“Maybe he was sick,” Arnold mused.
Helga’s voice once again clothed itself in barbed wire.
“Don’t bother that feeble brain of yours about who died on my driveway. Go take that stinking wet shirt off and hang it on the clothesline.
“Yes ma’am,” said Arnold. Swiping at his eyes, he headed out the back door.
7
Ten Months Ago
Chicago’s evening rush hour was just ending as Brad Hamilton, Jr. fed the last of the paper correspondence through the shredder. A rap on the door forced him to break focus. A silver-haired gentleman sporting a bow tie and mustache marched into his office.
“Good evening, Brad. I trust all Ryan Atkin’s e-mail correspondence concerning his suspicions of illegal medical claim tampering has been erased?” he asked, the early evening sun reflecting off his silver toupee.
“Not to worry, Gerald,” said the younger man, slipping a manila folder through the slats. “Just cleaning up a few loose ends.”
“Well done.” Gerald MacFerron eased his tall frame into a cherry leather desk chair and crossed his legs.
Brad sat down behind his desk, and then peered into the older man’s eyes. “I don’t know how to thank you, Gerald. You’ve been a trusted friend to our family since I was a kid.”
“Don’t delude yourself into thinking any of this is about you,
Brad.”
Brad hung his head.
“Rumors are circulating throughout the health insurance community. I refuse to allow your father to be used as fodder should the insurance board choose to examine Great Harvest, a business that’s operated for forty years with the utmost integrity until Brad Sr. hoisted you on-board.”
“I understand, sir.”
A tall, imposing woman, her hair combed into a neat gray bun, entered Brad Jr.’s office carrying a tea tray. Her eyes briefly flickered to the meticulously dressed senior partner as she silently glided across the room to the younger man’s desk. She set a tray of finger sandwiches and a ceramic teapot and cups on a stack of papers and wafted out of the office.
Brad moved the tray to an empty spot on the cluttered desk. “G’s at it again.”
“Obviously her efforts are in vain,” Gerald said dryly. “Your desk is disgraceful.”
“A clean desk is the sign of an empty mind,” Brad spouted. Gerald rolled his eyes. “Your borderline business transactions have caused your father much chagrin over the years, Bradley. What was particularly despicable was sending a good-for-nothing hoodlum to rough up Ryan Atkins.”
Brad shot a paper plane glider across the room. “I needed to warn him off reporting us to the board.”
Gerald slammed the glider to the floor. “Due to your shady endeavors, this company lost a conscientious employee who performed his job to our high ethical standards. I trust you were able to stop the evil hand from raining down upon Atkins and his family.”
Brad nonchalantly tossed the injured plane into the metal trash can. “Actually, I never heard back from the dude.”
Gerald stiffened.
“I tried to contact TG, that’s the name the guy went by, but his cell phone was disconnected. Even went back to the motorcycle bar where I met him. No one’s seen him.”
“Has anyone communicated with Atkins since he left?” Gerald asked through gritted teeth.
“One of the adjusters in his group mentioned Atkins was recovering from a heart attack he suffered shortly after he left Great Harvest.”
Gerald strode to the door, then turned. “If this motorcycle goon attacks Atkins or his family, I won’t be able to protect you from the fallout.”
8
Helga Beckermann settled onto the paisley-cushion beneath the picture window. A purple parakeet alighted on one shoulder, a blue parakeet on the other.
“Your birds are so well-trained,” said Laurie, resolutely ignoring the poop chips that decorated the elderly woman’s flowered housedress.
The older woman nodded, carefully reaching up to rub the purple bird’s chest. “From this window, me and my birds watch the world.”
“I appreciate you letting me stop by. Must have been a nightmare finding that kid’s body on your driveway.”
Helga squinted. “Why you so interested?”
Laurie leaned forward in the straight-backed chair. “Earlier that day, a vagrant was spotted at my son’s camp. Scared Rory pretty bad. I’m just trying to put two and two together.”
“Kids don’t need no fancy camp. They need to be home with their parents.”
Laurie swallowed hard. “The newspaper article said you were away from the house Friday afternoon.”
“Once a month, for the last twenty years, the ladies get together for lunch at The Depot, then head over to the antique shop. Your mother, now she was a friendly sort. When your family bought old Biesterfield’s cottage, she came right over and introduced herself. She joined us every now and then.”
Laurie grudgingly acknowledged a memory track of summers involving Helga and her mother before her parents’ divorce. Card games. Scrabble. Grown-up chitchat. Ancient history.
“Friday afternoons are one of the few pleasures I got left,” mused Helga. “Only time I leave Paulie and Priscilla.” The older woman flicked tweezer-sized turds from her shoulders.
How do you spell disgusting
?
Helga’s parakeets chirped gaily, unaware of their owner’s eccentricity.
“What time did you arrive home?”
“Five o’clock. I pulled into the driveway and what did I find?” Helga paused as if she was recounting a ghost story.
Laurie looked at her strangely. “A body?”
The older woman looked crestfallen. “Who told you?”
“Um, you did.”
“Right,” said Helga. “There passed out on my driveway was this young guy in a yellow nylon shirt with the letters ‘TG’ and a number ‘7.’”
“Did you recognize him?”
“Thought he was my friend’s grandson. Then I remembered her boy’s married with children of his own. Me, I got a ninety-one-year-old brother who lives alone in Baraboo. Then there’s Margaret, my niece. Your family invited her to their barbecue the summer before you went off to college. She and her husband live in Jefferson County now. Got those three pit bulls to keep her busy.”
Laurie grimaced. Her parents had bought her a red Porsche as a high school graduation present. She’d been screeching down the country road when three big dogs jutted out from Helga’s property. She’d braked so hard she almost went through the window.
“Good guard dogs, are Jim, Joey, and Jack,” continued Helga. “I seen your toy dog barking in the kitchen window when I take my walks. He don’t do nothing but yap, yap, yap.”
Laurie stiffened. Rocky alerted me to the dead body on my lawn, she wanted to protest. But for right now, the initial discovery of that body needed to remain holed up in her consciousness until evidence could confirm her story. She kept silent.
Helga raised her eyebrows at Laurie’s lack of response. “Your tenant get a teaching job?”
“Shakia?” Laurie. She was unaware they’d ever spoken.
Helga gently stroked one parakeet’s lime-green tummy. “Shakia was a good girl. She tutored the Spanish-speaking kids at the library on Saturday mornings.”
Chagrined her neighbor knew more about her former tenant than she did, Laurie shifted the conversation. “You’re sure you never saw that kid in the yellow jersey before?”
“People are more than a blur to me, missy.” The older woman’s trembling hands fell to her side, causing the green parakeet and his aqua-breasted friend to flee to the drapery rods.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” said Laurie. “Please accept my apology.”
Silence.
“I’m thinking he could have been a grocery clerk,” Helga confided.
“The boy on your driveway?”
“Your parents put you through college and you can’t follow a tiny thread of conversation without losing the needle?” taunted the older woman.
“Sorry.” Laurie wanted to fling parakeet poop in the venomous woman’s face. But before she could slam out of here, she needed to wring from the older woman’s lips any information that would identify the dead body.
“They’re always hiring new kids when the others get pregnant or graduate high school,” Helga gossiped. “Then again, he could’ve been a pizza delivery boy. Last year Margaret came down with the flu and had to cancel Thanksgiving dinner, so I ordered in pizza from Dominos.” The old woman licked her lips. “Yum.”
Laurie got up and headed for the door. “Listen, I’m going to skedaddle and let you enjoy the day. Thanks for your help.”
“Don’t run off just yet.”
Laurie paused in her steps.
The old woman squinted at Laurie. “You ever stop to think that young man dropped dead in the wrong driveway?”
“Huh?” Laurie’s shoulders tensed.
“You’re 201 Briar Road, I’m 102. Could have been his first time visiting and he got lost.”
“Our address is clearly posted on our mailbox,” Laurie said defensively.
“Maybe he was wanting one of them two houses between us.”
“Sounds pretty far-fetched,” said Laurie, playing for time.
“I gotta take a rest now.” Helga abruptly turned and started down the long hardwood floored hallway.
“Thanks again, Mrs. Beckermann,” Laurie called as she let herself out the porch door. Ironically, her nemesis was the only other person who shared her doubts about the intruder’s quest.
*
Laurie Atkins drummed her fingers on Officer Gomez’s wooden desk while the officer scanned a list of phone and e-mail responses she’d received regarding the identity of the body found on Helga Beckermann’s driveway.
“No valid leads yet, Mrs. Atkins. We’ll let you know if we come up with something.”
‘“The check is in the mail,’” Laurie mumbled under her breath.
“Excuse me?” asked the officer, raising her eyes from the monitor.
Play nice,
Laurie admonished herself. It wouldn’t do to make an enemy of her only liaison, tenuous as that might be. “I was saying how much I appreciate you keeping me informed,” she said primly. Not. Ten days since the accident without any contact.
“The department is doing what it can.”
“I’m sure.” She debated whether to mention her chat with Mrs. Beckermann.
Gomez picked up the black telephone receiver. “If there’s nothing
else.”
“Actually, there is one more thing.” One puzzle piece Mitzy had urged her to share with the police. “I found an army canteen around the kid’s neck. And a Greyhound bus ticket receipt stuffed in the young guy’s jeans pocket.”
The officer held the receiver midair. “On Helga Beckermann’s driveway?”
Laurie heaved an impatient sigh. “On my front lawn.”
“Oh, right.”
“You still don’t believe me.”
The receiver slammed back into its holder. “Mrs. Atkins, we’ve been through this before. There is no evidence the vagrant ever set foot on your property.”
“Then how’d I know about the canteen and the Greyhound ticket receipt?”
Gomez folded her hands on her desk and leaned forward. “Why don’t you tell me?”
“What, you think I killed the kid?”
“I advise you to stick around in case we need to question you further.”
“Actually, my family and I are returning to Chicago the end of this week.”
“Uh huh.”
“That time frame is not negotiable. I need to get my son ready for school.”
“You’ll be hearing from me soon. Good day.”
Laurie felt a sudden urge to convince the officer of her innocence. “I did some investigating on my own,” she confessed. “On weekdays, Greyhound buses from Green Bay and Chicago both pull into the Milwaukee station at nine o’clock a.m.”
“Milwaukee’s a good forty miles from here.”
“This guy probably hitched a ride from a truck driver and got dropped off on Rte. 94 at the Oconomowoc exit, then hiked the last six or seven miles from there.”
“Nice theory. His picture’s been splattered all over the television networks, not to mention the Internet. No parent calling to claim him.”
“You could follow up with Greyhound.”
Gomez gave her a cold stare. “No one tells me how to do my
job.”
Laurie sensed humility was the magic key here. “Listen, I apologize for freaking out when you responded to my nine-one-one.”
The officer groaned. “Your bogus emergency call.”
“It’s not my fault the dead body disappeared by the time you showed up.”
Gomez’s voice grew taut. “Mrs. Atkins, I don’t have time for this.”
“I was crazy scared for my son.”
“Crazy scared enough to track that pedophile to Helga Beckermann’s house and kill him?”
“You said there was no indication he was a…”
“Perception is reality.”
“There’s no love lost between my family and Mrs. Beckermann,” said Laurie.
“So she said,” said the officer. “Which makes me wonder why you chatted her up yesterday afternoon.”