“Not that I remember?”
“You said it was leather.”
“Yes, brown leather, I think Larry said. Just an average briefcase. Except that Blyleven acted as if it contained military secrets.”
“Down and back?”
“Excuse me?”
“Did he treat the case the same way flying to Tucson as he did when they flew back to Denver?” Maybe he was carrying drugs, one direction or the other.
“I really can’t say.”
“You’re sure.”
“Yes. Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” I drank some beer, gathering the resolve to toss mud on her dear, departed husband. “On their final flight, they left around four-thirty in the afternoon, true?”
“Yes, I—” Her voice caught, and she cleared her throat. “Yes, that’s right.”
“Did they always leave at that time?”
“No, it varied. Sometimes it was in the morning. Although …” She frowned.
“What?”
“It was rare for them to leave so late. I remember Larry saying they wouldn’t reach Tucson until well after dark.”
“Was that a problem? I mean, as far as Larry’s flying abilities.”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Who decided what time they took off?”
“Blyleven. He’d phone Larry a day or so beforehand and tell him when he wanted to leave.”
“Always?”
“Yes.”
“So your husband never had a say about that.”
“No,” she said, frowning at me. “What are you getting at?”
“Just trying to straighten it out in my mind. On the night before their final flight, can you tell me what happened?”
She was still frowning, but her eyes had come unfocused. She blinked and looked away. “What do you mean?”
“Do you remember the night before that flight?”
Now she turned to me with one corner of her mouth raised. When she spoke, there was bitterness in her voice. “Do I remember the last night I ever spent with my husband? The father of my only child? Yes, you might say I remember it.” She snorted with disgust and stood abruptly. I thought she was going to tell me to leave. But she turned away, took three steps to the edge of the deck, and stared out at the night, arms folded, shoulders painfully hunched. Nice going, Lomax.
I watched her for a few minutes. She shuddered once, and then her shoulders seemed to relax. She turned her head to the side, still keeping her back to me.
“We ate at a Japanese restaurant,” she said without emotion, as if repeating lines she’d spoken to herself too often. “Larry loved sushi. I had grilled salmon, and Brian had shrimp. On the way home we stopped and rented a movie, an Indiana Jones, I’m not sure which one. Larry and I went to bed not too long after Brian. We… made love. In the morning, I kissed him good-bye and took Brian to school. And the day after that they told me he… was dead. Yes,” she said with sarcasm and pain, “I remember it pretty well.”
“Was Larry with you all night?”
She turned toward me and dropped her arms. “I just told you,” she snapped.
“I’m sorry, I had to be certain. You see, Blyleven was at the hangar late that night, and someone was with him.”
“Well, it wasn’t my husband.” Then her look changed. “What do you mean Blyleven was at the hangar? What was he doing there?”
“Good question.” I wasn’t going to repeat what Blyleven had told Earl Wilson—to surprise Foster. Some surprise.
Nora came back to the table and sat down, studying my face. “Could Blyleven have been putting a bomb on the plane?”
“It’s possible.”
“Goddamn him.” There was venom in her voice.
“I said ‘possible.’ We can’t be certain.”
But she wasn’t listening. “Most of the authorities suspected that Blyleven had brought the bomb on board. I refused to believe it, though, because it would have meant that Larry knew about it. And that was impossible.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because Larry didn’t want to die, that’s why. He would never leave Brian and me.”
“I’m not saying he would. But what if he was helping, not knowing exactly what Blyleven had planned.”
She shook her head and gave me a half-smile. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Maybe not. He took a road trip with Blyleven less than a week before the crash, didn’t he?”
She gave me a quizzical look. “No. What do you mean?”
“Wasn’t your husband gone for a few days during that week?”
“No. He was never away overnight. Except when he flew to Tucson.”
I didn’t think she was lying. But somebody was. “Well, maybe he told you he was flying to Tucson that week.”
She frowned and shook her head. “He hadn’t flown there in a month.”
“Look, Blyleven’s widow told me that your husband showed up at their house during the week before the crash. He and Blyleven drove off in two cars with provisions for a long road trip. Blyleven returned two days later with his car covered in road grime, apparently from a long drive.”
“Larry wasn’t with him. He couldn’t have been.”
“She said he was.”
“She’s mistaken.”
“I doubt it.”
“Then she’s lying.”
It was possible. But why would she lie about that, after telling me everything else?
I drained off my beer. Nora didn’t offer me another. I was out of questions, and we were beyond pleasant conversation.
“I should go. Thank you for dinner. And thank you being so cooperative.”
She nodded, looking sad and a bit confused. I wanted to change that. But I didn’t know how. I followed her into the house.
Brian was not in sight. I could see light falling from an open doorway at the far end of the short hall. At the near end there was a small table with a telephone. Half a dozen framed photos hung on the wall. Five of them pictured either Brian alone or Brian with his mother. The sixth showed Brian as a little boy standing with Nora and a smiling, square-jawed young man.
I hesitated. “Is this a picture of your husband?”
“Yes. It was taken a few months before the crash.”
“Would you mind if I used your phone?”
I dug out my spiral notebook, flipped a few pages, and dialed a number. It rang three times before Vivian Armis answered.
I said, “I want you to think back to that two-day road trip your husband took with Lawrence Foster.”
“What about it?”
“You told me that he introduced you to Foster then.”
“That’s correct.”
“So you’d never met Foster before.”
“No.”
“Describe him to me.”
“Well, let me think. He was about the same size and age as Martin. Brown hair, I believe.”
I waited.
“And of course, his awful scar.”
Bingo. “What sort of scar?”
Nora said beside me, “Larry didn’t have any scars.”
I nodded at her and said into the phone, “Describe it to me.”
“He’d been severely burned,” Vivian Armis said, “on his neck and chin. It was the sort of thing you try not to stare at, but you can’t help yourself. Do you understand what I mean?”
“Perfectly. Thanks.” I hung up.
“You were right,” I said. “It wasn’t your husband who took the road trip with Blyleven.”
“Who was it?”
“A man named Stan Lessing.”
21
ON THE WAY HOME from Nora Foster’s house, I spotted someone following me.
I’d been lost in thought about Stan Lessing. He seemed to be the answer to two questions that had been haunting me. One, if Blyleven was alive, whose burned body parts had been in the wreckage? And two, how had Blyleven managed to get a body on the plane?
I believed now that th
e charred remains belonged to Stan Lessing. He’d gone on the road trip with Blyleven, and he’d no doubt been with Blyleven at the hangar on the night before the crash. Blyleven could have murdered him on the plane, then hidden his body, probably in the baggage compartment. That would explain why Blyleven had arrived at the airport so early the next day. He didn’t want anyone checking out the inside of the aircraft, especially Lawrence Foster.
Naturally, this was only a theory. And it would collapse if Lessing were alive and well and—
And that’s when I noticed I was being followed.
I was on Downing Street, a straight shot from the south end to the central part of town. Just before Washington Park I’d sped up to make it through a yellow-turning-red light on Louisiana. The guy behind me had been hanging back about a block. I say “guy,” but all I could see were a pair of low, wide headlights and the sloping hood and windshield of a new black mid-size car, possibly a Lexus. He came roaring through the red light.
It’s not unusual to see that around town. You barely make a light, feeling that it was a close call, maybe even feeling guilty for breaking a traffic law. But when you glance in the mirror you see one, two, sometimes three more cars coming through behind you.
That’s what this guy did. I probably wouldn’t have paid attention, except he immediately slowed down. He waited until I was a block ahead of him again, and then he matched my speed.
Manny?
My little finger throbbed. Even in the weak light I could see the thin black line that ran the length of my nail. I reached over to the glove compartment, slid the .38 from its holster, and set it on the seat beside me.
Two blocks later, I stopped for the light on Alameda. The black car pulled over to the curb a block behind me and waited. There were other cars on the street. They began to pile up at the light, two of them beside me in the left-turn lane.
The light changed to green. I made an illegal left turn, cutting off the two cars, getting the horn from one and the finger from the other. I sped west on Alameda for four blocks, then hung a right at Clarkson Street, just catching sight of the black car in my mirror, racing to catch up.
Once on Clarkson I pulled over and stopped.
The black car screeched around the corner. When the driver spotted me, he jammed on the brakes. And then he punched it, flying by.
It was a Lexus, all right, a shiny black coupe with smoky windows. I couldn’t see who was driving. I pulled away from the curb and tried to catch him. A vain attempt. The aging Olds strained with the effort.
When the Lexus reached Speer Boulevard, I was two and a half blocks back, doing fifty.
Speer is six lanes wide, three on each side of Cherry Creek, and always flowing with traffic. The lights were red for the Lexus, but it barely slowed down. It dove through all six lanes amid a shrieking of brakes and a howling of horns.
No way would I follow that act.
I waited for the lights to turn, then crossed Speer. I was only a few blocks from my apartment.
Manny knew where I lived.
I cruised the neighborhood for a good half hour, looking for the black Lexus. No sign of it.
I parked a block from my building, then walked down the alley, the holster on my hip, my hand on the gun butt. Despite the city light, there were still a lot of deep shadows behind fences and hedges. I checked out every one.
Logically, I knew that if Manny had been following me, he’d been doing it in the hopes that I’d lead him to Blyleven. He had no reason to ambush me. Still, I had my gun drawn as I went through the back gate into Mrs. Finch’s yard. I checked out the rear of the house and both shadowy sides before holstering my piece and walking around to the front.
Susan Hoffman’s party was breaking up. I’d forgotten all about it. Just as well, because Mrs. Finch was doing the breaking.
I stood aside as a dozen young people filed out the front door, casting nervous looks over their shoulders, trailing the sweet scent of marijuana. Mrs. Finch was standing in the doorway to Susan’s apartment, her back to the hallway, her fists on her hips. She was shouting. So was Susan.
“This is my apartment, and I’ll have a party here anytime I want!”
“The devil you will, missy! This is my house, and I want you out of here tomorrow!”
“You can’t throw me out, I just moved in!”
“If you’re not gone by noon, I’ll call the police!”
I was about to intervene and try to smooth things out when Sharon retorted, “My boyfriend will have something to say about that!”
Boyfriend? She’d never mentioned a boyfriend.
Sigh.
The next day I started my search for Stan Lessing. I tried the obvious places first: phone company, post office, Public Service. No record of him. The Denver phone book listed eight Lessings, and I called them all, connecting with six. None of them had ever heard of Stan.
I’d have to ask Big Brother. The government may not know everything about you, but they know enough. Fortunately for me, most of it is public information.
A good place to start is the Department of Motor Vehicles. On the drive out West Mississippi Avenue I kept one eye on the rearview mirror. No black Lexus. But I could sense Manny’s presence. The Lexus was probably a rental, so Manny could be back there in another car. I doubted that he’d let me out of his sight. Not until he’d found Blyleven.
I spent a few hours at the DMV, needling and wheedling and waiting, before they gave me a copy of Stanford Wiley Lessing’s Colorado driver’s license.
He stared grimly at the camera, a brown-eyed, brown-haired man in his late twenties, listed as five ten, one sixty-five. His scar was prominently displayed. It covered half his chin and all of his neck, disappearing into his collar line—a puckered mass of livid, purplish-red tissue. Obviously, this was the man who’d played chess with Martin Blyleven and later taken a two-day road trip with him.
The big question: Was he still alive?
His license had expired two years ago and hadn’t been renewed.
The reason could be that he was dead. Of course, there were other explanations. For instance, he’d moved to another state. Or else he’d simply forgotten to renew his license. Or he hadn’t bothered to. Or he was unable to. This last reason might mean any number of things—loss of sight, for example. Or a prison sentence.
Stan’s old mailing address was on the license, but it was a PO box. Besides, it had been defunct for at least one year—I’d already checked with the post office. And he’d left no forwarding address.
I wasn’t finished at the DMV, though. They also keep records of vehicles owned.
There was nothing for the past three years, but four years ago Lessing had renewed the plates on a 1976 Pontiac Firebird. Five years ago he’d also renewed. And six years ago he’d bought the car. The record showed the purchase price ($1,700), the seller (Skyway Motors on South Broadway in Englewood), and the buyer’s address (the PO box on his driver’s license). It also listed the buyer’s place of employment.
Bargain Tire Company was in Englewood on Hampden Avenue across from Cinderella City, which twenty years ago could boast being the largest indoor shopping mall west of the Mississippi River. If boast was the proper word. Now, though, it was worn around the edges, and two-thirds of the shops were vacant.
Still, there was a lot of shopper traffic in the area, and the tire place was bustling.
Most of the building was taken up by half a dozen bays, all occupied. Each car had its own blue-shirted attendant, who seemed in no hurry to change the tires. The vehicles’ owners stood outside the open bay doors, looking on anxiously, while air ratchets whirred and growled like weapons from a fifties sci-fi movie.
There was a small waiting room crowded with four customers and all the amenities of home—tortuously molded plastic chairs, auto magazines with torn covers, and an out-of-order coffee machine. The guy behind the counter was a young Hispanic with a mustache and chin whiskers and a tiny gold earring in his left lobe. W
hen I told him I wanted to speak to the manager, he gave me a bored look and said, “Is there a problem, sir?”
“I’m trying to find a guy who used to work here. Maybe he still does. Stan Lessing.”
He hesitated, then said, “Just a minute,” and disappeared through a back door.
When he returned, it was with a guy who had to be the boss, since he was the only employee wearing a tie—a narrow, dark number that went perfectly with his short-sleeved white shirt, pocket protector, and military haircut. He was about my age and putting on weight, spreading the spaces between a couple of lower shirt buttons. His forearms were muscular, so he’d probably worked his way up from tire-changer to supervisor. He said his name was Nordstrum.
I introduced myself and told him what line of work I was in. He decided we should talk in his office.
It was just about big enough for the two of us. Nordstrum squeezed behind his massive, metal desk and I scrunched down in the wobbly visitor’s chair. The desktop was a mess of order forms, catalogues, and promotional flyers, with more piled on the file cabinets in the corner. On the wall behind him was a poster-size calendar showing Miss Lug Nut leaning over the hood of a Corvette. She wore impossibly short cut-off jeans and a skimpy bikini top, and she held an air ratchet in a seductive manner, blowing across the end as if it were a smoking gun. It was last year’s calendar. I guess Nordstrum was nostalgic.
“The name’s familiar,” he said. “Lessing.”
I showed him the copy of Lessing’s driver’s license. It jogged his memory.
“Sure. The scar. I remember him now. An asshole.”
“Oh?”
“Always bitching about something. Too much work, not enough pay, not enough days off, you name it. He acted like the world owed him something. When he shut up and worked, he wasn’t too bad. But I finally fired him.”
“Why?”
“He got in an argument with one of my other guys over some stupid little thing and he smacked him in the head with a tire iron. The guy had to go to the hospital for stitches.”
“When was this?”
“Four, five years ago.”
“Do you know where Lessing might be now?”
“Don’t know, don’t care. Like I said, he was an asshole.”
Grave Doubt (The Jacob Lomax Mysteries Book 5) Page 13