by J. A. Jance
“Yes,” Deputy Timmons said. “That’s correct.”
I knew where Mel was going. There’s a lot to support the idea that stepfather/stepdaughter relationships can be fraught with peril, so when she asked her next question, I wasn’t at all surprised.
“Have you considered the possibility that Mr. Broward might have something to do with Rachel’s disappearance?”
The genuinely shocked expression on Deputy Timmons’s young face made his verbal answer unnecessary.
“So you don’t think there was something inappropriate going on between Mr. Broward and his stepdaughter. .”
“No, ma’am!” Timmons said decisively. “I never gave that possibility any thought at all. I’ve known Kenny Broward all my life. If there was ever a truly upright guy, he’s it, although how he could get mixed up with someone like Ardith Haskell is more than I can understand.”
I glanced back at Ardith’s mug shot. Haskell was the first name listed there, a maiden name, as it were. People from your hometown are usually the only ones who stick to those first names, so it occurred to me that Deputy Timmons had known Ardith all his life as well.
“I’ve heard what Ardith’s place was like before,” Timmons went on. “Before Kenny was in the picture. You’d be amazed, Sheriff Tyler. Now the place is clean as a whistle. He cut down all the weeds in the backyard and put together one of those wooden swing things out there so the kids would have something to play on. When I got there, they were outside having fun like normal kids. If you ask me, Kenny’s more of a father to that bunch than all those other guys put together.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let me understand this. Rachel went off with this supposed friend named Janie on Sunday.”
“Yes,” Timmons said. “She left Sunday afternoon about four, just after her mother left for work.”
“How did she leave?” I asked. “Did she walk? Did she ride?”
“She rode. Somebody picked her up, somebody driving an older-model pickup truck. Green. Chevrolet, Silverado. Kenny didn’t see the license, so that doesn’t help us much. There are lots of old Chevys in Packwood.”
“Okay,” Mel said. “She left on Sunday. Why did she leave after her mother went to work?”
“According to Kenny, Ardith and Rachel fight a lot. If Rachel had asked for permission, there probably would have been a big argument.”
“When was she reported missing?”
“This afternoon,” Deputy Timmons said. “Kenny called it in after Ardith left for work, for the same reason. He didn’t want to start another argument. I think I may have mentioned that Ardith isn’t exactly a nice person, a reasonable person.”
“Don’t you think it’s odd that Rachel’s stepfather is the one who turned in the report and not Rachel’s own mother?”
Deputy Timmons sighed. “He told me what she said.”
“What who said?” I asked.
“What Ardith said about Rachel’s running off,” Timmons said.
“What was that?” Sheriff Tyler asked.
“She said, ‘Good riddance. One less mouth to feed.’ ”
On the face of it, Kenny Broward sounded too good to be true, and Ardith Haskell was just the opposite-too bad to be real. Either way, the situation at the home in Packwood had been bad news for Rachel, and it had sent her running pell-mell into something much worse.
“Do you know where Ardith is right now?” I asked.
“Sure thing,” he said. “Tending bar at the Bike Inn bar in Randle. It’s a pretty rough crowd, but Ardith has worked there for years. She fits right in and can hold her own with the best of them-or the worst,” Deputy Timmons added. “Take your pick.”
I stood up. “We should probably go have a talk with her,” I said. “And maybe with Mr. Broward as well.”
Sheriff Tyler nodded. “Good idea,” he said. “But if I were you, I’d let Deputy Timmons take you there. You can drive your own car, of course. I wouldn’t expect you to go there in a squad car, but I caught a glimpse of your wheels when you got here. If you drive up to the Bike Inn by yourselves in that pretty little Mercedes of yours, those guys are likely to clean your clocks.” He grinned at Mel. “I have it on good authority that you’re fully capable of handling yourself in a pinch, but let me ask you this. If you were going out on an African safari, would you head off on your own, or would you pick up a local guide before you took off?”
“Local guide,” Mel said.
“Exactly right,” Sheriff Tyler said. “And this is the same thing. As far as the outside world is concerned, Randle and Packwood are a little like the back of the beyond. When Deputy Timmons came back home from his tour of duty in Iraq, I hired him to work that eastern sector of the county because he grew up there. He knows those logging roads like the back of his hand. He knows the people, the good ones and the bad ones.
“And why did I do that? Because, when I sent deputies from other parts of the county to Morton or Packwood or Randle and the like, asking questions, they never seemed to get to first base. If you go there on your own, it’s likely the same thing will happen to you. You can ask questions until you’re blue in the face. You’re not going to get any answers.”
What Sheriff Tyler was saying made sense. Mel stood up and turned one of her classic smiles on poor unsuspecting Deputy Timmons. I wasn’t the least bit surprised. When it comes to bringing unsuspecting young guys to heel, she’s a killer. I’ve seen her do it before, and it works like magic every single time.
“If you have time to take us there, Mr. Timmons,” she purred, “we’d be ever so grateful.”
Timmons blushed from the top of his collar to the roots of his hair. A few short minutes earlier, Mel had been the one voicing the suggestion that there might be some kind of unsavory connection between Timmons’s boyhood pal Kenneth Broward and Rachel Camber. In the face of Mel’s radiant smile, however, all remembrance of her unpleasant suggestion was zapped right out of Deputy Timmons’s random-access memory.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, grinning back at her. “I’d be happy to.”
If I had tried pulling that coy-smile bit, it wouldn’t have done a thing for Deputy Timmons, and it wouldn’t have done much for us, either.
“Would you mind going now?” she asked.
I believe Mel could have asked Deputy Timmons to march straight into hell about then, and he would have done it without question.
“Not at all, ma’am,” he replied. “Whenever you’re ready, I’m ready.”
And off to Randle we went.
Chapter 14
I’ve never been to the Ozarks. Mel tells me they’re beautiful and that I’d love it there. The closest I’ve ever come was reading my mother’s well-loved collection of books written by Harold Bell Wright. The Shepherd of the Hills and The Winning of Barbara Worth are the ones I remember reading myself, but my mother had a whole shelf filled with them. Those were books she read over and over when she was growing up, and they were books I read to her aloud when she was in the hospital dying. I think she had whole passages of them memorized.
I wouldn’t be surprised, however, if the Ozarks aren’t a whole lot like the far-eastern stretches of backwoods Lewis County-Morton, Randle, and Packwood included. U.S. Highway 12 is made up of miles of tree-lined blacktop punctuated occasionally by tiny towns and isolated houses, where elk and deer and the occasional bear wander across the roadways.
As we drove, it was easy to imagine that we were time-traveling back to a simpler, quieter era, but that was an illusion because bad things happen everywhere. Some of the towns and houses we passed were decidedly worse for wear. The downturn in the housing market had hit the logging industry hard. People who were just barely making it before were a lot worse off now.
Mel had used her considerable charm to bring Deputy Timmons to heel, but in the privacy of our own vehicle she was not amused at the idea of being led into the wilds of Lewis County by a local scout.
“I don’t care what Deputy Timmons has to say about his sainte
d friend, Kenneth Broward,” Mel said. “They’re pals, meaning he can’t possibly be objective about the guy. I have no intention of believing Rachel’s stepfather is in the clear until I see proof of it with my own eyes. And no mother in her right mind would say ‘Good riddance’ about a fifteen-year-old runaway.”
We drove into Randle through the lingering late-afternoon sunlight that is typical of Washington in the summer. We knew Mount Rainier was a huge snow-topped presence lurking only a few miles away, but the mountain was mostly out of sight behind the wall of trees that lined the road. Driving through the woods at that time of day means watching out for wildlife. We saw several deer grazing along the highway. As Mel was noting how beautiful they were, a fawn spooked for some reason and leaped across the road directly in front of us. Mel and I were both grateful for the Mercedes’s top-notch braking system. The unscathed deer, springing off into the forest, should have been grateful, too.
We’d already had some hints that the Bike Inn wouldn’t be a quaint country hotel catering primarily to bicycle riders in their bright Gore-Tex outfits. Denizens of the bar were of another species altogether. We’re talking Harleys and leathers here, not Trek and Spandex.
The building itself was a disreputable ramshackle kind of place with several Harleys angle-parked out front. In among the collection of Harleys were hidden a couple of Honda Goldwings and even, I was surprised to see, a fully restored Indian Chief. The Indian was an original that dated from the early forties, not a reproduction like those currently being built in North Carolina. There may have been shiny new leather on the seat, but this one came complete with the old-fashioned suicide shifter. When it comes to Indians, I’m something of a purist.
It was almost eight o’clock when we stopped the car in front of the row of cycles. We exited the climate-controlled comfort of the car and landed in surprising heat that was unsurprisingly muggy.
The building stood alone. Rather than having a sidewalk out front, it sported a worn wooden walkway that creaked when we stepped up onto it. There were still a few vestiges of color on the outside walls that indicated the building had once boasted a coat of blue paint, but now there was far more mold than paint showing. Off to the side of the building sat a relatively new AC unit that probably cost more than the building itself, but I welcomed its low-throated roar. In the baking heat, the prospect that the Bike Inn was air-conditioned was a welcome surprise.
Deputy Timmons stood waiting for us on the boardwalk. Once we joined him, he pushed open the door and ushered us inside. I had never been in this particular bar before, but I’ve spent enough time in disreputable places over the years that this was an entirely familiar “ambience.” The first thing to hit me was the smell. Cigarette smoking inside bars and restaurants may be prohibited in Washington State now, but generations of smokers had left behind clouds of smoke that had absorbed into the Bike Inn’s very core. In this case, I suspected the dark paneling on the interior walls and the upholstered booths were most likely the main smoke-sink culprits. The bare plank flooring had sopped up plenty of spilled beer over the years. The olfactory residue of that lingered, blending with the stink of burned grease from a kitchen that probably wasn’t any too clean, either.
From the invisible dollar signs on the two-wheeled rides parked outside, I could tell most of these guys could have afforded to hang out in a better place, but for some reason they didn’t. They preferred this one.
After the bright sunlight outside, the room was gloomily dark. Most of the light came from fixtures that dangled over two fully occupied pool tables. The light over the bar was a lot dimmer than the light over the pool tables. There were four guys playing pool, two men and two leather-clad women sitting in two separate booths along the far wall, and three guys at the bar-two on one end and a solo at the other end near the kitchen. One of the pool players wore a handgun-one that looked like a.38-in a holster on his hip, but I assumed that wasn’t the only weapon in the room.
A woman wearing a tank top stood behind the bar with one tattooed arm raised while she pulled draft beer into a glass. After viewing all those mug shots, I recognized Rachel Camber’s mother the moment I saw her. In the flesh, I saw that her mug shot wasn’t an exact likeness, but that’s hardly surprising. Even movie stars look like crap in mug shots-just ask Charlie Sheen or Nick Nolte.
As the door opened, I had heard the sound of someone whacking the cue ball into a newly racked triangle of pool balls. We stepped into the room while the balls were still skittering across the felt-lined table. One of them dropped into a side pocket, but before that happened, complete silence fell on the room. I’ve been in bad-news bars before, and that kind of ominous silence makes me wary as hell. Right then I busied myself with a head count-nine men and three women-against the three of us. If Mel had been at the top of her game, the odds might not have been too bad, especially since Timmons was a trained Marine. Still. .
The silence was broken when Ardith slammed the beer glass down on the bar hard enough that half of it slopped out onto the counter.
“Who the hell is this, Davy?” she demanded sharply of Deputy Timmons as we walked past the pool players and took possession of three unoccupied bar stools. “Whaddya think you’re doin’ bringin’ folks like this into my bar?”
I noticed right off that she didn’t call him Deputy Timmons or even David-as his name badge clearly stated-but Davy. It sounded like she was using a nickname that was most likely a carryover from childhood and predated Timmons’s time in the Marines as well as his time as deputy. Ardith’s use of “Davy” was similar to the deputy’s calling Ardith by her maiden name. In some cases, turnabout really is fair play.
“They’re cops, Ardith,” he said, stating the obvious. “They need to talk to you.”
Timmons was the only one wearing a uniform, but everyone in the bar had recognized Mel and me as cops the moment we had stepped across the threshold.
“I don’t talk to cops,” Ardith replied. She topped off the beer to replace what she had spilled and then slid the glass down the bar to the solo sitting next to the kitchen.
“No kind of cops,” she added, “unless my lawyer is present, which, if you’ll look around the room, you’ll see he ain’t.”
I heard a slight guffaw from somewhere behind me, most likely from one of the pool players. I waited, hoping for the sound of a cue ball striking something else, but the games were currently halted while every eye and ear focused on us, the unwelcome interlopers.
“It’s not about you, Ms. Broward,” Mel said quietly. “It’s about your daughter.”
“Oh,” Ardith said. “So it’s Rachel again, is it? Well, whatever she’s done this time, I’ve got nothin’ to do with it.”
“If we could speak to you in private-” I suggested.
She cut off my words with a hoot of laughter. “Private?” she repeated. “The only thing private around here is the ladies, and that’s only if there’s still toilet paper filling the peephole somebody drilled through the wall from the gents. And what’s supposed to happen to my bar while you and me have this cozy little chat? I can’t exactly call in a pinch hitter and ask ’em to substitute for me, now can I!”
“It’s about your daughter,” Mel said again.
Ardith’s jaw slammed shut. That’s when I realized what was different about her. Someone had gone to the trouble and expense of helping her get her teeth fixed. The front teeth that had been missing in her mug shot were no longer missing.
The lone wolf at the far end of the counter was a leather-clad giant of a man with a headful of frizzy reddish hair pulled back into a ponytail that ended near his waist. He stood up, sauntered down the bar, and stopped in front of Ardith.
“You go take care of whatever you’ve gotta take care of, Ardy,” he said. “I’ll mind the bar and the till.”
He wasn’t the kind of guy I would have trusted to take over my cash register or my bar in my absence, but Ardith nodded her agreement, then turned and walked away. With the three
of us trailing behind, she left the bar and turned down the hall marked RESTROOMS. She walked past them and let herself out a back door marked EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY, although no alarm sounded when she opened it and led us outside. By the time she stopped next to a stinking garbage Dumpster, she had a cigarette in her mouth and was lighting it.
“Okay,” she said. “What’s Rachel done now?”
“I take it you’ve been having problems with your daughter?” Mel asked.
“I’ll say.” Ardith blew a cloud of smoke into the air. “I told her the last time she run off not to bother comin’ back if she did it again. People laugh at me for havin’ so many men in my life, but I’ve married every one of them. That’s the God’s truth. I sure as hell don’t do it for the money, and I won’t have a slut who puts out like that livin’ under my roof and bein’ a bad influence on the little ones.”
“Wait a minute,” Mel said. “Did I understand you to say that you think Rachel has been involved in prostitution?”
“I don’t think,” Ardith responded. “I know! I wasn’t born yesterday. When I found four hundred bucks in crisp new one-hundred-dollar bills hidden in her underwear drawer, I didn’t figure her fairy godmother dropped it off just for the hell of it. She was whoring for it, plain and simple. Where else is a plain-looking girl like that gonna come up with that kind of money?”
“Do you know the names of any of the people she might be involved with?” Mel asked.
“Are you kidding? I’m Rachel’s mother. She’s not likely to tell me anything.”
“Are there friends from school who might know the names of some of her associates?”
“Associates?” Ardith scoffed. “You make it sound like a lawyer’s office or something. No, I don’t know her friends. If she’s got ’em, she doesn’t talk about ’em, leastways not to me. You can ask Kenny, my husband. He’s been laid off for months, so he’s around home a whole lot more than I am. He keeps telling me that I’m too hard on Rachel. He got called back to work. Today was supposed to be his first day back on the job. Rachel promised she’d be here to look after the younger kids. I suppose you can guess how well that turned out! She probably got herself a better offer than babysitting for free so she could have a roof over her head and food on the table.”