Hunting Sweetie Rose : A Mystery (9781429950879) (38 page)

We ate Egg McMuffins quickly and silently, as though afraid to say one word for the flood of them that might release, and took coffee back to the truck.

This time Leo got behind the wheel. Once we'd gotten back on the interstate, he gave me a sly grin. “Who shall we dig up now?” he asked, and I vowed never to underestimate the healing power of McMuffins.

“I heard from Ellie Ball,” I said. “It wasn't Alta in that cemetery.”

“Who, then?”

“A man. Beyond that, she'll never give anyone the chance to find out more. By now that body has been buried somewhere else, where no one will ever find it.”

His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “What's that mean?”

“Her grandfather knew who was in that box, and who did the killing.”

“Who's the oatmeal, and who dunnit, Holmes?”

“Best guess?”

“Fair enough.”

“The man in the tin box is Herb Taylor.”

“Dead by daughter because immediately following Mr. Taylor's drop from sight, Alta got pulled from school, and was never seen again.” He nodded to himself, pleased by his thinking. “It works, circumstantially.”

“Maybe not conclusively enough for Ellie Ball,” I said. “She hustled us out of there because she wanted to hide the body while it was still dark. She doesn't want a forensic examination.”

“She doesn't think Alta was the killer?”

“She's worried it was her grandfather, Sheriff Roy Lishkin,” I said.

CHAPTER 70.

A parade of engines woke me just past noon the next day. I'd slept for only a couple of hours.

I peered out the window. Vans and cars were lining up to park on both sides of the street. The vans belonged to television stations; the cars, I supposed, to print reporters. Benny Fittle was double-parked in the middle of it all. He was going to work off doughnuts, that day.

I supposed they'd come to hear about my being attacked in Sweetie's penthouse.

I hurried to get dressed, went downstairs, and made coffee. It was only after I'd gulped half of my first cup that someone banged on my door. Banged on my sensibilities, too, as I realized that for all the ruckus outside, no one else had banged on my door. Nor had anyone called. The press hadn't come for me. They were gathering for something else.

I opened the door. Jenny stepped quickly inside. “I've only got a minute,” she said. Her face was flushed beneath her television makeup.

“What's the rumpus?”

She looked at me, saw I was serious. “You haven't noticed the press outside?”

“They just woke me up.”

“You didn't see my report on last night's broadcast, or see this morning's papers?”

“I was out.”

“I broke a corruption story about your city hall last night. You've got citizens' committees that contain no citizens. They're used as conduits to funnel benefits—hospitalization; life insurance; use of city-owned vehicles; and the biggie, travel expenses abroad, supposedly to study how other cities do things—to the committee members.”

“The recipients of this largesse are the lizards?”

“In a nutshell.”

“Is that nutshell going to be cracked open more?”

“Eventually, but that's not why I stopped by. Tonight I lead with another exclusive. Plinnit is going to issue warrants for Sweetie Fairbairn. She's being charged with murder, fraud, theft, flight to avoid prosecution, and probably a dozen other things.”

“Heavy heat on Plinnit.”

“Not just him. The state's attorney and the U.S. attorney are feeling it, too. This case has thick tentacles. Plinnit's got to sling warrants to show activity.”

“Heater case, for sure.”

“Plinnit might have one with your name on it, as well.”

“Might?”

“Does. He's going to arrest you to squeeze you.”

“For what?”

“Obstruction, most likely.” She looked away, which meant most certainly. Plinnit was keeping her informed.

“Because I wouldn't say it was Sweetie Fairbairn who attacked me in the penthouse?”

She barely nodded.

“He's saying his DNA analysis showed conclusively Sweetie was up there?”

“I heard Plinnit wasn't happy with what he got. I know somebody at Cook County. He heard the DNA showed a mitochondrial relationship—”

“A what?”

“Mitochondrial. Maternal. Like two sisters who have the same mother.”

“I've heard of that. Usable in court?”

“Usable for warrants, for now.”

I gave her a shrug. It was lying. It was not the time to tell her that Alta Taylor was not in the ground in Hadlow.

She smiled then, a Jennifer Gale television smile, fast and efficient. “I've got to get over to city hall for a one o'clock news conference. My citizens' committee story, remember? News at noon, six, and nine?”

Her high flush had returned. Excitement. Opportunity. I'd seen that kind of flush on Amanda, not that many months before, when she first started imagining doing big things with big donations. Right now, Jennifer Gale had big opportunities.

I opened the door.

“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.