by Paul Charles
The second they exited the grand gates of WWW ranch, Mactoo seemed to relax
“Did you know,” Mactoo eventually said, settling back into his relaxed homespun style, “if you put a little whisky on a scorpion’s tail, it will run around crazily until it stings itself to death?”
Kennedy’s mind was elsewhere.
“Well,” Mactoo continued, as he sped along the dangerous streets at over twice the speed limit, “I think we just dropped some whisky on Miss Florence Asher’s tail.”
The minute they walked into the station house, Liz shouted to Kennedy that he was to ring the chief immediately at the number she handed him.
In the office Grace had commandeered for both of them, Kennedy quickly dialled the number, imagining the worst. Were his wings about to be clipped?
“Hi, Chief, I just got back to the station.”
“Inspector, I’ve just had Asher on the phone to me huffing and puffing and trying to blow our station house down. Please tell me what happened; spare me nothing.”
Kennedy recalled the encounter with Miss Asher, leaving absolutely nothing out.
“She said that,” the chief barked, “that she had a hundred witnesses?”
“She actually said she had over a hundred witnesses,” Kennedy clarified for the record.”
“Well, I kinda figured by the storm Asher was blowing up, threatening to have me thrown off the force, if you don’t mind, that you and Mactoo must have been dong something right. So what do you want to do?”
“I want to get on the property as soon as possible and inspect the bank from the positions where it might have been possible to throw a body into the creek. I also want to check the property for the guy with the green cap, his mate and the beat up truck...”
“You mean the same guys who nearly ran you down up on my ranch?” The chief interrupted.
Kennedy could hear his brain tick over the telephonic static for a few seconds
“Okay, leave it with me. I’ll speak with the judge and see how quickly I can get a warrant issued,” the chief eventually said.
Where was Grace? Did she and Steve have a special place they went to? He thought about her classic looks and how she did her best, not exactly to hide them, but pretty close. And then he thought about Florence and how it appeared her dream would be to be like Grace. If she had Grace’s beauty, though, she’d be sure to tout it to death.
When the phone on the desk rang, he picked it up on the second ring.
“Okay,” the chief said, dispensing with all small talk, “here’s what I’ve got. We can go back to the property and look for the two men and their vehicle. That’s based on their alleged trespass and attack on my property. We can’t check the bank of the creek, not just yet anyway. However, if we discover any information on our initial search that gives justification to examine the bank of the creek, the judge will rule on granting a further warrant for a more extensive search. But please, under no circumstances, go near that creek bank.”
“Agreed,” Kennedy replied.
“Just so you know, we are going to the Triple W because we have reason to believe they may be harbouring two people who a) trespassed on my property and b) while on my property attempted grand theft, and c) drove in a manner which endangered the lives of others, i,e. namely you and Grace. Okay “b” is very important. If you find your two men, the attempted grand theft will tie them to the murder of Officer Scott, in that they were trying to steal his file. A pair of complete idiots, Inspector. Like we’re not going to have computer back-up of our files! If it wasn’t so sad it would be funny.”
“Unbelievable,” Kennedy agreed. “Thank you, sir.”
“No problem. Look, this should just take half an hour to set up. Grace should be back before then.”
“How is she?”
“I’ve spoken to her and she’s fine. She needed some space, and now she’s raring to go. Tell Mactoo to take every officer he can put his hands on up there. We might not have a lot of time. Once Asher gets his hands on the warrant, his very expensive team of octopuses (they have hands in everyone’s pockets) will spring into action.”
Forty minutes later, five patrol cars, fourteen officers, and Christy Kennedy (body armoured up to the eyeballs) came screeching into the forecourt of Asher’s grand ranch house.
Asher himself had mysteriously reappeared from San Francisco - probably something to do with the helicopter, blades still silently turning, on the front lawn, Kennedy reckoned.
Asher greeted them affably on the front steps of his house. As Asher read the warrant, Kennedy studied him. He was slim, looked to be around forty, was going prematurely grey and had had vanity surgery done to his face, most noticeably around his eyes. He wore a Ralph Lauren blue and black striped Polo shirt; reddish orange pants with a white belt. The combo Kennedy would never have had the courage to wear, even for a bet, was completed with dark blue socks and genuine looking moccasins.
When Asher reached the end of the warrant, Mactoo shouted, “Right, boys, you know what you’re looking for.”
Florence Asher arrived at her father’s side, more soberly dressed now in a less revealing dark brown summer dress, her face still red from the severe scrubbing she’d endured to remove all her make-up. Without it, she looked surprisingly...plain.
Kennedy and Grace rushed straight to the row of six garages at the right of the house. Once they gained access, they were stopped dead in their tracks. Before them, in the open-plan garage, were six of the most beautiful classic US cars Kennedy had ever set his eyes on. Sadly, though, there was no beat-up truck.
“It’s obvious Asher is not going to permit any bangers around his house,” Kennedy started.
Mactoo entered the garage behind them. When he clocked the cars he gasped, “Three of these are priceless, totally priceless, and the other three could be exchanged for a good chunk of the national debt.”
“To heck with the priceless cars, Mactoo. Let’s find the pick-up, before we’re pulled out of here!” Grace hissed.
One of Asher’s staff ran into the garage, obviously to supervise the search and protect the cars.
“Michael, I didn’t know you were working up here,” Grace said.
“Yep, sure am, Grace. It pays my way through Berkeley.”
“Mactoo, watch the door,” she ordered. “Michael, we’re here because of what happened to Steve. Please help us,” she pleaded. “Where does Asher keep the farm vehicles?”
“Up on the back lot where the old farmhouse used to be. The farmhands live up there as well,” he replied very quietly.
Mactoo returned to the garage and silently nodded his head towards the outside of the building. Michael scarpered to the opposite end of the garage and pretended to ignore the police officers.
“Let’s take the patrol car up to the back lot,” Mactoo said when they were out of earshot of Asher on the way back to the main house. Kennedy was grateful for both the ride and the air-conditioning. It was the hottest part of the day, and the body armour was not only slowing him down, it was making him sweat. He didn’t like feeling trapped in clothes.
Kennedy and Grace couldn’t believe their luck as they drove up to the badly neglected old farmhouse. There, parked outside, was the battered pick-up truck that had nearly run Kennedy over up at the chief’s ranch. Kennedy immediately clocked the “My Other Gun Is a Winchester” bumper-sicker and kicked himself for not including that vital detail in the search earlier.
Mactoo signalled them to be quiet and led them to the back of the shotgun style farmhouse through a beautiful natural garden with a multi-coloured variety of flowers and plants. Drawing his gun and opening the teak door silvered by age, he entered the house gingerly. Grace followed suit and ordered Kennedy to stay by the door.
Every few seconds he heard doors slam open and heard them shout, “Clear!” and more footsteps. Next he heard them climb the stairs, shouting, “Clear!” for every empty room they checked. And then Kennedy heard what sounded like additional foot
steps. He clearly heard Grace shout, “Down on the floor, face first, now, hands behind your head!”
He heard her scream the same order with greater volume. He heard someone scurrying about as Grace’s person of interest seemed to be doing as commanded. Next, from what seemed another part of the house, a part closer to him, he heard the sound of running bare feet. Then the sound of heavier feet, someone in shoes or boots chasing, then Grace ordering, “Go after him. I’ve got this one.”
Kennedy heard the sound above him of a window opening and someone scampering on to the porch roof directly above him, someone of generous proportions, if the sound of the creaking of the supports of the porch roof was anything to go by. He lifted the broom lying on the porch beside him.
First he saw the bare legs, then the chubby, wobbly bare thighs, then the... “Oh no, you’re not totally nude,” Kennedy whispered to himself. It was not going to be a pretty sight. Then, after his privates, the first of his three bellies and then the rest of the body eventually followed thanks to the laws of gravity. After the thud of the fall, where Kennedy actually felt a tremor in the earth beneath his feet, he realised that the person of interest wasn’t totally nude after all. He was still wearing his green baseball hat.
Kennedy hoped that the fall had broken Green Cap’s ankle and that he would be spared having to chase after Green Cap. Sadly that did not prove to be the case, as Green Cap wobbled to his feet and started to head for the bushes.
Kennedy had a theory that balance was all about confidence. Look how thin our ankles are. Then consider how much weight those thin ankles have to carry. We should fall over between each step. But it’s confidence and the momentum that keeps us going.
Kennedy wasn’t as close to Green Cap as he’d been on the night outside the log cabin when he was able to trip him up, but at least this time he was armed. He came out from the shadows of the porch and carefully aimed his brush, handle first, between the lower regions of Green Cap’s wobbly wee legs. The brush landed right where Kennedy aimed it. First Green Cap’s right ankle hit the brush shaft, which in turn hit his left ankle, which in turn turned the brush shaft ninety degrees, whereby the brush shaft clattered with the front of his foot. This, in turn, proved Kennedy’s theory: remove the momentum and the confidence and the human body collapses - in Green Cap’s case in an unsightly mess.
Kennedy rushed to the clothes line and retrieved a drying, ratty, Michael Bolton T-shirt, which he threw at Green Cap so Grace Scott’s, rather than the person of interest’s, blushes might be spared.
“Good job, man,” Grace shouted as she, Mactoo and their prisoner exited the back door.
Mactoo raced back upstairs and returned a few minutes later with trousers, shirts, some mismatched socks, and two pairs of shoes for the two men who had been sleeping off a heavy night of drinking.
Kennedy and Grace bundled the two in the back of two separate patrol cars to keep them apart while they were transferred to Kelly Street police station. Mactoo volunteered to stay behind and guard the pick-up and see what else he might discover in the meantime.
As Grace drove her patrol car down the main sweeping driveway, Kennedy could see, in the wing mirrors, Asher and his daughter standing in the grand porch of their virgin-white house. This time though the daughter was holding her father’s hand very tightly.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
It turned out that Green Cap, a.k.a. Dustin McClelland, and Bobby Cohn were still too drunk to be questioned.
Mactoo said, “We were very lucky Bobby was out of it. He’s a great boxer when he’s sober. He’d have to be with a nose like that.”
Despite the risk that Asher’s lawyers would have them out by morning, the chief decided that they would not be questioned until the next day. The chief figured that Asher seemed more interested in his daughter’s liberty than the freedom of two of his workforce.
The pick-up truck was put on a trailer destined for San Francisco, and Grace volunteered herself and Kennedy to take it in to the city immediately. She said they needed to kill time until they could interview the two persons of interest.
By the time they reached San Francisco, the forensic mechanics said they couldn’t get to the vehicle until first thing the following morning, which was how Grace Scott and Christy Kennedy were to be found later that evening in the Great American Music Hall up on O’Farrell Street, listening to the fine music of Ry Cooder and Nick Lowe as they, along with drummer supreme, Jim Keltner, enthralled a packed house.
Kennedy liked the Great American Music Hall. The chips were good but the burgers were amazing. The finest San Francisco music venue reminded Kennedy of a smaller version of the Irish ballrooms back home. The Great American Music Hall was obviously not as large as the Arcadia in Portrush - where the younger Kennedy had enjoyed many a fine evening’s entertainment - but it was very funky in a Americana kind of way.
Kennedy and Grace had great fun; they chatted intensely about nothing at all and continued their conversation all the way back to the chief’s ranch.
She persuaded him to make them both a cup of his tea, just to see what the fuss was all about.
As he was making it, she said, “Your Miss Chada has been behaving herself, you know, Inspector. I went to see her today, treated myself to a massage. She does have magic in them fingers of hers. She didn’t say a word to me. I asked her a few general questions, but only got one word replies.”
“She didn’t know who you were?”
“Hadn’t a clue. I took the Mustang and was in my street clothes. But I’ll tell you this, Inspector, she’s one beautiful woman. I’ve never known anyone before who has made love to a goddess. You must be smoother than you pretend. But what is it about her, Inspector?”
Kennedy shrugged.
“I remember you told me she totally gave herself to you, and I thought that was a funny thing to say. She gave herself to you, so what were you meant to do? Trade her in for another model? Sell her on?”
Kennedy laughed.
“No, I’m serious, Inspector,” she said as she sampled his tea, “Oh yes, now this is really good. It’s not at all like the tea we make. But Miss Chada. I looked at her in the mirror as she massaged me, and I wondered about her, and I wondered about Florence Asher and about myself even. Do we all unconsciously put on show to get what we need? To catch our mate?”
“I think we all put on a show of whom we think we need to be, in order to be attractive to the person we’re trying to attract.”
“You know, some women will take excuses for men to their beds,” she continued, appeared not to have registered Kennedy’s response to her earlier question. “Why is that?”
“Could it be because they can’t find anyone else?”
“Or perhaps because they don’t feel entitled to anyone better?” she offered. “But I think I’m getting away from my point. I’m tired and I want to go to bed, but the point I was trying to make was, Miss Chada gave herself totally to you, yet you admitted you weren’t at all interested in her beyond the physical side.”
“But she was sleeping with me to facilitate her alibi,” Kennedy said.
“But she kept on sleeping with you, even when she had her alibi and it was potentially dangerous to continue to see you. The time you said you felt Miss Chada gave herself completely to you, was that the first time she slept with you or one of the later times, you know, after she already had her alibi.”
Kennedy thought about it for a few seconds, quite a few seconds.
“I’d have to say it was perhaps the fifth or sixth time,” Kennedy admitted.
“After she had secured her alibi?” Grace pushed.
“Yes.”
“That’s what I find so sad, that she would give herself to you like that and you wouldn’t be affected by it.”
“Grace, let’s not forget, we are talking about my one and only person of interest here.”
“I know, Inspector, and that’s what I mean,” she said, sounding like it had all fallen into place for h
er at that precise moment. “How did she end up in that place where she felt she had to do what she did?”
Kennedy went to sleep that night with that very thought in his mind.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Wednesday midmorning they discovered Green Cap and Bobby Cohn had been as useful as ashtrays on a motorcycle when it came to wiping the truck clean. There was yet another tear and threads from Officer Steve Scott’s red-checked shirt discovered deep in the flatbed, as well as quite a few hairs and several fibres, which Kennedy guessed would match up with the deceased. Even with this information and evidence in the bag, Kennedy still wanted to take the interview slowly.
Assume nothing, he always thought, and you won’t be disappointed. Chief Donohue had been wrong when he’d assumed Asher would leave his boys to fend for themselves just as long as his little girl was okay. Green Cap was all lawyered up to the peak of his grubby cap when Grace and Kennedy sat down with him.
The first words out of Green Cap’s mouth were, “I want my own lawyer.”
Asher’s lawyer looked like someone had just saved him from having to wipe dog-do off his shoes and was out of there quicker than it took the American nation to forget George W. Bush. The smile slowly disappeared from Grace’s face.
Dustin McClelland, a.k.a. Green Cap, had to be returned to his cell so the court could appoint a lawyer. His only condition was that it wouldn’t be any of Asher’s lawyers and that he didn’t want to share a lawyer with Bobby Cohn.
“Is this a good sign or a bad sign?” Grace asked her father as they were waiting in his office to find a lawyer for Green Cap.
“Could be good or it could be bad, Grace. The only thing I’ve learned is to never second-guess situations like this. When you do, you’re in danger of being sucker punched.”
“Do you think we can make this stick?” she then asked Kennedy.
“It’s better we go into this looking for the truth, rather than trying to make something stick,” Kennedy replied.