A Dead Red Miracle

by R. P. Dahlke

  "You're the super financial wiz in the family, so where do we get the money to pay for secretaries?" I was beginning to sound a bit squeaky.

  "They've got unemployment, don't they? We got two cases to solve. They can answer phones while keeping an eye on us. If nothing else, they'll see for themselves that we're not withholding anything from them."

  I felt my stomach turn over. "You really think it'll work?"

  "Might as well ask them," she said, nodding at the two women and four teenagers coming through the door.

  "Oh crap! They followed us?"

  "Everybody's gotta eat," Pearlie said, waving the sisters over.

  So do rattlesnakes and poisonous spiders, but that doesn't mean we have to be on the menu.

  The two accepted Pearlie's invitation to join us. Burgers all around seemed to calm the suspicious sisters and settle their offspring long enough for Pearlie to outline her plan.

  After firing off questions, they looked at each other, nodded and stuck out their hands.

  "You want a contract?" Pearlie asked.

  Zelma cracked a grin. "What for? The sooner we solve these cases, the sooner you can pay us."

  "We'll take the kids home and meet you at your office," Velma said.

  An hour later, they joined us in the office where we showed them our evidence board.

  I was impressed when the sisters whipped out identical notebooks and jotted the particulars of each case.

  "Even if Wade did kill Ron, we still have the cold case to solve on Damian's father."

  "What time tomorrow?" Velma asked.

  "Do we get a key to the office?" Zelma asked.

  "We don't want to be seen standing around in the hallway," Velma said.

  "We'd look like criminals trying to break in," Zelma finished.

  "And where do we sit?" Velma asked, looking around the office space.

  "Use Ron's desk, or ours, when we're not here," I said.

  The sisters gave Ron's desk a baleful look and I took pity on them. "I'll pick up folding tables and chairs tonight and you girls can fight over who gets what tomorrow."

  Pearlie reached into her handbag and handed Zelma her key. "Nine a.m. is fine, and I'll get another one made tomorrow."

  Satisfied with the arrangements, they left.

  "They'll have gone through everything in this office by the time we get here tomorrow," I said, wearily.

  "I sure hope so. Maybe they'll come up with some more business."

  She was right, of course. While our file cabinets held nothing but closed cases, the sisters might yet be able to squeeze some new business out of those old files.

  "What're you going to do for a key?" I asked.

  Pearlie, well aware that I was unable to break my early morning habit as an aero-ag pilot, said, "Someone will be here at nine a.m. It just won't be me."

  "It's already five-thirty. I'd like to think that I could go home and enjoy a nice dinner with my husband but I'd rather not tell Caleb I’m looking into a rumor about his best friend. I think I should make that call and see if I can drive up there now."

  "Sooner the better," Pearlie said, flipping through the newspaper.

  "Do you have any plans for tonight?"

  "Like you said, any other day I'd be having dinner," she said, opening a drawer and smacking a file folder onto the desk, "but tonight I'll be here going over the old photos of the shoot-out. Call me if the woman has anything concrete on Andy Sokolov."

  I had my doubts. Why had she kept quiet all these years? Had someone interviewed the daughter and decided the girl had lied? Hormonal teenagers had been known to tell tales for the attention. Or had she been paid off?

  I left a message for Caleb telling him I was working late, then left for the hour-and-a-half drive to Tucson thinking if she wasn't at home or had changed her mind about seeing me, I'd stop by Costco and pick up supplies for the office and home.

  I enjoyed my solo drive listening to National Public Radio instead of country western music, but at the Kolb exit, I hit the Blue Tooth and dialed Margaret Painter's number. She answered the phone as if she'd been sitting on it.

  Her home was a single story ranch house south of the University of Arizona and I no sooner put a foot out of the car than she was at the door, waiting. She was calmly observing me, as I was her. I got out, closed the car door and waved.

  She waved back.

  As I got to the porch, she looked up and smiled. "It's still hot out here," she said, backing her wheelchair up to make room for me to come inside.

  Someone forgot to tell me Andy Sokolov's accuser was in a wheelchair.

  .

  Chapter Eighteen:

  Margaret Painter wheeled her chair aside and I slipped into the cool house while she closed the front door. "Some years I keep the A/C on almost to Thanksgiving. Can I offer you some iced tea or a soda?"

  "Water would be great," I said.

  "Have a seat in the living room and I'll bring it out."

  I thanked her and stepped into her living room. The house looked to be tiled throughout, the grout worn in a few places, making me think the house had been tiled some years back.

  There was no clutter to trip a wheelchair and the furniture was simple and spare. The dining room had an oak dining table with dusty and never used place mats, a sofa against the window, the soft indentation in one corner and a TV tray on wheels pushed to the side. Pictures in frames on the walls appeared to be the only decoration. All of them of her and a child who progressed in age until the last one where she looked to be about fifteen.

  "One water for you and a Sprite for me," she said, setting the tray on the coffee table and handing me the cold glass of water with ice. "They grow up so fast. Do you have children, Ms Bains?"

  Unable to think of a suitable reason other than my own personal tardiness, I simply said, "No, I'm sorry to say, I haven't."

  I stood where I was, waiting to see if she would transfer to the sofa or if she wanted me to stay long enough to be seated.

  She motioned me to the sofa and picked up her glass. "You're not with social services?"

  "No, I'm a private investigator."

  "How much were you told about my allegations against Andy Sokolov?"

  "Not much. We have another case, totally unrelated, but his name came up and I'd like to hear your side."

  "You won't be able to do anything with it. He'll deny it all. He's very good at denial. A real charmer our Andy."

  I brought out my notebook a little powder pink mini-recorder. It looks just enough like toy to appear non-threatening.

  Holding it in my hands, I said, "Would you mind if I recorded our conversation? I can take notes, but my handwriting is so bad, sometimes even I can't read it."

  She stared at the recorder for a minute. "It's just for your notes, right? What I tell you won't get back to him, will it?"

  I put the notebook and recorder on the table and leaned back into the cushions. "That depends. What would you like to see happen to Andy Sokolov?"

  Her face scrunched into a mask of pain. "I'd love to see him go to prison for what he did to us."

  "I thought you might say that," I said, picking up the recorder. I turned it on and laid it on the coffee table. When we finished the preliminaries, I asked her to tell me her side of the story.

  "I've been sober for fourteen years, eight months and twenty days. That's almost fifteen years to the day since he molested my daughter." She paused, taking another sip of her drink before continuing.

  "I deeply regret the years I was lost in self-pity and alcohol. AA taught me that nothing but sobriety would give me a chance at life again.

  "My husband left when Bonnie was five. We were both drinkers then. Fighters too, not all of it his fault, some of it was mine, but it took a toll. Drinking leads to spiteful, hurtful words, and then someone cheats on someone and it all ends in divorce court. He paid child support, but I gave him such a bad time about the money, that after a while he just stopped with the visits,
the phone calls and the child-support. I tried the courts but a man can go off the grid and just vanish, you know."

  In a voice filled with self-loathing, she continued. "I didn't care. I had a job. I had my work, my kid and my booze. In case you've never heard the term, that's called a functioning alcoholic. Two steps one way or the other and I would've been a falling down drunk. And if I hadn't had Bonnie, I'm sure I would've been found dead in a gutter. Yet, for all my self-pity, my self-serving grandiose opinion of myself, I had no idea my poor baby would think it was her fault that her daddy wasn't here. We never really know what little kids think. I sure never thought to ask her. Too busy.

  "When Bonnie turned fifteen, she decided it was my fault that her daddy never came around, or sent birthday or Christmas gifts. I knew having a teenager is like doing hard time. She was already difficult, all over the place with black lipstick and seventeen-year-old boyfriends. I was at my wit's end. Then Andy showed up and asked if Bonnie would like to join his softball team, I was elated. Softball? Yeah sure, why not?"

  "How did you find out?" I asked.

  "She started coming home late from practice. I would have dinner waiting and her excuse was that she and Andy's family went to pizza or she had to wait for him to finish a meeting with the other coaches. I think it was about the third time she waltzed in at nine o'clock on a school night and I told her I'd have to talk to Andy about these late nights. I remember thinking how I would regret not having his help if he dropped her. I was thinking of me. Not my daughter.

  "But then she looked at the half-empty glass in my hand and lifted her chin in that way she would do when she was feeling defiant and she said, 'You're not ever going to take me away from Andy. Not like you did with Daddy. Andy won't allow it.'

  "I put down my drink, got out of my chair and slapped her across the face. Wasn't that what a mother is supposed to do when her fifteen-year-old daughter smarts off to her? But I wasn't listening, was I? Not with two-fifths of vodka swimming through my veins. But I thought about those words all the next day at work and when I came home, there was a note on the kitchen table that said Andy had picked her up for practice. I called his wife. No practice tonight, his wife said. I was too proud and too scared to say the words, what I suspected, so I went looking on my own. My last option was the backside of the Lavender Pit mine. You know that place where the kids go to park? He had a '57 Chevy he'd remodeled and the damn thing was rocking. The bastard. I flew out of my car, ran to the passenger side and yanked her out of that car so fast she didn't have time to cover herself. I was a mad woman, screaming profanities at them both, telling him I was going to ruin him as I shoved her toward our car.

  "Bonnie was crying and buttoning her dress when I started the down-hill drive and home. I told her to buckle up, but I don't think she heard me, or maybe it was just another way to defy me. It was her last," she said, unable to finish, she swiped at the tears running down her cheeks.

  "Then what happened?" I asked.

  "He came after us. I felt the bumper nudge up on mine. He backed off, flashing his lights. He wanted me to stop. He wanted to talk. Bonnie laughed and waved at him. 'Pull over,' she said. Like it was all some crazy game that I refused to play.

  "When I wouldn't pull over, he continued to follow us down the hill. By this time, Bonnie and I were yelling at each other, me accusing, her blaming. She swore at me and grabbed at the wheel. He must've seen us struggling and this time his nudge caught a corner, shoving the car into the side of the mountain. Naturally, I yanked the wheel back the other way and before I knew it, we were going off the road and over the cliff. Over and over and over. Three hundred feet they said, to the bottom."

  "The wheelchair―is it the result of your accident?"

  "Or you can call it my just desserts," she said reaching over and picking up a music box in the shape of a boat with a sailor boy in it. "I was legally drunk."

  "And Bonnie?" I asked quietly.

  "That picture of her on the wall? That was her sophomore prom. It's the last picture I have of her. I was convicted of negligent manslaughter, got probation and court ordered rehab. Andy got off scot free. So what do you think, Ms. Bains? Any ideas on how you can nail Mayor Sokolov for having sex with a fifteen-year-old?"

  I shook my head. "Do you know if there were other girls he might've molested?"

  She put the music box on the table. "I haven't kept in touch with anyone in Wishbone. Not for the last ten or so years. I have a job at the library in Tucson and I attend AA, but child molesters are never really rehabilitated, are they?"

  "I wish I knew the answer," I said, and stood. "But I'll certainly see what I can do. I have a long drive home. Could I use your bathroom before I go?"

  "Sure," she said, "there's only the one and it's at the end of the hallway."

  I used the sound of the flushing toilet to open her medicine cabinet. Bottles lined up like little soldiers ready to battle viruses and bacteria of the wheelchair bound. The one I was looking for was also there; oxycodone, a strong painkiller favored by addicts. Looking at the date, the quantity in the prescription and the number of tablets left in the bottle, I was relieved to see that she hadn't exchanged one addiction for another.

  When I came back into the living room, she was winding up the music box. "He came to the hospital while they were still working to save my spine. He brought flowers and this music box and told me how it was all going to play out. He'd retained a lawyer and he'd do everything he could to see that I got probation, but it wouldn't do me or my case any good to accuse him of sexual abuse, not when everyone knew I was an unreliable mother and a drunk. Then he put the music box on the over-bed table where it was out of my reach and flipped the switch. I had to lay there in traction, tears streaming down my face while the music box played, My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean. You know that song? I keep it to remind myself," she said, releasing the switch and letting a verse tinkle out before turning it off. "That's the kind of man Andy Sokolov is."

  She opened the front door and once again wheeled aside to allow me to leave. I turned to her and held out my hand. She took it and looked up at me, the question in her sad eyes.

  "You understand," I said, "I can't guarantee anything."

  "Bringing Andy Sokolov to justice would take a miracle, but I can hope, can't I?"

  I should regret leaving her with any kind of hope. A miracle would be a long shot, yet, I would never again hear that children's song without thinking of Andy Sokolov's cruelty. If it took me a lifetime, I would find a way to make that miracle happen.

  Now I had to take this sad tale home to my husband. Would I be able to convince him that his friendship with Andy Sokolov was tragically wasted?

  .

  Chapter Nineteen:

  By the time I got home, I felt as if my brain had been lacquered in black from the ugliness that happens when adults force their twisted desires on helpless children. Yes, I've heard plenty of stories of abuse against women, but as I would never put up with abuse from anyone, I was always able to draw a line between them and me. Children were another subject, and I felt out of my element, unable to do anything but listen. The bad feeling didn't dissipate when I let myself in and dropped my keys on the small table by the door.

  There was a ball game on in the living room. I heard the refrigerator door open and glass bottles clinking together. I walked into the kitchen and Caleb saluted me with two bottles.

  "Hi sweetheart. Want one? Your dad and I are watching the game."

  "Sure," I said. "Let me wash up and I'll join you."

  Reprieved for at least the three minutes it took to run a washcloth over my face and draw a brush through my hair, I went into the living room, accepted the beer and asked Caleb to put the game on hold. "I have some news."

  Caleb turned from the still image on the TV screen to look for signs that I'd been in a fight. Seeing I didn't have a black eye, he asked, "What is it? Should you be telling this to Homicide instead of me and your dad?"

  "I
t doesn't directly affect anything we're working on now, but it does involve Andy Sokolov." My father and I exchanged looks. I didn't have to tell him that his prediction about old friends had come true. I told them everything I'd learned from Andy's accuser.

  As the story unfolded, Caleb's brows dipped, his mouth tightened and once or twice he'd ask a question or make a comment, usually with an expletive attached. "I've arrested my share of pedophiles and I know that they're never, ever cured and they don't stop unless they're caught and put in prison. He may have gone underground with this, but he hasn't quit. Oh, jeez, he's got a thirty-year-old married son with two little girls. Something has to be done."

  "You do see that this puts Andy back on Ian's list of suspects?" I asked.

  Caleb's head moved back and forth as if to shake off a bad smell. "Ian knew this and didn't tell me."

  "Nobody would call Ian Tom a fool," I said. "He handed it off to Pearlie and me hoping we'd ferret out the truth. If it went balls up, it's not on his watch."

  "I get it," Caleb said. "I don't like it, but I get it. Andy's dirty little secret needed uncovering, but I’m annoyed that Ian thought he should dump this on you and Pearlie so he can keep his hands clean. The question is―how to prove it?"

  "What makes you think that girl was the only one?" Dad said. "He's still coaching, isn't he? Lots of them young girls raised by single moms."

  "I dunno Dad," I said. "Parents are more aware of this kind of abuse these days."

  Caleb growled, "He didn't get to his position as the mayor of Wishbone by being stupid!"

  "You don't have to yell, Caleb."

  "Sorry," Caleb said, scrubbing at the top of his buzz cut. "Tomorrow, I'm going to talk to someone I know in Sacramento. He's a criminologist and a profiler. He may be able to put us onto the right track. You and Pearlie have my permission to look as hard as you like at Andy."

  He went to the door. "I'm going for a walk."