by Claire Booth
She nodded again. He stuck out his hand. “Don’t push it,” she said, and threw the truck into reverse, backing away toward the other exit out of the parking lot. Hank grinned and went to move his own car out of the way for the people just starting to leave the fellowship hall.
* * *
Rudolph was shaking. Standing in front of him and shaking so much that the newspaper rattled in his hands as he waved it in Hank’s face.
“Do you have any idea…?” Rudolph sputtered. “That you would slander this town’s most respected citizen … to even suggest…”
Hank plucked the paper from the county commissioner’s hand and smoothed it out. It appeared that Jadhur had taken full advantage of the sheriff’s quote for the boat fire story. And moved it to the front page.
SHERIFF QUESTIONS ACCIDENTAL FIRE
TABLE ROCK LAKE—Authorities continued this week to investigate the cause of the fire that sank the Branson Beauty on Tuesday. State fire officials are calling the blaze an accident, but County Sheriff Hank Worth thinks otherwise.
“It’s awfully coincidental that an old boat, badly in need of updating and with significant personnel expenses, suddenly caught fire in such a way that no real investigation of it can take place,” Worth said earlier this week.
The Beauty, one of Branson’s oldest and most beloved tourist attractions, has been navigating the waters of Table Rock Lake for three decades. Originally owned by “Crazy” Otis Schornberger, the boat was purchased after his death by Gallagher Enterprises, which has run the operation for the past two years. It employed more than 100 people, many of whom started with Schornberger in the 1980s. There are no records of it being retrofitted at any point in its existence.
“We kept the Beauty meticulously maintained. It received a yearly bow-to-stern inspection and daily upkeep,” said Henry Gallagher, president of Gallagher Enterprises. “It was the crown jewel of our business here in Branson County, and I am devastated by its loss.”
The Beauty ran aground Sunday morning during a routine cruise. The showboat’s paddlewheel wedged between boulders south of Poverty Point and had to be removed in order for the boat to be towed to shore. The cause of that incident is still under investigation, Worth said.
The hasty amputation of the paddlewheel likely led to fuel or hydraulic fluid leaking and caused the fire, according to fire investigator supervisor Mike Salvatore of the Office of the State Fire Marshal. The entire boat is now underwater, and the wreckage is too dangerous to send down divers, he added.
According to sources, Gallagher Enterprises had insured the boat and accompanying business for $20 million. With the fire officially ruled an accident, that payout should not be questioned, industry experts said.
Hank stopped reading. Twenty million. Interesting. Jadhur apparently had better sources than Sheila did, because she’d been trying to get that figure ever since she got back from Oklahoma. He was wondering how soon Gallagher would get the money when the paper was snatched from his hands, forcing him to return his attention to the irate politician standing in his substation lobby.
“You can’t operate like this!” Rudolph was almost yelling now. “He is the most important businessman in the county, he—”
“He certainly is,” Hank cut in. “But do you want to tell me why you were chatting with his flunky at the vigil yesterday?”
Rudolph looked as though Hank had hit him with a two-by-four. He clamped his slack jaw closed and glared up at him.
“How do you know that? You weren’t there.” He looked as if he regretted the words the second he uttered them. “What I mean is … I don’t know what you mean. I spoke only to the concerned citizens who attended the vigil. And the pastor. Yes, yes. The pastor. We prayed together. Yes, yes … when was the last time you prayed, Worth?”
Hank couldn’t help laughing. “Nice try. I’m not asking you about the pastor, or your religious pedigree. I’m asking you about Terry Cummings. What were the two of you talking about behind the church as the vigil let out?”
Rudolph took a step back and began to look a bit wary. His gaze darted around the lobby as if he were looking for hidden cameras. He should know I don’t have the money for those, Hank thought. He crossed his arms and waited as Fizzel, now a decidedly un-Rudolph-like shade of white, shifted from foot to foot in front of him.
“I was … I was offering my condolences … about the Beauty. That’s all.”
“Really? Then why was Cummings so upset? What did you do to make him mad … Commissioner?” Hank drew out the last word with a mix of contempt and distaste that he had honed in KC interrogating gangbangers whose drive-bys shot up uninvolved bystanders. He’d never gotten to use it on a politician before. Fizzel blanched and took another step back.
Hank took a shot in the dark. “Were you talking about me?”
Fizzel got even more pale, which Hank hadn’t thought was possible. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “Why would we be doing that?” he asked in a shaky tone that confirmed Hank had scored a direct hit.
“Well…” Hank was coming up with this on the fly. “You already gave me a warning. Then I tried to get Gallagher in here to explain his holdings and the state of his showboat business. Then his chief assistant was seen yelling at you. And now, you’re awfully upset about an observation I made in the newspaper. You’re not doing a very good job of keeping me in check, are you?”
Fizzel flushed, his face regaining its standard red hue. “I was the chief supporter of your appointment as sheriff. You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me. You should … you should … act as if you appreciate that fact.”
Hank raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. “Oh, but I do. I very much appreciate my job and the responsibilities that come with it. But here’s the thing you need to appreciate. You might have hired me, but you can’t order me around. I am not your employee. I am the law.” He couldn’t believe he’d just said that. In Kansas City, that would have gotten him laughed off the streets. Down here, though, it fit. So he said it again. “I am the law. And I will uphold it. And if anyone broke the law, or thinks they can cash in by committing fraud, I’m going to stop it. And then I’m going to arrest them. And anyone who might be helping them.” He paused. “So, what do you know about the boat fire?”
Fizzel’s throat convulsed again. Hank’s eyebrows climbed even higher as he waited. And waited. This guy was not quick on his feet. Hank sighed. “Who have you talked to at Gallagher Enterprises since the fire?”
“Uh … Mr. Cummings, at the vigil. And … uh … that’s all.”
“Bullshit,” Hank said. “You told me when you came here Tuesday afternoon that you’d already spoken to someone there. So you at least did that.”
Hank slowly pulled out of the commissioner that he’d spoken to Cummings a few hours after the Tuesday morning fire. And then every day after that. Rudolph insisted that the conversations were only about his concerns for the welfare of the Beauty’s employees—“my people,” he called them—and that they had nothing to do with keeping Hank in line.
“Yeah. Just like handing out my name and number to all of those people at the vigil had nothing to do with keeping me in line. My phone in Forsyth has been ringing off the hook with people freaked out about the murder. Like that’s not going to cause me to spend less time investigating the boat fire.”
A smirk flashed across Fizzel’s face and was just as quickly gone. Hank wanted to punch him in his red nose. He took a step back instead. “The law” would lose a lot of his moral high ground if he hauled off and hit somebody—even if it was a politician.
“I really think—” Hank started, when the bell on the lobby door jangled loudly and the one person with even less restraint than he had burst in.
“I knew it. And I’d be able to say ‘I told you so’ if you’d just answer your damn cell phone and listen to my suspicions,” Sheila said as she bent down to brush crusty snow off her boots. “That little weasel took a boatload of cash—hah, boatload—from
Gallagher during the last elect—” She straightened up and noticed the weasel standing next to Hank. “Well, what do we have here? It’s nice to see you, Commissioner. It’ll save me a phone call to ask you about these campaign contributions from the last election. Seems you took the maximum amount from Gallagher Enterprises, along with the maximum amount from Gallagher personally, and his wife, and that Cummings guy. I seem to remember you being pretty far behind Percy Wilcott. ‘Fizzel has fizzled out. Vote for someone new.’ Heh, that was good. But then you started running TV commercials. Commercials. Nobody’s got the money to do that. But you suddenly did. Said all kind of nasty things about poor Percy.” She dug a sheaf of papers out of her marshmallow penguin parka and waved it in the air. “And I’ll bet these donations don’t even come close to paying for all that airtime. What’d you take under the table?”
Hank turned to see that Fizzel had gone white again. He took the papers from Sheila and began to casually flip through them. “What else did Cummings tell you, Commissioner? Or do you want me to do this with your bank statements, too?”
Fizzel’s shoulders slumped. “He told me that I’d better get you to shut up about the Beauty sinking. That you were creating problems and that it was my job to protect this county’s most important business. That was why they were so generous when I ran for re-election.”
Hank pounced. “They—they who?”
“Well, Gallagher Enterprises, of course.”
Sheila snatched back the campaign finance papers. “These list a lot of money, but everything complies with the law. Where’d all the extra money come from—the money for all of those commercials?”
Fizzel scowled. “I don’t have to say anything. We’re not involved in this, and—”
Both Hank and Sheila leaned forward until Fizzel was forced to take a step back. His red-faced belligerence had turned into ashen fear. Hank felt as if he was finally getting somewhere.
“Who’s ‘we,’ Commissioner?” Sheila asked. Then she smiled. “Wait a minute. Didn’t your son get hired by Gallagher Enterprises? Before the election? I remember that was one of your pro-business things. That you were supporting jobs—and just look at the opportunities for young people around here now. And then you’d talk about your son.”
“So?” Fizzel said. “This area needs jobs. Everybody knows that.”
“And wasn’t it nice that your son got one of them,” Sheila said. “Especially considering that he still lives at home and doesn’t have to pay rent. Tyrone sees him while he’s doing his mail route, and—”
Fizzel cut her off. “Oh, he pays rent.” Then he stopped and his face got even more red. Hank stood back in silent enjoyment and watched Sheila go in for the kill.
“Really?” she said. “How much, exactly? How much does he get paid and then how much does he give you for rent?” She started listing figures as Fizzel stood there mute. She stopped when she got to three grand a month and the veins in his neck bulged. He would not make a good poker player, Hank thought.
“And now we know,” Sheila said. “That kind of money month after month would buy a lot of TV commercials.”
Fizzel spun on his heel and marched out the door. Hank turned to Sheila.
“Get those bank statements,” Hank said. “Oh, and nice work.”
Sheila smiled, patted her already immaculate ebony hair into place, and headed to the phone.
CHAPTER
25
Dunc was laughing over the Daily What’s-It when Hank got home that evening.
“Well, son, that’s one way to do it,” Dunc said, waving the newspaper at him. “Poke the tiger right in the eye. You’re not trying to make any friends in this job, are you?”
“Nope,” Hank said. “At least not a friend like Gallagher. Any dinner left?”
“Yeah, there’s casserole in the fridge. This one actually came out pretty good. Well, better than usual, at least.”
Hank pulled it out of the fridge and sniffed at it hesitantly. Duncan grumbled from his seat at the kitchen table. “You’ll take a risk like ticking off Henry Gallagher, but you won’t take a risk on my casserole? You are a pansy.”
“My odds are better with Gallagher,” Hank said as he put the dish back in the refrigerator. He pulled a jar of peanut butter out of the cupboard and started hunting around for the bread. Duncan finished with the newspaper and got up from the table.
“Oh, I almost forgot. I need you to figure this out for me.” Dunc pulled something out of his pocket that looked suspiciously like a piece of glass. Hank, his peanut butter sandwich halfway to his mouth, started laughing.
“Is that twenty-first-century technology I see you holding?” he asked. “Where the heck did you get an iPhone?”
Duncan snorted. “Your wife. Ordered it for me without even asking. Came in the mail yesterday. I’ve been poking at it and now all these little squares here on the screen are shaking, and I can’t get ’em to stop.”
Hank put down his sandwich, took the phone from his father-in-law, and explained how pushing the device’s one button would stop the shaking. “I thought all you had to do was touch the screen,” Dunc said. “Maggie didn’t say anything about the button.”
Hank picked up his sandwich again and wished Maggie were home from the hospital so she could explain elegant technological design to a man who was jabbing at the thing like it had just bitten him.
“Now you got to put some music on here for me,” Dunc said in between jabs.
Hank opened the fridge and reached for the milk. “Maybe you should have waited to call me a pansy until after you asked for my help,” he said.
Dunc grinned. “Got me there.”
Hank’s phone interrupted his next sandwich bite. He didn’t recognize the number.
“Sir? Sir? It’s Duane Shrum. I thought calling was better than the radio this time of night. Sir, he just woke up. Mr. Eberhardt did, sir. He’s awake.”
* * *
Albert Eberhardt looked very tired and thoroughly confused as he sat, propped up by pillows, in the hospital bed that had been his home for the past five days. He blinked and tried to focus on Hank, who leaned forward and asked again.
“Do you remember your Sunday voyage?”
Blink.
“Al. What happened on your Sunday brunch cruise?”
“I don’t know. I’m trying to think. Man, my head hurts. Um, let’s see. We started off, same as always. We rounded Poverty Point, and brunch was over. The show in the main dining room had started—Tony told me that—and then … then my head started to hurt. The noises were so loud. The bombs were so loud … the bombs … and the screaming … I couldn’t get away from it … I tried to leave…”
“What do you mean, Al? Tried to leave where? The pilothouse?”
The door had been locked from the outside, Albert said. He’d tried and tried the knob and then looked for his keys so he could open it from the inside. He had keys for everything on the boat, but they weren’t in their usual spot up by the window. He’d started to search, but the bombs kept going off. And he could hear the villagers screaming. Over and over. The screaming. Then the room started to spin. His head felt like it was cracking open. The bombs got louder, and the helicopter started to go down. The crew chief grabbed him and shoved him away from the door. And then they crashed.
“I don’t remember anything after that,” he said, slumping against the bed pillows and closing his eyes.
What the hell? A helicopter? A crew chief? Hank sat back in his seat and stared at the ceiling. His own head felt as if it were going to split open.
“Al,” he said, slowly bringing his gaze back down to the man lying in front of him. “Were you in a helicopter crash in Vietnam?”
Al did not open his eyes. “Yes.”
“And have you had flashbacks before?”
“Yes.”
“How often?”
“Not in years. I’ve been doing pretty good. I run, you know. Every morning. I go for a run. That’s helped a lot.�
��
“Did you run on Sunday?”
Albert opened his eyes. “No. Actually, no. I didn’t. I couldn’t find my running shoes. And I woke up late. There was a dog barking all night long, it seemed like, which was weird, because I didn’t think any of my neighbors had dogs. So I slept awful. And I didn’t have time. I figured I’d run after I got back from work and had time to look for my shoes.”
That would have made him plenty frazzled, Hank thought. Albert had apparently arrived at the same conclusion, because he turned to look Hank directly in the eye. “I know that makes it sound like I just fell apart. Just went nuts or something. But I didn’t. It was real. Those bombs weren’t just in my head. I swear, Sheriff. It was real.”
The result of his flip-out was certainly real. “Would you have any reason to want to not have to work on the Beauty anymore?” Hank asked.
“Huh? No. I like my job. Why would you ask that?”
“Would you have any reason to want to harm the Beauty? Any reason to destroy it?”
Albert sat up straight in bed. “What happened to my boat? Did something happen to my boat?”
“How do you feel about Gallagher Enterprises?”
Albert clutched the bed sheets. “What happened to my boat?” he shouted.
Hank watched him very carefully. “It ran aground. Two and a third hours into your cruise. They had to hack the paddlewheel off to get it unstuck and then tow it back to shore.”
Albert looked shocked. “Oh, God. Did I do that? How could I have done that? I didn’t touch the wheel.… Is she okay? They’ll be able to fix her, won’t they?”
“No,” Hank said. “The boat caught fire more than three days ago. Sank to the bottom of the lake. Total loss.”
Albert slumped back onto his pillows.
“Did you leave the pilothouse at all? At any time?”
Albert shook his head. “Not at all. I went straight up there when I came aboard. Never left.”
“Did you know Mandy Bryson was on the boat?”
Now Albert went from shocked to puzzled. His hands still clutched the bed sheets. “Who? Mandy? From my track team? Why would she be on board? Isn’t she away at school? She was on the boat?”