“I can’t believe this,” Summer said and worked a thumbnail between her teeth. “This is unbelievable.”
Jess tipped the photo towards Sam and he shrugged.
“What are we looking at?” he said. They both stared at the normally cool Summer. She was shaking.
“The man on the right is Albert Grimes. Look closely at the face of the man on the left,” she said to Jess. “Do you know that face?”
Turning to flick on the table lamp, Jess reclaimed her seat and she and Sam shifted the photo under the bright lights. It took Jess about thirty seconds for her eyes and brain to place the cut of the face, the funny ears, and the smile. Although the teeth had been updated over the years, the lopsided angle of the smile was as familiar to her as her own.
“I don’t see it,” Sam said at the same time Jess said, “This has to be a mistake.”
“No mistake,” Summer said and returned her thumbnail between her teeth. “This case has gotten a whole lot more complicated.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Irving had been ejected from the hospital the previous evening after insisting that he’d had enough of overcooked peas and too solicitous nurses. Apparently, he was convinced that they hovered due to his advanced age, and because they expected he had a foot in the grave, exacerbated by his wounds. One nudge and they’d be sending his carcass down to the morgue.
After he explained—quite loudly—that he intended to live well into the next decade, or two, the doctors finally signed his release, and the nurses sighed collectively as Alvin wheeled him out to the curb.
For all his sweetness, he made a terrible patient.
Being home overnight had smoothed out his disposition immensely, and after making Alvin take him to work, he was his old sunny self.
Jess was about to change that.
“Are you sure you shouldn’t be home sleeping?” she said as she took a seat on the corner of his desk. She’d resisted feeling his head for a fever and taking his pulse. Alvin sat in a chair by the door and Sam went to look out the window for Olive and her rifle.
“If one more person asks me that today,” Irving grumbled. “I’m shuttering this building, moving to Tibet and buying a yak farm.”
Lifting her hands, palms open, Jess said, “Fine. We didn’t come here to lecture you about taking it easy and not pushing yourself. Or to make sure you take your pills.”
Irving’s eyes narrowed, but there was humor there. “Funny, that sounds just like a lecture.”
She smiled. “I don’t know what you mean.”
A frown ended the topic. “If you aren’t here to bother me, then whatever it is must be important. Summer ran out of her office like her tail feathers were on fire and I know she was in the basement with you. I assume you’ve made a breakthrough in our case?”
There was no point asking how he knew about Summer and the basement. The man had eyes everywhere. Hopefully not in the grope-fest she and Sam had undertaken earlier.
She’d have to use one of his gadgets downstairs to sweep the place for hidden cameras.
“We have.” She unrolled the printout. “We’ve discovered the sniper is a young woman named Olive Pyle from Minnesota. I won’t bore you with the details, but we think we’ve found our link to you.” She held out the photo. “It turns out you know her grandfather.”
Slowly, Irving took the page while Sam and Alvin watched. Her boss took a cursory glance at the old photo then adjusted his glasses and pulled the printout closer to his face. The wall clock ticked for a good twenty seconds before he laid the page on the desk. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“That’s what Summer and I thought.”
The chair squeaked as he leaned back and put his hands behind his head. “I thought that old bastard was dead.”
Although Irving never confessed to his true age, Jess and her friends gaged it at somewhere in the mid to late eighties. For an octogenarian, he had the energy of a much younger man. Spending half of his life on the golf course kept him fit. To call Albert old meant something.
“Well, he isn’t,” Jess said. “At least as of about a month ago. Now he’s gone on the lam with Olive the Sniper and I suspect he’s the leader of their band of two. Would you like to explain why a man from your past wants his granddaughter to snipe at you and me?”
Silence filled the room but for the tick-tick of the clock. Irving closed his eyes and for a minute, Jess thought he’d fallen asleep. Or died. Alarmed, she glanced at Sam. He shrugged. The ticking went on.
Finally, Alvin rose halfway out of his seat.
When Irving did finally speak, Jess startled, and Alvin dropped back down. The big guy really did care.
“I guess you’d like the full story,” he said.
“Yes, please.” Jess nodded. His eyes closed again.
“It was nineteen fifty-five and I’d been living in New York in the years after high school and trying to find my fit. That Christmas, I’d gone home and discovered that Eileen Pepper, the youngster who lived down the block, had grown up. She was eighteen and a real beauty.”
A smile crossed his face. He opened his eyes. “It was love at first sight.”
Jess had seen the photo of Irving and Eileen on his bookshelf many times and knew her boss had married way up. Eileen had been what seniors called a ‘stunner’. She was Marilyn Monroe to his Joe DiMaggio.
“What I didn’t know was that Albert Grimes, who lived next door to her, also had her in his sights. They’d had one date. Eileen wasn’t interested, but he was determined. Eventually, he gave up. By the time we married, I thought he was happy for us.”
“I take it, he wasn’t?” Sam said.
“Who knows now? By then we’d become friends and everything appeared fine. He must have been hiding secrets.”
“He held a grudge?” Jess saw a clearer picture evolve. If Albert let his anger fester for all this time, the man had serious issues. “Holding anger over a broken heart for sixty plus years seems extreme.”
Irving nodded. “That isn’t all. In nineteen sixty-three when that photo was taken, he and I had started a construction company. By then he was married with young kids of his own. For several years we struggled to get a footing in the business. I wanted to move from residential to industrial construction but he said no. He asked to be bought out and I mortgaged everything I owned to scrape together the money.” He paused and the smile returned. “Eileen and I ate a lot of tuna sandwiches in those days.”
The porcelain smile seemed a little sad. Jess wished she’d known Eileen. She must have been something else.
“The business took off,” Alvin said.
“It took another five years, but yes, it took off.” Irving brushed gray hair off his forehead. “Highways were being built and cement pipes were needed for drainage. We also sold other construction materials for multi-million dollar projects. I got in early and made a killing.”
“Albert resented your success,” Jess said. She noticed Summer standing in the open doorway, listening.
“He accused me of stealing the company from him. By then, he’d been out almost ten years when he showed up at my door. Thankfully, the deal was legal and my lawyers shut him down. I haven’t seen him in over forty years. I’d assumed he’d died.”
She slid off the desk. “Love and money are two powerful motivators when it comes to revenge. In his eyes, you took both his woman and his business from him.”
Irving put his golf shoe covered feet up on his desk. He was wearing green and blue plaid pants and a green shirt. “But why now? Why come back for revenge now that Eileen is gone and the business sold? We’re too old for this crap.”
“That’s a good question,” Sam said. “Something must have set him off. The mystery is what.”
“And he’s using his granddaughter to do his dirty work,” Jess agreed. “They’re two apples from the same crazy tree.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
“That is the st
rangest thing I’ve ever heard,” Summer said as the trio walked down the hallway to her office. They had left Irving to contemplate the betrayal of his former friend.
Inside the office was a computer system that would be the envy of any government agency or computer geek. Summer dropped into her chair.
“We have to find Albert,” Jess said. She had a feeling the case was heading toward a hard landing. Olive had upped her game. They had to find her and Albert, and fast. “Detective?”
Sam checked his texts. “So far, no news from the nursing facilities. There are no new residents that match both his age and description. I’ll send out the photo and see if that shakes anything out.”
“Summer?”
Summer handed over a three-sheet stapled printout of everything she had on Albert and his granddaughter. “Albert worked as an accountant for forty years. He had a modest home and an ordinary life. His wife died fifteen years ago from heart disease. Olive went to college on a rugby scholarship. She dropped out after the spring semester two years ago and has worked odd jobs since. There is no sign of trouble with the law and she was doing well in college.”
There was a lot more of nothing unusual about the pair on the pages. They were like any other Midwest family. Apparently, that wasn’t enough for Albert.
“I read some of Olive’s diary and it’s pretty standard. Does he like me, he doesn’t like me, am I too plain, what should I wear to school, stuff like that.” Jess found most of it tame. “It’s only about two years ago that she started hanging out with grandpa at the home. He had to be the trigger that set her off. She stopped talking about boys and clothes and more about the injustices in the world.”
“Did she mention Irving directly?” Sam said.
“No. She complained about stuff she’d seen on the news or read online. None of it was personal.”
“She took her cues from him,” Sam added. “Could be that he didn’t start indoctrinating her with tales of revenge until recently. Something set him off.”
“Over checkers and Antiques Roadshow, he must have fed her stories about Irving,” Summer said. “From his warped perspective, he saw Irving as living in the shiny tower on the hill, the king who stole his castle.”
“With another new and successful business, Irving was living large,” Sam agreed. “Eileen aside, Albert wanted out of construction and made the wrong choice there. That was his bad decision. But why recruit Olive?”
“He turned her to the dark side for selfish reasons and was too old to act on the plot by himself,” Sam said. “Maybe he wanted someone to sympathize with him? Maybe what started off as a meeting of the minds turned into a revenge plot? She could have Stockholm Syndrome.”
It could take a lot less than a twisted grandfather to turn an impressionable girl to do his bidding.
“If she wasn’t such a danger to herself and others, I could almost feel sorry for her,” Jess said.
“If Albert wanted Irving dead, why have none of the shootings been fatal? She clearly knows how to shoot straight.” Jess rubbed the back of her neck where the latest pellets hit her. “Olive seems more interested in ticking me off than actually hurting me.”
“Why come after you, anyway?” Summer leaned her chin on her open palm. “You weren’t even born when the feud started.”
That remained the big unanswered question. “To hurt Irving? She has to know we’re family to him.”
Summer pressed on. “Then why not me and Taryn?”
Jess had no answers. “We’ll add that to the list of interrogation questions when I put the thumb screws to Olive after we catch her.”
They discussed all the possibilities for the non-lethal attacks and didn’t come up with anything solid. How could they when Olive was all over the board with her strategy.
Jess and Sam left Brash and headed for the PD.
Now that their suspect had been confirmed, it was time to put out an updated APB for Olive the Menace. Afterward, they checked out a couple more gun shops, a pair of motels, and a nursing home with a recent patient about Albert’s age.
Nothing. Wherever Olive and Albert were hiding, they were off the radar.
“I’d like to make a trip to my storage unit,” Jess said and gave him the address. “Since the case is taking longer than I thought, I’ll need a few things before I start wearing your clothes and undies. Your house isn’t exactly female friendly.”
He groaned. “Sam, welcome to the land of throw pillows.”
She laughed despite a huge effort not to. “Oh my God. You are such a… I don’t know how to describe it. If I didn’t know that you liked women, I’d swear you’re president of the He-man Woman Haters Club, from The Little Rascals.”
“Tell me that you don’t have at least one throw pillow in your storage locker?” He waited for a denial. It never came. “What is it with women and throw pillows? You just kick them on the floor when you go to bed.”
“What’s with men and sterile environments?” She challenged back. “If left to a man, your houses would look like units at a prison.”
“You think my house is sterile?” He actually appeared insulted.
“Not in the least,” she admitted. The house was beautiful. “But it would look nice with a couple of mossy green pillows to cover up the hole in the couch.”
Sam inhaled deeply through his nose and out through his mouth. “That couch was perfectly fine before Spike ate it. It didn’t need a ‘mossy’ anything.”
By then, Jess was shaking on the seat with laughter. “See, even Spike knew the living room needed a change. Pretty pillows are fun and add character.”
With the most exaggerated eye roll known in the history of mankind, Sam lost the battle. His mouth twitched. “Given another week with you two living under my roof, my house will look like the Grimes cabin but with fancy pillows. Spike will have eaten most of everything else.”
* * *
The storage facility was shaped like a U and tucked back off the main street. The units were not big, about ten by ten. Jess claimed to have sold off most of her belongings when she took to the road with the Lansing Mighty Muskrats.
“Why did I need a houseful of furniture when I’d spend most of my time traveling?” She pulled out her keys and walked down the aisle to the right. “Taryn, Summer, and I lived together with another friend, Lisa, in a small house in Lansing until Willard fired us. We didn’t have much, so moving to Ann Arbor to work for Irving was a breeze.”
The orange door went up easily on oiled tracks when Jess pushed it up. She reached over to the left side and flicked on the light.
Shoot! How could she have forgotten?
Her head spun in his direction but it was too late.
Sam froze when hundreds of beady black eyes stared out from the dim and cluttered compartment.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Jess froze beside Sam, her eyes on the dozens and dozens of little white poodle faces, their sightless eyes bringing a look of worry to her pretty face. It was like a scene from a creepy movie where little stuffed animals came to life after dark and ran around killing people.
Thankfully, there were several hours of daylight left.
“Oh, crap,” she said. Quickly recovering, she scowled and lifted her nose in the air. “Don’t judge me.”
How couldn’t he? She obviously had some sort of obsession that bordered on pathology. How had he not seen signs before now? He was good at reading people.
“What is this, Jess? Have you seen someone? There are a lot of competent professionals out there that can help you recover to some measure of normal.”
“Stop it.” She reached for the closet poodle. “These are the reason I don’t need therapy.”
As if.
She held the dog up for his inspection. One of his ears was larger than the other. “These are toilet roll covers. My Nana taught me to crochet when I was little.”
The explanation helped a little. Still, there w
ere a lot of them. She was a poodle hoarder.
“You might want to get them fixed,” he said drolly. “They’re reproducing at an alarming rate.”
Clearly annoyed, she shoved the poodle in his hand and took up another. “My father was in the Airforce since before I was born. I was shy, so making friends wasn’t easy. I suffered from anxiety. My father thought I should get over it and my mother went with what he thought was best.” She ran her hand over the poodle head. “My Nana thought I needed a stress reliever, so she taught me how to crochet. And since TP roll poodles were all she knew how to make, I made them, too.” Her voice caught. “They remind me of her.”
At least she had a reasonable explanation. He started to relax. It was easy to imagine a little girl in a strange new place needing something to comfort her. “And now you hoard them?”
“I don’t hoard them.” She hugged the dog. “I used to give them away at nursing homes and care centers. They’re very popular amongst seniors. Since moving to Ann Arbor, training to be a PI, and being so busy getting settled in, I haven’t had time to make the visits.”
He tipped the poodle over and saw where you put the roll. In the back of his mind, he sort of remembered one of his grandmothers having something similar in her bathroom. Only he was pretty sure hers was a goat.
Relieved she wasn’t an obsessive crocheted poodle collector, he figured he could help her out.
“I tell you what. When we catch Olive, I’ll help you disperse these around the city.” He put the dog back on top of a packing box. “If you’re going to spend time with me, you’ll need room for a new batch.”
Jess pursed her lips. “I’ve already made two since the wedding. I ordered more yarn yesterday on my favorite website.”
The Sweetheart Kiss Page 18