Darkness, Sing Me a Song--A Holland Taylor Mystery

by David Housewright

  “I’ll do that.”

  I glanced at Ophira as I spoke. Clearly she didn’t think it was a good idea, yet refused to challenge the girl again.

  “Give me your phone,” Devon said.

  I did. She inputted her number into it and pressed CALL. Her own cell started ringing. She ended the call and handed back my phone.

  “See, it works,” she said. “I expect you to call, too. Don’t you dare blow me off.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Not even for the woman you were sitting with last night.”

  “That was no woman. That was an attorney.”

  I smiled. To my surprise, so did Ophira, if only for a moment.

  “I don’t get it,” Devon said.

  “It plays off an old joke. Man says, Who was that lady I saw you with last night? The second man answers, That was no lady; that was my wife. Ba-da dum.”

  “I still don’t get it.”

  “I didn’t say it was a good joke.”

  “She was very beautiful, the attorney. I mean like freaky beautiful.”

  “Yes, she was.”

  “Did you—?”

  “Dev,” Ophira said.

  “The woman works for U.S. Sand,” I said.

  “Oh, those guys,” Devon said.

  “Yes, those guys.”

  “What did she want?”

  “She wanted me to leave them alone.”

  “Are you going to leave them alone?”

  “We’ll see.”

  Devon rested her hand on mine.

  “Afterward, did you and the attorney, you know?” she said.

  “What kind of question is that?”

  The expression on her face—it was like I slapped her. She quickly pulled her hand back.

  “I’m sorry,” Devon said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said.

  “Taylor, do you think all teenagers are insane? This guy on National Public Radio thinks so. He thinks that for about a three-to-four-year period we just all go completely nuts.”

  “No, I don’t believe it.”

  “I say and do things sometimes…”

  I rested my own hand on her wrist the way Ophira had.

  “Pretty girls who are almost seventeen always get a bye. Everyone knows that.”

  “You’re nice, always nice to me. It’s too bad you’re so old. Don’t you think, Ophira?”

  “Just terrible,” she said.

  “I need to go back to work,” I said. Yet before I could, a large man appeared at the table and called my name.

  “Martin McGaney, as I live and breathe,” I said.

  “I’d like a word,” he said.

  “Ladies, this is Martin McGaney, an old friend from my crime-fighting days. Martin, this is Ophira.”

  He shook her hand, and she smiled brightly. I didn’t know if it was because she liked what she saw or because now there were two African Americans in Kamin County.

  “This young lady is Devon Barrington.”

  I thought the name might give him a start, yet he simply said, “Hi, how are you?”

  “Join us,” Devon said.

  McGaney grabbed a chair and sat without hesitation. I didn’t think I had ever seen him smile so much as when he returned Ophira’s smile.

  I stood up.

  “Time to scoot,” I said. “Before I leave, though, I should tell you. Martin, here? He works for the woman who’s trying to put Devon’s mother in prison for murder.”

  I turned and strolled away. Behind me, I heard a confusion of voices. McGaney’s was the most prominent. I heard it say “Sorry” and “Not my fault” and “Excuse me,” followed by the sound of a chair falling over, followed by another “Excuse me.” I was in the lobby of the resort when I felt his hand on my arm pulling me to a halt.

  “Sonuvabitch, Taylor,” McGaney said. “What was that?”

  I lifted his hand off my arm by his sleeve as if it were something contagious.

  “Interviewing a minor without permission from her parents, what’s wrong with you?” I said.

  “I had no intention of questioning the girl.”

  “If it’s about Ophira, then I did you both a favor. What would have happened when she found out who you were? Think of the heartache I saved you guys.”

  “What a bitter old man you turned out to be.”

  “Why is everyone calling me old today? I’m not old.”

  “Old, old, old—old before your time.”

  “What exactly are you doing here anyway, Martin?”

  “Trying to find out what you’re doing here.”

  “No license holder shall divulge to anyone other than the employer, or as the employer may direct, except as required by law, any information acquired during—”

  “Ah, Jesus, stop it, wouldja.”

  “If you guys would give me a little cooperation, maybe I would give you a little cooperation. I’ve worked with the cops before, and you know it. All PIs do. It’s always a strict quid pro quo relationship. So, if you want a little this, why don’t you give me a little that?”

  “You first.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Have you identified the girl yet?”

  “No one in town seems to know who she is. I know for a fact that Emily didn’t go to school here, so…”

  “Looks like a dead end.”

  “Looks like.”

  “Then tell me, Taylor—why are you still here?”

  I gestured toward the restaurant.

  “Just keeping an eye on the kid for Momma,” I said.

  “Why don’t I believe you?”

  “Because you have a suspicious nature.”

  “The skirt seems to think you’re trying to connect Emily’s murder to the Red Stone Patriots.”

  “The skirt? Everyone picks on Maureen. I think she’s a fine chief of police.”

  “Oh, you do not.”

  “Unlike some big-city policemen I could name, she is without guile.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Although she did have as much reason to pop the mayor as anyone else. What’s more, the chief carries a nine-mil. Kind of makes you pause, doesn’t it?”

  I knew what McGaney was thinking as he stared at me. He was thinking that I was thinking that he should investigate the chief.

  “Cut it out, Taylor,” he said. “Not even you would dump on a cop unless it was for certain. Not even to save your client.”

  He was probably right, although … “I’m surprised more and more, Martin, by what I’m willing to do,” I said.

  “Yeah? Me, too.”

  Martin left the lobby. I decided to give him a head start so I wouldn’t bump into him in the parking lot. I hate multiple good-byes. While I lingered, Bill Everheart called me over to the front desk.

  “Taylor,” he said. “Sorry I missed you this morning. You snuck out before I could deliver this.”

  It was a neatly folded sheet of resort stationery; my name was written on top in a careful cursive.

  “Lady left it when she checked out. She left before sunrise. She didn’t look happy.”

  I unfolded the note and read what Cynthia had written there.

  I love you, Taylor. I will always love you. You shall not see me again. C—

  “Well, that’s that,” I said aloud.

  “Excuse me?” Everheart said.

  I didn’t answer. Instead, I crumpled the note into a ball with the intention of throwing it away. I changed my mind, though, smoothed out the wrinkles, refolded it, and slipped it into my wallet.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  I drove the county highway until it left the forest and revealed the long, flat field. The sight of the silica sand mine still jolted me. Something had changed, though; I felt it before I knew it. The pyramids of topsoil and shifting yellow sand were still there. My car kicked up the particles, trailing clouds behind it as I drove just as before. Yet there was no shrieking of heavy machinery. There was no noise at all except f
or the steady hum of the Camry.

  I followed the road past the Franson farm. Bridgette and Mark were sitting on their stoop drinking from travel mugs as I passed. A couple more turns and I was heading toward a cluster of offices and porta-potties. Unlike the gash in the earth, the offices looked temporary.

  I parked next to a Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor with the words ARONA POLICE DEPARTMENT painted on the door. Heads turned toward me as if they were waiting for something and hoping I was it. Most of them turned away when I emerged from the Camry.

  Chief Maureen McMahan approached. Skip Zetzman and Doug Pinter trailed behind.

  “What are you doing here, Taylor?” the chief asked.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Answer me.”

  “I’m here to see Esther Tibbits. I heard she was out here.”

  Along with McMahan, Zetzman, and Pinter, there were at least twenty men milling around the cluster of buildings. They reminded me of baseball fans during a rain delay wondering if the game would resume. Leaning against the wall of one of the offices, I found Esther. She was wearing a black skirt and a white shirt, both tinged with yellow. The men were showing a great deal of interest in her, yet she didn’t seem interested in them.

  “Why do you want to speak to Esther?” Zetzman asked.

  “It’s a personal matter.” I waved at the site. “What happened?”

  Heads turned. I followed their gaze to what used to be a high-volume storage silo but was now a heap of twisted scrap metal that looked as if it had been dropped there from outer space. Next to it was a pile of charred steel resting on melted rubber that used to be a tractor and frack-sand trailer. Smoke lingered close to the ground. Blackened sand was everywhere.

  “My, my, my, what a mess,” I said.

  “I got the call ninety minutes ago,” the chief said.

  “Then where is everybody?”

  “The Kamin Independent Citizens Against Silica Sand cannot condone the destruction of private property,” Pinter said. “However, given the urgency of the problem, the destructive nature of fracking and silica sand mining, we feel—”

  “David, will you kindly shut up?” the chief said.

  Zetzman held up his reporter’s notebook.

  “I got it, Pinter,” he said. “I got it.”

  I took the chief’s arm and led her away. Zetzman and Pinter attempted to follow, but I gave them a look that froze them in their tracks. As soon as we were safe from eavesdroppers, I leaned in.

  “Dammit, Chief, this is no way to protect the integrity of a crime scene,” I said.

  “No one has gone near the silo and truck. I’ve seen to that.”

  “The crime scene isn’t just the truck. It’s everything. It’s everywhere. You let the media hang around? Some environmental extremist who should actually be a suspect?”

  “I’ve known David for years. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “A silo isn’t a fly. Where’s the county sheriff? Where’s the DCI?”

  “I never called them. This is my jurisdiction.”

  “Maureen, this isn’t a simple case of vandalism. Given the nature of this site—hell, even Doug Pinter knows eco-terrorism when he sees it. Which the federal government translates into domestic terrorism—”

  “Don’t you think I know that? I called the Feds.”

  “Who specifically? Homeland Security? The FBI?”

  “Since I’m pretty sure it was a bomb that destroyed the equipment, I called the ATF.”

  * * *

  I watched the white van approach, a yellow cloud trailing behind it. The vehicle followed the same path I had used and parked next to my Camry. Special Agent Rachel Colgin alighted from the passenger side, and the tech I had met earlier slipped past the driver’s door. A third agent I had not seen before joined them. The two men halted and gazed at the scene as if they thought it was amusing. Colgin kept walking toward the chief. I stepped away from Maureen.

  “You,” Colgin said.

  “Ma’am?” I said.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Umm…”

  “Stick around.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Happy to assist the federal government in any way I can.”

  Colgin kept walking until she reached the chief. Without hesitation, she draped an arm around the older woman’s shoulder and squired her toward the bomb site. Halfway there, they stopped. Colgin left her arm around the chief’s shoulder and even gave it an encouraging hug as she spoke. I couldn’t see the chief’s face, but I knew something about body language, and hers was not confident. Finally Colgin removed her arm, turned, and walked away. The chief did not move, however, and Colgin halted. She walked backward until she was parallel to the chief. She said something. I don’t know what, yet it was enough to cause the chief to turn and walk ever so briskly to her car and speak rapidly into the radio. Fifteen minutes later, an army of Kamin County sheriff’s deputies descended on the place. It wasn’t long before agents from the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation joined them.

  Meanwhile, Esther Tibbits continued to lean against the wall of the temporary office, looking as if she wished she were somewhere else.

  “May I ask a few questions?” I said.

  “I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

  “Don’t be so sure. I just left your uncle.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I told him what you and your brother wouldn’t.”

  “About?”

  “About Julie.”

  “Are you sure he didn’t already know?”

  “Whatever that means.”

  Esther went to the office door, opened it, and stepped inside. I followed. She closed the door behind us and locked it.

  “I didn’t recognize Julie when she came to the conference room in the Barrington building,” Esther said. “That’s the truth. I saw her only for a second, and I thought, Joel Barrington is doing a pretty girl, but that’s all I thought. I didn’t know it was Julie until you showed me the pic on your smartphone.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me then?”

  “Did you really speak to Uncle Curtis?”

  “Yes. A couple hours ago in his trailer. You can call him.”

  I was relieved when she didn’t. Instead, Esther said, “What did he say?”

  “He was very upset about Julie’s murder.”

  “But what did he say?”

  “He told me about Menominee, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Then you know that Julie betrayed the cause. That she ran out on the Patriots, on her father. She was just as guilty of the crime as he was. If it was a crime. More so because it was her idea.”

  “Blowing up the Welcome Center with a liquid explosive was her idea?”

  “What did Uncle Curtis tell you?”

  “He said that Julie bought the anhydrous hydrazine and ammonium nitrate.”

  “So you know, then.”

  “Know what?”

  “That Jules was responsible.”

  “Your uncle said he did it.”

  “No, it was all her. She built the bomb and planted it. Don’t you think she didn’t. She ran away because she knew the Feds would come a-knockin’. Well, they came and they went and nothing happened. But we all knew if they ever caught up with Jules, she’d rat us out in a heartbeat. Turn government informant and get a cushy life in the Witness Security Program while the rest of us went to federal prison.”

  “So she had to die.”

  “That’s how the Patriots looked at it.”

  Esther smirked then.

  “Doesn’t mean we killed her, though,” she said. “After you left the office, I called my brother. Neither Eric nor the rest of the Patriots knew anything about Julie. No one knew she was in the Cities. No one knew she had changed her name to Emily.”

  “Are you sure of that?”

  “Eric came down to make sure.”

  “Eric, but not your uncle.”

  “The Patriots operate
on a need-to-know basis like any other paramilitary organization.”

  “Who’s the one who didn’t need to know? You or Curtis?”

  “I know what you’re asking, and—I’m speaking hypothetically now—it’s possible he had it done without telling us because he didn’t know how we’d take it, executing our own blood.”

  “How did you take it?”

  Esther smirked some more.

  “I don’t know if Jules was killed by the Patriots. You never heard me say that any of us had anything to do with it. We’re just talking here.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m saying, if the Patriots did it or if someone else killed Jules for their own reasons, the bitch had it coming. There’s no crime in saying that, is there?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “If someone else did kill Julie for his own reasons, let’s just say me and Eric were protecting my uncle from some unnecessary grief by keeping it to ourselves and let it go at that.”

  “You’re talking about your own cousin.”

  “I’m talking about a traitor.”

  “Are you really this cynical, Esther? Are you really this tough?”

  “Tough enough to be my uncle’s whore. Do you think Todd Franson would have hired me if I didn’t put out? Do you think I’d be working for those shits at U.S. Sand if I didn’t get down on my knees every now and again? I do what I have to for the cause. I do what’s necessary to help protect this country from its enemies both foreign and domestic.”

  “That’s the saddest thing I’ve heard in a long time.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Just between you and me and the empty room, did you blow up that silo out there? Is that why you stayed in Arona instead of going back to the Cities with Frick and Frack?”

  “I didn’t blow up anything. You believe what you want, though. You can’t prove shit.”

  * * *

  I exited the office and hung around like any other innocent bystander. By now the investigation was humming along. Yellow crime scene tape was everywhere. Local TV cameras took video from behind the yellow tape. Pinter tried to attract their attention and actually succeeded. Guys crawled over the silo and truck with magnifying glasses and tweezers. Someone had even set up a table with coffee and donuts. A man wearing a flannel shirt kept asking Special Agent Colgin when his crew could get back to work, and she kept saying, “I’ll let you know.” After a while Colgin waved me over. Chief McMahan was standing near enough to hear our conversation.