For Whom the Limo Rolls

by Lorena McCourtney

  “Poor Mary Beth?”

  “All that searching we did when we were younger, and all she ever found was a phony entity from another dimension.”

  “And you?”

  She smiled, like a sweet ray of sunshine shining into a dark room. “I found Jesus.” Then her smile turned into a wry laugh. “So here I am, a Christian believer in a clown suit, and two divorces behind me.”

  “Better behind than ahead,” I offered. “Do you ever get, oh, disheartened with the behavior you see in Christians?” I asked.

  “Disheartened? Oh yes. Also disillusioned, discouraged, dismayed and dispirited. I dated a guy from church for a while. Till he wanted to move in so we could see how it ‘worked out.’ But just as often it’s me, not others, that I get dismayed and discouraged about.”

  “Have you ever changed churches?”

  “No. . .” She turned from studying the contents of a desk drawer and gave me a speculative glance. “Have you?”

  “So far, just thinking about it.”

  “Well, whatever you do, hang in there with God. Don’t give up on Him. Don’t judge God by the flaws of people who claim to worship him.” She picked up a lone key from a catch-all drawer. A tag with a number was attached to it. “Does this look like a safe deposit box key to you?”

  “Could be. I wonder why Sloan didn’t take it?”

  “Maybe he just didn’t find it. Or maybe he found what he was looking for, and it was something other than a key.” She pocketed the key. “I’ll see what the lawyer thinks. If it is a safe-deposit box, maybe her will is in there. If there is a will. Mary Beth got kind of weird before our friendship collapsed, and sometimes I thought she was beginning to believe her own act. Maybe she figured that instead of dying, she’d be joining Trafalgar when she left this earth.”

  I echoed Judee’s earlier words. “Poor Mary Beth.”

  We spent another hour or so in the house, but we didn’t find anything of particular interest. Julee called a moving and storage outfit and arranged for them to box up everything and put it in storage. We hauled plants out to the limo and her SUV.

  Finally we went out the back way. I locked the door and handed her the key. Before we parted, I asked, “How’d you become a clown?”

  “No great calling. A friend had a Lulu clown business and I helped her out occasionally, so when she moved away I took over and became Lulu myself. I tell Jesus stories to the kids. They go over pretty well, coming from a clown.”

  I’d heard that the Lord works in mysterious ways. Did he sometimes speak through a clown to kids – and to me too? Don’t judge God by the flaws of people who claim to worship him. I wanted to jump on that and make it a solid platform to stand on. But the platform had a few wormholes. Didn’t flaws in the people he created suggest flaws in the Creator too? Maybe he wasn’t as all great, all good, all powerful, all knowing as he was supposed to be?

  She opened the door to her SUV. “Hey, I’ll call you if any of my birthday party clients need a limousine.”

  “I’ll call you if any of my limo clients need a clown.”

  “Maybe I’ll just call you and we’ll get together for lunch sometime?”

  “I’d like that.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Back home, I took two of the plants in the house, then carried the two biggest and most flamboyant ones over to India.

  “Hey, great! I’ve been thinking I needed some green in here. What are they?”

  “No idea. The only plants I know are daisies.”

  She put the plants at each end of the living room where they added a showy touch of exotic elegance. “How about coming over for dinner?” India asked. “I’m fixing—”

  I held up a hand. “I don’t care what you’re fixing. If you’re inviting, I’m coming.”

  I went over to my side of the duplex to change out of the chauffeur’s uniform, and by the time I returned she had enchiladas and salad on the table. During dinner, I filled her in on my meeting with Lulu the Clown, plus background information about Mary Beth’s origins with both channeling and Slick Sloan.

  “I’m sorry I never got to see her Trafalgar show,” India said. “Sounds as if she took acting lessons from my ex-husband.”

  “Ex-husband? But Connor is dead, not ex—”

  “Not Connor.” She passed the dish of enchiladas toward me, her enigmatic smile as she said, “More?” signaling that although we’d come close, we still weren’t talking about her other life in the world of Coach handbags and Manalo Blahnik shoes.

  I took another enchilada and told her I knew Fitz would love to have them sometime too. At some point one of us got the bright idea of calling local motels to see if Sloan Delaney was registered, so after dinner, I got out the phone book and started dialing.

  “May I speak with Sloan Delaney, please?” I’d say, as if confident he was registered. “I don’t have his room number.”

  When I didn’t get anywhere, India gave it a try. She also had no success, which led me to suggest that he’d probably left town after our encounter with him. India came up with another possibility, an obvious possibility although I hadn’t thought of it.

  “Maybe he’s using some other name.”

  “I wish we knew if Detective Molino located him.” But we both knew that was useless wishing. Detective Molino shared his information about as well as Phreddie shared his secret cat life when he disappeared for a few hours. “If he couldn’t find Sloan, we probably can’t either.”

  India gave me a sly sideways glance. “Who says?”

  Could we do better? Detective Molino figured he had his guilty man in Tom Bolton, and I knew from news reports that the sheriff’s department was busy with the murder of the body found in the bay. Although politics, local, state, and national, dominated the news now. The item that interested me most was an announcement that Anderson McClay had withdrawn from the county commissioner’s race, his wife’s health given as the reason.

  My personal thought was that it was difficult to run a political campaign from a cruise ship. Even more difficult to be a county commissioner if you were a murderer hiding out far away from your home county.

  But, even with the emphasis on politics, crime did march on. A rash of burglaries had been reported at houses along Hornsby Inlet. More crime to keep local law enforcement busy.

  Although I had to wonder if crime and politics weren’t sometimes one and the same, given the dismaying revelations that kept coming out about the activities of various politicians.

  “I have photos of Sloan,” I remembered suddenly when we’d given up on the phone calls.

  I ran back over to my side of the duplex and got the photos of Sloan Delaney I’d found in Mary Beth’s house, bringing Phreddie too. India and I studied the photos together as we indulged in caramel-pecan ice cream atop brownies. Phreddie crawled into a big pot to inspect one of the new plants.

  “I know you shouldn’t judge a person by looks,” India said as she studied the photos.

  “But he’s pretty shifty looking, isn’t he? I wonder, if we were to take these photos around to the motels, and mention another identifying factor, that he drove a ’78 red Corvette. . .?”

  “Let’s do it!”

  ***

  I had to make a limo run to Sea-Tac on Thursday, but I was back in Vigland by 2:30. So, photos in hand, we headed out in India’s pickup. We also had a rather limp story about why, if we were asked, we were trying to find Sloan Delaney, that his wife was looking for him because she was afraid he had amnesia and didn’t know who he was. We tried several of the larger motels first but got nowhere. Partly because the motels tended to protect their guests’ privacy and security, but also because there were so many employees that we were constantly being referred to someone who wasn’t available. We decided to bypass the other big, touristy places, and go for the smaller Mom-and-Pop places that often had weekly or monthly tenants.

  On the second one, we hit pay dirt. Pay dirt of a kind we didn’t expect.
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  I showed the photos to a gray-haired lady who looked tough enough to open oysters with her teeth. She was sitting in an old green recliner watching TV in what appeared to be part motel office, part living room. She lumbered to the counter when I held up the photos.

  “We aren’t sure what name he’s using now, but he drives a red Corvette. It’s possible he has amnesia.”

  “Sure, I remember him and his flashy car. One of you the gal who kept callin’ him and yellin’ like a mad hyena when he wasn’t here?” Her disapproving glance flicked between us, gold gleaming from a bottom tooth.

  “You mean, uh, Mary Beth called him?”

  “I don’t know the name. She said she was his wife, and if he didn’t get his sorry behind home or send her some money, she was gonna sell that Porsche in the garage to pay the rent.”

  “His wife?” I repeated. “You mean his ex-wife?”

  “Wife, ex-wife, who cares? I just know she was a big pain, callin’ the office all the time when he didn’t answer the phone in his room. I’d get amnesia too, with someone like her after me.”

  “Did he return her calls?” India asked.

  “I dunno. He wanted me, even if he was here, to tell her he wasn’t. But I told him what he could do with that kind of hogwash.”

  “He isn’t here now?” I asked.

  “Nah. Pulled out, let’s see, must have been couple of Saturdays ago. Rushed in like someone lit a fire under him, threw his stuff in that fancy car, and left.”

  India and I looked at each other. That Saturday would have been the night we encountered Sloan in Mary Beth’s driveway. Had something in Sloan’s meeting with us pushed his panic button?

  “He didn’t leave a forwarding address?” India asked.

  “We haven’t had a renter in this motel leave a forwarding address since Reagan was in office,” the woman said.

  An exaggeration, no doubt. But close enough to tell us that the clientele here generally didn’t tell where they’d come from or where they were going.

  “Did he ever say what he was doing in this area?” I asked.

  “Up to no good, I figured. Though I don’t really know,” the woman admitted. “I was surprised when I ran into him down at the courthouse one time. He was coming out of the County Clerk’s office.”

  “Have the police ever come around asking about him?”

  “No.” She hesitated momentarily, as if about to ask why they might come looking, but then gave a who cares? shrug.

  Back in the pickup, India mused, “So, he has a wife.”

  “At the same time he was splashing in Mary Beth’s shower and they were talking about getting back together.”

  “It gets harder to tell who’s the scammer and who’s the scamee, doesn’t it?” India said. “And we still don’t know what he was looking for in the house.”

  “I think we can figure he found it, given the way he tore across the yard that night. He had something in his possession that he didn’t want the police to find.”

  We drove up to the espresso stand near Wal-mart, ordered our usual, and discussed further what Sloan may have found in Mary Beth’s house. We drew up a list of possibilities.

  At the top of the list was evidence that implicated him in Mary Beth’s murder.

  Next was evidence that tied him to the investment scam.

  Possibly something that enabled him to latch onto that big amount of money Mary Beth was expecting to receive.

  Maybe items to pawn or sell.

  “Or could be we’re overly suspicious, and he really did just need a pair of clean socks he’d left there,” I said finally.

  “Right. Innocent ol’ Sockless Sloan.”

  “What we need to know is whether he’s left the area, or if he’s still here, laying low,” I said.

  “And if he’s still here, why? What’s he doing?”

  We decided India would take one photo and widen the search to cheaper motels in a larger area the following day. I’d try to find out what Sloan had been doing in the courthouse.

  ***

  I hurried into the courthouse the following day after a run to Enumclaw to take an older couple to his 85th birthday party, held at noon because he didn’t like to go out at night any more. In the County Clerk’s office, I pulled out the formal photo of Sloan Delaney and showed it to the woman behind the window at the front counter.

  “I’m trying to locate this man. I think he was in here, possibly on several occasions. He doesn’t have a mustache in this photo, but he has one now.”

  The middle-aged woman studied the photo, then motioned to a woman running papers through a photocopy machine. “Teri, come look at this.” She showed her the photo. “Put a mustache on that guy, and isn’t he the one who kept coming in to look at wills?”

  “Anyone can come in and look at a will? Even if it has nothing to do with them?”

  “Once a will has been filed for probate it’s a public record, and anyone can look at it. That’s why people use trusts, or whatever a lawyer can think up to keep information from becoming a public record.”

  Teri studied the photo too. “That’s him, I think. Older now, though. He looked at a lot of wills. What’s he done?”

  “Nothing that I know for sure,” I admitted. “Though there are various possibilities. Was he interested in old wills or newer ones?”

  “Newer. Or at least not ones from way back. I think he was getting names from obituary notices and then coming here to look at their wills, because once he pulled out an obituary to check on the spelling of a name.”

  “Did he say why he was doing this?”

  “Research for a thesis,” the one named Teri said. “He claimed he was working on a master’s degree in sociology.”

  The other woman nodded agreement. “That’s what he told me too.”

  I glanced back and forth between them. “Do you think that was true?”

  “I don’t have any reason not to believe it,” Teri said, although her skeptical tone suggested she had her doubts. “But even if he was looking for some other reason, anyone can, as I said, look at a will. We occasionally get people doing genealogical research, but they’re usually interested in older wills.”

  “Did he give a name?”

  “No. We don’t charge for looking at records, just for making photocopies, so we never had reason to ask him for a name for a receipt. And he just looked, then sometimes wrote something in a notebook.”

  “Okay, thank you very much. You’ve been very helpful.”

  I left the office with a possible clue as to what Sloan may have been looking for, and found, in Mary Beth’s house: that notebook with information he’d gathered examining wills at the County Clerk’s office. They wouldn’t tie him to murder, but they might make the authorities suspicious of what he was doing. Collecting information from the wills of strangers is not the kind of thing most of us do.

  ***

  Fitz invited me to dinner on the Miss Nora that evening. They had a sail up to Bainbridge Island scheduled for the weekend. His son Matt disapproved of our sleuthing activities, so we avoided that subject during the dinner conversation and chatted about Fitz’s excellent stuffed peppers, some new global positioning gadget Matt had installed when the boat was being overhauled, and guests coming in from Australia. And, oh yes, politics. Matt was really into politics. I tried not to roll my eyes when he got started.

  “We’re in trouble if that big spender Dickerson gets in as county commissioner,” he declared. “I was sorry to see McClay drop out.”

  I kept quiet about my own suspicions of McClay. “But county government doesn’t really have much to do with you here on the boat,” I said cautiously. Dickerson didn’t sound too bad to me. He wanted to enlarge the sheriff’s department.

  “Politics affect all of us, and I object to all the big spenders. Including Sheevers, that guy who’s so hot to get a state income tax started. And then there’s that big-talker who wants to be senator. He’s in your face every time you turn o
n the TV. Rulfson. He’s always parading his wife and kids and grandkids around. What we don’t need is him in there promoting enough pork barrel projects to drown us in lard.” Then he gave a laugh that unexpectedly sounded self-conscious. “Sorry. Politics get me kind of worked up.”

  “Maybe you should run for some position yourself,” Fitz said mildly. “Get an honest man in there.”

  “Find yourself a good wife to help,” I offered. “A good wife is always an asset for a politician.”

  “Maybe I will get into politics sometime,” Matt declared as he carried his dishes to the galley sink. Then he turned and glared at us. “But don’t you two start trying to provide me with the wife.”

  Fitz and I strolled out on the dock after dinner. Beautiful fall evening, moon a golden ball on the horizon. Water lapping gently at the pilings, and a brightly-lit tug pulled a raft of logs down the inlet, taking advantage of the outgoing tide. A scent of woodsmoke drifted from somewhere across the water. The night wasn’t cold, but chilly enough to make the jacket around my shoulders and Fitz’s hand wrapped around mine feel extra good. Also rather romantic, except that Fitz’s and my minds were more on murder than romance.

  I reported on what India and I had learned about Sloan Delaney, and the results of my visit to the County Clerk’s office.

  Fitz outlined a scenario. “Sloan and/or Mary Beth watch the local obituaries. Sloan uses the names to make a search for wills in the County Clerk’s office. If a will indicates a worthwhile amount of money may be involved, Mary Beth figures out a way to meet the heir. Otherwise known as the potential sucker.”

  “That fits with Annabelle Dietz. Sometime after her husband’s death, Mary Beth just called up and made friends with her. But Tom’s wife died several years ago, and he said he and Mary Beth just happened to park next to each other at Wal-Mart.”

  Fitz looked off across the bay, going into criminal mode, as he calls it, thinking like a crook. “Mary Beth sees an obituary for an elderly man. The probated will shows Tom as the heir. Mary Beth looks Tom up in the phone book and gets an address. Sloan discreetly hangs out around here until Tom drives out, follows him, and calls Mary Beth when Tom parks at Wal-Mart. And there she is when he comes out, a pretty lady in distress.”