The manager moved to a personnel door next to two roll-up garage doors. He placed the jaws of the bolt cutter on one side of the padlock shackle and squeezed the handles together with noticeable effort. A couple of grunts from the old man and the lock jangled to the ground in two pieces. The manager opened the door fully so everyone could step inside.
One side of the space was crowded with old pottery, brass lamps, mahogany furniture from the days of Hepplewhite and Chippendale, oil paintings and lithographs, and glass-doored cabinets, stacked high with china and crystal. A plywood and exposed-stud partition separated the two large bays, but left an opening at the rear to allow passage between the two spaces. The second bay contained a solitary object.
It was a Nile green 1936 Reo Flying Cloud that once belonged to Clark Gable.
* * * * *
Frank found the keys for the Reo in the glove box and immediately stepped to the back of the car and opened the trunk. He glanced behind the spare tire. The rolled-up folder was still there, seemingly untouched, and Frank exhaled the breath he’d been holding. He decided to leave the folder in the trunk. No one with him should know about the secret documents he’d withheld from the FBI, including Alasdair. Alasdair was a trusted friend, but he was another set of eyes, another mouth, beyond Frank’s control. Ben Franklin again recited his timeless axiom in Frank’s head.
Alasdair and the two state troopers were talking with the manager as Frank returned to the other bay.
“Looks like everything’s still there,” Frank said. “I was concerned about losing that 1939 license plate.”
The state troopers filed outside, followed by the manager. Frank signaled Alasdair to meet him at the rear of the Reo.
“The state boys are leaving,” Alasdair said. “I thanked them for obtaining the warrant and for their help getting old Ebenezer out there to work with us.”
Frank now needed to drive the Reo somewhere safe, but he didn’t know where safe might be. If he took it back to Elm Terrace there could be a repeat of the robbery since he wasn’t there much of the time to keep an eye on it. He could install a surveillance system, but why sink that kind of money into a house he intended to sell? Besides, it would take too much time, a commodity he presently had too little of.
Frank stared at the car from the side. He stroked the roof line like it was a cherished pet.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Alasdair said. “Take the damn car to my place. I’ll keep it in my garage and park my clunker in the driveway in front of the garage door.”
“You sure?” Frank said and slipped into the driver’s seat.
“No one’s going to bother it there. Monkton is not like Catonsville. We don’t allow thieves to even come into town. Besides, I have a full video system and alarms all over the property,” Alasdair said. “After all, I own a video production company, don’t I?”
“God, this is going to cost me a buttload of dinners and drinks,” Frank said and cranked the Reo to life, while Alasdair rolled up the storage unit’s garage door.
Frank switched on the headlights, even though half a ball of sun was still above the horizon.
“Good God, it runs, it lights up, it’s alive.” Alasdair said.
“Tomorrow we pay a visit to Main Street Antiques,” Frank said.
“The manager here says he copies all the checks he receives for this unit,” Alasdair said. “I’ll make a copy of one of his before I leave and meet you at my house. It’s pretty warm out, partner. Better put the A/C on high in that old buggy.”
“Go stuff a caber up your kilt,” Frank said and roared out of the storage unit.
* * * * *
A few blocks from the storage facility Frank pulled the Reo over to the side of the secondary road he’d taken and shut down the engine. Something kept troubling him, something he needed to confirm. He looked up and down the road for any activity. Satisfied that no cars were approaching in the fading light, he hopped out of the driver’s seat and lifted the trunk lid. He retrieved the folder from behind the spare and unrolled it. The paper stapled to the back of the photo was the object of Frank’s interest.
Frank was relieved when he saw the words:
Men wish to swing in their seventies and fly with eagles.
Chapter 25
Main Street in Ellicott City was officially Old Frederick Road, but for the five blocks of the antique and restaurant businesses it was known by its simpler name. Funny thing was, Frank and Alasdair discovered there was no such place as Main Street Antiques, and the address shown on the storage rental check belonged to a bakery. That left them with one final thing to look into: the bank that issued the check.
The bank was a state employee credit union with branches just about everywhere except in Ellicott City. The nearest one was off Route 70 in nearby Marriottsville. The signature on the check was made by the same guy who taught doctors how to write prescriptions. It consisted of a curlicue and a wavy line, like a hieroglyph for a tadpole. Even if Frank had access to the Rosetta Stone, he wouldn’t be able to decipher the name.
The young teller at the credit union looked up the account on a computer screen and knitted her eyebrows like something displayed on her monitor was unusual.
“This is a special account,” the teller said. “It’s locked for privacy.”
“We are police officers and we can get warrants to inspect this account,” Frank said and side-glanced at Alasdair. “We don’t have accounts locked to government authorities here in America. You want that level of privacy, go to Switzerland.”
“I’ll speak to my supervisor,” the teller said, and left her station to talk to a woman overseeing a young woman working the drive-thru window.
“Where do you come up with such bullshit?” Alasdair said low.
“Law & Order.”
The teller returned with the supervisor, an older woman with steeply arched eyebrows, which gave her a hard, angry appearance. Anticipating resistance, Frank held up his Florida police badge.
“What is it about this account you require, officer?” the woman asked.
“All I want is the name of the account’s owner,” Frank said. “We have this check, but we can’t make out the name from this signature.”
Frank showed the woman the check. She tightened her lips and shook her head.
“This account is involved in a homicide,” Frank said. “Where we got the information will never come back to you. You have my word.”
The tellers in the bank looked on at the confrontation with keen interest.
“I can’t tell you that information on a private account such as this,” the woman said as she wrote something briefly on a slip of paper, folded it, and slid it across to Frank, “but you can take it up with the bank’s vice-president if you like.”
“I’ll do that,” Frank said and nodded at the two women as he and Alasdair left the bank.
“Going to call the number she gave you?” Alasdair said when they reached their car.
Frank opened the piece of paper and read it.
“Probably not.”
He showed the paper to Alasdair.
“Sweet baby Jesus,” Alasdair said.
The name on the paper was John D. Dellarue.
* * * * *
Frank and Alasdair sat in the car and stared out the windshield.
“Let’s figure out the logic in all this,” Alasdair said. “Dellarue hires a career thug, with a rap sheet from here to Tasmania, to steal antiques and store them in a rented garage to cool off and sell later. A pretty stupid hobby, I’d say, for a high ranking cop near retirement.”
“Maybe he bought the stuff legit. Could be he’s into something bigger than boosting antiques. Maybe drugs. Putting treasure away to augment his pension,” Frank said.
“Or gambling. Grabbing your Reo makes sense, if your theory about Joe’s gambling is stirred into the mix. Why else would he steal something from you, of all people?”
“I’m no longer buying that theory.” Frank
said.
“Even so, we’re going to need more proof than Dellarue allowing an ex-con to use his storage facility,” Alasdair said.
“When we came up with Dickie’s prints in my garage, I had them processed through Dellarue’s lab, and he went right to work and implicated his own accomplice. Then he has him eliminated?”
“The only real mistake he made was in leaving the storage company’s business card in Dickie K’s pocket,” Alasdair said. “Might’ve been rushed. Didn’t take the time to search him. Probably figured no one would ever find the body.”
“Little things like that trip up the smartest criminals,” Frank said. “And trust me, Dellarue’s got more mistakes in his past.”
“Always follow the money, Alasdair said.”
“And follow the power.”
* * * * *
Frank heard Celine calling out to the garage where he and Alasdair were sitting in the Reo.
“Last chance for a fine Italian dinner,” Celine called from the house. “The caterer just left.”
“Be right there,” Alasdair said. “What are we having?”
“Pizza,” Celine said.
“Ah, the world’s most perfect food,” Frank said, climbing out from behind the steering wheel. He reached back into the car and pulled out and pocketed the key from the ignition.
A minute later, the two men came out of the garage and entered Alasdair’s house. Frank carried the rolled-up folder with the photo and poem from the Reo’s trunk in his hand.
“Ever see this Colonel Chernac?” Frank asked Celine as he pulled the photo from the folder.
“Is he one of the men in your photo?” Celine asked.
“No,” Frank said. “Someone else.”
Frank placed the folder on the cocktail table in the den and with the curled photo on top.
“I’ve never actually met him,” Celine said and placed the pizza box on the dining table. “He’s always on remote assignments, foreign hot spots, I imagine. I worked in a different department.”
“I talked to him on the phone,” Frank said. “Weird guy, annoying.”
“I got the meat lovers’ special,” Celine said and handed out paper plates. “Dig in.”
* * * * *
After eating, everyone went into the den. Frank took out a letter from his jacket pocket and sat on the sofa in front of the cocktail table where the file folder lay with the rolled-up photo. He opened the letter and looked at it for a moment.
“This is a poem from my grandfather,” Frank said. “He loved to create puzzles, like the one we had to solve to find the fallout shelter.”
Frank read the first stanza of the poem.
“Treasure comes not only from gold,
Nor from chattel stately and old,”
“What does that mean?” Celine said.
“I guess there’s something in the house more valuable than money,” Frank said and read more.
“Brains on paper and acts preserved,
And still Martian men Are swell served,”
“He found a UFO alien?” Alasdair said.
“The ‘brains on paper’ has to be what’s in the file folder, maybe the chemical equations, and the “acts preserved” must be the 16mm film,” Frank said.
“What about the ‘Martian’ part?” Celine said. “Men are from Mars. Hm, I guess that’s true.”
“Mars is the Roman god of war,” Frank said. “‘Martian men’ are warring men ... wait a minute ... I just picked up on something here for the first time. ‘Martian men Are swell served’ with the word ‘Are’ capitalized in mid-sentence.
“A typo?” Celine asked.
“Not likely from a scholar and perfectionist like William.” Frank said.
“Let me have a go at the line,” Alasdair said reaching for the letter.
Alasdair looked carefully at the poem then looked up and smiled.
“How about if we read it as: ‘Martian men Ares well served’ instead?” Alasdair said.
“Of course,” Frank said. “Ares was the Greek god of war. William was covering all of his war gods, for sure. And who are war gods? The leaders of nations, the heads of governments, kings, dictators and emperors, that’s who.”
“You’ve nailed it, man,” Alasdair said.
Frank read the final line.
“As secrets lie dormant, never told.”
“Well, we certainly know what that means,” Celine said. “How long has that secret room been down there unopened? Since World War Two?”
Frank knew the room had been used since then, but he was sure the dormant secrets started there.
“Actually,” Alasdair said, “That poem was pretty easy to figure out. I’d’ve thought your grandfather’s clues would be more challenging. At least up to the ‘Detroit wonder’ one.”
“I agree. It was way too easy,” Frank said. “The poem makes sense, but what’s with this picture?”
Frank picked up the photo and its attached paper. He stretched the picture and paper over the edge of the cocktail table to take the persistent curl out of it so it would lie flat on the table. He placed it picture-side up.
“The only thing I can be sure of is that William put this photo in the Omega file folder for a reason.”
Frank hesitated at showing the photo and the poem to his friends, but reasoned he had to trust some people to help him, and who better than his best friend and his wife. He was careful not to reveal the stack of memos inside the folder. There were things they contained needing no interpretation, things his instincts warned him not to share with anyone. He pointed to the photo on the cocktail table.
“What do you make of it?” Frank said.
Alasdair and Celine sat on either side of Frank on the sofa and studied the photograph.
“Looks like two men… possibly in a laboratory,” Celine said.
“Two men in lab coats who work for NASA in front of a little shovel on a metal rod with a handle,” Alasdair said.
“The man on the left is my grandfather. I have no idea who the other guy is,” Frank said. “William was a consultant to NASA in the ‘70s and ‘80s.”
“What’s on the other side?” Celine said.
“Just another stupid poem,” Frank said.
Frank flipped over the photo to briefly give them a flash shot of the poem. Alasdair and Celine had no time to scan it before Frank hid it back in the folder.
“Any thoughts?” Frank said.
“Your grandfather was a strange fellow,” Celine said.
“But once you got to know him,” Frank said, “he was even stranger. He took me to Washington late one night and we drove to the Capitol and sat on the steps until midnight. At the stroke of twelve he looked at me and said, ‘Where else in the world can you sit in your nation’s capital on its central government building at midnight? This is freedom, Frankie. And it’s never free.’”
Frank stuffed the letter in his jacket pocket, picked up the folder and stood up.
“Thanks for indulging me,” Frank said. “I’m going to head home and try to grab a little sleep.”
“Tomorrow I may set up a video camera in your garage,” Alasdair said. “We’ll see then who comes and goes. I don’t want you to lose that gorgeous ‘Vette as well.”
“You’re worth every burger I force you to eat.”
Frank left the MacGowans knowing poems could be explicated, even cryptic poems like William’s. And even by less than scholarly people. Frank would keep the poem attached to the NASA photo out of anyone’s reach. And he knew precisely how to do that.
He would memorize the poem and destroy the document.
* * * * *
He was comforted by the fact that only three people had ever seen the poem and photo, and Alasdair and Celine had so briefly been shown the poem they wouldn’t be able to even make a guess at a word it contained, and certainly not a hint of its interpretation. On the possible downside, they both knew it existed.
Frank drove back to Elm Terrace and popped t
he cap on a St. Pauli Girl. He sat in the recliner in the parlor and reviewed his intense day. One notion kept surfacing: How would anyone gain the information necessary to build a device of such devastation as the Omega weapon? Even he couldn’t make any sense of it, and he was intimately acquainted with its author.
Frank began to allow that William was having the last laugh on everyone … and probably nothing more.
Chapter 26
Frank drove up to the garage at Elm Terrace. He was curious. Would Dickie K’s lock needles match up with the scratch marks on the garage lock? He knew marks like these were as reliable as fingerprints when it came to identifying and comparing tools and instruments with the scars they left on other objects. He went into the garage and found a magnifying glass and stepped over to the door. He took the lock needle case from his breast pocket and examined the garage lock.
There weren’t many scratches, but there was one small gouge, readable under the ten-power glass. Three of the needles didn’t match the mark, but the fourth, a large pointy one, was spot on; a marriage of tool and tool mark. Without question, Dickie K’s tools were used to open the Dugan garage. The question was, had he acted alone?
Frank re-entered the house, ascended the staircase and went into the master bedroom. Alasdair’s call came in while he was sifting through William’s things in the armoire’s lower drawers, where nothing there, thus far, had jumped out as useful.
“A pleasant surprise,” Alasdair said. “Ebenezer at the storage company just called me as I instructed him to if there were any further visits to the space where we found the Reo. A man came in to get the key to the new lock the old man put on the unit. He made him identify himself. It was Dellarue.”
“His lackey is dead. Has to run his own errands.”
Frank swept his hand through the clothes hanging in the armoire’s upper wardrobe and encountered nothing significant.
The Omega Formula: Power to Die For (Detective Frank Dugan) Page 12