Hidden Graves

by Jack Fredrickson

  It was close enough to opulent to reinforce my belief that I would never feel comfortable in such a craft. Two tan leather seats faced each other on the door side, along with a single seat that faced the door. Two pairs of seats faced each other across the narrow aisle. Most of the hard surfaces were tan, textured plastic, trimmed in narrow, gold-colored metal. Amanda and I sat opposite each other in the larger seating group.

  The pilots came on board a minute later. The captain slipped onto the left-hand seat in the cockpit and the first officer came back to give us the same instructions about emergency evacuation, oxygen masks and flotation cushions that I ignored on commercial flights. Pointing to a cabinet, he told us there was an assortment of booze, Coke and snacks, and for us to help ourselves.

  ‘I asked them to stock Twinkies and Peeps,’ Amanda said.

  ‘You did all that this morning?’

  ‘Crack of dawn,’ she said.

  ‘You were pretty cocky, assuming I’d prefer this over the press of mankind in the main terminal,’ I said.

  ‘I hedged my bet by stocking the Twinkies and Peeps. I knew you wouldn’t refuse those.’

  ‘The Peeps, they’re fresh?’

  ‘Wealthy people don’t risk cracking teeth.’

  We were off, then, and in no time we were above the clouds.

  ‘Seductive, isn’t it? No lines, no TSA screening, no waiting of any sort?’ she asked.

  ‘What if your shareholders find out you’re using this for personal reasons?’

  ‘This was my father’s plane, not the company’s,’ she said. ‘He used it for business, of course, but also for fishing and hunting trips with his buddies. I’ll need it once in a while but not as often, so I’ve let it out for charter. I expect to make money on it.’

  She got up, grabbed two Diet Cokes and asked what specifically I expected to find in Reeder, Oregon.

  ‘The reason why someone isn’t there,’ I said.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Four hours, one Twinkie and two Peeps later, we landed at a bright and shiny small airport along the west coast of Oregon. Sounding not so bright and shiny was Sergeant Bohler, who had left eight messages on my cell phone. I called her back.

  ‘What are you up to, Elstrom?’ she asked, by way of an enthusiastic greeting.

  ‘Yielding to the herd of folks giving you tips about my murderous ways. Leaving my Jeep with you makes it more efficient for them to plant evidence. You just have to walk outside to collect it.’

  ‘We were done with your Jeep.’

  ‘What about the most recent evidence?’

  ‘What new evidence?’

  ‘The green top, of course. Surely you knew about that.’ I stopped short of asking her how long she’d watched Booster’s garage from her fat-tired, black pickup truck.

  ‘Pick up your Jeep, Elstrom.’

  I hung up on her. It was no risk. Our relationship was already damaged.

  Reeder was tiny, a meeting of two side roads along the Oregon coast set in tall pines so dense they cast everything in shade. The intersection held a mini-mart gas station, a long-abandoned ice house and two thickly wooded lots that had resisted development since the dawn of mankind.

  The clerk at the mini-mart pointed to the steeple a hundred yards down the one road. ‘That’s Dainsto’s church, though he took off.’

  ‘You call him Dainsto? Not Pastor Runney or Reverend Runney?’

  ‘He tried preaching for about a year but the man was mostly interested in money.’

  Amanda and I agreed to split up. She’d park the rental at the ice house, where a man as old as the building was perched at the top of the steep stairs. I headed down to the church on foot.

  The Church of the Reawakened Spirit was small, more of a chapel than a full church. Its white paint was faded and peeling but still stark against the dark green backdrop of the enormous pines. Two cars were parked on the gravel lot in front. One was a new four-door sedan and the other was an old hatchback, faded like the church. Two men came out as I walked up, each carrying a cardboard box filled with hardware. They got in the hatchback and drove away.

  Large cartons of miscellaneous cooking utensils, printed church envelopes and office supplies were set out on folding tables inside. Plastic chairs, more folding tables and boxes of mismatched dishes were laid out on the floor against a side wall. The pews had been unbolted and pushed against another wall. Everything was affixed with a price on a yellow Post-It.

  A woman at the far end, where an altar might once have been, noticed me and walked up. She was about forty years old, well dressed in a matching gray sweater and pair of slacks. ‘No reasonable offer will be refused,’ she said, waving a hand at the stuff for sale. She might have been the woman I’d talked to when I’d phoned from the motel in Laguna Beach, before I knew Marilyn Paul was dead.

  ‘Is Dainsto Runney in?’

  ‘Long gone,’ she said. ‘We’re recouping.’

  ‘You’re with the bank that holds the mortgage?’

  ‘I conduct their foreclosure sales.’

  I handed her a card.

  ‘This is about insurance?’ she asked.

  ‘An old friend of Runney’s named Willard Piser,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know his friends.’ She made a smile but there was resignation behind it. ‘Look, I suspect Dainsto Runney is too broke and owes too many people to ever show his face in Reeder again. He disappeared in the night.’

  ‘Suddenly?’

  She nodded.

  ‘When did he leave?’

  ‘We think the week before last, though no one’s quite sure. He didn’t have any friends left to say goodbye to. He threw his clothes and some food into his car and took off, though some say he won’t get far.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Apparently he drives an old white police Crown Victoria he got at an auction, back when he was trying to sell used cars. It was the only car he had left, some say, because it barely runs.’ She put my card in the pocket of her slacks. ‘If you do find him, tell him he’d make things a whole lot easier on us if he’d just sign some papers.’

  I walked back down to the intersection. Amanda sat at the top of the ice-house stairs, laughing with the old man we spotted driving in. His clothes were worn but clean. He had a full gray beard, combed gray hair and looked like he’d been adorning those steps ever since ice boxes were common a hundred years earlier.

  ‘Dek,’ she called down, ‘this gentleman has been telling me fascinating stories about Dainsto Runney.’

  The man looked doubtfully at Amanda, then down at me. ‘She finds that fool interesting. I was just telling her about his arm.’

  ‘His arm?’

  ‘I been telling your gorgeous associate here about Dainsto when he first came to town, and the backside of the church.’

  He gestured for me to climb up and sit down. Likely the man didn’t enjoy much company, perched as he was so high on the ice-house steps, and the story was going to be told his way, with every detail he deemed necessary.

  ‘Dainsto blew into town twenty years ago, maybe intending good works,’ he began. ‘He bought the church and began holding services.’

  ‘I thought preachers were hired by a board of church parishioners.’

  ‘Nobody thought Dainsto was much of a preacher at all, him being so young, but there was no question he was rich, paying cash for a church that had sat empty all those years. He gave sermons but they were rambling affairs and attendance dwindled soon enough. Folks around here couldn’t put much in the collection plate anyway, so he quit that altogether after a few months. When spring came he began fixing the place up, probably to sell, and that included a new paint job. It’s peeling now but it was quite nice when he got it almost done.’

  ‘He never finished painting it?’ I asked, like I was really interested.

  ‘Never did the backside. If you walk around you’ll see the wood back there is raw. It ain’t seen paint for fifty years, and that brings us to Dainst
o’s arm.’

  ‘I’m not following.’

  ‘The damned fool fell off a ladder and broke his arm. It was crooked ever since.’ He turned to Amanda. ‘Why is all this so interesting?’

  ‘I thought if he was looking to sell the place he could have hired someone to finish painting that last wall,’ she said.

  ‘No; I meant why do you good-looking women find Dainsto so interesting all of a sudden?’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Amanda said.

  ‘There was this other babe, said she was a reporter from San Francisco. Built like a brick sh—’ He stopped, moved his eyes away from Amanda.

  ‘Outhouse?’ Amanda said, laughing, offering the more acceptable word.

  He nodded, relieved. ‘She was asking the same exact things you’re wondering on.’

  ‘Television reporter?’ Amanda asked and turned exaggeratedly raised eyebrows toward me.

  ‘Could have been,’ he said. ‘We don’t get San Francisco stations up here.’

  ‘What did Dainsto do after he quit preaching and painting?’ I asked.

  ‘He was a hustler, that Dainsto. Chock-full of schemes. After he quit the sermonizing business he got the idea to build a pee-wee golf course, but he lost a pile on that and ended up stiffing more than one lumber yard for the wood he bought on credit. He mortgaged the church some more to try buying and selling used cars, then switched over to selling them on consignment, right there in the church parking lot, but he was stiffing folks there, too, never giving the old owners money for their cars after he sold them.’ He laughed. ‘That Dainsto, he tried a hundred schemes, lost money on every one and screwed everybody in the process. No wonder he slunk off in the middle of the night. I’m going to miss him. Pure entertainment, that man.’

  ‘I heard he left town in a heap,’ I said.

  ‘Clapped-out old cop car,’ the man agreed. ‘White Crown Vicky with black doors that he painted over with aerosol cans of white paint that didn’t match and puttied up holes in the roof where the bubble light bar was. Been sitting at the back of the church for three or four years.’

  ‘Nobody knows where he went?’

  ‘Plenty of people want to,’ he said, ‘but I don’t guess they’ll ever see him again.’

  It wasn’t a guess to know he was right.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  I had an inspiration as we drove out of Reeder, so we switched places and Amanda drove while I called Lieutenant Beech. ‘There’s a problem with the body found at Arlin’s house?’ I asked.

  ‘Arlin’s insurance medicals?’

  ‘When are you telling the reporters about the problem?’

  ‘We welcome visitors, including the press. We’re right on the ocean. Our sunsets are spectacular.’

  ‘What’s wrong with the corpse?’

  ‘I’m working until midnight, every night this week.’

  ‘What about that red-haired fellow hanging around Arlin’s house the night before the explosion?’

  ‘Do drop by with medical records,’ he said, and hung up.

  ‘He wants the pleasure of my company,’ I told Amanda.

  ‘To arrest you for withholding evidence?’

  ‘I might have leverage to keep him from doing any such thing.’

  I asked her to pull over. I wanted her to call the Laguna Beach Police so whoever answered wouldn’t recognize my voice calling back. She put it on speaker.

  ‘Laguna Beach Police,’ the woman who answered said.

  ‘A friend borrowed my car,’ Amanda said. ‘She left it in a no-parking zone and it got towed. Where’s the city impound lot?’

  ‘No city lot. We use Ajax Towing. Here’s their number.’

  I made the call to Ajax. ‘You’ve got my white Crown Victoria, Oregon plates?’

  The man at the other end put the phone down for a moment, then came back to say, ‘Sixty-five a day brings it to seven hundred and eighty. Cash only.’

  Ajax’s deal with the city was to tow for free. They made their money on storage charges. Or not, if the owner never came back to claim a car.

  I did the backward math based on the impound charges. Runney’s Crown Victoria was towed the day after Arlin’s house blew up.

  Amanda read my face like a page printed large and smiled. ‘Two hundred extra for a dog leg on the way back to Chicago?’

  ‘Done,’ I said, peeling off four fifties.

  She dialed a new number and said, ‘I’d like you to file a new flight plan.’

  THIRTY-NINE

  I checked for voice and text messages during the short flight to Laguna Beach, and then handed my cell phone to Amanda.

  ‘Dear Mr Elstrom,’ she read aloud from the small screen. ‘Regarding your note, I possess no answers to the questions you raised. Sincerely, Theresa Wade.’

  She handed me back my phone. ‘Congratulations. You got a response from the famously reclusive Theresa Wade, hot from her address on Tim’s campaign website.’

  ‘My note to her said simply that she and I had a mutual interest in a matter for which I was being framed. I didn’t mention that someone had disguised herself to look like her, nor did I write anything about Marilyn Paul. If Theresa Wade is totally clueless, as she claims, either she would have tossed my note away without responding, like she must do with the hundreds of others she receives from cranks, or she would have asked what our mutual interest was. She didn’t do either. She knows something.’

  ‘Dek, I’ve come to know these people—’

  ‘Not her,’ I interrupted.

  ‘No one knows her. But I do know Tim. He’s a good man. He does a lot of good.’

  ‘That never comes up. Unusual for a politician.’

  ‘He’s reluctant to brag. He stays totally focused on the future.’

  ‘And his sister facilitates that?’

  ‘She administers everything, to help him keep that focus.’

  ‘He’s still the fourth musketeer,’ I said.

  ‘Happenstance,’ she said.

  But she said it tentatively.

  ‘Damn, Elstrom, I didn’t expect to see you so quickly,’ Lieutenant Beech said. He was all grins, coming into the tiny interview room. He turned to Amanda. ‘And you are?’

  ‘A very wealthy woman who employs lots of lawyers who report to lots of lawyers who report to her,’ she said, calmly enough.

  I think I must have stared, as shocked as Beech at the arrogance of her opening salvo. She was looking out for me, telling the cop that hell would pay if he tried to arrest me. This, most certainly, was not the Amanda I’d married and would love forever. This one possessed interesting, though intimidating, new possibilities that I was very much likely to love forever.

  The lieutenant sighed, accepting. He was used to confrontations with the rich.

  He turned to me. ‘So, what’s this about the sheriff liking you for dumping that woman in the river?’

  ‘You found Bohler.’

  ‘It took me some time to find someone interested in you. Are things so messed up in Chicago, budget-wise, that a deputy who runs an impound garage heads up a murder investigation?’ he asked.

  ‘For some reason, an anonymous tipster called her to blame me. Must be that every other cop thought it was ridiculous.’ I smiled at Amanda. ‘And dear Miss Phelps’ lawyers will keep me out of jail.’

  ‘OK, I get it – you’re both crazy,’ he said. ‘For now, we’ll try to get along, if no one tries lying.’

  ‘You’re having trouble identifying the body found in Arlin’s house?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know how you found that out, but yes. Arlin was a tennis player, like so many around here. He sought treatment for an arthritic condition last winter. The doctor took X-rays.’

  ‘Which showed there was no break in his arm?’

  Beech leaned across the table. ‘Who are you, Elstrom, and what do you know?’

  ‘I was hired by a heavily disguised woman to look in on Arlin here, and Dainsto Runney, an erstwhile preacher and hustle
r, up in Reeder, Oregon. She didn’t say why. It took no time on the Internet to learn Arlin had just died in a house explosion, which must have triggered her hiring me. Runney left his church in Oregon a day or two before Arlin’s house blew up.’

  ‘You think he came here?’

  ‘He broke his arm painting that church, years ago.’

  ‘Lots of people break their arms.’

  ‘But not David Arlin, according to his X-rays?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘A white Crown Victoria with Oregon plates is impounded here at Ajax Towing. If I’m right, it’s Runney’s and the DNA inside will belong to your corpse.’

  He leaned back, rubbed his eyes and said, ‘Runney drove here and Arlin killed him to take his place?’

  ‘Have you identified the cause of the explosion?’

  ‘Loose gas fitting, like with a wrench.’

  ‘Arlin’s car was blown up in the explosion?’

  Beech nodded.

  ‘Then Arlin left town some other way. Did you ever follow up on that red-headed man?’ I asked.

  ‘Arlin’s neighbor is elderly. People stop all the time, asking for directions. Or he could have been delivering a pizza.’

  ‘Maybe he wasn’t asking for directions. Maybe he wanted to be noticed asking for the directions.’

  ‘You think it was Arlin in a red wig, dragging a herring across the road to confuse us dogs?’

  ‘Perhaps, or perhaps it was someone else – a real redhead,’ I said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ I lied.

  He sighed. ‘Your client might know, but you’re sure she’s no longer available?’

  ‘That’s all I’m sure of,’ I said.

  FORTY

  ‘You omitted a lot back there,’ Amanda said as we sped through the California night to the airport.

  ‘He might share with Bohler and she’ll just get in my way.’

  ‘Of your messing with a future United States senator?’