is getting good.”
“Just wait. It gets better. Sometimes the girls went weeks without leaving the campus, but Harold needed a way to get a message to Elizabeth. So he quit his job at Boeing and he joined the gardening crew that tended the grounds. Took him about a month, but they finally came up with a plan. They let a bunch of mice into one of the classrooms, and all the girls came running out. That’s when he slipped her a note.”
“What did the note say?”
“To meet him behind the school later that night.”
“Did she come?”
“She did.”
“Yay,” she said grinning. “And they lived happily ever after.”
I sighed.
“What?” she asked. “What now?”
“The dean of the school found out about their romance.”
“So what?”
“The dean of the school was her father.”
“The asshole who threw rocks at him?”
“Yeah.”
“What did he do?”
“He forbade Elizabeth from seeing Harold. Said that if she ever saw him again, she would no longer be part of their family.”
“What did she do?”
“She chose Harold.”
Wheeler grabbed my wrist.
I let out another sigh.
“Oh, no,” she said.
“They got married, and Elizabeth got pregnant. But then she died during childbirth.”
“Oh my God.” Wheeler’s eyes began to glass over under her hat. It wasn’t just animals.
I said, “Harold didn’t know what to do so he put the little girl, my mom, up for adoption. He got remarried, had two more kids, but he never told them about Elizabeth. In fact, I was the only person he ever told.”
Wheeler wiped the tears from her eyes and asked, “What about your mom?”
“He kept tabs on Lily, that’s my mom, over the years.”
“When did he finally tell you he was your grandpa?”
“We w
ere actually on a ferry ride when he pulled an old tattered piece of newspaper from his sock and showed it to me. It was a news article about when my parents died.”
She rocked back lightly, then said, “That’s crazy. And then after he died, he gave you this farm?”
I nodded.
She took a long swig of beer, then said, “Now let’s hear about this governor of Washington murder.”
“Maybe some other time. I want to hear more about you.”
“Okay.”
I asked, “What did you do after vet school?”
“I stayed out east.”
“Why did you come back here? Didn’t like city life?”
“I was three months into my first job when my dad was murdered. I came back for the funeral and decided to take over his practice.”
“Is it just you that works there?”
“Mostly it’s just me. My dad’s old receptionist comes in for a few hours a week to tidy up and to help file. If I need help with a surgery I usually call one of the other vets to assist.”
I nodded, then said, “That was actually my first time in a vet clinic.”
“Really? You’ve never had any pets?”
“I had a hamster for two weeks when I was little, but he ate his leg off and then died. And then I won a fish at the fair once, but I think he was dead by the time I got him home.”
“That’s too bad.”
“My sister though, she has a little pug named Baxter. He has narcolepsy.” I began laughing. “He once fell asleep with his head in a gopher hole.”
“That’s not funny,” she said, giving me a light slap on the shoulder.
“I beg to differ.” I asked, “You have any pets?”
“I have a little shih tzu named Margo. She’s twelve. She was asleep on the ground behind the front desk when you came in.” Her eyes fell to the ground. “She was my father’s.”
I decided now was as good a time as any and asked, “You mind if I ask you a couple questions about the murders?”
She bit the inside of her cheek, took a breath, and nodded.
“Did you know this Lowry guy who did it?”
“Yeah, I knew him. He was a few years younger than me in school.”
“When you heard it was him, were you surprised?
“Yeah. Lowry was pretty quiet, but nice enough. I was gone so I didn’t know about all the trouble he got himself into over the years.”
“The drinking?”
“Yeah, and I think he broke into a couple of homes.”
“But that’s a giant leap to shooting six people.”
She nodded silently and I asked, “When did you start putting the flowers at the memorial?”
“A couple years ago, I bought some flowers to put on my dad’s grave, and I was walking past the memorial and I just decided to leave five of them there. Then it became a habit. I try to do it every few weeks.”
“Did you ever question what happened at the store? That it went down the way everybody said it did?”
“There was nothing to question. Most of it was captured on video, and what’s not, Victoria was able to tell.”
“Victoria?”
“Victoria Page. The only survivor.”
“Where is she now?”
“Still here. She’s the town comptroller.”
“Comptroller?”
“Like a treasurer. But she only does that part-time now. Mostly, she breeds horses. I was actually out at her place just last week.”
She took the last drink of beer, set the bottle down, then asked, “Why do you care about the murders so much? You miss the old job?”
Because I was forever the skeptic. Because something about the murders seemed off. Because some douchebag told me to leave it alone.
“Just curious,” I said.
We were both silent a moment, then I said, “I got pulled over yesterday.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, right on County Road 34. For speeding.”
“Really? I’ve never heard of anyone getting a speeding ticket around there.”
That’s because he was waiting for me.
“I was wondering if you knew the police officer. Little guy, butt chin.” I squished my chin together with my fingers.
She looked at the ground, exhaled, then glanced up. “Matt Miller.”
“You know him?”
She puffed out her cheeks and nodded. “I was engaged to him.”
“You were engaged to him?” I asked, my disdain for the guy increasing ten-fold. “What happened?”
“We were high school sweethearts. Actually, we were middle school sweethearts. I started dating him when I was thirteen.”
“Thirteen?”
“Seventh grade. I asked him to the Sadie Hawkins.”
“Remind me what that is again.”
“It’s the school dance where the girls ask out the guys.”
“Right.”
“So I asked him, and we were together until I was twenty-one.”
“Weren’t you in college by then?”
“Yeah, we both went to the University of Missouri. He wrestled for them. We got engaged after our junior year, then I called it off.”
“Why?”
“He was the only guy I’d ever been with. I wanted to see what else was out there.”
“Understandable.”
“Anyhow, after I broke up with him, he messed up his knee and lost his scholarship. He moved back home.”
For just a split second, I felt a twinge of empathy for the guy. He makes it out of his small town, then he loses his girl, then his knee, then he has to head back to Tarrin with his tail between his legs. And he was just so small.
“What happens when you guys see each other now?”
Her face flushed slightly.
“I should have said that I was engaged to him twice.”
“No!”
She lowered her head. “I know.”
“So, what? When you moved back home four years ago, you guys got back together?”
“Yeah, we dated for another couple years, then he proposed again. We moved in together. Even had a date set.”
“And then you backed out?”
She let out the longest sigh I’d ever heard. “Yep.”
“You are a terrible person.”
“I know.”
“A monster.”
“Stop.” She covered her face in her hands.
I laughed and said, “I can’t believe you stuck around.”
“Trust me, I thought about moving to Alaska, but keeping my dad’s practice going…” Her breath caught and her soft hazel eyes began to water. “Working there just makes me feel like he’s still around.”
“I get it.”
She wiped her eyes then looked at her watch. “I should get going.”
I walked her to her truck and shut the door.
I grinned and said, “Thanks for stopping by, Wheeler.”
“My pleasure, Dergen.”
Chapter Eight
The next day was Friday.
I parked the Range Rover in the Tarrin Police Department parking lot, then headed inside.
“Is the Chief in?” I asked the woman behind a small reception desk. Behind her there were three small desks. Two empty, one filled by a female officer in uniform.
When you get thrown in jail, they say the first thing you should do is find the biggest, scariest guy on the block, and knock him out.
That’s what I was doing.
The woman furrowed her brow and asked, “What is this regarding?”
“The Save-More murders.”
Her breath caught. Evidently, the words “Save-More” were the equivalent of “Voldemort” in this town.
The woman picked up the phone, turned her back, then spoke softly. A moment later, she turned back around. “He wants to know your name.”
“Thomas the Magnificent.”
She relayed this.
If for no other reason, I was certain he w
ould see me just to put a face to the name.
The woman put the phone down and said, “I’m gonna need to see some ID before I can let you back.”
I pulled out my wallet and handed her my license. “Don’t look at the weight. I’m a little pudgy right now.”
She forced a smile and said, “I’m just gonna make a quick photocopy of this,” then disappeared from view.
I didn't wait for her to return but headed toward the back of the room and to a door that read “Chief Leonard Eccleston.”
The door was ajar, and I pushed through.
Chief Eccleston sat behind a black desk. He was in his late fifties, but had the jowls of a man twenty years older. His face was badly sunburned, his forehead and nose peeling in chunks.
“Chief,” I said with a nod.
He pushed back from the desk and surveyed me, soaking up my now only thirty-seven-pounds-overweight frame and rugged good looks.
“What can I do for you?” the Chief asked, his loose jowls shaking with each word.
He reminded me of that cartoon dog.
Droopy.
Well, if Droopy had fallen asleep in the sun for thirty hours.
Anyhow, I wasn’t sure if Droopy was responsible for the threat Officer Tiny—aka Officer Matt Miller, aka Officer Dumped Twice by the Same Girl—had delivered, but there was only one way to find out.
“I’m interested in the Save-More murders, and I was hoping I could have a look at your case files.”
My request fell somewhere between downright absurd and utterly ridiculous. Closer to the latter.
The Chief’s forehead creased, sending a flurry of dried skin into the air.
“Who exactly are you?” he asked flatly.
I smirked.
Late last night, I received a text message from an old acquaintance in Seattle, Erica Frost. She was an ex-girlfriend, and we parted on semi-decent terms. Semi-decent because I broke up with her by text which, according to my sister, should be on my permanent record. Anyhow, she was a homicide detective at the Seattle Police Department. Her text simply said: Heard your name today. Some police chief in Missouri asking about you. Just a heads-up.
“Cut the shit. You know who I am.”
His facade broke. “You’re right, I do.”
