“I do and I will. But…”
“Yeah?”
She picked up a stalk of asparagus and paused with it. “I have a funny feeling about Bill Sechrist.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Trix’s recollection of him just disappearing into the night. That was somewhat disconcerting, wasn’t it?”
“Exactly.”
“Well, let’s see what we can turn up.” All of a sudden I felt like a real investigator. “Duane’s not going to be of any help right now,” I went on. I told her about his getting busted for trying to dig up his mother’s corpse beneath Trix’s grave marker. “I wouldn’t have thought he had it in him.”
Minerva was impressed. She closed her eyes and nodded slightly, as if viewing a movie behind her lids.
“Now,” I went on, “that kind of crazed boldness is valuable to our cause. But I can’t count on Duane’s stability yet. Tomorrow, I’m going to see Uncle Guff. I called him today and set up a fishing date with him. I want to get him out on the river, where it’s quiet and we can talk, and I’m going to tell him what I’ve found out so far. I owe him that much, anyway. Before, when I brought up the subject of the fire that night, he didn’t want to talk about it. But he has no idea what really went on between the people who were involved, he has no idea about that deal between Bill Sechrist and my dad about the insurance money. He has no honest information as to what led to the events of that night. He has a right to know. I want him to know. I don’t want to be the only one in the family with this knowledge.”
Minerva remarked, “It will be painful for him too.”
“Yeah, but he’s a tough bird. I’ve never known anything to faze him. My goal is to get him to be our ally here. Once he sees how much I’ve found out, he’ll be willing to…get on board with us. If your people pull up something on Sechrist, Uncle Guff could maybe help us get to him. Maybe set a trap for him. Or surveillance! Let’s say we find out where Sechrist works or hangs out, we’ll go down to Florida—Guff and Rosalie can drive their motor home and we can use that as headquarters.” The possibilities excited me. “It’ll be our clubhouse, and we’ll get Aunt Rosalie to fix us hamburgers and these home fries she makes, they’re really good.”
Minerva suppressed a smile at that, but I didn’t hold it against her. I thought some more. “Sechrist was always hot for easy money, a big score,” I went on. “Maybe we could approach him with some kind of moneymaking scheme. Something he’d lick his chops over and say Yeahhh.”
“Lillian.”
“Yes?”
“Those are all really good ideas. OK?”
I looked at her.
She said, “But I think your mind is getting just a bit fevered here. Maybe we shouldn’t jump so far ahead.”
I reined myself in. “OK.”
“How about first things first. Let me get the database searches going, let me look into the military records, let me talk to my South Florida sources.”
“Right.”
“Have you given any more thought to that bastard Robert Hawley? Because now that Trix’s dead, he might—”
“Oh, God.” I’d already forgotten about Robert Hawley. Isn’t that amazing? But once he was no longer an element in my quest, my mind just dropped him. I said, “As I believe a Las Vegas cop once put it, no can do.”
Her eyebrows quirked up.
I told her about the radio report. “We can probably get a little more from the papers tomorrow. But it looks like that avenue is shut to us forever.”
Minerva just sat there, gazing off in astonishment. For a minute I thought she was having another seizure. But no. She was merely absorbing things, her mind churning. As I had when I first saw her, walking through the lobby of the Ritz those years ago, I watched her mind in motion: thinking, evaluating, categorizing. She was intensely happy. She appeared to be awed, gladly overwhelmed. She murmured something very softly.
I leaned to her. “What was that?”
She shook her head and smiled at me helplessly. “This is a hell of a story. Lillian, this is a world-class story. A staggering story. My God. What I could do with this story.”
“Minerva, now—”
“There’s got to be some way I can convince you to—”
“No!”
“All right, all right, let’s not get—relax. Lillian, please don’t worry. It’s just that I get fired up. I understand you. Here. Come here. I want to kiss you.”
“Yeah, but I just want to make sure you—”
She startled me by ripping open her blouse and presenting her breasts and belly to me. So smooth and creamy, what a sight. Oh, praise the creator. God the parfait maker. God the pastry chef. God, she looked luscious. I made an incredulous sound. Minerva smiled a smile of pure mischief. I was speechless. Speech, I realized in the next moment, was beside the point.
Her lips widened and curled deliciously, the tips of her ears pinkened, and her eyes told me I would not get away from her that night. The sight of her set my body to throbbing, and I allowed myself to be drawn into her arms as a skier drops over a blind cornice and commits to the open space below, trusting that the powder on the downslope will be deep enough and forgiving enough to afford an unforgettable run.
24
Uncle Guff throttled back the motor, then cut it. On one knee in the bow, I hefted the anchor and dropped it overboard. He had built the pancake-shaped anchor by melting scrap lead into a shallow mold and adding a steel bar with an eye for the line to go through. The braided line raced through my hands, following the anchor to the bottom. I fastened the line to a cleat on the gunwale.
Then comes that distinctive moment when the current sets the boat against the resistance of the anchor, and you feel one tug through the skin of the boat as your momentum stops. Then come the tiny movements of the boat at anchor, if you care to notice them: up and down in response to the small wavelets driven by the breeze; side to side when the wake of another vessel, degrading on its way to you from the channel, reaches your boat and slips beneath.
Late afternoon is never a great time for catching fish on the Detroit River, but if you’re willing to stay as dusk comes on, you might have some luck.
Uncle Guff had had to run errands in the morning, then there was Aunt Rosalie’s hair appointment, so the sun was well on its way to the west when he and I shoved off from the marina. I’d brought some salami sandwiches I’d made, plus two Cokes apiece in my LunchMate cooler. We had plenty of worms, packed in a paper tub that I placed in the shade beneath my seat.
The afternoon was clear and hot, so Uncle Guff wore his pith helmet—an old, old thing, God knew where he got it. It was a real one, carved from that corklike stuff and sewn over with white cloth. The leather chin strap was slung daringly behind the crown. Most people would look ridiculous in such a hat, but Uncle Guff wore it with dignity. It served a precise purpose: to protect his bald spot from the sun. Beneath the thick brim his seamed face regarded the river attentively. His blue eyes behind their bifocals scanned the water, judging our position relative to the tip of Celeron Island, south of Grosse Ile. He seemed satisfied. It was a place we’d fished many times before.
We rooted in our tackle boxes and set up our perch rigs. I passed the worm container to him, he helped himself, and passed it back. The nightcrawlers writhed healthily in their cushion of black dirt. We baited up and cast our lines to the lee side of the boat. I settled on my seat with my back to the dropping sun; I felt its warmth through my short-sleeved blouse. My Vietnam hat kept the worst of it off my head. As usual, there was a faint but steady breeze from the west. Gulls skirled overhead, checking us out for possible garbage.
My uncle hadn’t spoken since we left the dock except to say “Thank you” when I passed him the worms.
There was something so meditative about him this day, and something so lulling about the water, lightly slapping the sides of our open boat, and something so simple about our lines angling from the tips of our rods down to the khaki-colored water that I almost hated t
o speak.
But I did.
“I’ve been kind of busy,” I said. “I know you didn’t want me to poke around. You told me there was no mystery to Daddy and Mom’s deaths.” I watched Uncle Guff swallow. “But it seems you were wrong on that. I’ve come across some pretty interesting evidence.”
At that word, evidence, he coughed ferociously, cupping his hand over his mouth. He adjusted the drag on his reel, pulling out some line to test it. Then he reeled up the slack. He placed his eyes on his rod tip and kept them there.
I said, “Here goes, Uncle Guff. I met up with Trix. The barmaid. Remember I was telling you about my friend Duane Sechrist, and how Trix showed up as his new mom after the fire? She didn’t die in the fire after all. I met her. I spoke with her. I got her to talk to me. The fire was an arson job. Bill Sechrist, Daddy’s friend, was the reason it all happened. Daddy made a deal with him to let him burn the bar and give him, or lend him, the insurance money. Sechrist wanted to kill his wife and run off with Trix. Daddy didn’t know that. He just knew that he owed a big favor to Sechrist for having saved his life in the war.”
If I hadn’t known my uncle so well, I’d have wondered if he was hearing me. But, the same as how the river’s current yields small clues if you pay attention, Uncle Guff gave me to understand that he was listening. Just the way he held his head, that told me.
When fishing, your senses get sharper, and your mind unclutters as you focus on what might or might not be going on in the underwater world. People have written books about it. But just as you can’t make someone understand exactly what swimming feels like until they do it, you can’t make someone who’s never held a fishing pole know that weird clarity that comes to you when you fish.
I was feeling such clarity, and from it I sensed that Uncle Guff’s and my relationship would be transformed before the day was over. Transformed how? That I didn’t know.
I opened Cokes for us and narrated everything, from my interview with Adele Hawley to my midnight encounter with her husband, through my Las Vegas investigation, to Duane and his arrest. I told Uncle Guff that Minerva LeBlanc had joined me on my quest for the truth. He knew very well who she was. I left out the sexy parts.
I talked it all through methodically because, number one, my uncle had a right to know, detail by detail; and two, because I felt that the weight of the many facts I had gathered and the circumstances of their gathering would convince him of my commitment.
All of it took so long that the sun was approaching the treeline of the western riverbank. Nothing was biting. I stopped talking and got out our sandwiches. We ate them, watching the day fade. I’d learned Uncle Guff was a patient man with a very long attention span. I felt it best to pause and let what I’d said soak in.
Uncle Guff said, “Do you need to go ashore?”
“Yeah.” We pulled up our rigs, discarding the puffy, waterlogged worms. “Sorry, guys,” I murmured to them. I pulled up the anchor and we motored to the shore of the little scrub-covered island. The mosquitoes were coming out. I helped Uncle Guff haul the boat out and we went separate ways into the bushes.
We met up at the boat, slapping mosquitoes, and jumped in. Uncle Guff started the mighty Johnson outboard and steered us to a different place, southeast of Sugar Island, where I dropped the anchor. The mosquitoes thinned out away from shore, and to keep us even more comfortable a light breeze came up. It riffled the water. We put fresh worms on, cast out our rigs, and almost immediately began catching fish. The perch population of that part of the river really turned out for dinner right then. We reeled in fish, tossed them into our bucket, pinched worms in two, threaded them onto our hooks, and cast out again.
Something heavy grabbed one of my hooks, and before I knew it my whole rig was gone, the line snapped. An adult carp, maybe. They can do that if they get ornery enough. I hastily tied on another rig and threw it out again. In an hour we’d caught a bucketful of perch, mostly, plus a few walleye. We released a couple of bullheads, a sucker, and some perch that were too small.
There was still enough light to see by. The fish stopped biting. We’d hit that magical hour. Just to be sure, though, we put our lines back in. The fish may have been through biting, but we weren’t finished talking.
There wasn’t any point in asking Uncle Guff how he felt about what I’d told him. He had made no sound as I talked. No shock. No anger. No dismay. I realized I wasn’t afraid of what he might say or how he might feel. This last week had changed me. I thought about how Uncle Guff differed from my father in the greater measure of fierceness in his approach to life. Well, I now had that fierceness in me. That was what that hot-cold feeling was. I had uncovered a reservoir I never knew existed. It wasn’t something I would need all the time. But when I did, it would be there. Blind Lonnie was right: I had more than I needed.
The air took on its mossy evening smell. A cabin cruiser probably on its way to a dockside restaurant churned past us, politely keeping its wake low. A woman’s laugh carried over the water. I was just able to tell that the skipper had put his running lights on.
I said, “I need to find Bill Sechrist. I’m going to find him. I imagine, after hearing what I’ve told you, you’ll want the bastard found as much as I do. Minerva LeBlanc is going to help me. I invite you to join in. If we got together and pooled our resources, I bet we could find him and get…and get…resolution. I have some very specific ideas on how to do it.”
My uncle said nothing.
I went on, “Of course I could let this thing go. It’s been so long. But something’s happened to me, Uncle Guff. I guess I don’t know if…The thing is, I’m no longer worried about what will become of me in life. I don’t have very much concern for my own comfort anymore. There are lots of ways to get at truth, I see this now more than ever. You know?”
“Mm-hmm.” His eyes moved along his line as it left his rod and descended into the water.
“Anyway, I know Sechrist is out there. I feel I owe that much to Daddy and Mom.”
He shifted on the bench seat of our little boat. Watching his posture, I saw I’d gotten through to him. His back was straight, his head, crowned by the white dome of his helmet, was erect. Yet he wasn’t stiff. His expression was steady, and I saw something else too. There was a look of relief about him. As if he’d just come to a decision.
He cleared his throat. “Lillian.”
“Yes, Uncle Guff.” The sun had set, and the last of the day’s light was blue and soft.
“You won’t find that man.”
The water darkened.
“What?” I said.
“He won’t be found.”
Suddenly I felt disoriented. The breeze shifted. I searched the nearest shoreline—which island was it? But the world was receding into darkness. The red and white lights of the channel buoys emerged from the gloom, as the buoys themselves disappeared. Houses on either riverbank became pricks of light floating above the black water. The summer sky sent its deep blueness down onto everything, and everything was shadows.
I said, “Tell me.”
His shoes scraped the bottom of the boat as he aligned his body squarely toward mine.
His tone was neutral, his cadence deliberate. “Your dad came to me saying he needed money. He wouldn’t tell me why he needed it. I had some I could’ve lent him, but I didn’t do it. I thought he’d gotten into trouble, and I didn’t want any part of it. When the…bar burned—I knew it was…”
He couldn’t bring himself to say the name. So I said, “Sechrist?”
“Yeah. I knew it was him.”
“How?”
“It’s one of those things you know. I saw him sitting and talking with Marty—with your dad—the week before it happened. The way he talked. The way he moved his hands. I took Marty aside and told him I’d lend him the money after all, but he said no, he didn’t need it now, he had it all worked out. He was mad that I didn’t give it to him right away.” My uncle took a long breath. “Wish I had. Well, when that man l
eft town with the boy, I knew it for sure.”
“Did you talk to the police?”
“They said they looked into it. They said there was no evidence. Until tonight, Lillian, I knew he’d done it, but I didn’t know the rest.”
We held our fishing poles firmly, as if the fact of them, the realness of them, created safety for us.
I felt a fish tug at my bait. A small perch, it felt like, the way it went tug-nibble-tug so fast. I let it eat, not setting the hook. The tip of my rod quivered. I saw Uncle Guff glance at it. I could barely see his face, but I thought he smiled very slightly.
He went on, “I tried to put it out of my mind. I tried to accept…I prayed. But…” He paused. “It was no use.”
I waited, breathing the damp river air, feeling the fish below working at its dinner. Stars were coming out.
My uncle said, “You know you resemble your father?” His voice was strong but not rough.
I said, “I always hoped to grow up looking pretty like Mom.”
“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about how you…trust people.”
I thought about that.
“You and your dad were the same. Neither him nor you could ever understand how people really are. You never wanted to see it.”
My heart raced.
Uncle Guff said, “I couldn’t let it go. Three years it was, then. I figured the boy would be almost grown up.”
“Oh, my God.”
“I found that man.”
“Oh, God, Uncle Guff.”
“It wasn’t hard. He wasn’t hiding. I went to Florida and I got him to meet me. He didn’t know who I was until it was too late.”
I could only see the outline of my uncle, as the night overtook us completely.
He said, “I tried to tell myself I didn’t mean to do it. But Lillian, I did. I took care of it. For all of them. And for you.”
I said, “You killed Bill Sechrist.”
“I killed him.”
The Lillian Byrd Crime Series Page 62