by Joan Opyr
Two blocks later, Sylvie stopped in front of an iron-barred display window for a place called Jackson’s Pawn Shop. I stared at it dubiously.
“It’s upstairs,” she said. “You have to go through the back of the shop to get to the staircase.”
Cowslip had two pawnshops, both of them seedy. Jackson’s Pawn Shop made them look like Nordstrom’s. As I followed Sylvie past toasters, electric guitars, baby strollers, and ice skates, I grew depressed. How much did a pawnshop pay for a blender, two or three dollars? Whatever it was, someone was desperate enough to take it.
A fat, greasy man sat behind a glass counter in the back of the shop and stared at us through long, sticky bangs. Lying on the floor at his feet was the inevitable pit bull. It looked up as we walked by, its big square face perfectly placid. Why couldn’t people just get Labradors?
“Nice dog,” I said.
The fat man laughed and the dog laid back down with the side of his face pressed flat against the dirty tile floor. We walked down a short hallway and through a freshly painted white door marked Reginald Brown Investigations. Brown’s office was at the top of a narrow, carpeted staircase that stank of stale cigarettes and urine.
“I’m sorry,” Sylvie said. “I found this guy in the phone book. I guess I was desperate.”
“It’s okay,” I lied. “Sam’s dragged me to worse places.”
Reginald Brown was his own receptionist. We knocked on the door, and he yelled for us to come in. I whispered in Sylvie’s ear, “If I made my living spying on cheating spouses, I’d be more careful.”
“Shh,” she said, “he’ll hear you.”
We went in, and Brown stood up to greet us. He was smiling. I’d been expecting a low-rent Philip Marlowe. The man who reached out gleefully to shake our hands was young, not much older than Sylvie and I, and instead of a trench coat and fedora, he was wearing nearly the same outfit I had on. His office was nice, too. Big and airy, with new carpet and good furniture.
“Hello, Miss Wood and friend,” he said, nodding at me. “Please, sit down.”
I looked around his office. It was fairly large, with two rooms leading off the west wall. The door nearest Sylvie and me had a red light next to it, probably a dark room. Decoration was minimal, a couple of Ansel Adams posters. It was clear how Reggie spent his money—his computer must have cost a mint. Fifteen-inch monitor, color scanner, and, sitting on the desk in front of him, a digital camera that cost God only knew what. The box the camera had come in was sitting on the floor next to his desk, and the manual lay open in front of him, so I suspected this was a recent innovation. He saw me looking at the camera and ran his hand over it protectively.
“Nice system,” I said.
Brown smiled again, and I noticed for the first time that he was wearing braces.
“Thanks. It’s all tax deductible, too.”
Sylvie cleared her throat, and Brown quit grinning.
“Well,” he said, “let me tell you what I’ve learned. If you’d give me a couple more days . . .”
“I can’t afford a couple more days,” she replied firmly.
“Right,” he said sadly. “Anyhow, I followed your instructions to the letter. I called all of the people on your list and told them I was with the Associated Press. I said we were interested in the Burt Wood story, missing for nearly twenty years and then he turns up dead. I contacted the Lewis County Historical Society—a lot of good stuff there—and told the woman in charge, what’s her name?” He glanced down at his notes. “Millicent Rutherford.”
I elbowed Sylvie and mouthed the word, “Christ.”
“Shh,” she said.
Reggie Brown read on. “I told Mrs. Rutherford that we were thinking of focusing on the tie-in with the Frost robbery, although that isn’t really the right word, as it was actually an embezzlement. Anyhow,” he turned his back to us and opened a file on the computer. “Sorry. I haven’t printed it all out. Some is still on the computer. I’ll have to mail it to you.”
“That’s fine,” Sylvie said.
“Right. Fred Maguire. Not much there. He was thrilled to be talking to the Associated Press, and it was hard to keep him focused. Free with the gossip. Said everyone suspected Frost was gay, but people were surprised by Wood. Frost and Wood went to high school together and were roommates for a while at Cowslip College. After that, Frost dropped out and went to work for Lewis County. He was an assessor.”
He clicked the mouse and a small window opened in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. “I also did a little research into the Lewis County records. Public information, you know,” he grinned back over his shoulder. “Just started putting it all on computer a few years ago. They’re starting with the older stuff and working forward, rather than the later stuff and working back. Good thing, eh? Anyhow, Frost began working for the county in June of 1975. Nothing untoward until January 1976, when the county clerk wrote a memo to the Lewis County Commissioners detailing some problem with accounts in the assessor’s office. There’s a second memo in February saying that it was human error and everything was now hunky-dory.”
He closed the window and read on. “Millicent Rutherford refused to discuss the Frost case in any detail, but she suggested I call Wilhelmina Aldershot. Lots of information there. Mrs. Aldershot claims that Frost was essentially a bisexual rent boy. On the condition that she not be quoted by name, she told me he’d had arrangements with Maguire, Burt Wood, and both Agnes and Fairfax Merwin. Maguire seems like a possibility. He has arrest records in New York and Chicago for solicitation. That could mean anything, of course.”
Granny. I wondered just how much of her information was accurate and how much was idle speculation. About fifty-fifty, I decided, with a frosting of embellishment.
“The next people I talked to were Agnes and Fairfax Merwin. As you suggested,” Reggie continued, with another over-the-shoulder smile, “I called her at home and him at the office. He flatly refused to talk to me and hung up. She was a little more forthcoming. She absolutely denied that Frost and Wood were having an affair—in fact, she was adamant about it. One thing I found interesting was that unlike the other folks I interviewed, she knew the exact dates on which the men disappeared. She last saw Frost on July first, and Wood on the third. She gave times and locations. On the night of July third, she saw Frost at a bar, the Wheatland, drinking a beer. She said she was there two-stepping with her husband. On July fourth, she claims to have seen Burt Wood’s motorcycle at a rest stop on Highway 95. It was after two o’clock in the morning, and she was coming back from Spokane. Mrs. Merwin said she waited around for several minutes to say hello, but he didn’t come back to the bike. Eventually she left, as it was late and she needed to get home.”
Heavy trucks rumbled by on the street outside, and I found myself listening hard to catch every word. Brown turned off his screen and turned back to the desk. “I checked on the bank transactions you asked about, and, for at least the past two years, money has gone out of Katherine Wood’s account at regular intervals, five thousand dollars at a time. It may have been going on longer, but that’s as far back as I could get. The transfers have been made quarterly, and they were in house, from one account at Pioneers Bank to another. The receiving account is held jointly by Kate Wood and Agnes Merwin. One other transaction might interest you—two transfers have been made from that jointly held account to a bank in New York. Here,” he handed her a piece of paper. “The money went through an intermediary account on the way to its final destination. This is the name of the bank and the account number where it ended up.”
Sylvie looked down at the paper he’d handed her before passing it on to me without comment. It was a list of names, banks, and transactions. Most of it seemed to be in Greek, but it was clear that the name on the destination account was Charles Gibb. So much for my theory of the spontaneous alias. I looked at the other names listed.
“So this intermediary account you mentioned—it’s called the Fitzhugh Corporation? What’s th
at?”
Brown wiggled his eyebrows up and down like Groucho Marx. “A blind, I think. I haven’t been able to find out anything about Fitzhugh except that it isn’t publicly traded. The Gibb account was dormant for a long time. Money began moving into it again a couple of months ago, all from Fitzhugh. As I said yesterday, if I had more time . . .”
Sylvie shook her head impatiently. Brown shrugged and continued, “I tracked them down as best I could, but I’m not a financial wizard.”
“You’re a hacker,” I said.
Brown looked wounded. As if to sooth himself, he ran his hand absently over the digital camera. “I’m a private investigator.”
“Is that everything?” Sylvie asked.
“Without another day or two to work on this . . .” Receiving no encouragement, he went on, “I’ll tell you what I’d do if I were you. The classic detective’s advice is cherchez la femme. In this case, I’d cherchez la moolah. Access your mother’s accounts. All you need is the last four digits of her social security number and her mother’s maiden name. Then, follow the connection between Wood and Frost. They’d known one another for a long time, and they both worked for the county as assessors.”
“Assessors,” I mused.
Brown stared at me blankly for a moment and then laughed. “An assessor determines how much property tax you have to pay,” he explained, as if he were talking to a particularly dim-witted farm animal.
“I know that. I was just thinking.”
“Really?” he smirked.
Sylvie stood up and offered him her hand. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Brown. This has been very interesting.”
“If there’s anything else I can do,” he began.
Cut your fee in half so we can pay you for an extra day, I thought.
Half an hour later, we were on the other side of town at a combination bookstore and coffeehouse called Ellie’s. Our waitress had just served us two coffees. What we’d actually ordered were two hot teas. I sighed and dumped three packets of white sugar into mine. Sylvie shook her head in disbelief.
“You’ll rot your teeth.”
“Not a chance, see?” I gave her a wide smile. “Strong and white, if a little gapped up front.”
“Nice choppers,” she agreed. “I thought you took your coffee black.”
“I do,” I said. “Usually. But tonight, I need the jolt. Caffeine plus sugar, the poor woman’s crack cocaine. So what’s this about a jointly held account?” I cocked my head and looked at her closely. “How did Brown get into your mother’s bank accounts anyway? Isn’t that illegal?”
She shrugged. “Through me. I gave him her maiden name and the last four digits of my own social security number. That was enough to run a full credit report on me.”
“On you?”
“Yes, on me. My mother and I have a couple of joint accounts. I knew once he got into those, he’d be able to get into hers.”
“But not without her permission.”
“No,” she agreed. “Not legally.”
“Shit, Sylvie. He could rob you—he could rob your mother blind!”
“I don’t think so. I’m not crazy. He’s licensed with the state of Washington. He has to follow certain rules.”
“But still, your mother’s bank accounts . . .”
“A couple of those accounts are held jointly,” she repeated. “I never look at the money. I just withdraw what I need, I let my mother know how much, and we call it good. I could have looked most of that stuff up myself.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Because our joint accounts are held in two small-town banks in the small town of Cowslip, Idaho. You don’t think Betty Jane Oliver down at the Wheatland Bank might mention to my mother that I’d been making inquiries? She and my mom went to high school together. Or, how about this: picture me asking my Uncle Fairfax at Pioneers Bank for a record of all balances and withdrawals? No. It was better to have Reggie Brown asking the questions.”
“Under what guise? He couldn’t tell the bank he was with the Associated Press.”
“No.” She looked thoughtful. “He could have told them he was with a credit card agency or a brokerage or something. My mother has investments everywhere. No one would think anything of it.”
Meaning Reggie Brown probably broke the law, I thought, but I didn’t argue. Kate wasn’t my mother, and the Woods’ money wasn’t anything to do with me, either. I said, “Listen, I’ve got a savings account with exactly a hundred bucks in it. I can’t touch that, not if I want to keep my checking account open. Now, my checking account has about three dollars and fifty cents in it. I don’t understand banks. I don’t understand money. What I know about investments would fit in this coffee cup, with plenty of room left over for the coffee. I was completely lost in Brown’s office. I only understood about twenty percent of what he was saying. Why does your mother have an account with Agnes?”
“I don’t know—they barely speak. When my mother offered to share the inheritance from my grandfather, Agnes turned her down flat, so that can’t be it. Did you get a look at the balance? It’s just over ten thousand dollars.”
“That’s a lot of dough.”
She nodded. “I asked Brown to look into my mother’s finances because I wanted to know if she was being blackmailed. The fact that he was able to trace a connection to Charles Gibb tells me she was.”
“Maybe. Brown traced a connection from your mother and Agnes to Gibb, and it went through this Fitzhugh thing first. If that’s a blind, then what does Agnes have to do with it?”
“I don’t know.”
I tasted my coffee and stirred another teaspoon of sugar into it. “What are you going to do?”
“Exactly what Brown said, look for the money. The problem is that I’m no more a financial wizard than he is. Before I do anything, I want more information on Frost.”
“That’s where I come in,” I said. “Sarah should have finished that research by now. We’ll see what she’s got and take it from there.”
Sylvie gazed up at me. “I’m glad you came today, Bil. I feel better when you’re with me.”
I wondered if I could be reading her wrong or just losing my mind. Everything she did and said was driving me crazy. During the three-block walk from the truck to the coffeehouse, she’d kept bumping into me and then excusing herself. There was a positive charge in the air between us, and my skin was buzzing.
She looked away first. After a few moments, she said, “This place is lesbian-owned.”
The walls were plastered with big posters of Eleanor Roosevelt, Audre Lorde, and Angela Davis.
“I’d never have guessed.”
“Smart ass.”
“That’s me,” I laughed. “Actually, it does kind of surprise me. This is the first lesbian coffeehouse I’ve been to that has real sugar. Usually, you have to make do with molasses or something like that. Tipper and I went to one place in Seattle where we had our choice of either honey or maple syrup. It was disgusting.”
“No need to worry about that here. Ellie’s as big a sugar fiend as you are.”
“Is she the owner?”
“She is.” The green eyes met mine for a moment and then looked down again. “I used to go out with her.”
I could hardly have expected Sylvie not to have had girlfriends. Probably lots of them. I wondered if Ellie was the k.d. lang I’d seen her with at Jackie J’s.
“Isn’t she a little young to own a coffee shop?”
Sylvie frowned. “Young? Ellie’s thirty-five.”
Not the same woman. “You must have been in diapers. Who is this cradle snatcher?”
“Shh,” she said, laughing. “I don’t think she’s here, but who knows? She might be in the back checking her stock. She’s paranoid about people ripping her off.”
Sylvie looked into her coffee, gently swirling it with a spoon. The coffeehouse wasn’t particularly crowded, and aside from the fact that one of Sylvie’s ex-girlfriends owned it, I liked the atmosphe
re. Me’shell NdegeOcello was playing over the sound system, and the posters of famous feminists reminded me of my parents’ den in the seventies. Someone had even slapped a “Feminism Spoken Here” sticker on the cash register.
The coffee was also good, if wrong. There were empty tables on either side of us, and the people sitting in the corners were absorbed in their newspapers and conversations. Sylvie was giving me a bemused look, and I felt the flush rising in my cheeks.
She said, “You wouldn’t pass me a packet or two of that sugar, would you? The cream as well. I think I’ll splurge today.” She stirred two packets into her own cup.
“Don’t believe the hype. Sugar is good for you.”
She laughed, and took a sip. “Delicious. Deadly, but delicious.”
If I’d been offered my pick of DNA, I’d have made Sylvie Wood. Exactly. Everything about her was perfect, from the faint freckles that ran across the bridge of her nose to the way she licked a drop of cream from her top lip. I wanted to ask her about the woman at Jackie J’s, but how could I? With A. J.’s help, I’d pulled the rug out from under my own big feet.
“Would you pass me another sugar packet?”
“What?” I said, shocked out of my reverie.
“Sugar?”
I moved the whole container of packets over to her. She stirred in two more.
“Can we talk?” I asked.
“I thought that’s what we were doing.”
“We are,” I said slowly, “and we aren’t. What are we doing here? I mean you and me, not this stuff with our mothers.”
Sylvie leaned back in her chair, balancing it on two legs. Before I could stop myself, I yelled, “Four on the floor!” She laughed and brought all four of the chair’s legs back down with a loud thump.
My cheeks were on fire. “I’m sorry. That’s what my mother always says.”
“Bil.” She leaned across the table and gazed at me, her fingers touching my face. “Your eyes are very blue, dark blue with snowy caps around the pupils. They’re beautiful.”
I took her hand. “What do you want to do?”
“I want to go home, and I want you to come with me.”