by Rich Foster
Harry looked out the window, uncertain of what Widow Ames was hoping for. “It happens you know, people die and the crooks come out of the woodwork.”
“Are you saying you don’t want the job?”
“I don’t want to waste your money, Mrs. Ames. But I’ll give it a day or two. Then I’ll tell you what I think.”
Harry handed her a standard contract. Her good looks caused him to knock ten dollars off his hourly rate, Harry kidded himself it was because she was a widow.
Lisa pulled out her checkbook. When she wrote out a retainer check he could read her balance upside down. The check was good but the account would not bear many more like it.”
Paula came in with two coffee cups. Harry sipped his while his client dropped sweet and low into hers. From his desk he pulled out a legal pad.
“Okay Mrs. Ames, tell me everything you remember that got your backside up.”
For the next half hour Lisa recounted all the small oddities in Eddie’s behavior. Her list was thin pickings.
Chapter 16
Harry leaned on the counter at the Sheriff’s station. He thumbed through the thin sheaf of papers in the case file for Eddie Ames’s accident.
Detective Egan’s printing writing was neat. The file was straightforward, it contained,
An inspection of the vehicle, no defects found.
The autopsy report conclusion, death by drowning.
The accident scene report written by Egan.
Photographs of:
1 Indentations in the snow.
2 Ames’s truck in the water.
3 Ames’s body pressed against the windshield.
The case file on the break in at the Ames residence was even thinner. Someone took a pry bar to the back door and swiped what they could. Case closed unless someone got picked up hocking the computer.
Sheriff Gaines walked over. “So did we pass?”
“I’m not grading you Sheriff, just looking into it for Mrs. Ames.”
“Easy money, huh?”
“No need to insult me. I told her it was probably a waste of money but I would give it a day.”
“Could be a car came wide on the curve, maybe he fell asleep, but I think there’s nothing to it. There was no real damage to the truck.”
Harry shrugged noncommittally.
“But,” Gaines said, if you find something different you let me know, okay?”
Harry made no commitment, he simply said, “Thanks.”
Outside the day was warm. April showers were bringing Mayflowers, which would be followed by Pilgrims, or at least the tourists that came up to Red Lake in June, Harry idly thought.
He drove out the lake road. The truck’s snow tires sang on the pavement. In the woods the trees were turning buds into leaves and where there wasn’t mud grass was growing richly. Be good grazing for the cattle this spring, he thought.
Going north he missed the site of Eddie’s demise. He turned around at the prison and drove back the 2.6 miles Detective Egan noted on the report. He parked on the shoulder. The curve was tight and hard. The place looked different than the photos because the snow was gone. It looked rougher. Some skid marks showed on the bank, but he figured those were made when they winched Eddie’s truck up the bank.
Amongst the gravel on the shoulder silvery light glinted at him. He bent down and picked up a broken piece of mirror. The glass was thick. He kicked at the gravel with the tow of his boot and more bits of mirror glass winked at him. Probably been a lot of accidents on the curve.
He didn’t know what he was looking for. To be honest he did not think there was anything to see but he clambered down the bank toward the lake. Twenty feet down a flash of sunlight hit his eyes, another piece of mirror only bigger. There was another and another. A-half-dozen triangles of plate mirror lay scattered in the grass.
It was an odd place for mirror glass other than the curved ones on autos. Most likely someone lost a dresser off the back of a truck. But it was an odd find and it was at the scene of Eddie’s accident.
Harry climbed back to his truck, put on a pair of latex gloves and returned with plastic baggies and a box, the Grim Agency’s equivalent of an evidence kit.
On his way back to town Harry ran through the possibilities. If the Sheriff’s Department was right, Eddie fell asleep, drove recklessly, or swerved to avoid an oncoming car. But if it was something else, how do you get someone to drive off the road? The ways and means were few. Someone could tamper with his truck, but mechanical issues were ruled out. They could drug him, but the toxicology screen was clean on the body. You could force him off the road, which most likely would result in a crash between the vehicles. Or you could drive straight at your target, but that seemed too risky.
He stopped for a burger at the Canaan Grill. Between bites he chatted up the waitress. Becky Fenton was a single mom raising two kids. Harry believed a little flirting made everyone feel better.
“When are you going to run off with me Becky.”
“Just as soon as you dump that bombshell you go with.
“Aw shucks, she’s just my secretary, I barely notice her.”
“Paula was never ‘just’ anything,” Becky said, stressing the word.
Harry was forced to laugh.
“Besides, sugar, you don’t strike me as the fatherly type.”
“If not for the kids Becky,” Harry said ruefully, “you and I would be something!”
Becky laughed, “Damn kids.” She was still laughing as she took his money. “It’s always good to see you, say hi to Paula for me.”
Harry reached for the door, his face reflected back in the glass. As he swung it open the reflection disappeared. Another possibility for Eddie’s accident popped into his mind.
Instead of returning to Boyden Street, he drove through town and turned south unto route 218 toward Beaumont. As he climbed the pass, Red Lake was soon a small sparkling gem behind him. A short time later he was snaking his way down the mountains. Halfway down the hill he passed a sign that read, Parsons County, a dozen curves later the road straitened out and he was speeding across the flats outside Beaumont.
Ten minutes later Harry parked at the Parsons County Crime Lab where Zane Thayer, his friend and occasional asset, worked.
“Hell Harry, I’ve got shit piled up to here!”
“Just dust ‘em quick. There’s probably nothing on any of them. It won’t take you five minutes. Besides I’ll buy you lunch.”
It took a half hour.
“This piece here is edged. It came from the outside of the mirror. I picked up two clean prints on the front and a thumbprint on the back.”
“Can you run them for me?”
Zane rolled his eyes. “This better be a damn good lunch!”
“Anywhere in town.”
Zane scanned the prints and sent them electronically to the FBI’s IAFIS database.
“Lets get lunch. If the prints are on file we will know who’s they are after we eat.”
They lunched at the Harmon House. Zane had the fillet, two highballs and desert. Harry ordered a burger and a beer to even the bill out. They caught up. Then it was time to get back.
“We got a hit,” Zane said as he looked at his computer. “Sgt Riley Lance Crawford, USMC.”
Harry drove back to Red Lake. At his office he ran a check on the name. There were only two people with that name. He paid for a background check on both. The first was seventy-eight and lived in Sun City, Arizona. The second came from North Carolina, until he went to Iraq where he died in the war.
“Curious and more curious,” Harry said. “I guess dead men tell no tales.”
Chapter 17
Claus Van de Meer drummed his fingers on his desktop. It was the most emotion Claus ever showed but Kurt could tell by the beat his boss was angry.
“Whose prints did they run?”
“It was a bogus set.”
“Who was asking?”
“The Beaumont crime lab.”
“W
here is Beaumont?”
“Just over the range from Red Lake where we had that problem.”
“Problems, you mean!” Van de Meer said, then lit a cigar, rolling it slowly until it burned evenly. “Never thought about the medical files. That was a mistake. It made that Ames guy get nosy.”
“Well he’s not a problem anymore.”
“Then why are we here?”
Kurt heard the edge to Claus’s question. He knew better than to speak. Claus drummed his fingers and blew a cloud of smoke. After a few minutes he said, “Go out there and sort this out. Make sure I never hear about it again.”
Dismissed, Clemson walked out of Van de Meer's office.
He stopped at Christina Whelks desk.
“Where is Louis Speers?”
“In Antigua, on vacation.”
“Get him back.”
“Yes, sir. Anything else?”
“We’ll need transport to Red Lake.”
Chapter 18
Harry had given one day to Lisa Ames’ problem, during which time he found no answers but did discover a means by which Eddie’s death could be something other than an accident. The next morning he called Lisa Ames, she picked up on the third ring.
“What happened to your husband’s truck?”
“Its at the Red Lake Towing wrecking yard. My insurance agent said they would probably total it.”
Twenty minutes later Harry was at the yard. Homer Benson pointed out the truck. The crash did little damaged but the water did. The smell of mildew wafted out of the cab.
Harry looked at the front left fender, the one exposed to impact from on coming traffic. Several hard scratches marred the fender paint. A line of rust showed where the scarring reached raw metal. He squatted, bracing himself with his hand on the plastic headlight cover. When he shifted, something cut his palm that oozed blood from a half inch crimson line. A smear of blood marked the lens cover. Gently sliding his finger over the surface Harry felt a small sharp point. With the aid of a small magnifier he saw a sliver of embedded glass.
The glass confirmed his suspicions. He now knew how Eddie Ames was killed but held no clues as to by whom or why. Perhaps the answers were at the Ames house. Someone broke in. It seemed unlikely that Eddie’s murder and the burglary were coincidences.
The difficulty was he did not know what he was looking for. Eddie was bothered by something. Would he write it down? Was what worried him in the missing computer? If not where would he hide it?
His search began in the basement. If Eddie was hiding anything from his wife it seemed reasonable to stash it where she was least likely to go. After an hour of searching the basement yielded nothing. Harry’s next bet was on the bedroom or the desk in the living room.
Upstairs, he lifted the mattress, looked for split seams, pulled out drawers to check the bottom and back sides. He searched through his client’s undergarments upon the assumption Eddie might hide something where he thought his wife would eventually find it. But other than discovering Lisa was a 34 C cup, the same as Paula, he came up empty.
Under the bed he found a pair of pink fluffy handcuffs. He didn’t mention them. In the closet he ran through the pockets of Eddie’s clothes that still hung abandoned and unneeded. Nothing.
The nightstand held a .38 police special with a trigger lock, a crossword puzzle book, a cordless vibrator and a tube of K-Y gel. It appeared the Ames connubially happy.
Harry disregarded the children’s rooms. The attic was a possibility, but when people went to hide something they tended to begin thinking about all the things that might happen to what they were hiding, theft, fire, flood, accidental discover. Most people wanted to be able to reach their secrets quickly, otherwise more stuff would be in safe deposit boxes, but they also wanted it to be safe. Harry’s experience said, the average shmuck got too sneaky when setting out to be surreptitious.
The desk was a pile of unsorted paperwork. A stack of receipts lay piled on top of a Visa bill. Below this were other bills marked “paid”.
Harry looked at the phone bill. Several phone calls were long distance. Opening the phonebook he checked the area codes. One call was to New York, another to Washington D.C. and the last to Los Angeles.
“You have any friends at these numbers?”
Lisa scanned the list. I don’t recognize them. I have a friend with a 310 area code but that’s not hers.”
Harry took out his cell and punched in the number. An electronic voice said, “Los Angeles Times. If you know your …”
He hung up. The next was the New York Times and the D.C. number was the Washington Post. It was impossible to know with whom Eddie spoke but he was certainly interested in newspapers. Harry wondered what the man was trying to sell.
Next he sorted through the credit card receipts.
“We’re trying not to use them,” Lisa offered.
Most were for gasoline or food. A few were from the local K-Mart and for kids clothing. Two were fast food receipts. The Ames’s were not living high on the hog. The item that caught Eddie’s eye was from Radio Shack. The purchase by part number. He called the store on the receipt and asked if they could tell him what the item was.
After he hung up he asked, “Did your husband use flash memory cards?”
Lisa looked as if he were speaking a foreign language.
“It a small thing that plugs into your USB port.”
Harry drew a picture. Lisa shook her head.
“I never saw anything like that.”
For another hour Harry sifted through the desk. The last item he looked through was a mail holder for incoming mail. One of the envelopes was already open. Inside he found a sheet of paper.
“That’s the paper I found on the floor,” Lisa said upon seeing it.
Clara Bellson James Tayler
1,948
William Stone Carl Zimmerman
“Recognize any of the names?”
“No.”
Harry knew it meant something, but what?
Chapter 19
Harry went back to the office. Paula was at her aerobics class, doing what it took to maintain her delicious figure. A pleasant breeze wafted spring sounds and scents through the open window. On the desk a pastrami and Swiss on rye awaited his attention along with a bottle of Down Town Brown ale. He put his feet up on the edge of his desk and leaned back to think.
A half hour later he was finished with the sandwich and on to his second brew. What could a prison guard in a small town know that might interest a major newspaper? Corruption? Abuse? Hardly something that would bring in any money. A whistle-blower, perhaps? They were eligible for ten percent of any fines levied by the government, but Eddie made no calls to any government offices. Secondly, the United States Government never fined itself. Could Eddie have decided to attempt extortion? But of whom?
Harry sipped his second beer and considered the names on the paper. For a while he tried letter substitution in the hopes it was a code, but it came out gobbley-gook.
Failing in that, he turned to the internet where he tried each of the names. Bellson was the 27,146th most common surname in the U.S. Tayler was 24,784th Stone, placed 162cd and Zimmerman was 350th. It didn’t seem to prove much.
On Wikipedia there was no Clara Belson, quite a few William Stones, several James Tayler with the “er” and no Carl Zimmerman. Harry saw no pattern of connection.
He Googled the names. A genealogy site caught his eye. One file listed a Clara Belson, died June 6, 1898. When he clicked on it he found out she died in Red Lake giving birth to Elsie May Belson who died in 1942. Elsie bore two sons one of whom was dead. But both bore their mothers married name of Halliday. Harry looked for any Belson’s or Halliday’s in the local directory but the family moved away, died off, or married out of the name. Clara Belson was a dead end.
The afternoon sun poured in his windows. Harry eased the blind down to half-mast. His phone rang.
“Harry Grimm Investigations.”
“Yeah, its
Zane. A couple of guys were just in my office asking questions about those prints.”
“What did they want?”
“Who I had run them for. I tried passing it off as a side issue on a case but they demanded to see the file or they would take it up with my boss.”
“So did you give them my name?”
“I told them I ran the prints for a friend who was a P.I. I said you know how it is, you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours. They didn’t think I was funny.”
“So what did you actually tell them and who the hell were they?”
“I’m not sure. They flashed badges. The one guy with whiskers, creeped me out. He was tall and lanky and his eyes looked through me. I said it was just some stuff you found at an accident site and wanted to eliminate.”
“Thanks for calling.”
“Don’t expect anymore favors. I don’t need these sort of headaches.” Harry heard Zane hang-up.
Somebody killed Eddie Ames. Now someone was nervous. Whoever talked to Zane had access to inquiries from crime labs. That meant either the government or an organization big enough to buy an informant. Eddie must have been on to something big.
Harry opened his desk. He thumbed the clip release on his nine millimeter to assure himself it was fully loaded. He slid his holster onto his belt. The gun made his sport coat hang oddly but the nine carried 13 rounds, twice what fit in his .38. Plus it had more stopping force.
He was about to call Lisa Ames but she called first.
“I was going through Eddie’s things. I found something odd.”
“I’ll come by. Something has come up. I need to talk to you.”
Ten minutes later he pulled into the drive. Inside the house Lisa put a pair of work boots on the kitchen table. I was packing these up when I noticed the heels. Harry picked them up. He wasn’t sure what the point was until he noticed the hole in the left heel.
“A flash drive would fit in there.” Harry said. “I think Eddie found out something at the prison that he smuggled out.”
Or else, thought Harry to himself, Eddie was smuggling stuff in. But then why was he broke and why would people with badges be looking or him? He felt nervous, especially for Lisa Ames.