Authors: Lorena McCourtney
I guessed there was as much logic to that as to my naming Koop after a former U.S. Surgeon General who was vigorously opposed to smoking.
I dished up pot roast and vegetables, sliced the freshly baked bread, and added the salad I’d fixed earlier. We sat down to eat.
Mac was silent for several minutes while he ate double helpings of roast and asked for another slice of bread. Finally he said, “Does knowing it was a former Braxton you talked to at the power company change your mind about staying here for a while? We could be on the road within minutes.”
Yeah, that was the great thing about motorhome life. If you didn’t like your location at the moment, you picked up and moved, and took your whole life with you. For a few moments I was ready to do it.
But my reasons for staying kicked in again
.
My responsibility in Lillian Hunnicutt’s death, which translated into a responsibility not to let the Braxtons get away with what they’d done to her. And this was
home.
The more I thought about it, the less willing I was to let the Braxtons run me out of it again.
Mac grunted as if he knew my response without my ever saying anything, and we continued the meal without words. I figured he was silently fuming about my stubbornness and what it would take to make me change my mind about staying. But when he finally spoke, after a big dish of peach cobbler, it wasn’t about picking up and leaving.
“I don’t think we should just sit here biting our fingernails and getting nervous ulcers while we wait for the Braxtons to mount an attack or an ambush or whatever they decide to do,” he said.
“You never bite your fingernails or get a nervous stomach,” I pointed out. Mac’s stomach can take anything from a tsunami of garlic to chili hot enough to set a glacier on fire. His fingernails are unremarkable but also unbitten.
“I may start having trouble with both, worrying about you and Braxtons,” Mac grumbled.
“Worrying is not a productive endeavor. The Lord advises against it.”
“I know. It’s like watering fake flowers. Keeps you busy but doesn’t accomplish anything.”
Not exactly Biblical words on the subject of worry, but maybe they were lost in translation somewhere.
“Whether or not I’m worrying is getting off the subject here,” Mac added. “What we need to do is go after the Braxtons instead of waiting for them to come to us. Find out where they live, what they’re involved in, what kind of relationships they have with each other. Where they’re vulnerable. Check into family squabbles. Use the old divide-and-conquer technique to get something incriminating on them.”
“I’ve had the impression that even if there are family differences, their desire to turn me into roadkill unites them.”
“But no family is totally united. There are conflicts and internal feuds. We need to look for them.”
“Okay. How?”
“The internet knows all. But first I need another dish of peach cobbler.”
Chapter Ten
After dinner, we drove back over to Mac’s motorhome. I had a computer for a while, but it crashed in a blue funk of death, and I haven’t replaced it. Mac’s laptop works on something called Wi-fi, which the RV
park provided. I have an uneasy suspicion this is connected with a mysterious cyberspace cult with secret handshakes (or talon or tentacle shakes, whatever the case may be) and a language utilizing only two-letter words. Mac assures me, however, that it’s a technology “everybody” uses these days. I suppose he’s right. His laptop fired right up. Every time I seem on the verge of catching up with technology, it leaps right over me. Leaving me in a dust of pixels and bytes, ports and scripts, with enough acronym letters (DDR, BIOS, CPU, ISP)
to make alphabet soup for an army
.
Mac concentrated on the laptop, with me looking over his shoulder. He collected a list of a half-dozen or so Braxtons, with residential phone numbers and addresses. Also some Braxton businesses: Braxton Construction, Braxton Furniture, and an all-purpose Braxton Enterprises. No address for that one. Ever suspicious, the lack of address made me wonder if they were
doing nefarious
business from under a rock somewhere.
We also looked for the Zollinger name, possible relatives of the Beaumont Zollinger I’d helped convict. Braxtons and Zollingers are entwined because Bo Zollinger and Drake Braxton and a couple of others are half brothers. Several residential addresses for Zollingers showed up. Also a Dr. Deena Zollinger, podiatrist, which rather surprised me since I’d never connected feet with a mini-Mafia. Maybe she had a concrete-shoe sideline? There was a Zollinger Brothers Computers & Communications business, and, rather ominously, it seemed to me, an Elton Zollinger, Attorney-at-Law. No doubt standing ready to find legal loopholes for any and all Braxton/Zollinger illicit activities.
Altogether, the Braxton/Zollinger spiderweb covered a wide territory and made a dangerous net
of people who might have me on a hit list. I couldn’t help a nervous glance out the motorhome window. Were they stalking me even now?
Unprompted by me, Mac made another quick search, this time on Radison Properties, the company that had made the offer on my house. A phone number and an address over in Illinois, the same information that was on their letterhead, was all that came up.
“Don’t you think that’s odd?” I asked. “Doesn’t practically every business in the country have some kind of internet presence by now?”
“Did you ever try to call them?”
“No. Not yet.” I’d put off
calling until I stopped flip-flopping and settled on a definite plan for the future. Although I was reminded of that old saying:
We plan – God laughs.
Not a malicious laughter, of course. But our plans may wander away from his, and he’s the one in control.
“It almost looks like a front,” Mac mused thoughtfully.
“Meaning—?”
“Maybe a company set up for the specific purpose of acquiring property without revealing who’s actually behind the acquisition or what kind of company it is.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Good question.”
“Isn’t it possible to dig deeper and find out who owns a company?” I asked.
“Probably. For a computer expert. Which I’m not.”
Mac is so much better on a computer than I am that I think of him as an expert. “You’re always doing research on the internet for your magazine articles.”
“But I’m not usually looking for information someone may be purposely trying to hide.”
Hide
?
“You think there may be something not quite legitimate about the offer on my house? Like it’s a scam or something?”
I didn’t really
want
to sell. I’d almost made up my mind I was here to stay. Yet the offer lingered in the back of my mind as an escape hatch if I needed it, and I didn’t like the idea that it might be more trap than safety net.
“Not necessarily. Being secretive about company plans or new products to protect
from piracy
is a fairly common corporate technique.”
But neither was it necessarily an admirable or legitimate technique if used to deceive the public in some way.
The public, of course,
including
me
.
Mac got into the tax assessor’s records, which were public information, and found Radison Properties was indeed listed as owner of a number of properties in the Madison Street area, as well as a large piece a couple blocks over that had never been developed because it is so swampy. It had been for sale for years. The address for Radison Properties in the assessor’s office was the same Springfield, Illinois, address as that on the letterhead to me. They were also behind on most of the property taxes.
Which also didn’t necessarily mean anything, Mac said. Some companies simply did business that way, preferring to pay interest on the accumulated tax debt in order to use the money for current purposes. Although I tended to think that upright citizens and companies kept their property taxes paid up.
***
We went to an early Sunday service together the following morning, to the church I’d attended briefly before leaving Madison Street. A few people remembered and welcomed me, which was nice, but I answered questions about the intervening time with the vague explanation
that I’d been “traveling.” The pastor delivered an intriguing message linking Biblical prophecy with current Middle East events in the news. Biblical bad news:
dangerous times are coming. Good news: so is Jesus. Afterward, we drove around checking out the Braxton and Zollinger addresses.
Drake Braxton, the man who’d threatened me at the end of the trial, had a gated residence of southern plantation style, with a tree-lined circular driveway. Money trees, from the looks of the place. He was apparently better off financially than I’d realized back then, or had done very well for himself in the intervening time. He appeared to be in the process of putting a huge new addition on to the house. Indoor swimming pool? It looked big enough. The other residences of both Braxtons and Zollingers were not as extravagant but definitely upscale. Deputy Chief of Police Haldebrand and his wife Sylvia lived in a big condo complex, nice but not champagne-and-caviar luxurious. No vehicles or people were in view at any of the residences.
We stopped for lunch at a Taco Bell and then went on to where Bo Zollinger’s Thrif-Tee Wrecking was once located, and where I’d had a memorable encounter with a junkyard ho
und. A business manufacturing
metal-fence materials operated on the site now, no indication whether it was owned by Braxtons and/or Zollingers. Bottom-Buck Barney’s used-car lot, which Bo had also owned, was now a lawn-and-garden store.
Zollinger Brothers Computers & Communications, located in a strip mall, was doing a brisk business. I didn’t go in, but Mac did and reported that in addition to computers and communications equipment, the store also carried safes and locks and home security equipment. He talked to a clerk and learned that, although the name wasn’t changed, one Zollinger brother had bought out the other. She said the podiatrist-Zollinger was a relative, very knowledgeable and caring, opinion gained from the salesclerk’s personal experience with ingrown toenails. Which didn’t keep me from wondering about a possible concrete-shoe sideline. Also wondering if Ms. Zollinger was even now ordering extra concrete for a potential Ivy Malone fitting.
I didn’t question how Mac had acquired those unlikely bits of information unrelated to computers from the clerk. I sometimes suspect Mac could get information out of a monk who’d taken a vow of silence.
The last place we went to see was the country address of an I.G. Braxton, a good eight or ten miles out of town. It was in an area of lush rolling hills, some wooded, some farmland
, quite pastoral looking. The house was rambling ranch style, not as impressive as Drake Braxton’s place, but it had the addition of a barn and stable, and white-fenced pastures enclosed black cattle and aristocratic looking horses. A sign arched over the driveway said “Braxton,” with no indication whether it was a farm or ranch, or, given my sometimes morbid imagination, a covert setting for disposing of Braxton victims. An impressive array of oversized SUVs, chrome-heavy pickups, BMWs, and a Lexus filled a parking area. Identity of vehicles courtesy of Mac, because my capabilities there are limited to differentiating between pickups and cars. Except for old Thunderbirds, of course, because I have fond memories of the one I once owned.
It was no wonder we hadn’t seen vehicles or people at the other homes; they were all congregated here. A
get-Ivy
brainstorming session?
A covered patio and large fenced yard screened by trees extended from one end of the house. We caught glimpses of kids chasing balloons in a playground of swings and slides, plus a couple of chubby pinto ponies lined up for rides. Rowdy country music blared from an unseen source, and an older woman danced with a toddler balanced on her feet. Smoke drifted from a barbecue manned by a guy in a cowboy hat, and a come-n-get it gong clanged.
I had to admit that it didn’t look like a gathering of murderous conspirators. Was this the grandmother’s birthday celebration Sylvia Haldebrand had mentioned to Mac? I reminded myself that looks could be deceptive. Even crooks and killers no doubt enjoyed the occasional birthday cake and pony ride.
I also had to consider the possibility there was no connection between the Braxtons and Lillian Hunnicutt’s death. Or me. Maybe I’d spent the recent years hiding from people who’d forgotten all about me. Maybe some vindictive person truly had come out of Lillian’s past to kill her.
I also reminded myself that just because the Braxtons and Zollingers didn’t operate a business conveniently labeled Braxton/Zollinger Murder, Inc. didn’t mean they
weren’t
crooks and murderers.
The conflicting possibilities made my head feel as snarled and tangled as an unfortunate ball of yarn that had once fallen into Koop’s clutches.
***
Back at the house, we had a supper of yesterday’s cold roast beef, and then Mac went back to his motorhome to catch up on his e-mails.
I decided to enjoy a leisurely bath. I started to drag a chair from the kitchen to the bathroom to prop under the doorknob for protection, but at the last minute I scolded myself that it was time to stop acting as if a Braxton lurked in every dark corner. Although I did lock the back door. That wasn’t paranoia, right? Just prudent.
I dumped enough bubble bath in the tub to suds up a small ocean, stretched out in the big tub, and relaxed till my fingertips went wrinkly in the hot water. I wished I could slip directly into bed, but I had to run over to the far side of the yard in my bathrobe to get to the bed in the motorhome. I hadn’t taken my cell phone to the bathroom with me, and it was tinkling when I stepped in the door. The caller was my FBI friend Dix, I saw from the information on the screen when I finally found the phone under Koop’s belly on the arm of the sofa. For some unknown reason, he seems to consider the cell phone a personal buddy.