by Jean Rabe
The spray soaked Piper and made gripping the strut difficult, and she knew she had made the plane unsteady, maybe was keeping it from taking off.
“Stop!” Piper hollered. She figured the pilot would be suicidal to take off with her hanging on the side, plane off balance. If she dropped into the water and managed to hang on, he’d have drag on top of that. But she didn’t want to test that notion. “Stop you sonofabitch!”
The pilot didn’t. The propeller turned faster, the engine sounded louder, and the plane picked up speed, bouncing harder on the river’s chop.
Macho pilot, Piper thought, gritting her teeth. Suicidal, macho pilot. Maybe he’d been promised a lot of money. Maybe he was good enough—or stupid enough—to lift off with someone hanging on the outside.
Maybe the pilot couldn’t hear her; he had a headset on. But he had to have noticed her hitching a ride, unbalancing his attempt to take off. Perhaps Cassidy was promising him even more money.
It’s always about money.
Oren was shouting on the ramp, Keaton screaming, “Casssssssssssss!”
Piper steadied herself and leaned against the plane, released the strut and fumbled with her right hand on the fastening of her sling, yanked the tie lose and nearly fell in the river in the process. She recovered and grabbed the strut again. She praised the Army for putting her through rigorous training exercises. But this hadn’t been something Fort Campbell had covered.
The plane picked up more speed, bounced harder, and angled toward the center of the river. That was the Jerry W. Humphrey Seaplane Base’s runway—the Ohio River.
“Stop! Spencer County Sheriff! Stop!”
The pilot glanced at her, and then looked forward.
“Shit.” She tugged at the sling again, finally wholly freeing her left arm. She had two hands now. Her left arm felt like she’d dipped it in fire. One to two weeks she was supposed to use the sling. Hell with that. Grabbing the strut once more with her right hand, she reached her left to the pilot’s door, turned the handle, and flung it open. He’d tried to grab it, maybe hold it closed or lock it, but she was strong and fast and fueled by anger.
“Shut the damn thing off!” she howled. “Shut it down now!”
“Nooooooooooooooooo!” Cassidy keened. “I’ll pay you more. Keep going!” The girl looked just like she had the day Piper met her in the library, cherubic face—no longer looking innocent—pierced eyebrow, wearing the same t-shirt, Music + Cats Make Life Worth Living.
“Shut it down!” Piper screamed. Her voice was going. Even if the pilot couldn’t hear her—with his headset and the plane’s engine, he could damn well get the intent. “Shut. It. Down.”
It bounced a few more times, Cassidy continued to yell, and the pilot cursed and turned off the engine. He removed the headset. Cassidy opened the passenger door and flung her backpack into the river.
“Great. Your laptop, I’m guessing,” Piper said. “Cassandra Keaton, you’re under arrest for a shitload of things.” To the pilot, “You’re under arrest, too. For something. I’ll figure it out.”
Somehow Oren had commandeered a boat. Minutes later everyone was back on the shore, where cars from the Newburgh Police Department and the Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Department were arriving, lights flashing.
“They can have the pilot,” Piper told Oren. “Sheriff, police. I don’t care who takes him. Miss Cassandra Cassidy Blossom Keaton is ours.”
On the ride back to Rockport, the Keatons shared the backseat.
Cassidy fumed and wiggled. “Handcuffs, really?”
“Protocol,” Piper said. “You’re a thief.” She was about to add and a murderer, but stopped herself. They’d cover all of that when the girl was formally charged at the jail.
“It’s not like those old farts needed the money,” Cassidy spat. “All that money just sitting in their accounts. They were so stupid about computers. It was so easy to take their—”
“Don’t say anything else, Cass,” Keaton cautioned. “Nothing. Don’t say another word until I call an attorney.” He reached into his pocket, retrieved his earbud, and started making calls.
Piper was glad the girl was taking the advice. She wanted the miles to pass in as much silence as possible. It felt like the Mailbox Mauler had shot her all over again.
39
Thirty-Nine
Wednesday, May 9th
Ezekiel missed his morning classes, on the okay of the principal and at Piper’s request. The State Police had computer experts, but wouldn’t send one until Thursday or Friday, and Piper didn’t want to wait.
It took him almost to the lunch hour, but he was able to recover Cassidy’s wiped files.
“Not easy,” he told her. “A real challenge. I got websites, IP addresses. She had encryption software, but I had the right decryption protocols. I could tell she’d set up a proxy, pretending to be in Brazil rather than Rockport. She was slick. But really, she could have done a better job. I’m thinking she didn’t expect anyone to go looking for her. A little county like this? I’m betting she thought she was invincible.”
He found details on how much money she’d taken from each individual on Excel sheets—names, dates, amounts. Going back four years. If the records were accurate, she’d amassed a little more than nine million dollars, stashed in an account in the Cayman Islands. No taxes on income, capital gains, profits, or estates there, and secrecy laws were touted as being among the strictest in the world. But an expert with the State Police said there was a good chance the money was recoverable. They’d bargain with the murder charges if necessary so Piper could get the funds back to Cassidy’s victims.
Ezekiel also found hacking software and several links to Dark Web sites. Evidence of the pacemaker hacks was among his discoveries. The transmitter they’d found in the Keaton basement had been key. That plus her software, and Ezekiel said she had the skills and tools to do it.
“She could hack right into his pacemaker. Get within twenty, thirty feet, probably stand right outside his house and do it. I just can’t imagine, you know—I thought she was kinda sweet.” Ezekiel’s face drew forward like it was pinched. “But she wasn’t sweet, she was a monster.”
Cassidy Keaton was a monster who was going to prison for a very long time, Piper mused. She was eighteen, would automatically be tried as an adult—even though some of her crimes stretched back to her freshman year. But the murders hadn’t. DA Scales said it looked like she’d hand over all the money in exchange for him taking the death penalty out of the equation. First degree murder, no death penalty, she’d be looking at forty-five to sixty-five years, eligible for parole after serving half of it. If the jury was generous and instead gave her life, she’d be eligible for parole after twenty.
“I’m taking Zeke to lunch,” Piper announced. She poked her head in Oren’s office. “Want to join us?”
He shook his head and pointed to a paper bag on his desk. “I’m following some Huffman leads,” he said. “I’m going out to talk to John Rasor at two.”
“He’s the Huffman shirttail?”
“Yeah. I’m hoping he can give me more than Schleevogt did. He said he has some old photo albums to share.”
Piper thought that sounded like nothing more than Oren had already gotten from his other sources.
“Mind giving me a lift home on your way to Rasor’s?” They’d discovered that Rasor lived in Rockport and had missed yesterday’s meeting because of a doctor’s appointment. “I’m going to call it an early day, and take the spray painted Hyundai to the dealer.” Her arm was in a sling again—for a prescribed additional two weeks, courtesy of a stop at a Rockport clinic.
“Sure.”
“You can use my Ford, which they said is ready.” Oren’s was being repaired, the scratches, new tires, new fuel filter and lines, the gas tank removed and cleaned, the latter being the least expensive fix. “I’m going to use my ‘suggestion of a car’ tomorrow. Easier to drive.”
Piper owned an apple red Smart Fortwo,
a “suggestion of a car” her dad called it. It was a three-cylinder turbo-charged five-speed manual with an oatmeal hued interior, and it registered every dip and rocky patch in the road. It was not the smoothest of rides, but it averaged thirty-five miles a gallon and was effortless to steer one-handed. She loaded its tiny trunk with an overnight bag, Mark Thresher’s laptop, and a frozen pizza she pulled out of her fridge. She called Nang and invited him to dinner at her house in Hatfield.
She put Marmalade in a cat carrier on the passenger side floorboard, coaxed Camaro onto the seat—apparently the dog loved car rides—and left a message for her father.
Dad, I inherited a house, Mark Thresher’s in Hatfield. I’m going to spend the night there. See if it fits me. I’ll have my cell on. Hugs, Piper
She had no trouble nesting her little car in the extra-deep garage, right in front of Thresher’s vintage Chevy. She probably could have put a pair of Smart Fortwos there.
Piper let Nang see the garage first, used her cell phone to take a picture of his astonished expression.
“The Chevy’s a 1935 three-window coup that Mark restored. The other,” she’d looked it up on the Internet, “is a 1922 Franklin convertible. The wheels are hanging at the back of the garage.” She’d been wrong about two vintage motorcycles. She’d only seen two looking in through the windows. There were four, and Nang visited a few websites on his phone to help identify them.
1953 Ariel Square 4
1951 Vincent Comet in showroom mint shape
1915 Indian 8-valve boardracer, that Nang estimated was worth more than eighty thousand
1928 Coventry Eagle
Piper felt like she might pass out.
“I can’t keep all this,” she said, waving her good arm. “These. I can’t keep these, the cars, the motorcycles. And the house. Good God what was Mr. Thresher thinking? It wouldn’t be right. All of this and I’d only known him a few days before he changed his will.”
“Maybe his relatives—” Nang started to suggest.
“He didn’t have any. He’d told me that, his attorney told me that. Last of the Threshers.”
“Why would you refuse his gift? Why would you disrespect that?”
Piper stared at him, a thousand thoughts spinning.
“I need to think,” she said.
“Think about this. You honored him by finding the thief, stopping that girl from stealing even more money. Discovered his murderer. How can you refuse his gift?” Nang appeared to study her. “I like country music. There is a song by Billy Currington about an old man who leaves his fortune to someone he meets in a bar.”
“I know the song. I didn’t meet Mr. Thresher in a bar. I met him on a park bench.”
“Maybe someone will write a new country song.”
Nang was impressed with the stove. He left the pizza in the freezer and used ingredients he found in the refrigerator and cabinets to make what he announced as Steak Asada, complete with fajita vegetables, pepian sauce, pico de gallo, black beans, and rice. It seemed that Mark Thresher had kept a lot of makings for Mexican meals. He’d also had a big stock of high-end dog and cat food.
While Nang cooked, she took a call from her flabbergasted father, who seemed a mix of happy and distressed. Next came a call from Basil Meredith. He said he’d take the job, that he’d start in two weeks, and that they’d return over the weekend and look at houses—particularly that brick one in Santa Claus.
Maybe he won’t be bored here after all, she thought, reflecting on the activities of the past nine days.
After dinner they explored the basement. Clearly Diego hadn’t come down here or he would have told her about the contents.
It was a half-finished basement, that part being a library. Hundreds of leather-bound books filled impressive oak cabinets, which she suspected were specially-made for the house. They were a mix of mysteries, horror novels, and biographies. Most were military books. She scanned some titles—Brassey’s Dictionary of Battles; Fighter Pilots of World War I; Legend, Memory, and the Great Air War; To Fly and Fight. A section was devoted to various conspiracy works—Unholy Trinity: the Vatican, the Nazis, and Soviet Intelligence; Puzzle Palace—National Security Agency; The Quiet Campaign to Rewrite the Constitution; Legend: the Secret of Lee Harvey Oswald; High Treason: the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Piper smiled sadly. She didn’t doubt that there weren’t conspiracies in the world, but she didn’t want to dive in. She would read some of the books, the mysteries especially—he seemed to have the entire Michael Connelly collection—but the conspiracy volumes…those she’d eventually hand over to the library.
There was a desk—a massive roll-top with a comfortable chair. Piper sat at it and opened the top while Nang continued to peruse the books. It looked like Mark had kept all of his genealogy notes here, paper copies of what she’d seen on his laptop. A note at the end of his family tree read, “Last of the Threshers.” There was another printed copy of the genealogy club members, but it was older, stated 2014 Membership Roster at the top.
She stared at one of the names and pulled out her cell phone.
“Oren, sorry to bother you, but I found something. Remember the genealogy club members? Oh, nothing helpful from Rasor? Too bad. But this is interesting, what I found. That Gary Frank? I have a roster from some years’ back that lists his name as Gary Frank Huffman.”
“And two is four,” Oren said. “Virginia Huffman, in Evansville. She loaned me photo albums. Wait a minute.” Piper heard Oren set the phone down, heard pages rustling. “There’s a photo she pointed to. Neal, Gary, Sandy, and Julian. The Huffmans, she said.”
“Gary. Gotta be Gary Frank,” Piper returned. “County’s too small for it to be otherwise.”
“I’ll go out in the morning.”
“I have an address.” It was right there on the 2014 directory. “I’ll go with you.”
Marmalade was curled on the easy chair in the den. Camaro stretched out on a section of coach, his head on Nang’s lap.
“I’m going to stay tonight,” Piper said. “See what the house feels like.”
“And?”
“And if it feels okay I’ll take Mr. Thresher’s thoughtful gift. The house, contents, garage. I will respect his wishes.”
“And—” Nang let the word hang. “I would like to see how the couch feels tonight. I’d rather not leave you alone. I’d like to make sure you don’t do anything that’ll keep you in that sling for a lot more than two weeks.”
She smiled at that. Maybe it would be all right to get attached to the quick stop owner. Maybe she was staying in Spencer County.
40
Forty
Thursday, May 10th
Piper used her good arm to carry the box of items recovered from the bluff. She thought showing them to Gary Frank Huffman might jog his memory about Neal Robert.
“If the bones really are Neal Robert’s,” Piper said.
“They are,” Oren returned. “I can feel it.”
He drove.
Gary Frank lived in a small Craftsman-style bungalow that likely dated to the thirties. It was in Evanston, an unincorporated village, fittingly in Huff Township. He was sitting on the porch, and after a little prodding invited them inside.
Piper sat back and watched. It really was Oren’s case. She put the box on the floor and lifted the lid.
“We think the bones on the bluff belong to your brother, Neal Robert, who folks thought drowned sixty-five years ago,” Oren said. “We’d like to prove that, and give him a proper burial.”
“The raft,” Gary Frank said. “Killian’s raft. Or maybe it had been Martin’s. One of them boys built the raft that sent them all into the river.”
“It was a raft built for one,” Oren said. “Not made for something like the Ohio.”
Piper thought both men looked sad.
“Probably broke apart,” Oren continued, “because two boys were on it. I’ve someone who said he saw two boys on the raft, Neal Robert was not one of them.”
A black cat with a smattering of white on its head and front legs crept into the room and rubbed its head against Gary Frank’s calves.
Piper pointed to the box.
“We found these things on the bluff, around the bones.” She tipped the box so Gary Frank could better see them, then she rattled off the contents. “Cap gun, sheriff’s badge, marbles, buttons, pieces of a belt, rivets from blue jeans, a buckle.”
“Any idea why your brother would have an Arizona newspaper boy belt buckle?” Oren asked.
Gary Frank stared at the box. “We had a cousin. Him and his dad came through here at the end of that summer. Neal Robert took a shine to the buckle and Andy gave it to him. They traded buckles. That’s why he had that newspaper boy buckle. Neal Robert was a newspaper boy, too. But you didn’t get a belt buckle for delivering papers in Spencer County.”
Oren shot Piper a look. It was the confirmation on who the bones had belonged to.
“What about the barbed wire?” Piper had wondered about that. It hadn’t fit with the “playing sheriff” notion. “Do you know what that was about?”
Gary Frank sat back on his couch and closed his eyes. His expression clouded over with memory. “Neal Robert was dressed up as a sheriff that Halloween,” he said. “I remember. He’d taken a twist of barbed wire and curled it around a boot, hooked a bottle cap to it and called it a spur, scratched the boot up. They were new boots. And they were too big for him.”
“We didn’t find boots, any evidence of shoes.” That had bothered her.
“They weren’t his boots. They were my boots. He shouldn’t have taken them for his costume. He’d shoved newspaper in the toes because they were too big for him.”