Whiskers of the Lion

by P. L. Gaus

  Then the three maids in forest-green dresses said good-bye, and they wheeled their cart toward the service elevator.

  29

  Friday, August 19

  9:30 A.M.

  AFTER BREAKFAST at the Hotel Millersburg, across the street from the St. James, Professor Branden and Pat Lance walked on Jackson Street with the sheriff, heading east to the bank at the corner. Stan Armbruster and Captain Newell trailed several long yards behind them as a security detail.

  As they approached the bank, people on the street took note of them. Most people recognized the big sheriff. Some recognized Bobby Newell. The attention was drawn by the fact that the lawmen were escorting an Amish couple.

  An Amish man passed by, and he appeared to try to listen to the conversation between Lance and Robertson. Looking puzzled, he studied the professor’s garb, and then he stopped in front of a window display and lingered there.

  At the corner bank, Lance entered with Branden and Robertson. She used Fannie Helmuth’s library card and one hundred dollars in cash to open a checking account in Fannie’s name. Armbruster and Newell waited on the sidewalk in front of the bank, and when Lance and the professor came out, they made a show of passing the new checkbook around to admire it. The Amish man who had listened earlier on the sidewalk drew closer.

  Two blocks west of the bank, Lance and Branden entered a pharmacy on Jackson Street with the sheriff, and Lance shopped the aisles for toiletries. These she took to the pharmacist’s station at the rear of the store, and as she laid her items out on the sales counter, she presented Fannie Helmuth’s checkbook. When asked for an ID, Lance answered that of course she had no photo ID, but she did have a library card. The pharmacist accepted the library credential, but she said to Lance, “There’s no name on your checks.”

  Lance turned to Robertson behind her, and Robertson stepped forward to say to the pharmacist, “It’s a new account. We just opened it at the bank down the street.”

  The pharmacist nodded her confirmation, and Lance paid with a check, signing it as Fannie Helmuth.

  Outside again on the sidewalk, Lance turned to Robertson. “Are you sure about writing these checks, Sheriff?”

  Robertson smiled. “The check is good, Pat. The hundred dollars covers it, so you won’t bounce a check.”

  “I mean about the forged signature,” Lance answered.

  Robertson acknowledged the concern, and he turned back into the pharmacy. He needed the signature to pass in front of the pharmacist’s eyes, but he did not need a forged check issue tailing him into court, despite the fact that the bank would surely honor the check. So, at the pharmacist’s counter, he handed across cash and asked for the check to be returned. The pharmacist drew the check out of the cash drawer and studied the check closely. “Is there a problem?” she asked.

  Robertson took the check from her hand and said, “I don’t want her to overdraw her account. She hasn’t been keeping that checkbook for very long. Amish, right?”

  Next, the group rounded the corner at the pharmacy and entered the alley parking lot behind the Hotel St. James. Lance and the professor got into the backseat of the Crown Vic, and Bobby Newell sat behind the wheel. Robertson stood beside the driver’s window and said, “Walmart, Bobby. I’ll ride with Stan.”

  At the Walmart south of town, Robertson pried himself out of the Corolla and came forward to the Crown Vic. There he took Lance’s elbow chivalrously, as if to help her navigate the potted blacktop parking lot. Lance accepted the gesture for half of the distance and then pulled her arm loose, saying, “Really, Sheriff. Please.”

  As they entered the Walmart, Lance walked beside the professor. Captain Newell led the way inside. Robertson and Armbruster followed them into the cavernous store.

  Using a cart, Lance and the professor walked the aisles in their Amish clothes, and they selected various items, shopping for light groceries. The professor picked out snack foods and sodas, and Lance carted some fruit. As they headed for the lines at the cash registers, Lance also took a box of tissues for the hotel room.

  At the cash register, while Robertson and Armbruster watched, Lance paid with a check from Fannie’s checkbook. As she did this, she frowned a measure of consternation at the sheriff. Robertson noticed, and he came forward with his wallet. The cashier was studying Lance’s Fannie Helmuth check when Robertson reached out for it and handed over cash instead. As the cashier took the money, Robertson said, “Ms. Helmuth is a guest of the county,” and the cashier gave a perfunctory nod as she muttered, “Cash or check. Suit yourselves.”

  Outside in the Walmart parking lot, Robertson drew his crew around him and said, “Next, the convenience store across the street. Lance, I want you to show Fannie’s library card and ask if you can rent a DVD.”

  At the cars, the groceries were loaded into the trunk of Armbruster’s Corolla. Robertson got into the Crown Vic on the passenger’s side, and again Bobby Newell drove. Armbruster followed them out of the parking lot, and the rest of the morning passed for him pretty much in this same fashion. Follow the Crown Vic. Trail behind five paces at the stops. Drive behind them to the BMV. Wait outside while Lance inquires about a learner’s permit. She wouldn’t actually apply for one, Armbruster knew. She’d just inquire and take away literature.

  After the BMV, Bobby Newell made a stop at a cell phone company. Armbruster went inside with the others. Acting as Fannie Helmuth, Pat Lance inquired about getting a phone. She did not buy one, but she did leave with several brochures about the various plans.

  The morning drifted along slowly for Armbruster. He felt like he was a chauffeur with no passenger, assigned to drive idly from place to place while shadowing a mirage, all of it to establish the identity of the sheriff’s new “guest of the county.” By the end of the day, nearly everyone in Holmes County would have concluded that Fannie Helmuth had come home. Also, it would appear to everyone who became aware of her that she intended to stay for more than just a day.

  After lunch at the roadside restaurant in Charm, they headed for the more distant town of Baltic on the southern border of the county. Armbruster followed the sheriff’s Crown Vic southeast on SR 557 to Ohio 93, and then south on 93 into Baltic. There Robertson had Bobby Newell stop at a real estate office beside the road, in the north end of town. The sheriff went inside with Lance and the professor, and Armbruster and Newell waited beside their parked cars.

  When the three emerged from the office, a woman late in her years followed them out and turned back to lock the door. Robertson directed Captain Newell to ride with Armbruster, and he let the real estate agent sit in the passenger’s seat of his Crown Vic. Lance and Branden again got into the back of the Crown Vic as an Amish couple.

  Robertson opened the driver’s door of the Crown Vic and realized that Newell still had the keys. Across the roof of the car, he asked Newell for the keys, and Newell tossed them over to the sheriff. Robertson caught the keys, and they clinked in his hand. Startled, Robertson held the keys in the light and stared incredulously at them. He gave them a shake, and he tipped his head. He glanced over to Captain Newell, and Newell asked, “What, Sheriff?”

  Robertson stood beside his sedan and thought about the keys. He turned his thoughts into an interior awareness, and a smile drifted across his face.

  • • •

  It took an hour and a half for Branden and Lance to show the Helmuth property to the real estate agent. As they did so, Robertson sat behind the wheel of his Crown Vic, distracted by his ruminations.

  The real estate agent walked through each of the buildings, taking notes and snapping photographs. Standing between the barn and the main house, she marked the identities of the buildings on a Google Earth map of the property, and once she was done, she went back into the kitchen of the main house to spread surveyor’s documents on the kitchen counter. She read through the papers and maps, and she appeared to be satisfied with what she had le
arned. As she left through the front door, however, she reminded Lance that she would need the deed holder, Fannie’s brother Jonas in Kentucky, to send an affidavit that he did in fact wish to sell his property. A contract would be sent to him for his signature. When the real estate agent stepped onto the front porch, she asked Robertson to drive her back to Baltic.

  Robertson, who was then standing with a troubled smile beside his sedan, replied, “Of course,” and as the real estate agent took the passenger’s seat, the sheriff gathered his team at the back of the Crown Vic. There Robertson opened his trunk and took out the red backpack that Armbruster had found beside the yellow VW two days earlier.

  “I’ll take her back to Baltic,” Robertson said to the four. “It’ll take half an hour. Then I want to meet you all at the Dent farm. Mike and Stan know the place, Bobby. While I’m down in Baltic, I want you to ask if this backpack does really belong to Howie Dent. His mother will know.”

  Lance spoke up. “She’ll also know that I’m not Fannie Helmuth.”

  “Right,” Robertson said. “So you just stay in the car. We’ve finished our travels today, anyway.”

  The sheriff closed the lid of his trunk. “Mike, I want you to show Stan and Bobby something at the Dents’ house. They weren’t there when you and I saw it.”

  Branden hesitated. “OK, Bruce, but what?”

  “The nail,” Robertson said as he stepped around to the driver’s door. “The nail behind that hutch on their back porch. The nail where they kept their spare keys to the yellow VW.”

  • • •

  At the Dent farm, it was Susan Dent who answered the door. She recognized Professor Branden. She appeared weary with grief, but she managed with effort to hold the screen door open for him, saying, “I didn’t know you were Amish, Professor.”

  “Just today, Mrs. Dent,” Branden said. He stepped inside. “You know Detective Stan Armbruster, and this is Captain Bobby Newell.”

  “Please come in,” Susan said forlornly. “Is it about my Howie?”

  “It is, Mrs. Dent,” Bobby Newell said. “And I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Please, just Susan,” Mrs. Dent said.

  Branden asked, “Susan, is your husband home?”

  Susan Dent appeared not to have understood the meaning of Branden’s simple question. Her leaden feet stumbled along a path into the living room, where she turned and said, “Of course you’re right to blame him, Professor. I begged him to let me call the sheriff.”

  Branden followed her into the living room. “Maybe we should talk with Richard,” he said. “Really, Susan, maybe you should have something to drink.”

  “Didn’t I tell you, Professor? I’m not talking to him today.”

  “OK,” Branden said, “but can you tell us where he is?”

  “Chopping wood,” came Susan’s vacant reply. “He’s just been chopping wood all day.”

  Newell followed Branden into the living room and said, “I’m sure it’s hard, Mrs. Dent. And again, I’m sorry.”

  Susan Dent brushed a tattered hankie across the surface of a dusty end table. She turned in place and selected her husband’s brown recliner. She sat on the edge of its seat. While staring at the carpet, she said to the room, “Oh no. He wouldn’t listen to me.”

  Branden mouthed “water” to Stan Armbruster, and Armbruster followed the hallway back into the kitchen. He returned with a glass of tap water, and he set it on the end table that Susan Dent had just dusted with her hankie. She looked at the glass of water and barked a strangled laugh. “I saw my Howie in the letters. Richard wouldn’t listen.”

  Tears began to course her cheeks. “I begged him to call. That morning when we saw that the VW was gone? And I tried for weeks to tell him about the newspaper’s letters.”

  With her wrinkled and tattered hankie, Susan dried her eyes. Branden pulled his handkerchief from the side pocket of his denim pants, and he held it out for her. “This one is clean, Susan. Please take it.”

  Susan dropped the soiled hankie from her fingers and left it lying at her feet. She took the professor’s handkerchief and glared an accusation at him. “I don’t see how he can blame me!” she shrieked. “I wish he’d chop that ax right through his foot!”

  Again Susan wept, this time with the professor’s handkerchief to her eyes. Branden knelt beside her and held her shoulders to draw her close. She leaned toward him as if starved for human touch, and Branden held her while she sobbed.

  Bobby Newell and Stan Armbruster stood nearby and waited for her anguish to pass. Eventually she stopped crying. She dried her eyes and blew her nose. She slipped the professor’s handkerchief into the pocket of her dress. When she eased herself away from Branden, she appeared to have gained enough clarity to be both relieved and embarrassed. She stood and asked Captain Newell, “Why have you come? Do you know who killed my Howie?”

  “No, Mrs. Dent,” Newell said. “We don’t know yet. But the sheriff wants us to look at something. Is that all right with you?”

  Susan seemed to slip back into puzzlement. Her eyes seemed to drift along an invisible plane of nonreality. “Howie hasn’t been home for weeks. I don’t know where he is.”

  “It’s the back porch,” Branden said. “Where you kept the keys behind the hutch.”

  “OK,” Susan said. “It’s just beyond the kitchen. We keep spare keys there for Howie.”

  “I remember,” Branden said. “May we?”

  “What?” Susan asked. “May you what?”

  Branden said, “We would like to have a look behind your hutch, Susan.”

  “Of course,” Susan chimed. “Can I get you boys something to drink?”

  Branden lifted the glass of water that Armbruster had brought out of the kitchen. “Here, Susan,” he said. “We’ve already had some water.”

  Susan took the glass and sank back into the recliner. A question appeared in her eyes. She looked up at Branden and asked, “Do you have news of my Howie?”

  • • •

  On the back porch, Branden showed Armbruster and Newell where the nail was positioned behind the hutch. Newell came forward and felt behind the hutch, and then Armbruster did the same. Branden said, “That’s the nail where they kept the VW’s spare keys.”

  Saying this startled the professor. His eyes tracked several thoughts at once. He brushed his fingers through his hair. Astonished by new insight, he said, “It’s the keys. It has always been the keys.”

  Armbruster stepped forward again to feel the nail. After he had done so, he took hold of the corner of the tall hutch and pulled it out from the wall. There he saw the nail, and a carillon of bells pealed away in his mind. His thoughts raced back through the questions he had asked Fannie Helmuth just yesterday. When he saw there what the professor was talking about, he practically jumped in place. “It’s the backpack,” he said, and he turned back immediately to dash into the living room and out through the front door.

  When Armbruster returned, he had the red backpack that Robertson had given them at the Helmuth farm. It was the one Armbruster had found in the rain beside the yellow VW. He took it into the living room, and as Branden and Newell watched, he knelt in front of the seated Mrs. Dent to show it to her. “Mrs. Dent?” he asked. “Is this Howie’s backpack? We’ve always assumed that it was, but I need you to look at it.”

  Susan shook her head as if to deny herself any solace. She shook her head as if she deserved no sympathy for her pain. But she did look at the backpack, and then she took it into her hands. “No,” she said dismissively, handing the backpack to Armbruster. “He has his FFA badge pinned to the flap.”

  Armbruster handed it gently back to her, but he retained his hold on the front flap. “Here in the flap, Mrs. Dent,” he said. “Aren’t these the holes that his badge would have made?”

  Susan fingered the tattered holes where long ago her son had pinned his Fu
ture Farmers of America badge, and a sheen of tears appeared in her eyes. She turned the backpack over, and she examined the straps. Small holes were evident there, too. “Howie had other pins on these straps,” she said, and she clasped the backpack violently to her breast. “Oh Howie!” she shrieked, and she began to rock on her seat.

  Armbruster took her hands away from the straps, and he held them. He waited for her to realize that he was talking to her. He waited for her to stop rocking. When she looked back into his eyes, he asked, “Are you certain, Mrs. Dent? Are you certain that this is Howie’s backpack?”

  “He loved this bag,” Susan sobbed. “He carried everything in here.”

  Armbruster stood and motioned for Branden and Newell to take charge of Mrs. Dent. Hurrying toward the front door, he said, “I need to make a call.” He dashed out onto the front porch and found Robertson coming up the porch steps. Waving his hands with excitement, Armbruster blurted, “It’s the bus ticket, Sheriff!”

  Robertson smiled knowingly. “And the backpack, Stan.”

  As the sheriff came up to the top of the porch steps, Professor Branden emerged from the house and stood beside Armbruster. With a satisfied smile, he said to Robertson and Armbruster, “It’s the keys. It’s the backpack and the bus tickets, but it has always been the keys, too. We’ve known this all along. We just didn’t realize it was important.”

  Mrs. Dent appeared at the front door, and she came out ahead of Bobby Newell. “What? What can you tell me about my Howie?”

  Behind her, Newell stepped out onto the porch. “Howie would have left his backpack on the bus in Charlotte,” he said. “We should have guessed that. He had only his phone. He never used any credit cards, because he left his wallet in his backpack, on the bus when they went in to breakfast. His keys and his wallet were left on the bus, in his backpack. That’s why he needed the spare set of keys.”

  Susan Dent smiled as though lost in a haze. She turned back to Newell and said, “Oh, I told you. Howie keeps everything in that backpack.”