by Claire Booth
The woman started to tear up.
‘How often did you go see her?’
‘As often as I could.’
She wasn’t going to give Belinda more opportunity for grieving sniffles. She switched subjects. ‘When was the last time you saw Clyde?’
‘It must’ve been at her memorial service.’
‘Really?’
One step closer.
‘Oh … yes. I saw him here, of course. When Ward had them all over to try to play bocce in the backyard.’
Step.
‘And?’
Belinda was matching Sheila’s advance with a sideways shuffle that put the protruding kitchen bar counter between them. ‘And what?’
‘Then when did you next see Clyde?’
‘That was it. Only that time.’
Ward let out some confused mutterings. Neither woman paid him any attention.
‘When you would go visit Nell at her home, what did you think about how she was being cared for?’
Belinda blinked rapidly at the shift.
‘Clyde wasn’t … he wasn’t doing it properly. She was in too much pain.’
‘Did Nell say anything to you about it?’
‘No. That wasn’t her way.’
‘Was Clyde there when you would visit?’
‘Not usually. He’d have to leave, run errands. Take a breather, that sort of thing.’
Step.
‘So you were there with just Nell? No Clyde?’
She stiffened. ‘What are you getting at?’
Step.
‘What’d you and Clyde talk about that day everyone came over here to play bocce?’
The woman looked like her head was starting to spin. Her hands came out and she clutched the countertop.
‘What? I don’t … you mean a month or so ago? Nothing. Just a hello.’
Sheila’s next step took her to the opposite side of the counter from where Belinda stood. She laid her hands on the cool granite surface. ‘“Just a hello” for the woman who’d helped nurse his dying wife? The woman he hadn’t seen in years?’
Belinda nodded. Sheila spun to her left, startling Ward so badly he bumped the sideboard and sent a glass off the side. She asked her question before it even hit the carpeted floor.
‘Did you know they knew each other?’
Ward, his face almost as gray as his hair except for two red splotches on his cheeks, shook his head.
‘Did she tell you after that bocce get-together that she realized who Clyde was?’
Ward gave her another mute no.
‘Were the two of them ever by themselves?’
Now she got a nod. Clyde had gone inside to use the restroom. When he came out, he hadn’t said much of anything the whole rest of the time.
‘But I don’t know if they even talked,’ Ward said in a tone made up of one part hope that he was helping, and two parts fear that he wasn’t.
‘Doesn’t matter.’ Sheila whipped back toward Belinda. ‘I don’t care if you two had a conversation or if he just saw you and recognized you. I don’t care what brought it together for him, I only care that he figured out you killed his wife.’
The glass Ward had picked up slipped from his fingers and hit the floor again, sounding like it didn’t survive the second fall. Belinda didn’t move.
‘I’d like you to leave my house now.’
‘No.’
That produced a flinch. Ward started to stammer. Without taking her eyes from his wife’s face, Sheila gave him a palm-out stop signal and he immediately fell silent. Then she went out on a very thin limb.
‘We found the bocce balls. The bag has your DNA on it.’
If the woman had somehow destroyed them, the lie wouldn’t hold. If she knew it was highly unlikely DNA would be left on a bag, the lie wouldn’t hold. Sheila pressed her hands against the cool granite and prayed.
‘Of course it has my DNA,’ Belinda said, her voice suddenly high and scratchy. ‘It’s my husband’s equipment. Of course I’ve touched it. You’d know that if your deputy had asked me before he took it in for evidence.’
It was a good response – an innocent-sounding response – but Belinda’s careful word choice showed she knew exactly what Sheila really meant.
‘Not your husband’s bag, Mrs Ullyott. I’m talking about the equipment belonging to Clyde Timmons. The set you used to beat him to death.’
The two women stared at each other, separated by only a countertop and two killings. Sheila heard Ward’s breath hitch and glassware clink as again he staggered against the sideboard. Belinda glanced over at him.
‘I went to talk to him. She’s been gone nine years. What was the point of him saying something now? It wouldn’t have changed anything.’
Sheila thought about a bad mullet rattling the chains around his ankles. ‘Oh, yes it would have,’ she said. ‘It would’ve brought his son back to him.’
THIRTY-SIX
Everyone was talking at once. At each other, over each other, against each other. What are you thinking, Hank? Who’s Tina Hardy? Why would you bring this here to our doorstep? Where’s your judgment gone, boy? Take the damn cuffs off, it’s all a mistake. Get the kids away from the door.
That last one was Hank, trying to make himself heard over the din as his precious children pushed their way to the front, staring fearfully up at their handcuffed Uncle Lewie. Suddenly a voice cut through all of it.
‘Leave the handcuffs on.’
Aunt Fin appeared behind her brother, her expression hard and her hands clasped. The little crowd parted and she walked the few steps to her husband.
‘Where is she?’
‘Where’s who? Tina? I don’t know. That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out. Why is he …’ Lew tried to turn and look at Hank. ‘Why are you saying I killed her?’
Hank grabbed his shoulder and forced him back around toward Fin. He was more than happy to let her start the interrogation.
‘Because she’s been missing for weeks,’ Fin said. ‘And you’ve lied from the beginning. She wasn’t on vacation, she didn’t have a sick mother, and she wasn’t keeping you updated. She’s dead.’
‘Like hell she is,’ Lew yelled. ‘She took my … she took off. I was, uh, worried. So I was looking for her.’
Hank heard someone call from within the house and the kids disappeared inside. He and Fin looked at each other. Hank started to speak, but Fin beat him to it.
‘We know everything. The fraud, the false inventory. The police are at the business right now. And Tina’s condo. They’re searching that, too.’
Lew let out something between a groan and a moan. ‘The office or the stores?’
‘That’s all you care about, isn’t it?’ she snapped. ‘Just the business. You broke the law for it. You killed for it when Tina found out about it.’
‘Why do you keep saying that?’ Lew was still yelling. ‘I didn’t kill anybody. I’m the victim in this.’
‘So why,’ Hank said, his grip still tight on the old man’s shoulder, ‘were you at the strip mall? Why did you run?’
‘I was running to you. I didn’t know it was you in that police car. I thought if I could get to you here at the house, you could help me explain things to the other cops.’
Maggie stepped forward. ‘You thought you’d lead a police chase to my home, where my children are, where they are supposed to be safe and sound?’ She kept advancing and Hank made no move to let Lew back up. ‘How dare you?’ She was in his face now, stepping on his shiny loafers. He started to cry.
‘I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t go home. That would pull you in, Finella. And Marco would find out.’
‘Both of those things have already happened,’ Hank said. ‘So now, you and I are going to take a ride to my jail and I’m going to tell the Columbia police that I have you in custody.’
‘Oh, hell, no,’ said the one person with veto power. Maggie jabbed a finger at Lew’s blazered torso. ‘We’re standing right here until
you tell us what you did with Tina’s body.’
Hank, still so furious that his grip was making Lew wince, felt a bolt of pride cut through his anger. No one went from zero to sixty faster than his emergency room doctor wife. She’d gone from knowing practically nothing about Tina’s disappearance to controlling the situation within minutes. Lew tried to shift away from her but she wouldn’t let him.
‘We’re waiting,’ she said.
They waited a full minute. Lew couldn’t pull himself together. Hank started to worry that the old man would suffer a permanent mark-down right on the front step. Maggie seemed to realize the same thing – she put her fingers on his neck to take a pulse and then took a step back, telling him to take some slow breaths. Hank turned him and looked him straight in the eye for the first time that night.
‘I’m going to ask you one question at a time. You’re going to answer. Got it?’
Lew nodded.
‘Why were you at the strip mall in the first place?’
‘I thought she might be there.’ He didn’t specify whether he expected her alive or dead.
‘And what were you planning to do if you found her?’
‘Ask her where the money is.’
Alive, then. Fin’s breath came out in a hiss. Duncan started to mutter.
‘How many times have you been inside that particular store?’ Hank said.
‘None. I don’t have the keys.’
Argyle had said he mailed them to a Columbia PO box.
‘I never got them,’ Lew said.
‘Why’d you even need a store down here?’ Dunc said. ‘You planning on defrauding people in Branson, too?’
Lew’s shoulders curled inward. That wasn’t how it worked. No customers got taken advantage of, he said. They were just going to say the store was full of stock and had good sales. That’s what they’d done with the store in Kingdom City, and to a lesser extent the other three stores in the chain. Those figures were passed on to potential investors.
‘I needed to raise money. That was the only way I could keep things going. No one is buying anymore. They want to find things online and they want them too cheap even for me. I can’t cover my costs.’
‘What did you do with all that investor money?’ Hank asked.
‘Is that who you stole from?’ Dunc said.
‘I was going to pay it back.’ Lew was pleading now – for them to understand, for his old life back, for anything that would stop the hell encircling him right now. ‘But I needed it to pay the other vendors, and the employees.’
The other vendors. Two pieces of information shifted in Hank’s mind and clicked together. ‘You created a vendor. You made one up. That “miracle vendor” that Marco told me about, whose merchandise sold like hotcakes – that was all fake.’
Everyone but Lew stared at him in confusion. He’d have to pull off a verbal flow chart. The Castle ‘bought’ nonexistent merchandise from Discount Express Trading, Hank explained. That payment, made with investor money, went into an account controlled by Lew. He was the one who made up the whole Discount Express company in the first place. Then, because none of the other stores were really bringing in money, Lew used what he collected as Discount Express to pay real bills – like genuine vendor invoices and employee wages. That money was slipped into the everyday account that the Business School kid used to write the actual checks.
‘That’s why you refused to sell online,’ Maggie said. ‘You’d have to tell the world what you were claiming your stock was. And what if people bought it and you didn’t have it?’
Lew nodded. Dunc threw up his hands and kicked at the front doorjamb.
‘Did Marco know?’ Hank, already a good six inches taller, purposefully loomed closer. He wanted the whole truth with his next two questions. ‘Did he?’
Lew shook his head. ‘No. He’s a … a good man, and I couldn’t’ve built the business without him. But he’s got no head for numbers.’
The old man looked too beaten to be lying, too tired to try and pin it on Cortello. He started to sag into Hank. We’re not done yet, old man, he thought as he took hold of Lew’s other arm as well. ‘Where’s Vic Melnicoe?’
Lew started to protest, then swayed forward a little. Maggie swatted away Hank’s hands and took his pulse again. ‘He needs to sit down. He might even need an ambulance.’
‘We are not calling an ambulance,’ Hank said through clenched teeth. ‘He’s riding right where he belongs. The back of my squad car.’
He took Lew’s elbow and walked him across his parking lot of a lawn. Over the sobbing, he heard Duncan kick the doorjamb again and swear. ‘Goddam it, I wish he had been having an affair.’
THIRTY-SEVEN
Sam held open the passenger door. He was going to give Brenna a ride back to her car at the restaurant. The glove box was ajar – the Chief must’ve come by for the case notes. He wondered if Hank had grabbed the Timmons notes as well. He could check once he got Brenna safely on her way. He gently closed the door and walked around to the driver’s side. Ten minutes of driving through empty streets and they pulled up next to her little red hatchback. They chatted a little more about the movie and then she said she should really be going. She had the busy pre-church Sunday shift at the coffee shop in the morning.
He got out and as he walked around the car to her door, he tried to talk himself into asking her out again right then. He helped her out and took a deep breath. And then an old blue Honda stopped at the new traffic light they’d put in right near the parking lot. Close enough for Sam to see the license plate.
‘What?’ Brenna stepped back at the look on his face. ‘What just happened?’
‘That car … body dump … I got to go. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ He grabbed her hands. ‘Can I call you? I really had a good time. I’d love to take you out again.’
He let go of her before he had an answer. His eyes were on the Civic. The light was about to turn green. ‘Please, I need you to get in your car and lock the doors. That’s a … a wanted person. In that car. I have to go. And you have to be safe. I want you to be safe.’ She got all flustered as he bundled her into the driver’s seat of her car. He laid his palm on the window glass and then ran for his Bronco, leaving a little piece of his heart behind.
The Civic was halfway down the street. He accelerated until he was about four car-lengths behind. He spent a quarter mile happy with the anonymity of his personal car before it sank in that he had no way of pulling over the Civic. No police cruiser, no uniform, no gun. And no radio. He worked his cell phone out of the pocket of his dress slacks and punched the Chief’s number. It went to voicemail immediately. He tried twice more and then dialed Sheila. The same thing happened. What the hell? He needed some help here.
The Honda went through the intersection with Highway 76 and then turned left on Green Mountain Drive. Sam made the turn one-handed as he scrolled through his contacts to find the Branson PD number. When all this was over, he was definitely – finally – going to get around to turning on the voice-activated commands. He looked around and swore – they were now the only two cars on the road. And he couldn’t find the PD’s damn internal patrol number. He dropped a little farther back and used the only option left to him. He called 9-1-1.
‘Wait – say again? You want a Branson County sheriff deputy?’
‘No, ma’am. I am a Branson County sheriff deputy. I need a Branson police patrol to respond to my location. And I need you to patch me through to them, because I have to explain what I need.’
‘Just state your emergency, sir.’
The Civic was slowing down and then speeding up. Sam had a feeling the driver was testing to see if the Bronco really was tailing it. Green Mountain had a lot of development as it looped south of the Strip, but it also had stretches of empty woods. Which they were fast approaching.
‘I am stating my emergency. I need to speak with the patrol officer nearest to the Jim Stafford Theatre. I’m on Green Mountain about a quarter mile south.’
‘We can’t send an officer till we know the nature of your emergency. Sir.’
The Civic was slowing way down, giving Sam no choice but to pass, or to stay put and confirm that he was in pursuit. He dropped the phone on the passenger seat without disconnecting and sped up to go around. He had a sinking feeling that the driver would turn off the road once they were back in a populated area and be lost in the tangle of side streets. He yelled out the car’s license number and suggested that the 9-1-1 operator look up the BOLO. Was that emergency enough?
‘Sir, that car is wanted in connection with a homicide in the Branson County sheriff’s jurisdiction.’
Sam’s heart was louder in his ears than the idiot emergency operator’s voice as he pulled alongside the Civic. It slowed even more and the Bronco sailed ahead. He said one more thing and then pulled at the wheel in a way he’d only ever done during practice maneuvers. His beloved Bronco jerked to the right as he slammed on the brakes. He heard tires scream as the guy hit the Honda’s brakes. Sam braced himself and watched the smaller car careen toward him at a speed that would do a stunt driver proud. The car lost control just as Sam saw the driver’s face for the first time.
The Civic glanced off the rear passenger side of his Bronco and shot into the oncoming traffic lane. He hadn’t figured on it not having anti-lock brakes. He pulled around in a clockwise circle until he was behind the car again as the driver fought to keep it from going off the road completely. It shot up over the curb and on to the grass shoulder. Noxious smoke rolled out from the wheels and most of the tire rubber had been left in skid marks on the pavement.
He could faintly hear the tinny yelling of the operator as he stumbled out of the Bronco. He approached from the side just as he would during a traffic stop, shouting for the driver to put hands on the steering wheel and wishing like hell he had his gun. He moved at a slow sidestep and continued to issue orders, even though he could now see that the airbag had exploded. The driver sagged against its deflating bulk. He crouched down, grabbed the door handle, and yanked.
‘Put your hands where I can see them, or I will shoot.’